Generatta

I sit here, where Eliot could not,

Twenty floors above the street.

People below are color spots—

Trowsers, rolled? Flat-front or pleat?

Of their flesh is a matter of guess.

That they are human, a matter of faith.

What are they—  What? Tsk tsk, sot—

I simply take note of their game,

Watching as the hawk eyes prey from afar

Through great lanes of land and air,

But I do not swoop, I lick my feathers clean

Of the knowledge my hawk eyes glean,

Here are not matters of pride or shame,

Here is only a question of how to compare

One spot to another, high above it all—

I do not swoop because swooping involves me,

And well, you see,

The twenty floors between,

Naturally, disinterest me.

The sweet familiar scent

of Sunday services

Has broken through my wall.

Tribute of the dead and the dying

                invades my cubicle.

A deathly seeded air, Oh from where?

I wonder, aloud. A grunt ripens my awareness—

A small bit of mass in my hand.

Unwrapped dark chocolate, opiate,

Sweetest antioxidant on the market—

Here is a good and many flower,

come by someone’s lover

let’s us all feel its power

like a body full of wine.

Ah, but for the moment, to save the minute

wherein lay my reverie,

Back to hover at the conference corner,

To the gaping view and my friends below.

Save me that chocolate pill till commentary

Warrants a plenty candy

And my own flower dandies

Reeking like hospital rooms and funeral parlors

Sometime distant from now.

Now for the quiet clamor of thoughts

And observations on these presentations of spots

and the complement of simple crackers

in this waxing lunch hour.

Ground level and the elevator dings,

                released, free.

                Ear popping the new altitude.

Six o’clock train is five blocks away

There’s fresh air and a breeze. 

What an hour for a tour, its nice walking

with a gentleman’s ease.

Thoughts of my work, behind,

ahead is Thank You and Please.

Yet now on the ground floor, I am blind.

Every five steps, I must stop and unwind.

There’s music of every channel, beating,

                and a show of skin bleating,

                as the fresh meat competes.

My eyes are burning raw, my mind is burning.

All the voices, emanate a beckoning.

All the bodies, animate a reckoning.

My safety train is five blocks away,

That fact strikes me plain.

So get up and get on,

                but I’m already on.

I whisper my strife,

I’m a young man, after all,

And this evening I walk with a cane,

As this evening I walk off the pain,

On this evening I crawl to the train.

Dear me, you’ve pulled down your pants

here in the village square.

Strangely he did not stop, though he stared

Caught mid-ecstasy.

Desist, I insisted, you are making a scene.

I don’t care, he said, I don’t care.

I am an individual, you see, I am me.

And continued to build on his high,

He exercised his control button

While I stuttered in my step to move on.

Heard him calling on as I ascended the hill

I am celebrating myself, right here,

I celebrate me.

What is the natural distance of crazy

In its equilibrium state? How far a walk

Between the wave patterns of outlandishness,

They, the crazies, certainly do give each other

A wide enough berth to feed  on normality

And let normality replenish

Before its next encounter with absurdity.

I think one hundred paces is not enough room,

But then some may not like what I presume,

Oh well. This is just talk,

Crazy talk on a crazy walk.

So when the poet gave us Mrs. Porter

                and her daughter

He was careful not to wash their feet

                in silver water.

Yet why would they not?

Shouldn’t they so esteem?

Silvery feet, is not such a thought

Buried one fathom in every dream?

By nature, the Porters are hot commodity,

And I should find them sitting well

When they have silver feet, shone properly

As would match their sylvan retreat.

Such is the natural effect by a moon

High and bright, and water thick and calm.

The trees are silvers in the water glass,

And silver eyes then shine from mother and her lass—

So why, poet, should they not delight or else

Why do you spare to indulge them the minor sprite

of nature’s own argent light?

‘Soda water’ in the Wasteland

Is this poet’s tricked rhyme,

Isn’t he grand? He transforms the water thus,

Matches the scene to his minor fuss.

But we are sure to know,

By the graces of that natural glow,

The Porter girls, both Miss and Mrs.

Are out each night, taking dimes

and giving kisses.

And silver feet marks their stride

From here to there, passing No Where Place,

And in the bowers of love they hide

Where others define them

by the show of their lace.

Dear Great Sea, admittedly,

I have great confusion in place where

Great Enlightenment should be.

Is this because of you or me?

Or maybe I just see confusion

In the place of Enlightenment—

But who am I to pass such judgment?

Maybe, though, I am Enlightened

And the whole place, because I am,

sends out a steady beam

that makes it all seem

A great confusion.

If so, I pray now for the arrival

Of the code and way of fusion,

Perhaps not of the body,

But of the minds, undeniable

The power we could be

If our minds were, like you, a Great Sea,

Fluid, changing, sustaining

Bodies within and without—

I keep reserved the possibility

This is how it is now

And I am the last one to cast aside doubt.

