I wonder...

I sit here in this twilight, my life before me
I know of only what I have endured
and in the endurance have discovered that
life is only an afterthought, a breath mixed with the wind.

I bought 4 dozen roses for myself today
They sit arranged in a vase in the corner of my home
under this roof, in this field, in the middle of nowhere
I bought them for my own pleasure,
with the hope that they might be seen by my friends and admired

I don't know the course, I have never known where this ship would lead
I've ridden it aimlessly and it has returned me to the land of my youth
I have befriended many and yet know no one
This primordial existence, this hermit crab life, this aimless peace
This beloved loneliness

Flowers are midnight monsters without the light
Home is without cause, home is without boundaries
Home is void of it's warmth, if only to cradle one so
free of it and estranged from it that he falls, falls, falls to his death
Home.

And yet she moves, she stirs beneath this sea of skin and stone
she awakens in the belly of the beast, the riddle in the cave
I thought this as I drove at the twelth stroke.
I thought this as the wind blew the fields aside in my wake
Why can't my eyes see the way they did before?

Where has life gone? Where is the sun in stream in this cornfield afterbirth?
I calm myself, I find resolve, I discover a solution, and the ship pulls from this abandoned harbor.
I'm on the eve of a disasterous and wonderful begining.
I know this, that if it could be in human form it would be me
if it could walk down a road it would wear my shoes

I know that if it had a name it would be mine
The weight of the world has beckoned, the sadness of our destruction has spoken my name
since the dawn of time.
I cannot help but give what has been given. I cannot help but love those who seek its face
I only see a haze of red when these eyes unfold in morning's first light.

It's with the stars we dwell, it's in the rotation of the planets we begin
We are the love affair of the comet with the sun
Think of it, think of that silence, that vast nothingness and the stars sewn in their place
Picture it, picture those fields of endless weightlessness and then close your eyes
We travel, we move. We are hope and destination, we are what was meant to be with no set path.

Remember it, remember how it lasted and never ended. Remember how we can never understand such a void, such time and space.
Remember it and journey on.
Life was given to such bodies so we could remember that when we love, we express time and space, a beginning without an end, joy without sorrow, pasts without futures.

Hope and Destination.


J.M. Prater

Tell me the end of all things. Tell me why I sit here as bombs explode in God’s ears. What do I benefit from such destruction? What is the justification of such violence? Is the life of many worth the life of one? I can barely keep calm in this chair, amid this war, throughout this chaos. I asked for none of this, we asked for all this.

Is it right that the leader of my nation speak with my voice even if I didn’t give it to him?

What does death truly mean for me? For us?

I sit here, in this chair, in this room, away from the end of the world, the sun shining through a blanket of trees, the birds nestling in the grass. I sit here not sure what to do. What can I do? What can one man do? I fear the wrath of the angels, I fear the judgment of God that so many lives would be bought and sold and destroyed in the name of an insidious currency.
What can one man do? What can one man do lost in a nation more concerned with actors then with the woman who lost her child because of a misguided bomb? What can one man do when the most important issue pressing his people is whether or not their Latte is made right? What can one man do.

God is speaking to me, and he is ashamed of me. He is ashamed of a nation hellbent on piety and self righteousness. God is speaking to us and his voice comes from the depth of the graves of bodies, from the mass of blood that spills into this country and on our hands.

What can one man do?