The Hillside Commons

Hello Commons, here is the fourth part of A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game, a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. Please enjoy. See the bottom of this post for more info.

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Part IV
Dimensionality

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Dimensionality:
An Extended Thought On Existence And The Human Experience

“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”
~NDT

“…and quite frankly, neither am I.”
~HOW

The Geographic Categorization Of Society

As with many of my more existential trains of thought, this one began while I was watching an episode of the animated television series Rick And Morty. The series is about a mad scientist-type grandpa named Rick who goes on wacky sci-fi adventures with his idiotic grandson Morty. In the show, Rick has a gun that shoots portals which lead to what he calls alternate dimensions; what I saw, though, was Rick traveling to alternate universes, not necessarily dimensions. Ah, to be lost in the world of words…

Anyway, ‘Other universes aren’t a different dimension,’ I thought to myself, correcting an animated character’s speech.’ A dimension is… what is a dimension, technically?’ This thought prompted me to look up the definition of a dimension, which is as follows: an aspect or feature of a situation, problem, or thing. Dictionary.com, everyone; that is literally the vaguest and most open-ended definition to a word I have ever read, it could apply and be applied to anything.

Before we continue, this text is literally me scribing a lengthy train of thought filled with various ideas that may or may not necessarily have scientific backing. In essence, this is a rambling, and if it doesn’t quite make sense to you, rise above and make sense of it; or don’t, I’m not going to force you. If you’re reading this in pursuit of the one ultimate and undeniable truth about the Universe, well, I’m flattered, but please look elsewhere. And if you find it, kindly let me know where it is.

With that said, I will now “apply dimensionality” to “the geographic categorization of society” – one must board the train somewhere.

You are reading this thought, a product of a human society which exists between the second and third societal dimensions, but let’s back up. A zero-dimensional society, the one given for all other societies to exist, is a nomadic society. This is a group of intelligent lifeforms who stay together but do not stay in one place, instead living their lives following food and water to suit their needs for survival. If/when these lifeforms eventually decide to settle down and become more agricultural, their society enters into the first dimension. A one-dimensional society is a tribal society; a group of humans that exist together inside a contained geographical area that exists within a bigger land mass, or continent.

This continent, eventually, will sprout many of these tribal societies, each with its own culture. Some of these tribes will be friendly and open towards one another and some… won’t, but at the end of the day, they all learn to co-exist until they begin merging together under peaceful terms. If they don’t learn to coexist, one or more of these tribes may begin exterminating the other tribes to eventually claim the entire landmass to themselves; either outcome marks the process of entering into the second dimension.

A two-dimensional society is a nationalistic society, a society which exists on one (or eventually multiple) land mass(es) contained on a planet. Depending on the planet, there may be few or many land masses, each potentially with its own society (or societies) running on its (or their) own cultures. Like the aforementioned one-dimensional society, these more nationalistic societies coexist with each other until they eventually merge (whether peacefully or violently) to form into a three-dimensional society, one which exists on a global scale. In my mind, in a true three-dimensional society, every single specific settlement on every single specific landmass is united and working together, likely in an attempt to spread to other planets where they may or may not find other independent societies of potentially higher dimensions. Each of these specific societies will probably have a unique, if not slightly borrowed, form of culture, too.

Following the train to its next stop, once a three-dimensional society merges with (or is taken over by) the societies inhabiting the other planets in the solar system, it becomes a four-dimensional society. This level of society, if it were to/does exist, would need to have technology far more advanced than our current human society can even comprehend, along with a bottomless supply of numerous physical resources and limitless free energy. It gets bigger though; a five-dimensional society would then encompass all star systems in an interstellar neighborhood, which is one of many parts of a larger galaxy. A galactic society, in our case a society encompassing the entire Milky Way Galaxy, would be considered a six-dimensional society.

Going up in societal dimensions from there, we have a society encompassing our local group (fifty-four galaxies), then all of the galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster (roughly one hundred local groups), then all of the galaxies in the Laniakea Supercluster (one hundred thousand galaxies), until it finally encompasses the entire observable Universe, which is thought to contain two trillion galaxies. These societies would be seven-, eight-, nine-, and finally ten-dimensional societies, respectively. We can actually take one more theoretical step from there and enter into the eleventh dimension of society, a society which exists throughout the entire Universe, so long as more of the Universe exists outside of what we humans can currently observe.

Grape Flavored Candies

All that said, let us pause for a moment in order for me to tell a quick story. Close your eyes if you can do so and continue reading and imagine you’re a human-like creature called a… called a Wah. After wandering through the forests for an unrecordable amount of time, you were adopted into a nomadic group of other Wahs called… Wahs Always Huntin’, and together you eventually settle down and claim an area for yourselves… stay with me here.

Your tribe operates in the middle of North America in a time approaching modernity and, being Wahs, you have the uncanny ability to infiltrate civilizations and societies – especially human ones – and assimilate all the lifeforms until they turn into Wahs, essentially spreading like a virus and completely taking over everywhere you can. Veni vidi vici, am I right?

After a few years of colonizing tribal villages in the forests, your tribe comes upon a small town nestled in a little clearing. This is a town of humans, as no other higher form of life would be desperate enough to colonize Earth, and in this specific town, all the humans gather in a white building every Sunday for a guy dressed up in a costume to shout at them and read them stories; this is but one example of the strangeness of humanity. One could call the human species a conundrum, were they so motivated, but I digress.

You, the alien outsider observing as these humans participate in their very foreign culture (foreign compared to your own, that is), become extremely confused and afraid for their survival. What’s more, you decide they’re a lost cause, they’re hopelessly beyond helping themselves. You convince your leader to launch an assimilation, which is successful. From there, us Wahs move on to the eventual assimilation of all the towns in the state, and all the states in the country, then all the countries on the continent of North America. Can’t stop there though – there are more dumb humans out there. So, the now Wah-Assimilated Humans launch a global assimilation operation and come out on top, taking over the planet as the dominant lifeform; we moved from the bottom dimension to the third dimension just like that. Who’s fuckin’ wit’ da Wahs?

Following suit, our society then moves on to our solar system and up and up and up until it controls the entire physical Universe. Then, we stop our assimilating for two fucking seconds and start celebrating – we made it, eleventh dimension baby! Our society’s taken over the entire physical Universe! We are The Domain, we have civilizations on every single inhabitable planet in Existence and resource generation on all of the uninhabitable ones. It wasn’t easy, but we took life by the balls and spread our civilization everywhere, assimilating everything else on the way, and we fucking won.

Now what?

All of our society’s greatest generals and philosophers gather together for discussion and they come up with two options: either we can look back at the journey and try to figure out what the point of it all was, or we can explore this thing called the Multiverse that our clever sciencey bois just figured out, thus allowing us to further expand our society, our knowledge base, and of course, our control. Being how we are Wahs and how the idea of a universe that we don’t control is sickening to us (now that we control an entire Universe, that is), we decide to delve into the Multiverse. Set your phasers to fun, because this is about to get stupid.

Once we break through that four-dimensional wall and enter into an alternate universe, we need a way to understand it. Since our society has been using dimensions thus far, why don’t we call the universe(s) parallel to our Universe the twelfth dimension? And then the collection of universes parallel to that (or those) would be the thirteenth dimension, and so it goes on and on until we’re locked in the fetal position trying to figure out what the color purple smells like! Thus the conquerors continue on, taking over every conceivable universe parallel to our own until the entire Multiverse (our Universe’s entire Inner Rim) is under control of the Wahs. Can’t stop there though, there are more multiverses are contained within the Omniverse, the Outer Rim of sorts – there’s more work to do.

“But,” one of the generals exclaims before jumping into the blue and red swirling portal that is slowly but surely turning into a solid purple mass, “we’ve been going for a while now, so if y’all philosophical types want to, yous can hang back in our original Universe while the rest of us continue on, cool? Get to thinkin’ !”

As you watch the assimilation teams jump through their portals leading to a place on a rock floating in a parallel space floating in… more space, I suppose, that question comes back to you: what was the point of it all?

Unable to come up with an answer by yourself, you begin wandering across the land you stand on until you experience everything it has to offer. Once the first culture is exhausted you move on to the next and so on until you experience everything there is to experience on Earth. Then you move on again, exhausting all the cultures from all the other dimensions of your existential society until you have experienced the Universe Herself. Great!

You check in with the purple portal and the boys aren’t back from taking over the Omniverse yet, so you reflect on all your experiences and begin to philosophize. You realize that you, an original member of the Wah Assimilation Horde back when it was called Wahs Always Huntin’, were only able to experience your entire Universe because you had unbridled access to your society through your past contributions to it. No other lifeform will be able to do what you’ve done, to experience what you’ve experienced; neither will they necessarily want to either, they’re busy building their own cultures and living their own lives, pushing themselves to new heights, and for what? So you can pay them a little visit and experience them to try to figure out the point of life? Maybe… probably not, but mayb-

You are broken from your train of thought by Wahsident Liguey, the head Wah in charge of the culture of your home society. At first he scolds you, but once he realizes who you are, he embraces you in a hug and takes you around his culture, giving you a fabulous tour of everything it has to offer. You try explaining to him that not only have you seen his culture, but that you know more about it than the Wahsident himself, but he will hear none of it and the tour continues on anyway, wasting everybody’s time, money and energy. The Wahsident is a proud Wah, you see; therefore, it must be done.

