by Mike Czuchry
In the presence of scepters and gold goblets
Good intentions first forged in the mind
Lose their way through neurons and dopamine
Eventually becoming ill-conceived contraptions
Malice aforethought is not a prerequisite
For opening Pandora’s Box
Evil fingers are not a necessary characteristic
To pick the locks of stolen treasure
Everything I have ever done
Love was at the center
Yet sometimes love can be skewed
Great minds can destroy the world with brilliance
Pure hands can crumble nations with blankets
Religions can wage wars with faith
Sometimes deals with the devil are only seen in the rearview mirror
I am asked to make decisions
Emboldened with guesstimates
And since I am only made of carbon and water
Life is certain to be ambivalent toward my misfortune
These lids now opened
Cannot be slammed shut
These measures taken
Cannot be undone
My first steps
My good intentions
Seemingly insignificant at the moment of inception
Carry the unintended weight of Pandora’s Box
I tried to be scrupulous
I tried to be valiant
I tried
Yet through a series of unforeseen events
My life’s bounty is given in the payment of forbidden fruits
And although my spirit never intended the evils
I will not deny myself the taste
SPOTLIGHT
With the filament pops
Come magic
Endorphins spike
Palms sweat
And the marrow within your bones begins to stir
In the spotlight
When the light begins to shine
It will at once humble you
And well you up enough to burst
In the spotlight
Some
Will be moved by your light
And run to your side
To give you shoulders to stand on
And hearts to lean on
Because they want to see you through to even brighter days
Others
Will have their reasons for darkness
They will run to your side
With their loose tongues
Rip through you and tear you down
Pushing you into the shadows
As they hoard your light for their own ends
Yet no matter what you do
Or who you are
Life will always give you both shields and arrows
Shoulders to perch on
And those loose tongues to cut you
You have heard it before
I’m here to echo the voices
And mirror the reflections
Don’t be fooled by fools
All the jesters
May indeed be weeping behind their masks
Because
Life is never what it seems
In the spotlight
IN FLAMES: PROLOGUE
Hermosa Beach, California, October, 2007. Fires raging in the distance. Smoke in the clouds. Rushing home to see if the flames have reached my doorstep.
IN FLAMES
The sky is on fire
The city is on fire
The sun is bleeding
Dripping into the ocean
I shake off my sins
Place trust in my soul
Shake the trees of my entrapments
And watch the dew from the leaves drip into the ground
Is this dew enough to save me from the flames
I am thirsty
These tongues of flames have parched me
Thirsty for a clear Heaven
A white cloud
A blue sky
But the water is dry
For us all
The sky is on fire
The city is on fire
The sun is bleeding
Dripping into the ocean
Let the fires lap at my door but not enter
Let my will push them back
Let my courage spit on their sparks
Let my faith deny the fires of Hades
I wonder today
Who will perish in the ash and miss the city of gold
Who will be the lucky few to remain unscathed
Are these mere droplets of holy water from my tree
Enough to cleanse my doubt and mistakes
To save me
To be a lucky one
The sky is on fire
The city is on fire
The sun is bleeding
Dripping into the ocean
TOWERS
Even when we feel like steel
The right set of moments
Can make the towers come down
Leaving us bleeding
Raw
Real
Remember all those with pictures clasped in their hands
Hoping their loved ones would materialize out of thin air
Remember disbelieving
Watching
As fearful people
Jumped holding hands
And in an instant
They became heroes as they leapt
Seizing the moment to control their own fates
Refusing to be defined by others
Finding freedom from these towers
Is it worse to be those that have perished triumphantly
Or those clasping pictures left in waiting
Some may say
It does not matter
We all meet the same fate in the end
But perhaps our intuition was right all along
As Shakespeare said
The coward dies a thousand deaths
But perhaps what matters most
Is how we meet the one
August, 1992.
THOSE EYES
Once
I saw
A tear
Drop
The weight, the fullness
Expressing life itself
Seeing it fall
I, for all of time, make a commitment
To protect it
And I believe
Even when past my fingertips
Like an impossible pass
I can still catch it
To hold your tears
I will be miraculous
I will leap off buildings
I will dive in front of bullets
I will give you my life
All of it
Forever
I will cup my hands
Absorb your tears
Before the ground
Has a sense
That they’ve ever been shed
November, 2010.
SAME EYES
Pretty
Tears
Fall with the same weight
After all these years
Yet
Now sharpened
By time and your mind
They cut through my hands
Like knives
When they fall
From your eyes
TO BE
In your heart
There exist two worlds
Joy
And
Sorrow
They are always there
Together
Beating and working in concert
Blood spilled in one
Makes the other more vivid
We need both worlds
To be
ONE
How is it possible
That any one person
Could understand it all
Have all the answers
Lined within their pockets
To reach in and grab at a moment’s notice
When the questions arise
Because
Answers are never facts
And
Questions are malleable
Because
Life is bigger than us
And
Life is all of us
Those lines drawn across countries
Are only real to those who aim to rule the world
The answer is lined within your pocket
Don’t discard me because I am not you
We are all one within another
I am your soul now and always
STICK UP FOR YOURSELF
You can always cower in the corner
Again
And again
And again
If you choose that
If you want that
You can hide
From all the wrongs of the world
That beat you down
And then cover up the bruises on your face
As you carry on simply wishing life were different
But
Although pain is real
Suffering is choice
At some point
You must choose
To
Stick up for yourself
Even in the face of fists
Even in the face of doubts
Stick up for yourself
A TROJAN HORSE
Have we learned nothing
Hatred begins with merely words
Would it not be refreshing to just say
I love
I am
I hope to be
That is all
I remind myself to be gentle with words
Knowing without love and acceptance
It’s easy to look for even the smallest of differences
As a way to slowly and subtly stroke our children’s innocence into prejudice
A TROJAN HORSE: POSTSCRIPT
Subtle prejudices seep into our very being even when we try to consciously prevent it. Test this theory by visiting a website titled Project Implicit at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. Click on demonstration and pick a topic or group you think you have no prejudice toward. You might be surprised at what you discover.
