Swirling

I must be swirling through a blur

Staggering sideways after all the spinning

Things must be roiling all around me

Maybe I saw heaven from every side

Swimming strongly or is it the current?

Going crazy just making sense

Standing upright, floating upside down

Falling softly from all directions

Fading off in those cool shadows

Turning upwards with the school of fishes

I think I twirl as I am gliding

There is no real sense that I am falling

My mind is clear though we are whirling

Remaining focused on the past unfurling

Through it all in this gentle swirling

In eddy resting and vortex yearning

Bobbing calmly in their wakes

Building with the clouds to rain

Sliding down this swell that’s curling

Achieving much through simple swarming

I might be part of something bigger

But quite alone when at last it’s over

My thoughts merge with this cat’s purring

In snowfall patterns there can be no hurry

I no longer fear this constant blurring

Losing focus need not bring on hurting

I go on swirling through things moving

Holding on? Who can I be fooling?

Spindrift

Blown off the peak, spun around and floating down the leeward side

Formed into lacy drifts with so many others like me that I will never know

Assuming crystalline forms in that weightless moment

Smoothed into curved shapes by the gusty winds that followed

Sublimely whirling in the vortex behind that giant ocean swell

Falling back fully aerated with life’s sustaining oxygen

A surface mist that waxes prismatically from the slanting rays of the sun

I am falling snow or roiling sea at different times

Spindrift whirling in the vacuum of the power of the wind

And those dancing with me all rotate at slightly different angles

The heartbeat of the storm is mirrored by our dizzying procession

We are cast into phantasmal castles and drift across every pathway

At times we appear to panic like a school of frightened fireflies

With a pause in the wind we fall in separate patterns, independently

This quiet beauty a chaotic byproduct of the sublime organization of the storm

And my appreciation but a simple outcome of my accidental self-perception

Just Seconds To Go, But I Never Knew

My time becomes more precious the more I realize just how very little remains to me

After so much wasted racing towards unspecified and forgotten goals, I must pause to look about

At last I can refuse foolish siren calls to empty work and mindless entertainment

More precious still these moments as things grow ever more serious at every important juncture

I am forced to look behind the curtains and beyond the well-dressed entertainers

I have to forget about the next sports season and peer into that empty but everlasting void

Though others stand beside me, we all know I follow this course quite alone

There awaits an event that will never end for me and so very little time remains

I look up to distant galaxies or my gaze falls upon an ancient fossil, and I am already gone

I close my eyes, hold my breath, stop my thoughts and I am filled with all that I will ever know

Memories buzz around like pesky flies but they, too, will disappear right along with me

Dreams come to me in waking hours and I stare blankly into the dark of night

I realize now how the effects of any action quickly fade into that cosmic background noise

But I have not spent 1% of my infinitesimal time slot on what might really matter

With only seconds to go, I am way behind and have no way to stop the clock

At least the incessant, foolish prattling of our daily lives can finally be ignored

For now all I see in their ads and entertainment is just a hiding from the truth

All the short-lived satisfactions of the fads simply mask the onrush of that vast unknowable

Our small victories in our petty squabbles reflect but our mere nervousness as we stand in line

My mind fails in attempts to imagine the unavoidable eternal dark unconscious

So soon our species short interlude on earth won’t be discernible from my own lifespan

Just seconds to go as my finite heartbeats toll in a cold and mindless countdown

And in a much, much shorter time this briefest chirp will cease again, once and for all

My dead senses will no longer feed my lifeless brain the data it has always craved

From this perspective our routines dissolve into wanton, pointless fools play

Yet in the irresistible current, near the vast dark abyss, I grasp futilely for simple normalcy

So quickly there will be no one to read such words as these, which exist no longer

Fractal Messenger

Filling the great galactic clusters with stars accounted for, but uncounted

Leaving copious evidence of this same message at the subatomic level

Unknowable and forever far outside any organic experiences

Saying more than we can ever grasp in the gurgling of each tiny creek

Incredibly obvious everywhere we look yet nowhere to be seen

Not alive as in our poor understanding nor dead as we can only witness

Talking to us without a voice in channels outside our senses

Caching the entire mystery complete in uncountable, infinitesimal clues

Bearing not the slightest resemblance to the deities of our childish fairytale afterlives

