Psychedelic Challenge (Small Prize)

Posted on by meltingneurons
Credit to AfterLife Coach for the image.

So I had been attempting a 30 day challenge to write everyday and post something new to the blog. Sadly, as school crept into the mix I can say that while I’ve written everyday, nothing more made it up here after the 11th day…I’ll take it as a partial win since doing anything for more than a day straight tends to be a bit of a personal adventure of sorts.

The other interruption was going on a weeklong retreat to practice a new healing method I’ve been exploring with a shaman down on a pot farm in Oregon. I spent a week sitting with Grandmother and Grandfather along with some of the most amazing people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter. True hippies, filled with the love leftover from the movement in the 60s and still sharing what it means to be surrounded by brothers and sisters with no shared blood but all the right intent.

With that in mind, I wanted to put it out there to what audience there may be of the blog still to see what others can come up with on a topic that has become near and dear to me of late. Plant medicine, any form be it poetry, prose, short, or long, I’d like to read something from you fine folks on the topic however you see fit to blend it into your work.

I don’t have a lot of resources, but the top entry will get a $10 PayPal donation or eGiftCard of your choice. Please leave submissions in the comment section. Contest will end October 20th, 2020.

Thanks for reading, and here’s my own submission:

Full moon night,
harvest weather.
Ceremony tent glowing
from colored tapestries
dangling as flags of focus.
Stage set for the journey
to come home,
be set free from Earthly Bonds
into the Dreamtime.

Day 9 (Deadly Desires) – 30 Day Writing Challenge

Posted on by meltingneurons

There’s a heinous wind of wanting that sheds lightly bound despair to the trundled carts of cash swept from their bodies.

Aching insides so very desperate, desiring the next and the next until the vacancy between their heart and soul is refined.

Never use the words “better than” when referring to your own, it makes you seem shallow in a wading pool of sharks and minnows.

What was the purpose? The sheer ecstasy of the reveal, the acquisition, the placement, the perfect moment of satisfaction felt so briefly?

What wiring madness has been mounted to the mainframe that this ceaseless task marks consumers as those to be consumed?

Eaten alive beneath wild stacks of treasure all aglitter in the pelting wind, eyes glazed to a rapture of earthly delights.

Day 6 (PTSD Love)- 30 Day Writing Challenge

Posted on by meltingneurons

Wrap me in the mysteries of your dreams,
oh, sweet one with your eyes of green,
where the magic pools and smiles go
to dip beneath that inner glow.
Wash us deserving in the shadows of your pain
where the struggle is real,
no longer a game and
all that once was becomes real again.

Day 4 (Frost Comes) – 30 Day Writing Challenge

Posted on by meltingneurons
Credit to Marketwatch for the image.

There is a whisper laying heavily across the hills outside
our back window. It calls of frost and aching joints
amid pale rains covering all the land in pure bone shades
before the grime of cars and feet tracks humanity
across that softest of faces.

Forever replete in an incomplete cycle
washed to bare sticks and the legend of struggle
through the flames of Summer which left
vaunted few standing into the withering of Fall.
Not in perpetuity do the giants stand, rather, they
grovel to the wind and vanishing sun as it takes
it’s yearly rest deep in the night.

Ground down over a mashing of ephemeral gears
as children romped across their veins
sucking desperate gulps of life through buried tendrils.
Survival as a gasp to share their essence
revealed finally as they die beneath the weight of Winter.

Mountain Trail

Posted on by meltingneurons

Meandering feet fall between the scent of wildflowers and moss,
deeper into the mountain side this long trail winds.
Water courses on a ceaseless tract towards the valley,
runs furiously far below where the air is cooler
and the sun rains its heat against the rapids.

Heated Gaze

Posted on by meltingneurons
All credit for image to https://mothergoodsmiles.wordpress.com

Summer becomes the tone of fresh and old love mingled.
Of exhilaration, fascination, inspiration,
all put in skin sacks, given names.
Each heat riddled day the sun bakes us,
we are entwined in passionate reverie,
where no mere words will penetrate the sanctum.

Night Tan Under the Supermoon

Posted on by meltingneurons

Layer a white cold blaze

in circular pool

hung

where the reflection of day

carries to the infinite

teeming void.

Shadowscape of eternity

ever beyond 

incandescent blue skies,

milky clouds,

beyond sun-blinded sight,

always sitting.

Wonderland of possibilities

bending even science

to use imagination.

Endlessly faltering

towards an unknowable end.

The Gods baubles

spin deftly

through the deepest darks

of cavernous black gone noir.

Never bound,

never stuck,

not clasped tight inside

of opulent bondage 

as we marching mortals

on our madhouse Earth.

Into that idea –

that dizzy concept which

forged new words

to try and constrain

something so terribly VAST –

where all is birthed

through cataclysm,

fiery destruction,

demises so profound

dust from their corpses span eons,

rages as a furnace

crafts awakening

in billions of new forms.

