Ode to Caye Caulker, Belize May 2015

On the outside O THE LIGHT it's surrounding more light !
Guarded by angels on the outside, blessed by God on the outside,
on the inside quiet and still and troubled on the inside all brooding,
A Roiling of metamorphic dreaming eyes tightly closed for
                                                                           the light its blinding

Paradise And the Ship of Fools
Prose poem by David Sky

In paradise exotic beauty gleams off of every single living and non living surface alike. In paradise the skies dance with hyper color so electric blue in its intensity that if you listen carefully, you can hear it sizzle; there are thousands of graduated shades of orange, yellow, red and green all washing across the sizzling blues above and the multitudes of greens all around and at sunset each night a warm, benevolent sun slips down into the oceans horizon with to that sensitive ear the softest of sighs. Even if the skies were on fire with the roiling, burnt and horrid colors of the apocalypse - in paradise it would be a spectacle of perfect awe and splendor to witness!

So come friends, one and all, join us upon the ample deck of this Ship of Fools! It is only paradise, after all, and in paradise what better way to greet the cataclysmic abyss than a party with all hands on the deck!. Let there be music and dancing. Let us share what we may have freely on this eve of our doom. Let there be joy and beauty and strength and love. Not out of some Bacchic abandon rather invoking a unity and abiding respect for all creatures and all people in this life so that here at the end of it our many lives, alas, meld seamlessly into one, joyous, dancing thing.

Grandma's Flag, Short Autobiography

Grandma's Flag - autobiographical short story by David Sky

Granddad I recall mostly sitting in a straight back chair in the living room of the old, WWII era apartment he and grandma share only a short drive from the nation's capital. They were built originally to hold an influx of military personnel and their families with The Pentagon only a few miles away. Granddad never says a word to me throughout my whole childhood and sits chain smoking Camel cigarettes and drinking whiskey surreptitiously from small, metal flask. I understand that grandma is not to know of this flask and I do not ever speak of it. I learn the ways of secrecy in what must be that same unspoken manner that evidently is a family tradition.

Occasionally, when grandma's back is turned, Granddad salutes me with the flash before taking a sip, a cruel light in his eyes. It is not a friendly gesture but the closest he ever comes to communicating with me. Mostly I recall him scratching his head as he stares out at the street with long, thick, gnarly yellow fingernails terrifying me when very little, that scratching sound steady and constant, as much as the sight, then finally as a teen and young adult only disgusting me.

I am twenty five when he dies finally of lung cancer and they had lived there since before I was two when my mom would drop me off with grandma for visits lasting from a few months to a year in length as mom transitioned from one abusive alcoholic suitor to another. Soon as mom would find one who she felt might be able to provide us a home, she would come get me and try her best to make a home for us. She tried, you know. She loved me. I would try to tell her at first that it wasn't going to work but I learned that she could not listen and so remained silent waiting for the next shoe to drop and my inevitable return to grandma's apartment. It was some years later after much therapy on my own that it occurs to me that granddad had sexually molested my mom all throughout her childhood even though mom never spoke of this and my guess is that she never spoke of it to anyone at all. She just carried it with her silently in every cell of her body until the moment of her death decades later never having said a word about it so far as I know.

Now granddad is dead and his death for me is about grandma, not him. He called her “Hazel” after the TV character and treated her always as a slave and with great disrespect but now that he is dead, she is utterly and completely lost. She remains lost for the rest of her days and it is not long before she succumbs to severe Alzheimer's and my mother and I take her to a nursing home far out in the countryside where we seldom see her. When I do visit, she has no idea who I am. A few times, she seems to think I am her eldest son, Lenny. I will never forget leaving her there sitting on the bed next to her holding her hand and she is crying and I am thinking Goddammit David if you had any decency at all, you would strangle her to death right now, you coward. But I do not strangle her to death only leave her sitting on that single bed in that bare room alone, crying. It is better visiting later because she is always happy and laughing and has no idea who I am or even who she is.

But now – now granddad is dead and grandma is lost. Now mom lives with a horrible little man I think of as her last alcoholic. He is a passive man at least he does not physically abuse her or even verbally, so far as I know. Grandma moves into their two bedroom apartment for a few years afterwards until the Alzheimers gets bad. I am the first to notice it visiting having lunch with grandma watching some old movie on the TV eating on the couch on TV trays. Grandma makes a comment on the movie and I realize that she has no idea what the movie is about. I eat and watch a while and then I ask her what she thinks of the movie and she tells me and what she says while a moving story in itself bares no resemblance to the movie we have been watching. I tell my mom then to take grandma to the doctor and have them check for dementia.

