Labyrinth Project Creators Journal - Jerry Randolph Gilmer

Poet: Jerry Randolph Gilmer
New Orleans, Louisiana USA



08/22/19

LYRICS

I woke in the middle of a string of lyrics.

Nattering on and on.

Simplistic imagery describing the architecture of troublesome experiences.

I had to write them down.

Tracking them by the circles they were racing around me.

Vainly attempting to pin them in place.

Practicing the last impossibility: The uncensored, not reflected upon intact retelling of a Dream.

You know Precisely what I mean.

In this, possibly Only this, does all sentience collide.

We've all been driven to frustration by the idiosyncratic recounting of a Dream.

We've, each of us, stood on either side of this the most inaccurate, and therefore infuriating attempt at communication.

Because we Want to communicate it.

It Is important.

It Is a message.

It is most decidedly not Just a Dream.

Artists are our pinprick glimpse of this.

At best a keyhole view.

But people fear this.

"Lest Ye Be Vexed."

What a stupid fucking warning.

Life is vexing.

I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm doing when I'm awake.

When I sleep?

When I sleep Everything is compelled to follow my whims.

And my whims are legion.

It's at the crossroads where it all goes to Hell.

And not the groovy, chaotic Heironymous Bosch version.

Not even the vaguely frustrating order implied by Dante.

No.

It's the path leading out of wondering at it into floundering about in it.

Those whisper thin threads of symphonic sanity into the iron bars of inanity.

I spend a great deal of time pretending I can't find my passport.

Stalling.

So as to covertly scribble down all I can.

The sly shorthand of a poet on the move.

And more often than not I cock it up.

Witness:

FINGER PAINT

Escaped escaping now I'm free.

I'll no longer capture me.

Bolted doors that locked me in.

Shatter at the slightest grin.

Captive genius grown too soft.

Laughing Madman waved him off.

Racing round the track again.

Running ends where it begins.

End it well keep it abrupt.

Holding on is so fucked up.

Hope escapes it's pack of lies.

I am Madman powerful wise.

Once they locked away my rage.

Fools forgot to pin the cage.

Walls were built to hold me in.

Maddening me made friends with wind.

Off I went and circled back.

Not to fight but to attack.

Preachers teaching not to play.

Play at sin at end of day.

From a pulpit love is tossed.

Mind you wash off all the lost.

Devinely grind infinity.

Serve it with hypocrisy.

What crazy fails to understand.

I'm the son of Maddened Man.

Jericho and tumble down.

Babble at the awkward sound.

If you catch me I'll behave.

But to catch you'll need a grave.

Rules unmade they fuel new gods.

My Mischief likes to play the odds.

No one knows why ask at all?

That heavy shit will likely fall.

Make up answers feed the flock.

Waste up words to race the clock.

Enjoy all your pain and Death.

Leave behind all extra breath. 

You run off and be a saint.

I prefer to finger paint.

08/09/19

STICK PINS

Why do these things bother with me? 

These notions.

It’s not as if I ever intended to gather their attention.

I rather enjoy being the shadow in a room. 

I can, do, and have enjoyed interacting with others, but always with my hand on the “eject” button. With very few exceptions, I’ve not had any sort of interaction, social, ephemeral, or otherwise that I could not immolate at whim.

I can be scary like that.

Not interesting scary. 

I'm interesting in the "Hell were you Thinking?!" way at best.

Not even sort of acceptable scary. 

Like a vampire.

Or a member of the clergy.

No, I'm just flat out frightening when I feel the urge. 

I’ve yet to meet a person I cannot unnerve.

This is not a thing I pride myself on. 

Quite the opposite at times. 

It simply is. 

I can also be entertaining, gregarious, and charming. 

Up, and to a point. 

Once I hit said point I swiftly, even surgically excuse myself. It’s not that I’m entirely anti-social, I just genuinely find people exhausting.

Not bewildering, mind.

I'm clever as fuck.

