The Tease

The Tease


Your game is madness,
trying to dispel your sadness
and hatred of your life,
getting back at he who made you his wife
in ongoing campaigns of marital strife
by playing the game of hearts,
never caring who you tear apart,
hoping from the start
in the digital Sodom
to taste the forbidden
and experience things hidden
from your world of just existing
that seems to be mindless twisting
on the gallows of discontent,
for truth is evident,
this depraved descent
is to find the one
who makes you come undone,
with debauched rites
and possessive fights
and cruel might,
making you a slave
with the gift that you gave,
unknowing, falsely brave,
your happiness buried in an early grave
He showed you how much
by dint of his touch
that you are by so far
the wicked person you think you are.
And those you touch
who aren't good enough
you discard their broken souls,
in your attempts to make your mind whole,
you broke them like pottery bowls
and crushed them under your feet.

(c) Tortured Cyclone 2017

Then There Was You

It is amazing, in the moment that you meet someone and realize that they fit you like a puzzle piece, One that brings the jigsaw tapestry of life into greater clarity. You mesh so smoothly with them that it is difficult to to say where one ends and the other begins. And so the relationship began...

That is what happened when I met you.

But life is never static, and the complications of our love interfered with our ability to be in contact with each other. Those challenges have become, at times, mammoth - terrifying in their Brobdaginian immensity. The miles that separate us, our duty to others, our contrasting work schedules - these all have stood in the way.

But while falling in love is something that happens to you. Loving someone is a choice, even if it is the only choice. And choosing not to love you is a choice whose consequences I never want to face - for I want you to be a persistent part of my life, as long as we can.

Some things are so precious that you would die for them, if it were necessary. That is what you are to me. Without you in my life, I would be looking at a world that was once two-dimensional, knowing that a third dimension exists because of you, but unable to perceive it any longer.

It is like having the world of sight removed, a few days after you had just gained your vision.

So, I choose you. I love you. I need you.

Lifelong, if not into the next life...

TC

(c) Tortured Cyclone 2017

Community Spirit in the Digital Community

I believe that people
have valid feelings,
no matter where they may be.
Whether in person,
by the telephone,
or hidden behind
the digital veil.
We have a responsibility
to be ever mindful
that what we might see
as merely a harmless game,
is something more to them.
This is why I cannot
countenance online trolling,
because I cannot be a witness
to a wrong and do nothing -
to my way of thinking
that is no better
than being the villain
that commits the crime.
So don't tell me
not to get involved
when I see someone hurt,
because I will not,
cannot, listen to something
that is anathema to me.

(c) Tortured Cyclone 2016

In Search of Poetry's Soul

What is the soul of poetry?

A deceptively simple question, for most people (myself included) would probably be able to come up with an answer within moments. The answers would invariably be subjective and, as such, have much more to say about ourselves than this form of expression.

As is frequently the case with other questions that lead to subjective responses, many of us have a tendency to view our answers as the right ones, to the exclusion of others. So we tend to exclude ideas that contradict our own, because if we're right, they can't be, right?

Wrong.

For some, poetry is about the cleverness of the writer. How the poet uses her knowledge of language to entertain, to demonstrate their intelligence, independent of emotional context or even comprehensibility.

For others, poetry is all about capturing an instant, creating an image that the reader can be captured within. Using their words and placement to convey an image that is undeniable in its clarity.

Yet others see it as a medium to express the emotions that wrack our psyches, and the ones that make our spirits soar. The language of the passions.

Yet others see it as a dogma where the rules of a specific form are all-important. Where it is necessary to harness the words to the mastery of rhyming and meter, stanzas and couplets.

In truth, poetry is all of these, and more. And we are the ones who choose to limit it by perspective, saying only our vision is "good".

So, if we create in different ways, can we at least respect others for following their particular vision?

After all, the artist is only half of what defines poetry. The other half is the person who reads it.

(c) Tortured Cyclone 2016

About Misuse of Resources

Recently, in the Twitter world of online poetry and activism, I heard a criticism made about my conduct and my focus. In short, the critic stated that I should not be doing what I am doing on Twitter, because I was being derelict in my duties towards my offline family. I was too busy being a Dom instead of being a provider.

I wanted to set the record straight, pulling back the fourth wall to give you a glimpse of some of the choices that I have had to make with my responsibilities and with my career and my lifestyle.

My spouse of 14 years is terminally ill. She has been on kidney dialysis for almost 10 years. Four years ago she had a stroke. Since then her health has been in a steady decline.

