I Streaked So Very Briefly

I grew as clean and polished as the perfect desert sandstone

I spun peacefully in an eddy though strong currents tossed all around me

I tumbled with the words from your lips as you mumbled a goodbye

I orbited the earth just fast enough to remain perpetually in the light of dawn

I was lofted somewhere far away, into the golden West upon the prevailing winds

I scattered with the leaves during a few crisp autumns long, long ago

I faded into one or more of those amazing painted sunsets

I was bent by gravity around celestial bodies along with other ancient photons

I rolled up on the beach with many a perfect swell

I twirled slowly to the ground with the fragile apple blossoms

I streaked briefly across the summer sky with a shooting star

I crashed through many canyons in roaring youthful streams

I refracted from the peak along with a billion ice crystals

I ground out the valley, nosed along by a patient glacier

I bathed the room with a streak of brief and pale moonlight

I rose in the air as a life-giving mist after plunging down the gaping cataract

I was taken up by the slanting sunshine and fell again as a gentle rain

I flourished in the ancient forests and then was compressed into a coal seam

I rained slowly down with other fine detritus from the far off surface of the sea

I fell with the million snowflakes as we silently covered the vast boreal forest

I welled up with vital nutrients in the icy water just off the pacific coast

I left questions carved in random patterns upon many jumbled boulders

I faded away in proportion to the increasing heat and the longer droughts

I played my subtle variations on a theme brought to life by a tiny creek

I streaked briefly full of avian color in the blue above a clearing rain forest canopy

I flashed a shining migrating side, momentarily breaking the surface of that great river

I helped form those fantastic images that filled the skies among the holy clouds

I went down in muddy sediment leaving behind baffling, petrified remains

I sighed with the wind in the big trees standing arms akimbo for a thousand years

I fused my atoms with all the others at the center of many suns

I formed mystic patterns of electromagnetic radiation they called the aurora borealis

I raced across the ocean with a pod of warm-blooded giant bluefin tuna

I bathed peacefully in the light of a billion healing springtimes

I disappeared across the event horizon of that black hole at the center of our Milky Way

I spun with the earth about the sun around the galaxy tracing far across but one universe

I left my carcass to the wolves and crows, and my soul to father sun

Now, Who Was I Really?

Can I finally risk a moment now to stop and ask, or am I still just in far too much of a hurry

What was my story again? just text me the take away

Did I ever even try to know? yeah, right…so why would anyone else even ask

Was I swimming hard but just holding my small place there, close to the bank

What were those unspecified goals towards which I moved with ever increasing speed

Did my influence end simply when I finally ceased spending more than I was earning

What slowly diminishing rippling effects spread out in that wake I long ago stopped making

Who is there to answer for me, if even I did not try and question it at all for myself

Who was I but some uncle who died long ago, barely known, leaving them nothing

And who were they, but minor characters, overlooked in my unscripted personal melodrama

Do I abide in a saccharine heavenly glory, or have I been sent to their tragicomic hell, or?

Where are those missing final statements from the boring ledger of my passing life

Who was I really, if I myself could not be bothered to take the time to stop and ask

Was I that gray and sick old man they turned from, who could not even sit up in bed

Maybe the smiling, hurried so-called professional who could not stay too long

Then again, there was that dripping boy who so reminded them of his grandfather

Who was that guy I looked at in the pictures someone else took when I happened to be there

What were those things that I found so important back then that they kept me so long in a blur

Was I the one always laughing too loudly, way too often, at the expense of others

Did I really spend a third of my life in bed and fully another fifth in front of a TV

Why cant I find all that stuff I held as the very dearest to life, not really too long ago

Where are those little darlings that made even all that work seem so worthwhile

Where has that woman gone I loved so much that it could make me cry

Is it true there really is no way, looking back from now, to find out who I was then

Why does the value of my pleasures seem to have drained through my hands like so much water

How come I don’t remember all the holidays I spent so much time looking forward to

How can I fail to be able to reckon up the present value of my lifelong reckless habits

Who was I and did that answer already disappear many years ago, somewhere in my clueless past

Does it all really dribble out to nothing at an empty dead end, just past nowhere

Then again, there certainly were moments, though I have sewn no meaningful tapestry

Can’t I reach back now to enjoy the worth of all the things I always did - for the future

Now can I ask for some of that that time I was always working so hard to try and save

