Pondering Cantos

One - Ghost Box

When I was a child of four
there were ghosts in a box
in the corner of my room;
deep pigment red top painted
over whitewashed white pine,
crisp as Christmas morning.

Shut tight as a warm window
on a cold night; the ghosts there
trod and pondered my dreams,
amid moonshadow, and the sough
of breeze through seasonal trees.

I dreamt of a great tree then;
winged children, and some,
grown into distant adults-
and an old man, who spoke to animals
that came and went, and sometimes just sat.

When I knew I could fly
I would; step, step, leap up
to the top of some familliar structure,
sensing the world as the woven texture
of a stormy spring green day…

And leap, again up, to the sky
and up the spiral stair of air
to where clouds met mountains,
heaving with and into this ocean of wind
thick enough to grip and slide through.

Far, and long, and surely lost-
bright sun on clouds;
mountains lit, enshrouded in mist,
alive within their fierce beauty,
mere steps ahead across air.

I chose to turn, not back
but aside, and flew not to
but along the front of living thought;
and saw faces as pieces of memory
time-etched into the mighty spine.

Then, down to moors and sunken hills,
to scrub and scree and beach,
then tideline; the border of the shore
came and was and went,
and the sea took me into her country.

And I heard a voice somewhere;
the old man, some animal, or a star;
laughing, cajoling, wondering
something beyond my simple ken;
drawing me like a sketch toward…

The ghosts murmering and clambering
amongst the blocks and viscera quieted
as I spoke; mom; talisman of
identity to all who know one, and
gave up my struggle against waking.

Birthday Best Missed

I don't usually count my 'birthdays', until tonight I forgot that I had one go by - which, in and of itself, is a very nice thing for me.

After abusing prescription narcotics for more than 10 years, about 1/2 of those years, using every day, I have been clean since July 9, 2001.

I remember the first AA meeting I went to, (there was no NA meeting in the area at that time that met daily), and the Serenity House above the bar in downtown Ypsilanti, MI was crammed full of alcoholics, crackheads, heroin addicts, every color of skin and flavor of culture I could imagine. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I went to my first meeting on July 8, 2001 - the day my then wife told me that our marriage was most definitely over, adn should couldn't care less whether I lived or died. I did everything I could to convince her that I really needed help, that I was going to get help, blah blah blah... Anybody who has sat at tables knows all of the negotiations that addicts go trhough.

I got to the Serenity House about 30 minutes before the meeting, I didn't know anyone, the place was a dump; the walls were tobacco and coffe-fume stained, it smelled like an ashtray, and was full of homeless and poor people - I was wearing more than $1000 worth of almost brand new clothing, and they eyed me like I was an edible alien. I wanted to leave, needed to, and I sat there, held down to the chair by my hands gripping the arms so tight my knuckles were popping and my fingers were bloodless - I had taken a couple of vicodin earlier that day, which was nothing, and i wanted to bounce all over the walls and run out the door. But I sat and ground my teeth and didn't even smoke until I went into the big room with all the tables.

That first meeting taught me three things that I am very grateful for.

First, that the people in that room knew me - that they were like me, they would steal, lie, cheat, degrade themselves, their families, and use whoever came near them to score whatever it was they needed. And I knew, somehow, that I could not lie to them because they knew The Real Me. I realized that I could not even think of them as they, because they knew me, and I knew them - they became we at that first meeting. All I could do was stand up and say "My name is Brandon, and I am a drug addict, and I don't want to die like this." It took me almost an hour by bus, each way to get to and from the meetings I went to for the first three weeks of my sobriety, and I usually shook all the way there, and wept all the way home.