So, Wahsident Liguey calls up his other Wahsident buddies and they take you on special insider-access tours through all their respective civilizations, but again and again you tell them you’ve seen it all. After touring your Universe a second time over, you bring your Wahsidential party to the portal and the collective Wahsidents all gather around you. One of them steps up and asks what they can do to please you, and all you can come up with is: “Tell me, what is the meaning of all of this? What is the meaning of being alive?”

The Wahsidents nervously look back and forth at one another, unsure of what to say. Just then, the assimilation team comes back through the portal with astounding news: they conquered the Omniverse! But, they discovered the once-theoretical Gigaverse is actually real, and now obviously they have to conquer that. Again, the Wahs Against Hlifeforms offer you a choice: stay here and think, or come and join the party. You look at all the Wahsidents in front of you, the masters and architects of their own cultures all trying their hardest but still failing to give the answer to your question. Then, you jump into the portal and a certain scent hits your nose, a scent reminiscent of grape flavored candies, the ones that don’t taste remotely like grapes but are called grape-flavored regardless.

Biotools

You see, the way I see it, the philosopher Wah spent his entire life fulfilling the purpose of his life and he didn’t even realize it until after he got everyone else in his Universe involved. For a Wah, a hypothetical creature who has the ability to take over (especially human) societies, the purpose of life would clearly be to take over all the societies and, by extension, expand said societies to take over more societies. Why else would they exist naturally equipped with such tools and abilities? The same goes for predators with their sharp claws and teeth made for tearing flesh, and for monkeys with their thumbs for climbing trees to escape said predators; creatures are born with certain body parts that give them certain abilities and attributes that allow them to survive and prosper, so wouldn’t the point of their lives be to use what they’ve got?

That isn’t to say the sole point of a monkey is to climb trees simply because it has thumbs, but rather, maybe climbing trees is part of the purpose of a monkey’s life.

A fish is born with gills so it can live surrounded by water just like a human being is born with lungs to live surrounded by air; these mechanisms are required for the body to function, yes, but they are still part of life for these lifeforms. A fish, generally speaking, has its purpose in the food chain of its environment. That is the main purpose of a fish’s life: to swim, eat smaller fish, circulate water, breed, be eaten, et cetera; these are the things a fish’s brain is capable of doing. A fish is quite the complex organism, too; biology in and of itself is indescribably intricate and complex, and don’t even get me started on consciousness. Nobody knows how fuckin’ consciousness works. If reincarnation is a thing like everybody’s said it was until a certain group of white-skinned humans started dressing in costumes and telling stories on Sundays, and I’m reborn into a fish, I will do nothing but swim, eat, breed, and die, and I suggest you do the same if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Then again, if you are born as a fish with the ability of abstract thought, well… my next point.

Human beings, aside from having the capabilities of traversing, manipulating, and understanding our given pocket of Existence on levels unlike the lifeforms we share our planet with, have brains capable of complex and metaphysical thought that influence how we manipulate our Universe. Other lifeforms have brains that are clearly capable of some sort of thought too, some of them capable of fairly impressive feats when not compared to our own. Beavers build functioning dams out of logs and sticks; humans build concrete towers tall enough to crash airplanes, another human invention that allows massive amounts of humans to travel by air, into. Elephants, given the facilities, can paint pictures of fruit; humans, given the facilities, can make a three-dimensional printer that, given the facilities, can literally create the fruit the elephants are painting, edibility and all. Apes in the jungle live together in large colonies and build nests and beds for themselves; humans create societies that are (sort of) governed by different sets of rules across the entire globe, each following its own complex and unique ideology. Some species are capable of comparatively more impressive feats than humans as well, although I have less examples to give. Humans can create wearable objects to help blend into their environment; octopi can change the color and texture of their octolegged bodies at will for camouflage. Humans can communicate through intricate mouth noises and squiggly symbols on paper; dolphins can communicate through clicking noises and echolocation, an organic version of sonar, a human technology; theoretically, there are likely some wildly advanced extra-/ intraterrestrial species capable of communicating telepathically. Do you see my point?

We need to face something, especially those of us who believe there is one sole truth out there, one sole purpose of life, or whatever collection of words you want to use to describe the idea of there being a the truth. The purpose. The answer. I ask you – what part of this ridiculous Universe that we inhabit is so simple that it can be explained with a single statement, with a single answer? Take a beach ball, for example. Just a plain old red, white, and blue inflatable beach ball you would bring to the beach as a kid; it’s just a toy, some air with plastic around it, right?

Kind of, but not really. That plastic is composed of different components which can be broken down into atoms, the building blocks of things, and categorized into elements. Atoms, from the Greek word atomos (meaning indivisible), can be divided down into the three components that make them up: protons, neutrons, and electrons. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know anything about these three particles besides that two of them have an electrical charge of some sort, but I do know  they can be broken down further into these things called quarks, of which there are six kinds: up, down, strange, charmed, top, and bottom. Quarks cannot be broken down any further, as far as we know, although my mind is open to the possibility that one day, some crazy bastard will discover that which composes a quark.

Anyway, that beach ball was also assembled in a factory (probably by underpaid workers with families and lives as intricate and complex as your own) out of materials that were probably created in a different factory operated by even further underpaid workers with unique and complex lives. Also, you need to take into account the money, time and energy that went into making that beach ball, AND the money, time and energy it will take to make that beach ball disappear after your attention for it has run out – whether it disappears into a landfill, an incinerator, or into the water/soil of the planet you live on. Also, there’s the coloration of red, white and blue, the colors of the American (and a ton of other countries, but I’m from America so the American) flag, which could have an infinite amount of implications depending on which size hat you wear and whether or not that hat has tin foil on it.

The point of all that bullshit about the beach ball, of all this rambling really, is that nothing in Existence, at least as far as I can tell, is simple; especially not life. If you’re reading this it, means you at least got through that bit about the dimensions of society, which even I can admit is fairly fucking convoluted. And the Wah shit? Just go home, get the fuck outta here with that.

If something as mundane as the self-organization of one species of life on this planet on can be organized in such a way by a member of that species who felt compelled to stratify societies based on geographic size and location, one can only imagine how complex that species as a whole must be. So, if there is a purpose to life, to the human experience, then it simply can’t be simple, but at the same time, it has to be, or otherwise the humans would never be able to figure it out. And, like I was talking about before, the purpose of any given thing’s life probably has something to do with what that thing was born with. So let’s roll with that.

Human beings are born into this world with many things, but I see three major biotools, if you will. First is the brain (and head); this experiences thoughts, perceives the Universe, ingests substances, and controls the rest of the body. Next is the torso; this processes substances in order to sustain the body and keep things ticking. Finally we have the limbs, the appendages; these allow the human to carry out its thoughts via the maneuvering through and the manipulating of the Universe.

Tackling them one at a time, let’s start with the torso: the human torso can process a myriad of sources of energy, some only semi-edible, and use them to keep the body alive. The body requires food and water or else it will die and the consciousness will leave it, which it would have eventually over time anyway, regardless of how much one eats and drinks. So far, the purpose of human existence is to live until death, which will come sooner or later… stellar.

Next, limbs: the human’s legs allow it to travel the land and the arms allow it to climb, and when these powers are combined, they can swim as well; since our purpose so far is to live until death, these must be used for getting food and water. So, our purpose is now to find food and water, consume it, process it, expel the waste, and repeat… that’s a little better. The brain is where things get interesting – metaphorically speaking, we have a theoretical infinity motionlessly spinning around the inside of our skulls. We can think about anything; how dimensions work, what matter is made from, aliens from alternate universes that take Psychedelic drugs and travel through the various dimensions of Existence, a purple elephant named Susie Q, whatever. Literally whatever we want!

Get ready for the real magic – when we use all our biotools together, we can (eventually) bring these thoughts into reality, no matter how ridiculous they are. Want a purple elephant? Learn how to modify the DNA of an elephant and name it Susie, then make another elephant that’s more or less identical to the first one and call it Suzie Q. Want to visit extraterrestrials and discover alternate dimensions? Work with the humans who build spaceships and fly out into space, you’re bound to discover something eventually. Want to figure out how matter works? Get a microscope and start from there; reading a few books may help with this one. Do you want to, I don’t know, organize your thoughts about how dimensions work into a written thought process that refuses to stay on topic? Get stoned to the bone and start writing on your laptop, see where you go from there. It’s currently three forty-nine in the morning (approximately one month after I originally started this essay) as I write this, and I’m happy with how it’s concluding. Again, do you see my point?