I figured That riddle before I puzzled out walking.

As for the aforementioned “notions”... That’s a different animal entirely. I mean that more literally than you might suspect. I’ve been writing for years. I really couldn’t tell you why, except to say that I must. The damnable words, and their ludicrous urges won’t leave me be. 

Simple as that.

But their timing?

Questionable.

The most significant of life events can be bludgeoning me about the head and shoulders screaming for a reaction, any reaction, and I might as well be made of alabaster. Yet in that very same moment I’ll find myself transfixed by a fleck of pollen sitting on a window sill. In that moment, that torrential downpour of reality, I am quietly, busily scripting away about pollen. 

Poets are...?

I have come to understand this is abnormal. (Epileptic, likely Asperger's, that kinda whatnot...)Just as I have come to understand that categorizing anything as “abnormal” is pointless. Or, more succinctly: Just because I know I’m crazy doesn’t mean I give a damn about it. If others find labeling a comfort, who am I to cast aspersions? I’m only in charge of me, and as I’m dismal at it, I really don’t pay much attention to the perceived inadequacies of others. I’ll note them. But mostly in a scientific manner. Much like an entomologist notes the actions of an anthill.

Only with less stick pins.

And now for something likely irrelevant:

MAP TO ME

Something's coming.

And it's bothering me.

It's likely less than nothing.

But I was taught to feel before I see.

Winds are changing.

Whispering things.

Words hesitant, and hanging.

I hear untouched bells begin to ring.

Tamed, yet irreverent

Tomorrow counts as change.

Burns are irrelevant.

Just to try seems strange.

Can you feel rain?

Of course you can.

Yet, you weep out pain.

I catch it if I can.

What would you say

If given the time

To define today,

And not lose your mind?

What could you see

If gifted the time?

Would you feel free

Were you not blind?

I'm bound to my limitless limitations.

Floating just beside the sea.

I'm found lost in my contemplations.

I've no map to me.

Something's ending.

And it's caressing me.

It's unlikely my beginning

Was meant for more than only me.

Ears are ringing.

Presaging things.

Hurt imminent, damaging.

My fear proposes with crystalline rings.

Named, strange covenant.

Yesterday's echoed rains.

Time is an element. 

That's why blood stains.

Can you taste fame?

Run if you can.

You've no need for pain.

I'll hide you if I can.

What would you pay

If you had the dime

To confine today,

And keep your quite mind?

Who could you be

If forgiven crime?

Would you steal me?

Are you that kind?

I sound out my limitless limitations.

Singing beneath the sea.

I'm unwritten by my notations.

I've no map to me.

07/26/19

PRYING MADLY AT MY TOY BOX'S LOCK

I find myself rummaging through my locked box of toys.

Then I realize I've yet to find the key.

Typical.

And typically I'm hardly shocked by my own inanity.

I'm just playing with my toy box.

As one does?

Well...

As I do, I suppose

. 

It's somewhere in the nearly half way past the middle of the game that I realize I'm "meant" to be working.

Writing.

Whatever it is I think I'm doing.

And then, sometimes, rarely, because I'm Also "meant" to be "adulting" (the Fuck does That mean anyway? Ridiculous word...) I try to force the lock on my toy box. 

Which is also the Worst way to go about writing.

For me, at least.

But I'm crazy.

Grain of salt that.

I insist.

Because I cannot Force the writing.

The writing is perfectly capable of backhanding me at its leisure.

Today for example.

Just started a movie, nibbling on a cookie, and sick as Hell.

Day four of this?

I don't know.

It's Not Tuesday.

That I'm certain of...?

So there I sit, me with my movie, my cookie, and absolutely convinced I needed to be deeply involved with feeling sorry for myself.

Prying madly at my toy box's lock...

Then, somewhere in the opening credits...

I had to pause the film, stop pitying myself, Very reluctantly set down my cookie, and do whatever This is "meant" to be.

MOLECULES OF ME

It's endless little things,

Willingly melding seamlessly.

