4:47am. December 27.

Behind the window and through the blinds lies a man, standing and perching, a silhouette outlined by the dreary, nicotine-stained glow of the curtains-made-from-sheets. But anyway there's a man there, peering into my window as I take measures necessary to facilitate sleep, but he's not really doing anything, I mean - I'm not sure he's even watching me, or even looking in this direction, but the hour grows late and the
mind
runs
wild,
drawing demons from crevices filled by plaster and howls and shrieks of memory from the bizarre December thunderstorm winds, and it's generally hard but right now REALLY difficult not to draw lines between nonexistent floating points and shadow the bottoms of spinning geometrics. I don't know how people do it although I imagine this fucking guy that won't stop looking at me has some notion of how.
Hey!
You!
Listen!
I shout, I'm starting to wonder if he's really there at all, if maybe he's not a pseudo-fucking floating dot-point construct, designed and developed and implemented by some crazed group of people ------------------------no! That's unlikely. That is probably impossible. That's crazy. Really, I'm better now and see entirely that said lying-yet-standing man isn't a man, no but he
is
an
illusion!
Looking around at the soft yellow glow from the low-yield/high-power bulbs behind me as their photons leap from dingy couches and onto stained and scarred electronics and into my cerebral cortex, the lack of and maybe I see now a palpable, thickly yogurt-like desperation for wont of another human is ---- retching, but ever-present, and VILE because at this moment,
that
cannot
be,
and really is there every anything nearly as damaging and damning and, I think I'd argue, driving as the desperate drive that comes from knowing that what you know you need is absolutely impossible to attain? The terrible tragedy is the way that vile need creeps into everything, poisoning pure thoughts, but it's not half so bad as the realization that the image you spent hours pouring yourself into
was
never
there.

Christmas

The sounds of laughter and love drift up from the floor below,
emanating through the floorboards and flowing up the stairs,
where they find me, sitting alone in a room we called my home,
wondering how it was so quickly that yesterday became today.

As Christmas, it's important to recognize the key and critical,
shed the trappings of those things considered mostly irrelevant,
but on this holiday I'm having a hard time concerning myself with
tradition, seeing as how it seems to have entirely failed me this time.

Maybe it would be best to wander down to the sounds, engage maybe
in laughter and love, even if for only the face value: I fear that today
I've sadly little to gain from such things, beings of family being little
comfort, their goodwill sadly contorted into anger, hate and loathing.

Welcome to Christmas, I said, as my brother cheerfully handed her
the present he was so proud of: tickets! to see Wicked, of all things,
except unlike when I played that card, it's in New York City, appropriately
east to my version of west, and maybe just maybe it won't provide images

that will later kill you.

Solstice

It was foolish to think that
somehow today would be different
Foolish to think that though
the dreams came from a
golden, hopeful today,
they would influence,
of all days, today,
winter solstice

At What Cost Does the Morning Come?

Empty and devalued, a meal without substance,
a song lacking not merely chorus but chords,
a victory so hollow that it's difficult to find
where their blood ends - and yours begins.

Are not all victories the same, you ask,
is not this inch of ground worth the thousands
and thousands of lives, regardless of whether or
not .. we have anyone left alive to hold it?

It is, at this point, as with all others,
a question of perspective, vantage, one that while
submerged within cannot be fully understood.
Such is always the nature of these events.

Are not those mere inches, measured with
the span of a soldier's boot, lines to be redrawn?
Are they signs of a progression, symbolic that
regardless of the cost, this war will be won?

Tomorrow, however, beckons and approaches;
ever is it's call clear, the Siren of Dawn much more
audially visible than anything visual, forcing
on man more precognition than he can bare.

But at what cost does the morning come?
Always, with man, that is the secret that can never
be shared until readily known - always is it that
the consequence is cursed to follow the action.

But of the value!, you cry, demanding that
the worth of your just reward eclipse those same lines
that, months prior, you had spent thousands upon
thousands of gallons of blood carving.

Because, let's face it, even though your lines
were previously tighter, the empire encompassed within
much smaller, the relative might and power of your
land slighter - at least you had men to guard it.

