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

No Longer The Man I Only Thought I Was

I’m not the man now I just used to think that I was before

Anymore, I’m not the man I only thought I was

I am no longer the man who once used to believe I was

I’m simply not the same man I really never was

It’s really just not like we only thought it was before

Things aren’t like we used to make them out to seem to be

Nowadays just aren’t the same as we used to have them feel

It’s different now than we simply believed it would be, before

Tomorrow isn’t even what we thought it was going to be

The future isn’t as bright as we could see it, way back then

Our kids real lives don’t match the fairytales we always told them

The future is simply not the same as how we held it up before us

I’m really not the man I believed I was always in the act of becoming

Yesterday just ain’t the same as we made it out to be back then

These days are different than that ancient history of ten long years ago

Pretty soon has been disconnected from the good times we were waiting for

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

They Could Not Hear It

They could not hear the music which always flowed so smoothly from inside my head

I still could not understand them even when they stooped and shouted right in my ear

They did not feel the sad melodies with which I themed all of their activities

I understood every word they said but in the end I could not grasp their true message

Their motions became quite graceful when put to the rhythms that only I could hear

I shuffled about to those crazy tunes to which they never even knew that I was listening

Since they could not hear it, they determined there must be something wrong with me

But I politely rebuffed their earnest efforts at helping me along my way

My internal occupations made me seem quite inattentive and forgetful to them

I always wandered off course immediately without the strictest guidance

But they could stand me in a corner and I might remain still for hours on end

And how often I was startled by their gentle tapping upon my shoulder

So many times I would finally notice someone had been calling my name

I would smile in red-faced amazement and then simply shrug

Staring straight forward I never even saw the back of her embarrassed head

I waltzed alone to an orchestra that helped me soar and made them chuckle

I thought I sang harmoniously with my music but, to them, it just sounded very much off-key

There was no way I could share with them all of the beauty that I witnessed inside

They laughed and shook their heads as I swayed alone to those inner melodies

I had to turn it up so loud that I was deafened to many important commercial messages

They could not hear and I would not listen and so did my years dance right on by

By A Thread

Balanced on a tipping point thanks solely to our own good and focused efforts

Risking not only our foolish selves but the entire complex web of life on earth as well

So close now we must shout above the noise we make so we do not have to hear

Hanging on by someone else’s fingernail while we concern ourselves only with the view

Piddling with the fancy GPS instead of just looking up ahead through the windshield

Held up by an unraveling thread yet somehow still struggling wildly to be freed

Heated almost to the boiling point but unwilling to turn down the flame

Out of breath but still running while trying to bray silly orders and directions

Able to see the consequences clearly now but still unwilling to change the course

Just looking at the road ahead as the entire load commences to sway and tip

Depending that the river ice won’t break as we cross far too late in the springtime

Speeding through a stormy night overloaded with worn out tires on bad roads

Stumbling in the darkness but too much in a hurry to take the time to fix the light

Wading just at the edge of a steep, invisible drop-off without knowing how to swim

Needle pegged on empty but so far away from any town on a cloudy, moonless night

Talking on the cellphone and screaming at the kids as the latte spills and a truck pulls out

Much older now, for such a long time, than we ever imagined we could become

Safe and dry with a picnic lunch in our rowboat unaware of the waterfall up ahead

In a hurry, but blinded, on a foggy night with the street covered all in white

So near to losing all we’ve built but staying focused on living only for the moment

At the point where an unlikely salvation can only just arrive in the very nick of time

Unknowingly separated by merest hairsbreadth from total and eternal annihilation

Milliseconds from a stunning crash we did not see coming and will not live to remember

Catching the disappearing rays of the last gorgeous sunset on our final dream vacation

Caught in a still picture of that fantastic blur at the end of this, our futile race

Poised upon a great divide and now at the mercy of entropy as to which way we flow

Having risen to the edge of space there is this brief and subtle pause upon our zenith

Reaching too far over, from several rungs too high, with no one below to steady us

Betting everything on an untested long shot some salesman touted as the next sure thing

Just one more minor system insult from initiating a cascading set of networked failures

Going so fast that even if we make it we won’t really know until it’s way long over

Hanging by one silky thread but still living really large thanks to greed and denial

Working In The Darkness

It seemed as if I strained to leave a message by pressing tiny keys in heavy mittens