Hidden from us by our subconscious projections of ourselves upon it

Comporting in timescales and distances far beyond our imaginations

Wholly too ignorant to take part in scholarly debate with clever theologians

Filtering every bit of information through each raindrop in every rainbow

Revealing all its secrets in the moss that grows on the striations of a boulder

Utterly mute in terms of commandments, calls to belief and tests of faith

Dripping all wisdom from every icicle hanging in the late winter sunlight

Blasting forth all knowledge in each burst of radiation from every neutron star

Reciting not a single line of internal dialogs along with our personal saviors

Encrypting the entire message in each of an infinity of absolutely random packets

Perfectly reflected in my limitless ignorance and our greatest discoveries

Neither far away nor inside us, not with us, but never leaving us alone

Expressing everything we know in the change marked by our final breath

Showing its entirety in each brief twinkling of the firmament above

Invisible but for the endless forms of its shadows, echoes and reflections

Inscribing the full message in patterns on the birds, the reptiles and the fish

Completely occupying all the borders of each one of our zen-like contradictions

As indifferent to new life as to the struggles which lead inevitably to death

Playing the same countless variations with raindrops as falling leaves

Dancing briefly in morning sunlight, peeping out from under dark clouds

Simply as likely to grant an unearned forgiveness as to punish unfairly

Deeply underpinning our endless and hopeless but inescapable struggles

Forming foreground and background, past, present and future

Blind witness without memory, testifying only in insoluble riddles

 

Radiating uncountable variations of perfection on this infinitesimally small world

As dense in empty space as in those songs that fill our entire hearts

Outlining a paradox whose purpose we can never approach deciphering

Neither concerned with cause nor aware of outcomes

Transforming hellish nuclear fission into warm winter sunlight

Source of no dogma but reflected in the maths we see underlying the cosmos

Bombarding from every direction with signals which travel unnoticed through us

Discerning each tiny peep in the vast white noise which fades back into entropy

Reabsorbing each droplet of consciousness without a conscious thought

Creating the music with the silence between the notes

Emitting fractal miracles regardless of magnification, size or distance

Incapable of any jealousy and unable to demand a fraction of our tiny faith

Possessed of no knowledge but without any questions

Filling the time and space outside of our universe

Making not a single promise to either sinner or sufferer

Backdrop to the background radiation of the Big Bang

Forever ungraspable but simultaneously inescapable

Undisturbed by the faint noise with which we try to hide it

Offering no consolation, bereft of mercy and unable to forgive

Totally accepting, endlessly patient and tolerant without comprehension

Filling everywhere to capacity with a mindless, insensate wisdom

Always within us but never really with us

Dancing with the shadows of the flickering firelight on the cave wall

Caring as much for our lives as shiny drops of dew on one tiny blade of grass

Grinning behind quantum dice as the clockwork universe unfolds

Unaware of our contemplations as part of itself

Holding men as responsible for their actions as it does the flowing rivers

Not Even Lost

Not just visiting, or even simply passing through while heading somewhere else

Without a feeling for a destination, no real inclination towards an actual direction

Shimmering stars light the sky but there are no signs where there is no road

Coming out of nowhere not expecting to get somewhere, or even ever to return

Not even lost, without a start or finish, but unsure where I’ve been, or my heading

Could not tell if I, indeed, traced a circle, no way to remember if we were here before

No one waits with a light on for me and everyone is traveling in different directions

Bumping into you after you bumped into her, that guy seems headed where I came from

Though our sun comes up every day now, that’s just for a very short part of forever

It might be confusing and I would be dizzy except - It’s just always been this way

Often I think I am briefly tangent to some illusion just as I accelerate back within it

We all move together but separate towards all directions, faster than we can see

Not even lost, falling like raindrops at tiny points in vast cycles we cannot be aware of

Pretty sure that I can see where I am going and it’s mattering less and less where I came from

Simply because I feel lost, I mistakenly think I went from somewhere to something

But being lost was not as frightening as realizing I can never know where I am going

Racing towards goals which materialize suddenly but vanish quickly into darkness

Tracing the stumbling, mad arcs of a dizzy whirling dervish in this unending blur

Holding at an unmanageable velocity towards unspecifiable objectives

Not even wrong, for our answers were not for the very real but always unasked questions