I hope you do, because if I have to explain it further, then you have no business reading this thought, which probably sounds a little harsh. That being said, if you feel individually offended after reading this thought, well, you likely had no business delving into this poetry anthology either, an anthology which no human being aside from myself could even hope to put together, because they just wouldn’t know HOW to do it.

To end this train of thought, I would like to pose a paraphrased quote. I always rather leave an interaction with someone on a good note and with some substance so we can both leave thinking, and possibly even growing as humans a little bit. Since this is a written piece, I think another quote will do just the trick. Yeah, I’m one of those types. One of those too, if you couldn’t already tell. Anyway, here’s Alan Watt’s words redone in my own,  typed in comic sans because if you can’t take it seriously solely based on the font, well, you probably don’t have any business reading it anyway:

“I like to ask graduates the following question: what would you do if money didn’t matter? If you could choose how to spend your life, what would you choose? Well, after they’ve washed their hands of humanity’s educational system, most ex-students will tell you they’d like to be writers, or painters, or sculptors, or musicians, but everyone knows you can’t make any money that way. Or another human will say, I want to live off the grid and tame horses. So I ask, would you want to teach others how to tame horses too? Let’s do it. What do you really want to do? When we finally get down to what that ex-student really wants to do with their life, I’ll tell them to fucking do it and forget about the money, because if you think money is the most important thing, you will waste your entire life, and worse, you’ll have entirely missed the point of it by the time you croak. You’ll spend your finite time on Earth perpetuating a life you don’t enjoy living, which is asinine. It’s better to live a poor, fulfilling life than an empty life spent counting minutes on a clock, or worse, dollars in a billfold. Life is for the living; if you’re too afraid to live because of a fear of not being able to horde away enough green paper with the faces of dead men printed on them, ask yourself: do you really deserve to live your life?”

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Toss A Stone

I like to tell the others,
“Not all those who wander are lost.”

A stone tossed across the still surface of a pond,
skipping along the pristine mirror image of the sky,
until the tension breaks
and takes the stone for a dive.

Pay attention, wanderer,
journeying through the great beyond,
that you don’t encounter something bigger,
out to take you on.
You don’t know what’s out there,
and there’s no need to be alarmed,
but every rock skipped
chances a chase with a swan.

Yes, I tell them,
“Not all those who wander are lost;”
and many lose their way
long before they’ve left at all.
So take a rock and toss it,
there’s plenty to go around;
and if you dome that swan just right,
dinner may be abound.

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Beech Tree Buds

A starburst.

One rainfall later,
last week’s gray neighborhood is flooded with life.
Shining like a gemstone,
carved into the shape of a knife,
the sun melts away a brainstorm of dark clouds
with a melancholic lining.

Like an alcoholic choosing life over strifeful boozing,
springtime ignites the fuse on the brightest firework
the Earth will never see.

The sky, a sea of blue
until you punch through to the other side.
She hides a light show of cosmic brilliance
as billions of burning comets and other fireflies
join to birth planets.

Babes of mirth,
future Earths burning in wait for their Mother’s rain
to satiate their thirst.

A starburst.

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Run Your Race

Lace up your shoes,
time for feet to hit the pavement.
If you know the ground is solid,
you shan’t expect a cave-in.

The clock is ticking my son,
the race has just begun.
If the starter gun frightens you,
you’re missing all the fun.

Blood pumping,
sweat dripping and teary- eyed from the wind.
Run fast and don’t look back,
I’ll see you at the end.

Cross that finish line in a sprint or in a crawl.
By the balls of your feet,
to yourself you’ve proved it all.

You may not net a trophy,
no medal around your neck,
but you won’t be that loser at the end
answering back,
“I bet.”

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Flood

Flood in a drought, levee is broke,
beavers’ dam’s washed out.
Knock on wood my good vibes don’t up and run out.

Though I feel by fearing it, I’m really drawing it near;
my rear-view says objects are closer than they appear
so I can either speed up or wait around for the crash.

Yeah, as if that’s what I’m about.

Why not slam on the gas pedal
‘til the tank doesn’t run out?

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Icing From A Cup

Very paradoxical times we’re stuck living in,
I look around myself and everywhere it seems evident:
a reality TV star is America’s current president;
burning Marijuana’s as illegal as shooting heroin.

So who’s gonna win?
This fucked up game we’re in.
Stuffed up with stuck-ups and full of shit bluff-nuts
who want nothing more than to win
whatever conversation they’re in;
this conversion of creation from elation to pure hatred,
to inflated egos of the men who love to eat burritos;
or maybe of the women who dislike the brand Fritos;
or maybe of the men banning together to bang the Migos;
or maybe of the transvestites,
in their too-stretched-out tights,
trying to decide whether to start a fight or verbally ignite
the pipe-dreaming cis-demon who made the fatal mistake
of verbally labeling them all as queens.

Want to raise the stakes?
Simply divide and conquer;
conjure up some nonsense and brainwash the populous,
make ‘em think their neighbor’s on the brink of a hate crime
like, “Yo, watch this!”
They’ll take the bait and debate how long it’ll be
‘til their friendly enemy crosses that line;
and when that line is crossed,
they’ll pull out their sauce,
dip their breadsticks so fast that you won’t even pass gas,
forget tryna pass ‘em your home-made Kool-Aid in a glass.

Became a sleuth to deduce
that the truth no longer matters;
it’s all about that rung
that you’ve climbed to on the social ladder.
Who’s ladder? Their ladder,
and definitely not yours.
Otherwise, who’d they get to do all the remedial chores?

My advice: cut it down with a medieval sword.
The old use the young like the tooth uses the gum:
to hold it in place while it turns good food to waste.

They’re all playing a game while we’re trying to live
in an infinite Universe full of wonder and spirit.
They’ve wasted their time and now they’re waking up
to ensure we repeat their cycle,
like eating icing from a cup.

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Drought

I want to write a poem about the rain after a drought,
but I can’t find the words to express what I’m about.
Writer’s block is a bitch,
it’s a sandwich made of doubt with two slices of fuck you and
the urge to scream and shout.

I guess it’s kind of like a cat who wants a piece of dinner.
She already ate her own and she’s not getting thinner
and she’s clearly never seen food before in her life,
so just cut your meal to pieces and give her a little slice!

That’s a metaphor, the cat’s a crazed man in the sand,
his throat is even drier than the desert where he stands,
and he isn’t even sweating ‘cause he literally can’t
and the hallucinations of oases
are makin’ him shit his pants.

Do you see where I’m going with this? ‘Cause I sure don’t.
I guess I’ll dick around and word this piece into a close.
I don’t know why I tried so hard to write this little poem.
Four blocks of more lines,
water pine to make a cone.

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Warning

I sat in the Dee-eM-Vee reading 1984 this morning.
The look the policeman shot me
felt an awful lot like a warning.

But the government’s not an overlord,
just a corporation in sheep’s clothing
that’s in the business of their subjects,
always ordering and controlling.

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Ancestors

When I say I walk on water, I’m referring to when it freezes;
I bear resemblance to the man,
but I do not claim to be Jesus.

I am but a simple shaman,
a native American man,
living on the same piece of land
once dominated by my clan.
Many eons ago,
thousands of years in the past,
before the white man came and turned it all into trash.

Living in a fever dream,
my ancestors speak to me.
They say,
“Live your life. Nothing’s really as it seems.”

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Fear

The scarlet glow ridicules the darkness.

A burned bridge is swallowed by the gorge,
yet it follows him across.

It knows no bounds,
clutching his heart like the winter’s frost does the moss,
guiding his feet along the path.
Memories of past lives echo through the night,
bringing him back to sunny days
spent barricaded in a cave as its hooves
draw ever closer.

The future a figment,
presently past the need for closure.

Through hallowed halls
lined with shattered windows, it leaks in.
The moonlight grows dim as he finds himself at a dead end.
He waits, petrified and bleak,
for the end that always persists.

The greatest trick the devil played
was convincing him it exists.

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Darling

She reeks vehemently of soot and ash.
Smoke leaks from her ears as a fire blazes inside her.
Not quite feared nor respected by her peers,
known of but not known,
raised by wolves into an enigma
to the faint of heart and shallow of mind.

Behind her blank face a war wages,
the calm nothing more than a facade for the storm.
Thunder cackles as lightning crashes into a sea
of untold treasures and terrors alike;
sadness, ecstasy, spite, bravery,
her own brand of insanity wrapped up
in a bent little package, and the cost?
But a cent,
merely a penny for your thoughts.

Facing demons of a man-like demeanor
whilst drowning out the voices in her head
leaves little room for a closetful of skeletons.
Perhaps, could we stuff them in the shed?
Don a new skin,
softer than the pelt yet tough enough to feel the things
most others have not felt?

I know you hear us darling, we’re only here to help.

