reaching out of imagination

imagination bursts forth in a peacock array.

images flicker by in alternating hues of aqua and red. three-dimensional cracks leap out of the sidewalk. birds are singing frank sinatra tunes to lull the masses to another peaceful night's sleep.

everybody has their own story.

some tragic.

some beautiful.

some awe-inspiring enough to cause thousands of books to be written and read simulanteously -- tales that haunt civilation and cause countless tributes to arise and inspire new generations to never forget the words.

i sit in my own world of fantasy. i am not sure what is real anymore. the scope of my vision may not be as deep as the true nature of the world is meant to be but i am content to sit from afar and watch.

i listen to the undercurrents that beat against the shores of my mind.

i am not in harmony with the rest of the world -- i never will be because i have no plan to do so. i will continue my existence on the outside. my own understanding of the world i live in is enough to satiate the doubts that gnaw at my soul. i am one with the universe around me, but at the same time it might just be a universe of my own fabrication. i know i am nothing and i have come to accept this. i am merely here to transcribe what i see so that others will know what conspired.

i fill my world with phantoms -- both light and dark and some swirling and spinning in a beautiful conglomerate of colours. i would be alone without them.

i have fallen between the pages and down into the gutter. i am taking notes for a better day. i am consolidating all of my dreams and thoughts and conjured images into a stream of light that will issue forth and illuminate a new plain of understanding. i am not there yet. still i trek through endless deserts and forests and swamps. i am bitten, scorched, sinking all at the same time. i sometimes feel as though i won't be able to make it another step -- i want to give in to the sadness and take for the sky where i'd know no limits. but even the sky has limits and once the oxygen ends and i shrivle up and implode back into the atom from which i was conceived, i will know nothing again.

but what do i know now, if anything at all?

i admit that i am nothing and everything at the same time.

i am all that i truly will ever know, but at the same time i realize that is a mere speck of dust compared to the enormity of the universe.

but i am content. i need not lift my eyes from the world i have sewn.

everything around me has ceased to mean anything. i grin because i know what i know has no boundaries. tomorrow i may know more. the day after i may know less. understanding has a way of crumbling the fondest desires to ash.

sweep up the ash and mix it with water. paint the world with shadows and delight.

i am confused -- no -- i am confusion embodied.

i am spinning on my carousel in the middle of the night. i go backwards. the music drones on in errie discordance. i am sitting on my wooden ostrich and laughing with not a care in the world. i watch the faces stare at me because i am alone on the carousel and the operator has abondonned me leaving me to spin for eternity. i revert back to a child. i am giddy and giggling and i realize all that i ever thought i knew was meaningless and the true meaning of life comes down to how you perceive it.

i made myself a world out of paper and ink. finely scrawled t's and h's mark the pages. i am not alone in my vision anymore because now it has been read.

and isn't that what the search was for in the first place?

i know am not alone because i'll always have the phantoms of imagination that dance in my eyes to keep me company.

somedays it is enough to keep me moving forward. other days the loneliness of living in a world populated by only my own delusions makes me want to cry.

i reach out with my words and blindly touch because there's no other way for me to know if there's anything real beyond the distorted world i see.

"He who does not fill his world with phantoms remains alone." -Antonio Porchia

-ade.

poetic curse

faces stare back at me through history: i read the poets of the past and i hear their voices speak to me through the marvels of modern inventions and i sit and think.

sit, think, sit, think--stuck in the washing machine cycle of perpetual thought.

am i too to be pigeon-holed as just another woman author, another woman poet of all things? i don't want my work to be interrupted as being feminine. to me it transcends gender. where do we draw the line between men and women, and more importantly where does this line cease to exist? there is no face to the narrator speaking those words. i am in the background: an unimportant player in the flow and dynamics of my words. i do not want to be the next 'feminist' writer; i just want to say what i have to say and that is that. i sit and think some more.

alone, alone, alone, alone in a quest to find the meaning to it all.

where is my place in this universe? i've been writing since somebody first put a pencil in my hand, but where is it all going? sometimes my path is blurry and mingled with the scents of others i do not wish to smell but inevitably always seem to be lurking somewhere by my side. i am cursed to ponder the state of things. i need to write it all down but i lack the focus to do so. i must find a way. i sit and think.

this is routine for me now. thinking is more than an action; it is a way of life.

i wish i could find other poets to figure out if i'm alone in my madness. the words never stop. i try to stare vacantly and peacefully at the clouds, but the clouds form into words and ideas. the blue sky contorts into women in dresses twirling and writhing in the pleasures of the wind and clouds gently brushing over their flesh. they moan and sigh from above and that wetness you feel falling on your head is not rain or dew.

today i was staring at the windows of a skyscraper shining in the flood-lights of the bus station and their reflection of the cityscape. i was entranced by the beautiful angle it made against the sky; a juxtaposition of nature and society: who is the rightful owner of this planet? we take her beautiful face and mar it with our presence. someday we will all be exfoliated off her face like the spiteful acne we've become.

i dreamt of dressing a cat in its own fur; it had a zipper to aid the process. i look at my cat and see no such props to aid his transcendence from furry creature to furless one. i wish i could zip off my skin and figure out what makes me work. what are my processes? why do i write like there's nothing better to do? poetry is a disease, and as i count its ravages on my soul, i slip off into fits of imagination that draw me farther and farther away from reality; i fall into nonsense that seems to sprout out of nowhere: is this the way my imagination is doomed to manifest itself? perhaps i should wait another ten years before trying to come to any conclusions about myself. after all, i'm only twenty-six. sometimes i feel like i must be at least a hundred...

i picture myself growing into an old lady with crow's feet around my eyes, still staring off at clouds and measuring verse on the backs of strangers. counting each and every track that the train bounces over in an orgy of electricity and steel, i will watch for eternity, just waiting until all the answers are revealed.

-ade.