Christmas.

Appropriate that
I should not merely meet but
come to know an agent of chaos
on today, Christmas Eve, of
all days, significant -

Not at all because
of the holiday, no, but
rather the ludicrous timing
that really could only happen
in a situation like this -

Frustrating, ultimately,
as although it's bound to lead
to greater and better things,
this is the sort of thing
that could happen only -

on Christmas Eve.
The weight and impact of it
rather striking, as I remember
that today, of all days, last
time - only it was in September.

Return

Although difficult, I am pleased to have returned to this frozen
landscape, the horizon jagged with stone knives and sealed off
from all the world,
the sky a high-resolution diaspora of violet and
ship-iron grey -
though cold, though difficult, these lands are familiar;
unforgiving and ever-treacherous, the quiet and sense of
foreboding is, in a word, welcome.
Welcome in a way those abandoned palm trees and sands might
never be, as here -
the warmth and orange glow of Sol has no place,
no sway, understanding that these poisoned sentiments and
entropic ideas lead only to damnation, as here -
One might escape them, the concepts and notions found in these
wintry lands as pure as the untouched permafrost,
an understanding amidst both the rare man who finds himself
here and the rocks, trees and skies that nothing found here
might ever be removed, as nothing from without may ever enter. -
the only crossing between these worlds is the vessel of
the body, only the mind and memory permitted to steal
and pillage, each man welcome to whatever truths he might find.
I haven't found mine yet, but pick in hand and iron-boot on foot -
I mean to.

Missed it Like Castle Danger

You remember how
all the way there and all the way back all that I wanted
was to stop at Castle Danger?
And how, even though we tried so hard to find it
we simply could not?
The map and the compass pointed us
in the way we should have and did go but
they couldn't find it for us, either,
and I, too stubborn and masculine
and you, too feminine and shy,
couldn't be bothered to ask the path
from people that might have known it.
We never did find out way to Castle Danger,
never really found our way back home,
left maybe a little too much up in
those wastes of oxidized stones, frozen skylines,
we as ragged and destroyed as the bloody and ruined
husks that the wolves left behind.
You've found Castle Danger, now, a newer and better
navigator lead and lit your way, but I -
I'm still on I-61, searching, eyes on the road signs,
trying to find Castle Danger.
Maybe I'll send a postcard if I find it.

To Hew, version 2

Surrounded by a black fog like black magic so
ephermal it's more mist than mass,
I conjure.
I conjure and summon the thunder the clouds the spinning
celestial hammers that define the landscape -
and those I summon I command,
sending forward to hew the living stone to destroy
to butcher to carve a likeness like that which is
never seen yet was always known; but it's hollow, empty,
lacking an instrinsically necessary item that -
that spirit of definition,
that silhouette that's become an imperative, a crucial
function in the foundation missing that -
I've built am building
as intangible but forceful as the lightning that
powers these stones I throw;
the struggle sometimes is not one of definition
so much as syntax, but the cracks -
the crevasses those forces carved -
they mar and line this landscape, they -
they define it -
embody it.
They embolden it with a futility I knew not these
iron hands capable,
a sense of humility and weakness so profound so as
to destroy, but -
but not the stone.
Never the stone,
as even without one as I, these stones live of their own,
grow and fall and form, sustainment their DNA,
and I am a mere benefactor, a com-off, an
element of impermanence that -
that as strongly as the molecules of stone bind
themselves in this image,
as absolutely as they assume correct form,
they are to be but dust, the sought resolution
as laughably marred as crippled,
their entropy demonstrating that I have neither
the iron hands nor power over stone, no, but rather -
the shattered leaf, the burned branch,
the wilted, scorched and dying grass,
these things, these things dead and fleeting and
soon gone,
these are the ways in which I carve.

