All that was ever possible.
I do not know what to do with these wild flowers I have brought home.
I know they are dying in my care, even as they shine now for the freedom that lights beyond my window. I am quite taken by them, in so much that I say that literally actually, they have addled my brain with equal parts suspense, lust, jealousy, and remorse. I aliken myself to a child who has snared his first bird on the hunt, a goal subdued, the thrill of the hunt amidst the throes of first regret. These things are never certain, it seems.
This will be my last season of doubt.
I should wonder what’s brought me here, but I’ve learned looking back that nothing is a mistake, rather it’s all exactly as it happened. You should wonder why I picked you, how we happened to have something in common, but I cannot explain why my heart beats, as much as scientists like to suppose, there is a force and a reason for living which eludes them, just as there is a force and a reason for tears, and a time and a season for gathering flowers from the sun. But I am no thief, I haven’t the heart, nor the will (any longer) to steal something god would’ve loved for his own.
I wonder too much today, trying to find the point at the end where it was that we began.
These new flowers I found in my old haunts, you and I. I can’t for the life of me figure out a thing we’ve in common, except that I needed what I found, and I took the chance that grew before me; and that’s something, if it’s not common.
Your roots are so much deeper grown than any of my own, oftentimes this vexes me to no end, your being so intimate with a world and time I can never understand. Or why flowers so bright should want to be lovely for anything else but me, but I am not the sun, and should never assume to be so. But oh, if it were another way, what shadows would fall, if the sun were lost, and the moon was never at all? Would you have me then as your light? I ask this of myself after hours, when it is nearly so, I can never get past the question of whether I could be that light, if I am strong enough to hold on against the world, and then the tears pull and I blink. The whole deck of cards comes crashing in again. I suppose it’s just the projection of my own fears, having unsuccessfully dug for years to try and reach the dark places in the ground where I might find my thoughts, or maybe swim to the deepest reaches of the sea, beneath the toil and the turmoil of the waves, and in the belly of something wholly greater maybe find sleep.
Quite plaintively I admit I can do nothing but cut short the rest of your life to spite myself, my insistence on making you my own will very quickly leave us both with nothing but withered memories, I, despite most bitter objections, to be left with dead flowers and even more decayed dreams to blame on the rest of the world. I think about why, or how, it came to be that someone or some fate could’ve planted something so beautiful-albeit with it’s own thorns- in a place where someone as troubled as me might come across them, but there are inner machinations to all thoughts, and these things being so is just a point in time, the cosmic tumblers clicked for me, or perhaps they simply got stuck on you. My doubts point me at the latter.
It’s true that once they must’ve loved you, but our love- theirs and my own- are hopelessly devoid of common ground, I cannot understand such a thing. Perhaps they now lament the fool who was foolish enough to cut of something given to the world, quite possibly though this mistake was mine alone, hope is nothing to feed on, tears are not water, and the New York City streets should never be a place for flowers to die, but this never was my world, and my dreams were never quite strong enough to encroach upon it. I could’ve sworn how you might have said I love you, that first time I brought you home, but those are just things I said to myself, when I first took a life.
It’s sad to watch you die, a season in it’s seizing. Primely, we want only to rush headlong to it’s aid, gather against us what remains, reaching out further than ourselves for something tangible, anything alive, to find approval in reassurance. There’s something so right about vitality that we can’t afford to be without it, even if the terms of the proving are foul and most regrettable. We make no terms for getting everything we ever wanted; if this means surrounding ourselves for such a short while with dead flowers, or spending years with an eye on the sky hoping to catch a falling star, then it shall be so. But the lights will fade even before we are satisfied, the flowers will decay long before the scent has died. We are ravenous consumers of life, the living, and we will have that pound of flesh, the source be damned, to assuage the sins of our own. Within this frustration I am swimming now, borne back ceaselessly against the warmth of months ago, even as the stream is drying, I have reached the bottom, and it is rocky, but I cannot leave. I know all too well that singular fate which awaits the sedant-swimmer, the cold air is ever so pressing, I am patently aware of it’s designs for me. There are enumerous places in this dried up world that I have once seen, these are places I will never again go.
