Community can be defined by words or actions; by privileged and class; by intersections and city names.  There are layers built in, as we travel out of our "lived-in" zone to enter into new communities.  With the transient nature of our civilization, it is quite possible that through our lives, we fall in and fall out of several communities.  People we live by, coworkers, that cashier you bonded with who moved to New Hampshire.  Our kids create these funny evolving communities, and some times we get pulled in, the moms or dads getting together for dinner or drinks, but then that falls out as the kids get older and interaction moves slowly from comparing stories and receiving advice and bonding time to a time of frantic changes and leaving nestlings.  Hearts are broken, prayers said, and soon the empty nest is there waiting for a return.  Even more communities are formed from the evolution of this change, as parents, free to explore the world with less tether attached to their souls, venture out of the "lived-in" zone and forge forward.  But all of this talk of community makes me wonder what is the value that is placed on it?  And where do the boundaries exist for the community that I live in.  If I see a boy hurting but he is blocks outside my lived in zone, can I still consider him a member of my human community?  I shall sit and let him wait it out--he looks tough, the boxing kind--and I will sit and wait to decide if he deserves to have good schools and good tech and good chances, because he may not be my community. But I know that his school is overcrowded and that the job scene isn't great and he's had a whole lot less than I in just about every area--jobs, education, socioeconomic, etc., etc.--And I complain that people like him come to my community to rob houses and cars and flee with our wealth.  And he is still sitting there.  It looks like he is waiving and smiling.  I may be able to trust him.  But I shall wait.

I sat for a long time and stared at myself in the mirror, searching for some kind of direction, like it would suddenly appear, nestled tight in a laugh line, a forehead crease in the sign of an arrow. And I held a handful if lunesta, the moon's beams at their finest, and stared at those chalky orbs, walking their ways into the creases in my fingers. Wanting so badly to swallow them all and finally sleep. But not the sleep of never more--the sleep of you and me and uncontrollable laughter and sobbing until my chest heaves and screaming so loud that my throat burns. Because those are the truly restful sleeps, where I can release the you of me who is so wound tight that you encircle my diaphragm and leaves me struggling for breath. Under your pressure, I have become a shell of myself and wanting only to emerge, if only for a moment of sunlight. But you only release me in the moonbeams, and all that is left is falling.

Musely

I was raised by the Nonappreciators.  The people who look at art and say, “I could do that.”  Art is not beautiful or unique; it is the generic result of idle hands.  The sunset can be declared miraculous, because it is something that we cannot create.  We can look at it and say, “I cannot do that, therefore it is beautiful.”  But man-made things are not awe inspiring.  How stifling can this viewpoint be creatively?  Why take the time to create something, put pen to paper, strike that brush against the canvas, if it is something that is inherently common?  For what do we all want but to believe that we are unique?  I find it boggling to imagine how many moments of inspiration are lost because I told my muse to go away.  She tapped and tapped at my shoulders, until they hunched over from the weight of words and images that were forever trapped in nonexistence.  Purgatory for inspiration.  She grew old and frail, refusing to go away, dragging me, zapping my energy, making my mind spin in circles.  I may not be ready to have an all-night, two bottles of wine conversation with her, but I am acknowledging her presence.  And she is beautiful, because she is common.  She is the common intellect of humanity, collected into a basin of ideas and imagination.  And she is trying to share.  Who am I to refuse this generosity?

Lost Indepenence

There is little known beyond these eyes
That stare so deeply into you,
Projecting my thoughts into the wrong frame,
Making everything unstable.
The wobbling of the rotations throws me off;
And I leap into the ideas of grandeur.
You stare, stare, unable to respond
To foreign ideas put into your mouth,
As you chew this newly formed cud.
Unable to dispel what isn’t yours, what isn’t mine,
Nascent cognition forced into being by our proximity.
We can’t push it out of our minds;
Once unleashed, it ricochets between us.
The wounds created will fester or heal,
Fate possessed by the entry angle, the withdraw.
Until we can no longer stand independently.

Essential Death

I will make a beautiful corpse one day

As the pink in my cheek, finally fades away.

And the cellulite drips, drips from my bones

While the flames lick the stretch marks,

Made from making my body a home.

The laugh lines will dissolve, along with my teeth,

No longer there to greet a stranger on the street.

My copper hair will dull and singe, right on the spot,

No wind to feather the strands to a knot.

The anxiety and memories will all meld to one,

And sift through a grate as they are finally undone.

What is left will be the essence of me, or is this a fallacy?

Will culture have found a way to bite through my bones?

Trickle into my marrow and delve further below?

The particles that I breathe sucked far into my soul,

Clogging and infecting until we are all but drones.

If even there is left a sliver of my soul,

Then a beautiful corpse I shall make one day.