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Thin Ice

The sky is that certain shade of gray today;
closer to white and mostly blank,
like a piece of my open notebook’s page.

Pale blue spots reflect off the icy surface of the pond
upon which I stand,
which I ran onto with haste and now I stand
with the grace of a swan,
white as a poltergeist and frozen like a statue,
like a sculpture of ice.

I don’t remember how long it takes the lake to freeze,
since November it’s been solid for a couple of weeks.
I thought I would make it back before I sneezed and,
like a dry leaf,
the ice cracked beneath my feet,
leaving me up a creek without a life raft, a paddle,
or even a bag of weed.

Now I’m uncertain,
this very well may be curtains,
how the hell will I survive when it seems
like death is lurkin’?

I hold my breath and step light before igniting a sprint,
in hopes the ice won’t crack
just to race me to the finish.

---

As I said above, A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game is a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. It is also the third book of the First Spiral, a longer story called The Highest One Writing.

The Highest One Writing is a story about an author told through the books he wrote. It starts with a self-help book and ends with the destruction of Existence. Also, it may or may not take you to the depths of insanity and back.

Lyme-Brained is available to read for free in its entirety on my website. Click here to check it out.

I’ve written a few other books, too. Click here to see the list.

If you like Lyme-Brained and would like to help support my work, buy a copy of the book here.

Be well Commons~

Hello Commons, here is the third part of A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game, a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. Please enjoy. See the bottom of this post for more info.

---

Part III
Peace Of Mind

---

Peace Of Mind

A Cool Spring Breeze

Peace of mind… what is that?

A state of zen reached when one is so easily able to shut the thoughts off and simply be with the rest of reality? A state in which reality is not happening to you and you are not happening to it; a state of awareness of the fact that reality is happening and so are you, but you are a part of it and there is no you?

Is it a reward for spending years and years of your life meditating until you finally get it? Is there an it to get?

Is it a Cannabis high?

Is it a cool spring breeze that knocks the last dangling dead leaves from the branches so the new buds can bloom?

Is it a rare state of being in which only a chosen few may partake in? Is it the natural mindstate of a human, and the fact that so little of us seem to have it a marker of how far from nature we’ve come as a species?

Maybe, or maybe not.

I know not what peace of mind is, but in laying beneath this tree on top of the mountain on this beautiful sunny day, I do believe I’ve found it.

---

To Bee, Or, Not To Bee

Tiny wings carry the bumbling bee,
fumbling through the air
in between the leaves.
Humbly seeking not to be caught,
all the while preaching his hopes
to be sought.

Left his old hive in charcoal and ashes
just to rebuild it,
despite all the scratches.
Then he leaves once more, on better terms perhaps,
for pastures anew,
leads himself into a trap.

They all clap their hands,
welcoming him in while dirtying his stripes
with the dust of a chimney standing tall,
but caked full of soot.
He smells the fire burning, pretends evil not afoot.

Trades his wings for a mind,
his stripes for a hoodie,
with an open third eye and a future full of goodies.
One last handshake and the bee says goodbye,
embracing humanity,
leaving the hive.

---

Untitled Mountaintop Poem

Another long day of giving chase to paper later,
bright yellow sunlight
with white clouds all a’layered,
blocking out some,
but not a lot of the blue;
just a fool on a hill out to appreciate nature.

I lay back in the grass and gaze into the sky.
An airplane makes a pass,
space is where I want to fly.
Close your eyes and focus,
one day you will see,
that inner space is outer;
all you need’s a key.

---

Rainstorm

The dirt is mud,
the Earth flooded by the rain of days past.

The gray of the sky reflected off waves babbling by,
a stream once dry,
a’flow again.

Some see puddles after it rains,
while others see the sun,
recognizing the change.
A Token of hope,
a purchase made with spare change;
a child’s mope reversed into a delighted gaze.

Gray forests barren,
green only on the rocks;
rainy drops fallen,
from high above the tops
of mountains,
through my valley where I choose to take a walk
through a wintery wildland;
quiet,
no reason to talk.

---

Flock

Birds of a feather flock together
whether or not they learn how to fly.
No matter the weather,
snow, rain, whatever,
Crane don’t chill with Magpie.

Vulture, beak full of brain
 of a maimed piece of roadkill,
is accompanied by two more of its kind,
hungry to eat their fill.
Even The Eagle,
majestic, lethal,
unmatched and alone in the sky,
settles down and shares its crown
in a thatch nest with his bride.

Birds of a feather flock together
whether or not they learn how to fly.
So find the others,
your sisters & brothers,
spread your wings and hit the sky.

---

Just Like Us

I see you up there.
You grow and shrink just like the rest of us,
I would like to think.

Or could it be that you always stay the same,
appearing to blossom when hit with the rain?

I mean,
bathed in the light. Sort of ordained,
not like a priest, but higher up
all the same.

---

Flower

A rose by any other name
would smell just as sweet,
though the nameless flower
claims a beauty more unique.

Though she walks through the valley
of the shadow of death,
she fears not the demons,
merely putting them to rest.

I wandered lonely as a cloud,
floating over valley after hill,
until I found her, my medicine,
I swallow like a pill.

Let us go then, you and I,
into a future so uncertain;
to be blinded by your light,
refusing to draw the curtain.

Along the course of my life
I’ve been bored by material girls,
but she’s my cannaherbal chick
from a more psychedelial world.

---

Here

As you lie down to sleep at night,
or rise to face the day,
do you thank god for only sex,
or do you include pain?

To live your life one day at a time is surely an act of grace,
but one cannot truly love the sun,
unless one loves the rain.

But how does one love,
embrace that force of a higher plane,
if once that one doesn’t get their way,
they lash out with words of hate?

The act of living the human life is an art painted by tears,
of joy or pain? Both are the same.
I just thank god I’m here.

---

Winter

The cold outside is biting,
yet the sun shines so inviting
on this,
a blustery winter day.

Bundle up all you want,
the gust will cut through your cloth
like a hot knife through melted butter.
Dead leaves clutter the forest floor beneath a layer
of white ice,
snow frozen into sheets so slick
you could slip and slide on them.

Rudolph with the red nose,
icicles dripping from nostrils as tears freeze on rosy cheeks
and eyes become difficult to shut.
You’d think blinking would make it better,
lo, all the wetter your face becomes;
yet still you feel the glow
of the forever gleaming sun.

The price to pay for time spent in nature,
worth every cent.

---

Bluff

‘This face is pretty steep,’  I think to myself
as my feet begin to slide.
To my left, the flat edge of a cliff and to my right,
the icy water slides.

Behind me, well… if I fall, I won’t survive.

The top is in sight, literally, at level with my eyes.
At the same time though,
the other five feet of my body dangle,
hands clasping holds and feet boldly angled on the rock.

I’ve had a headache
and tasted paper in my mouth all day,
yet none was eaten.
My family supports my drive but they clamor to steer.
I’m seen as a wolf,
yet I breathe as a deer.

‘Maybe… a sign to let go,’
I think for a time,
possibly half a moment,
a secondary thought in my primary mind.
I gaze down once more; below me, but a muddy forest floor.

A shake of my head. A cackle of laughter emerges
as the ice cracks on the reservoir in the backdrop.
The music picks up,
audience on the edge of their seat.
I vault.

Ah, to climb over the top, calling the devil’s bluff.

---

Memory

It’s hard to be creative when you stay inside all day,
and no matter what you sing,
the rain won’t seem to go away,
and it drifts down from the sky in the form of frozen flakes
and the cold of the ozone is shoved
right into your face.

Like, I get it, it’s winter,
the sun ain’t gonna shine;
the mountains are leaking ice, far too slippery to climb, and the trees are all leafless besides the evergreen pines,
and the daylight seems to fade
too soon with opened eyes.

They say spring’s around the corner,
but I don’t know what they’re on.
I’ve heard that it gets darker
just moments before the dawn
but we’ve been sitting in the shadow for three months Mah, come on.

One can’t appreciate nature ‘til the
hollowness is gone.

And how hollow it is when the cold tickles your ribs;
when the wind rips through your clothes
like the sharp end of a pin
and makes you feel naked,
like garbage without a bin.
To harbor these feelings,
to sink the ship and swim.

But when that long dusk finally breaks into the dawn,
and the forest is alive like a prancing baby fawn,
when the ice has all melted and the green grass grows on,
the cold will be a memory,
will serve to make you strong.

---

As I said above, A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game is a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. It is also the third book of the First Spiral, a longer story called The Highest One Writing.

The Highest One Writing is a story about an author told through the books he wrote. It starts with a self-help book and ends with the destruction of Existence. Also, it may or may not take you to the depths of insanity and back.

Lyme-Brained is available to read for free in its entirety on my website. Click here to check it out.

I’ve written a few other books, too. Click here to see the list.

If you like Lyme-Brained and would like to help support my work, buy a copy of the book here.

