Heart & Soul (day 1779)

When I crawled to the edge of a forever span
I got so close to a miracle
I laid my nose right down to the stone
And breathed in the dirt that was my heart and soul

When I reached so high from the up most top
My mind was scorching in an unbent sky
With rainbows and eagles far below
I was a full thought in a twinkling eye

When I caused each leaf to rock and sway
From an ebb and flow in my very glow
I sent my prana to behold the world
To return double-fold, with such secrets that’d never been told.

Golden trees along the PNW coastline of Vancouver Island, Canada

Ode to the Soil (day 1755)

Sweet dirt, my soil;
Great bounty of life.
Breathing and heaving and turning delight.
You break down my blossoms
And decompose your own waste
To help nurture all life
Balanced, and full of bugs and worms.
Your kindness is forgiving,
Your consistency is staggering,
Your patience is humbling,
Your vitality encouraging.
Even your air is enlivening –
Quite literally in fact.
And if until forever I had
Betwixt my fingernails and toes
Your rich presence to look at
Your heart in my hand,
I’d forever be full
Of everything I’d ever need
Until the day at last did come
For me to join thee, forever free.

image of dirt, grass, a section of spine bone, and dandilion

Memory (day 1596)

Your heart rings on the bars of my faint memory
Tingling windows that never seem to open right
While lights flicker from unknown sources
As if silent messengers in night’s sky.

I touch my lips and think about a sensation
Once so familiar to my heart that it left an ocre mark
And scalded the new moon twice since
Leaving rays of blood light shifting my reminiscence.

I cannot wait here long, for leaves follow my mind
Upon a downward spiral to freshly rooted dirt
Awaiting new seeds of our ancient memory
And lifting lines that varicose their way back to my heart.

Memory by Ned Tobin

Crispy Wallows (day 1593)

Crispy wallows and snakes following ancient trails down spirals, leading only to a perfectly spherical, blood-moon-packed dirt bubble where one thousand and one perpendicular lines scarred concave smoothness, remarkably resembling an eerie odessical scene of Labyrinth, David Lynch infused simplicity and snakes. With an omnipresent light leaving no shadows, even in such depths, that echoed with every heartbeat snaking it’s way downward, downward, downward until the downward was no longer downward but stuck in a simple sphere, simply circled as if snakes and ladders were suddenly trapped in an empty crystal ball bubbling with misunderstood and toppled (read:shook) reason that inhabitants were too impatient to digest, leaving perpendicular marks in frightened terror as retraced steps traced their snaking along ancient trails back into the under-root of an atmospheric tragedy they had become familiar with and called home.

Rusty (day 1546)

I put into words the last drops of sunlight
That left my supine soul wandering alone
Face up on an old two-track dirt road
By a rusty water reservoir
Near the outskirts of town.
For me, I couldn’t understand the capacity
Of one single ray of sunshine
That drifted on from that barren landscape
Of my calmly coiled fingers.
I drew a large circle encircling my two nipples
Nearly touching my navel
– Which had the mark of an ancient blood line –
In order to continue calculating
My numbing heartbeat’s instinct
That would lead me from this enclosing darkness
Into a fiery nether region
I had witnessed during a tremor.

Rusty by Ned Tobin

Unmanned Headlights (day 1187)

Tunnel down this deep dark hole
With an un-handled shovel;
Unmanned I’m blinking headlights.

I lost mine up to my knees;
Life and dirt is blowin me.
Change is seasons we cannot see.

Two dollar bills and my coffee’s cold.
Dusty love-note’s fading mind,
It’s a dusty love-note’s dying time.

I’ve got a spotlight memory,
Driven by a crazy dream.
Unmanned headlights flickering.

Transition From Hurt to Love, and then Back Again (day 1092)

..And there were golden letters.
[Can I finally tell you?]
Like streams lapping mossy brooks,
To which my gloss rolled over.
In spite my anarchy,
My self propulsion…
Towards your grace.
I left slipping,
Jumping to and fro
Unto my broken jaw,
Lifelessly turning me over
Into airbrushed aluminum oxide.
Geometrically tracing
My bloodless sorrow
Into triangles
[Non-conducive triangles]
That weaved my sorrow
Into perfect pitches
[Acute pitches]
Hallowing my desire
Into five unspoken pledges,
Five needle point succulents
Layering my borders
Like foggy rolling alcoves
Set deep amongst
Cool summer’s afternoon
Wheeping willow rushes
– faint memories about this seascape –
But my layered angles sheltered me
From petty hearts that soothed me
To make my sleepless nights
Ever lonely, evermore.
A riddle I can’t play just so.
But lighting candles
That broke into my bedroom
And watched my brow quiver
As morning wretched it’s yawning
About the dusty trails,
I traced an even pathway
In triangles, forever faster
Until my morning had at last come
Filled with ancient rhythm.
Eyes so better clearer
Than one thousand lenses focused
On a heart so muddy [clearer].
I held onto my breath
Until anxious had subsided,
For I could not remember
What words had come before it.
And in such built excitement
A heart did flutter on,
Lost but not forgotten
Into books of golden letters
– Bound with broken arrows –
That felt so narrow holding
Pieces of leather’d sorrow
[Remember bloodless triangles]
That wept a stainless trail
From deep within desperation
Into worn hands of a savior
Who whittled out a triangle
To feed alotted perscriptions
With ever nimble fingers
Soaked in rosé water
And dried with ancient scrolls
Written in a forgotten language
That told of a lost soul
Who pledged a life to quill
Written in golden letters
And tied with broken arrows.
Words he’d lost to scrolls.
A heart he’d bled for food scraps
To feed his lifeless voodoo doll
Filled with needled pin holes
And scarred with a single triangle
Between worn out eye holes.
And written just below it
In tiny golden letters
Was ‘dia de la muerte’,
And the eyes all turned to sun
That grasped their holy language,
Blinding them to forgiveness
In smokeless trans-am tires
With a golden eagle flying.
This was not the end of stardust,
Not a burning pledge for Satan,
Not midnight’s showdown in dusty boots.
This was the last redemption hour,
A stained wedding gown and laughter.
And two boots made of leather
Tied tight with broken arrows,
Tracing triangles in the dirt
At gun points scary tremor.
Written neatly in a book
In perfect golden letters
Signed only with a triangle.