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

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

Yo, Conservatives: Do You Really?

Do you really ignore their careless toxic dust way up your nose and far down your lungs

Are you good with harshly ignorant laborers throwing up cheap shit all in your face

Is their flimsy pre-fab on flattened and devastated earth a relief to your tired eyes

Does that smoggy orange haze that you drive through soften your haunted outlook

Do you really fulfill your spirit from some musty old book supposedly written by a god

Can you actually enjoy that giant, poorly-engineered, way-overpriced gas guzzler

Do you think the lame media in which you immerse yourself helps you to grope your way thru

Are you still so sure you won’t live long enough to need any Medicare or Social Security

Do you really think energy efficiency spells the end of what you mistake for comfort

Do you perhaps take a vicarious pride in our cowboy diplomacy and wars of liberation

Are you gathering cosmic truth in your cycle of meaningless work and mindless recreation

Has living for today and grabbing all that you can not even worn you just a little bit thin

Does it grow difficult to lose yourself in prescribed meds, alcohol, religion or media rapture

Can you truly believe that our blind and greedy rush can continue even another 100 years

Have you actually considered the size and permanence of your stumbling daily footprint

Did you ever answer if you’re better off in today’s version of Morning In America

Do you really think if you just keep the family safe and happy everything will simply work out OK

Does the blasting noise of all the cars and harleys and trucks somehow blend to soothe you

Can you find safe and quiet refuge in the crumbling home that’s worth less than you owe

Is yours a parallel worklife with the next piece of veal in one more prairie dog cubicle farm

Do you really think that polarized 2 party gridlock inevitably gropes us forward

Must you judge all your actions with regard to convenience and time savings

Are you ok with those who fed chalky poison to babies helping provide food for your children

Do you really feel that things will just work out and we’ll muddle through like always

Do you really think it’s progress to channelize the rivers and fill in all the wetlands

Are you maybe only accelerating blindly toward some as yet unspecified objectives

Will you really reflect back in satisfied wisdom as you are fed and excrete thru medical tubes

Does their sporadic and uncontrolled noise really not rattle your uninsured teeth

Do you really not notice the billion wasteful and paranoid lights blotting out all the stars

Is adjusting the thermostat to your comfort really your only solution to climate change

Have you truly found peace of mind in a round of golf or an expensive pedicure

Do you not weary of making this or that hole a little bit bigger while moving it elsewhere

Do you really ignore the endless tolling of extinction, heat, drought and pollution

Aren’t you often looking forward for weeks to vacations that you do not even remember later

Can you actually believe that unencumbered greed is, in reality, sacred enlightened self-interest

Do you really sleep soundly thru the night, wake up refreshed - just to do it all once again

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

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