The Hammock Spot

The other day I went on a gentle stroll with a friend into the cow pasture, after getting horribly shocked by the electric fence we wandered around until we came across a huge pile of shit. And to our happy amazement it had a few mushrooms growing out of it that happened to bruise blue when touched, said to be "magical".  So we gathered them of course.  After an hour or so we had gathered many. 

The next day the truck was heavily loaded with camping gear and off we rallied into the lava fields, slowly cruising through ancient molten lava turned black, frozen in its liquid looking flowing state. Down the heat soaked Hawaiian desert to this secluded beach with fine black sand.  Nobody around, we had this tropical paradise all to ourselves as the ocean carved it's foot print on our front step. I instantly set up my hammock and made my self at home, who needs mansions when you got a hammock on the beach.  My friends craftily made a fire, everything was unpacked, food laid out, the land was ours.  And before I knew it the mushrooms had found themselves in our happy hands and into our eager mouths.  They were local, sustainable, non-GMO and straight out of a cow patty!  We needed a plan.  Surfing seemed like the best option.  Climbing the coconut trees for dessert came in second with a running tie for catching scorpions and watching them battle in a shoe box.

We walked what felt like miles down the black sand beach.   We all plunged into the awaiting sea.  At the surf break there were jagged sharp lava heads spired out of the water like black glass panicles of death right where the take off was.  They roared and grumbled, splattered and ripped up and down as the sets rolled in like freight trains.  I haven't been surfing in a long time and knew I wasn't at my proficient state of ability, I pictured my face slammed into the exposed razor sharp reef-heads gripping on for dear life as I hug feebly by my teeth.   But just then the water seemed to become a bit more fluid, a tad bit brighter, as the setting sun danced upon my retinas.  That gooey mushroom bubble had seeped into me like a cold fudge Sunday on a hot African summer.

I started to fiddle in the water playfully and just so happened to find myself petting a near by shark that happened to be strolling by.  I looked at this huge creature with no fear what so ever.  I just sat on my surfboard with ease and kept stroking his gritty dorsal fin like it ain't no thang.  I gathered up the courage and said to this mystical massive fish looking thing: "ahh, nice sunset huh?"  And to my surprise in his deep powerful Spanish accent he replied: " ya, but I've seen better." 

After I listened to him rant on and on about his home life, his annoying drunk wife and his half retarded kids, I gladly excepted his offer of eloping down in an underwater sea cave with him.  For a shark his age he was quite handsome, and I liked his salty sense of humor.  I took off my leash, dove down deep and there he was waiting for me, he came up to me with his huge algae shark mouth, and opened his huge diamond tipped sharky teeth and gave me some more air by mouth to mouth. I was sort of afraid he was going to eat me, but he didn't. After a long dark swim to the bottom of the ocean, the cave awaited us. It was already decorated with seaweed and abalone shells dangling like dream catchers throughout the cavern.  I held his little flipper, it was rough and tough but felt good to have such a real connection with such a magnificent creature.  The starfish that was wedding us had a bad lisp and I hardly heard anything he said. And I blushed because I didn't even have my vows memorized, but it didn't matter.  Love needed no script.  He said "I do", I said "Ditto".

We kissed in that sea urchin cave, in that watery cathedral, away from the horrors of man, from the plastic world of money and broken hearts; we kissed for what seemed like hours into eternity, exchanging energies throughout our microcosmic orbit, and oxygen into my heavy laden lungs.  Out we swam, through coral corrals, down seaweed streets and sandy sanctuaries with multitudes of colorful fish twisting every which way, out into the deep blue of the salty salt world.  We eloquently fantasized about which ocean to live in, how many Skarkeings ( human/ shark off spring) we wanted to have, how to feng shui our sunken ship home with colorful sand dollars and octopus ink kelp rugs, and how many baby seals I could eat for breakfast.

And just when I was about out of breath again for the 24th time, it hit me.....what the fuck was I doing?  Who was I becoming? Where am I? And I realized.....I don't like sharks -- or even men for that matter! I looked at my new shark husband, deep into his slick fierce eyes...for a long while. He knew. He had always known.  I was always going to leave him. And so I did. 

There was no good bye, just a small bubble that drifted up from out of my shorts and popped between us.  His sad eyes held the weight of the world, the burden of love and it's treacherous formalities.  Up I swam, up up up, until the light of the sky could be seen again. The surface was so near, I could almost smell it. And I broke through into the earth licked air, gasping every ounce of oxygen I could take. Just as a huge set rolled in, each wave of the set had one of my friends gliding down it, effortlessly, slashing and twisting and hitting the feathery lip, driving down the line as they pulled into these perfect barrels.  

As they paddled back out they asked me "What happened to you man? You ok?"

"Oh I'm fine, just thinking about the math homework I have to do later" I lied.  