Sheds

Mine eyes turn only towards the future, the consequences of yesterday and the implications of today forgotten, I turn, eyes and mind open, that I might engineer that golden tomorrow, build it with bricks mortared in soul and blood and stone of effort and toil, that the today of tomorrow might be built of gold and steel and not the corrugated iron that one refuses to escape from. I turn, knowing that the works of today are the spoils of tomorrow, and that thought I cannot escape the tasks of today by way of road, I can escape them by way of labor - and building better my tomorrow. Though the possibility exists always that my tomorrow may not be golden, corrugated iron it will not be.

Footnotes

I notice now
how quickly the page turned and the chapter ended,
this part of the story complete and resolved,
merely another subsection in the grand picture, gone now.
The characters from before forgotten too,
their actions unnoticed and devalued as
they contributed little to the theme anyway, being minor characters.
What that they had known, before, their fate,
to be relegated to annotations and footnotes,
would they have performed their function the same?
Were they to have an understanding
of the rules of engagement, those wonderful
little
rules
that shield intent and guard truth;
When wordsmithing it is of vital importance
to always maintain a close watch on rules as
without them, the story
may
have
changed.

God Emperor

Something something something has to break;
no elastic outpaces this force and, like
Tennyson, I refuse to bend, to yield, to break, I -
in occasions of moral imperative there can be
no alternative, yet I, I, I - I questions always
what appears to be the Golden Path.
Leto II had it wrong, he -
he, he, he said the path is destiny, unalterable
fate, and only by bridging that history might one
span it, but -
He was wrong. There is no secret, Golden Path.
There is only the I, and I,I,I, -
I force the path I decide, I -
I choose the hand to forge this weapon, I -
Am as wrong as Leto II.

Untitled2

I wait for you to walk through that door in the same way
that you sit, phone in hand, waiting for his call.
Both we two after the same things: contact, acknowledgment,
an unpressing of the pause button, but the killing difference
is that soon enough, your call will come:
You can, as you said, begin to live your life again,
having that contact, that reaffirmation, that so painfully severed connection ...
restored.
But my door will not open, will not provide me that unpause,
and though as you wait your phone chimes and you, ecstatic,
grow disappointed to learn it's another chain of home instead, a
maybe step closer to that contact, and, like the lights of your phone,
this door opens, illuminating the ground before me, and, like you,
I grow ecstatic, filled with hope, erupting with sunshine, but -
like you too, these new lights and figures are another chain of home,
a painful reminder that today is not tomorrow, and yet ...
Filled with stupid, blind hope, I look up each time:
A difference seperates and divides us, cruel as the dull sword of a headsman,
in that your hope, beautiful and wonderful and filled with knowing that
it is not vain - it is but a matter of time - will come,
and mine, knowing with almost absolution that those lights
are not to be that golden halo framing your face, not this time or the next -
yet still I look, believing, everytime the door opens, that maybe this time
my hope will be beautiful, wonderful, and that golden halo will be there.

Black and Grey Scarf

A circle of ash cascades down the column of cold air next to the stone-plaster ashtray,
they entwining and encircling one another, forming and unforming patters that nobody paid heed to,
providing half-seen distractions for he that stands idly smoking a Camel - a Turkish Royal -, and he wonders:
Why bother to wait here, paused in life until the cigarette burns low, the addiction sated,
cease in all actions until the decision of the nicotine reaches critical mass, and finally decides
to reject life - and slowly whither here in the frozen snows and devouring winds?
He that stands, paused, wonders at the ashtray, and as the embers cool to naught,
he questions why he selected the almost-finished, woolen-scratchy black-and-grey scarf.
For fashion and heat, possibly, although the nature of an unfinished scarf of colors contradictory
seldom lead to either, suggesting instead another, unspoken motive -
Perhaps for the same reason he carries, daily, the wolf-stone from Minnesota;
but as minds turn to wonder at such things, the burning sun of the Camel finally dies,
and he walks away from the plaster-stone ashtray, leaving only footsteps and spirals of ash.

Sleep

Empires by the hundreds have fallen,
fallen to sleep, leveled and laid low,
all of their works and joys cast into the wind -
The tribes of man have dispersed, fallen,
fallen to sleep, ejected into the chaotic diaspora
all of their ways and customs cast to the wind -

The ever-expanding sands of antiquity encompass
all things; the relics of each era, each age,
exists in permanence only there, as in the living world,
all of them sleep.