Not even lost, for that implies a way to a somewhere we can never know exists

Nonetheless pressing onward within this collective imaginary frame of reference

Staring out into the darkness through windows that only reflect the bright lights inside

Screaming passionately into that deep space vacuum that does not carry sound at all

Each and every one of us at the exact center of a cosmos that retreats in all directions

The scale of my experience too small to be plotted on a map of space and time

Unable to ever even get lost, except in our own surrealistic fantasies

A vast silent, deep nightfall races towards me from every direction that I turn

My senses are gone, my memories evaporated and no new thoughts can stir me

Then I awake to the morning sun and note briefly that this might have all been a dream

But then, the simple fact that I cannot even be lost thrusts itself close upon me, once again

Detritus

I piece together unrelated parts of different fallen objects which I find upon the ground

Things from far above land all around me in the total darkness in which I abide

And I cannot sense the gentle rain falling on that calm surface miles above

My experiences compress each other into a mental sedimentary record

I grope for the importance of things which I stumble upon but cannot see

I filter a rich gruel of detritus well-mixed during its long descent to me

I can never escape the constant threat of heavy objects crashing down like meteors

I make a comfortable home inside large carcasses for years at a time

Prevailing winds deposit a rich sample of their contents upon my leeward side

I am washed into an eddy I circle as my thoughts are sorted into their proper levels

Our randomly-incessant noisemaking smears my musings from all directions

I wash up on the clean wet sand with the waves of yet another incoming tide

Briefly streaking through the atmosphere, I drift with a few starry molecules

I fall to earth with the thunder’s ozone in the soft shower beneath a rainbow

We descend at different speeds each wondering at the others whizzing by

We are adrift in a graceful Brownian Motion far removed from our own control

Falling at one of a thousand angles with a million silent snowflakes

Drying out where the storm deposited me far above the peaceful water line

Found where dark flood waters left me laying quietly in an impossible position

Dried to fine dust after a short journey across unquenchable desert sands

I am pocked like the moon with repeated random impacts by unidentified objects

Turned over as I lay with alluvial soil to receive the good seed of the farmer

Sticking with the wax that drips from their faithful candles flickering in dank chapels

Listening as unknown liquids trickle down to me in the depths of our great landfills

Fluttering with falling leaves so that I can be buried by them year after peaceful year

Compressed into a single blue layer deep within the vastness of an ice sheet

Dated absolutely by position in the growth rings of an ancient bristlecone pine

Orbiting based on my density in a planet’s ring after an interstellar collision

Tumbled to odd resting places with the giant boulders left by those retreating glaciers

Spreading out in graceful whorls in the jet contrails headed to vacation destinations

Diluted in pure air after escaping, only partially combusted, with your exhaust

Settling out peacefully in quiet sewage lagoons along with your contributions

Sorting into the dust that came before me even as new dust softly entombs me

Exposed once more after millennia to be covered again for another billion years

Gracefully piling up in that small hourglass that drains but once, for all of us

I Left All These Tiny Ripples

Everything I do ripples outward, far beyond what I will ever see
Nowhere I have gone merely to look upon was unchanged by my coming

All the things I touch are altered in ways that I can never even notice

In turn, no one I have so much as spoken to did not change me just a bit

All the ways I tried to fix things keep changing other things as well

All the stuff you do interacts in unseen ways with all the things that I once did

Every time I replace one item I displace something else

When these two parts fit together that other one over there turns out to be a little short

Like a spaceman, stuff gets away from me and starts an existence all of its own

No one walks without their footprints changing the ocean even as it erases them

Anything I handle manipulates me with forces that I cannot see or feel

Tiny life I crushed unconsciously in my passing allowed other forms to prosper

Nothing that I toss aside has not left its ongoing trace before it more or less disappears

Every step I take turns the earth beneath my feet just the smallest fraction

A wake spreads out around me as I move through the infinite chop of others

Whenever I feel like I’m thinking for myself, it always comes from what they taught me

All their unseen co-operation make possible my rugged independence and self-reliance

Asking nothing from anyone, I still depend entirely upon others to simply live and breathe

I leave a little bit from everywhere I’ve ever been everywhere I go

Turns out my voice is but one little peep in a small frog chorus on a tiny pond

Influences my actions set in motion are continually reduced but never completely reach nothing

