Spiritus Veritas

I just want something real,
he said
I just want something real,
he said.

This common experience.
This shared suffering.
This birth into tragedy that
has shaped us so.
Demented us so.
Made us artist.
Let our spirits soar.
I just want the real experience now.
The authentic.
I suffer for it.
I await it.
I yearn for it.
This is the truth I toss about in
meandering lines.
We are in a space outside the tribe.
We are the neurotic episode.
We are heaven's offerings unto the dirt.

I don't want
the ones who hide from it
wearing the hiding
like a mask.
I don't want the ones who
fester in it
wearing the festering
like a mask.

Let us transcend it.
Let us overcome it.
Let us be all at once above it.
Let us enlighten ourselves with
the healing of it.
Let our spirits sing.
Let our words be divine.
Let us be more,
more and more and more
than the circumstance of it.

Faith faith faith faith
faith faith faith faith.
Goodbye to being,
hello becoming.

I just want something real,
he said.
I just want something real,
he said.

I'm not sure what I want
she said.
Something altogether different.
I think.
Come and be
real
with me

- Paul Sexton

On Fire

you're on fire
you're on fire
you're on fire
everything about you is on fire.

your eyes are on fire
your eye lashes are on fire
the tiny edges at the corners of your smile
are on fire.
your lips are on fire
you hips are on fire
all the lines that come together in-between
to create this amazing being
are on fire.

your heart is on fire
your soul is on fire
your mind is on fire
your voice is on fire
your words are on fire.
the feelings you feel and
the thoughts that you think, are on fire.
your laughter is on fire,
especially your laughter is on fire.

your dreams are on fire.
the compassion of your actions is on fire
the places where you get occasionally lost
inside your hopes and memories of the past,
are on fire
everything inside you is on fire.

the air that surrounds and slides around
your burning form when you move through it
is one fire.
the infinitesimal empty spaces burning with desire
that come together to create the matter
which manifest your form and being
are on fire.

you're on fire
you're on fire
and when you look at me
and when you speak to me
and when I look close at you
and when I listen close to you
and when I feel close to you
and when you open your heart
for tiny fleeting brief moments to me
I am on fire. I am on fire,
and it's your fire
and it doesn't go out.
It burns.

you're on fire
you're on fire
you're on fire.

- Paul Sexton

It Is What It Is

I prefer that feeling.
That dried up feeling.
That spent feeling.
That empty feeling.
I dig it,
dig it hard,
when people are the worst to me.
The cruelest.
The most unkind.
I like it best when I
know it's coming
like a familiar tune
like train cars
like regret.
I like it most when
I stick it out there
and am foolish
and it gets cut off with lazer precision.
I like it this way
because it's comfortable
fucked up
dangerous
real.
I don't like it when there's attachment,
like quicksand,
like chattering laughter
like clouds.
I don't like it when it seems like
a corner might turn
like time is a top hat
like Santa Elves and Easter Rabbits.
I hate it when the asphalt
slides away like cotton candy.
When sweet dreams spill over into
dark afternoons and solitude.
I hate it most when nothing
pretends in my mind
to be something.
When bees sting
and rain dances like a bugles mourn.
I hate it most when I care about anything
or anyone
or anywhere.
When days run away and
fingers snap like bowling pins.
I love it when
I fuck it all up.
When I'm blank tablet.
When there is no one.
When bells ring
iron bars clang
and words dance on paper.
I love it most when I'm alone
when I'm empty,
when I have no attachment.
when I'm burning like the blistering heat of
tomorrows melancholy sun.
I love it most when I'm empty,.
unfettered.
un dissolved
unrepentant
misunderstood
misrepresented
mistreated.
I love it most
when it's over,
all said and done,
when I'm pounding like a hammer
deafening like a broken heart
sworn in like an imbasil
overcome
debauched
defeated.
I love it the very very best when I hurt
because it's a recognizable thing.
It's something
It keeps me in line.
Keeps me from escaping wrongly,
strangling circumstance
becoming a butterfly
embracing civility.
I love it most when I'm in it
fucked up broken down
not surprised
empty
unfettered
alone.
I love it,
love it best
when it simply
is what it is.
is what it is.
is what it is.
Tonight.

