“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

BAY

shotgun sensibilities
plague my waking dreams
the soul of my birth dies
nothing lies in my path but
ashes and dust...
a rage builds tempest within,
i cannot stop it -- i only hold
it at bay with powders and 
herbs.  nothing saves me from
my Destiny of Blood.
torn by a jagged sky
my sensibilities ruined
perceptions ravaged and scattered
everyone tellin' me what i ought
to do. slipping into a  permanent
hate. a vacancy is opening, the
boy is dying, the man no longer cares--
the maniac is quite austere.
i think i had too much to dream last night.

-Dale Massey

"If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman."
– PLATO 

CHARADE

crawling just below the surface
tendrils advancing on worn synapses
i scream out in deafening silence
even in this state there is no respite

why do i continue on?
to play the game i suppose
to hold their hands
to stutter and play mute

i am grieving
i am tearless
why do i fear myself, hate myself
this maddening charade?

-Dale Massey

“Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.” --Albert Einstein

"Love until it hurts, and then when it hurts there is only love." --Mother Theresa

“Imagine you’re a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you’d have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you’re a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of.” 

-Blake Crouch

"The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” 
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
http://merton.org

Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.-- Kevyn Aucoin

"Nullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius (Nothing has yet been said, that hasn't been said before)." -Cicero