The herd is on the march.
They lumber with slow
determination.
The young achieve
playful swagger,
but aren't allowed
too wide of the line.
I wonder whether they're
going someplace good?
Wandering through a new city,
I come upon a bridge:
its rails loaded with locks.
They call them "love locks."
It gets me wondering how many locks
long outlived the love they memorialized?
How many were lust locks --
linked to the bridge before
the couple really knew each other's
vexing peccadillos?
How many were like ill-advised back tattoos,
a lover's name - someone one met in Vegas -
and whose name one wouldn't
otherwise remember,
were it not inked across one's spine
in a 120-point flame-festooned font?
the big, brass bell hasn't rung in years the stiffest storm winds can't budge it it stands with clamorous potential -- unrung
A mongoose crosses the road. My mind makes it Rikki Tikki Tavi. Is there a cobra in the tall grass? Is this a heroic mongoose? The mongoose disappears from sight, and I'm left with no answers.
Not by hearing or listening,
but by feeling the rhythm,
body / mind resonating to it,
being effortlessly attuned to it:
That is how the music transports one --
how it changes one's mind.
The city sees like Santa Claus.
Every misdeed is captured.
Every lost soul is whereabouts known --
known but not shared.
The city sees all,
but it does keep secrets...
sometimes.
Seven Sages were spared the sickness
of perceiving the possibility of perfection,
a "perception" of the patently impossible --
in truth, just dim and flimsy imaginings of mind,
and, so, they didn't mind the inevitable
flaws of the human world.
language is liquid;
meaning meanders.
in the long-run,
meanings are meaningless,
untethered and adrift
in an ocean of possibility.
[political words' meanings
don't drift, but tumble with
whiplash violence through
a desert of the possible.
But, predictably, the first variation
of a political word is the exact
opposite of its original meaning.]
Be my god
and I'll be yours,
and we can make
each other miracles.
Are we Makers?
Yes. We are!
And damn good ones at that.
We can turn a planet
into plastic trinkets.
We can use every last morsel
to make stuff:
bright & shiny
or
loud & colorful.
We can even make ideas:
good or bad,
true or false,
but always 100% believable.
We're the ones who invented Evil.
Yes, that whole toxic notion
is brought to you by us.
And Left-Wing & Right-Wing...
It used to be just a bunch of people
trying their best to understand
and to get by.
But we built mental / conceptual corrals,
corrals good enough that we
could no longer recognize each other
as part of the same species.
We are Makers.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 