Second, I learned that there were three types of people (in terms of addiction) in that room; the ones who fought getting sober - these people don't relapse they retreat, and they don't care, the ones who feared getting sober - these are the ones who see their peril, but relapse and usually lie about it until they're almost (or completely) dead, and the ones who would die trying to live sober, if that's what it took. As I listened to the people at the tables speak about themselves, their pasts, their present situations; some would speak on their step-work, or lack thereof, weep and shake with fear and withdrawal becasue they didn't believe they could make it another hour, much less another day, some would admit errors they had committed that day, and offer their thankfulness to their Higher Power for their lives and their ability to stay sober after the shit hit the fan. One guy would only say "The f*ckin' judge made me come here, and when I get my paper signed, I'm leaving and I'm giong to go home and drink." That's all I ever heard that man say, for three weeks, every night he was there, he boldly said the same thing - and I was grateful for him, because he reminded me where I could be.

The third thing I learned at that first meeting was that I had a choice which group I wanted to belong to, and that, if I was going to get sober and (so I thought), (save my marriage, my kids', the shame of divorce - see? I didn't know anything about living sober, I wanted to have my 'old life' back the way it was, and if I had to give up the drugs, well, I'd figure out a way to do it.)

But I knew I had to choose anger, fear, or acceptance - and I knew, from that first meeting that it was a process that I could only choose if I stopped using narcotics - there was no other way.

On July 9, 2001 I woke up in what would become my last bout with withdrawal. I knew withdrawal very well, had gone through it hundreds of times, and I knew how long I'd gone, how much I had taken, and how sick I would get. The last episode only lasted three instead of the usual five days - I knew I could handle it. I dragged myself to meetings during the process, cranked up on caffeine and chainsmoking Marlboros to keep my brain from snap-crackle-popping right through my skull. I went to meetings and babbled and cried and raged, and they jus sat and listened and told me I was a f*ck-up and that I should shut up and listen to the old-timers. But, I couldn't - I had to let it out, and it came in floods of emotion that I had supressed for years - and it all meant the same thing - "I will not die like this!"

I went to Serenity House for three weeks before I found an Alano club within walking distance of my old-west-side Ann Arbor home. By then the physical withdrawal, and (what I thought was) the worst of the psychological withdrawal was over. I went to meetings, sometimes two or three, every day. I read The Big Book (there were NA meetings, but only weekly, so, I stuck with AA), started looking for things to read that talked about getting sober - and I dreamed every night of finding pills hidden everywhere, even in my body cavities, tearing myself open to get the pill that I knew was there - waking up sweating next to my estranged wife.

I went to the Alano club for two weeks, and moved out of town with my kids. My wife moved in with her 'friends' and held me to my promise that she would get the children when she could find a place. I moved 206 miles away to a small town that, when I got there I found had no AA, NA, I was SOL - but, I had the internet, and found EGNA - I spent the next year there, after my wife had come to get the kids, and I was alone - after she started using crack cocaine, and bringing the barflies home for sex and drugs - my kids didn't tell me a lot of this until after I finally managed to get custody in 2004. I'm glad I didn't know - I've never been a violent person - but, I think everyone has limits to what they can rationally deal with when their children are living in an ignorant, dangerous situation. I would visit and talk to my kids, and they were "Fine, dad, wer're fine." I saw them every other weekend - the three hour train rides were nice, I got a lot of reading and writing done.

I moved to the next town over in early 2002 and went to some AA meetings there - staying with EGNA, and doing a lot of writing. I 'remembered' that I had written poetry, I 'remembered' how much I enjoyed playing my guitar... How can you forget things like this? Well, slow death makes you forget life, a little at a time. I then moved back to Ann Arbor because my wife had been charged with negligence and marijuana possession. I moved in with her and the kids, and took care of them - the condo they lived in was destroyed. I couldn't stand the drugs and drinking, and so I found a place of my own; small, quiet, and moved there. It was a few blocks from my kids, and I saw them regularly. It became apparent that this quiet room with a fireplace and my own porch was in a crack house. Check it out.