But we cannot claim our own worth. Rather, we must wait- succumbing to the numbing of ritual and convention- for the chances we didn’t take. I picked you, my darling harvest of wishes and misgivings, much like I picked the path that lead me to this place; though I am never quite certain of anything that involves direction. But very likely it's because chances are slimmer than shooting stars, with a shelf life shorter than any star-gazer’s remorse, in that sense I had no choice, repercussions not withstanding there was nothing for me but to take you with me, and try in vain to bring beauty to my darkest places. For once they are beyond us, those chances, they quite likely will never be seen again; risk your life or lose it, there is no other way. Certainly this is the crucible, the seasonal march; to merriment, to frivolity-- avoidance, and whispering. And maybe someday wonder, about the things in life we never see, or why we were never chosen.
It’s a lifetime of sunny afternoons, and warm nights. It’s a great bloom of promises, and maybes, and eventuallys. We are different, these petals and these stems, they don’t bleed like I do, they’ve a home so much more simply conceived and yet assuredly more beautiful than my own. I cannot understand the complexity in the simplicity of their beauty, for hours upon them I stare- and I am un-ashamed when I am quite certain they very nearly wink back, giving me a knowing glimpse that says at the same time they both know and could never understand that which is within me, that which is not, the very essence they contain that is everything I can never attain, but will always seek- they are so utterly corporeal, and assured of that fact, and it is this paradox alone that I am forever after.
Very soon you will be gone from me, where you are going to I have a good idea, but I can never be sure. You will be born anew, and give once again of yourself to the world, perhaps wiser for your past experiences, but to my eye no different than when I first saw you. I should not look upon you again soon, I fear, but I hope that quite the opposite is in fact true, were it that my garden was rich enough, I should plant you there forever, but my wishes are not to deprive the world of something it is weary for, and there can never be enough sunshine, nor enough of anything which so closely resembles pure and simple love. The sort I would give you if I were a younger man, and not quite so weary with the world.
But I will see you again, and I can only believe in ‘hopefully’ when I say it through my hands, eyes closed to the world, though that is a lie as great as any I have ever told. Quite certainly the opposite being so is the only truth I can count on. Still, these are the things I see in you, these are what cause my grief when I am not myself--rather when I am quite myself, in it’s basest form. I see now in those afternoons, that the rain must fall upon me if it is ever to nourish you, and you could never be so beautiful as I might like if I were to be forever brooding over you, clouding out the sun which you need to shine. The world is your stage, and though you do not dance there is nothing so beautiful as when I first saw you, in the great fields of my mind, the wind catching your hair, playing for me, as every inch of my being was awash like the first time a child sees a rainbow. Through you I am new, I see in your intricacies all that was ever possible, and some things which aren’t.
It was then that things not dead, but long since asleep, stirred for what must’ve truly been the first time. I am alive in what I have found, and it kills me that all too soon I must give you back. Lamentably I am not the sun, and I cannot give you the world you require to grow, but for you I wish I was, and were it mine I gladly would. These longings are yours now, I’m sure you know them by heart, I’ve whispered them in your ears so many times you must know I’m crazy. And you would be right, though it’s only for you. And for all of my complexities and quirks I am just a simple creature, needing only to love, and be loved; given to longing, and hopeless fantasies of things that can never be. Just as flowers will not grow in the dark, I fear you can not blossum in my world.
And for the rest? I am quite stubborn by most accounts, but I will not keep you. Like all the things I have loved, your time is fleeting, there is a razor thin line that runs between things known and things unknown, this is what I can say to be the truth. And sadly this is the most I can give to you; the great mass of all of my fears, and all the things I have ever loved, and the dichotomy of my own existence that forever keeps them apart. These are yours now, just a whisper and a word to the wise, a voice to the thoughts I have mis-placed, and all the places they remind me of when I think of you. Perhaps it’s something to grow by, or maybe it’s just me who likes to think that.
But the sun is setting on you my darlings, and I’ve other places that I too must be. Remember me well as you grow along your way, take kindly to all the stories I have told you, they are the kind that always reduce to one, that ever-paramount truth which is the sole thing which binds us, as we toil under the sun. All things in life, the beauty of the flower, the sun upon the sail, even the lament of the poet, will someday fail. All things I have known, even love, is fleeting.