That is later and now we have to attend to burying granddad, the arrangements, paying for it. We find out that since he is a WWI vet, he can get a military funeral. That helps with the costs. We have to have him taken to a cemetery that is a long drive out in the Virginia Piedmont. My mom drives grandma and I and I do not recall much about the actual funeral. I recall on the way looking out the back window of the car at horses romping through a field in the Virginia horse country: how the horses are so obviously playing and happy.

At the service itself, grandma looks more lost than ever and I wonder if in her mind she is even there at all? The seven soldiers fire their 21 gun salute and each volley makes grandma cringe and the taps rips my heart out even though I feel absolutely nothing for this man, not even hatred. Grandma watches the soldiers fold the flag in front of her as if she has no idea what they are doing but I can tell that when they hand that folded flag to her and she accepts it as if she doesn't really know why they are giving it to her that somehow it sinks in for her right there and I see that she knows what is happening, alright. The way she holds that flag breaks my heart as if she knows that she has something in her hands of great import but not exactly what? This is mostly what I recall grandma holding that flag looking utterly and completely lost at the soldier standing before her saluting her crisply.

I wonder whatever happened to that flag? I have no earthly idea.

Main Street USA

I feel like I'm the only one walking down main street who sees the long line of flags flying proudly from each street pole stretching off into convergence as the sharp, metallic teeth of an enormous, monstrous machine in the process of devouring our humanity at this very moment. I know that if I were to share this perspective with any one of the people around me, I would be rebuffed as insane or worse, beaten as blasphemous. I do not possess an ounce of this much vaunted patriotism.

This no longer makes me feel some pride as it used to when I was younger - that self righteousness in seeing the truth that others either cannot or will not see; that strength of youth burning with an iconoclastic passion. I no longer feel any anger or any desire to rebel nor do I feel any fear for the future. I am hollowed out. Empty. Weary and alone. Hit me and I will ring like a bell. I feel some shame that I no longer have the will or the strength to shake my tiny, human fist at this gargantuan, inhuman machine that we have made of ourselves. I feel utterly and completely defeated.

God, I pray silently, help us all – and that's the only fight I have left.

Affirmational Incantation: First Door

As the last vision rests perfectly and easily within me like that fire which cleanses yet does not burn, my feelings turn toward the first door filled with light in this new life. I am awestruck standing before this bright and shining door now taking a moment to reflect with gratitude upon such a miraculous opportunity bestowed by this life that is after all a gift from God. I center myself before moving toward this door. The feeling is of being in the presence of something possessing genuine Holiness: feelings of reverence and awe. In order to get to this door, I had to delve into the darkest recesses of self and open the blackest doors I found full of horrific pain. I have paid the price in darkness many times over for this light. I know now that each door hereafter will open from light to light to more light still. I dare to imagine what in this physical place wherein my spirit resides, has yet been unimaginable: love and joy and peace fearlessly and freely shining like the sun on this perfect summer's day. Opening the door merely a sliver releases white light so powerful that it is blinding and takes my breath away for a moment. It is whiter than white and brighter than bright. No, Friends, no - it is not TIDE. Don't be silly. It is love.

Beauty and the Beast, poem by David Sky

The Beast -
The Beast, always the Lonely One, The Sad One
Waiting for someone or anyone or no one at all to stop
 And say, “Hello In There!”
Waiting to be utterly and truly startled by recognition
Imagining what that would be like but also afraid, very afraid,
For The Beast who is so Fearsome to The Others is … is …
As terrified in his Mighty Heart as any tiny, helpless bird
He is, after all, only a left brain thing, only words, thoughts, language -
The One Who Hears and Speaks and Writes
Yet who has never seen one single, solitary, Vision in his whole life

The Beauty -
She who is as pristine as morning dew on a rose
She of perfect measure, perfect balance, perfect porcelain skin
Whose movements flow like some thoughtless, happy waters
Her long, artistic fingers fluttering effortlessly over the Beast
Over the still surface of the seas, over the mountains, the sky
And when she turns around to look at him with those eyes
She does not look into his eyes but deeply into his soul
For Beauty sees everything resplendent within each thing!
After all, she is only a right brain thing, only feelings, perceptions,
The One Who Puts Her Arms Gracefully Around Everything
Who has never felt the sword like penetration of a hard, cold thought

The Beauty & The Beast -
Made for each other, well, yes, sure, exactly, right on, obviously -
Already perfectly aligned within one energy body in “that greater reality”
Where the Beauty and the Beast already reside as husband and wife
Physical union speeding at the fantastical speeds of some astral train
Soon to impact cosmically like two planets fusing one into another
In full blown manifestation here and now upon this dense earthly plane

