vevasap

[vevasap]

Loose Her, and Let Her Go

People reminiscing

With stories I can't follow

Smile wide and stay polite

Don't forget to swallow

Get a drink and keep them coming

Soon they'll give something to say

It's just a game of make-believe

They all know how to play

I act as though I agree

All my worries are benign

Though I've not been born yet

I'm the first and final of my line

Friends are smoking by the window

Cold air is rushing in

There's temptation still to join them

Embrace the moniker of sin

It was just an exploration

Of possible personalities

To be checked off on the line

Just social formalities

I retreat at this time from tangibility

And act as though it's fine

Learning how to walk now

I'm the first and final of my line

A crowd of people I should know

And see just once a year

There's something disconcerting

In how they come so near

Everybody with the question

We've all answered times before

If they'd cared to pay attention

There'd be no personal decor

I wish that I could make a single show

Of how I spit the strychnine

Instead I must introduce myself to each

As the first and final of my line

[vevasap]

Here Right Now

The leaves don't turn red here

nor do the few pine needles cushion with snow

Instead there exists only a blanket of amber

and a grey vaporous threat

concealing the still flowing river

When the days shorten

it is well and truly meant

and heavy wet cold penetrates all clothes

throughout each and every lengthy pitch

There are no beaches to speak of

no peaks for better writers than I

to capture in all their majesty

Instead, unlike each place before

there is simply me

[vevasap]

Observed Node

Markov blanket

July-December 2024

[vevasap]

The Lost City

"You lost it, didn't you?

That which you set out to find, while leaving behind, the only vestiges the world- for you- could provide.

See you are a monster, a demonic mess, a flightless bird meant only for redress or whatever you want to call it.

I'll consider it curing you- curing the world- repenting for my sins; for I have sinned lord, there is no doubt, for many years did I cast you out.

For I was unable to see the greatness I could achieve, should I just run away and make the world in my image, or, in your image.

I apologize, it's just so wonderful that the world you wish to see, happens to be the status quo; the game I've already won.

Oh.... but now I apologize, for I've digressed.

I was speaking to you, my son, and reminding you of how it is you can, yet, feel gods love."

On the day after Christmas

In the freezing northern drizzle

There's relief from the rain

In the arms of this downed-decaying giant

Memories of times that never were

Dance tempestuously through the periphery

And the fort across the river still stands

Older than any has ever housed me

Refusal to massage the truth

Ratchets up the tension with each breath

Until the rope does what it has want to do

And suddenly there is no tether

It is the fort

Floats down the river then

Becoming lost to the fog and overcast sky

Both of which will one day clear

[vevasap]

Dear ,

Talk me through those cold nights you had,

The blood that blistered on the bow of the ships -

Which sang your praise -

Carrying your voice in theirs

Through the ceaseless sheets of rain

And remind me again just how it was

Trudging, day in and out, through the militant marsh

Which begged of you to sink down,

To simply escape the equatorial sun

And how then at the end of the trek you found -

That nothing had been missing

They're so intriguing, these things you've done,

The life that you have lived for true,

But please now speak to me of anything but that

Tell me instead of those days in Saskatchewan;

In the provinces unbounded by the teeming modern world,

How at that time you lived a life

Only for the luxury of living

Or instead, please predict it forward,

Comfort me with how one day the worth will come;

How each event that has passed before

Will then slot right in and gain clear purpose

And if you can't...

If right now you cannot banish -

The memory of a free festival -

Please remain forgetful that you had no fare;

Hoist not upon me the burden of truth,

While survival-worn fantasy

Can still stand so much grander

[vevasap]

Thank You, Goodnight

[vevasap]

Bless Those Who Are Here

- And those [figments] who are in our hearts -

Who will not partake in turkey today

Nor the potatoes unseasoned

Who will forego this evening the store-bought pie

Itself an act of high treason

- And we thank you for those who we still deny -

As we pray soon they will see the sins of their ways

And forego the hedonics

For surely this must yet be another silly phase

One solved by histrionics

- We remain grateful for your name's hateful credence -

It's now delivered this house from hearing ebonics

And should carry us down the solution

We know if we eradicate the rest of the gays

Our "son" will find absolution

- Amen -

[vevasap]

The Closet is an Obvious Hiding Place

Maybe that's true, maybe that's a lie.

Maybe, in fact, I just want to stand in the wide world

and scream out "I'm here"

and stifle somehow,

with logic,

the voice inside my head that speaks of vanity.

For that is the most common call of the bats,

and the elephants,

and the monkeys.

Not a complex ritual nor a discordant cacophony

rather just the scream

that "I am here" !

Some would tell you these are closer alike to alert sounds

but, fuck, I can run with that one too.

It is an alert sound!

I am warning there is danger near,

predators spotted comfortable in the clearing;

I am warning to my fellow dysphoric travelers,

caution must be kept but not from the shadows;

I am warning to those who'd seek to kill us,

I know the inefficacy of playing possum,

of expecting you to realize your own folly in such a time

as we both shall not starve.