The sum of all my actions declines forever but only marginally reaches zero

Things others said so long ago that I never quite heard still guide me along this road

No one that has ever lived has not affected me in many ways

There is this melody in my head that is all the songs that they are ever singing

My happiness and contentment is somehow based in part upon their sadness and their suffering

Although I have no past before this life, it seems it has always lead up to this

Nothing I can imagine can ever come from outside what any of us has known

You can see me in one instant’s snapshot of the vast family tree formed by the life force

Every moment of the present I exchange a bit of my future into my disappearing past

Everything I do is very small yet so much more than what I can remember

I would be traveling in circles but time has converted them to rippling spirals

Though we make identical journeys, I cross your footprints heading the other way

I can even calculate the proportion of the sun’s energy that is falling upon my fingertip

Setting this thing in place I turn around and bump another which falls, out-of-reach, once again

Circling My Drain

I lay struggling and kicking on my mother’s breast unable to tolerate her good milk

even as they rolled my wrinkled, speckled body over to change the soiled sheets once again

I waited in a red jacket for the yellow bus on that first sunny day of kindergarten

simultaneously, at last I could no longer grasp the wriggling glyphs on any printed page

The older generations slipped away continuously in front of my children’s eyes

but, they too touched bottom at last, stood up and began slowly to emerge

I asked him of his plans and he recounted some of his more vivid memories

they were, as it turned out, actually willing to sacrifice for a future they would never see

Voices on the airwaves mingled with the live stream inside my head

in the land of dreams at least, I accepted these things without their having to make sense

I always felt I was growing nearer the happily that came just before the ever after

putting him in the ground I watched from a huge leafless oak as others lowered me as well

The times tables were like rhymes to me so I learned to sing them all quite well

he asked me how many fingers he held up but I could not really be too sure

I spent a lot more time with the people who had left me behind, the older that I got

no, I never returned to the homeland where they still walk me in the medieval courtyard

Later on I found it much more difficult when I tried to learn how to crawl once again

my chubby bow legs did not yet effectively support me so I waddled with uncertainty

I know that I am totally invisible in the purple lilac bushes of that sunny garden

as a starched nurse approaches I pull the stiff, rough sheets up and think that I am hiding

I have a recurring nightmare where I wake from a good dream that I can’t quite remember

awakened again that night, for the first time I understand when Mom tells me it’s not real

My life seemed as short as the years now seem after now having seen so many

in third grade I was sure that June would never come but that summer would last forever

For many years I returned with worms I had dug for the trout flashing under the old bridge

my uncle showed me how to bait the hook and told me I must intently watch the bobber

When I was 4, one day I thought back as far as I could and finally came to nothing

the older I got the more I saw how fast the void rushed at me, from all directions

I finally realized that things whirled around me much more quickly than I ran

holding my thoughts, I can take a long cool dive down into the dim, green past

After breakfast, we just stayed out by the lake for long summer days on end

I should apologize to many I no longer remember and thank the many more I never noticed

Sometimes my father disappoints me with an unexpected glance from an unseen mirror

I remember her dirty flip-flops and how she cried when she could not see the eye chart

I keep crossing my own tracks but it looks like they all lead off to nowhere

They got me cleaned up and just well enough to go and spend the night at grandma’s

All things were possible as I set off with my dad early on those Saturday mornings

often I hope we have enough time for the sun and snow to bleach our bones together

We wrestled savagely for what seemed like an hour in the side yard by his house

looking back now there is no way to recover that path I took to get here

I gave thanks that god had made me a boy and not an old lady or even an adult

groping in the darkness for direction, we did not describe straight lines

Staying below the superheated smoke we dragged the heavy firehose

the doctors found it difficult to treat the burns on an infant as small as myself

They could understand my words but we could no longer have a real conversation

I kept on trying as they helped me to evolve my first attempts at language

They performed an elaborate Christmas ritual which I have completely forgotten

they carefully placed the birthday cake on my chest after managing to sit me up

I floated like an astronaut with a lifeline plugged into my belly button

as my consciousness slipped away I felt myself rising at last, far up into the stars

Can’t Stop Our Ordained, Greed-based Progress

Keep on moving alongside of it, or get the hell out of our One True Way

These new asshole to elbow suburbs are merely blessed parts of God’s rich plan

Quit your misguided whining and chronic, spoiled, mealy-mouthed complaining

Outside developers quite naturally buy low, build cheap, sell out and move on

What could we really do differently anyway? Hey, these good people need those jobs!

