I saw that nation when it was anew,
and all the dreams of countrymen, they flew.
But danced back to the Earth in flaky ash.
As the dictator donned his glitter sash.
He said, “The fault? You’ll find it five miles down
in the bowels of bunkers, underground.”
People went to digging with their spoons,
and cursed the worst while burning at high noon.
From day-to-day you’ll find that they still dig.
No need to build a gallows or a brig.
There’s an old-timey telephone operator inside my skull,
popping plugs and jacking them back in elsewhere,
but doing it like a Hindu deity — infinite arms all ablur,
and all I know is that the well-worn jacks get the fire.
Chasing sages down the street,
tripping to bow at their feet.
Oh no, poor soul, who’s lost his way,
his brain behind, his mind affray.
You can’t get to there from here
for it’s much worse than you fear.
Lao Tzu’s Way is closed today.
Try again when it thaws next May.
Maybe by then you’ll ‘ve seen the light,
bouncing your way from wrong to right,
feeling the weight of what you’ve heard,
having found the sound, and lost the word.
you’ve clocked me on atomic time
dragged me below the water line
but you don’t know from whence I’ve come
blank, teary-eyed, and feeling numb
weary from my endless travel
my throat parched, the sound of gravel
still you pull from me a charred word
but it feels distant and absurd
somehow he thinks that he will find
somewhere among the broken time
a time shard that tells the story
lost city, ditched and hoary
weary wanderer drowned down there
pulled from green waters by his hair
“but who was the evil culprit!”
i once heard screamed from a pulpit
the funeral for a future me
i heard the word i could not see
found by some old man of means
who could see behind the scenes
but to know the truth, he could not
secrets hide in bits time forgot
It’s come to my attention that I’m doomed.
I heard that a cat was killed by curiosity.
I realize that I’m not a cat —
not even a hepcat,
which sounds like it would be a cat with hepatitis,
but it’s really the ringing endorsement of a 1940’s jazz artist.
(I learned the term from Looney Tunes reruns in the 70’s,
alas, too late for the hipster seal of approval.)
But, I digress.
My point is that I’m vastly more curious than a cat.
Cats are only curious about two things:
1.) where is my food?
&
2.) why does this human act like it’s the boss of me?
But I digress once more.
My real point is that if anyone has received a lethal dose of curiosity,
even given my large body mass and super-feline capacity to neutralize toxins,
surely it’s me.
Curiosity is my defining characteristic, the sine qua non of my life.
I’m curious about the arcane, the anachronistic,
and all the subjects typically maligned as:
“dreadfully boring,”
“painfully tiresome,”
“excruciatingly tedious,”
and “soul-crushingly ho hum.”
I have a Master of Economics degree, for heaven’s sake.
Even my “interesting” graduate degree, the one in International Affairs,
largely involved the study of the obsolete tactics of a collapsed empire.
I’ve spent hours asking, “Who am I?”
out of curiosity about whether Sri Ramana was right,
and eventually a meaningful answer would coalesce.
I’m curious about everything there is to be curious about.
Is there a god, and, if so,
-is she pretty?
-does it have tentacles?
-is it a lonely job?
What is consciousness? Where is consciousness? Is consciousness? Conscious much?
-And can one ever know a thing by using that thing as one’s primary tool of investigation? Or is it like trying to fully know a house while locked in one of its closets? Plato’s cave and all that jazz.
What technological advancement will blow us to smithereens?
-And will it be the same one that got all those alien races who should be billions of years ahead of us, but who are radio silent and whose suns aren’t even partially blotted out by Dyson swarms. Or is the road of civilization strewn with technological landmines — each unique, but deadly?
I’ve climbed to the top of a mountain just to know what was on the other side.
Only to be answered by the rows of ridge lines stretching out into the grey distance,
which said to me, “Even this little blip of the universe is too big for you to know.”
What kind of shrub grows an Empire?
What kind of shrub shifts the well-laid tracks of global trade routes?
What kind of shrub doesn’t know whether to be of nature or man?
Its even green sings the song of nature, stretching in an unbroken landscape to the forest’s pristine chaos-
-except when in need of picking. Then its bright, almost glowing, fresh tips are the shade of a newly trimmed outfield, standing out against nature’s dark olive.
But, its flat-topped, close-cropped ‘do tells a tale that’s all man, as do the fine parts that section off the shrubs into labyrinthine patterns for the pickers to navigate.
And what kind of shrub, each day, draws hordes of humans with wicker baskets on their backs and conical hats that are to the Vietnamese Paddy Hat what a novelty sombrero is to a real sombrero.
What kind of shrub…
he lies beneath a winter’s night full moon
under the stretching silence of fresh snows
quiet, save for the Saw-whet’s beep-beep tune
as if the living were claimed by the shadows
somewhere boots will crunch on a crust of ice
out to find the lost and longing wanderer
who thought no cabin rafters could suffice
to fuel the fires of an ardent ponderer
two enter a race neither knows he’s in
with the crawling clouds that’ll douse the moonlight
and with river ice that’s getting thin
but mostly with the mean teeth of frostbite
would someone come for you in the witching hour?
then treasure him be he tender or dour
No. Snow and ice can’t rectify my mind.
Don’t pray I’ll flash fire it into a boil.
I’ll seize, sullen, frozen, as a gargoyle.
Frost will form on my eye, and I’ll be blind.
A thaw comes only in the state entwined.
If only I were gifted at that toil.
I watch Trussed Wonder’s melt begin to roil,
wondering how they knew which way to wind.
But nature graces those lacking talent.
A sunflower’s wisdom is all one needs.
Making turning to the sun look gallant,
is the lazy thaw path to being freed.
There is no flash fried wisdom you shouldn’t shun,
but, perhaps, just revolve to face the sun.
People fear death,
but beyond death lies decay,
and one can rejoice in decay.
For to decay is
to be Santa handing out piles of gifts,
building blocks badly needed to make
stalks and sternums.
Becoming the dark, rich loam,
the color of coffee grounds,
from which shoots and leaves
sprout to chase the light.
Your gifts will keep giving
despite the people grieving
because you are a pile of
recyclables.
The arrogance, shoving words into rows,
try to describe someplace only god knows.
A cube of rock, turned edge skywards,
loftily defying each, and all, of my words.
Jolie laide in its craggy perfection,
free from all vanity and dejection.
When it shrouds itself in cloudy veils,
it doesn’t do so because it quails.
It demands no awe and yet has mine.
It is the sacred, sans the shrine,
and, before it, I bow.