- Paul Sexton

Tornado Girl

You came into my life so suddenly, unexpectedly
and, and, everything
was lifted up and twisted around and uprooted
like a tornado.
Like this spinning spinning storm that lifts and moves
and breaths and lives and feels and speaks
and changes up
everything,
my, my ,my
my heart, my eyes, my time, my hours, my
words, my ideas, my ideas, my days, my friends
my thoughts, my feelings, my views, my
altered views, my altered views and situations.
My work, my work , my art
my art, all of my words, and time and feelings and art all
lifted up all twisted around and changed all different all
impacted.
It's all different now, its all in different unrecognizable places
like this tornado that is you, touched down right here in the
middle of my life, my, my,
my heart, my words.
spinning and spinning and spinning everything all around and
now
when you are gone,
this eerie silence, everything scattered everywhere
this silence
when you are gone
like this big wrong awful emptiness when you are gone.
like everything is wrong somehow
like everything is undone somehow
out of place out of sorts out of whack out of synch out of time
like everything is sad and silent and falling apart somehow
my everything my everything all turned upside down.
your words and sentences and voice and ideas
and laughter and jokes and songs and tears and love
still lingering in each and every tiny space between
everything I am and think and create and see
I still hear you after everything I say,
I still feel you
I still can, can, can almost grasp you, respond to you
answer you, know what you would be saying in every moment
when you are not here with me.
How could you have become such a part of me
How could you have become such a part of me
How could you have become such a part of
everything I am in so short a time
such and impact, now a part of me forever, forever
in my. in my , in my
my heart, my mind, my soul.
twisting me all up like some tornado
twisting and twisting and twisting away
from me, from my world, left silent, left alone
left hoping, you
have carried something important away with you
something you'll keep
something of me flying away with you
as well. I hope I hope, come,
come back someday.

- Paul Sexton

THE REALLY BIG SHOW!!

Fire eater, dancing poodles, head in the lions mouth
hi-wire tight rope walker
that's me mother fucker.
A fucking circus act.
A really big show.
Repeat performance, uncanny skill, precision
crazy-clown showmanship, OH, How I dig it!
Whiskey a go-go. Go daddy go
do it all the time, yeah, yeah.

The act begins with me
somehow drawing these amazing women into my life.
Different sizes, different shapes, different ages, different colors
different styles, different beliefs.
The only common factor being a recognizably strong will and personality.

Part two.
Then through some strange mystic interaction
these fantastically fabulously bad-assed females
come to see me as this
talented, intelligent, insightful, entertaining
compassionate, honorable, worthy, respectable
gentleman, artist, friend, lover.
Someone worthy of time, energy, trust, emotion, attachment.

OH! It is truly grand indeed! It is, it is, it is.
However this is not the final act.
Not the finale, not the end of the show,
Because in ACT THREE comes the old switcheroo!
Couple weeks, couple months, bunch of years, something.
It starts with something like
"You know what your problem is?"
Then after a while, the female is raising her voice.
yelling a bit, pointing, telling me how it is.
Sometimes big, sometimes small
sometimes private, sometimes public,
but they seem to have always figured it all out.
Exactly what my character flaws are.
Exactly just how fucked up I am.
Exactly what I need to do differently to be somehow right.
To get my shit together, to fix it all up.
To not be whoever it is that I am not supposed to be.
Not doing whatever it is that I'm not supposed to be doing.

It's a farce, a fucked up romantic comedy, a cautionary tail
Shakespearian tragedy, slip and slide serious group therapy
highly entertaining, dramatically enthralling
a really really big show!
Three ring circus, big top blow out, Chinese acrobatics
High wire tight rope walking jumping falling without a net.
Head in the lions mouth.
come one, come all, come one, come all,
come one, come all, come one, come all,
Watch now, as he begins to learn to laugh at himself.

- Paul Sexton

Post Modern Orphic Hymn

French fry forearm tendons.
Contract. Release.
Tambourine plink ping breathing
diet soda can. Big gestures
when I lean back, clad black at
the stroke of midnight arms
falling palms down facing, plink
again. Neck roll concentric crackling
like footsteps on shattered glass.
All for the world.

All for the world I think,
as some wild June thunder busts it up.
See that puff
of smoke that rises there, as I exhale thusly?
Oh, it's all full of French Canadian clown music
entangled in fine gravel dusk memories.
Where we stood inside the time stream.
Watch it float up and away taking lost spectacle
elsewhere. Shredded memories no good when
the tall grass has known death and resurrection
time and again
since the slipping away
of wishes, days, and clock tics.

A can song fades to black..
Elysian Mysteries thunder as embodiment
It's different to be me.
Nothing anyone
would understand.