Tinderbox strip malls are the climax stage in an ordained, faith-based ecological succession

How else are we going to provide for our ever-expanding human population?

The ready answer is really just about this simple – Ever bigger portions of more of the same

Just follow the money and you’ll find whose pocket putting people first always lands in

We’ve already defined the false choices so you cannot ever reframe the phony debate

You can’t stop the ordained progress upon which our vapid and consumptive lifestyle feeds

So either drive that excavator or get pushed off to the side with all the dead trees

We can’t control the future but we sure can can sniff out a quick profit in the here and now

Under Manifest Destiny we are honor bound to voraciously extract & consume, from coast to coast

Look at the good jobs we provide to the community - for up to several summers

Being constantly driven by insatiable greed merely expresses our consecrated pursuit of happiness

Listen, you can’t make a cake without breaking a few eggs, right?

So, really, you can ignore shattering the ecosystem that sustains you - To make a quick buck

Simple-minded hyper-consumption is the genius that guides the blind hand of the free market

Planning and conservation is the province of that old, tired and failed socialist agenda

With money, law and tradition behind us, we bulldoze away any and all feeble arguments

We polish our moneymaking skills by doing just what we know best, over and over and over again

There’s no stopping progress, just ask those smog-purple mountains above the once-fertile plains

Just take some more of these pills and you’ll enjoy the bounty of our febrile exploitation

We’ve got laws and precedents going back to our revered colonist forefathers

They stopped slavery but we still do what we want to the land, once we get a loan

We must tame and control, kill or be killed, slash, burn and flatten to survive

It’s man against nature in a war of attrition and our cash flow shows us winning big

We’re building on a sacred heritage of free enterprise and entrepreneurial energy

We’re deconstructing our children’s future one shoddy eco-shattering development at a time

After all, since you can’t stop progress, what is it that you are really think you can do?

Look, this farmland could return more next year as identical housing units for harried commuters

Our progress is inevitable and a foregone conclusion, just like our uncontrolled population growth

So, even though our lakes and rivers are just filthy sewage drains, there are still clean ones up north

No human force can stop a progress that has monetary gain as its ultimate and only goal

God made it so and only spoiled, out-of-touch liberals raise some witless, namby-pamby concerns

We are tightly wrapped in patriotism, God, free enterprise and Traditional Family Values©

Faith in free markets guarantees that everyone’s selfish actions will blindly yield a better future

Look, you can’t stop progress, this is all part of His wondrous design for us, his Exceptionist tribe

We’ve framed the debate and marginalized you while hyping lies to the good people, our people

Our way forward is bold and unambiguous but you would paralyze us with all your baseless fears

Our greedy individual clutching moves us all inexorably forward towards the Happily-Ever-After

You can’t stop progress unless it will make us more money more quickly, and then that’s progress

It’s like asking us to recycle for free just because it makes you feel better

We don’t condone all of these environmental impact studies and over-regulation

We measure our progress in amounts of CO₂ emitted, wetlands drained and acres deforested

The history we never learned most certainly shows that ours is the only one true way

Let there be Chinese ‘God Bless America’ flag decals on the backs of all our bulldozers

Look, your burdensome over-regulation can only cost good people, our supporters, jobs and money

This government meddling is very much akin to the failed social programs of the past

We can’t predict the outcome of our actions so we say just roll the dice and we’ll see...

We’ll solve any real problems after forcing scientists to prove they really exist...in a political debate

After all, what studies show that so-called intact ecosystems really benefit any society?...