The culminations of thousands of human relationships have fallen,
fallen to sleep, torn apart by false promises,
all of the rings and broken dreams cast to the wind -
Dreams by the billion fall,
fall to sleep, distracted and pulled away,
so many aspirations cast to the wind -

The shells of love lost and crumbled dreams,
their sad anguish manifesting as crumbled castles on those sands,
will exist forever, forever crumbling but never quite to naught,
all of them sleep.

The Great Wall of China, whose purpose has long since fallen,
fallen to sleep, a powerful idea relegated pointless from time,
all of those noble aspirations cast to the wind -
That brief period of the proletariat, whose nation and idealism has fallen,
fallen to sleep, a beautiful idea - leaving only statues behind,
all of those concepts of equality and idealism cast into the wind -

Is what could have been the wonder of a lifetime,
the transcendental, singular connection - to calcify, to
stand forever on those sands, an effigy to all that could have been?
Is it to be, like so many things, cast into the winds?
Will it disintegrate, eroded by those very winds it was cast into?
Is it to be yet another, 'c'est la via,' are we to become fallen -
are we, too, to sleep?

Yellow Roses ((-))

I stand before tens and tens of thousands of flowers, so many that it is impossible to encapsulate the entirety of the vision in a single, prolonged glance. The multitudes spread out before me, an explosion of every beautiful color and shape I have ever known, and they beckon to me -
Stems and stalks and petals of every size and variety, dancing in the gentle breeze, each single entity behaving as one, each with the same calling, the same persistence that I could choose and have any single one of them.
Despite the distraction of the prismatic lights erupting from every corner of vision, I find my eyes drawn to a singular, solitary yellow rose, a rose directly tied to but inexplicably different than all of the tens of thousands of those surrounding it.
The yellow rose, while so striking and radiant, a pristine dream that, although wilted, far eclipses the beauty of all those around it, but it is not that beauty that forces this particular one to the very core of my being, no -
It is the delicate lines of a knowledge and clarity that entrances me. Glowing within from a light completely independent from the rest of the field of flowers, this yellow rose illuminates truths of life and love that no mortal man could know were it not for her. When every petal was aflutter with permission, an entire sea of choices, I choose this yellow rose, she not willing to throw herself to the wind, in the hopes that I can convince her to fall into my arms.
Although she be thorned and dangerous, I select the yellow rose, knowing full well the risk - but I pray the gloves on my hand and the honey on my lips provide persuasion to this one, specific rose.

Stonewall ((-))

Brick by brick I've built this wall
ideas for mortar and action for stone,
but it isn't a wall for imprisoning.
It's a wall of structure, a rebuilt wall,
a stone monument to not merely survival
but -
but of growth, and development, and stability.
It's a superstructure that nothing will
tear down, a series of obelisks to point
to the sky, to accuse it for not falling,
not everything crashing down in a flaming
glory of catastrophe - because that never
happens, and will not happen, not to my
wall. I worry that the potential of the
permanent loss of you will tear down
this wall, but it will not. Although that
pink-hued brick was always my favorite,
this wall doesn't depend on it, it won't
fall without its support,
but -
There is something to be said for a
part of a wall that is beautiful, that
makes the entire structure better and
stronger than ever it was before, that
it glowed with the blazing light of Sol,
but -
That brick, for a time, was not
merely a brick, no, but a wall within,
atop and next to mine own, and although
the wall was better and stronger
and stood for more things than either
of us could have achieved on our own,
it nonetheless can still be rebuilt.

Though both collections of stone are
capable of standing solitary, and they both
are strong and beautiful in their own
right, they are not all they could be.

Together, we could build palaces and empires,
things far grander than the walls that we
on our own could make. We've built grand
structures and monuments in the past, testaments
to love and enlightenment, but words dissolved
the mortar, misunderstandings eroded the stone.

Now, however, with the ruins of our old works
both behind and in front of us, we know the
acidic effects that these misunderstandings
can have. We now face a decision.