I thought I spoke very clearly given that I was so far beneath the surface

On my knees I felt my way with heavily-wrapped hands, alone

I tried to read but there was too much darkness before the tiny print

I heard many of the finer details crumbling beneath my clumsy feet

I had to remove all my tools just to squeeze on thru the smallest openings

I thought they spoke to me as I crawled by, but they were simply saying grace

I was condemned to groping with zippers flaps and buttons with thick gloves in darkness

Always sat down to eat only to realize there were no forks or knives

Kept on finding myself driving far faster backwards than I ever would have considered

Could not free the strap but it was too dangerous to remove my mittens

Groped my way through a black labyrinth that was but a child’s cluttered bedroom

Followed my trail in a circle cleaning up what flaked off my muddy boots

Working through the noisy rooms, I could not quite grasp their radio transmissions

Craved to rip my mask away but knew the atmosphere was deadly poison

I handed up my shovel when the hole was dug and then they told me to lay down

Working in that smoky darkness, over-heated and running low on air

We repeatedly shouted simple things to each other through our coverings and the din

Though I rose quickly for the surface, I was not sure if I could hold my breath that long

The protective lens was fogged but with the smoke it did not matter

I was wearing and carrying far too much to even do the little work assigned me

Hardly able to keep up, much more of a burden than any help at all

Feeling the entire sandy hill slide underneath me towards an unseen cliff

Forced to accidentally break many useful objects just to find the door

I concentrated my efforts on overloaded groping like a blind and half-deaf mole

I solved the puzzle with perfect logic but never knew my solution began incorrectly

Came to an ambivalent fork that was not on the map, far too long ago to turn back now

Working in the darkness, everything I had taken for granted rose up to claim my attention

As I moved, different parts of my body each locked into position like a finished puzzle

With every sweating overheated gasping breath I longed merely to kneel and rest

Moving through this poisonous darkness with all our senses protected, and cut off

Far-off voices called after me and I simply could not bring myself to ignore them

From somewhere within me came the feel of that cool Canadian air from my boyhood

I lay there thinking that I heard that church bell tolling long and gentle once again

I dreamed I was mummied up in bandages and blankets rolling down a bumpy road

But sometimes the darkness did not frighten me because I had no more light within

I Stood So Limply By

I stood by, and the best that I could muster up was just a couple squishy tears

I simply watched, numbed with shock, and did not stop the bulldozers gouging

I did not raise a finger as we eviscerated the very habitat that kept us all alive

I sat in silence reading of the disappearance of one species after another

I barely noticed our chances for survival as they disappeared in my rearview mirror

I did not press them to build things meant to last or which might even be repaired

I just let them go on de-humanizing animals into identical factory protein units

I bred, in a tacit acceptance of our witless and self-destructive overpopulation

I never even questioned that foolish, wasteful and expensive necessity known as war

I let them preach greedy unsustainable profit at the expense of all our futures

I watched as they spent more than they had on destructive toys that they quickly cast aside

I stood by as they made our important decisions in talks with their very own personal saviors

I deflected the many unrelated facts which pointed towards the need for real change

I observed from a distance as smugly smirking politicos confidently called the shots

I stood by and let simple mono-maniacal control freaks press their warped personal agendas upon us

I turned away from mounting evidence that we brought on our own slide into a dark abyss

I sat grimly on their sidelines as they played their shortsighted and selfish game

I stood by doing nothing to stop myself from being part of all that I condemned

I let them twist my angry silence into an approval of their boundless greed as our guiding light

I avoided conflict and let them carry out the wanton destruction they anointed as our progress

I simply kibitzed while they de-constructed this living earth and all its systems

I did not lift a finger as the lilies of the field were replaced by barren, hot, black asphalt

I looked right past the poverty, suffering and illness as I hurried on by to work every day

I stood by as it got hotter, drier and dirtier - convinced there was really nothing I could do

I only passively ignored their mindless, but expensive, mind-numbing media spectacles

I foolishly tended just to my own implanted needs thinking so would things work out alright

I stood by with but a blank look as a series of precious wonders disappeared forever

I did not get up and shout, much less so much as raise a hand in mild disagreement

I never even once protested the ecological holocaust of our convenience-driven advances

I stood by in silence as the teeming masses wasted or polluted all of our basic resources

I did not clean up the roadsides, beaches, rivers, lakes and forests that we fouled

I never mentioned how I despised their all-consuming pursuit of consumer goods

I stood by with hands free but not helping those who tried honestly to do better

I merely watched in amazement as we grew fatter and dumber, sicker and lazier

I did not speak out nearly enough to counter their glib lies and foolish promises

