P.o.t.D. 11/30/15: "Time Marches On"

Overslept again.
Life doesn't care - it moves on,
Leaves me scrambling...

P.o.t.D. 11/29/15: streaming on deficiencies.

streaming thoughts:

poverty sucks,
it really sucks...

to not have the power to buy a meal,
and subsist on old sandwiches

to worry about past-due rent
or credit card debt
spinning out of control
or not being able to see a doctor or dentist
because the copays too high

even though health seems to be getting worse
worries about cancer in the mouth or the colon
probably just an over-active imagination

and yet...
sharp twinge of pain down my right leg
as i get out of bed this evening
recalls horrible memories of sciatica
and reminds me how poorly
i do not maintain good physical health

back to poverty sucks -
it's not all finances
there's this emptiness
this lack of connection
with friends and family
so that when I suddenly need help
i'm afraid to write emails
or make phone calls
because i don't want to be
some random stranger making an imposition

i'm an introvert,
a hermit,
a solitary man
and that could very well be my undoing
because i need to be reminded

that sharing life
does not divide life -
it multiplies it
through the many perspectives

sure,
i might be pigeon-holed
as a star wars fan to that guy,
or a math nerd to another circle,
or a game player or merry jokester or monologue reveler or ....

i am not just my
collection of interests
or my common habits...

and yet, I feel uncomfortable
talking politics,
and behind the curve in the sciences
nothing "serious" seems to be my strength,
because I do not want to read and research

it takes so much strength
just to get out of bed these days,
and shower,
and brush my teeth,
and wear myself down
working
in jobs i do not relish

there's a poverty of energy?
or a poverty of hope?
I can't see why I should struggle
when i feel that I'm destined
to die alone, penniless, forgotten.

or there's that fear
that struggle as i may,
the rest of the world
is still caught up in an avalanche
of a great disaster
that we're all watching in slow motion

i feel bleak, disheartened...

some times, I just want to run away
to the mountains of Tibet,
to drop all possessions
except a bowl to eat rice out of
and meditate with monks
and live simply.
probably a rash decision,
but I could at least meditate each day,
to try to get centered,
to sort the wheat from the chaffe
in this barren field
that is our capitalistic society...

so i feel myself
getting weathered down
by poor finances,
lack of romances,
worries over health,
fears of the stupidity of others,
and i have to wonder,
"Will I come out of it all
As some well-worn river rock
hiding a beautiful geode inside?"

or will i just fade away...?

and "Comfortably Numb" just started playing on my radio.

Wondering about communication methods?

"the Facebook couch": yep, one of my weaknesses, at this moment, is an over-reliance on Facebook for communication. I whine about people not visiting, calling, or writing; and yet - what have I done in order to try to fuel those other channels? Nothing. No contacts initiated

I wanted to share some of the ideas in this post in the AA meeting that happened an hour before this post... but I never got called on to share, even when they opened up the sharing to volunteers at the end.

Why broadcast to the general public? Probably some hope that somebody, somewhere will pick up when I feel extremely limited on people I can emote with... It seems I've lost touch with most of my family, except my Dad for a variety of reasons. I miss the days of having best friends or neighbors that I did things with on an almost daily basis. I'm craving companionship...

Should I seek professional help? More than likely, yes. Yet my insurance does not have psychiatric services based in Austin. The therapist that was provided thru DARS dropped me about two years ago, because I was not following thru on our action plans. I don't think a general practitioner would do much, aside from prescribing medications. I could always call a suicide hotline, but I'm not pondering suicide, so part of me would feel like I'd be abusing that resource.

So... yet another time thru the bipolar cycle, and another holiday clouded by doubts, and a hope that somebody out there, somewhere will listen...

P.o.t.D. 11/28/15: "Poverty Blues"

To live without cash
Is tough, a marathon dash:
Running on empty...

There's this....
general feeling of ennui...
this sense that I've been betrayed...
abandoned...
written off as worthless or fake...
It could be some weird paranoia, with no basis in reality; or it could be quite true, like that gut feeling when you're in a bad relationship.
I'm not good at distance relationships, I think. Stuff that involves letters or phone calls, or trying to communicate past other barriers. I don't think I'm very good at casual chit-chat, either - just trying to connect with others. I don't think I behave like normal people do; it's even been pointed out to me how I remind a lady of her son with Asperger's Syndrome.
It hurts, that I want to be included and accepted, and instead I feel ignored by the majority.
Yet, my experiences do not always integrate well with yours. My stories do not always make sense, or end with a good point or moral. My needs are not always clearly expressed, due to communication barriers. My actions are not always noble, and some times quite destructive.
So, I suffer, even though you see me joking. That makes me wonder if "I need to change my tact", as pointed out by a friend earlier this week. What do I expose to the elements? What do I share?
Could probably write more, but I'm NOT very good at monologues.

grumbling about being alone

There's this....
general feeling of ennui...

this sense that I've been betrayed...
abandoned...
written off as worthless or fake...