Be well Commons~

Hello Commons, here is the interlude of A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game, a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. Please enjoy. See the bottom of this post for more info.

---

Interlude
The
To Bee Or Not To Bee
Collection

---

To Bee

Four hundred and five pounds;
a few ounces for every twenty-five snowflakes
fallen to the icy ground.

The hive buzzes to keep warm,
fuzzy sweatshirts,
jeans and beanie caps,
rubber gloves save the tools from harm.

The Queen’s right hand, or rather, the Left,
his feet weighted as he steps,
chin cleft,
chip of the shoulder and wings clipped,
whenever his throne is left.

He approaches the youngest Bee,
hiveless and born of a different tree,
listing the combs for him to clean
while the Queen feasts and feeds him the least.

He asks of himself,
“How would I rather bee;
guided to starvation,
or left outside to freeze?”

---

Wednesday

Eyelids heavy, armpits sweaty,
and a headache to bounce a Betty.
I hobble over dusty concrete,
yellow stripes faded like my fellows
on a Friday night.

Rusty metal drums,
a few old bumbles festering as Lefty puts on a show
for some new investors.
Our best guess is an investment into some new jester’s hive,
overtime is available;
expect to bail on life.

That look in his eye,
a dark storm clearing to fields of green,
papers laid in a row.

Three days
thirty down,
twenty left to go.

---

Tuesday

Another bent down day spent clowning in a box.
Back hurts because I’m spent;
I fall to peel the socks
from my feet. Three days off ago,
I finished up the week,
and now my eyes are twitching.

I chose to live life over getting a full night’s sleep.

Watched the TV, wrote, tried to plant some seeds,
shoveled with a hunched back,
snow and forty-four degrees.
Zombies were slain when I played video games,
even picked up a Steve Jobs book,
gave that tome a read.

Now it’s Tuesday night,
the sky’s blacker than the stripe of a bee;
I feel as though I’ve wasted all my time off on me.
Now it’s back to the grind,
in three days I may find relief,
but after, and only after,
putting in
my Oh-Tee.

---

Friday

Caucasian hands blacker than soot,
body draped in the same blue rags
that I put on the past three days,
brain going kaput when Lefty asks
whether or not I can stay today.

“Oh-Tee’s available, are you?”

No excuses come to mind,
I find only a memory of him tellin’ me
it’ll help my Pee-Cee.

“Yeah, I’ll stay,”
wishin’ for a way to get a raise,
but when you’re only paid thirteen,
you’re overlooked like the sea.

Mozart plays from my pocket as my false smile fades
with the style of a blazing rocket,
the Queen’s brave pocket pal
stomping loud in search of who else shall buzz
their Friday away.

This concrete box
slowly takes the form of a shallow grave in my head
as I scoff aloud at the thought
of slavery being dead.

---

Thursday

A cold night gives way to a bright and sunny day.
The Bee buzzes through the hive,
yet it doesn’t feel the same.
For years now he’s been working here,
pouring honey and cleaning husk.
Lefty expects a gleaming smile,
effort from dawn to dusk.

No overtime today, tells Lefty he won’t stay.
Lefty pouts and tells the Queen,
they feel some sort of way.
In between two broken trees
is where this hive resides.
Any day the boughs may break;
the hive will not survive.

There are meadows, pastures, and flowers
beyond these walls.
To find them one must leap with faith,
unafraid to fall.
A new day is now dawning, one cannot ignore the call,
so better get a move on,
summer always turns to fall.

---

Monday

A blanket of clouds insulates the sky today,
how fitting.
The sun shines through the bee’s smile
when he tells Lefty
that he’s quitting.

A storm inside the big guy’s mind
brings a scowl to the surface.
He carries his pout to the Queen Bee’s lair,
and she drops all her purses.

The Bee’s yellow stripes worn down a grayish black,
his back in pain and his wings all cracked
like the boughs upon which this hivemind sits,
but there’s nerry a doubt in his mind.

In a mere two weeks’ time,
the concrete will be left behind;
the winter has passed.
Freedom is mine.

---

Not To Bee

A patch of flowers sprouted in the middle of a meadow,
slender green stalks leading
to vibrant purple pedals.
A gentle breeze wakes the Bee,
once asleep on a sea of green,
now aware of the changing air.

Across the pasture dark clouds gather,
black as soot,
raining down thunder and lighting
like the stomping of a foot,
biting at the boughs beneath a hive
where smitten bees reside.

A tear is shed as pedals are spread
and pollen collects in a basket.
He lifts his head and stares with dread
at the casket,
aglow in red.

“They’re dead inside,” he rationalizes,
as fire consumes his friends.

What a family,
a deft calamity begging to be erased
without a soul to mourn them.
As the Bee buzzes away in chase of better days,
a smile spreads across his face.
Like him they’re free, no longer to bee,
underneath a fiscal monger.

Now the Bee, a wishful wander, can finally find his tree.

---

As I said above, A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game is a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. It is also the third book of the First Spiral, a longer story called The Highest One Writing.

The Highest One Writing is a story about an author told through the books he wrote. It starts with a self-help book and ends with the destruction of Existence. Also, it may or may not take you to the depths of insanity and back.

Lyme-Brained is available to read for free in its entirety on my website. Click here to check it out.

I’ve written a few other books, too. Click here to see the list.

If you like Lyme-Brained and would like to help support my work, buy a copy of the book here.

Be well Commons~

Hello Commons, here is the second part of A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game, a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. Please enjoy. See the bottom of this post for more info.

---

Part II
An Examination Of Anger

---

An Examination Of Anger

“Ultimately, if I am enraged, it doesn’t hurt the other human as much as it hurts me.”
~Abraham Twerski

Thinking Clearly

What is anger? To some it is just an emotion; to some it is an excess of energy running through the body; to some it is fuel to add to the fire of productivity, and to others it is the only emotion. I’m no stranger to the heat of anger; I once believed that I was born evil, that I contained all the world’s anger, but now I’ve realized my boy Borrelia burgdorferi had eaten away at so many of my neurons that anger is often the only way my brain is capable of dealing with the world around me.

The way my brain attempts to work is as follows: I can be in a great mood, feeling as though the Universe Herself is sat in the palm of my hand, and then some insignificant little thing will happen. A rude human will say something stupid, or I’ll fail at doing something one too many times, or maybe I didn’t get enough sleep the night prior, or maybe my left shoe is tied just a little bit tighter than the right one; the point is, I can go from an angel to a pseudo-murderous asshole in zero seconds flat; it’s out of my control, and it weighs on me quite heavily.

Lately I’ve been searching for answers, or at the very least for help in controlling this seemingly unavoidable cycle of rage to remorse, and I stumbled upon a video of a short talk given by a man carrying the name Abraham Twerski. He, in this talk, breaks the cycle of anger down into three parts: the feeling, the reaction, and the gripping of the feeling after it would have normally passed. Me, being myself, found these ideas to be very profound, so I decided to write out a meditation based on the ideas.

Here we go.

The first stage of anger is feeling the literal feeling of anger – in his talk, Twerski appropriately names this stage Anger. In our hearts, human beings are wild animals; we’re hairless apes who, in my opinion, spend our entire lives attempting to hide this plain and simple fact not only from each other, but from ourselves, and we don’t do a very good job of it at all. When we get provoked, we feel a primal, animalistic anger, and no matter how hard we try to cover it up, to push it down into the depths of our subconscious, it shows. There’s really nothing we can do about this, either; if you’re out there doing your thing, whatever your thing may be, and someone gets in your way somehow, you’re going to feel some type of animosity towards them.

Feeling anger, feeling that natural human reaction when an especially high-piled platter of bullshit is shoved in your face, that is unavoidable. However, you can make moves to get your brain to not pump the anger chemicals through your system, one method being taking things into perspective.

Twerski uses a lesson taught to him by his father to explain how to accomplish this goal; when someone did something that made him mad, his father would simply say, “What he did was so foolish, if only he knew how foolish it was what he did, he wouldn’t have done it. I feel sorry for the human for being such a fool.” This statement, when you actually realize it from thought into action, transforms your anger into pity, into sorrow for your fellow human being.

Pity and anger don’t quite occupy the same end of the emotional spectrum, and they certainly don’t go together. How can you be mad at a human for whom you feel sorrow? You can’t; when it really comes down to it, you can either hate the human for being a stupid prick, or you can feel bad for them for having to live with such a closed mind. For me, just saying to myself how bad I feel for the inspiration of my anger at the given moment doesn’t quite cut it; I usually need to sit and meditate or run a few miles for the anger to truly fade, but honestly? At the end of the day, everyone is different, and living with anger in your soul can only bring you pain. Do what you have to do to let it go.

