Sugar

Sugar
I don't particularly like sugar
It's not that it doesn't taste good
Because lord knows that it does
But people forget something
Sugar and dopamine aren't the same thing
I know it tastes good
But where's the feeling good?
People eat sugar when they're happy
Sugar when they're sad
When they're down
When they're up
It's like tiny wings
And your thumb
Thumb for up
Thumb for down
Thumb even when your joint
Hurts
All you want is the streak
Enough of the graceful lows
And all the sudden you're flying sugar
Highly addictive - an obsession
The sugar obsession 
Is because it makes them feel
Sugar makes you feel
And I can't feel
So why
Would I want to eat that sugar
That's going to make me 
feel ill
Feel gross and glutinous and 
Globbering and gahhhh!!!
So...what's my sugar?
Everyone needs sugar
Without it you're confused
You can't think
Can't walk
Can't talk
Things stop. Making sense
My sugar is the real sweet stuff
You could call it slightly
Cannibalistic
Or you could call it
Vampiric
Or you could call it
The obvvvviously better of
The two options for
The first of four on
The Meyers Briggs
They're really the same
Your dopamine just happens to come from
Consuming something that's abundant 
7 billion times over
The other beings blessed (?) 
With walking around this 
Giant, giant bakery
Replete with the pastry chefs in white hats
Glazed, sugared bread lining white shelves
With clear glass coverings to block the
Urge we all have
To stick out our hands
Grab the sweets
Oh, they taste so damned good
So see
I get my sugar in a secondary way
Most people eat sugar
I eat people
And when they're not around
I get hungry
But the problem is that now I have a diet
And nothing will satiate it
Except for the 
Dopaminergic human
Who rings the bell when she walks into the 
Bakery. Who smells the sugary air
Whose pupils dilate
Who's overwhelmed by the choices
Who experiences
Who feels
Something maybe like elation
That's my sugar
And now I'm trying to 
Cook for myself
And it's not working

Heed the dragon

Heed the dragon
Although we believe sanity’s surface
To be smooth

With close reflection we see
A different story, winding its way like a tail

We see rough, rigid notches
Fiercely arpeggiated scales 

We indirectly peer at a world’s worth of light
Shining over shoulders

With a brilliant light-stepped dance
Transposing our past to present

History, a city of dark radiance:
All its veracity preserved

With a listen, we hear a low beat
Welling slowly with deep-seated power

Our bones can’t help but bitterly run
Back and forth with the tumbling tones

Boulders audibly bash each other
Low sounds ring, heard in the belly

A great life jaw grinds open
The sharpness of teeth makes its point

We are inescapably bound in the sound
But we drip under rapture’s chains, too

We come to face fire-breathing sanity.

When, in my cup of tea, I saw love

When, in my cup of tea, I saw love
The tea steams,
and it leaves a ring
of condensation
denoting with transience its firm, sizzling
Life on the table.

The dark, earthy fragrance
wafts high.
Electrifying,
or so, still alone, it hopes.

A battery, an engine
Its fuel begs to combust.
Begs to reach out and embrace,
And excite,
And uplift
both inertial conveyors of life,
vessel and axon alike.

The tea itself, however:
It is embittered.
It is overwhelmed.
And with perhaps greater fervor than it wishes to excite,
it wishes to be
at once excited and swirled and dulled
and lightened and written with white ink
into the book of life.

My tea wants a pour of milk,
and so I oblige.

Have you ever had the
Pleasure & Privilege
Of watching that white love enter the crystalline walls of a dark tea?

I tilt my hand and
pour white ink to life’s volumetric tune.
I almost hear the synesthetic hum.
Hmmm, the tea sighs.
I look on in awe.

At first, nothing.
Then, a hint of motion.
A fractal’d cloudfront climbs the walls
with swirls for fingers, pillows for toes.

The clouds of clarity
Make all of the sense, and none of it either.
The smell subtly changes
as they now hold molecular hands,
in a union opaque to the outside,
but so inevitable from within.

And now I sip my tea, 
with an understanding of what grace
May be wrought by
the lovely fusion of my tea with milk.

What is a Metaphor?

What is a Metaphor
Imagine, briefly:

A set of parallel bars.

Where one goes, the other follows.
Where one terminates, so too does the other.

It takes an existential gymnast to balance
with just two hands and one bar.

It takes but a human to balance
with bars in parallel.

Perhaps a little strength is required,
but that’s a life-requisite anyways.

So, to address the titular motivation:
What is a Metaphor?

A metaphor
Gives balance

Where, with but one understanding,
we might fall hard to the floor.