It could be some weird paranoia, with no basis in reality; or it could be quite true, like that gut feeling when you're in a bad relationship.

I'm not good at distance relationships, I think. Stuff that involves letters or phone calls, or trying to communicate past other barriers. I don't think I'm very good at casual chit-chat, either - just trying to connect with others. I don't think I behave like normal people do; it's even been pointed out to me how I remind a lady of her son with Asperger's Syndrome.

It hurts, that I want to be included and accepted, and instead I feel ignored by the majority.

Yet, my experiences do not always integrate well with yours. My stories do not always make sense, or end with a good point or moral. My needs are not always clearly expressed, due to communication barriers. My actions are not always noble, and some times quite destructive.

So, I suffer, even though you see me joking. That makes me wonder if "I need to change my tact", as pointed out by a friend earlier this week. What do I expose to the elements? What do I share?

P.o.t.D. 11/27/15: "Feast or Famine?"

No poems made on Turkey Day;
It was spent with friends and feasts.
Many fun games were than played
After we snacked on roast beasts.

Got home, then got on Facebook;
Flooded with thanks from more friends...
Tough to read, to even look,
When I feel crushed, at wit's ends.

Cheers for crumbs, like petting cats,
That can become hearty loaves
When faced with pesky poor facts
That feed this depression's lows.

Ah, but I'm grateful
For friends and family 'round
Sharing lots of love...

General low-level malaise.
Don't want to do holidays...
Hopefully, just a passing phase.
Maybe just need some love and sun rays?

P.o.t.D. 11/25/15: "Ambience"

Scanning the air waves,
Hoping to find great music
That will drive my nights...

P.o.t.D. 11/24/15: "Dawn: Herald of Vivid Colour"

As the light scattered
Across the sunrise sky,
Some clouds were painted violet
And others faded to a bright pink.

While I walked
Towards a fiery orange horizon,
I marvelled at how
Pitch became baby blue.

What spectra would be revealed,
If we let the machine
Try to make sense of it all?

What spectres would be dispelled,
As night is chased away
By what looks to be a sunny day?

P.o.t.D. 11/23/15: "patterns?"

Looking for patterns
In Earth's complex patchwork quilt
From simple lives built.

P.o.t.D. 11/22/15: "At night, I wonder"

Oh, quiet nights!
My solace, my refuge, my recharge!

To work in silence,
Cloaked under cover of darkness,
Under that slight chill
Of a grinning Chesire crescent -
That fingernail of God
Pointing out a day done,
Or a dawn to come...

Keeping my solitary company
With the planets and stars,
Not concerned with this blink of man -
Shining brightly like beacons
Of aeons long past,
When we were but stardust.

To marvel in "God's glory",
In the great Whole
And a Path
That leads to the One -
Trying to get all spiritual, now...
But I embrace the sky and the Earth,
And woefully shake my head,
At those who deny it all,
Not caring beyond their death or birth.

We are nothing,
Such insignificant nada,
When mapped against the stars -
It feels so surreal,
Like the movement Dada...

So, let me move in wonder,
Gazing on glorious fires,
Burning way out yonder!

P.o.t.D. 11/21/15: "Jekyll and Hyde"

Go ahead, drink up!
Gave yourself a drunken rage,
You'll regret today...

P.o.t.D. 11/20/15: "Deadline Approaching..."

With audible clicks,
Each second ticks;
Feels like razor nicks
From a pendulum
Swinging over my corpse,
As I'm weighed down
By cold hard bricks...

P.o.t.D. 11/19/15: "Career Search"

Looking for fun work,
Using fancy Math degree -
Figure, "It's my love..."

P.o.t.D. 11/18/15: "Stretches..."

Twinges of muscle pain
Trickle along the lower back...
Another old age sign,
Maybe pointing at workout lack.

Years of foregoing bends
And stretches just to stay limber...
Catch up in an amends
Needed for one to remember:

"It's best to balance mind
With body, to live complete lives;
'Lest rusty muscles find
Us confined in bed, while pain thrives."