The second stage is called Rage, how one reacts to feeling all that anger. Plain and simply, one must do their very best to control that reaction, the end goal being not allowing your reaction to affect the environment around you, humans, objects, or otherwise. Admittedly, I am now a lot better at controlling my rage than I used to be; I’ve punched a few holes in my walls, blown up on friends, burned bridges, the whole nine yards. I don’t do these things anymore – the worst I do now is raise my voice to levels in which I feel pain in my throat – but I’m still learning to control. Rage is just part of the human experience, part of being a living creature on the planet dubbed Earth, even.

I had a cat (read: adopted son) named Milkshake who harbored quite a temper too, when he put his mind to it. Usually I could pick him up and toss him around a bit in a playful fashion and it would be fine, we’d have fun. But, when there were too many loud noises going on or when he hadn’t had enough to eat or didn’t get enough sleep, or sometimes when he just wasn’t in the mood, he got angry. And he reacted with rage, the rage of very sharp teeth and claws piercing into flesh; the little bugger did some real damage, let me tell you.

The thing is, though, Milkshake (as far as I could tell) didn’t have the mental capacity to control his rage; he had no choice but to react. Well, I thought that, until I caught the dude opening the door to the closet where we kept his food. Regardless, we are humans, we have one of the most evolutionarily advanced brains in Existence, as far as we can tell; we are capable of controlling our reactions and emotions in the moment, and for that sole reason, we must. Gaining this control is not something that happens overnight, over the course of weeks or even months, but over the course of years, in some cases over the course of a lifetime; it’s one of the most tenuous things a human can do.

That being said, just because something is hard to do does NOT mean one should not do it. If anything, that should be a hint telling you that you should do it, but I digress.

The third stage is called Resentment. This stage is the holding on to the feeling of anger after the bullshit has passed. After you’re done feeling that rush through your system, after you’ve properly reacted in some sort of way, you still blame the other human for making you mad, for being such a prick. And who can blame you? If they made you that mad, they probably are a prick, and they probably don’t care that they made you feel so awful. Resentment isn’t healthy though, it only makes things worse, only breeds more anger in your system until the day comes where you forget what it’s like to feel anything besides that dreadful anger.

In the video, Twerski recounted a lesson he learned from Alcoholics Anonymous, and I would like to quote his quoting of said lesson: “Hanging onto resentment is like letting somebody live inside your head without paying any rent.” My watching of this random video was not the first time I’ve heard this quote, and I doubt this is your first time being exposed to it either, but it still rings true. While it seems a very kind thing to do, allowing someone to occupy your thoughts for free, you still have to pay a cost.

Similarly to controlling your reaction, letting go of resentment is one of the most difficult things for a human to accomplish. One can so easily lie to oneself about how one is feeling, and usually the lie is so good it’s believable. You can sit there and tell yourself and everyone around you how you don’t care, how the other human is a stupid prick and how you’re just so above that shit, but if you still feel anger inside, well, you’re still angry. In my experience, both meditation and running for miles on end (or a combination of the two if you can fathom such a thing) are powerful tools in letting go of resentment, but one needs a very open mind for meditation to work. One must find their method, for it does exist; one just needs to be willing to change oneself for the better.

Lastly, there’s a phenomenon Twerski brings up that struck home with me: feeling guilty for feeling anger. Like I stated previously, anger is just a human reaction, an animal reaction. Unless you operate at an Alan Watts level of zen, you’re going to encounter anger – you simply don’t have a choice. That’s precisely why feeling anger doesn’t matter; what matters is how you react to the anger.

Nobody is perfect, no matter how perfect they think they are, and everybody has bad days. To assist in controlling anger, Twerski suggests keeping an anger journal of some sort. Write down what happened and how you reacted, and then at the end of the day go back and read it, asking yourself, “Was that really the best I could have done?” This is how you learn from your experiences, how you grow as a being: by examining yourself and making changes based on what you don’t like.

An example I think everybody can relate to: we get mad at our parents, and for stupid shit. Not every day, mind you, but the next time Mother pretends she doesn’t hear what you said when you’re speaking directly in her ear or the next time your father stares unblinkingly at the TV as you try to talk to him, you’re going to get pissed off. It surely won’t be the first time you’ve felt anger towards your parents for behaving in a certain way. I used to feel guilty about getting angry at my parents, but in reality, they’re just like me: human beings trying to do their best in a world that harbors a seemingly self-destructive society. Feeling bad for feeling bad is no way to stop feeling bad, and as obvious as that might sound on paper, some humans never realize it.

Nobody is thinking clearly when they’re provoked into feeling anger, they’re under too much pressure; pressure to react, pressure to assert themselves over the provoker, pressure to not feel this way as soon as possible. And this is okay. What isn’t okay is holding on to the anger for what really amounts to nothing more than egotistical purposes. If you’re angry at someone, talk to them about it, try to resolve your differences. Even go out of your way to make up for it, for no other reason than it being the right thing to do; even Milkshake would go out of his way to cuddle with me a little bit more after he slung his claws and the fur flew.

Anger may be a mandatory part of life, but rage and resentment are nothing more than malignant cells just begging to be amputated. All you need to do is find the right knife.

---

Rage

To be trapped in a cage,
maned like a lion and an untamed temper,
simple words vicious enough to make you cry,
if I try.

And try I do;
you fucking buffoons better tie me to a rocket
and shoot me to the moon
and hope, nay, pray that some aliens don’t stop me
and try to save my life,
because I’ll kill all of them for not intervening sooner.

A spectral beam shooter
controlled by the ship’s computer,
tempting to push the but’.
I swear to god,
I refuse to stop myself,
this fucking world’s getting blown up.

Be scared,
fear a poem,
my symbols on this paper are so dark,
the blackest ink,
it swallows up the spark.

---

Solitude

Solitude, a cold winter day;
watching a leaf flit through the air
over a pit where the last smoldering ember
fades away.

I spit as the blood leaves my hands,
an icy grip coming over my very being;
feelings fleeting as a once bright soul
chooses to sit alone in the cold.

To be accepted rather than misunderstood,
to be placed on a pedestal
for the good I try to accomplish
while instead, the rest fear my expression,
cold like stone and alone,
carved from a block of wood.

---

Snowstorm

Snowstorm, snowstorm, a white cloud blocks the sky.
I peer out my window,
what appears before my eyes?
The dry ground,
no branches bent low under the snow;
no blanket of blankness, no reason not to go.

Snowstorm, snowstorm, work is slow today.
An hour in the first flake falls,
I still don’t feel awake.
The radio plays the six same songs
every single day,
while we sit watching the snow fall,
wishing to be away.

Snowstorm, snowstorm, crystals turn to rain
pouring down from the heavens.
Clouds form inside my brain.
Pouting faces work ‘til five,
slush plowed the same as snow by Queen Bee.
This fucking job is driving me insane.

---

Cold

Left out in the cold,
getting that old shoulder like a boulder rolling into the sea
off the Cliffs of Dover.

It gets old, so what am I supposed to do?
Blackballed and opposed by my own fuckin’ high school, appalled, un-paid, and de-ranked
because of… wait, they never told me;
allegedly they hold themselves to a higher pedigree,
all the while staying cliqued up
like a fuckin’ baby seat.

In the North, South or West,
one would have to strap on a vest, but not in the East,
just eat the moldy wheat baked into your bread
while you fake up a character livin’ only in y’head.
Wake up, take a gander at the man in the mirror
inside your manor on the hill, pop some pills
and fill out your goddamned day planner by hand,
or by a minor that you pay
like forty-nine‘r fifty cents a day
to slave away chasin’ paper they won’t be taking
to their grave.

You punk pricks need your own parade
to get it through your thick skulls, it’s all a big charade.
Now go fuck your pig wives and sip your Hateorade.

I’m over this like a dove,
wings whiter than snow that it uses to fly above
the lowly Cliffs of Dover.

---

One In The Chamber

Every single time in my life I’ve sensed some danger
and was pushed towards it anyway;
that’s one in the chamber.

Give the benefit of the doubt, just ignore all their anger,
you have to help them anyway;
that’s one in the chamber.

Every human who calls me friend, beeping me like a pager
to treat me as a means to an end;
that’s one in the chamber.

Every human who fancies themselves some kinda trainer,
ordering me like I’m an animal;
that’s one in the chamber.

When humans act holy then shift like a shape changer,
wearing a mask like it’s their face;
that’s one in the chamber.

Humanity’s been lost, traded in for comfort and Haegar.
The magazine’s full now,
all the slugs in the chamber.

I’ve felt this way forever but bottled it like container;
I’m not pulling any triggers,
this is just a piece of paper.

---

Cold II

It’s pretty cold out here and there’s snow in my shoes.
I’m confused, screaming at the sky,
“The fuck’m’I supposed to do?”

Mentally exhausted
from sitting inside a box all day,
trapped with my thoughts and now the cold’s
soaking through my socks.
But yet I walk,
through the slush along a muddy path in the dark,
texting with a voice and feeling lost
inside my own heart.

But my hands are numb.
It’s hard to type when I can’t feel my thumbs,
and all that’s on my mind is the want
to shoot a gun.
But I keep pluggin’ along,
dragging my sluggish feet as frozen raindrops fall
and dilute my view of the screen.