For I remember, too, the stories of old

and for them, and now, and the sake of us all

I hope they remember how any animal acts when cornered.

[vevasap]

Eating, Drinking, and Licking Radiation Labels

Rolling down that valley

peppered with robotic faces and deepfakes,

what was always meant to cut with such precision

took upon a life of it's own.

For it's the us we're never meant to see,

broke down and stripped of sentimental qualities,

though it cannot help but betray

a target for our own projection.

For isn't it still the image that we project

to whatever infinitesimally small

speck of space

we hold out hope

may intercept,

so we may be delivered

and be seen,

not for as we are,

but only for what we had

in our most basic capacity

to be?

Although the chances were never more

than a global compromise

the capsule somewhere in the void survives,

just as the countless intimate

still sit buried in the ground.

Each of them carrying,

just the same,

post-war optimism

that somewhere out there

something will know better,

that someday right here

we will all do better.

But through the years

optimism followed the flow of the Colorado River

and from parcels meant to proudly display

our present as a gift,

we began to bury the warnings

of what our past had wrought.

No longer a celebration.

No longer carrying forth a hope for collaboration.

Instead,

a universally understood apology.

[vevasap]

Online

Trying what,

to come up with a way to continue the conversation?

I know you do it,

sit there and think,

as I do too

always a hair's breadth from the brink -

of sharing with you the simple truth.

There may be nothing left to say today,

we may both be busy

with our practical demands,

yet unready for connection to fade.

I wish upon it all -

we wouldn't have to search new words,

we could simply sit

and ignore the sands,

while you and I stare

into the other's eyes.

But, for now I do not know,

maybe I'll mobilize a meme.

[vevasap]

Where do I end?

Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

-

Played in the pool for hours and hours,

never tiring though inevitably I'd succumb to sleep

the moment we'd head for home.

Though despite the time, the pruny fingers and the bloodshot eyes,

never did I learn to properly swim;

couldn't time my face in the water to each

stroke, stroke, breathe,

stroke, stroke, breathe,

stroke, stroke, stroke,

fuck.

They still said I was okay to be a lifeguard though

and in the eighth grade I was trained to save

a drowning person,

any drowning person.

Never put it to the test in a pool, but I can attest

to the first rule they taught:

that a drowning person will kill you in their panic.

Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

Maybe add fuck in there,

fuck if I know.

But the demarcation is not that clean,

in-fact, the absurdity of ascribing these to hard-set rules

is matched only by Kubler-Ross's bullshit.

It's all always, all at the same time, mixed perhaps

to different degrees, but just a sympathetic nervous

system soup, swirling into a whirlpool

of either confused action or action through inaction

as there is no true inaction, no matter

how you reach for the ledge, begging

for a quick reprieve.

-

"You",

it feels better to say "you",

that it was the attempt to save

pulled "you" down,

but you were never drowning.

It was always me

trying to save "you".

[vevasap]

Curtains I.

Collab with @vevasap

02.11.2024.

[vevasap]

"Palimpsest"- Incredible

Pentaptych

Collab with @vevasap

02.08.2024.

[vevasap]

The Simple Expectation of Someone There

A head lost

like a birthday balloon

A girl stuck

in her empty nice room

Just waiting

for someone to come and save them

for anyone to come create them

A martyr

having lost his patience

Adapts and

demands complaisance

Just searching

for someone who they created

for anyone to let them fake it

They'll both lead a quiet life together

Assorted with a numbness for forever

And maybe when things are good they'll say

How love is all about-

compromises

How love is all about-

known surprises

How love is all about-

the simple expectation of someone there

A nightmare's

defeated by not dreaming

A lighthouse

cannot force the seeing

Just reaching

for something to keep the peace

for anything to renew the lease

A bedmate

blanketing the loneliness

Allows for

projecting back a rosiness

Just hiding

for something will surely change

for everything should stay arranged

We'll all lead a quiet life together

Assorted with a numbness for forever

And maybe when things are bad we'll say

How love is all about-

final prizes

How love is all about-

falls and rises

How love is all about-

the simple expectation of someone there

[vevasap]

Entirely Illogical

Scrawled on the city streets

In the Hamlets that none visit

But to see what is unseen;

In her kiss I taste the revolution

Broadcast over the speakers

On the train headed out of town

Off to a nowhere of it's own;

In her eyes I see the future

Found on the commemorative plaques

Too small for unwarranted seeing

Memorializing a world before;

In her arms I feel the possible

The train rolls out as the city sleeps

Lurching into the dark as the youth beg

Pleading for a break to the monotony

Though the status qou's been made

And the righteous lay broken by repetition

In her embrace a new world remains

[vevasap]

Resignation

The man who fell to earth

Crashed not with a bang

Nor even a whimper

Met up with the woman

Who confesses each week

But's never been true to herself

It's likely that even already

On a some manufactured wood farm

Grow the planks of their coffins

That reliable guide

The North Star Polaris

Couldn't be seen by dinosaurs

[vevasap]

Cinquains are just haikus for people in denial #1

Watch out!

The coming snow

Will blanket recent growth

If you should fail to protect it.

You'll fade...