For Those Who Are Still Tirelessly Pursuing Happiness

Happiness is an elusive cunt.

The carrot dangling in front of your face keeping you hauling these bags forward. Always pursuing happiness, have you even thought of what you'd do if you caught it? Have you considered that maybe you can't catch it with your arms so full of luggage?

Have you considered just being happy instead of chasing happy?

What a bitch smack those words are. The people who say things like that, they don't understand. They think it's as simple as just picking up your luggage and taking off. They're even glad to tell you, happiness went off in that direction. Wait, you dropped a bag. It says "depression" on it. It's heavy and clearly high quality, and it looks so good on you.

Do you think they have it in my size?

The luggage is heavy. It didn't start that way did it? The first bag was easy; I mean you weren't carrying anything. So you picked it up and you started walking; a nice walk, with plenty of people all carrying their own bags. After a while when your arm was tired you decided to look inside.

Remember what that felt like? First the feeling of utter relief when you set that bag down; the pins and needles as the circulation started massaging the numbness back to life. Remember how terrifying it was to reach in and pull the second bag out? When you started carrying both of them it still wasn't that bad. Sure, they were heavier but nothing you couldn't handle. Until the two bags turned into four; which turned into eight which turned into ... tell me, how fast did your arms get numb this time?

Maybe you should take up juggling. Everything might not be so heavy and cumbersome if you just keep it all in the air; and you might be able to reach out and grab happiness with your free hand at just the right time. After all, you've only got two hands. Just be careful looking ahead, you might trip over now. Maybe a forklift.

Do you think happiness has a forklift?

This goes on forever. The luggage just gets bigger and heavier while you fall further further behind happiness and you realize you don't have the right to, only the right to pursue happiness. No, this this problem goes much deeper than anything you could have seen or could have controlled. And no one can tell you where happiness really is. But I can tell you what I've heard:

1. I've heard happiness in laughing with a toddler about something nonsensical.
2. I've heard happiness in the raindrops hitting the roof of a covered porch warmed with hot coffee.
3. I've heard happiness in the beat of the drums around a fire of dancers.
4. I've heard happiness in the music of lights that shine from my fingertips.
5. I've heard happiness in a lover's voice wishing me good morning after a wonderful, sleepless night.
6. I've heard happiness in dark at midnight.
7. I've heard happiness in the first light of dawn.
8. I've heard happiness in the company of the friends who erase the concept of "inappropriate."

I've never caught happiness. Not once. I've seen it quite a few times and it's beautiful; and I can tell you that happiness isn't carrying anything. Happiness is always just a step ahead because maybe happiness knows something that I don't; because if happiness is traveling without baggage, what do you suppose happiness is chasing?  The only way to find out is to drop your baggage, speed up and grab it.

Legacy

Here we are at last
The rest of the story
I never wanted to write
The chapters have come and gone
I needed you....
I missed you....
I don't like you....
I don't want to be you....
How many times have I said it
I.
Don't.
Want.
To.
Be.
You.
Somehow I've never escaped your hegemony
And it is true that it's your face I see when I look in the mirror
Here's the pause
Where everything stops
And I try so hard
Just to see things for one second like you
To find peace in the legacy you've left me
For the first time I finally do understand
Though it's nothing about you
But I know what it is like
To return from a war in peacetime
Wakened cold and sweaty
Beaten bruised and bloody
With no enemies left to fight
Nothing to fill the gaping hole left by your patrimony
Only now at the end
Can I fathom the truth
This absence is a kindness
Whether your absence from the thing called 'Father'
Or mine from the thing called 'Son'
And so here we are at last
The rest of the story I never wanted to write
In which our hero
Will erase borders
Engaging in diplomacy
Not out of compassion
Nor from affection
This deed is born from necessity
A need to end a war that's raged for decades
Hard fought and well won
Darkness falls when what you've given
Returns to you
And I am born anew
No more words
No more verse
No more pain and
No more nights wakened cold and sweaty
This absence is a kindness
For one cannot exist while the other lives
And I understand only what God must have felt
As I kill your first born son
To wash away the sins of the father

Musings of the Mad Volume I: Every Stitch Tells a Story

Readers of the mad rejoice! The first collection of Musings from your favorite madman is now available in print! Every Stitch Tells a Story collects poems from the page as well as new, never before published material to round out your collection. Special advance copies for readers of this page are available through direct order from the publisher, just click on the image below.

C

I am the basis for your division

Without me you will never be full

I am the sum of your isolated incidents

I am semiperfect and self-descriptive

I am the explosion of your heated passion

Your blood could never boil in anger if it weren’t for me

I am the will of legislation

You are bought and sold at my hand

I’ve seen more years than nearly anyone alive
I can save your life

The individual within your group

I burn brightly as the Sun

The microcosm of your macrocosm

I escorted Christ to his condemnation

I am the tears that make the river of your Sin

I am ordinal perfection

I am Dante’s Divine Comedy

A vigilant overseer 

I am the eyes of Argus

The Verbe de Dieu

I am to be crowned as King

The creation of order from chaos

I am the achievement of all your dreams

I am the path to inner peace

The determination of your secrets

I am the discovery of the absolute and completely hidden

Supremely perfect

I am the Universal Energy

Bringing new beginnings

I am the end of the road