Short Story: The Universe

(been working this story over a lot getting close here maybe) I cannot account for what others do with their life's energy and I mean this literally because I am more than a little on the Aspergers spectrum. I perceive some people much as I perceive a dog in terms of any true grasp I can manage in understanding of their inner consciousness that is only vaguely, really, having some basic idea what a dog may be interested in, you know? Or, maybe you don't know and you're thinking, “what the hell is this guy talking about?”. Not to cast aspersions but maybe you're a little Aspy, too, man? I think it's a lot more common than people think, myself. The vast majority of us are not so far down the scale as Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory nor so smart … and I think the two do go hand in hand, Aspergers Syndrome and intelligence. Often quirky, savant stuff that weird uncle of whom everyone is always thinking, “why the hell doesn't he go on a game show with his trivia knowledge, he'd make a million!” The Tell is a little nervous tic in lack of social skills or perhaps not even that obvious just random gaps in ability to process certain social interactions properly that to “Normals” are so innate as to lay below the level of conscious thought. You know, when you miss something, you don't know that you miss it? If there's anything that frightens me, it's just that blind thought: “what am I missing!” Not of bodily assault or even cancer but that blind side, man, that blind side that can harbor the next truck that is about to strike me. And I hate being hit by a truck so hard that I don't even think to get the license number. Anyway, I was always looking for God myself. I mean that is what I was interested in and what I was doing mostly. Well, that and romantic love and sure I mixed the two up no bones about it. Goddess worship could not come more naturally to me. I never was much up for sports. I tried to get it up for politics but damn just can't do it I mean I'd rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick than watch another minute of cable TV News. All that to emphasize that I would have never in a million years figured that The Universe was a “male” entity. But it is what it is.

I found The Universe drinking heavily late one cold winter's afternoon in a dive bar about half way between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico near the Rio Grande River. Now of course The Universe is not God but I decided to work my way up the hierarchy, as it were. God in all due time , mind you. It's process. The sunlight outside is preposterously bright but the air is so cold that a half inch of old snow doesn't melt off the cactus even in the full light of the afternoon sun. Inside the bar is dark heated by a wood stove and the air is so bone dry that your nose hairs start to burn after a while and you it's quiet – which I it never is! - you can hear your own skin crinkling up. Anyone who lives here for any length of time ends up with skin looking like worn out leather. The Universe is sitting at the small bar alone big German looking guy mid thirties, I'd guess, running big, bony fingers through his thinning, dirty blonde hair when I first set eyes on Him. I can tell he's not a resident because his skin is smooth as a baby's butt. I set next to Him and introduce myself and The Universe nods and smiles politely, says hello, but does not identify Himself. I tell the bartender to bring two of what He is having and The Universe smiles and overs up a toast, “to you, Mate”. Good thing for me in this one case that I know my alcoholics. The Universe is a morose alcoholic who passes through a euphoric phase, I determine, and I hoped that he was still in the euphoric phase. I was already thinking that when He hit that morose phase, I want to be miles away from this place. After our drinks come, a single malt Scotch, I discover, neat, I ask of Him as casually as I can manage, “so You do a Walk In, did You?” His drink stopped half way up to His lips. I could see calculation flash across His face for just a beat then He said, also non nonchalantly as you please, “suicide case” downing the rest of His drink and slamming it on on the counter, “load me up,” He said to the barkeep in a cheerful, friendly tone. No hint of German in his voice. California, I guessed. I knew then that I had to jump in for The Universe would cross that threshold from euphoria to morose any time now if indeed He hadn't already - “I want to know about God,” I asked, “anything You can tell me?”. He started laughing then coughing so hard that I thought He might throw up then after this paroxysm settled down said, “don't we all, Mate, don't we all”, still apparently amused by my question. “Seriously?” I insisted. Without looking at me then, The Universe said matter of factly, “the closest thing to what you humans conceive of as a “God” is light. Insofar as I could answer such preposterous question, the answer is light. All that you is light. The truth is light just light passing through light, on and on – do you see?” Turning to look at me with those eyes as he asked, “Do you see?” So I asked without missing a beat, “to be clear then, you are not actually saying that light IS God or that God IS light?”. The Universe downed another glass and it hit the thick, wood bar with an empty bang. He just crossed that threshold and I left forthwith, man. I left Him there in the growing shadow cast by the canyon walls around that little dive bar and I hauled as up a short cut I knew on a jeep road that climbed two thousand feet in elevation over a relatively few miles up the eastern escarpment of the canyon where the cold, winter sun now dropping low into the western sky still shown bright. “The closest thing to what you humans conceive of as a God, is light” … it made sense in some way to me that was as of yet far beyond articulation?