Letting Go

 I’m entering that time and space of

letting go,

my chronological timepiece

witness to

time’s relentless forward motion.

 

Letting go

the affectations that

erect a facsimile

of existence and the

ephemeral nature of experience.

 

Letting go

of all the ego’s darlings,

edifices built upon

shifting sand and the

irrascible winds of change.

 

Letting go

affiliations built upon

intricate mythologies

constructed to obscure

the unavoidable finality

of human existence.

 

Letting go

for death stalks with

painstaking persistence

regardless of the

elaborate scafolding of

comfortable delusion.

 

Letting go

all the countless

protestations,

righteous indignations,

tilting at windmills,

while the natural world exposes

to blinded vision

true nature of reality

far more comprehensive than

human mind’s tentative grasp of

the present moment.

 

Letting go

all the artful dodging,

all the pretense,

all the absurd vanities,

all the comforting illusions

that contort the

wondrous gift of comprehension.

 

It is time for this

letting go

to prepare myself

when it is my turn

to join the joy molecular,

hopefully

with grace, integrity, love and clarity.

Red Rocks

 Solar furnace now

burning bright

dancing across

azure skies,

ignite the rocks with

crimson gold

impinging upon the human mind

inherent wonder of passing time,

the power of existence and

the sustenance of the natural world

in naked sparcity

in luxuriant rhapsodies

in kaleidoscopes of color and form.

 

From eyes to brain,

the world entrained,

dangling before hungry eyes

waiting for redemption,

upon this earth

nestled in the cosmos

an itinerant jewel.

 

Red rocks hewn from

ebullient power of rushing water,

eddies of turbulent wind,

sentinels to

relentless upheavals of a restless planet

born from the fiery bosom of a

raucous star

our sun.

Crazy Apes - A Tribute to Albert Szent Gyorgyi

 Young fighters

erstwhile warriors

prepared to explode

their body parts into

organic confetti

taking hundreds with them

to death’s crematorium

for glory

for god

for fruitless revenge

for retribution

for nonsensical beliefs.

Colonialists

with daydreams of empire

and untold fortunes

dancing in their heads,

strap weapons of destruction

to their merciless portfolios

of greed,

politics like a game of marbles

played with abandon

upon our earthly globe,

ignoring the ultimate reality

of victorious death,

we depart with nothing

no matter how filled our coffers,

regardless of all the possible satisfactions of

physical delights,

we depart from the living

much like when first expelled from

mother’s luxuriant womb

with nothing except

what is required to fill our lungs

with the very first breath and

bodies to sustain us.

 

Crazy Apes

have filled their precious brains

with ideas of endless and relentless

prosperity,

that if fulfilled

with come to naught,

yet the dance continues

to the incessant beat

within the fantastic dream of

having it all,

yet the idea of cheating death

in some extraordinary journey that

will carry us beyond the finality of the grave

to an eternity where all the physical laws

fall away like some annoying and burdensome baggage,

our airy souls can then surpass the very

essence of time and space.

 

Crazy Apes

sustain themselves

upon a bedrock of  twisted concepts,

beliefs exquisitely drawn from

erroneous conclusions,

that lead to nowhere and

suggest a world that

can no longer contain them.

 

Crazy Apes

nearly eight billion strong,

sucking great gobs of matter

from the earth

without benevolence or

sensible feelings of dread,

expelling poisons carelssly into

precious air,

draining the oceans dry of

precious life,

sacrificing exquisite beauty of wild

transformative earth

with mountains of trash,

living on the home planet

as if it was not responsible for

our continued existence.

 

Crazy Apes

with a world deperately in need of mending

problems mounting,

disaster looming,

doom approaching,

more content to annhilate

each other

over trivial concerns

than join together to

choose harmony instead

when harmony is so critically needed.

 

Crazy Apes

The Grand Illusion

There is no superhero

roaming the cosmos

balancing the cataclysmic forces

in limitless space for our

precise and mutual benefit .

 

There is no wondrous savior

ready to descend into the

human firmament

to rescue humanity from its own

reckless behavior.

 

There is no grand

all-encompassing master plan,

no magnificent paradise

engineered for the truly saved,

no other-worldly place

of eternal succor,

no fiendish caldron of

suffering and damnation,

no transcendent peace or place of

infinite interminable suffering.

 

There is an insatiable quiet

within the molecular void of

empty space,

there is an inspired chorus of

galaxies in riotous collision,

black holes that bend light into

utter darkness.

  

We are transient time travelers

marooned on spaceship earth,

moving through the generations

hapless and alone,

magnificent yet fragile,

blessed yet beseiged by

aching and profound consciousness.

 

Life is ours to fathom

within all its

fabulous and alluring

manifestations.

 

Life is ours to experience

own up to and

embrace.

 

No heavenly guidance,

no celestial validation,

no prophets that will descend

from lofty perches,

there is no rapture,

there is no escape.

 

Life is ours to comprehend

or neglect,

life is ours to appreciate

or discard,

life is ours to enhance

or abuse,

choice lies within

not held hostage in

some remote and distant

otherness.