They knew it too -- because I wasn't even in school.  I started to paddle in, slowly, not caring, just watching the waves crash onto the beach where I was about to land on the white washed grumbling beach.  And just then! Something grabbed my leg! My heart jump, it raced, it fluttered, it panicked, and I plunged my head down into the water to see for one last time.......a rock. My heart sank.  A rock had slightly brushed up against my leg on the shallow surface, and I started to bleed just a tiny bit.  The blood slowly dripped down my leg mixing it's red liquor with the blue shifting topaz sea.  I lay on the warm black sand as the sun descended into its hazy horizon, an owl flapped it's sacred wings above me on his way to the nest with a tasty rat, just as I thought to my self: i suck at surfing.

Love,

Dubb Sea

Beet Juice Love

Can it really be?
This massive rapturous weight be lifted
From doorways dripping with falsities
To frowns cloaked in discontent

Can it really be such brightness
Light that I've written years about
Traveling into my station, ecstatic
As I am?

I'm succulent to the heart
But reluctant to the mind
Tossing all cards on table
While waiting for the bluff

But I hear nothing of warning forecast
Given delicate allowance for all possibility
Beckoning cosmos lifting cheers
For this fusion

It's at points on wind stricken ledge
My toes tangle forth
My heart has jumped
I watch it squirrel suit through the trees
Unharmed

Then leap wandering spirit
Fling yourself into emptiness
Only What-ifs stand behind
Ready with sharpened blade

I say leap gentle fox
Fall into this
Permacultured love you've protected
And grown deep,
Deep as
The earthiest,
Purplest
Juiciest roots of Beets

The Distant Muse

It's not long before
we hit that dull rigid wall of reality
Like a giant hammer
slamming our youthful hopes
and sprouting dreams,
everyone has their lines
 even the lost and pathetic
 boast of their reason and misdirection.

 how long does the air keep coming to us?
 Dealing out sparkle and shine?
 Like the severed cord of spinal instinct
 why, and when, does the Muse wander
 off to the jagged cliffs or the wind-whipped prairie?

At some point she leaps
from the rusting train
to another bright-eyed traveler
To be filled with her invigorating urgency
and it's then that the color fades,
then that the tropical fish turns gray
 on the water-torn deck.

 we face our own limits during her absence
aching and fierce for an ounce of creativity
and yet nothing comes, nothing emerges forth
 even sadder still
 when the chill of winter
nibbles at our feeble physical selves
shaken blank and void

And so I plead to you
dear brothers and sisters,
pray to her! call her!
 ask for forgiveness and hope to god
she returns someday with her vibrant enthusiasm
electric wild-eyed passion,

 with every bit of lingering leftover energy
 yell at the top of your lungs!
 to the bottom of your soul!
 and lure her, lovingly
back into your heart
back from the hollows
so that her thrilling voice
restores us again to the
taste of belonging

Life Rant

What we really want as humans is to have some sort of idea that we know what we're doing, some ounce of direction towards some goal for some reason for the time being.  The thought of this ever expanding universe cradling our little itty bitty world in a swirling mess of asteroids and molten cold space-matter is just too much for our little brains to handle.  It's just down right overwhelming.  Once we start to fathom how expansive this life is with all it's undulating microcosms and multitudes of inner realms we end up where we started, blank and clueless in the same dark boat as everything else.
 
  So... we invent things. We invent stuff to wonderfully distract us from actually realizing this horrific reality that we have no clue what the fuck is happening.  And maybe we (as in the ancient cultures of this planet) once knew at some point; a long time ago, when there wasn't any separation between our rough skin and the forest air, our weathered feet and the moist dirt, or the fading heart beat of a deer with an arrow in its chest recently flung from the adrenalin fueled heart beat of our own.  Maybe those old humans did know the deeper reasons of our short time on this aquatic sphere, but alas those ones are dead now.  The electronic age of TVs, phones, Facebook gossip, drunken tweets, cement square homes, and excessively fast cars has blurred our awareness of such subtle truths now lost and choked out by pollution and Budwisers.
 
     There is something to be said in technology, in advancements of the mind and what these bodies can do, it has healed many humans that would have perished in the olden days, but then on the same edge of the same coin there is a huge subconscious obsession with distraction that has exponentially accelerated in the past few hundred years.  Just walk into any coffee shop, down any street, go into any bar and notice what people are doing.  Count the amount of people just sitting by themselves, just sitting quietly, doing nothing, just contently  being with themselves.  There probably ain't none!  We are distracted with everything, our little gadgets farting on us with instantaneous gratification about some other numbing distraction somewhere else.  So what emerges through that psychic fog, from under the flashy plastic carpet of technology, is a real yearning to know something deeper, something more worthy than who's twerking more seductively.
 
     We all feel it, most tend to ignore it, but some can't hide from it, knowing there is no place to run to, no place to escape from this burning desire to feel real purpose and reason for breathing.  Maybe we'll never know, maybe it's too late, could have missed the bus long time ago, could be long lost in transcendental translation.  Who knows why or how we ended up this way, here, with no clue as to what to do with this miracle gracefully placed on our lap.
 
But the fact is I've noticed that some of us are horribly unhappy and some of us are extremely joyful.  But why, why is there this heaven and hell living side by side within the same species?  And the only thing I have come to understand is that it comes down to having a Soulful Purpose, a path, a direction, to follow our primordial instinct of belonging, to give back some positive part of ourselves, back to the greater amoeba of Life.