the actual pingpong of the abyss

words that spark
convulsions of
convoluted images
freight trains
of thought.
How fraught
with hope
and despair
those words
are for some
for so many
who unlike
the most of
us cannot walk
are bound by
gravity to
physical stasis
or mechanical
mobility only.

I can walk
and like the
rest of us
mostly I have
been capable
of saying that
for longer than
I could speak it
sixty two some
years in my case.
Capable bodied
our minds take
so much for
granted so
much for
rock solid
granite.
But time
and the
elements
wear us all
down bring us
all down to
the eternal
common
denominator
by which
we are all
ultimately
conquered
and divided
into the
unity we
so often
too too often
cannot sooner
recognize.
It was always
there for us
in the mirrors
of our eyes
too too
often blind
to all the
other eyes
paired
infinitudes
of sentient
reflection of
our being.
Too too
rarely
seeing
our being
one and
oneness.
Unable
to see
unable
to truly
walk
yet.

today is the same
for being different,
each day the same
for being different.
Each day a different
mix of unfathomed factors,
magnitudes unmeasured,
faultlines of culpability
straining to stress their
innocence, or profess
their ignorance,
a chorus of implausible
pontification from
the pulpits of privilege,
their greatest wish, to
go unnoticed, the few
by the many, those who
suffer the sameness
of each unforgiving,
fragile day.

the air and
trees are moving.
That’s the idea.
It’s actually not
unbearable, this afternoon.
Not like I was afraid
it would be this morning.
Windchimes, even.

It takes an effort of
will to imagine
how hot it is
elsewhere.
How unfortunate,
elsewhere.
Earthquakes,
typhoons, food riots,
sinking water tables,
farmer suicides
as an agricultural metric
in India (they use pesticide).
Veteran suicides—18
per day—as a harbinger
in the United States.
The messengers are
shooting themselves,
and their loved ones.
Shock and awful
numbness, dumbness,
deafness, we won’t
hear ourselves
doubt about
the official version
of September
eleventh, 2001.
It would be
too shocking,
too awful,
too implicating.

How unfortunate,
everywhere, the
effecting guns,
the butterflies
of yesteryear,
vanishing.

time and space and words amiss,
how can I write this on a single sheet,
a plane of white containment?
Yet we know, I know, the reflected Kilroy
was here, was there, was omnipresent,
diffuse, ubiquitous.
I say I know, by which I mean we know, for
if I know, we know.

Holy the bop apocalypse !
I think I am America, holy
the abyss !
I think I am all Gaia, alcohol
in my veins, my rivers, my streams,
my rain.
Amphetamines in my seas.
My ice caps melting, my glaciers calving, daisy
and dolly, the lamb stew of the imagination.
Science, religion, run amok.
Entertainment, politics, run amok.
Shades of George Murphy—cast him as
the anti-Frankenstein, the deanimator.
Info-insensates, auto-lobotomies, near universal
koma run amok.

Near universal. . .
. . . but this is neither horseshoes
nor government work,
only. It is more.
It is all. It is All. It is Unity.
Or, perhaps more precisely, it is
a perspective on the
Oneness of Being.
It includes the sense of
despair and hopelessness.
It includes the impression of
particular imperfection.
And it includes
principle, choice and action.
A single sheet, indeed.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
with enduring appreciation and respect for Allen Ginsberg