I still had the dreams, but I didn't miss the drugs - I would wake, write in my journal until I felt better, and then get on with my life, I stopped going to meetings in May of 2002, and started working my own program. I think now that going to AA would have been easier on me. I had to find my own inspirational materials, I had very little support, I worked with a longtime friend proofreading advanced math, physics, and statistics textbooks, and I would go home or to the café and write – alone. I minimized my working hours as much as I could. I became isolated, started meditating for up to 6 hours per day, didn’t eat much, didn’t want to. I had no friends, my $200,000 plus income was gone down to about $20,000 and then half that, then I was selling blood plasma to buy food so I could eat to sell more blood to buy more food. My weight bottomed out at about 125 pounds, and … Something changed. I realized that, through all of this misery and difficulty, I had somehow become happy. I wrote poetry, I read books, I talked to my children, I helped my wife, I started talking to people, found a poetry group, got involved with homeless people who were trying to make it, started playing my guitar on the street for something to do, and realized I could make cigarette money just by doing what I really loved.

I took a job as the night manager at a residence facility, and the joy just kept on building - even when I became very angry, realizing how much time I had wasted being wasted – it was an awesome experience just to experience emotions on such a clear level.

]…
Broken like a window
I see my blindness now

I need love
Not some sentimental prison
I need God
Not the political church
I need fire to melt the frozen sleet inside me
I need love
-Sam Phillips

I felt like I was waking up, sober!

I took a job as night manager of a residence facility populated by people with mental and substance abuse problems – people on the edge of relapse, prison, homelessness, institutionalization. I started holding AA meetings at the desk, all night, whenever someone came in and needed a meeting I’d pull out something to read or share – I did what I could.

The meetings were not formal AA, but the Big Book saw a lot of use – and I had other books that I would take to work – [I]Illusions[/I], [I]The Prophet[/I], the desk had a KJV bible which I’ve been familiar with since my childhood – I had a copy of the Qu’ran, and there were Muslims who wanted to talk Allah – fine – I learned, and enjoyed helping people.

As I said, I quit going to AA, and followed my own road, and still do. I am sober today, AA helped me get there, and I’ll always consider myself a friend of Bill W., if not a follower of his plan – I’m not much of a follower, nor am I really a leader, I just do what I do, and find people who want to that, too. People – family, friends, lovers, my children, have helped me find ways to stay sober, but I am sober by my choice to find inspiration, to use my imagination, and to learn and practice living sober. My X wife and I are not very good friends anymore, even though, after all that has happened, which I won’t go into here, she’s sober now, too. Even though I don’t like her very much, I trust her a lot more than I did when we were sleeping in the same bed and exchanging fluids. Our marriage was based upon ignorance, fed on lies, and is better left in the ground where the Utah courts finally gave me sole custody of my kids in March of 2004, and buried the marriage’s desiccated copse (and gave me full custody of my kids (again)) last August 1st . And now, five years after my marriage ended, the miracle of a [i]soul mate[/i] has touched me - and I cannot even go there right now – but, she is a blessing, a gift, a guru, and a muse.

There are lots of things I have left out – but, I’m exhausted, and they’re just life things, anyway.

I am sober today, not because I followed steps, those steps gave me clues to how to find myself – I am sober today because I found that spark of higher power within me, the one that connects all of us, even those who don’t care, who want their pain, who want to die. I am sober because, I was fortunate enough to be able to clearly see that the choice was mine, and nobody could make it but me.

Five years and 11 days sober, I don’t have a single chip, token, or pin to show for it, but, I have this happy, sometimes difficult, but amazing life. So, I’m just going to quit counting for awhile, and go back to one day at a time – maybe in another five years I’ll do this again.

It’s just a bunch of days, some easy, some difficult, some sad, all wonderful and alive!

Peace / Namaste
-b

To that guy's wife who couldn't get a job at a tanning salon because she didn't look like that Lohan woman.

It never ceases to amaze me that real people are surprised when they can't get jobs in places where becoming unreal is the bottom line of business.