A blueprint for a better tomorrow, a golden
dream of life, a stone and mortar cascade of all
that our second palace could be, if only we decide
that palaces and golden palisades and testaments
are a better choice for tomorrow -

instead of two lonely, but stable, walls.

Casting ((-))

Heavy handed and slit lidded, I case the die
Didn't play my game as close to my chest as I should have,
but I was gambling with higher stakes
than I've ever known.
I cast the die, and weighted my game as I could,
but am unsure of how they landed as
I am blind to the hustling ring into which they were cast.
I thought I saw there a glimmer of hope,
the possibility that against all odds, I rolled sevens,
and that elusive, dreamed-of jackpot was mine,
but -
I've no idea how they landed.
Snakes eyes?
Threes?
I've no way to know, but I have a lot of hope.
But now the name of the game has changed;
the surrender of expository and dialogue to
give rise to new metrics:
The new game now is one of careful, calm, deliberate,
and of a cool, determined purpose -
There is to be no more casting now, only waiting,
eyes open and ears attuned,
Ready for that one last chance.

New Stuff

A lot of the things that were posted in the last day or two are older things, written in different times by the same hands but changed. I'll designate them with a ++ in their names for those of you that:
A. read this, and
B. care.

Iron and Ice((++))

Today I walked ten thousand miles in the snow, the dirt and the mud and I walked them underneath the angry, beaming and glaring sunshine of the cold Atlantic north. I walked ten thousand miles because I thought you went that way, I thought I might catch you might head you off at the destination but you prove as elusive as ever, as difficult to grasp as any good metaphor. I thought I was close this time, within reaching-distance and certainly seeing distance-like, but I was wrong; oh, always wrong, for as I reach this gnarled hand outwards I wonder, will it come back the same as I sent it?
Somewhat different, always different, never static; the hand changes as the walk changes, and though I can't always see or feel or taste that it's different, I can tell it is. I know it is. I do not live in a black-and-white monochrome redundant 50's television show and I do not walk that path that those forefathers of holy walked, no, I walk this twisting and weaving and cold and bitter and frightful path, walk it each time as though it was the first time -
and
I
pray
the last time.

Jah Didn't Kill Johnny++

Oh Johnny come what did you do now, oh Johnny why - why when you know better, why when you've tread this grim road, why when you know where it ends? Sometimes the trees look different, said Johnny, sometimes the road bends; but Johnny oh Johnny if you know then where this path leads why oh why, why delay what's only inevitable; because, dear Johnny said, because this time I've got this feeling, this feeling that this is the high ground.
Oh but Johnny, oh Johnny I asked, but which road?

I Used to be Scared of Spiders++

A spider lives outside of my house, attached to the light fixture and to the garage exterior wall. She's lived there since the spring, when spider's of that nature are born. Created. Hatched.
I've watched her and her webs grow in size and complexity, and everytime I smoke a cigarette I watch her hang motionless on her web waiting for the fly.
Tonight he came.
She shook the web after he made contact,
she made sure the silken strands were stuck tight to his meager body,
she sprinted across the web and wrapped her long, spindly legs around the body of the fly, and fangs like knives injected her venom deep into the fly.
Not killing him, not yet, no, but taking him as close as he was likely to have ever been, and encasing him in web.
Perched offcenter her silken throne, she awaits the fly.

Fell circumstance surrounds and encases and encircles; who am I but a prisoner to fate, a lackey to those ropes and webs and ties? I'm a pawn in this and in all things, a facilitator but rarely receiver of great things; for you, I am glad to have rendered this service, but know that it breaks my being to have given it to you. I trust you know well what must be done; take hold, now, take aim and ready your rifle, draw clear your bead and make way. My place?, no, my place is not to stand here, not in sight in mind in sound in vision in thought, no, off over and away, far from this disc of misanthropy. I cannot tolerate more, I cannot, but I fear I must.
Let me take and let me keep this for myself; you can only consume so much,
let me maintain this vestige of hope that there can be delivery.
Let me stay this road that I might leave,
let me maintain this thing that I might know -
let me have this favor, this boon, this mercy.
Let me know it alone.