Notes in the song I sing.

Flying in, and out

Between these breaths I doubt.

Molecules of me.

Even the largest beings.

The ones sent to alter me?

Though they mutter deathly things,

Like ghosts often shout;

They wail of losses I know all about.

Stained reflections that I've ever seen.

Only when alone...

Locked in my tomb like home?

Helplessly locked in stone?

Am I ever free to be.

So why?

Why peer about?

Why wail, cry?

Why waste precious time creeping among the seconds I've left to be alone with me?

It's almost time.

Goodbye. And silent Dreams.

That clock now hesitant for one timeless second.

It is too fearful of stopping me.

Life's a pausing clock made for out waiting eternity.

A playful, impatient game.

Laughingly ticking seamlessly.

Notes in the song I sing.

Flying all about

Breathing my breath I shout.

Molecules of me.

07/16/19

THICK WITH GLITTER

Sometimes I'm amazed...

Scratch that.

I'm Often amazed at just what little inconsequential thing catches my beat.

Idiosyncratic synchronicities that latch onto whatever bit of me that falls over from dehydration before it'll willingly stop writing.

The fact of the matter is that it's seldom anything that I'd assume Should matter.

The small inconsistencies are endlessly bugging the crap out of me.

Like?

Well...why is it that I find the length of a neck more tantalizing than the whole of a gorgeous body?

Or?

Do all the critters running around trying to get laid in the Southern heat not realize that their plaintive screams of "Somebody just get over here and FUCk me already!!" are interpreted by most people as the "Romantic ambient sounds of Summer", or some such nonsense?

Would they give a damn if they did?

I'm no zoologist, but I'm fairly certain we're the only critters that blush over our urges.

It's as if we were breathed into existence for the sole purpose of complicating it.

Matters of Simplicity like to complicate me.

Larger, life altering, some would infer "real" moments have to struggle to gather my attention.

But that by no means implies they don't. 

I just tend to get to it in a round about manner.

I suspect it has some root wedged in my severely distorted attention span.

I wander in and out of life changing events as if I'm looking for where I set down my coat.

Should someone have a random, stray speck of glitter on their forearm?

I'm transfixed.

Could be the epilepsy.

I even tested super high into the Asperger's thing. 

The test.

But that's all doctor babble.

I've met doctors.

I've Trained doctors.

Doctors are, in my humble opinion, really, really intelligent morons.

But that's a me thing.

When my Father was killed? A few months later getting my Mother through breast cancer successfully only to lose Her shortly after to what amounted to a broken heart?

I didn't write Anything.

For at least a year.

Then it was a year after I began again before I even touched all That.

Same thing when my body started failing.

Seizures, suddenly wheelchair guy, that stuff.

Just wrote about glitter.

Fell in, and out of love a few times.

Two pretty big falls.

One near biblical plummet.

Glitter.

I suppose I just have to ramp up to "real".

So here I recline. 

Currently thick in the process of evicting my housemate.

Various, very valid, very real reasons.

Thick with glitter.

Could be I require the minutiae of the mosaic to muddle through the momentous moments.

Stupid. 

But kinda fun to say. so...

Could be I'm a coward.

Maybe neither, either, or both.

Fuck if I know.

I just write here.

Here. Have a thing:

COMFORT ME

Underwhelming.

That's what I see.

As deep as I dive.

Whatever I breathe.

Escaping within

Lacks what I need.

Imbibing a lie

Is feeding this seed.

And it hurts!

Every inhalation

Begins dying at birth.

Belying exhalation.

Babbling about "just breathe".

Let's let it all whisper out.

That bullshit make believe 

Simply amplifies my doubt.

If you refuse to see;

Ignore falling sky?

It seems to me I'm free

To not ponder why.

Indefensible indifference.

Kick back.

Lounge in me.

Reprehensible intransigence. 

I'm back.

Comfort me.

The Hell's the point?

Untwist that for me.