Peace is found

within mirrored 

microcosm eyes

of any

who would choose to pray,

take silent reverie

in joyful awe,

of beauty without boundaries,

and their own

immeasurable nothingness.

Gods, Giants, Children & Men

Posted on by meltingneurons

Found this unexpectedly in my drafts folder, don’t remember writing it, but then again I don’t remember a lot of things in the ways that others do at least.

I don’t know that the entirety of any story,
will cover what I had wanted to say initially.
I don’t believe that the ideas are wholly there,
sitting more like clumps of clay
waiting for a better artist than I to mold.

I had a moment once where the world laid open its belly to me and told me to come close, listen at a heartbeat that thumped with mysteries beyond anything I had ever dreamed of before. A kiss to the forehead of reality and the absent blast from it’s withdrawal were the price. The air was a hazed crackle of something intangible and without form and face. A feeling left as an impression the walls of truth and the faded glories of all the wishes we had as children. When we were young enough to put our heads together and pass thoughts back and forth, pretending we were telepathic and could read each others minds. Racing the wind across the grass and stumbling because we felt we had grown wings to carry us at the speed of air. We were flying, brazen fuck yous to the established status quo of gravity bound worms that we had been, free to soar, smiles cutting our faces so broadly that they felt like they would never leave. It was a moment and a time when there was nothing impossible and anything you could think was only a moment of focus away from being achieved.

Close down to a belly thick with the furs of nature gone to shit and trees whistling with empty branches. An incoherent ramble across the soft pink that raised out a welcome heat in radiance and peace. Touch the skin with a shovel and pull the axe blade back out so that the blood could go free. Cinders and ash blasting away thoughts and giving the entertainment for the evening and the night as the moons went rising over the hillsides and into the ethereal realms which can be tasted in the heart and break the mind that walks through them.

Safely in the comfort of truth we could sit in the caverns beneath what you saw in the over world. We were realized and all to ourselves. Peaceful gods surrendering to the joy of being lighter than the air, more stable than the mountains outside. Fucking giants as children, children as men, and something gone to dust during the interim.

Something About Trees and Monsters

Posted on by meltingneurons

Simulacrum bonsai spirit shining bright,

tendril bushings famously tiny

sit so perfectly tight.

Clipped to stand proudly small,

deficiency rests on laurels deep inside

where no one fears the height

but is aware of the fall.

Watered down trivia the company kept,

guessing games fuel creativity

while vices rumble and trouble

until tranquility arrives, envelops and sets.

Your ghost is born on silent words,

freedom found out where they fly

unbound from earth by roots,

out in the open air

where birds sing and lost men die.

Fragile Bully

Posted on by meltingneurons

Tongue twisting
word misted
lofty ethics
suddenly shifted.
Verbiage awry
crooked context,
sand quickens
sickens the truth
with maddening lies.
Bullheaded bully
vacuum packed
morals gone dead
done right
presented cleanly
above suspicion
heartless lips
soulless head.
Accusations flutter
steer recklessly
fly rashly
land poorly
eventually die.
Miserable life
distorted denial
avoids change
ever always en garde
tromping a perilously pointless
and petulant hike.
Existence’s trials
trails marching for miles
dust caked grins always grimy
shiver obscenely
spit softly back at ’em
–shake the fear off and smile.

I’ve been on both ends of the stick I suppose at different points, something that I’m not proud of, but can admit readily enough. Whether it was spawned from fear, trauma, etc, doesn’t quite qualify as an excuse for how I behaved at points during my life, it was my responsibility to “not be an asshole”. Feeling someone play out their own internal sickness in the same way towards me is an eye opener.

Tattered, tired, and angry though someone may be, it has to be an echo of some truly painful and unresolved issues to advise an individual dealing with a mental illness that they are despised and everyone is in the eaves waiting for them to die. Shitty and deeply manipulative behavior, knowing that the recipient can literally do nothing other than just sit with themselves, absent means to defend themselves without seeming more culpable as a perpetrator of something justifying such vicious and cutthroat suggestions. There is no power in the words themselves other than what the recipient gives them.

Maybe though, in some ways, it might just be how a person deals with their particular brand of sadness and pain–the only way they know how, lash out. Go for the throat. God knows I’ve done it before more times than I care to think if not totally in that literal context. A whipcord reaction to hurt those that hurt you, even if it is based on incorrect judgement calls and assumptions.

Everyone heals in their own way, and while that doesn’t make it right, finally, I can put myself in the other pair of shoes and understand the feelings behind the words. Temper my own frustration and resentment at the unnecessary cruelty with patience and accept that it is what it is, and life will continue to move on. It’s not worth giving though or dwelling on someone’s words when they are bent on hating or hurting you, let ’em go by the side and don’t look back.

Someone once told me, if someone’s an asshole and lies or treats you poorly, at the end of the day, they’re the asshole, not you. I’ve been an asshole plenty across my life, and that makes a lot of sense.

We have only ourselves and our actions to control–for better or for worse.