P.o.t.D. 11/17/15: "Breaking News!"

The brain's blocks are strong,
But it's battered by news, non-stop;
What staves this onslaught?

P.o.t.D. 11/16/15: "Lacking Inspiration"

My mind is rotting in my skull,
Like the Halloween pumpkins
Left out until Thanksgiving,
Getting all soft and mushy
In the late Autumn Texas heat.

There's a curmudgeon in me that refuses to stripe my profile pic...
My heart goes out to those in Paris and Beirut; just as it hurts when I hear of another "shooter on campus"...
...but I want to show my support of the victims with some more substantial act than wearing a ribbon, or changing a profile pic, or other acts of iconography.
Where are the posts pointing out the charities we can donate our time, money and/or service to?

P.o.t.D. 11/15/15: "Celebrating Creativity!"

I would love to snorkel
In a sea of sights and sounds...

Immersed in the arts,
Celebrating creativity -
Not just man-made, mind you...
But a dash of nature
To spice up my days...

Bah! no flow in that!
...self-criticism is the worst!

Meditating to music I adore,
So that, in my dreams, I may swim, may soar.

Eating up images I find online -
Some text, some art, some crude, some so sublime.

Craving to be in the spectacle's crowd,
Succors sharing souls, in silence's shrouds.

Put people aside, to ponder pure plants,
Simple, yet elegant, in noble stance.

P.o.t.D. 11/14/15: "Some Times, My Mind..."

A bag of cuties, upon the kitchen table,
Beckoned to me, with easy peeling,
Sweet juices and no seeds to gag on -
Each one more decadent than the last,
As my little addiction monster kicked in...

Looking at the plate now,
I see just the skins, the remains of ten.

...plus a pineapple container,
And two plastic shells that
Held cheese, nuts, and wrinkled raisins...

Is it me, or could this poem be,
In a pornographic way, taken?

None the less, I feel a bit more healthy,
From an orgasmic frenzy of vitamin C.

P.o.t.D. 11/13/15: "Looking for Nothing"

"A world possesses an abstract item."

After six refreshes,
This seemed like
A random sentence
That I could work with...

Although, the third one...

"A heterosexual spreads himself."

Had definite possibilities, too -
Probably not fit for children, though!

So, how could we describe
This abstract item,
Within our grasp?

That is, assuming a world
Might be a conclave of souls,
Huddled against deadly cold
Of unused, pitch Outer Space.
It could be that blue marble
That we dig our feet into,
Even as green phases to brown.

Do we have any true love,
When we trash others and our land,
Without thought of damage caused?
Prove me wrong, yet I doubt man
Will learn the restraint of self
To gain such a devotion...

Is there a society,
With grace and calm dignity,
When lives revolve 'round TV
Or phones, or technologies -
Tools to battle apathy...?

What does our world possess,
In the midst of our distress,
Claiming we're not like our guests?

Alas, I feel like I am
Just pulling at frayed, loose threads,
Stringing ideas together
To form a derived fabric,
From which my world has been cut...
Not knowing if it connects
With your life's rich tapestry
Like some knitter's patchwork quilts.

What makes the item abstract,
Sentence random, like a crash
Making the world less intact,
Hiding meaning with words brash?

I put up my quill,
Dissatisfied still -
Perhaps today will,
With effort, unveil
A story to tell...

P.o.t.D. 11/12/15: "help.."

"...help....me,"
he whispered,
with his passing breath,
as the empty bottle
tumbled to the ground...

"HELP ME!!!!"
She screamed
To the heavens,
Not knowing
If he was there...

"Help us...,"
They chanted,
Years later,
In their widening
Circles of survivors...

P.o.t.D. 11/11/15: "Long-Distance Amnesia"

Forgot how to chat
When many miles came between
Us, in other states.

P.o.t.D. 11/10/15: "Local maximum, but not global"

Fighting inertia,
Peace on my local mountain;
Scared to cross valleys...

P.o.t.D. 11/9/15: "A Spectre's Spectrum"

Red for passion's glowing embers,
Fading now to dull grey ashes...

Orange for the "Once white-hot" school pride,
Waning as he walked life alone...

Yellow for the aging bleached bones,
Left to decay in Texas sun...

Green brought new sprouts pushing the Earth,
Alas, they withered in brutal heat...

Blue, the color of eyes weary,
From crying over hopes now lost...

Indigo stains cloth so royal,
Hiding sweat spilled on distant fields...