In the case of tanning, people tan to make themselves look more attractive by pouring radiation into their skin, to look like they really don't look, to appear to take the time to be out in nature, under the sun, having fun, living the 'good life'- which, if they were doing all that, would be really cool, but they don't do that - they slave, and keep themselves planted in non-oudoorsy situations - behind their desks or in front of their television sets, and go fast-tan to provide the illusion of a different lifestyle (to themselves, as much, in not more so, than to others.) Why? Because tan is "good", and pale is "bad." We are taught not to accept ourselves without modification - these modifications have almost nothing to do with health and happiness, but they are a cultural priority. People will risk skin cancer, and FSM knows what all to be accepted - but, generally refuse to take any risks at all to express who they truly are.

I'm not thin & muscly - I'm almost 41 years old, 15 pounds overweight, and have a moderately disproportionate muscle mass because I don't work out. But, I can play a 22 pound guitar for four hours straight - that's me, I could pump iron & fry on a tanning bed, too - but, how many of those folks could trade places with me and be functional at it? What I'm saying is that nobody in their right mind would hire me to be a poof-boy for a tanning salon! If I were offered a job at one of those horrid places, I would only take it if the other choice was at a fast-food restaraunt.

I think you're right - boycott the place, they suck - they all suck - they're all about taking your money and giving you physical, psychological, and emotional poison in return.

Those tanning-bed beauties

will be lining up at clinics to get

Basal Cell Carsinomas and

shit like this cut out of their bodies before all is said and done - screaming and suing and agonizing over the failure of their investment in poison - and who will be the "beautiful people" then?

You show me somebody who is overweight with a good attitude and joy in their life, and someone who is living physically and emotionally ravaged by their own self abuse, and I know who I'm gonna pick for beautiful.

Maybe this has been a good thing - maybe it's an eye-opener for you, your family, and your friends to find a healthier lifestyle, eh wot? I don't know, I'm just offering ideas and opinions here - you can always point at me and say "Hey, you self-righteous motherfucker, you smoke cigarettes and drink beer, and puff the ganja when you have the time and inclination! Who the HELL do you think you are?" Well, I'm me, and I really love my life, even the tough bits, and I'm learning how to treat myself well, even if I'm not perfect at it yet (hah! like, ever.)

And if your wife loves herself, and you love her, and she loves you, and you love you - well, hey, that's what matters.

You wanna tan? Go the beach! If she wants a job, well, maybe choosing something she loves, seeking it out, imagining and manifesting that is, in the long-run, an idea that's so much better, it makes the radiaion-poison business pale by comparison.

So, like I said, take it or leave it - I think you should be proud and happy with who you are - you seem pretty cool to me.

Peace
-b

Imagination, Inspiration, Intent, and Faith

This thought, covered by others, really inspired me to articulate my opinion concerning it - thanks for the inspirations! Thanks to KMH, Callum, OV, and Barry, very many thanks, indeed.


I've made the statement before that "Imagination supercedes faith", and it tends to be ignored (I think it's perceived as my naivete`), but to me, faith is a subset of imagination, inspiration, and intent - if you can imagine a beautiful life in a balanced universe, clearly, with detailed connections to yourself and others, it manifests through the inspiration that brings clarity, and the intent that creates a reality where faith is the state of being.

"Belief comes from without, knowledge comes from within."
-Marishi Nisargudhat

"There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds."
--Tennyson, "In Memoriam"

"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation."
--Elton Trueblood

If I, or someone else, develops a set of criteria (dogma), can I have faith in such without processing it through my imagination - visualizing, internalizing, pondering or meditating upon its validity, relevance, and potential? Can I have those unseen things without the inspiration necessary to clarify my desires and to patiently focus my behavior toward "right action"?

Hebrews 11:1 states "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It does not say that faith is acceptance of litany, dogma, or ritual as reality.

