america spoke with forked tongue
differences lying agitated in the shadows between
closets filling back up with their dangerous secrets
the celebrations are almost over
people are slipping back into sleep
tracking is back on track
the war continues strategically masked well
and the whole world is winding down again

The way is one of subtle change. It is a struggle to see clear. A silent mind can feel its way thru the turmoil of a day. Masked people walking everywhere. No definite evidence supports this way or another. The middle way sometimes has difficulty to exist.
The day was slow when the presence against the calm appeared. You could feel the tension, the stress, the compliance forming. There were those that were convinced with a main street media persuasion. There were those that were not. There were those that attempted to be open to the many possibilities that arose, investigated alternatives. Many got caught polarized by the magnetic pull of their own desires/beliefs. There were those that didn’t give a damn. There were the many that just follow the many. The masked were winning in the short run but truth moves slow in the sludge of the road. The war of the post modern man is an illusion and extremely real but no one wins. Possibly we’re all being played, set up one against the other, it’s anybody’s guess. Ununited we fall. No one to trust.

A crow walks by the table outside the cafe looking for a treat. Pretty dogs walk their masters along the boulevard. A pleasant woman smiles from behind her mask to a passing stranger. The day is grey. Winter is coming. The beauty surrounding is slipping under the skin. Another moment, for the moment, is moving free. There is no end in sight.

images and writing by patrick wey

Many years have torn and twisted thru city streets since i saw you here tearing down Juarez in a Mexico City paragraph. You were nothing more than a kid, a young man on the loose in a foreign land with dreams laying across the heavens like leaves floating around some boulevard tar. Times have changed, times have gone tight like night on a slim script. When i was young and you were me like some sort of character from a dylan rhyme, half hidden behind a loose freedom and scorns of possibilities dimming the road with tricks. I hid behind you without knowing what i was getting into; the road never lets all its iron claws out at once. There are dead ends down every street and paths way out of control from every alleyway. You took as many as you could, lived life deep into the rut of it all, highs for the sake of it, lows taken as a gift for the ride. Millions of moments have passed this way while i waited. I knew you would arrive like a destiny written in the stars, in the earth, in the apache cells of this brain.

Here i sit, alone, alone again. I have always been alone, no matter how many wander across my path. I sit writing to you. I remember it all somewhere inside, somewhere inside i can see every move you’ve ever made. The days in the bush, on the streets, in the bars, in the sweats. It all is cataloged in the books of the mystery spread out, floating across the universe in segments of dreams like fate. They fall into minds everywhere, become more and less and move continuously for as far as forever can go, that’s just the way it is, nothing is for sure but it is forever, as far as forever goes.

Reflections of my life pass before me in mounts of turmoil and deceit from the very ones that caressed my wounds while i was asleep. In the corridors of deep hidden revenge executions of the horsemen were carried out for little rewards. The temptations from the crowds discovered me here sneaking my way back to love, such a long road that leads nowhere if you’re careless. Memories scatter before me with quick warmth turning cold. This is the day death strung its web out like a knife, a trap and i fell. My friends left me here to crawl beneath the tracks, to hide to escape alone and find my soul shattered by my own imagination and light came in slow but left me here worn and old and tender in the heart for a few last breaths then left again. I don’t know if i ever came back, death stole my mind, took my heart and left my spirit floating about somewhere in an ancient glimpse of nothingness…….

There was light flickering thru the swaying leaves, the street was dangling off the mountain hills like a snake and i was ready. There was moon light waiting on the crescent and the feeling of success was handy by the door. I walked out into the open air and thought, ‘yea, i can do this’.
My whole life flashed by in a few seconds, age had grabbed me by the edge of night and dreams left for the coast for another and left me dying slow alone without a memory to hang on to. I took a deep breath, scared with sunken eyes i screamed to the heavens below, ‘what the hell is going on’ and got up on my knees and cried for help to be true, real.

