In Tao I Trust

Poetry by Scott Thomas Outlar Street Art by Starhead boy

In the Graveyard

There is no life

left

in the last lung

on earth –

the trees are dead,

the oxygen is gone,

the final breath

is a thing

of the past.

And the worst part

of it all

is that I

can’t seem

to get high tonight.

My blood is too thick

for the alcohol –

it swallows it up.

Red or white wine,

it makes no difference.

It is all

a trick

of the lights,

a subtle

sleight of hand,

trying to fool me

into feeling good –

but I won’t let it,

because the world

is dying

all around me,

so who am I

to dance?

It All Ends the Same Way 

 

A broken wing –

A hovering angel –

A crumbling city on the hill–

A nuclear holocaust –

An extinction –

A primordial ooze –

A cycle turning –

A season changing –

A solar flare –

An ice age –

A rise of consciousness –

A fall in the garden –

A snake bite –

A venomous temptation –

A worm in the apple’s core –

A plague –

A pestilence –

A virus –

A salted earth –

A Renaissance –

A Revolution –

A Phoenix on fire –

An eagle –

A coin with two sides –

A scam –

A ruse –

A rube –

A mark –

A herd of sheep –

A blackness –

A whitewash –

A womb –

A grave –

In Tao I Trust 

I’m not for it

or against it –

I am it.

I’m not with it

or away from it –

I am.

 

It is not

good or bad,

right or wrong,

black or white,

hot or cold,

day or night –

it is, it was,

it always will be.

 

It is not fire,

it is a Phoenix.

It is not ash,

it is a rise.

It is not death,

it is a womb.

It is not gone,

it is coming back.

 

Pull Up a Seat

Blackness fell over the world,

one disappearing ray of light at a time –

an agonizingly torturous event to witness

for most of those who were

still alive and awake at the time to see the

strange cosmic ritual in all its awesomeness

and terror.

As each section of the sky went dark,

it became strangely opaque and glasslike

before shattering into infinite pieces

and crumbling into the ocean depths,

down to meet the denizens of Atlantis –

another fallen epoch being laid to rest.

Some people ran from the oncoming death,

thinking they could find salvation

from the Apocalyptic Revelation at hand,

but this was no simple tornado

that could be avoided or hidden from

in the basement or the bathtub.

This was heaven on earth

unleashing a hellish fury.

This was an alpha and omega,

tearing apart the old, crashing chaos

on every scene, and preparing the world

for the next stage of ordained, ordered evolution.

It was, of course, written in the stars all along.

Those who understood the necessity

of the madness playing out did not cry,

they did not pray to the gods of old,

they did not allow fear into their hearts –

they simply remained stoic in their place,

popped one last bag of corn,

and took a front row seat

for the blockbuster hit to end all hits.

Scott Thomas Outlar survived both the primordial fire and the cataclysmic flood – now he dances in celebration. Otherwise, he lives a simple life, spending his time reading, researching, taking meditative walks, gazing at stars, laughing at life’s existential nature, flowing and fluxing with the River Tao, and writing prose-fusion poetry dedicated to the Phoenix Generation. His work has appeared recently in venues such as Underground Books, Dead Snakes, Dissident Voice, Black Mirror Magazine, Visceral Uterus, Napalm and Novocain, and Record. Scott can be reached at 17numa@gmail.com.