The more I peer into the light, the darker the world seems.
And now my legs are cold,
the snow’s melting through my jeans.

---

Drops

There lies a certain beauty in days like today,
where the sky is cast over with
serene shades of gray.

The forest rains down drops of winter,
the sheet of ice clasp’d round the branches and leaves,
the shells,
ghosts of what lies beneath.

They melt in little drops, tattering my head.

I’m reminded with a chill that,
though dark, lifeless and stiffer than dread,
the elders are not dead.
Nay, merely dormant,
waiting with great anticipation to fall like water
off the edge of a waterfall.

To the Earth they cascade, but what then?
It is too soon to tell.

The trees lie wrapped within their ghostly shells.

---

Teeth

Stalagmites of ice stand proudly before the cave.
Inside,
lost in eternal slumber,
lies darkness.

Bleaker than night,
shaggier than a bear and thinner than the wing of a bat,
it casts fear in a gust of wind
that takes nothing but the hat from your head.

Its bread and butter dwell in the mutters of lost souls,
the young and the old cast astray
from the light of day.

The ground is wet,
puddled with tears shed by wanderers.
They freeze in towers,
teeth and fangs,
standing at the mouth of the cave.

---

I Forgot I Wrote This

Another day spent in darkness feeling all alone;
time to conjure misery
into another poem.
To make the feelings go away for at least another day,
until they return with a suitcase,
telling me they’ll stay.

Pushing me out of the way and setting up a shop,
chopping down my trees,
they plant seeds for crop.
Really what I’m doing here is crying for attention,
because the others are scared away
by my “psychotic tension.”

It was never my intention to end up like this,
I swear it’s just what’s happened.
I ran fingers through my hair and felt bone cave in,
I’ve been different ever since.
Or maybe they hear keywords
and decide that I’m finished.

I was always that guy who just sat there quietly
when the rest ran their mouths
trying to figure out me .
Instead of saying, “Hi,” or asking me, “What’s up?”
they drank the spoiled Kool-Aid juice
that’s poured into their cups.

But like I said,
I’m just writing this starving for attention.
It’s easier to talk some shit and stir up some contention.

---

Keep In Touch

Keep in touch.

Hearing those words used to put me in a huff.
Like, what the fuck is stopping you
from keeping in fucking touch?
What, are you too busy
building up a fucking bluff
just so I can lift you up from outside your fuckin’ rut?

Then I realized, that attitude stinks worse than a butt.
The others aren’t malicious,
their lives just fuckin’ suck.
They’ve lived the groundhog’s day so many times
they’re fuckin’ stuck,
placing bets on a lottery,
hoping for a stroke or luck.

If that’s true, all my sub-peers must be stupid as fuck.
Trading paper for other paper;
it all amounts to…
what?
Disappointment,
plus another brew poured inside your gut.
Wow, living on a prayer must be pretty fuckin’ tough.

But then I realized, this world is pretty fuckin’ rough.
The humans do their best,
but they’re running out of trust.
The parasitic Gov’ holds out a hand,
a silver glove demanding their piece,
their cut of your fuckin’ stuff.

And you’ve got kids to feed, an ass you’ve gotta bust,
‘cause it’s the only way you know
how to clean off all the rust.
I hope to leave this place one day,
and when I do, we’ll discuss
how much I enjoy your presence,
and my hope that you…

Keep in touch.

---

As I said above, A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game is a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. It is also the third book of the First Spiral, a longer story called The Highest One Writing.

The Highest One Writing is a story about an author told through the books he wrote. It starts with a self-help book and ends with the destruction of Existence. Also, it may or may not take you to the depths of insanity and back.

Lyme-Brained is available to read for free in its entirety on my website. Click here to check it out.

I’ve written a few other books, too. Click here to see the list.

If you like Lyme-Brained and would like to help support my work, buy a copy of the book here.

Be well Commons~

Hello Commons, here is the first part of A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game, a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. Please enjoy. See the bottom of this post for more info.

---

Part I
The Human Conundrum

---

The Human Conundrum

“Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Come watch tee-vee.”
~Morty Smith

Surreality

Human beings, one variation of the innumerable lifeforms inhabiting the planet they call Earth, are a very interesting bunch. At some arbitrary point a very, very long time ago, one of these primates (although they hate being called that) realized it existed, and that it was, indeed, a living thing. Eventually, it found more living things that looked like it, and together, they eventually figured out that living with each other as a group, while it may get annoying at times, is easier than living alone. From this realization came societies, large groups of humans that combine their efforts to achieve anything they want while making sure to record everything they achieve along the way (metaphysically as memories or physically by writing). The modern human society has proven itself capable of mastering the land, sea, air, and the very molecules and atoms that make up the land, sea, and air, and they’ve keept very detailed physical records about everything they possibly can. The thing is though, the real kicker about these creatures is they don’t actually know what they are or where they came from.

From the moment a human finds itself conscious, it is immediately perceiving, thinking, doing, and somehow recording the things it does until its body and mind collectively get tired and it goes to sleep. When it sleeps it undergoes a strange phenomenon called dreaming in which it perceives various surrealities, or realities that are different in some way from the reality they perceive under normal, waking consciousness. Eventually, and almost always suddenly, the human wakes up from its dream to find itself back in the familiar reality, the only remnants of this lost surreality being the recordings the dreamer may or may not have made. From the point of the recording on, the meaning of the recordings is up to the interpretation of the human who made them; this means, as the interpretation of the recording changes, so too does the meaning – until the original recorder dies, that is; then, the meanings of its recordings are left up to other humans who eventually find said recordings, if the original human bothered to make physical records at all.

For some of the humans, the practice of meditation – sitting still and focusing on one’s awareness – produces similar yet different results to sleeping. In all literality, a human can sit or lay down and remain still for an extended period of time, focusing only on its awareness, and surreality will engulf its very existence. The surreality can manifest itself in various ways, from trippy visuals of random repeating geometric patterns and fractals to clear, pristine images of physical objects, from entire moments in time to more physical surrealities such as feeling causeless pressure in the temples, or a pinpoint pressure beneath the forehead right between the eyebrows. The human may even begin to feel as if it is floating, as if its spirit has left its body, or even as if it does not exist at all. Or, the human may just feel a simple sense of calm throughout its body. Then it opens its eyes and reality sets back in.

The human being can also perceive similar surrealities through the consumption/metabolization of various yet specific plants, fungi and/or pure refined substances. These substances, called Psychedelics, allow the human being to perceive perhaps more intense variations of surreality that I like to call Psychedelia, but that is an entirely different conversation.

We Are, We Think, We Act

To do a quick recap, the humans are an intelligent ape-like species with the ability to perceive and alter their environment to suit their various needs. One of these needs is the need to connect and build with other humans, which in turn makes them capable of accomplishing even more than they previously believed themselves capable of. They also have the ability to perceive various surreal, altered forms of reality when they sit still and close their eyes for extended periods of time, and when they consume very specific parts of their environment. Additionally, these surreal realities they experience always end at some point, leaving the human to find itself back in a more familiar and stable reality.

Lastly, as humans, we have not only the abilities to perceive all of these things about ourselves, to think about these tendencies, to attempt to find meaning in them, and to draw conclusions about the reality around us, but we also feel a primal urge to do so. These conclusions we draw even sporadically prove to be correct, whether the methods used to reach them are entirely logical or not; Isaac Newton (allegedly) figured out gravity when he perceived an apple falling on his head; Francis Cricks figured out DNA’s double-helix structure whilst perceiving Psychedelia through Lysergic Acid Diethylamide; René Descartes figured out the scientific method after it came to him in a dream; the list could go on.

To more concisely summarize, human beings exist in a perpetual state of mystery. We’re constantly trying to figure out the meaning of not only everything around us, but also the meaning of what (we assume) goes on in our heads so we can dictate it to everybody else and make them believe what we believe. However, as soon as somebody comes to a solid conclusion, somebody else is already working on a different one, creating an endless chain of conclusions that will all eventually be perceived as false beliefs.

I’d like to pose a simple question: what if this is the point? Our numerable abilities of perception, our thinking, and our attempting to solve each new unsolvable mystery are, generally speaking, the three major pieces of our existence. What if the point of human existence is first to be, second to form a group with a belief system that everyone can more or less get on board with, and third to build a society around that belief system until a new belief system is conjured by someone else?

It makes sense, does it not? All we do is perceive, wonder, build, question what we’ve built, and tear it all down, only to wonder and rebuild until we tear it all down again. Humanity, like everything else in the Universe, appears to operate in a cycle, and a seemingly endless one at that. To paraphrase Occam’s razor, the simplest answer is usually the correct one; following that logic, I believe I can break down the essence of human existence into one single sentence: We perceive, we think about our perceptions, and we act on our thoughts.

A shorter version: we are, we think, we act.