I know they are dying in my care, even as they shine now for the freedom that lights beyond my window. I am quite taken by them, in so much that I say that literally actually, they have addled my brain with equal parts suspense, lust, jealousy, and remorse. I aliken myself to a child who has snared his first bird on the hunt, a goal subdued, the thrill of the hunt amidst the throes of first regret. These things are never certain, it seems.
This will be my last season of doubt.
I should wonder what’s brought me here, but I’ve learned looking back that nothing is a mistake, rather it’s all exactly as it happened. You should wonder why I picked you, how we happened to have something in common, but I cannot explain why my heart beats, as much as scientists like to suppose, there is a force and a reason for living which eludes them, just as there is a force and a reason for tears, and a time and a season for gathering flowers from the sun. But I am no thief, I haven’t the heart, nor the will (any longer) to steal something god would’ve loved for his own.
I wonder too much today, trying to find the point at the end where it was that we began.
These new flowers I found in my old haunts, you and I. I can’t for the life of me figure out a thing we’ve in common, except that I needed what I found, and I took the chance that grew before me; and that’s something, if it’s not common.
Your roots are so much deeper grown than any of my own, oftentimes this vexes me to no end, your being so intimate with a world and time I can never understand. Or why flowers so bright should want to be lovely for anything else but me, but I am not the sun, and should never assume to be so. But oh, if it were another way, what shadows would fall, if the sun were lost, and the moon was never at all? Would you have me then as your light? I ask this of myself after hours, when it is nearly so, I can never get past the question of whether I could be that light, if I am strong enough to hold on against the world, and then the tears pull and I blink. The whole deck of cards comes crashing in again. I suppose it’s just the projection of my own fears, having unsuccessfully dug for years to try and reach the dark places in the ground where I might find my thoughts, or maybe swim to the deepest reaches of the sea, beneath the toil and the turmoil of the waves, and in the belly of something wholly greater maybe find sleep.
Quite plaintively I admit I can do nothing but cut short the rest of your life to spite myself, my insistence on making you my own will very quickly leave us both with nothing but withered memories, I, despite most bitter objections, to be left with dead flowers and even more decayed dreams to blame on the rest of the world. I think about why, or how, it came to be that someone or some fate could’ve planted something so beautiful-albeit with it’s own thorns- in a place where someone as troubled as me might come across them, but there are inner machinations to all thoughts, and these things being so is just a point in time, the cosmic tumblers clicked for me, or perhaps they simply got stuck on you. My doubts point me at the latter.
It’s true that once they must’ve loved you, but our love- theirs and my own- are hopelessly devoid of common ground, I cannot understand such a thing. Perhaps they now lament the fool who was foolish enough to cut of something given to the world, quite possibly though this mistake was mine alone, hope is nothing to feed on, tears are not water, and the New York City streets should never be a place for flowers to die, but this never was my world, and my dreams were never quite strong enough to encroach upon it. I could’ve sworn how you might have said I love you, that first time I brought you home, but those are just things I said to myself, when I first took a life.
It’s sad to watch you die, a season in it’s seizing. Primely, we want only to rush headlong to it’s aid, gather against us what remains, reaching out further than ourselves for something tangible, anything alive, to find approval in reassurance. There’s something so right about vitality that we can’t afford to be without it, even if the terms of the proving are foul and most regrettable. We make no terms for getting everything we ever wanted; if this means surrounding ourselves for such a short while with dead flowers, or spending years with an eye on the sky hoping to catch a falling star, then it shall be so. But the lights will fade even before we are satisfied, the flowers will decay long before the scent has died. We are ravenous consumers of life, the living, and we will have that pound of flesh, the source be damned, to assuage the sins of our own. Within this frustration I am swimming now, borne back ceaselessly against the warmth of months ago, even as the stream is drying, I have reached the bottom, and it is rocky, but I cannot leave. I know all too well that singular fate which awaits the sedant-swimmer, the cold air is ever so pressing, I am patently aware of it’s designs for me. There are enumerous places in this dried up world that I have once seen, these are places I will never again go.