And

James 2:20 says that "Faith without works is dead", I consider this as a warning that faith is driven first by the creative work of imagination, requires the work of seeking and opening to inspiration, and manifests through actions, which, is the kind of work that most of us consider to be the active side of faith. All three of these require "works" to practice and refine. In stipulating these criteria, I am saying that faith is a result, not a cause. What comes from faith is a deeper realization of potential, connection to Sourse (God, Divine Self, whatever you want to call it), and manifestation (creation) of reality.

In the article "Imagination, Advent, and Christian Faith, Rev. Gil Ott wrote:
Peter Gomes, the minister of Memorial Church at Harvard University speaks of the Christian bible as a book of imagination. A book of imagination. He urges Christians (as well as everyone else) not to see the Bible as a book of rules or regulations, rather to see it as a book meant to speak to, to stoke, to fuel the imagination.

Ah! To fuel the imagination.

From what I can see, imagination is in short supply these days. We modern folk tend to relate more to facts and figures. We’re more into statistics than symbols. We like to keep close to that stuff we call reality. Reality, meaning only that stuff we can see and touch.

And when reality is reduced to only sensory perceptions, I think our expectations tend to shrink, to become scaled down. We become blind to the divine intrusions among us. We become myopic. Our span of vision has become too narrow to comprehend the width and breadth of rich and diverse religious traditions that have shaped our culture.

In his article, The Uses of Imagination in Religious Experience, Dr. F. Thomas Trotter defines imagination as follows:

"My definition of imagination is this: It is the act of making images that convey through their shapes, form, and emotional authority a power of reality that lies at the heart of things. It is, further, the act of apprehending the power of events by way of their shapes, forms, and emotional authority so that the ordinary events of life are held in some accountability to a vision of truth. In a real sense, the principle use of imagination is to inform and vitalize human life. It is to create life itself, certainly to create human communities, probably to create all of the informed gestures of love that we know.


I am positing that faith is the actual state of grace that is sparked by imagination, connects us to our Source through inspiration, and manifests into our universe by our intent; devoid of these other factors, faith is without worth, it is "dead" - as an actiivated and emanated state, then, faith is the balance where miracles become so entwined with the everyday that, for the faithful, there is no real difference.

The Buddha said, "I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering", If I have faith in this statement, a hope or belief that it's true, how will it save me or the world from suffering any suffering? I can't see how it would at all. However, by finding faith - through the work of imagining that it's [i]potentially true[/i], by seeking inspiration from All That Is Out There And In Here that it is true, and by Intending to make it true by exhibiting the evidence of it's truth, I can then find that point, the balance where it Is True because I Know the process from one end to the other, and the insubstantial becomes 'real' - others may see some change in me and say "It's a miracle, you do not suffer!", and I can simply say "You don't have to, either.", this, to me, is faith.

Reflections on Truly Senseless Violence

Ah, memories; the reek of tear gas, the adrenaline rush of throwing beer bottles at the heads of riot cops with their armor and big orange sticks. Wading, then running through ankle deep broken glass past piles of burning furniture. Always the tear gas, everywhere - and that guy who would take his moccassin off and use it to pick up the hot tear gas canisters and throw them back into the lines of advancing police with their megaphones and clak-clak-clak marching forward, herding people like animals.

And the copper-sweet tang of blood scent when they drug a naked guy past; burnt, bruised, and bleeding from cuts he recieved from the sliding glass door the pigs shattered to get at him on his balcony - they could have just opened it - but, they had to break down three other doors to get at him, and I suppose the bloodlust was on them - everyone screaming obscenities as they tore the burning flag from his body, and pistol-whipped him into the glass crushed under their boots. The stinking press of bodies in the comandeered city bus, one among many busses lined up as roadblocks and mass cells; people pissing and puking all over themselves and each other, guarded by one cop with his service weapon holstered, but the strap conspicuously undone - talking about how he "loved this" becaue they were paying him double time to be here.