We have two children together. Our eldest is 13 years old, and is on the autism spectrum. He is high-functioning and his particular form of autism includes ADHD and Oppositional Defiant behavior.

Our 10 year old, fortunately, is not on the Spectrum and is basically healthy. However, he has begun modeling his behavior off of his older brother's, in order to get attention.

With my wife's worsening health, I have had to make some difficult choices. I work overnights full-time, but in response to her increasing illness, I have found it necessary to cut back on my hours at work. In fact, I have cut back so much that I have worked basically 20 hours a week for the last 7 months.

In this same time, we have made several difficult decisions, to ensure that were able to make ends meet. This includes eliminating satellite television, Internet service, private supplemental health insurance for my wife, and my pride. It has been necessary to put my ambitions as a writer and as an activist for the polyamorous lifestyle and as a Dom aside as secondary in order to take care of those responsibilities.

Many of you may be aware as how I have cut back on posts to this blog. Also I have eliminated all prompts that I was running through Twitter, including a prompt that was supposed to have resulted in an anthology that would have been published this summer.

To raise additional funds for my family, I have had to pawn my equipment for writing. Not once, but multiple times. In fact the computer has spent more time in the pawn shop then in my possession since the beginning of 2016.

As a result, I have just last month finished my second book of poetry which would have been released by my birthday this year if other things had not pushed it back. Additionally, I have had to push other writing deadlines back.

I have also cut back in my involvement within the Twitter writing community. I used to post approximately 5 to 10 poems everyday, if not more. And I was also active in the community fighting to protect members of the writing community, instead I have taken a secondary role in most cases. The one case where that has not been so, has been in a situation where I have been targeted directly by a group of harassers because I spoke out in defense of someone who was being tried in the court of public opinion for something that should never have been a general flame war.

My primary involvement now, within the community is in the recognition of a writer everyday by shout-out and a writing prompt every week by shout out to draw attention to others in the community because they deserve that attention and because with all the followers I have I should be doing something to let them know that there are a lot of other people out there who are worth taking a look at.

I have not been derelict in any duty offline. I have, in fact severely been absent in my duty to the online community to respond to offline demands.

It is not because I care less for the online community. It is because I have had to take care of my primary responsibilities.

Please be aware of that, before you make any accusations of dereliction of duty.

(c) Tortured Cyclone 2016

Look Deeper...

This discontinuity,
the demarcation
of "real world"
and Internet,
the insidious persistence
of the damning idea
that the non-physical
is less significant
due to the absence
of the tangible.
Look deeper...

For our reality
is defined
by our perceptions,
ultimately,
the product
of neural stimuli,
perceiving the shadows
on the walls
of a Socratean cavern,
with no basis
or proof
of the accuracy
of our perceptions?
Look deeper...

We create "reality"
out of the stuff
of our perceptions,
not knowing,
but firmly believing
the shadows
are real.
The digital realm
casts shadows, too.
Look deeper...

What if the shadows
we perceive
are our own?
Myriad reflections
and eclipsing occlusions
of the light
of consciousness?
Look deeper...

And what if
what we call
our consciousness
is merely a shard
of the fractured psyche
of an infinite universe?
The nightmare tormenting
a mad Creator?
Look deeper...

Then all are
interconnected,
distinctions
of offline/online,
Brexit/EU,
Trump or Clinton,
culture, creed, race,
gender identity,
sexual orientation
do not matter,
what affects one
has fractal ripples
that touch all.
Look deeper...

Perhaps all this
is only obfuscation,
discussion of matters
that don't matter
at all...
But the only way
you can ever discover
the truth or falsehood
of my words
is to look,
deeper.

(c) Tortured Cyclone 2016

Who Am I?

I am not a good man.

There is no virtue in me that is anything but accidental - a mishap of incidental proportions. My flaws are myriad and manifest, and the weight of my sins make the earth groan beneath me. If I say I do good, there is no truth in me, because doing good is counter to my deepest self.

What right do I have to say I am virtuous, when all I do is driven by ego and self-interest? When forced into self-reflection, it is all I can do to not vomit in disgust at my paltry efforts at virtuousness. Naught I do, but it comes to ill and harm.

I cry to the heavens - where is the justice that I have health, when better people do not? Why should I have prosperity when worthy folk go without? Why do I possess these gifts of understanding, of artistry, of wit, but have naught of worth to create thereby?

After all, what am I but another fallen soul?