None, but...It is true that lust for gain has clearly driven the flowering of our blessed demockracy

A Child Learns Personal Responsibility

I Was born with a hangover from the whiskey me mommie took for her pain

I was a little bit small since they both smoked but I smiled as I lay there

She had no milk for me and the formula played hell with my skin

Lay gurgling in my crib as the diesel fumes wafted in over me like a blanket

I cried all the time with gas and a stomach ache that they could not see

Her new boyfriend shook me almost hard enough that everyone could notice

Took in a lot of insecticides but still spent too much time playing with roaches

Got an untreated fever that brought pleasant visions and damage to my brain

Mice scampered over me sometimes after the big parties were over

Sat in their hot car with the windows cracked. Almost in the shade, by the tavern

Played on the dirty floor while they mixed and cooked the smelly meth all around me

Could not see the squiggles in their little books so they marked me down as slow

Loved those bologna and cheese slices with yellow mustard on soft white bread

Still think of my childhood when that peculiar smell of a WalMart overcomes me

Began to love jesus and was gently but firmly abused by the pastor in control

Appeared slightly palsied from the mercury in the tuna salad sandwiches

Daddy got out of jail when I was around 5 and he hugged me once and left again

I loved my mom despite her teeth falling out, the sores that never healed and her stringy hair

One time I asked her what dentists did on our way to the emergency room

I got lots of caffeine and plenty of sugar beginning even before my baby bottle

We traded head lice, boils, ringworm, impetigo and pink eye about the family

Santy claus was good to us cause Mom & Dad always bought us stuff instead of paying rent

We always liked playing on the clean marble down at the child support office

Sometimes I would visit mama working over to the Conoco

I often said I had finished my homework so I could go and play on the GameBoy

She had no pre-natal care and we did not get our vitamins and minerals

My first time in prison was a real eye-opening and educational experience

I played among the crumbs, dirt and dust on many housing project floors

Potato chips and sugar cookies kept me quiet and helped me get to be a big boy

The diabetes kicked in and took mother to the couch for good before she was 35

I dropped out of school, the army would not have me and I never learned to work

I could not feel the blows of others and goddamn how I loved to fight

I felt nothing from the hurt look in their eyes as I walked away

My teeth turned into rotten snags as my gums receded

I had a pin put in my leg after they tried to run me over

I got a cracked glass tattoo around the scar from a minor gunshot wound

Now, anything I want, that I can get my hands on, I just grab - without any of them regrets

Pointless Libtard Dreaming, Once Again

Just let me find a little cool shade in that searing heat of the day

If we could only sit out for a moment in the morning, when the sun feels so good

Give us a brief chance to listen carefully to the vast background silence

Allow me just a minute to sort through all these layers of confusion

Let me awake slowly with you to the tinkling music of that little stream

I really want to hear the evergreens sighing in the wind, once again

Maybe the opportunity to come in for a moment, out of the long cold rain

We are searching for the places that we want to be able to look back upon with smiles

Grant me brief instants of a cosmic awareness, even though I do not understand them

Don’t let me give up all of my consciousness to their colorfully manufactured illusions

Show me how to make a lasting peace simply, and within my own habitat

Let us at least try to leave things at least as intact as they were handed to us

I need to see the value of sweet water, clean air and un-profaned food

Help me to spread peace without using the same tired old sales techniques

I need to de-emphasize greed, but not with some slick marketing campaign

Let us dilute all our problems by vastly reducing our own numbers

Teach me how to contemplate and plan instead of simply reacting with the Quick and Dirty

Help me arise early and pull my thoughts together in my own good time

Make sure that we can actually believe there is a real meaning to our daily work

Let me be ready to fight as well as to know when it’s time to contemplate

Allow us to rejuvenate quietly in the special places we have preserved

Grant us a strong faith but help us to cast off the moldy beliefs of the past

Force the incredible shortness of our existence deep into my conscience

When my turn comes, let me begin teaching that I might really start to learn

Just let me be there once when a much-needed rain begins falling at last

Help us be rid of these implanted desires for items we do not need

Maybe to throw off this false doctrine of man in a continuous struggle against nature

Allow me to slowly find clarity during the gathering of the few dawns I will see

Bring us back from the edge of this abyss trembling, but with a new vision

Give elders good experiences that their children may seek them out with respect

Shatter the myth that mass blind individual greed ensures humanity’s happily ever after

Let us enjoy simply remaining quiet even when we might make extra noise

Teach us to stay out of debt and thus run the grasping usurers out of business

Demonstrate the falseness of the scourge that is the marketing myth of disposability

Grant us an appreciation for the people and technologies that make society possible

Awaken us with fond memories of dreams that shed real light upon our waking lives