Stand Fallen ++

building block building block what curve shape are you going after now;
skies purple sun black and moon red and earth dead - take the circle.
always follow the circle the cycle, so defined with futility justice and irony
build it build it build it make it grow make it strong ten thousand stories high and as many wide;
make it dwarf the clouds, let it stab at the heart of the sun, build it to -
build it to fall with glory and fire and death and murder and blood and horrible agony -
build it to stand fallen.



Also, stealing ideas from VNV Nation is fun

Bright++

I got shadows and ghosts and demons that I try and try and run from hunt sometimes but am never apart from, not long; though there's a clear, beautiful and shimmering golden horizon I can still see their silhouette still standing in the off on the side. I'm building with these blocks I got I'm building high and with great haste though I fear and dread but hope and really don't think I'm building too high too fast too far//in my zeal maybe I tend to but when you've a crusade then it's all faith anyway. Sadly foundation pouring is vague and shadowy and unknown until seen from afar from third person omniscient and well...
that never happens anyway.
all I've got much of is a handful of hope and a handful of fear. I got my golden idol I got my personal Sol I got my half-moon eyed, and I fear I'm getting to need them.
Need 'em to break these demons. Need 'em to break these ghosts and shadows. Need 'em to give me .. illumination.

Legions++

Golden sunshine and brimming dawn I look to thee today tonight and tomorrow with anticipation and, as I often come to this post, somewhat lacking of trepidation; gifts though only potential come in the form of substance and, this time, actual worth.
Coasting along seems such a downer and negative aspect but, no .. shining tides bright with the rise of Sol parting between the split of my bow, this time as in the hope of all times, rise high but don't overcome; this coast is in the direction of maybe potential finality and as close to conclusion as I'm ever to find.
Tomorrow later Tuesday brings great interest; things when lost of all worth and value tend to not hold such weight as those crucial. This is common knowledge, though something not commonly nor previously known to me and thus, representative of an entirely new experience.
Pissing into the wind, it could be called.
Laughing in the face of adversary?
No, no .. that doesn't work. The title of villain can never be applied to a monster once it's fangs have been ripped out and made into trophy.
No less, some trophies are potentially worth collecting.
To thee, oh Sol, I stand before naked and abreast; deliver unto me your bounty and your wrath.

One Road++

Back, back, back, I remember back when things were straight,
straight back with the spider as a girl and a shadow for a sunshine
See then, that was back when prospects were dim and things muddled;
not that they're terribly more clear so much but
you know
I like to think so
Potential ever pushing onward, it's no longer a question of why not but how
how terribly, bleedingly-hearted optimistic
idiocy, but that's okay
circumstance and drive replace deprecation and despair sometimes

To Hew((++))

surrounded by a black fog like black magic so ephermal it's more mist than mass,
I conjure
I conjure and summon the thunder the clouds the spinning hammers that define the landscape
and those I summon I command,
sending forward to hew the living stone to destroy to carve to butcher a likeness like that which is
never seen but yet;
it's hollow, empty, lacking an intrinsically necessary item that -
that -
that object that thing that -
silhouette that's becoming a necessity, a crucial function in the foundation I've built am building
as intangible but forcible as the lightning that powers these stones I throw,
the struggle sometimes is not definition so much as syntax, the cracks the crevasses that carve
and mar this landscape, they -
they define it
embody it
they embolden it with a futility I knew not these iron hands capable,
a sense of humility and weakness so profound so as to destroy, but -
but not the stone
never the stone,
as even without one as I, these stones live of their own,
grow and mold and molt as organic materium ~
I am a benefactor, a com-off., an element of impermanence that -
that as strongly as the molecules of stone bound, that I seek;
though I be damned, and damned, and thrice damned,
the sought resolution as easily marred as easily crippled
as the shattered leaf, the burned branch,
the wilted and dying grass
the sole, the solitary,
the goal of
fossilization
entwined

