A cannon blast through the heart of all that is dead and decaying.

Friday, May 12, 2006

The Long March

We are prisoners of commerce
wrapt lovingly in arms
of electronic warmth
by the smokestack queen mother
of our plastic desire--
A neon colony
shooting our fluorescent dreams
into the heavens
like headlights invading
a still dark

We have forgotten the soft whisper of pines,
Forgotten the field's gentle sway--
dancers beneath the stars
with minds unclouded by
the cancer of billboard dreams

Who was that person who first became discontented
lounging beneath night's gentle movements?
Whose ears desired more than
river-song
mingled with the lark?
Who was it that began the long march
toward a silicon god,
toward metallic perfection--
a mathematical equation,
everything in
inhuman symmetry
with no room left
for the flesh howl?--
The world of Progress
made complete
with one last
skyward-pointing tomb

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The Wisdom of the Songbird

I find myself increasingly drifting downstream, and the world around me falls away as greater vistas slowly come into view. The warnings of the news reports thunder from the screen, but it seems each new warning is just a reflection of the one before it. Nothing has changed. In a hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years--nothing has changed. Multitudes bow before their gods, then pick up the blessed sword for holy slaughter. Rich men get richer, and with every dollar, more suspicious of their fellow man, the hunger gnawing deeper. Millions move about in the chains of futility, and yet their movement grows quicker. Empires rise up, gobbling up those smaller nations. And then the cancer of discontent spreads until the old order dissolves into chaos. The year is 2006 but is might as well be 2006 B.C. The only difference is the speed with which each generation marches onward triumphantly to the grave. The monuments to our collective idiocy have grown larger, and have been erected in far less time. And still, it is all incomprehensible to me. Perhaps I'm the idiot, the fool off to the side scratching his head. The world calls me a fool because I am content to be off to the side, content to live my life free of the virus of worldliness. I find my strength in my foolishness. If I were to be embraced by the world, then I would know that I have surely failed. So why then do I write these words? Because I have faith that there are other fools out there--those who wear the smile of the mountains. And so the songbird outside my window continues his song. He has no knowledge of who is in power, of what war is being fought or why. He does not even know the proper name of God. And yet he sings against the twilight. I deem him wise. To see the moment in eternity, and eternity in the moment! The gift of heaven's blue eyes!

Monday, May 08, 2006

"Cold Roses" On the Road

for Jill

April finally warmly arisen
as trees begin to bud--
I sit comfortably at my computer
in an old Grateful Dead t-shirt
My company--the steam
emanating from coffee cup,
enveloped in that dark womb of distortion
of Ryan Adams'
If I Am a Stranger
As needle caresses vinyl

(flip to side two, record two)

Now the first harmonica strains
of Dance All Night
As I remember driving over
deserts and plains
from Wisconsin
to Colorado
(Red Rocks with Phil Lesh & Ryan),
then on down through the
Sierra Nevada to the Bay
All the way
listening to
those dark-blue
revelations
of Cold Roses,
wondering "how do you keep love alive?"
and what would become of me,
caught out alone
in the vastness of the world
like the last child standing
after a game of musical chairs,
Not knowing that that wild road
stretching like the dry skin
of a snake over the mountains
of the west
would lead me directly to
your warmth,
like an April morning,
That our eyes would first embrace
one another from across the room
the day after my western adventures had ended,
That as I drove on, Ryan Adams was pleading with me
not to give up on that elusive gift called love,
He was leading me to you,
That as I passed those sun-drenched miles
on the plains,
I could feel the well open
and rain-clouds swell
over Nebraska
And desert beds
begin to fill
that long road home
that lead me to this morning
of sunlight & lovemaking
to Magnolia Mountain
running like a stream
through lives
entwined

spontaneous poem of Spring love-joy, April 12, 2004. Thanks, Ryan--for getting me through to her!