This landscape is pale, barren,
Ashen sky.
Ground paved in concrete.
I want to remember the lines of her face like I was blind,
By touch,     and smell.
The smoothness of the water's edge,
Reflected sky at dusk.
The sound of animals,
Wild! Vital, succulent,
Clinging to the fertile Earth we strip bare.

It's okay to write-- it's beautiful!
What cruel world convinced me otherwise--
Yet in the same breath wiped ignorance away?
This life is a fantasy,
A shroud we envelope ourselves in--
Steel framework connected with mental rivets,
Through which sweet breezes of dreams flow.
I've been sleeping.
Mind far tinier than required
To process both my ignorance and enlightenment at once!
Bless'd by a steady flow of time
Distinguishing then from now and always,
Yet all is one.
I am but a tiny chime tinging in the breeze,
Great spires of creation tower 'round me.
So I must be ingenuitive with my awareness,
Giving due heed to the now!
Forging not forward, but inward,
a concentrated focus like a knife.
My nature is to be extracted, yet
Grown as though in a garden.
My purpose being that work.

A gaping desire,
an aimless need
for more.
This feeling of wanting something,
To transcend the mundane,
to turn eyes skyward.

Those youthful fantasies,
                 once I had fulfilled,
To drive to the edge of the horizon and further
                 To unknown places,
                        toward strange faces,
From which emerged the face of my love,
Like a beacon out amongst the crowd.

Sometimes I drive toward the mountains,
The ridge from which I once descended.
But I know what is over there:
Pebbles. Sand. Desert. Clay. 
        Grassland, then rolling hills.
                 Green, forests, cold, winter.
The origin of my birth.
I emerged like a crocus from the frost,
         Petals outstretched for the spring sun.
And I miss that steamy air.

How can I love what I have become,
Yet silently detest the landscape that has transformed me?
Urban. Concrete. Steel. Fire.
          Great migrations of humankind.
How has the tool for my ascension become my favorite scorn?
Driving me yet to further heights, in a rage?
Like a wildfire?

I suckle from the city's breast and she nourishes me with more passion
Until there are not enough hours in the day.
But this is barely living at all--
         I am drunk, addicted.
High on the self-servedness I abhor.

The quiet landscape and her spirits are what remind me of meaning.
It is difficult even to love in the midst of all this noise.