Category: Essays

beyond the light

Just beyond the light

There is tomorrow

Another line

Another page

A story yet untold

That only you can tell

In your unique way

——///

Our youth

Fields of grain

Too many intersections

And not enough time

——-///

We lived and we tried to feel love

As it was sold to us

We tried to be something

Nothing

Anything

——///

I felt the shift

I felt myself losing tune

Yes tune

We rang loud

And out of tune

We lost touch with people

Humanity

We looked to our palms

And our timelines

But it told us nothing of our times

Twitter is not real

Facebook is not real

It does not give you the supper table

The summer mornings

In the south

The green stalks of corn

The ice storms in winter

The kerosine Heat

——///

We live and die in the hashtag

But we haven’t grown up to maturity

Poverty is more than we can comprehend

It’s a relationship to money

It’s habits

It’s not just wanting and not having

——///

These lives just beyond the light

The gift of life

Look past the last headlines

What we are

We are here

Now

Alive

—-///

More than politics

More than religion

More …

——///

“Be what you were…”

I look at art

At words

Films

From the 90s

And I feel a disconnect

I don’t know this person

This person doesn’t know me

I can’t see the tv from across the room

I keep moving my couch closer and pretending it doesn’t matter ….

Pictures give us words

——///

We are textured

Quilted

Struggled

Immigrants

—-///

Downsizing

Can you downsize the American dream?

We can find answers in 5g speed

We are born with a cellular plan

But we don’t know our neighbour

A pastors struggle on Monday morning

—-///

Are we red and blue state ?

Disconnected

People vote, or don’t vote, for various reasons.

One Party is the single issue party. Or the anti vax, anti mask, lower tax…don’t take my guns?

No, one party is the American dream, Reagan party, read, communicate, write, dream, love your country, write your wife love letters from across the room. You’re groomed from a young age to vote red.

The business owner. Trying to dream.

The other is college kids, millennials, like it or not, woke, sensitive to every issue, minority, apologising, how will the kids make it during this economy?

Most of us are somewhere in the middle not on the fringes…who’ve lived through a handful of economic collapses…

Most of us have lost someone to this virus…

I was talking with a nurse and she was telling me of the horror of a patient dying…of the horror that people still think this is a hoax, the fact that these patients are protected by privacy laws and this creates a gap…and we will never know…but they know…and for them…this is a nightmare…

Now, what do people vote on?

Somewhere in the middle.

We have more in common than we think.

The whole silence is violence

be woke to every single new thing ….

that’s a big tab…

the answer to winning votes and states

is not be the most liberal…

it’s connecting to the country.

We are all Americans.

Unplug from social media,

You can block and unfollow each-other all day long but these are real people with real lives and real votes and they are not going anywhere, they’re our neighbours our mothers our siblings.

what do we all have in common.

Return to the vision. Return to common sense, adulthood …

you can build a platform and a table with room for everyone.

We can’t go back…we go forward…beyond the light…or we fade into oblivion…

Forever is but a moment

My back yard

I just want solitude

And beauty too

And if that rings true

You don’t have to give me forever

Just another moment with you

——///

Don’t let time pass you by

I know you have to go

The shadows are covering the sky

But I hope

I left you something

Good

I hope

I left you something

To remember

I hope

In this solitude

this beauty

That is you

Out of mind

There’s a man

Going around

Passing out promises

Gold and silver too

But the success

Never reaches down this far

No,

They won’t follow you down

And every woman I know

Works harder than two men

And they love

And they bleed

And they sew up our needs

And like Cash said

“When the man comes around”

Well, they won’t follow you down

So we fight

And we survive

Even when our paychecks

Barely make it through

What else are we to do

The silver and gold

Doesn’t come down this far

But they pass it around

With promises too

But they won’t follow you down

—-///

And I

I can’t write

My head is filled with clouds

I try to sit

But I can’t breathe

I watch the colour in the trees

And I think

About the dumpster on the side of the road where we used to get shoes and we used to get books…

And I think

About time

I hope I’ve used mine

Well

I think about the old man

Who lived in a school bus

And had a teenager for a wife

Her eyes said she had escaped something worse

A sort of curse

But I was too young to understand

Now, I think as I try to write, what good am I? What good am I?