Time Could Not Heal

Time did not heal the wounds he wore as he attended his own solemn burial

The passing of so many hurried years did not make them any wiser

Their broadcasted fantasies were not meant to have prepared the populace

Endless dull repetition did not bring her to some flashpoint of enlightenment

Sadly, the fear and worry that always drove them never lead to that happily ever after

All the time that convenience saved them was not stockpiled for their later enjoyment

Their passing would not heal the awful recognitions they suffered during their last days

There was no happy guided segue from this laying tubed up in a paralyzed desperation

That ever-pending eternity would disperse their strong feelings but never change them

Forever could not make up for any of their suffering, despite other’s pious assurances

For time could heal them no more once they had gone off and left us for good

The light-hearted empty lives of some, ironically enough, proved as useful as any pious brooding

Time neither erased his sins nor granted him the forgiveness his victims finally learned

Distance did not separate them from the memories they would always carry inside

No matter who those sad women slept with, they always awoke with themselves

The many long years did not help him to accept his own hideous apparition

She always carried that pain in a place that was walled off, but not inaccessible

They always sought something indefinable, though there was nothing left to tempt them

Time would certainly not heal the loneliness of her isolation during those final years

His healthy lifestyle was of no use forever once all his cells had ceased activity

They even dreamed it was not time that they needed, but devices that might save it for them

As he slowly faded, his only wish was that he could simply resume his empty, hectic life

The eternity that awaited her was oblivious to her many selfless sacrifices

His passing did not bring him the long-awaited pleasure of seeing his many enemies in Hell

Sadly, their quiet acceptance of lifelong suffering did not grant them an eternity with god

Time did not even try to heal their pain as their spreading wakes never quite faded to nothing

There would be no paradoxical heaven which included both the wise hermit and the great leader

Time could not halt the dispersion of any molecules that made up their hypothetical eternal souls

Waking Dreams

These dreams woke up at last and now they can never seem to rest again

They toss and they mumble fitfully, throughout my long and mindless working hours

I see them fumbling in their pockets for loose change in long gray lines

The alien light of our world creating the strange discolorations of their faces

You get used to not looking right at them or else they will quickly fade away

Their faulty assumptions collapsing beneath the fairy tale castles of their logic

These dreams awaken, stubbled and grimy, having voluntarily left their kingdom

They fill me briefly with their uneasiness as they are passing right on through me

They walk the land alone dissolving soundlessly without leaving any footprints

I watch them fade like old prayer flags just after they emerge fully-formed, upon my way

They leave no trace except the faint and dissolving memories of their passing

Some are so sublime as to be nearly undetectable by the busy conscious mind

Sometimes I pray to mistake gruesome reality for their phantasmal influences

Given off as I walk, they disperse in an illogical ever-thinning aerosol

Waking dreams, trying to tell me how much I need some simple restful sleep

Their seamless reality at least as attractive as our collective conscious hypnosis

There must be more to them than what so simply just fades from my grasp

Experienced as reality, dismissed as foolishness, yet somehow deeply symbolic

Tossed into pens and forced to struggle against each other for supremacy

They woke me up again in uncertainty merely with their deep and utter nonsense

These awaking dreams have not yet reached a full consciousness, nonetheless

These cast out and wandering souls sometimes awaken me in rich tears

We do not speak to each other but I wonder if they observe me as I do them

Sometimes when I come to, I’m laughing, with echoes of their beautiful music still in my mind

Often do I wish to experience their version of reality as more than a mere spectator

Waking dreams, trying to shake and rouse themselves from the depths of the everyday

Began to cry as one of them impinged upon the terrible vacuum of my empty life

Just had to reply as they masqueraded as those I had known and loved so long ago

Their parallel universe inextricably bound to our collective stream of unconsciousness

I could not elude them or escape them, for they awoke with me, as I fled before them

I might still be thinking, even as I talk to them, over their music, all in living color

Happily, as I grow older it becomes less clear when they have overtaken me once again

My Search Results Are Ready

I ran for the canyons but they was dammed, flooded and already way silted up

I made for the mountains but them empty second homes kept me fenced way outside

I went out to float the rivers but the drought had turned them into dirty little dribbles

Took off for the woods but they had burned down and dried to blackened ashes

Left on a road trip for safe family adventure and found a string of filthy restrooms

Went fishing with the kids but had to tell them that we couldn’t eat our poisoned catch

Fought traffic down to the ocean to watch as strange and dangerous objects washed ashore

The Doc cured my lifestyle-induced disease just in time to make his golf game

Headed for the wilderness but my GPS wasn’t working so I went on over to the mall