 

Whether we persist

or descend into our own

particular and disastrous conclusion,

time unfolds,

the universe endures,

existence prevails within the

scope of the ever-present moment.

Four Hundred Years

 

400 Years

Four Hundred Years

ago

human beings,

stolen from their home,

from their kinships,

from the beauty of their world,

from their families,

their lovers,

their children.

 

Four Hundred Years

ago

human beings

piled into the holds of ships,

shackled  and abused,

barely able to move

stripped of their humanity,

denied their freedom,

humiliated,

often drowned.

 

Four Hundred Years

ago

humans beings

treated somehow

less than human,

like expendable chattel,

like mere property,

disposable, exploited, murdered

with impunity, with indifference,

with carefree and deadly violence.

 

 

Four Hundred years

from then until now

intervening decades

this insidious poison

spread through the generations

periodic massacres of innocents,

near genocide of

native americans

treated as nameless obstacles

to colonization and conquest,

bloodbath that was the civil war

hundreds of thousands of bodies

left dead on forsaken battlegrounds

twisted and mutilated wreckage

forged from an erroneous notion

of supremacy based

not on merit

not on reason or logic

nor justice

but on accidental whiteness

now faithfully eulogized and

solemnly remembered,

blight and contagion spread to other

hapless victims

Chinese

Japanese,

Hispanics,

Muslims,

Human beings mostly of color,

of difference

in outlook

in custom

in dress

in persuasion,

their collective sin

their unforgiveable inequity

the nature of their threat

to be born with

non-whiteness,

with gradations of darkness

no matter how slight

no matter how innocuous,

this overweening falsity that

forged so much carnage

that ushered in Jim Crow,

that gave birth to the

Ku Klux Klan and the

NRA and

Tea Party politicians

inevitably spread to other lands

under the guise of foreign policy

national defense

beneath the umbrella of justifiable wars

leaving millions upon millions dead

immense carnage

and grief

Korean and Vietnamese and Iraqi

and Afghani and Mexican and Filipino

mothers to grieve for their children

their elders

their families.

 

Four Hundred Years

and yet

this unspeakable terror,

this fearsome and unimagined horror

still persists,

some human beings using

power and wealth

to dehumanize others

based upon the color of their skin

and yet

mindless bigotry, hatred and

violence still

plague this nation

even in the twenty-first century

with all that science teaches,

with all that we know,

yet senseless prejudice is

sustained and nurtured

in spite of all that logic and reason dictate,

in spite of all that we understand as truth.

 

For Four Hundred Years

In spite of all that we know,

the killing goes on,

mothers continue to grieve,

justice is denied

unnecessary suffering roars through the land

in a hurricane of grief,

those who live on stolen lands

arm themselves

preparing for a conflagration

that they cannot possibly control,

those who possess inordinate wealth

callous to the suffering

indifferent to the injustice

refuse to relent in their insatiable greed,

this poison passed around in giant goblets

that touch the lips and infest

hearts and minds

with pure nonsense.

 

It has been Four Hundred Years,

It needs to stop,

this moribund and

dangerous idea of superiority

based upon  the fallacy called race,

needs to be extinguished once and for all

not by the power of intimidation,

not by violence,

not by fiat

but simply and resolutely

through a transformation of ideas,

it is up to the people of this wondrous land

to teach the children and ourselves

what is fundamentally the truth

that we are all members of the same species

Homo sapiens

we share the same architecture

of body and mind,

the same panoply of

emotions and desires

the same capacity for love,

for reason and harmony

for logic and intellect,

for imagination and

creativity, inventiveness and

for art,

each and everyone of this

family of human beings

deserving of  equal measures of

social and economic justice,

equal access to health care

to shelter

to nutrition

opportunity to thrive and to prosper,

to learn and to grow

without any fear of reprisal or

bigotry or baseless retribution,

all worthy of the love that mothers

naturally give,

of being embraced and included

without hesitation or reluctance

or trepidation

within the all encompassing arms of the

human family.

 

After Four Hundred Years

is this

really too much to ask for?

Lightness of Being

 

Dance of the mayfly,

storm of fire ants

beneath the jungle canopy,

thundering herds of wildebeests

across the serengeti,

bones of a stegosaurus

millions of years deceased

in some faraway world

on earth’s perpetual sojourn

around its parent star,

human journey through time

illustrious home of earth

generation upon generation

stretching from tortuous past

into an uncertain future,

star going nova within the

expansive cosmos

engulfing its planets in a

momentous release of enormous energy,

owl beckoning for the

fall of night

to awaken its predatory spirit,

mothers in labor all over the

this wondrous world

on the same day,

destined to perpetuate the species.

 

Life transient

Impermanent

like the passing breath,

like a singular beat of the heart,

gift of existence

exquisitely present,

surprisingly brilliant,

intensely felt,

momentary,

often blinding,

unsettling,

full of sadness

and poignancy

and joy.

 

Life bonded

to emotions,

forged by love,

grounded in consciousness,

imbedded in now,

shaped by myriad experiences,

haunted by shades of past and

shadows of future.

 

Yet, there is an

Intrinsic lightness to being,

that embraces the present,

created and extinguished

moment to moment

within the indefatigable

arc of time.