The authors have no association with this website, its contents, or the individuals who run this site.
CRINKLES AROUND OUR EYES
Share your troubles
With me
No matter the weight
I will not buckle
With each tear shed
I welcome the pain
Knowing
In the end
We grow toward longer smiles
And perfect crinkles around our eyes
TROUBLE
When you were born
Your mother said you would be trouble
When I was a teenager
My father told me to be careful of women like you
Perhaps mothers and fathers may not know best
Because trouble or no trouble
I need you by my side to take on this crazy world
Your reckless psyche fends off the demons
Your erratic ways make me feel normal
And your devious smile keeps me alive
Even your faults make me hold your hand tighter
As your mistakes give me room to breath
And your burning force gives me the strength to challenge
Your mother was right
You are trouble
The best kind
I can’t go at this world alone
This world of curveballs
I can’t be everything on my own
This world of risk and loss
Who better to spin the world on its head
Than a woman born of trouble
IN THE END
In the end
All that is and has been
Will be wrapped up in nothingness
Yet we defy the odds
With consciousness
And love
THE JESTER
And when living life
Childlike innocence and laughter
Beats self scrutiny and doubt
And when dying
I would rather laugh amongst idiots
Than drown in seriousness
A GREAT SUCCESS: THE DARK SIDE
In my mind as success arrives
The self becomes unnaturally exposed
Disconnected and contagious
All these good intentions
Twisted dangerously through pens and microphones
Become lost in the ether
Fear arrives as the outside world aims to distort my mouth
My heart once on my sleeve
Retracted from others to ensure vital statistics
From these dreams attained come delusions
Desiring to escape nightmares in my favorite secret haunts
Away from takers of souls toward givers of life
Arm and arm
Surround me with friendship
Let the wine drip from my lips and ease my toxins
Longing to hide
In the forts built as children
Away from the ink and empty audio of this adult world
As success arrives
I have become unnaturally exposed
Disconnected and contagious
Or have I
A GREAT SUCCESS: THE BRIGHT SIDE
In my mind as success arrives
The self becomes triumphantly lifted
Connected and heroic
All these good intentions
Personified perfectly through pens and microphones
Become found as universal truths now lost on no one
Happiness arrives as the outside world aims to kiss my mouth
My heart on my sleeve
Beating more deeply in shared vitality with others
From these dreams attained comes clarity
Fulfilled with freedom through my favorite public persona
Away from the self that takes toward the self that loves
Arm and arm
Surround me with riches
Let the joy drip from my lips and erase my toxins
Longing for nothing
In the way we lived as children
Embracing the colorful ink and beautiful audio of this adult world
As success arrives
I have become triumphantly lifted
Connected and heroic
Or have I
ENOUGH
No matter the love
No matter the hate
I just go on
Being me
And that
Is enough
TRUTH ABSOLUTE: PROLOGUE
Dad once said, “If God could fit in my head, my God would be too small.” Over time, I have come to believe we only comprehend a small portion of reality.
TRUTH ABSOLUTE
Being but part of a greater unknown
Each word from my lips
Equal in truth and equal in error
Each time that we speak
Truth becomes none the clearer
Through distorted illusions we peer at ourselves
And even though it all may seem real to me
Never mind this perception
Truth can’t be known
But only
By truth alone
MERRY-GO-ROUND
So why can’t I bite my tongue
Hold it deep in my throat
So as not to speak to you like an animal
True
It may be in reflex only
But still the barbs are no less spiny
Against my loved one
My loved one that I have loved for so long
These things I say from my mouth
And you say behind your teeth
Indeed all the jabs are colorful and perhaps necessary in a flurry
Yet later they remain deeper, distracted, and piercing
We are lucky
Time again gives us another chance to
speak softly to each other
And when the distance between us comes between the jabs
I sit alone behind my walls thinking
I ask for you
Call out to you
Deep in the night
Longing for you
Longing for you to come back to me
For you to be kind to me
Please
Walk softly down the hall on your return
With your arms held out wide
Freeing your chest and heart to me
See me before you naked and small
Both of us forgiving our instinct to hurt
All in an effort to be loved again
Fresh and new
For we are what we love
We are the ones closest to us
Defined by the other’s eyes
Defined by the other’s love
GENIES
How many lamps filled with Genies can I rub
How many candles can I blow out
How many pennies can I skip across the ocean
Before my wishes come true
Wishing
Of you
Of me and you
These Genies from my palms could build armies
The dark smoke from my candles could burn down cities
These pennies drowning in the ocean could overflow vaults
And yet these Genies, candles, and pennies still don’t equal you
If only, if only
These hours, months, and years of wishing left me with you
Without you
Tears are cathartic
As the soul needs a good soak
Without me and you
The sounds of love songs hold up my sanity
Listening, knowing, and feeling
That someone else traveled down my same path
Loved loftily
Lost mightily
And despite it all
Tried yet again
Summon the Genies
Light the candles
Unravel the penny rolls
Wishing again
Of you
Of me and you
THYSELF
I loved you so deeply
You were everything to me
My heart
My mind
My body
My soul
Wherever you were
That’s where I wanted to be
Yet now
I love you no more
I feel nothing for you
You broke me
You were then