If we can’t listen

If we look away

What good am I

And what good have I done …

A clouded head is part of Crohn’s

Just like the ache in the bones

The shouting stomach

The anxiety and the depression

I write about it but I can’t talk about it

And you’ll never see it

I guess

We all are just stories in the end

And we want what we want

And we say it sets us apart

And we expect others to know

But part of us stays on the road

Because even we don’t know…

And all we have is time…

Clouded mind

Dear child

Don’t be

Consumed by fiction

Have we ever learned?

When will we reach over these walls

And grab hold of each other ?

Scale this pain,

“Hillary was a witch, the Antichrist.”

“Obama was not American and the Antichrist. And and and.”

If it’s not this

it’s something else

Look at us

What we swallow

What we sow

What we consume

Hillary was a woman

A human, flawed, yes…

Obama was a man, a black man…flawed, yes. But human.

Our record of self delusion and hypocrisy

Is terrifyingly sobering

But we can choose to change

I think about how many Americans have died…

I think about how many of us are sick

The hospitals are not allowing visitation again…

What will become of us?

What will history say of us?

That we bought the propaganda?

Or that we stood

And we faced ourselves

We said there is no room

For sexism

There is no room for racism

There is no place for hate

There is only room for growth

For all of us at the table

For all of us

The disenfranchised

The minority

The single parent

The middle class

Every one of us

Because we rise and we fall together

So child

Remember

It’s a job

Do not lose hope

The scientist

The journalist

The doctors

They are not spending decades

Trying to deceive you

Do not lose faith in your ability to make a difference in your community

Read

Study

Reach out

Make a difference

It only takes one…

How sad,

We were mad that she had to carry so much only after RBG passed away…before she died, we were saying things like “she better hang on. We need her.”

How sad that Obama has to get back in the fight.

But look, it only takes one

If you think you don’t make a difference

Look again.

You matter

You’re important

Reach across those walls

We are more than our differences

We rise and fall together.

And our future is waiting

Hindsight never sleeps

– all of these streets were crowded

– money never sleeps

– the markets will never crash

– in this economy?

It’s difficult for people to grasp eternity

Because all they have-all they’ve experienced, is now…

– you think you have something to offer humanity? You don’t have anything. . . They’re hungry for a shortcut to happiness… and I can give it to them. A life without discipline. Without goals, without effort. Just do whatever whenever however, for as long as ever. But quickly. The day before yesterday.

The devil sat back in his chair…the bar was empty…this was our third meeting…

There were no cars on the street…

No chill in the air…

No ice

I rolled my sleeves up…

Drank my gin

– look, I’m a salesmen, like you, I make deals… I made one a while back…a guy wanted to be the biggest president in history…

– I don’t think this is what he had in mind…

– he’s going down in history isn’t he? He should of read the fine print. Hell, he should’ve read period.

– if you’re confident enough people believe anything…

– the old rules don’t apply, the game is changing. I’m collecting souls. You still think there’s hope for these people? They made their beds. How’s yours?

– I sleep fine.

– are you sure? That’s not what she says…you do see her don’t you? Tell me, how is she?

“She” was a figure who appeared in my door…every night…since I was a child…I would wake up and she might rush toward me or float away.. this tall dark figure…or she might just be mumbling over and over again something I could never break.

I ignored this statement

– there’s a changing of the guard, I still believe in people, in free will, in peoples ability to change. And to choose, so yes…I think our tomorrows are better than today.

– you really don’t learn do you…if you give people the option to grab what they want now? They will take it. People don’t change. Even if it’s against their best interest. They will gratify today and suffer tomorrow. They like to feel like they have options, so they come and go and change their minds a lot, but they are really just circling around their individual grave… never accomplishing much, never really loving, never really growing, just talking. Loudly, about nothing, just themselves. And the world suffers.

If I can keep them distracted and self indulgent, they will gather and fight and self destruct. Arguing about nothing. Consumed with themselves. Feeding this appetite. It’s almost more than even I can take. I hate this whore of self. She drinks the blood and has no discipline no plan…you do know,she’s older than any of us…she’s been here since the beginning…I don’t know, I might have to kill her.

– I didn’t think you had it in you.

– I’m a guy with a plan. That’s why I need you. I can’t do it without souls. I need a statement.

I drank the rest of my gin…

When I set my glass down he was gone.

