Mesmeric – my image – transfixed and unaware; beauty always the prize – begin the gracious handover or carve out your own league? – refuse to be anything but and others will follow, always, others follow what they’re lead to believe – why does this matter? – because beauty is a doorway to the divine – because matter matters – because people need to believe in what they can see – can we ever enjoy our own beauty when it’s budding, flowering, in full bloom — only in retrospect do I smile, and see – there it was, only in a mirror, over there, severed from flesh – I must court the future and the past simultaneously to walk in the present gift – I am beginning to understand how simple and impossible it is, to truly be in the unfolding, where and only where the mystical exists – meanwhile, this curious life I’ve chosen – I dance with death daily – how hurt I’ve been by my own hand, how deranged and numbed I’ve made my mind – it gets old, this self-talk – it gets me down, down drudging up the past and the persistent impalpable future – not hand-in-hand but under thumb – wouldn’t you rather write about nothing? Or about anything, anything else? – I sit in cafes, glumly watching the rain trickle down the window pane as though I’m just waiting for it to all end – I am – can’t stand this skin I’m in – can’t find meaning in the matter, sometimes – finish line always in sight – sipping from thin glass, thin wine – finishing as the last time – no glory here, no joy – clinging to former days, praying for days that will never come – how about being here, love, how about now, how about the feeling of the cold air against your warm skin, with nowhere to go, nothing to be – how about a well-lived life as life gifts it, hour-by-hour, to thee? How our hearts shatter for being not-known, when we lie comfortably at a distance – not here, always chasing the life that is just one step beyond yourself, and not in the way of generosity that Whyte and O’Donoghue meant for it to be – not the selfless extension of oneself towards remembrance – you are more than your flesh – but the way I exist just beyond myself and always have is that I am not here, I am not in this suffering body, I am not in this love completely but on a plane to somewhere else, I am in another bed, breaking bread ‘round other tables with strangers, I am penning great works under windows of sea – if you’re left wondering why you feel alone, why no one but one has come close to your core, could it be that you are ever in another history, and your soul is too-deep buried beneath the rubble of your human sorrow – could it be that if you were to be the unfolding, return to your original sin, christ almighty, life might actually have been always in the place where you began?