Who can resist the rain drunk city

That glimmers twice as bright

As the streets all pitter with gossip

Of a light that found its other light.

From a French press pour
that
fills
a
mug

To a midnight cigarette on an

empty block.

The other pillow still plumped and fluffed

With listless whispers for no one in particular.

It’s all just abrimmingheartwithnowheretosp-
ill.

You are alive, and that is your art.
Your very first memory and your very last will fill pages of an epic, like Gilgamesh, Ulysses, Huckleberry Finn, and Jesus Christ.
Fate be your pseudonym; divine from what’s to be the marble relief of your greatest battles— against hubris and humility, doldrums and temptations, spilt milk and scraped knees.
Every step you take was once a spark of imagination that coaxed your brush to canvas,
“Let’s try this color!”
Making murals of Friday nights, frescos in the chapel halls.
Frida and Basquiat and Pollock in your soul, collecting stains on your outstretched canvas, splashed and bespeckled with inky, indelible time.
Take a look around you.
This is your gallery.
These are your blurbs.
This is your oeuvre with an exhibition statement that yearns to make some sense of a pièce de résistance so desperately content with being just to be.
Because you are Miles blowing in the wind, Coltrane on the sax taking giant steps.
Mixolydian or the backdoor seventh to your late and tired nights?
Your fingers decide what your ears imagine, and the song goes on and on.
So dance a little, and splatter a lot, and write yourself into a cliffhanger.
Then let it go and fall into an ending yet to start, with hope that it will thrill and awe your captivated heart.
Because you are alive, goddammit.
And life is your fucking art.

You have somewhere else to be,
But it takes a while to get there.
The wheel rumbles beneath your seat,
The wind licks wild your hair.

Colors ribbon past your cheeks
To the left and to the right.
Every flap a hammered bell
Announcing spring’s first night.

The firecracker blossoms bloom
Through a season short on time.
So you fly between their outstretched stems,
While they wilt before your eyes.

Because you have somewhere else to be,
And still so much to see.

From the past I wanted simpler days, but they're caught in memories.

From the future I’ll want guarantees, but who knows what will be?

So today I just want you with me, and look who I should see!

Sometimes when I close my eyes
To stand under the water
I forget a brief and slippery moment
Which shower I am in
And all the memories of times before
When I'd feel more than I'd see
Blend together into that one world
Of the water, the darkness, and me.

Day broke on two churning worlds
Coalescing in a breathless void, spun toward the searing horizon
Where all that could be multiplies.
When suddenly
From chance collision
The soundless fracture,
Of infinite dreams dissolved to stardust,
Swallowed back by the creation cloud.
A single day to discover all things,
And just the same to be forgotten.
And all the memories undone
But for the weeping star’s who watched it pass,
All born and broken in an eternal blink.
And, She, drifting once more through the spotless black,
Waits again for the dust to gather
From nothing into everything
And aimlessly returned.

Do not speak to my past, speak to me.
Not as roots in the ground
But as yet falling leaves.
Not a forest but a tree,
An exhalation from the deep.
Here is a dance of the soul meant for two.
Histories converge wherever we do.
But the past cannot hear
Heeds no tongues past its ear
So we translate across each ring bearing year,
And hope one day we might look up to see,
That we both grow beneath the same canopy.

When you vehemently disagree with somebody about a specific issue, try taking a step back and examining the broader context of the argument. Whatever issue you're arguing over must arise from some deeper interest in that topic that you both share. Only two nerds with a shared appreciation for comic book lore, canon, and internal logic could have an intense debate over whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight. There's always a common interest from which arguments arise. It isn't the absolute stranger with whom we have no common understandings that frustrates us most but the perversions of ourselves that arouse the greatest emotions.

The thought of another perspective originating from similar foundations as our own veering off into such foreign territory causes fear and anxiety within us; fear that whatever we've told ourselves to justify our own outlooks on life could be challenged and disproven, that maybe our internal logic and beliefs took a wrong turn at some point. This fear commonly causes us to try and annihilate the other perspective. If we can disprove or destroy the other branch of thinking, we will have nothing to fear. This tactic does work, but consider what happens if you are actually wrong about something. You are actively closing all possibility of learning and growth that could end up actually improving your life in many ways. Approaching disagreements with this attitude all but guarantees that your life stagnates.

Which is why it can be so effective to step back from the issue to find common ground. When we acknowledge that our most notable disagreements all stem from some shared understanding, we can try to start the conversation over at that higher level point of agreement, only this time also acknowledging the shared anxiety we both have of trying to find sure footing over existential crisis, and agreeing to cooperate in search of that sure footing. Rather than annihilating the other lines of thought, we can look at our debates as opportunities to collaboratively seek the answers to our shared uncertainties. Done properly, a debate can actually bring people closer, even if they can't find a way to arrive at the same destination, because it can still give us a momentary glance at ourselves in others, and grant us the wisdom to recognize and bond over the shared struggle to find meaning in life.

So, do you agree or disagree? 

Sunk into a fog of bass, shaken alive, frames possessed, yes to yes, mess to mess, there's thunder in our souls.

Give me a heart attack of joy, a riddled rhythm with a mystery, a secret bit of chemistry, a reaction to the scent of sweat.

How these coils unwind, let me come undone. Echo through these goose bumped walls, let fun be for fun be for fun be for fun.