Pieces of a Person: 1/21/25
Everything I wrote on 1/21/25. Poems and prose but most important, vulnerability.
Poem 1
what does it mean to be a man
can i stay here or do i have to dance
do i have to change,
certain things in my brain i can’t rearrange
feeling as if this life is preordained,
running from thangs like prefontaine
oh so strange
the things i see when my vision strained
hallucinations born from too much pateince
i am a patient
of my own intimations
i been watching this for too long
can i change the station
steady pacing
well really not steady
the pace is all over the place
i don’t know if i even want to win the race
why i am in the race
why have my dreams been replaced
with society's
its obsession with saving face
with its refusal to face the shame
creates the shame
then calls it by a different name
hide from it
run from it
that way you can never be done from it
done in by the dumb dumbs
who dont want me to run from them
and i do run
but i dont
because its not running when you fall down slippery slopes
they tripped me with hope
thinking they would show up and i wouldn’t have to elope
with my dreams
high beams
illuminate night scenes
my dreams are crazy
if you listen to my screams
the pain deep down
the buried ones
i vary sums
adding life together like the numbers won
I just want to slumber son
i need it to preserve this life that's one and done
wisdom and knowledge
how dare they think its one to one
im soldiering on
all the smolders are gone
from the fires that came from a pond
or was that a lake
the hellfire they convinced me to take
everywhere i went
all in the mind
but didn’t you know
the mind ends up controlling the spine
and how you relate to the spine ends up controlling the time
you spend
and its dividends
riveting
when you fall in love with the pen
or out of it
I would like to tout it quick
but for that you need confidence
and thats not my schtick
self deprecation waiting at every station
all the 33 directions my vertebrae splay in
no gamma waving
disconnection on a voyage
wouldnt be the maiden
Prose 1: Spiritual Choices
many people trade spiritual stability for financial stability. they believe they have to choose. and there are choices to make, but there is a balance to be found. You don’t have to sell out your moral code in order to live, but you do in order to have more, more, more. And people have begun to confuse financial success for spiritual virtue, when they're not necessarily connected. you can make choices to get ahead in society, choices that put you behind in matters of the spirit.
misplaced priorities, built from insecurity and fear. maybe of being able to live, maybe of being accepted… distractions from the fact life doesn't have to be viewed dualistically. Need a father abandon his children to make a living? Does a mother need to abandon her children in order to protect her husband? These choices seem ludicrous when asked in plain words, but many people choose one over the other. They choose not to pour into their children, but into themselves. They then try to convince themselves and everyone around them, that they did it for their children, rather than to fill in the hole of their own insecurity and satisfy their ego.
to relate to being a parent through the lens of the ego is what we see in much of modern life. kids are props, objects, trophies to be displayed and manipuated as the parents see fit. there’s no thought for the child's development into a full and whole human being. only in that they appear to be successful to others, because that means the parent appears to be successful as well.
many of the children raised this way end up as shallow and confused adults. unless lucky enough to have a breatkhtrough in their own values, they end up repeating the cycle of neglect… One that doesn’t appear to be neglect, unless you know the whole story.
Prose 2: “Microglial” came to me during sleep
last night, the world “microglial” popped into my head at some point and remained there after i went back to sleep and woke back up.
i don’t recall reading specifically about “microglia” but i certainly recall reading about glial cells. maybe i came across the terms and don’t remember and maybe I knew instinctively that it made sense for the “micro” prefix to be affixed to it.
why this word? it didn’t cross my head when talking with my aunt and uncle yesterday but maybe arose becasue our conversation dipped into the neuroscience pool at some point.
given the mind-gut connection and the large amount of immune cells residing in the gut, do “microglia” also originate there, even if they end up in the brain or CSF? if that's the case, how do they get from the gut to the spine? is it a diffusion across tissues? a certain pathway from gut to spine? does the gut use chemicals to signal the spine?