So, while people were being beaten and killed in the Townships of Sueto, and while the talk of the Nation of freedom was of divestiture in Apartheid states, well, this riot was brought to you by the clash of college kids, fighting for their right to party, and The Rule of Law, putting it down - Kalamazoo, MI, 1985.

Talk about senseless violence? Fuck that! Anyone who stood for human rights, who stood against the kind of tyranny that effected 85% of a downtrodden, uneducated population, and it got ugly - well, I salute THAT stand!

I marched for Divestiture, carrying a Mandela sign, playing my drum, and, on one occasion carrying a Coffin with "B I K O" written on it...

But, I know I could have done so much better.

Every Song I Send

Every song I send;
a collected drop of rain,
a gathered tear;
has nurtured my life,
watered the garden that is me.

Every song I send
has become some piece of me;
has filled me, as wine,
has changed me, with time;
and, in my dreams, has become mine.

Every song I send
will surely not bring
the same taste to your lips;
my only wish, that these gifts
quench your thirst with cool bliss.

poets.com - piss on you

I wanted to find a place to post my poems where other people, who are poetically inclined, might read and comment on them. I posted one on www.poetry.com, and started receiving an incessant stream of e-mails and postal envelopes lauding me with "awards" which I had to purchase, and "published work" which I had to buy. I was born at night, but not last night. So, I din't post any more poems there.

So then I found www.poets.com. I thought, woohoo, a place where poets are required to post reviews so they can post more poems to be reviewed by others, seems like a great place for me to get some honest feedback on my writing (none of that "YOU ROCK" / "YOU SUCK" stuff that I detest mroe than cat vomit on my bed), but real writers reviewing my stuff! Sweet! And it only cost me $15 for 3 months - OK, I'll try it.

Now, I don't think I'm a great poet, I think I have a knack for getting my thoughts out through moderately good syntax, pretty good language, and fairly good analogy and slightly better metaphor - I can make something sound good, if not always mean exactly what I want it to - I do think in poetry, odd, but true - I also enjoy the process of puzzling the right word into the right spot, so as to deliver an entire psychic package of image and emotion and meaning, squished into a nice tight bundle.

So, I posted 11 poems over the last 7 or weeks. Some of my favorites, and a couple that I put together recently - a bone deep thank you to My Muse! 11 poems that I care about, and there were reviews, good ones, out of a possible 200 points (40 reviews * max 5 points each) I scored 191 points, and the language that was used to describe the impact of my poems made me feel kind of squishy inside - it was beautiful.

I don't get all ego-fruck about my wiritng. I know I'm competent, but I also know that opinion is fickle, and pretty much meaninless when it comes down to working on something new - I could accidentally write a great poem, or blog entry, and spend the rest of my life trying to compete with myself to exceed my maximum ability, a futile scenario, at best. I'm sure Hemmingway would have nodded in agreement before wandering out to blow his brains out.

So, I'm not really concerned, but I feel good that people are noticing my work - something that most of my family, and some of my friends have put up with, or pretended to. I mean, I know who loves me, and tells me the truth - or even sees the truth in what I write, I also know the slack-faced look and the "Yeah, that's really good... ... ... ..." response that really means, "How come you use all those words?" No biggie.

Tonight, I found out it was a lie - the common practice at poets.com is to cut & paste reviews on to as many poems as possible, so as to earn perqs from the site - $25 per day if you post the most reviews - and I am a sucker.

piss on poets.com, and all the commercialized poetry sites out there - I'll let this shit moulder on my blog, whether anyone reads it or not. And, if people come here, read it, and like it, then maybe they'll be a little happier - hey, this lesson only cost me $15 and a small chunk of pride, which I don't really need anyway. Definitely a good lesson in doing something I love to find out how much others love it - I'll just do what I love, and the rest of the world can go piss up a rope if they don't like it.

