Welcome to the Age of Indifference

    Oil extracted from the ground

in prodigious amounts

to feed the hunger of humans in the

age of the irascible machine.

 

From the ancient carbon stores,

many things are fashioned,

gasoline runs the engines

designed to foster and prolong convenience,

to feed the insatiable progress machine.

 

From the fuel that was earth's bounty,

wondrous polymers are constructed,

molded in myriad forms to

shape our insatiable indulgence.

 

From wild and exuberant beginnings,

the creatures that call themselves human

have created an elaborate reality

that has removed them so completely

from their origins that

the future is dying.

 

Magnificent creatures that

remind us of the wildness of the world

we once had,

disappearing from earth's diminished bounty.

 

Polar Bears drowning

ice no longer able to

sustain them.

 

Tigers and Rhinos and Elephants

slaughtered to near extinction

to satisfy ancient superstitions and

feed the endless lure of profit.

 

Zoos destined to be their

final habitat.

 

The insatiable human penchant

for order and dominion

wrecks havoc upon this hapless planet.

 

Once wholesome air

now populated with

noxious chemicals

too numerous to catalog

turn lungs into black parchment and

suffer the children.

 

Water is no longer considered sacred

squandered by abuse,

bottled water now the norm
fresh water no longer trusted,

fire retardant resident in

mother's milk.

 

Oceans, pity the oceans

the fate of coral, uncertain,

denizens of the ocean depths

depleted by the extravagance

of human folly.

 

Humans, an unfinished species

seem incapable of learning

from a history of profound mistakes,

too inured to the machinations of

the lower brain,

too bridled by emotions,

too wedded to the

shallow dimensions of self.

 

What does the future hold for

creatures so immersed in

paths of self-deceit and

mindless destruction.

 

What gruesome future

will unfold if

we do not take hold of the present and

transform it to something

hopeful and transcendent.

It’s Stories We Crave

It's stories we crave,

we thirst after them

and wish to impale them

upon the ends of our

barbed and perilous curiosities.

 

It's the story and it's telling

that reminds us that we are,

it's the story in it's listening

that affirms we are members

of a greater whole

with it's language,

its babblings,

it's eccentricities.

 

It's the story that

binds us to the memories

of a collective past,

that recalls our humanity,

that trumpets possibilities,

that predicts our fate.

 

It's stories we crave,

they give us place

within the gyrations of

a chaotic universe,

they offer sanctuary

from the fear and

uncertainty of living.

 

It's stories that

catalog our fears,

give them all names,

names that we can call upon

to subdue their reckless tendencies.

 

It's stories that

give dimension to dreams,

hopes and aspirations.

 

It's stories we crave,

we long to be reminded,

that we are not alone.

HOW CHARISMA FILLED UP YOUR LIVING ROOM

How charisma filled up your living room,

and the sunlight beamed

through cracked pottery

from the ceiling,

 

How the locomotive died

on its way to the unveiling

of your new placenta

at the whitney,

next to the fried egg on platter.

 

How the days went by like moist arrows,

and the dawn nearly froze

in the wake of your eyes.

 

How i greeted the audience,

and fed them your program,

how i laughed at your stowaway manners,

how  i metered the rhyme that came out  of you

like Oklahoma dust,

how i staged your departure

in  a hallway of mirrors.

 

How charisma filled up

the webbing of your bed,

how i pleaded to pause

by your manifold breathing,

how you turned up the volume

and resisted the meeting,

how you authored your memories on the ceiling,

and signed my letters

with the blood of a hamster,

how precise, how clear

you were then,

how charisma filled up your penthouse,

and let the day begin.

To My Son – Still Arriving

The time is almost

when we will touch

when you will first

set eyes upon the open air.

 

The time is almost

when you will come

on a great swelling tide

to this room,

here by the goldfish

and the scattered letters,

to this room

its walls

its dispositions.

 

The time is almost

when the separate sea of your flesh

will meet with those who

conspired to make you.

 

The time is almost,

spring teases at the window and

earth is open to your anticipated

arrival.

MANHATTAN

 

I walk the streets of the city like a

traveler from the distant stars

noting every nuance of the human thirst for

survival, for pleasure, for reverence,

for glory and for meaning. 

 

Humans seem to be beleaguered by the

complexity of the inner life,

the images of self and others and the

summation of the infinitely diverse interpretations of the

singular events and circumstances of a lifetime.  

             

There are many nomads in the city,

many homeless,

many hanging precariously to life. 

 

There are many young vital males with

nothing to do but endure the

relentless passing of time 

while the vitality roars in their bodies.

 

These men decay from within from the

ravages of the restless engine of inertia, 

the parks, the christian missions and

ultimately the prisons await them.

 

There are many who walk the city

inescapably mad tormented by the fire

burning constantly in their brains. 