Prose 3: Freed from blood ties
thank god for life , thank buddha for the ultimate reality.
here at my grandma house, thankful i have places to go, friends to turn to in my time of need.
i feel free. like i’ve broken away from my immediate family and their ignorance. their ego and their fear that makes them unable to truly listen.
it’s sad its come to this point, but i feel much happier and freer. i truly know and feel, that meeting of conscious and subconscious that births flow, that divine state of being that shows we are in harmony with the universe, i have done all i can, as best i can, for as long as i can. i wanted to save all my relationships and tried to do so. sometimes it felt like progress was made, while at other times i was bitterly disappointed by my family. frankly, i’m glad to have very concrete and legitimate reasons to separate from their ignorance and dumbassery. dumbasses in terms of emotional IQ… and frankly logic as well. there was no more ways for me to appeal to them without me feeling as less than. maybe it 's my ego, but maybe its just a fact that there was nowhere else for our relationship to go. i don’t trust their ability to love, trust, or to reason.
looking back, my parents abandoned me emotionally long ago. there’s no doubt in my mind they abandoned themselves emotionally at some point, just like I and many other humans had done, so they were never able to be fully present with me.
its sad their emotional immaturity made it into and through adulthood. I understand that it's a cycle of generational trauma that hasn't been broken, but no longer can I try to fix people. I don’t have that abilty nor desire. maybe i do have the desire, but im too ignorant to even begin to “fix” people. i don’t have the wisdom, i don't have the expertise, but one thing i know , is that i’m worth being listened to.
Prose 4: Poor and materialism
pg 4 in East of Eden, “ You can boast about anything if its all you have. maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.” Makes me think about the materialism of poor peopple due to their lack of perspective. Not necessarily their own fault. But only due to eyes closed by ignorance, not wilful ignorance but just a lack of knowledge or wisdom.
Poem 2
How can the hawk fly in the storm?
how does it…?
and how goes it?
your shrieks speak to me,
snow covered wings this scene’s only decency…
i’ve been going through it recently,
the puzzle of my life,
try to figure where the pieces be,
maybe where they’ve been,
my only sticking point the pen,
i stick it in and underneath the skin,
a heathen if,
you let these cult members in…
finding out I’m pretty normal,
i face the breaks that never reach the skin.
slavery cycles,
we got a beastwithin, so please beat your kin,
torture them in ways that society seeps within.
or let it flood
why weren’t these people saved by the blood,
jesus christ,
seems they’re worse off for your run.
Poem 3
They say God gives the toughest battles to the strongest soldiers
the wrongest solder that made my heart turn colder
when will god get the snow up
this sadistic bastard
am i seen as noah
or has this been the job touch
i don’t believe the hype
that god is not my type
one who punishes from spite
then makes us call it right
how could this be the god who is on call at night
a nightmare whos disrepair in regards to fair might ruin life
who is right
when god brings a man the flu tonight
sickly
prickly
where do the demons stick me
And how are they different from the god of job
is it gods boredom that made so many broken homes
who puts the final touches on the saddest
who broke the strings
causing scenes if freedom rings
Just finished your piece, and man, K1, you got some deep sharing and some big talent! You've got a lot on your mind -you mentioned the Buddha, and Jesus, and closed with a quote from Thich Nhat Hahn (Thay) so I'm weaving together the pieces of you.
Your poetry is so profoundly provoking that I would need to write you back a 5-paragraph essay to share everything that came up for me, but for now I'll say a few short things I gathered from your pub :
-you open up convo about toxic masculinity and how a man doesn't have to follow society's mainstream script and can choose their path. Kudos to that! We need more men holding the space of divine masculinity for our young men and boys, and also for us women.
-it sounds to me that though you don't know how to 'fix' anyone, you are still the one breaking the chain link of generational trauma. You are severing the generational trauma of your family with the choices you're making in your life.
-'I don't know if I even want to win the race' - this speaks to me regarding my own transformational spiritual path and how I got out of the race, stopped drinking the KoolAid (as we used to say), dropped the materialism and egoically-conditioned mind and continued on the path of InterBeing , as Thay teaches us.
So, so much more. Thank you for showing up vulnerably, fully, raw, courageously, uninhibited, and yet with a hint of respect underlying your words. You offer respect for the human experience and for the suffering we each carry. Respkt to you! 🙏✨🕉️