The day broke the silence and the moment held its position into the night. I got it right this time; love came tumbling down, sprinkled high energy all over me, the spirit of life tore my past to shreds and i was back on the track again. What a trail, terrible low valleys, trecherous mountain cliffs, non-ordinary realities twisting my mind from one end of the galaxy to the edges of the universe and then some. But i’m back in the saddle again, roaming the country side, slippin down the city side walks watching the masked men follow in line to the injection booth and the pretty dogs walking their owners for a shit. I got it all, sun spewing across my forehead and my black pants melting in the light, i couldn’t ask for more. Thanks god, thanks for the trip, thanks for the weird world you threw me into, thanks for my friends and thanks for my enemies too.
In the morning air i watch the birds flicker by, the humming birds in for a drink, the sounds of song all around and the green summer turning into amber autumn rust. I love the way the quiet settles in on the mind and how quick things can turn on a spec of time. There are moments i swear last forever, the soft sun melting my heart to the light. I love life this moment, this eternal moment, she owns me.

She moves in beauty with her love wrapped carefully within. Like a tender woman she touches your soul with her most intimate glance and you melt inside her wounds like a martyr.

In the dim city where people travel tight, little room for long-time and pressure on the skull to get it right. A young woman walks by inside a tee shirt with her philosophy spelled out across her chest like a scripture, ‘sleep less, dream more’; i’m thinking’s it’s backwards; too many dreams, too many worthless homes; a crow caws from the side-lines, hidden in the streets. 

The moka house cafe on cook st. Pretty girls stroll by, at least that is what i see but at another glance i see a whole lota people so deep-dreamin by they hardly notice what is developing within their skulls.

A little boy in a real big body revs and roars his harley as he speeds away, the pot-bellied-guys standing by with their coffees held loose like a beer, look at the kid in the street and boast about something to each other while bicycles quietly skim by down around the cafe, the hot spot this covid-afternoon.

I see the coffee attendant handing straws to clients but he won’t touch my travel mug, says it’s the law. I pursue it then stop, force him to pour my coffee from his handled paper cup to my thermos, which he at first refuses than i encourage him and he does. There is a lot of crazy rules unsupported by the by-law officers just yet, but they’re getting there. Soon we’ll be in order; but harleys will continue to agitate our numb nerve cells with their concealed muscle. It’s a beautiful sunny cool afternoon and the tattoos keep walking by like human bill-boards advertising messages somewhat too deep for this mind of mine that sits nicely disturbed behind these eyes wandering.

With her facebook smile hanging in the screens with her ripped jeans and tattooed cartoons and her pierced soul she glides thru hell like a heaven. From a new section of town, cafaid in the midst of the jungle i sit pondering stuff.

I realize i have been un-encouraged to write for a future when i am no longer here watching, looking. I, somewhere inside have assumptions, presumptions that we’re all going sooner than we’d like to believe, an apocalypse of sorts. I catch myself on this and begin a new chapter addressed to the ones not here just yet. No more threats of stabbing-echos from friends, enemies, aquintances and family. Not that they had much to do with words that find me but they’re around and that’s on me. I realize once again that death is just around this long last bend. Age is painting more texture on this canvas-face, sculptured rusting bones are being chiselled out by the winds of time, cells are getting lazy in the night. I know in the sphere of things time is expanding and slowing down, an outwards spiral to the heavens of the unknown. I’m scared in moments of such magnitude but most of the time i just let silence guide me to the slow calmness of pure perception. This is where it all began and so will it end.

The loves that have brushed up against my heart i have remembered and they also will fade. There are things that needed to be said that had not been, not found in moments to exist. I know it is a common belief that there will be moments after the body ceases to exist to say things that had been misplaced, to do things that had not been done, to live again in a new way. There are those that believe we have been here before and shall return. There are books, scriptures, ceremonies and perceptions and visions that have told some so. Others believe what others have experienced and live their life with someone else’s presumed knowing. I have been one of those with definite visions telling me things as if from another level, a higher plane, a truth, the truth. Possibly if it had stopped at a few, i would still be a strong believer in simple synchronicity but i have had too many non-ordinary moments and with vision herself honouring me to question the validity of the very tool itself that had produced these visioned-belief systems. So now i feel i know that i know nothing for certain and the closer one may get to the great-mystery the more mysterious it all becomes and belief is just a wind in the night, cherish it for the moment but keep it moving, let it breathe. I am not saying that life is absurd, or meaningless or too dreadfull to continue. I think that we have all been conditioned so thoroughly as a must to know why, when, how and what it is all about with a tool that finds it extremely difficult to accept that it simply is not capable of ultimate knowing. The search itself has destroyed the simplicity of love that man could and can and does to some extent experience.

