Conduit

- Poetry - 

Muse! -
   There is a stench in my shoes,
   a staleness in my coat,
   a crust on my skin,
      and I lie awake on shifting dunes
      measuring my life not in cups of coffee,
      but in full moons;
      not in the rungs of a ladder climbed,
      but in the horizon’s loom.
 
   I don’t know
   what I’m trying to become,
   and, Muse, I have never appraised myself by the sum
   of some bank account,
   or how precise I have laid out
   the tracks of a plotted, straight life,
   but this leaves me standing alone in uncharted
                                                                      untrailed
                                                                      untraversed
                                                              
                                                                           w  i  l  d    p  l  a  c  e  s.
 
   I howl to the darkness of the natural world
   and serene indifference whips,
      blows through in reply.
 
Oh! Muse! –
   What are we but things that blip alive
   in a brief awareness,
   and vanishing in rapidity
   as brilliant and passing as lightning
   that crackles life and light
   across a dark, swirling void?
 
Muse! –
   Where do I strike?
   What do I conduct this charge of self through?
   I am building up static
   and dangerous weather patterns,
   and I’m raging at the point where
   I am searching for a key on a kite
   because if I don’t strike soon
   I’ll fry myself.
   I’ll end my life.
 
Muse! –
   Spin me blindfolded in a field,
   and send me on my way.
   What better direction could one go?
   I carry the vitality of the storm,
                the weariness of the road,
                the moon in all its forms.
   There are railroad ties
   to build with and bind,
   to guide with certainty
                  with rigidity
   to carry you and all your earthly possessions
   in comfort to your predestined goal.
 
But I?
Muse, you and I roam.