Violet fades into pitch black,
As light's waning spectrum is palled.

P.o.t.D. 11/8/15: "Vague Memes"

To find brilliant thoughts,
One must muddle through darkness,
Wary of false shots...

Cranking noisily away
On my little music box,
Like a lost, manic monkey
Enamored by evil thoughts...

------

Pulling fiery passions
Out with milky Pensieve,
Cooling, congealing black ice
Splattered across your snowed screens...

P.o.t.D. 11/07/15: "Procrastination...? Or worse..?"

Yesterday?

I spent twenty-one hours
In my bed,
Listening to classical music
From the radio across the room.

Why I did not
Get up to eat,
Or to shower,
Or to visit with friends -
I do not know....

Maybe this is
Depression,
Twisting its knife
Across my soul.

Such a jagged knife
That rips and tears my life
Into tattered shreds,
All while I stay huddled,
Under covers on the bed.

P.o.t.D. 11/5/15: "Winter is coming"

Staring at the white space before me,
Trying to paint it black with bloody words.

My mind's lost in some twisted blizzard
Of noise and disjointed ideas -
I feel so unaware, out of the loop,
Lost in the frozen wastelands.

Is this depression,
Twisting it's knife in my skull,
Rendering me impotent,
Like some poor cattle
Led to the slaughter?

Each stanza begets a sentence.

Fighting my preoccupation with haiku,
Bandying words about loosely, like improv,
I still try to slap a structure on it,
Like Bob's "Put a bird on it"?

Back to the chilling realization
That I can't think of what to say...

Nothing develops.
It's all snow,
Blotting out the sunlight.
The stains of my pain
Left on the still, pristine banks
That are but a quiet memory
Of the flurries and flakes
That chipped off
The cloudiness of my brain, beset
By Obstinance and Obstruction...

I feel I should be screaming
Into winter's dying wasteland.
I want to emote,
I want to be heard!
Yet, when pressed for a sharp word,
I find myself stung numb
By thoughts mundane and dumb.

Writing is such a chore,
And I'm trying to get out the door,
Thinking a first draft is enough,
Not willing to invest in
Revising it to something more.

The thought crops up,
Like a new sprout in spring soil,
That, next year,
I can revisit all this churning
And tighten it up into
Something fruitful for my toil.

Most of all these words
Are scratchings at the surface -
First draft nonsense,
Tossed out, offhand,
Attempts to save some sort of face.

I don't want to be spending so many hours,
Hunched over the computer,
Mulling over thoughts somewhat sour,
Yearning for those days when I tutored -
Feeling myself mired in deep drifts,
Out of my depth, just scrawling...

No conclusion to be made,
Just a howl in my own way...
Because I still know not,
What I have left to say.

P.o.t.D. 11/4/15: "Disabled?"

What's it like to be Deaf or Blind?
Is there a total abscence of sense,
Or a confused muddle
Of which the brain
Simply can not make sense?

I looked at his cane,
And Coke bottle bottom glasses,
And I thought of extreme focus
That only made the eye's strange blurs
Just a fraction more sure...

If the brain has so much garbage
Fed into it by distorted
Eyes and ears -
What a challenge, then,
To try to create
The external world
Inside the mind.

Who's to say, though,
That there's any sensory input -
After all, there could be
Horrible damage to the nerves
Leading to silence or darkness
Or nothing left
Where once there was plenty.

Would it be better to
Never sense at all,
Or to have tasted
The sights and sounds so sweet,
And now be left
With...?

P.o.t.D. 11/3/15: "Cancer Concerns?"

Scalp scabs are scary -
Signs the sun is singing skin...
Hope hats help head health...

P.o.t.D. 11/2/15: "Bending Rules"

"Alphabet's
Beginning
Current lines,"
Decided I,
Even with smirks...

For in this foray
Grows simple patterns
Hiding in other
Intellectual plays
Juggled about with quirks...

Keeping patterns going
Leaves no room for the words
Making a good story,
Now that I'm locked in these strange
Ordeals where the poem's a jerk...

"Quit now! Shred it all! Begin again..."

Reticent, the Rat retreated,
Sensing shame, shunning the game
Traced thru tortured, twisted
Undulations of one's uvula
With the words wrapped 'round rules.

Yo! You notice now, the shattered patterns?
Zip through the lines again, zeroing in on the missing three...

"How would you fit them in, then?"

P.o.t.D. 11/1/15: "Fuzz"

November arrives
With floods, and furry faces
Blossom like flowers...