Is it denial to say
it's not everywhere yet?
Before I’ve been
To where a desert
and an ocean married,
Far away and trusting,
Waiting for her eyes to coup de grâce
The sea and crown her shade of green
Leaving just sand and
waves and winds,
Silence,
and then again
waves,
Crest and
Swells
Lungful of winds
A sun setting spell
Hissing in the waves
And crests again
The world is dying, you know? - she said
I thought:
I know.
They would tell a child like me:
Don’t be like the rest.
Be gluttonous for study,
You could be the best;
Your mother,
Your father,
Were smart;
They’ll bend which way
For your head-start.
And so I did,
Learn and remember,
Learn until the big questions had humble answers,
And the face of life had lost its luster.
Learned about how priorities had been sown bent,
On meeting people who integrally lived
Whole and straight;
With no theory or craft;
Put the mirror on myself,
To learn a lesson one must be
Ready to change, even if in little ways:
I learned to learn, how the biggest insults and fears
ignorance,
delusion,
naivety;
Were what made the
happy,
successful,
beautiful;
respectively exist.
Might be too late for me;
But the lesson at the end,
was learned nonetheless.
I hear people say,
The world has gone insane;
As if they’re not part of it
And it isn’t part of them.
What I cannot understand is,
A body adrift, looked at itself,
With water rising and
unwilling to change;
Stared at insanity and
Declared it health.
I wish I could somehow,
Make a portrait of you,
That felt remotely true:
But it takes more than an overlook to paint a view,
A canvas so wide or a word so concise,
To describe what’s irreductible
In the panorama of your eyes.
From core, bone and blood,
Smile, hands and voice,
Silhouette, movement, thoughts,
Memories, influence,
Virtue and soul:
Inspiration, meaning,
A reason for living,
I can’t fathom
how far back must I stand
For your reach to leave my sight.
You couldn’t tell up close but
This house is a mess,
Tripping on a bent carpet
To a sink full of half-drunk glasses
Might as well just leave it hanging
by the phone, since
The honest have packed up and gone
The old world’s exhibit is an empty hall
And the whispering next door
Is just a roomba cleaning after the dog,
Something I heard
Is that both
men and birds
Somehow share
A billion heartbeats
Before leaving earth,
Ain’t it something?
Seeing it numbered;
Fills me with regret,
How I should’ve
Crossed you sooner,
Few hundred million
Could’ve been
Better spent.