Brianna Campbell
Take me to the wayside, that lightly trodden edge.
Then follow it along with me until there’s nothing left.
We can find everything by the wayside too, all the familiar things.
Yes indeed we’ll find them all there, just to a smaller degree.
The path less taken was still took after all…
Into someone else’s footprints, we always seem to fall.
What is it all for, who hears our weary call!?
What’s it cost to be free finally, once and for all?
We pass from scene to scene
From dream to dream
Then back and forth we slosh about
What’s it worth til we’re let out?
Where’s the fruit from here and now?
How can you be found wanting if you’re not without?
Where to cast the horizon or throw it to the wind this time
Where the power of your will is kept confined
Not wanting to give when nothing is mine
Ready now to taste new wine
Full of trials, rewards and memories.
Can you relate to anything I see? What you judge to be a lie was, is and will always be real enough for me.
I will always bring forth a smile for you, despite the sting which stark contrasts between unrelenting longing and times of real intimacy do bring.
Despite the pain from perhaps being insane and having to carry on everyday withholding the things you are dying, keep trying, to say…
While compromising without ever seeing a gain, aimless to fight, by love, being slain.
Yet body held up afterwards to walk it again, just the same.
Graciously strength is faithfully granted and personally by God Himself, it is handed, to live another day, wandering, distracted.
I endure and I deign to the utmost mundane, every wearisome aspect expected to be entertained, while my own passionate heart swings I’m afraid, are reined and restrained.
In times before they were boldly displayed and perhaps those who I loved, of me, were ashamed.
Thinking it grotesque the ways I behaved, I possibly was deemed somehow inept or in someway self-depraved.
My passion, my fire, never repaid, so one unique honor was brutally gained.
My heart that has most endlessly exuded, the most heaviest drained, this goes undisputed, can no one dare dream to ascertain or subdue it.
“Gate Gate Para Gate Para Sam Gate Bodhi Swaha” HEART SUTRA
Gone, all gone!
Life, all gone from me.
The only thing which remains, pain birthed as it was rent from me and anguish from all that is now left empty.
My life stolen I can no longer see the banks of the water laid across from me and wonder about its history or how it formed there physically.
I have learned that knowing does not set one ‘free’ but rather sets lessons scathing and weighty upon the chosen appointee.
Curse the seed of that infernal tree!
With fruit consumed by means of trickery, performed so sly and subtlely that even though we may now claim victory, its dual lessons still hold a key, one whose door does not open gently, those who find it learn intently.
To be so well acquainted with misery and experience the epitome of gravest injury…
I keep this treachery shelved away in memory and live now, present, confident in everything, in a state of constant reverie.
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In my mind I pass the time as comfortable as I can possibly.
No need to guard oneself or appease friends and family.
Nothing, no fees to pay for my rebellious passions or child-like frivolity.
Yes, in my mind I am granted my every plea and I ponder life, its curiosities and its mystery.
Like how where I have been and where I am now somehow both hold the same trajectory.
Like how anything is possible, even for someone like me, a person who holds all information but no directory and partakes in every blessing yet somehow nothings supplementary.
Who eagerly dreams to nurture and to savor someone complimentary…
Where I go to cry is my empty bed mostly in the hours of the night
I have just begun noticing the pattern to my grieving, as it’s become just as familiar these days as routine breathing
At first I greet, then I visit with the pain
As it accretes, I let the ocean drain
After complete, up on my feet, the blanket drowned where I had lain
I know I’ll meet with it again, the idea of victory or conquering I will not feign
But it really is quite a feat, that next time I will turn waves to rain, something much more discreet, to be left sprinkled on the sheet
This at least means something to me and is progress I can keep
Sweet “Nothings”?
I fall into the beautiful words which bring to me staggering, extraordinary relief and comfort
As my stagnant dullness they pivot and evert, my cynical conclusions they uproot and subvert
A releasing fall or collapse into a familiar bed after the most grueling and exhausting day when stark soreness and pain is all your muscles can relay is like when someone you adore miraculously delivers above and beyond what you could ever hope they would say, like a fervent promise to keep steadfast in their way, to never leave you, and to always stay
The heaven sent moments of respite never propel me too much forward and they hardly ever get to accrue
I fall almost immediately from the bunk, believing accurately or not, it’s much too good to be true
Is it self sabotage or genuine self preservation I find myself practicing and navigating through
For my intimidating doubts I find the explanation, that no love has revealed that it matches mine or that of my station and has left to show me or share how it’s been tried to the degree of my own tribulation
I don’t mind, no hear me truly, I will not cease to strive patiently as I do, nor my ultimate goal fail to faithfully pursue
It just seemed that finally this sadness I would at last shove, that the moment I was on the spur of was so transcendent and set exceedingly far above the capacities of this life hereof
Yet fleeting that feeling inevitably was, it’s dissolving presence I only catch the blur of, but something I hunger and desire for most thereof
To be devoted to, consumed with and given in good measure the love with which I love.
Illuminating what was once empty and void, as all matter becomes employed, charged with being within your sight, demanding to be beheld, received into life and perhaps nothing more.
You’re consumed, compelled by this divulgence, something you never asked for…
You were ultimately drafted, thus carried into war, left to wonder what’s worth fighting for, not quite sure where you stand anymore…
Yet you know full well these uncertainties you will gladly meet with at the door and will always hope that she continues to shine on, all the more.
VENTANAS BLANCAS
SUNSET. Two photos taken in June 2023 in Ensenada, Mexico.