- Paul Sexton

Machine of Almosting

Mad genius sloped back flicker in the sun,
ethereal agent sacred clean
caught up in Spiritus Mundi machine.

Echo flapping desert bird wings,
toward
slouching beast, lost, sing, sing
crestfallen desire.
Giant aching acre wide heartache of legend.
Simple fruition of a female golden mean
nothing more,
minus modern moviehouse adaptations.

Pratfall whirlwind blink violin whacked,
depressed on the eve of great depression,
he was depressed, obsessed.
Formed from seraphic anti-matter Goatee
I must already be
an impious version
of singular quantum implosion
privately
safeguarded by the apathy
of everyday notions.

Vacillating melt-down mushroom cloud
dream believer circumstance unspoken,
strictly speaking, fate,
lips against the glass eye road to nowhere,
deserving of so much more.

Just want to grab true real words,
once held solitary in silent temples.
The idea of permanent impermanence like
circumventing the torn rent veil of night,
circumspect in circumstance
always circular.

Abrupt impromptu jagged batwing fancies,
dash about no worse than
clown groupies.

I want to blow out your candles,
make you forget,
foraging
inside the confines of a moment, with me.
Tell me you want me,
unfolding as just what it is,
eyeballs, everything unexpected.
Templar treasure comfort just thinking of you.
Upon the heads of.
Upon the heads of kings.

Marching band crackle fizz bear claws
cat's-paws.
2 anonymous door frame red roses in
burnt toast wind.

Do I drink excessively.
Am I. Am I. Am I.
I am chasing sudden autonomy weeping
letters in the snowy blood of
ancestors already sleeping.

Even now as the moment dim light silences,
chicken wire around my heart and
brainpan self-speaking into
the next simple breath,
and the one after that,
and after that.

- Paul Sexton

Evil Walks the Land

She blew through the glass door, black
tall boots and short cropped dark, gray peppered hair.
A stack of papers and notebooks approximately 7 inches thick.
She Belonged body and soul to Mary Kay,
A quasi-cult corporate Hydra.

It appeared terribly absurd, the way she
spoke to thin air, gesturing and smiling out of habit.
As if an empty chair held the actual form
behind the voice on the Cell phone ear piece
which facilitated obtrusively loud far off communication.

She advised the voice to pray,
that the hotel off of George Bush Toll way
would offer them a lower rate on the meeting room.
To pray that they would
include the buffet as a part of a pre-agreed upon price.
And that the buffet might attract more participants to the event.
at an attractive price of $2 per head.
She advised the voice on the other side,
the invisible cohort,
to continue praying in this direction.
That she was absolutely sure
that the lord had a plan for them,
that their business initiative would work out splendidly.

She was very loud, as I said
and something like a circus side show attraction
a bearded lady, a sword swallower.
She was a soulless female networking automaton.
A real flying saucer suicide, and she was loud.

I couldnt drink my coffee.
I couldnt read Ken Wilber and conceptualize emergent Holons.
I couldnt relax.
I couldnt breathe in normal ways.
Then suddenly 2 men walked in, shirts tucked under bellies,
with the same space age Cell phone ear devices.
Like 1950s Robots, Klatu Barrada Niktu
Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto.
They simultaneously ordered Chai Tea Lattes
Then began speaking in a rhythmic Latinish
Benedictine backbeat conjure chant.
One started a Boogaloo Shrimp Breakdance
twirling head spin routine, while the other tapped his foot.

It was time for me to get,
and to get fast, while the getting was good.
I farted a heady bouquet while sauntering past the woman.
Letting her have it real good.
And I could feel her praying in my direction
As I plummeted through the glass door.

- Paul Sexton

Crazy Girls...

I love the crazy girls.
They are more alive than giant
crocodiles.
They possess levels of depth
that un furrow
Like blooming flowers of impulse.
Their words like throwing knives
non-sequential ideas that
entangle themselves
In vines of truth
And they area all mad
Really.
At least all the ones I’ve known.

If the entire universe was
careening to a halt,
and I could save but one thing
from oblivion
It would be the crazy girls.
I’d save them just for me
I'd keep them and I‘d
watch them
and listen to them
and hold them tight.
I would never point out the illogic
of their assertions.
Only pull them close in
when they cried
And kiss their mouths when they
laughed.
It would be just me
and all the crazy girls
all alone
in a perfect universe.

- Paul Sexton