I’m almost there, Great Sea,

Almost reconciled the differences

Of senses between you and me.

I should hire a biographer now

To follow me round with camera.

And every time I enter a cab

or exit my door, in that moment capture

my morning stroll through the park.

Like John Lennon and Daniel Johnston did.

This is the time to capture my mind

Before it fizzles and is gone,

Before its memory dusts down

To a form that supports another system,

a thoughtless system,

                my mute corpse,

some kind of a chair,

A throne for nothing to lay upon,

Nothing but day light and star light,

Wind, grass and dust.

A throne for DNA of all sorts

But the one thing of miracle

That made the material me, gone.

Snap, snap---biographer come too

in the maudlin dawn, me and you,

through the sobering morning!

Note how I take my espresso

And lean against the bar and window

To see and be seen and wonder

Who from among them knows what I know,

Who knows more and who will share today,

Who can love without impediment,

Each moment a dying moment,

Each love an eternal love.

Memory, of the lives we were before,

Hawk-like above, watches with disinterest,

Waits for the moment for us to figure it out,

To stop in our tracks and look round,

To remember everything as it was and

What happened to make it as it is---

Memory, she will start

like the crack boom of universal birth

When we achieve the critical mass

Of remembrance---and laugh in universal chorus,

We Angels, who traded the fixed rate of Heaven

For this volatile market of Life,

we shall soon remember why we did it,

we shall soon regain immortality.

Snap, snap, biographer, we haven’t all day

To lurk about. Now’s our time

For rounds and visitations,

For dying creatures’ permeations,

For yesterday’s insights

And tomorrow’s revelations.

Look here how I style my scarf

And fix my cap, oh how my ephemera sparkles!

Matters nothing but in the instant of now

I shine the all of who I am,

snapshot of my mind activity,

into the fixed lens of your eye,

the black hole of your mind

absorbing all of space and time

letting nothing escape—

Nothing escapes you, biographer!

Here, let me take one of you too.

We can over-develop these later,

Put filters on and see all the lovely wonders

Hiding safely behind our plain sight.

The light we are is order and chaos together.

The light we are is harmony of the two.

Here we are proof,

Heaven is alive and well

beaming in all directions

sources many, variable and unknowing.

Every ounce of every being

comprises that being’s confessions,

Heaven is to witness truth.

In the hours of life and life’s departure,

We remain as we are, gentle creatures,

In moments of chaos and order,

Across periods of harmony,

An artist and a biographer,

An ebb and flow within a Great Sea.

Dear biographer, dear Memory,

Remember me and remember me.

The sign round the peasant’s neck read:

Judge me not by my morning glow

                Nor by my setting worth,

Judge me by the burn I place

                Upon the skin I touch.

Okay peasants, you are judged.

And I stand burned by your awful truth.

More reliable than sunlight and starlight

Is you. The forever position you hold.

Trustees of an ancient attitude,

That when forsaken it is okay to display

Shameless destitution

Before a mass of blessed creatures,

Evidence, truly, that anything is okay.

Shipwrecks off the Lighthouse course,

               Here is not the way.

How fragile the divide, I am sure,

Between my Here and your Here,

How varied the daily trek we steer,

Yet how unconquered our minds both are,

              I am a star,

              You are a star.

Upon this battlefield we both have come

To Be, Am and Are, the ballast and bar,

The changing variables and their sum,

Part players, I play smart, you play dumb.

Interchangeable, the change observable,

One life another life’s dirigible.

In this life, peasant, you may have heard

Fewer times than I these words, Thank You,

But that look in your eye

And its mirroring the world you see

Is my undeniable cue, to you many times

                Thank You.

For the eternal envy we, who have, inspire,

You, who have not, persevere just as well.

You, Odysseus, blasted out of your ship,

Robbed of your men, kingdom and queen,

And, for one ounce shy of your customary wit,

Forsaken by the gods—

no chance to re-string the old Bow

                no chance to overthrow

the lesser suitors

and peer again with their betters.

Timeless as you are. Eternal as you are.

Sorrow and sickness follow you---

But you had to make such friends in Hades,

As you did, these wicked friends of an old war

Who still have nothing better going on

Than to sit and cant against the Paragon.

They found you again. Shy of Paradise.

            Their shade is your demise,

            here in the land of the wise.

The depths your mind lurks in still,

These shades you draw upon cloak you

And keep between you and a lighter mind,

And neither the sand of time

Nor the heart waves of neighbor’s care

Can shield out this torment and despair.

Balanced or not, it is fair

             Odysseus-King

             Peasant-beggar

You must overcome it all, reclaim your will,

And wit will find you again.