The Rhino

I once saw a rhino in a zoo
And they told me that his cage
Had been expanded
His universe was arbitrarily
Grown out past its edges
That options vectored tangentially
To all infinite points
On the circle that
Until yesterday
Defined his parabolic life and
Hyperbolic limb
An augmented reality
A superior potential

I thought to myself
I would sing of running
And roaming
I would ply the wind with my great horn
Sniffing and scratching the ground
Falling through grass and air and time
And I would be large
And banish the smallness
Of belief illuminated by knowledge
Into memory
Raised to a new power
I would see the true dimension of my history
Take it in my hands
And press it between pages
And move into the light
Of presence that
Contains me and so much more

And maybe in my rhino mind
Would flicker a twist
Synaptic “Hallelujah”
A lightning flash
The once occluded path, like a string of pearls
A fractal algorithm
Infinitely recursive
A soup of light and shadow
Each drop a where / when
The spoon mere inches
From my hand

Who’m I kidding?
All see as through a glass darkly
Sift through perceived reality
Laughing or crying or raging
as through a class drunkly
hoping we can pretend it's just a movie
begging some weird ignorant interpretation
of a God that lies outside this twisted perception
to cut some deal that seems like absolution
Believing self and cage to be the same
Just like that poor rhino
Treading a dirt circle
In a wide meadow

Stormchild Listening

Clouds scud low across the sky
thick enough to completely obscure
the dirty-penny eye of the dying moon
June is gone and the world is burning
the stink of ozone and fried mesquite
hangs in the air; blown debris of
dead trees and scrub seems to want
the solace and moisture in my eyes,
as they watch the weather trap this valley
below it's sinister, portentous weight.

They do not call the wind Moriah or Santa Ana
Tonight, these folks huddle in pre-fab hovels
and call it scourge, for tonight it is so;
alive and angry, knowing nor caring for
respect for the traveler, for the seeker
there is only warning in the wind.
I call this wind the lovers of ancient silences,
a power tryst that bleeds passion and lust for return
to the raw land and the howl of the true native;
she shrieks through the town
he ravages the lawns and gnaws
the effigies of man, they cry together
"Seek shelter from me, my domain
is all tonight, ignore us at your peril!"

Lightning flashes - brighter than day
but, so far away that the illusion
of distance and streetlight safety
is almost complete. Oily bolts seem to
breathe up from the ground, lick the clouds
taste the water there, and spit disaster
into smouldering, burning,
exploding, disintegrating, vaporizing life;
it dances and laughs as if waving
a wand of smoking wiels or a lash of wrath
to blast the land and sear the air, power
to pry molecules from their mates
and send the reek of grief
to the humans who gawk in awe at the forces
that dance beyond their reach.

The thunder in this land does speak,
loudly, if rarely, it calls to the dead
and wandering spirits who lithely shy away
from the halide and mercurial light;
ancestors of no one now, who flee to, but
mostly fro, in eternal confusion at the sense
of false green, primped and manicured nature,
that, molested, hides something that resembles
nothing of the shape or scent of lands
these souls of badger and crow, eagle and wolf
used to know. The voice cries in short bursts
of bestial frustration, not having words for
betreayal or desecration; it cannot ask the
land or the usurping nation "Where are my children?";
so it wanders away, and does not bother to mutter.

I am a child of storms, raised from the land
of many waters, fed by the creatures who
knew weather and hardship in winter's grip;
flora that hid from rain and reached for sun,
shook in thunder's wrath, and let go the earth
to find a home beyond some impromptu river's run-
I wonder, on nights like this, if I am alone
as I watch nature flailing at the ground,
scratching the belly of the earth as she heaves
in complaint, wretched and painted like some
beautiful, drug-addled whore, shaved and tarred
by machines and driven insane in the throes
of pains that her pimps mistake for stupid passion;
I hear, alone, I fear, this storm moan to me,
its demands groaned through engineered grass
and foreign trees; fed by strange chemicals,
the language is foul and choked
with naked need to be free of this evil disease -
and to me, who can hear, barely, sometimes,
it pleads "Oh please, stormchild, give me peace -
leave!"