perception – radical druid

Once Upon a Time

Published on April 7, 2026

That once upon a time that never comes:
a world still yet to come that stays unborn,
its waking breath caught up in too young lungs,
not more than just a sigh of sad could be’s.

What would you have the world do unto you,
to pique your interest and keep you engaged?
Is not a chance to breathe the air enough?
Is there still more you think that you deserve?

If words could become wishes, after all,
what good if they are never spoken out?
And further, how much can they really change
a world that grows more deafened by the day?

That once upon a time we think is past:
what if it is some once and future time,
just waiting for us all to rise and shine
and simply take initiative, for once?

What would you want the world to give you next?
It’s not like you’ve exhausted every choice
or followed every starting point to ground.
it may be that the fault is in our stars.

If you believe a thing is true, it is;
at least, until some proof shows otherwise.
But how much more convincing do you need?
You’ve been awake for hours now today.

07 APR 2026

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The Last Present

Published on November 15, 2025

There is no time like the Present;
that’s what all the pundits say.
They’ll be saying it next season.
It’s the one that got away.

There is no time but the present;
that just now and yesterday,
the coming nexts or maybe soons
that occupy and stay.

Time is, just as a construct,
one more useful set of bars.
The less that you can see them,
the more watchful are your guards.

It’s the ones you don’t see coming:
that’s what gets you in the end.
There’s that one defining moment,
when we either break or bend.

And at the time it seems like
even time has had enough.
When things are tough all over,
time is all you have to bluff.

There’s no time like the present.
It’s like that in a sense.
Forget what you think you may know,
that life experience,

And wander down the hall with me
to some new secret room
where we can have time to ourselves,
until sometime in June.

15 NOV 2025

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Time The Changeling

Published on November 6, 2025

What has been need not always be what is.

There is a sense of time that must erase the world that is what was and built the now.

Against such force, what armed and booted thugs can stand and keep their sense of distance from the truth?

What is and always seems to be the stone against which endless, mindless flint is drawn?

The world may still endure the flames and from the morning’s ashes rise a phoenix.

What will be must evolve from what it is.

There is no secret alchemy of fire to draw out from a well of empty space the light that has no heritage of dark.

06 NOV 2025

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We Like To Think

Published on August 15, 2025

We like to think the truth is complicated,
that life is how it is because it’s hard
to figure it all out while it is happening
and comes at you, rapid fire, non-stop.

We like to think our big brains are so useful,
that the solutions we come up with are so wise.
After all, we spend so much time thinking.
There must be something worthwhile in it.

We like to think we don’t like drama,
that life is better when we keep it real.
But that’s too simple, really, to be right.
If it were just that, wouldn’t everyone do it?

We like to think, because our minds invent
an endless stream of objections and excuses
designed to convince us we don’t know anything.
If we could figure it out, we would. Right?

We like to think the world is complicated.
But that’s because it’s follow-through that’s hard.
If life were simply our imagination,
we’d never need to fix another thing.

We like to think the truth should be more clever
than simple minds like ours can figure out.
But we don’t need more gurus, saints, or teachers.
It’s not that hard to be a better person.

15 AUG 2025

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Time Enough

Published on August 7, 2025

If there is time enough for this and that,
for endless hours to deconstruct ennui
and countless minutes lost in might have been,
then surely there is room for something more.

The clock’s always correct just once a day.
It never moves or gives itself away,
but blithely watches on as we digress,
or find another way to sit and spin.

But we are no mere aspic holding on
to minuscule and tasteless bits of life.
Our grip can only wrestle with our grasp,
and neither proves adhesive in the end.

What else would you have time enough to try?
The busyness of spectacle consumes
so much of what could be but never is,
and leaves us much more lonely than alone.

If there is time to waste, why make much more?
There isn’t any race left us to run.
We hear eternal echoes but have learned to hate our ears.
There’s always time enough to try again.

06 Aug 2025

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Outside the Cage: Sicilian quintet

Published on June 18, 2025

Physical confinement has its source
in some external entity that binds.
It is imposed by outside will, of course.
But slavery is not just of that kind;
your mind’s created prisons reinforce

the limitations you are taught to see,
the walls that form the edges of the box
in which you play out your brief history.
It has no doors or windows, and no locks,
but keeps what is outside a mystery.

It takes so little to remove the lid,
but once you’ve seen outside, your goose cooked.
You cannot take it back, and if you did,
there’s no way to describe what in one look
destroys all that you learned when still a kid.

Your chains you forge in life are your own brand.
The steel in them is alloyed from your acts.
There is no crushing heel or helping hand,
no unseen other twisting simple facts.
You are the ship, the ocean, and the land.

Inside the cage you build to hold you in,
there is just one sure way to be set free:
forget all that you know. Once you begin
to let that go, your eyes, now dull, will see,
and recognize exactly where you’ve been.

18 Jun 2025

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What Else: choka

Published on April 30, 2025

What else can I say?
The world is what we make it,
or maybe it’s not.
The little splashes we make
barely change the water’s calm.

What else can we do?
From nothing, everything comes
and then it is gone.
How we choose to measure time
makes little difference to it.

What else could there be?
Nothing exists forever;
and how would we know?
We see just the horizon;
life doesn’t stop at our eye.

30 Apr 2025

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Tag: perception

Once Upon a Time

The Last Present

Time The Changeling

We Like To Think

Time Enough

Outside the Cage: Sicilian quintet

What Else: choka