I looked down to see an envelope…

I put it in my coat…

It was raining.

The streets smelled like sewage.

The city wasn’t pretty.

It reminded me of how I felt inside.

What we build

1958 Bruce Davidson

Jfk was keenly curious and aware. He traveled Europe and observed politics on the ground. He didn’t have to use historians, he saw first hand the propaganda machine.

He understood the importance of image.

Being a war hero, and ill himself, always in poor health. He somehow presented a positive energy and outlook that was contagious.

He was the blue print for a new brand and structure of politics.

His ideas were shaped from experience.

He was understanding, because he knew people consumed what they heard and saw. He understood the importance of democracy, that it had to work. It was the last best stand on earth.

I can’t help but wonder sometimes, how odd that we recall the death over the life. The women over the veteran,

Deeply curious about political history

He wanted to understand.

I want to understand

If this is the last best stand on earth …

What am I living for ?

What am I leaving ?

Most people want so desperately to be told what to do

And they don’t even know it

Not even when you tell them what to buy

They don’t know what they want

Or that they need something

Until we sell it to them

They don’t know who to vote for

Until it’s sold to them

What they believe

Until it’s sold to them

Ads

And images

Propaganda

It’s what we consume every day

I unplugged

This site is my only social media right now

Until after the new year

My head is in a fog

I never read

I want to write more

And really create

But I’m angry

I’m confused

I feel like we have more in common than we have differences

But now

We are constantly pitted against ourselves and against eachother

JFK understood things needed to change

We didn’t need a hand out

We needed a hand up

So we could get ahead

And so we could give back

We had a responsibility

But I wonder if we even know what that responsibility is

I ask myself if we even remember what a dream is ?

Or are we so deep in the mud

That we are fighting only ourselves now ….

I want to believe in a tomorrow

I want to believe in us

Because of us

We determine our future

And we can decide today

What we are building

Can endure

Tradition

Requires repetition

We have to start somewhere

Why not here?

Why not now?

Why not us?

What’s your dream?
Your passion?
Where do you want to be?
What are you walking towards?
We tied ourselves up inside other people’s ideas
Look out at all the other faces in the room
If you don’t build your own

You will build one of theirs

What are you building ?

Are you just what you wanted?
Are you alright?
Do you dream at night?
Do the stars shout your name from the sky?
—-
I run for health
I write to kill
I kill to write
People say we’ve never been here before
I don’t have time to stop and compare
I’m going somewhere….
I was born
I was standing still
I wrote about the lonely
I wrote about living until our time is up is out
But I was there
I was putting pieces of my heart together
Alone
I’m just a broken vessel
But I’m strong
And here
Inside these walls
These streets
I found my people
We are made of love
They came to see me
They all know me
—-
We are born
Until we are born again
We all dream
Until we dream out loud
We all run…
Until time runs out….
—-
What is your passion?
What is your dream?

What if

What if –
We all supported each other
What if –
Their win isn’t your loss
What if-
You didn’t cut someone or something down
Every time you built something up
What if-
You wore the shirts
The shorts
The skirts
And
Other women didn’t reprimand you
What if –
Women were celebrated for their accomplishments and not just for marriage-
What if they didn’t spend every moment making sure they weren’t tempting men
Or acting just right
Or under the microscope of everything
What if we all could just discuss and compromise on politics and ideas
What if
We’ve been duped into believing in a win lose
Good guy
Bad guy
Good wife
Bad wife
Good girl
Bad girl
—-/
What if there are none of these things ?
There’s just you and me
us
Right here
In small towns
Big cities
One life
Fighting
Editing each other
When we could be coming together
Building eachother up
Winning
And helping those coming up next
To do the same
——
What if
You crushed your goals
You wore the shirts
The skirts
The clothes
The shoes
The look
You did what made you happy
Really
Really
happy
And you were great at it.
You can
You don’t have to settle for one hour every few weeks with your person
You don’t have to chase things
That make you miserable
And you don’t have to defend yourself
You don’t have to make excuses
You are valid
If you want something more
You deserve something more
You don’t have to wait for permission

Go be you
And celebrate you
Your wins
Your accomplishments
And notice those around you when they win
And celebrate them too.
I believe we all can win.
And why shouldn’t we?
What else is there?
-Regardingsamuel.com

📷@ Ethan Bethune