Took the speedboat down to the reservoir but there was no water left for to ride on

Got up real early to enjoy the quiet and heard brave construction workers roaring by

Said I’d rather fight them here than there and was labeled as a cowardly cut-and-runner

Got all ready for the winter but every day stayed real warm and it was way too dry

Called for action on climate change so they set the clocks back a whole week later, in the fall

Went searching for the great West from one chain restaurant and hotel to another

I journeyed to our great outdoors and found the discarded toxic remnants of a meth lab

Climbed a rocky mountain and was passed by the many hurried hi-tech peak baggers

I went to hike the mystic arroyos but they were clean choked up with exotic species

I sought the ancient wisdom of the Indians, and so I journeyed to their new casinos

I watched the electrically sprinkled fossil water simply evaporate, shining in the wind

Talked to the wise men in their giant pickups and they told me that they’d just tell me what

Listened, mesmerized by the agents looks and voice, as she pitched the mountain sunsets

Learned to help clamor for the always more, the ever bigger and the even cheaper

Worked to realize our manifest destiny by plopping strip malls from coast to coast

Sought out that shady grove I had heard about but got turned around on the interstate

Rode out of the valley and gazed back upon the ozone layer that covered up our town

Loved that down home country music as it brayed down to my pickup via satellite radio

I searched for the wisdom of the elderly and they told me I just best not get too old

Quietly paddled our canoe through the wakes of pleasure trawlers and jet ski madness

Meditated to the blessed randomly and sporadic high-decibel outbursts of our progress

I enjoyed the financed memories of a lifetime at handicap accessible vista overlook points

Heard god’s amplified word at our friendly megachurch and then stopped down to Wal*Mart

I went to seek the wisdom of the retired CEOs but their compounds were walled and locked

I sought the peace of the starry desert but found it full of wackos, bristling with guns

Put great faith in freedom of the press then saw that it depended solely on selling advertising

I went back to eat at Grandma’s house once more but Dad had sold it off way, way long ago

Quest For Inner Peace V2.0

I simply could not just ignore my body odor in the search for inner peace

Got flipped off while talking to Sally on my cell driving to my yoga class

Well, actually I go a couple times a week and it’s only $35 a month

I think I really noticed something after only a couple of classes

The other day I almost touched my toes for the first time since I cant remember when

I was really getting out there as we lay in the corpse position, then I fell asleep

It felt sorta like I saw myself take off silently in one of those rescue helicopters

Why, the traffic didn’t even bother me as I drove alone all the way back home

I think I scratched the side of a hybrid floating out of my SUV in their parking lot

Shutting down my comm device, I was shedding my earthly concerns before the class

I knew I needed another measured portion of the infinite, really soon

I was still a pilgrim despite the deeply worn tracks I followed thru our rodent warrens

I dropped my thoughts of dinner and even forgot all about my office foes for just a moment

I sought to see myself on a lovely beach in a rainbow sunset framed by reflecting clouds

I was only dimly aware of a woman’s gas in front of me as we assumed the next position

I repeated the computer-generated nonsense syllable that was my unique personal mantra

I pursued this inner quest as vigorously as I had pushed to get the kids thru school

My husband said he had learned to meditate as well and he practiced on the couch at night

Visions of the eternal void maybe just came to me in short bursts, as I exhaled

I took to going barefoot in loose clothes at times, in the privacy of my own home

My cooking shaded away from meat and towards instant packaged Asian main courses

Sometimes I felt a twinge of guilt sipping on a Latte instead of bathing in the Indus

After a long internet search I found a guided Indian Enlightenment tour with a real guru

I began to see a bit of God in all the plants and insects as I sprayed and weeded my garden

Passionate conservatism began to make a lot more sense as my eyes slowly opened

I peeled off layers of consciousness with the onions, searching thru my life’s mandala

Many weekends I applied but a half coat of makeup and wore my hair quite simply

There was so much more to me than these well-tended suburbs could ever reveal

The occasional housekeeping haiku began appearing in my personal diary

I wrote down the dreams that awakened me and tried to fathom them as I blew dry

Sometimes the New Age music cable channel brought quiet, purging tears to my eyes

I spent 20 minutes in the park listening for songbirds on my way to grocery shop

Changed my ring tone to a soothing melody and tried to let up on the car horn

Began to sense the triviality in the banal and un-insightful existence of others

Adopted a Tibetan orphan overseas on the internet and walked dogs at the shelter

Took comfort in knowing that I was following the ancient path of enlightenment