I leaned my fat belly on a shovel while the potholes grew and multiplied all around me

Tax Trash And Legalize Rocket Launchers

Take the automatic weapons away from those dirty swarming criminal scum

Yet give our private militia the same rocket launchers as our beloved army

Sure they should get the same social benefits just like any married citizens

But don’t publicize fat gays parading on floats wearing only stringy grape smugglers

Take care of the at-risk children from any mothers of any race, all the same

But require a tough examination and a license of both parents for every child

End this foolish, expensive environmentally dangerous ethanol nonsense for good

Subsidize grid-shared solar and wind generators on every rooftop, throughout the land

Constitutionally require a permanently-balanced government budget

Reduce military spending by 3/4ths over ten years starting last year

Open our doors to all who embrace our ideals of freedom and democracy

Stop automatically making the children of illegal immigrants citizens by birthright

Of course we must conduct more research on the potential effects of climate change, BUT...

We should become an example of reduced CO2 emissions to an entire consumer world

Triage medical treatment for the old, terminally-ill and hopelessly brain-damaged

Simply provide universal health care as another constitutional guarantee

Close down the bullshit gaming industry and replace it with regulated organic herb

Require a deposit on all packaging and thereby pay the poor to clean our lands of our litter

Issue every resident mandatory, tamper-proof biometric ID cards

Amend the constitution to guarantee a citizen’s right to privacy

Don’t let home equity spending consumers out of their foolish debts

Punish those who invented and sold them this Ponzi mortgage fiasco

End agricultural subsidies at once and forever and tax the use of fossil water

Put our outsourced labor force to work on roads, bridges and clean energy

Tightly control the recreational use of ATVs and snowmobiles on all our federal lands

Re-open public access to all our national forests through private second homes and mining

Conduct all government business only in English and make it a citizenship requirement

Make sure every child studies a second language all the way through primary school

End the un-mandated, suffocatingly-divisive two party control of our political process

Tax their trash and water the more they make and use per person

Quit ignoring the unwanted children being saved from the murder that is abortion

Be strong enough on defense to ask for better than their no review cost plus contracts

Stop being fruitful and multiplying without regard to the earth’s ability to sustain

Give up this foolish notion that earth and its creatures were put here by God for us to plunder

Even learn to look beyond GDP and unemployment figures in measuring our progress

Finally become good and faithful stewards, passing on as much as we were granted

The Quiet Rushing

Stood still in long funeral lines as fighting broke out somewhere up ahead of us

Vowed to pretty women, all in white, who scattered yellow flowers out upon us

Saw men too strong to think, die violently justifying the mistakes of others

Heard frightened foods cry out as the smell of death filled their nostrils

Became tangled up in confusion after falling over the most obvious of riddles

Saw smoke rising in threat beyond their peaceful white steeples

Heard the quiet rushing back in, once I had finished all my shouting

Felt the life draining out of me, when we left you with nothing

Stood listening to the village bells filled with their simple reasons

Got sucked under dirty water and spit out from gray tailpipes

Lost all the real reasons but still kept right on working

Might have heard the silence dripping during long and sleepless nights

Watched the vultures grow fat as the songbirds slowly lost their feathers

Walked where they had always driven and finally realized how far

Escaped or was released up high into our blue, blue atmosphere

Left blank applications at the locked compound gates of invisible leaders

Roared through concrete canyons ignoring other’s children

Saw endlessly cheerful ads going on blankly without me

Made up my mind to just be happy and to keep to my meds

Was touched by their great suffering even behind my moving windshield

Heard a quiet sobbing I could not stop to recall for many hours

Saw hopeless widows watching their many children playing

Got struck hard inside as we shoveled thru your charred belongings

Grew older and slower but was in no way deemed to be the wiser

Stood up to be counted and was downsized, outsourced, laid off and forgotten

Limped off, looking for that quiet place I had heard of in their advertising

Ignored all that disturbed me for just as long as I could

Watched the fat and inactive be carried off slowly, somewhere far away

Saw meadows going brown and the trees drying out into waste paper

Wondered why the snow had stopped falling and it all gotten so expensive

Was bullied into illiteracy and a disdain for the magic of maths

Watched the wolves make a comeback until we showed them once again

Found my palms were still damp even as I sat trying to be calm

Cursed out my fictional savior for what I knew were my own mistakes

Hung up my clothes neatly even though they were worn out and filthy

Enjoyed the dying images produced when at last my breathing stopped