The dormant gods’ love you once soaked by

Will then excite inner warmth, the shades will disperse,

And pennies in the pocket, burst and burst,

This blessing of thought shall lift the curse

And hold it still---Odysseus, the only wealth is will!

The peasant swung the sign on his neck round

And made of it a cape and shield, draped on his back,

And drew to his feet, stepped off the path,

And stumbled onto the field.

He beat his emaciated chest,

Scratched his face, pulled his hair,

And screamed to the day light

                I am the best!

                I am the worst!

I could take your homes by force,

I could fill this human ocean

                 With my superior seed.

And be king of the world—

                 Grandfathered in, by deed.

But in life we incubate,

In death we culminate.

My will is not to compete for scraps

Of the scraps of the scraps of the scraps,

My will is to remain true to patience

                For a time yet to come,

                For the lifting of the Veil---

                And the Veil shall soon be lifted.

Apocalyptic visions, in the park like pennies,

A stack never higher than an Attic column,

Promising a part of the present hardly anyone can see,

For that part resides between each moment,

As one moment passes, the next approaches,

And the exchange point is guarded

By the progenitors of time---not figures, not people,

But concepts driving a slave mass,

Concepts that operate the blinds, control the gas,

Inspire self-guided minds through an eternal pass.

But for the handful that can see between,

Nothing is secure. Hard to know for sure

What may happen if the blinds stop spinning

And the gas flow ebbs and the machinery halts—

Some among us think this would breach an omega point,

Ignite a fusion reaction, where it all comes back in,

Or detonate every particle---perhaps to begin it all again.

There must be some who know what will happen,

And they do not speak. Maybe there’s no language for it.

Maybe their patience is great.

Maybe they’re still writing the Standard Operating Procedure

For the Ascension of Mind to Telepathy,

To make it much easier for you and me to agree.

Maybe next year will be the roll-out,

Maybe the roll-out is now and next year

                will be the dawn of awareness,

                maybe the Veil will lift soon

                maybe in our lifetime!

                maybe I presume—

But better to say now what I think

Then to wait for forever to come and

Gargle my thoughts with some notion of peace.

How many times have I heard from another

To cease this line of thought, to not bother

With a whimper or growl about the Who, What, How,

Let alone the Why.  All we really have so far

Is Where, here, and When, now.

The rest of it maybe tattooed across our brow,

Or figured in the particle lights that dance between eyes

Or resting on a quiet plane deep within the mind,

But somewhere, for sure, is truth,

               Who we are, What we are,

               How we are, Why we are,

So many angles to approach the answers,

And we need them all, for We is the word

for all us dancers,

all our genius

all our cancers

Yet how many times have I heard it said,

These thoughts are absurd? We is just a word!

Yet the thoughts still come. I, for one, let them---

Illumination surely succeeds openness.

And We is more than a word to me,

A concept of collective oneness

That must require training and focus

To bring it into a being of chorus.

Two hemispheres of truth, parted by mystery,

Wait in each other’s darkside for that moment

Where the bridge forms and they can share

Knowledge of illness and cure from each side.

Bloodlines a million years old and more

Come together in a wipeout of separateness,

And a new chapter for discovery lasting

The merest fraction of the age of blood begins.

The survivor lines shall be emerging soon,

We hope, but the chaos of union still rages.

                All have the moon

                and sun in common

All fear the serpent when he enters the garden,

All have reason to hold the heart through the stages

And pray decimation will not end their line of ages.

No one particular can stop the great machine in motion,

Land masses once separated by two great oceans

And singular fantasies divined under the same skies

Come together now, some parts thrive, other parts die.

                This tree of Life is you and I

                and of Knowledge is We,

                You and I, a tree.

Rooted, uprooted, transplanted, spliced,

Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Christ.

In the ground when we feed grass, or dance in the air as ash.

Osmosis of mind to mind, set in your truest rash---

Let us have the final test now, Clock strike your final chime,

Our biology is so perfect, we will reach Equilibrium in time,

Mind wave patterns, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, align,

Heart beats in this great entrainment, synchronize---

                inhuman parts of the world

                watch and wait for us to realize

God’s dream was to make life make life make life.

We were seeds in the beginning.

We became trees, by and by, and under the surface

Our roots entwined. It is time for us now to flower.

We can have a unified world, and it can be our bower.

                Bodies and minds, language of bodies,

                minds and bodies, language of minds.

Animation of laws and principles, government of passionate mass,

Dams in a great river. Life held back. For electricity, so primitive.

Yet the Great Flood shall come, as always,

And dams of every cause, fall.

                Made, hear the Maker’s call.

                Ego gives rise to We

                and the voice We hear—

                 let it be All.