 

There are many who walk the streets with a

running dialogue being carried on by the

myriad personalities trapped within a

singular consciousness

particularly prone to perilous ends,

completely devoid of the least remnant of

survival programming, so engrossed are they

with their own divinations.

 

 

Uptown women at the very pinnacle of fashion,

hailing cabs in a driving rain, 

junkies nodding out over a cup of coffee at bickford's, 

lunch time employees causing

ten thousand hot dogs to disappear from a

nedick's restaurant in less than an hour,

a drunk pissing on a statue opposite macy's.

 

Five young black boys

demolishing a burnt out tenement with

consummate speed and skill,

young gay men cruising with an

almost mocking grace on a

hot summer afternoon in central park, 

a family speaking french on a bus

nearing lincoln center, 

old italian men in white playing bocce.

 

A gaggle of widowed women

lined up on park benches

like chickens roosting on an old fallen log

exchanging stories regarding their dead husbands

and inconsiderate children,

or comparing the severity of their operations, 

queues of young professionals outside the

broadway theaters on a saturday night. 

The ghost like quality of Wall Street on a

sunday afternoon with the wind blowing the

refuge through silent thoroughfares,

the sharply delineated gray of winter with

low clouds enshrouding the great skyscrapers,

thousands upon thousands of workers emptying out of their cubicles onto fifth avenue.

 

These are some of the images that

envelop my senses and

catapult me into the

ever changing fabric of the human kind

infinitely diverse yet

somehow monolithic,

ever moving yet changeless,

an immense population that

shares a commonality of their genes,

the architecture of their brains

and the form of their bodies. 

 

Humans are the chimera of a protracted past,

an instantaneous present and

an uncertain future. 

 

The city stands as a

crystalline mirror to that humanity

revealing all its convoluted facets,

its monumental incoherence and

shimmering vitality.

 

My own growing up with all its

particular circumstances is but an

indelicate mirror of the state and situation of humanity. 

 

I am, in fact, a living time machine

carrying with me through the fourth dimension

the history and possibilities of the race.

Two Guitarists

Two guitarists at the window by the night, 

the moon glides gingerly over

sounds of humanity

where jungle meets swamp.

 

Air is filled with longing,

we awaken to it like gypsies, 

mayhem and confusion both rushing

over sanguine dreams. 

 

Hypnotist and his magician

hand in hand in the alley, 

the highway motions,

the sea shatters the illusion of time,

the heart empties its vessels. 

 

Brick upon brick,

civilization is built and 

worn patterns of the ancients reminisce

amid the brooding whispers of

the virgins of the clotheslines.  

A Meditation on Humanity

From the magical darkness

of the womb

into the abrupt light of

human contrivance.

 

In the dome of the implacable skull

the torch of consciousness

passed down through generations

and fashioned into

the protoplasmic wonder called human.

 

Dark, wild images implanted

in layers of distant memories

in the labrynth of brain.

 

Sleepless nights of

tumultous storms

tossing lightning through the skies

at the ground in haphazard folly,

trees snappig like helpless twigs,

rivers raging with their burdens of

relentless driving rain,

nights filled with utter darkness,

volcanic fury ripping the earth

as if it were paper,

sky overwhelmed by distant points of light and

moon, mysterious moon

casting pale shadows on the midnight earth,

howling beasts that break the silence

and impregnate the unsuspecting mind

with avenues of fear and deep distrust

of nature so capricious.

 

Lush rich beauty  of the world

enveloped by the seasons,

filled with wondrous creatures

gave pause to awakening spirit

to rest and meditate

upon the possibility of meaning,

to considere cause as well as effect.

 

Conflict between the inexplicable and the known,

horror of predation and joy of the kill,

fear and understanding,

health and disease,

plenty and the relentless pain of hunger,

harmony and upheaval,

rapture of sweet love and rage towards the enemy,

living and the end of life,

gave sustenance to the idea of the capricious gods

who hold creation in their playful hands

who can change the course of life

in an instant.

 

Born with the hunger to understand,

born with the relentless desire for harmony,

wrapped in mother's arms and

held sweetly at the breast,

we seek each other out

to enrich the joy,

to placate the suffering

that begins to unwind from first breath.

 

We are a vast tribe

grown from few to billions,

we carry the emotions

bundled in our minds like fire,

we have great capacity for

living fruitfully or

giving sway to ignorance

and a thirst for chaos and dissolution.

 

We are a vast tribe,

grown from few to billions,

we can continue to nurture hatred

sustain the idea of enemy,

need for mortal combat or

take the noble idea of equality

and give it true birth

in the human heart.

 

We are a vast tribe,

grown from few to billions,

we can hold on to pernicious ideas

that arose from a darker age

where ignorance resided or

embrace our capacity for wonder,

and enfold the whole of humanity

to our breast like the ancient mother that

gave birth to us all.