I may have loved others more or deeper than my present love, but it is becoming apparent that this love now is more valuable and more sincere as it moves thru the twists and turns of these last years. I never expected to end up here as most people in this life, and infact i never really expected to end up anywhere in-particular. Tho i do think that i had expected i would be more financially secure with the arts and entrepreneurial projects that i had pursued. Not so, at least of late, but the game is still in motion.

From this balcony, now, in down town Victoria i could imagine i was in just about any city on this planet. Recent apartment buildings scatter the view and if one doesn’t look too close at the decorations and furniture of the balconies, i could be anywhere. In my mind, i am everywhere i’ve been and more. Life is like a long branch on the big tree, many tributaries not taken but remembered and many a folk gone off up and down dead ends, out of site, simply ended along the trail, but you alone must walk, crawl, run to your end, with or without dignity, with or without the belief of knowing, in torment, in calm but the end is inevitable, quick or slow.

Life is beautiful and many of us know this. That must be why we continue on, with the luggage of belief, the torment of relations, the treachery of doubt, it is this , this love that carries us on. We know somehow, that it exists, that it alone makes us walk, in heaven thru hells along the canals of ignorance, the arrogance of knowing, the surrender, the almighty surrender that gives us faith that it is just the way it is and that is just good enough, beautiful mysterious life, beautiful eternal love; call it what you will.

Images and Writing by Patrick Wey
All Blog Images For Sale…..follow the path….contact me direct if you wish.

Death is coming for us all, even the comic book people will have to go, none of the dreams will keep them here; here or there, this dream dreamin will fade to black like the nothingness in it all. The tattoos are meeting and melting later this evening amidst the flesh and bones of the dreamers, the ones with purpose and the ones with none at all. The philosopers, the predictors, the smooth slick thinkers to nowhere and all the ink-ones are gathering for the great celebration; the rock and rollers too, the classical dressed, the know-it-alls foaming from the heart and everyone whom is someone will be there, death is picking a few for the door prize and love will be spread upon the cake. 

I was thinking my pen was alive and i was just a machine typing as fast as the ink would flow. I could hardly keep up with the stream and many times lost site of the shore-line as i flowed fast past with hardly a thought to remember. Writers do that sometimes, doesn’t make sense somehow but from another plane it fits like abstracts expressed in moments of creation and disintegration. Writing with shapes of things like a painters brush disguised as a pen.

A price you pay for living long and before you know it the only friend you have left is the pen. The laws of the streets can’t be beat but you can twist them and turn them like you can anything else, either to flow with the current or against it, like life or death. Ink is so much like the wind, you can tangle it around the trees with any form you make, but you can’t stop it. A writer writes. (period)

Images and Writing by Patrick Wey

When i first laid eyes upon this scene, i knew it didn’t fit, outa time, outa space, a completely new world, a woman in a time that was not quite there. She leaned against the past like it was hers, a place close to her heart, a world not quite done with, one that needed a little more time to evolve smooth. I could have sworn i knew her from the way she smiled thru the air, the way she gleamed thru that space and time sitting still like that, made things surreal, real, unreal. There, with her leopard skin jacket flowing in the ages like a piece of a puzzle perfect in the right place at the wrong time. Yes, she held my glare, i couldn’t let go, i forced myself to capture the moment like a person does when seeing something so unusual, tempting, it must be right. There you have it, the look the space the time, all wrapped up into one unique scene while time fades like it does for a generation or two….

She came like many others of the fare complexion looking for the new land, a place of adventure, something different, security; possibly secret dreams unfolding in some distant horizon of her mind. Things change, little people become historic symbols, wall-scape murals depicting fiction disguised for the pleasure of the common folk, or something like that.