Axes++

See there?
that glint on the horizon, that piercing ray of light coming --
see that, that is the axe of the headsman
I forged that axe, and now, it grows hungry
Yet I am as the leaf in the October wind in this,
as orange and semi-fragile thing as, --
it matters, ultimately not, for what is the leaf if not sustenance for the coming worm?
Nothing; if not that, and thus, I dance up these gallows towards the block;
not oblvivious,
not unawares by any means, no;
but rather full on the notion that I've been here before, that --
that this likely is nothing near my final stride up these gallows, and yet ...
the notion that this instance may be the death of it all, that I might find the permanence of stone,
the rot of brown decay, that --
that is what provides this current I dance towards the gallows on

Prophets ((-))

I dreamt I dreamt I dreamt of being a prophet
I cared not to be the doomsayer or
the bringer of fortune
I dreamt I dreamt I dreamt of being touched by the divinity, the
aware or --- the entire unconciousness
the dreams showed me lights and the hopes
great pillars of glass but --
I awoke I awoke I awoke to the life of a historian, the hands
of a scholar and life of old, forgotten books
I awoke I awoke I awoke instead not to the staff or vision
of the speaker, but to the pen and words of the scribe
the life gave me candles and showed me inks, and
my hopes but bleed into the pages

Sand Castles and Dice ((-))

It's a little bit like that time
when your kid sister spent weeks convincing you
to please-oh-please be at the clearing in the woods -
and then she wasn't there.

Those same weeks spent convincing yourself that you don't care
but you were every bit as disappointed when she didn't show
to the please-oh-please clearing in the woods that day
as she was when she spent several vain weeks convincing you to go.

Or maybe it would be better to say that it's kind of like
how you spent years avoiding that boy dying in the hospital.
Convinced that he was positively dying to see you and
your excuse was the smell and the height and the building.

Years spent convincing yourself you had good reason not to go
even though you knew his sentence was death -- non-commutable.
Yet for all of the worry and fear and guilt your excuses provide
it's later learned that he didn't even remember who you were, anyway.

More than likely it's like that time where
you tried to build a sand castle by yourself on the beach,
and you sat there erecting palisades and arches but -
the sea kept coming and eroding, slowly but inexorably, the castle.

But you just kept trying because, "You can do anything,"
she said, and you had absolute faith; but then, slowly,
it occured to you: she knew of the sea! -
and knowing that she understood your futility didn't stop you.

That little boy, astride the sea, cannot be told his task is fruitless -
he was told he "Could do anything," and now stands in defiance of the tides,
because those words were so loaded with potential and hope and sunshine
that eternity becomes meaningless next to sand castles.

Maybe then it's kind of like after spending years explaining in action
you felt as though you had nothing but time when you are told,
"Just give it time," and you start to think about it a little bit
and begin to wonder if the hourglass is starting to run low.

Maybe it's difficult to worry time away when you're convinced
that Caesar is crossing the Rubicon and you're five days behind
knowing that haste just means you'll watch Rome [metaphorically] burn
exhausted and desperate instead of well-rested and lucid.

I'm not sure that Caesar approaching Rome is quite correct:
it's a lot more like the barbarians pouring into the city, looting and burning,
because even though you know Caesar is a noble sort of patriarch,
the barbarians have no such interest in preservation or sanctity.

In a very real sense it's like being told that the expression of hopes and dreams and goals
being smashed on the coastline by that same eternal tide as before
is petty melodrama, meaningless and devoid of value, destined
only to make things worse and cause more problems than anything.

Well some don't understand the fight; like the boy and his castle,
futility in light of the goal is meaningless, too, and maybe just maybe,
Some people believe in something so strongly that all futility does
is mean that there is a chance to beat the tides.

Sometimes, the Devil will back out of a bargain, convinced that
he's somehow getting burned, that your soul is somehow not worth the cost -
but what he and every suspicious and conscious dealer fails to see
is that sometimes people bargain with sincerety.

And that aside from all of the inevitable doubts as to motive,
once in awhile, on perhaps exceedingly rare occasion, some people sometimes
are willing to pass over everything
for another cast of the dice.