But we cannot claim our own worth. Rather, we must wait- succumbing to the numbing of ritual and convention- for the chances we didn’t take. I picked you, my darling harvest of wishes and misgivings, much like I picked the path that lead me to this place; though I am never quite certain of anything that involves direction. But very likely it's because chances are slimmer than shooting stars, with a shelf life shorter than any star-gazer’s remorse, in that sense I had no choice, repercussions not withstanding there was nothing for me but to take you with me, and try in vain to bring beauty to my darkest places. For once they are beyond us, those chances, they quite likely will never be seen again; risk your life or lose it, there is no other way. Certainly this is the crucible, the seasonal march; to merriment, to frivolity-- avoidance, and whispering. And maybe someday wonder, about the things in life we never see, or why we were never chosen.
It’s a lifetime of sunny afternoons, and warm nights. It’s a great bloom of promises, and maybes, and eventuallys. We are different, these petals and these stems, they don’t bleed like I do, they’ve a home so much more simply conceived and yet assuredly more beautiful than my own. I cannot understand the complexity in the simplicity of their beauty, for hours upon them I stare- and I am un-ashamed when I am quite certain they very nearly wink back, giving me a knowing glimpse that says at the same time they both know and could never understand that which is within me, that which is not, the very essence they contain that is everything I can never attain, but will always seek- they are so utterly corporeal, and assured of that fact, and it is this paradox alone that I am forever after.
Very soon you will be gone from me, where you are going to I have a good idea, but I can never be sure. You will be born anew, and give once again of yourself to the world, perhaps wiser for your past experiences, but to my eye no different than when I first saw you. I should not look upon you again soon, I fear, but I hope that quite the opposite is in fact true, were it that my garden was rich enough, I should plant you there forever, but my wishes are not to deprive the world of something it is weary for, and there can never be enough sunshine, nor enough of anything which so closely resembles pure and simple love. The sort I would give you if I were a younger man, and not quite so weary with the world.
But I will see you again, and I can only believe in ‘hopefully’ when I say it through my hands, eyes closed to the world, though that is a lie as great as any I have ever told. Quite certainly the opposite being so is the only truth I can count on. Still, these are the things I see in you, these are what cause my grief when I am not myself--rather when I am quite myself, in it’s basest form. I see now in those afternoons, that the rain must fall upon me if it is ever to nourish you, and you could never be so beautiful as I might like if I were to be forever brooding over you, clouding out the sun which you need to shine. The world is your stage, and though you do not dance there is nothing so beautiful as when I first saw you, in the great fields of my mind, the wind catching your hair, playing for me, as every inch of my being was awash like the first time a child sees a rainbow. Through you I am new, I see in your intricacies all that was ever possible, and some things which aren’t.
It was then that things not dead, but long since asleep, stirred for what must’ve truly been the first time. I am alive in what I have found, and it kills me that all too soon I must give you back. Lamentably I am not the sun, and I cannot give you the world you require to grow, but for you I wish I was, and were it mine I gladly would. These longings are yours now, I’m sure you know them by heart, I’ve whispered them in your ears so many times you must know I’m crazy. And you would be right, though it’s only for you. And for all of my complexities and quirks I am just a simple creature, needing only to love, and be loved; given to longing, and hopeless fantasies of things that can never be. Just as flowers will not grow in the dark, I fear you can not blossum in my world.
And for the rest? I am quite stubborn by most accounts, but I will not keep you. Like all the things I have loved, your time is fleeting, there is a razor thin line that runs between things known and things unknown, this is what I can say to be the truth. And sadly this is the most I can give to you; the great mass of all of my fears, and all the things I have ever loved, and the dichotomy of my own existence that forever keeps them apart. These are yours now, just a whisper and a word to the wise, a voice to the thoughts I have mis-placed, and all the places they remind me of when I think of you. Perhaps it’s something to grow by, or maybe it’s just me who likes to think that.
But the sun is setting on you my darlings, and I’ve other places that I too must be. Remember me well as you grow along your way, take kindly to all the stories I have told you, they are the kind that always reduce to one, that ever-paramount truth which is the sole thing which binds us, as we toil under the sun. All things in life, the beauty of the flower, the sun upon the sail, even the lament of the poet, will someday fail. All things I have known, even love, is fleeting.
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