She could have been a queen in another life time, a peasant, a gypsy or an early settler, even an indian, a crow; anything is possible when you believe in that sort of stuff. Times and murals, fantasies made out of brick and paper, paint and illusions in the minds of the perceiver and in the words of the writer, ‘everything is twisted when you’re winding around the trail like a dream of a scene that doesn’t exist’. Yea that’s life on the coast, fairy tales hanging off the walls and no one seems to notice, the street is strange, desolate but in perfect tune with the deserted pavement and the magic just keeps pouring in like a mystery in a smile. That’s her, the one, the perfect one, almost real amidst the world; smooth, delicate, the new woman.

Writing and Images by Patrick Wey

it’s the rain that has me mellow
its washing effect that cleans my soul clear
has me wandering undisciplined
watching in new eyes
thinking thru the heart
i love the way old memories dance about
concealing their faces
sliding back and forth
between the furniture of the streets
the squish and slap off the black jungle trails
against my ears
in tune like a long day
slowly fading into an evening air
the rain scrubbing the tears off the buildings brick
off the dark deep tar to the horizon
and trees gasping for breath
relieved and speaking soft again
it’s the rain
it has its glorious way
embracing breath as water

gelatin floors warping up against melting walls of tangerine wind blowing words of multi-coloured cellophane into thick tunnels of mind. the strained history of man wrapped up into little packets floating memories deep across crevices of inner lobes. i demand an explanation, and many come then no sooner slip down some other crack into forgotten terrains of brain.
a wall appears fast moving abasing the cliffs of my lonely love and drowns in a sea of pointlessness. what is this all about asks a desk of dust thirsty dictionaries and worn umbrellas fly by in torrential rain of bulky thought; the whole universe is in chaos and i believe in answers.

doomed and forsaken i leave for a surreal cafe on a nearby shore, the roads smother me with hope and the people in the know direct me to well-welded sides. finally i feel almost whole again, complete, possibly pure when you enter wearing a silver cloak draped over some-thing uncertain and with a dark dagger hanging from your inner ear, you ask for a light; it’s a big joint and you offer me a toke and i say, ‘no thanks, i’m stoned on life’ but i take one anyways.
things change, everything is normal again, boring, purpose everywhere. i move thru walls dangling off my sight, books and books with faces, manipulations, lies being promoted like sermons and poems made of delicate strings of weak memories and real distant love fading fading thru-out the virtual dreams of mistaken heavens. i escape. i don’t look back. i can feel the trail on my heals; i slow down breathe deep, keep hidden as best i can, knowing it may all blow over but ready to take it as it comes or doesn’t; broken fences lying dead against the horizon.

Images and writing by Patrick Wey …. Images for sale

from the banks i watch
quietly i stop nothing
the noice of the world
the arrogance along the trails
the deception carefully packaged
in love tainted with the absurd
all things moving within the grid
the mesh of power and control
my simple love drowning slow
there is no way out for this
no way to extract the simplicity
and lay it on the road

the streets are filled with fear
beliefs blooming from the curse of time
people becoming saints and scholars
with a magnitude of madness hidden
like a cancer does when it conceals itself
as love dying to live within

i walk on thru these lies on the walls
the blatant clasping for the likes that makes me sick
out to the forest where the truth is simple
nothing much more than a moment at a time
to remind you that infinity is eternally present
the smell of summer pollen in the sweet air
the vastness in a view
the taste of fresh huckleberries full of life
birds sneaking thru the forest
activity always moving perfectly
like a dream, my dream

writing and images by patrickwey

i’m a rat according to the chinese calendar. there is some truth to all that i suppose, whatever truth is? a few days back i turned around 72 times across the path of the sun whipping thru space at speeds we’ll never know. what speed is the universe travelling, a parallel verse, a dylan verse? what is speed anyways? a concept of relativity useful for keeping things’n perspective but where deep-science is concerned things get very dice-c. anyways i want to thank all the folk that hurled happiness my way for a day that comes but once a year if your lucky, i suppose that’s what we can call it, luck.
i had a wonderful time travelling around the main land of bc with my remarkable significant other. we roamed around the highlands of the okanagan and had a few very cool dips into its lake. All in all life is what you make it, and we made those days just fine, really fine, extraordinary; we caressed rain sun wind , we had it all and the spirit of gratefulness followed us around like a magnet, a scent of purity in oh so many breaths of true-life and we inhaled it all, a trip well done……..happy birthday, yes it was, thanks once again this earth, this beauty, these moments that fly by so quick..thanks friends, foe, relatives, sometimes life is just so good, almost a sin to mention it.

