April 2009 – Normal, IL

All is incomplete
Can you handle
being
a work in progress
Can you handle
incomplete
unfinished symphonies
novels
portraits

The moments of perfection
of completion
like finished work
that you set your gaze upon

When I stop to think about
the shuffle and
that John Lennon song
pops into my head
the one about the wheels
it occurs to me that all we have
and all we'll ever have
is unfinished work

I guess the realization comes
when you realize you're not headed
to some moment of perfect
but just another
moment of unfinished
incomplete work

It was a dream I had
before I went to bed
I said 'Dad-
both of us were in the car
on a strip of the highway
Both of us stared into the
light on the road ahead

What – my dad answered
Is it always like this -
I mean do you ever get
to the end of the road

That's when the desert appeared
in and out of the shadows-
and cacti made faces

Your work is never done
and the road never ends he said-
Then are we lost I wanted to know-
No, we're not lost, we're just driving

March 2005 – Normal, IL

"…Greatness is not assumed, it is earned and I have not earned it yet. These are just my thoughts, they are not public displays of art. Why to write art you need a form, like a poem or a short story, or a novel. Those are the buildings. But a journal, a journal is not timeless, it is transitory, fleeting like butterfly wings. One flap, and they're gone. We so want to assert our spirits upon this earth. My mother, why hers casts a light across the family, her artwork, a colorful mural once foregrounded, now subtle, behind us. Where will her son come out? There needs to be industry. What will I produce, just these 25 year old thoughts? Language must be handled deftly, it must be learned from masters. This is not a vacation here on earth. We are expected to leave legacies for our children and if our children were never born, those who we love instead, but build we must. We must express the unexpressed, the eternal must seep through the words. And silence must fill our ears with images so resolute that we shy aware from their gaze. Our discussion is only with ourselves, we are forever talking back into our womb until our mother hears us calling back into her. We must warn our families, tell them to stop before they begin. These creatures have spirits. these animals have real hearts. We're alive and song pours out of us. We're so much of life we cannot hide from our own enormousness, impossible faith, beyond beyond…"

February 2007 – Normal, IL

"…My mind is a temple of illusion and I am a false god. True, there is something pure and positive in me but it is hidden so deep, under all the layers of illusion. I seem to know my soul exists but I am constantly running from that source. Instead, I obsess over personal problems and my mind resorts to fantasy – to lusts or material desires. The Buddhists are right about one thing – that we can't trust the mind. The mind is not to be trusted. And yet I listen to the thoughts that run through my head and quickly, I get caught up in my old ways – nervousness, busyness, impatience – never resting in the moment, always rustling. I try to practice awareness but my awareness is not genuine because simultaneously I am giving in to the pleasures of the ego of lusting, of wanting, of fantasizing. I can not be aware without gravitation toward illusion and then my mind becomes more charged with anxiety because now I am self conscious.
The ego has a plan for me everyday. Will I follow it? I usually do – that plan leaves me with little satisfaction and more desire. My desires have many faces but the general urge is to have something else to change how I feel by possessing something.
What is wrong with how I feel? I feel like time is running out. I feel the need to perform. I feel the pressure to maintain an illusion.
My life is mostly an illusion with a grain of the truth. The paradox is that my illusions teach me to become wise. We cannot be led directly to the source, the source is too powerful. We must go by indirection – mistake after mistake we learn to take another route. Once I thought I knew what I wanted. Now I see that I want everything and none of it will help me change the way I feel.
I feel the burden of living. The flux, the rise and fall of hopes, the patience involved. Where am I moving toward? Not more illusion but less – I am moving toward the light. These illusions will not save me more. I am not who I thought I was - my talents, my security, my good sense is not what I thought it was. I must tell myself Chris, you are not so wise. Your life is little more than a petty day dream. Wake up. These illusions you drown yourself in – do not trust them – do not trust your mind."

Poems to my mother

We had fun didn't we – on earth
We laughed, our laughing
released us from the pain
of circumstance.

We couldn't adequately explain
or escape but like now
there are these nether worlds
right above or beyond – the
colliding particles of everyone else.

What I'm saying is that there's
always a space to build a
sanctuary -

No space is too small -
your laughter filled those rooms
my laughter was the sky blue lining of yours -
enspiraled in one another.

hard to explain things now -
there has obviously been
a change

me here

you there

or here
i'm not able to give
the right word for every
designation

but i know this world is where
i'd rather be

opposed to the world on the other
side of this thin wall of
air? clouds? membrance of
something -

there are default worlds -
default worlds of pain – of
hunger – of void -

And i'd rather be in this
bright world of you -
of miracles dancing

I belong here. don't i mother
with you. or not?

Are we really in two separate places?

i laugh when i think of all people i project my feelings onto -

when it's so much better -
to relieve these minor deities

And talk to the source -

talk to the source – All these
bright stars – these individuals
web of stars – i'd talk to them
all – i'd memorize each one
of their stories – but

the door – the big door

is open. why make cold calls

to darkness – when angels

welcome you into light -

go ahead, fall back if you have to
Christopher

it's only natural – gravity pulls
you down – everyone has to
deal with that -

Then go – let yourself go – Rise
like nothing – like everything
without weight -

this life it fades out -

watch with me
watch

i disappear

forever.