the actual pingpong of the abyss

this morning
for the first time
of her own accord.

Purring.

Observe and accept
choose and act!

Hope and process got we going
going round and round
we look into we mirror
we see we battleground.

Every little thing we love
all that we despise
we see it in we faces
we see it in we eyes.

Pastures of pure plenty
privation pork and greed
we shepherd boys we sleeping
we wolves we full of need.

We voting for Obama
we voting for McCain
we whole world watching waiting
disenfranchised still again.

Still we are the winners
hallelujah jubilee
disease and starving plentitude
commitment scarcity.

We lovers lying on we bed
we dozing spent content
we kitten purring near we head
we new life innocent.

We scamper pounce we captivate
we catch we moth we mouse
we layoffs unemployment
we foreclose upon we house.

We harking back new deal new leaf
we turning turning turn
we fossil fuel we had we day
we burning baby burn.

For everything a time a place
we turning turning turn
we soldiers now we flowers gone
when will we ever learn?

We epic poem we poets all
we know we have to write
daunted we but hopeful
process through the night.

these words
temporary rearrangements
of physical matter to
facilitate and reflect
the temporal flow of
mental matter what
one might wonder
does it even matter?
Indeed if one
thinks in cause
and effect mechanical
means one seeks
to find meaning or
not in quids and
quos in zero sums.
Slice and dice
divide and conquer
the modus operandi
of our prosaic
habitude.
That is what is
visible to our
sensory organs
so that is as far
as we often are
willing to try to see.
But seeing is not
constrained by
optics not if one is
willing to try to see
past apparent patterns
of cause and effect
to the holistic
force field of
karmic potential.
It is there that
matter’s antimatter
rearranges itself
into new effusions of
material appearance.

A poem
could
reverberate
in sympathetic
mental harmonics
disappear
and then
reemerge
sometime later
as an otherwise
unlikely
sprouting idea
or even a
newborn
behavior.

over images of
polar bears swimming
in the open ocean
hundreds of miles
from the nearest
ice lifetimes
beyond the
radius of
their endurance.

What does a father
say when his
daughter says
she doesn’t know
how people will
want to choose
to bring children
into this world?
Into a world
without polar bears.

After the tears
and the hugging
we talked.

She wondered if
polar bears could
survive at the
south pole.
I immediately
thought of the
ecological havoc
that would be
wreaked by
translocating
such a major
predator.

Then again
I’m thinking
now that the
disappearance
of such a major
predator
would wreak
havoc just
as surely.

Pick your havoc
perhaps it is
simply as simple
as that.

School children
have been locating
polar bears at
the south pole
ever since white
crayons were
invented.

The human mind
will spin its wheels
and strip its gears
arguing about this
until it is too late
never coming to
consensus.

Mean while. . .

The human heart
should just do it.

comes upon us
in many piebald
guises like so
many sharp and
shining devices
tossed and cycled
aloft by the crafty
artiste balancing
on the unicycle
on the globe
on the back
of the tortise
swimming in the
desert of the
universal skies.

Star light
spots us as
we balance
precariously
as we invert
the balancing
act by artfully
juggling
our energies
our attention
our priorities
our hopes
and fears
our urgencies
our lives.

The roots
stretch thirsty
to the liquid
web of the
spot light
starry night.
The branches
clutch our
devices offering
them Earthward
as supplications
to the Mother
as if we could honor
her with but a
single dimension
of our busyness
our distraction.
As if gravity
pulls in only
one direction.
As if the stars
make no demands
upon our being
in and amongst
them and their
gravid splendor.

Where am I?
Where are you?
It was it is
a rhetorical
question when
considered in the
context of stellar
attraction the
push me pull you
of universal flow
expanding or
contracting
depending
on the tossing
of the juggler’s
backstage dice.

this is maybe
it may be
a place for
words a place
for the making
of a possible
difference if
even only
a tiny beginning.

Of course
what may be
already is in
the certainty
of our imaginal
forge in the elfin
forest of our
invisible
and maybe
soundless trees.

If the palm
oil plantation
master’s bulldozer and
or incendiary device
fells a forest
and smolders a
peat bog do
we hear it as
we mirror our
makeup as we
feed our KFC?

That is
if a tree
and its denizens
are murdered
in the forest in
this or another
hemisphere
do we hear
their screams?
Do we hear
our screams?

Could be
this is a place
where our
outrage can
congeal in
syllables of
possible significance
maybe to make
a difference even
if only a tiny
beginning.

Where are we
going? Where am I?
Where are you?