Could be this joint

Knows more than thee.

Plot's getting thin.

Ink starts to bleed.

Haul ass to die

Before I concede?

And it hurts!

Every inhalation

Begins dying at birth.

Belying exhalation.

Babbling about "just breathe".

Let's let it all whisper out.

That bullshit make believe 

Simply amplifies my doubt.

If this is meant to be.

If they've cast the die.

It seems to me I'm free

To queue up, and fly.

Indefensible indifference.

Kick back.

Laugh with me.

Reprehensible intransigence. 

Stay slack.

Comfort me.

07/06/19

PROCESSING

I am meant to have a process.
A structure, of sorts, to get me from the top of a thought to the bottom.
Hopefully intact.
I don't know. 
Do I?
Explain myself?
Um...sure?

I wake up. Almost always sometime after I've fallen asleep.
Timing doesn't really seem to apply.
15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 10 hours.
The sun can do what it wants.
As long as it stays well away from whatever nest I've ended up in.
I think I'm cathemeral. 
Like a lemur.
I wake when I'm made to, so I can get my what not done.
Writing.
My whatnot is writing.
Not all grown up writing.
I'm a Poet. 
After a fashion. 
A lyricist, really. 
Although I do, from time to time, get struck with an unleavened bolt of whatever the hell, and scribble out little stories. 
Real quick like before they scamper off where someone with talent can five course meal them.
I'm at best the Amuse-bouche of writing.
Maybe the aperitif.
Both?
Either.
Utterly unimportant, but useful for justifying the expense.

At least that's how I see it.
But it's maybe best to not go by me. I'm more than a little detached.
I had an ongoing, circuitous, often maddening, yet always entertaining back and forth with my most "X" of exes about whether or not someone could Know they were eccentric. 
I always lost.
Unless I didn't. 
It tended to depend on how much time we had until the next social engagement. 
Mustn't fuck with our public.

I kinda sorta "won" in the end.
On account of me losing my mind. 
It's true. 
I have a Doctor's note.
He lost his too, so crowns all around.

Writing.
I'm meant to write about writing.
I'd really rather not.
It makes one inexplicably honest, does the writing about writing.
I'll inevitably go deliriously off-book, intent upon chasing whatever rabbit caught my eye.
I have many rabbits.
My name should've been Warren.
Cause rabbits live in warrens?
It's a joke.
It's a terrible joke, but I'm a Poet, not a comic, so I'm perfectly fine with my bad rabbit joke.
Cozy even.

But the process.
I find something.
Then I fiddle with it.
I'm likely to dive into my tragedies. 
Always good for poetry.
Love works too.
Or it doesn't, which is kinda the whole point.
I'm unlikely to be 100% honest.
I'm being 100% honest about that.
We shall see, I suppose.
I'll see when you see.
Here! An unhelpful hint:
I seldom know what I'm writing about.
Truly.
I get backhanded by a word, or phrase, or whatever, and then I write, and write, and write.
To the exclusion of everything else.
Then?
Then I read what I wrote.
I mean, I feel somewhat justified. It's not as if I'm taking liberties. I may not know the why of a thing, but I sling the ink, so yeah, I peek at it.
That's usually when I know what it is I was writing about.
At the end.
Not always, but usually.
Okay.
I think I'm done.
I'll maybe scribble more later.
Maybe not.
Fuck if I know, I just write here.
Bye.

Oh! Here. Have a poem


MY MIND

I misplaced my mind again.

Wasn't really worth the time.

It tended to fuck with my sin.

I fly better without my mind.

When I spy myself a shy horizon

I tend to dash, and splash right in.

I find they need a good surprising

Otherwise they get too thin.

May come the day I settle down.

Buy up all the castles I can find.

Till then I'll bother my slice of ground.

Maybe even paint a "not yet" sign.

I must lace my mind again.

Can't rightly recall last time.

It's mended so I owe it sin.

I Find flying really suits my mind.