Then, we become our actions until we get self-aware about them, leading us to change ourselves over and over and over again until there are no humans left to be. Then the aliens come down, drop off a few more, and the experiment goes on.

I’m kidding, of course; there’s no indisputable proof for that last sentence… yet. Anyway, there is another crucial aspect of human existence that I have chosen not to mention until right now: the tendency towards law. Laws, rules, commandments, axioms; whatever symbol you choose to denote them, they appear in every human society that’s ever existed. We have the tendency to set arbitrary guidelines based on whatever sounds good at the moment to live our lives by. Not only this, but we also show the tendency to enforce these guidelines on everyone around us because we think it will help to form a stable, sustainable society.

So, if the purpose of human life is simply to be, to think, and to act, what law could possibly sustain such a vague and open-ended existence?

The law of love.

---

What Is Love?

When I say, “what is love?”
you may think, ‘Baby, don’t hurt me.’
Haddaway, to finish the saying,
add the word purposely.

To grow familiar over time, refusing to taste defeat,
only to see your precious sweet turn sour as a lime.
It’s like the Universe putting humans on the Earth,
just to see them all pull oil out of the fucking dirt.

In order to know love, you must first feel it;
in order to feel love, you must first show it;
in order to show love, you must first know it.
Where does not matter, you simply have to start.

---

Titleless

A kingdom of clouds afloat on azure seas
cascading shadows upon the ground,
hallowed and picturesque as if melded
by brushstrokes of men haunted by holy ghosts.

Climbing from burial grounds,
hurried by resounding wails of self-pity and sorrow,
he follows the trail.
How far must one ascend to find shelter,
a momentary end to the sweltering air and
bleak grind, oblique in its design?
Not even the angels know,
swept up in dust clouds of charity and good grace,
running a race not their own.

He holds his pace.

The trees clear as he nears the top.
Below him the ants march in lines carved
through this sublime rock, and above?
They fly with wings meant for a dove.

A breeze, a cool reprieve.

As the wind whisks through the canopy,
it whispers to the leaves:
“Was he turned a fool up on the hill,
or upon returning to the trees?”

---

The Call

I’m woken by the call.

The window’s open.
Hot summer air mixes with the conditioned air
floating in from the hall;
the perfect storm of the fall.

My cat crawls up on my bed,
nudging his head against mine;
it’s breakfast time.
I follow him downstairs,
out of the lair yet the calling still blares,
the singing of the trees, screaming,
like the ringing in my ears.

We left the caves long ago,
trudged through snow like the ox,
left the woods alone in pursuit of a box;
these days, the caves are made of wood,
not carved into stone.

Yet the trees still call me, and my cat too.
Fat with food he rushes out the door;
budding with life he dives into the brush;
I follow close behind.
The leaves are speaking to me, taunting,
haunting my mind with visions of being high
atop a mountain,
a fountain of youth begging to be found.

The call ceases as I climb back down.

---

Happiness

Happiness; what an unachievable goal.
Like catching a crappie in the Gulf of Mexico,
or leaping from a plane, no parachute in tow.

You won’t glide like a leaf,
you’ll plummet down below.

To always feel happy would be quite magical.
Unexperiencing sadness; no more anger of a bull.
Floating in an ocean, no riptide to give pull.

Just salt to dry your skin;
it would quickly get old.

A poor man sits on a filthy city street
as a shitty rich man grips some grub to eat.
‘Breaking this in half would be quite the feat,’
as he looks down on the elf
missing bells from its feet.

Instead he walks by,
stuffing his face as they both blame their sadness
on the fucking rat race.

---

Titleless II

I live in a different world than most,
drink from a deeper pool;
climb up higher hills on my hands
and come off like more of a fool.
I find that things encountered in life
are rarely as they seem,
and I scream at sleeping humans just to
wake them in a dream.

I spend most of my time alone,
harboring a deep-seated pain
as I easily tread in the waters
that so often drown the sane.
I see the other humans infatuated
over physical gains,
through my window I peek in at them
from the ethereal plane.

But who am I,
what is this formless force,
perceiving light?
What is the ghost in this human shell,
claiming to understand life?
He insists he writes some poetry,
but all he does is rhyme words in a predetermined pattern,
splatters symbols on the screen.

The very screen that enslaves him,
the glass that gives him life;
the circuit board wrapped up in metal
keeps the leash pulled tight.
It wheels and deals this poor sap,
telling him and the others how to feel,
all the while making sure reality
never becomes too real.

Even now I can’t put it down,
I’m captured by the light.
I guess I thought, I never imagined…
the screen could shine so bright.

---

What If?

What if reality truly
isn’t what it seems?
What if human life is more
than staring at a screen?

What if humans are just monkeys,
hairless chimpanzees,
except instead of flinging shit
we fling our negativity?

What if we lived for spirit,
in harmony with the Earth,
instead of poisoning our rock
and loading up the hearse?

What if the only simulation
is our global society?
What if we’ve been lied to
by old white men sippin’ tea?

What if we lived the Island life,
let true freedom unfurl,
instead of stacking paper
to sustain their Brave New World?

---

Titleless III

As they climb the hill to the start, the fog settles in.

It drifts from the sky as it does the tea,
poured steaming from the kettle.
Jitters, shakes, anxious minds bearing the cold in stride
for one reason:
crossing the finish line.

Do they have what it takes?
The pavement rumbles as the siren blares
and the rabbits run scared to the front.
One by one they’re picked off,
pedals by one loved not.

Feet beat the pavement for the love of…
what?

One mile, two mile, nickel and dime.
The time ticks on as the sunny clock shines
through the shroud.
With each step they come closer yet,
sprinting deeper into the cloud.

Though the finish line is crossed,
a new day is abound.

---

Machine

Everybody does what they think
will get ‘em ahead in life.
I’m over here tryna tote some guns
and maybe shoot some knifes.

That line was sampled by a rapper
who listens to other rappers;
he eats loose leaf papers
and sips on animal crackers.
I once knew a man who claimed
sampling other songs was copying;
all I know of him now is taking drugs
and maybe, occasionally dropping in.

I think to get ahead in life,
all one must do
is breathe.
Also,
try to avoid
feeding your soul
to the machine.

---

Ruins

These ruins lie dilapidated, catastrophized and barren.

A cavern opens beneath the leaves,
the sinkhole engulfing all but the breathing
as the sands of time turn to mud and funnel in.

A single sapling sprouts from the crevice.
The buds branch out from a blossoming tree of life
to reach through eternity
and read the writings scrawled upon the wall.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
The fall of man is graced by the rise of something more,
or is it less?

Have they failed the test? It matters not;
what remains is all that is left.

---

Blink

When I scrawl these symbols down
in rows and make ‘em rhyme,
do you read all of my words,
or blink between the lines?

The bat of an eyelash, twist of the lips,
standing there still with hands on your hips.
What’s cruising by on your highway of a mind?
The cops can’t catch up,
you simply don’t have the time.

But time is an illusion,
meant for nothing more than distraction and confusion,
revolving like a door
or the cylinder of a gun, the clerk working the store
can either lose his life,
or live a day more.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
But what happens after all the sweet’n’sour’s drank?

---

Me

The ringing in my ears is loud,
but I can barely hear it.
Life feels dull as Novocain,
I’m truly at one with spirit;
detached from it, this physical game,
only as real as it isn’t.
I float inside my cloud of doubt,
wondering why I lack vision.

Like the wise men love to say,
time itself is infinite.
Live a while, fade to black,
and be reborn an infant.
Nothing’s real, nothing’s fake,
nothing stays, and nothing changes;
you’d think that’d take the pressure off,
yet I’m firmly stuck at anxious.

A latent hatred for my surroundings
constantly engulfs me;
the who, the what, the when, the why,
I feel like it all insults me.
I’m a ghost that only seems to exist
when someone else is salty,
or when they need some hard work done,
you better believe they call me.

The one thing that I’m praised for
is being a hard worker,
for behaving like a slave
and quietly following orders.
It makes me feel cold enough
that I think a grave could be warmer,
but I’ve died before, I want to survive
and live a life of splendor.

But I don’t live, I just exist,
waiting for a task;
maybe I’ll do some heavy lifting
and further ruin my back;
a self-destructive, self-loathing,
selfish lack of self,
who pretends there is a me somewhere,
hidden inside this shell.

---

As I said above, A Lyme-Brained Rhyme Game is a satirical poetry anthology about an author journeying to a horrifying place: his own mind. It is also the third book of the First Spiral, a longer story called The Highest One Writing.

The Highest One Writing is a story about an author told through the books he wrote. It starts with a self-help book and ends with the destruction of Existence. Also, it may or may not take you to the depths of insanity and back.

Lyme-Brained is available to read for free in its entirety on my website. Click here to check it out.

I’ve written a few other books, too. Click here to see the list.

If you like Lyme-Brained and would like to help support my work, buy a copy of the book here.

Be well Commons~