I lost a year of writing. Laying words on a page is not like other arts; photography, painting, carving, music. It is more vunerable, exposing naked your heart, leaking your soul into the air of thought, into the space of feelings. You can intellectualize your position and be exposed for what you are not. You can cry for mercy for the guilt hidden behind your verbs. You can paint love with dashes of adjectives that transcend time, with continuity that erupts emotions into a frenzy. You can hide behind the phrases common for the times, slip out of the torture of your soul with a well manicured paragraph or two. 

Writing is hard, a dance between the intellect and the heart, the poet and the philosopher, the scientist and the craftsman, the wordsmith with nothing really to say. One can lay camouflaged with leaves from an old oak, clouds from a gray damp day. What ever writing is, it is personal no matter how things are said; if you’ve learned how to read between the lines, that’s where the juice is, the energy that runs the show. But all in all nothing is really revealed for certain, every word can ramble down eternity road and every sound will echo endlessly whether you let it or not.

I lost a year of writings, as these, thru incompetence and stupidity between myself and a mac repair shop here in Duncan. I almost lost hundreds of hours of image editing as well as tons of other important computer related content. All was eventually retrieved accept almost a year of writing. I had to remind myself of others that have lost all in fires or floods or have nothing at all to loose. None the less it did disrupt my mind and had me face death once again as in the hundreds of times that other circumstances have had me do. Eventually i’ll have to leave it all behind and the consolation of leaving a legacy often does nothing much for my weary mind. I am a traveller, an adventurer in the cells of this brain i call home. It will all die and i refuse to accept common after-life believes simply because it makes me feel well and alive with some truth to call my own. Bullshit, we made it all up, mankind is a living lie. Memory as thought changes, bends, attaches, dismembers, but it is as unstable as the wind. It is not necessary to know what you can not know. It is alright to realize reason is not the ultimate tool of knowing and knowing as eternity, just keeps flowing on. There is nothing to hang onto, no ultimate security, no dream that sits perfectly still but all is pure that way, all is just what it is, nothing more and nothing less. We need not embellish perception simply to fit it into our molds, break the sentence with a hammer of love………..stop, start, meaning will find its silly claws, it is the nature of thought, memory, words. I love and hate writing, it frees my mind and cripples my soul. It resurrects me when i’m low and soothes my heart when the existential pain of love leaves me.

I will miss the words that suffered upon the pages now erased into the virtual space of trash. At moments they fly by tempting me to struggle for their existence, but i won’t, new words can never replace all the moments my fingers needed the serenity of the keypad, but that my dear mind is the way it is. Goodbye to those rooms where realities once stood and now nothing more than a few disintegrated fragments faintly falling across the screen of my mind with ease and occasional hesitation.

I own nothing not even these words, death is coming for all of them soon but until then my fingers will stumble across the table of thought and scribble more sense where ultimately nothing really matters.

Words are like water dunes upon the surface of the mighty seas, they weave in and out of existence like meaning does.

i’m down around the end
there is no word to please me
no wound deep enough to hide within
i have nothing left to be
the people are all away from here
there is no one to see me
the trains have all died
the flowers are crying as rain does
there are a few smells remaining
and a cluster of thought by the bridge
but other than that everything else is gone
just some resemblance of me
and an empty suitcase of dreams
quiet by the long stairway
this is where it all begins to end
not with some enormous gathering
but with a few drops of rain and a forgotten caress
this is the way things end sometimes
almost silent almost invisible
like it never was
like meaning fading slow
across a terrain of scattered memory
into a horizon
of pure beauty

images and writing by patrick wey