Thursday, January 11, 2007

What's Left?

Do not be fooled by the smell of roses
Fresh cut grass, trees
Do not be fooled
Life is not that kind
The ice will still melt but

we can have a party
While we watch the waters rise
“More ice anybody?”
like interest compounded every second
in one giant feedback loop
and so exponentially
faster than scientists
each stuck in his own
cubbyhole of calculation can assume

traffic will back up on the freeway
near sunset for no good reason
no more than a year after it was built
UFOs will be sighted &
Will speed off too busy to be bothered
With our stupidity

Do not be fooled
There will still be such great & awe inspiring
Distances that say
There is nothing to say
Between them and us and
She and
You and
Me and
Whoever
Whatever
Happens

Consciousness may indeed be
Manifesting its self in matter
But matter as we all know
Can be very dense witness
(as I do)
tonite the president’s speech
not even addressing the points
of the loyal opposition:

how to repair the errors of debaathification
how to help a country in a civil war
how to help one sect without inflaming the others
corruption on our side and theirs
the concerns of the Iraqis for the independence
necessary for governance

and the usual voices
chatter on & on, on the radio
as if they knew something
while species, forests and wetlands
disappear I fold
my hands and listen

dutifully because
that’s all I’m given as a way of participating
in history and I notice the marks
of age & hard work on them and wonder
what for?

And the guy in the coat is still waiting
For the bus
That never seems to come
In this town

And café windows stare blankly
Without their college kids
Chattering blandly like flocks
Of gulls on shit
Splattered rocks by the ocean

Alpha males and alpha females
Still lead us down trails of alpha tears
And arrears pretending to even more wisdom
Than our stupid genes tell us they have

I am not fooled tho
What I find to believe in
In these last sad days
Full of seemingly intentionally stupid leaders
Is the intelligence of nature

Tho our genes that make it marginally
Self reflexive may be a flash
In the cosmic pan still there are
Artists who work with it

There is the feel, smell & sight of vegetables
In the market
Faces on the street
Animals and their invisible connection to us
And the whole like it was all one
Vast vibrating sympathy

And---intensified even
By its brevity----the wonder
Of being here
At all.

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