The children will sleep tomorrow
Without the waves of the dead
Women will laugh tomorrow
Without bowing near the graves
If we hold our hands
For a new tomorrow
If we have to survive
To host the new flag of life.
The post If We Have To Survive appeared first on Countercurrents.
I crest that gentle, old, familiar hill,
and see, at last, the harbour
glowing in the distance.
She’s a-waiting, patiently,
upon one of those little houseboats
for my, long overdue, return.
Off-grid we live, Water Rovers,
moving from estuary to muddy bank,
all of the year ‘round,
apart from these three Winter months,
where we flock together,
deep in the curving arm
of this natural, wooded waterline.
Both front pockets a-jingling and a-jangling
with busked pennies, farthings and shillings.
Why the long face, they would
ask him
jeering,
easily seven feet tall from the time
he was a teen.
No one else could fathom him
and those that dogged him
one day learned when, with a simple
thought, he erased them.
Lifting no finger, barely moving
an eyebrow,
an artist clearing a canvas.
Once upon a time
the world bowed down
before the hearts of children
and tended their joy
like the most prized orchid
in the conservatory of the soul
We once rushed for paints
when the rain washed their chalk
from the pavement
so their essence
could always be remembered
in color
Now we idly wait
while that same rain
washes their blood from it.
Yet somehow, as a world,
we go on
fat, round, and turning,
as if our children’s beds weren’t burning.
So it’s no small wonder
I always arrive late for everything.
Stuck in a traffic jam by the docks,
missed Noah’s boat but
survived under water
accidentally trapped between stolen books
by a word heavier than a stone,
lighter than a feather.
Hidden in the overcrowded wooden train carriage,
radicalised by the anonymity of my blue name-tag,
with a heart growing outside my body.
Each beat painfully visible to the guards
around the Monopoly table.
On the waiting list for ballet lessons,
We avoid traps, the jagged rocks
in order to avoid being snapped and bitten and torn.
We accept being snapped and bitten in traps
in order to accept reality
which is (partly oh partly)
to accept the experience of being snapped and bitten.
Or do we avoid the traps
in order to avoid experience at all?
Which is to accept a single trepid experience
as though there were no other.
Which is to accept no Other:
Like the graceful Other of the prow of a boat:
canoe, sailboat, rowboat, dragon ship.
Why is stupid stupid?
Assuming it would blow over, we could be busy
improving our lives.
Collective insanity:
A gold rush of irrational,
whether or not we should all invest
in today’s version
of tulips.
Past performance we see
and want future results, hence:
beanie babies,
dotcoms,
rhodium,
Florida land,
baseball cards,
and Herbalife,
still a publicly traded company.
The next big thing a mania,
a lottery, dumb luck retrospected
as genius;
Once,
Two crows were quarreling each other
Over a piece of bread!
One White Ant overheard that
And asked them: “My friends, why are you
Quarreling each other?”
1st Crow said: “I got this bread so it’s mine.”
2nd Crow said: “I showed him this so it’s mine.”
1st Crow: “I put my efforts to grab it.”
2nd Crow: “I advised him a way to grab it.”
Then, the White Ant said: “Friends,
Why don’t you part it equally? ”
Both Crows agreed!
But, the 1st Crow said: “If she divides she will take more.”
Slow drip in the pipes
of the tenth dimension.
Parachute through the ozone
with your blanket comfort of platitudes.
Wrap me up in fuzzy layers
of plucked feathers and apricot fur.
Breakfast served on a silver platter
with cacao nibs hot to trot and fervent.
Kiss-kiss on a tree limb
when the Tao bends the willow.
Walk atop the river’s thin skin
to manufacture urgent reactions.
Empty sleeves and parlor tricks
hidden in the hollow of crooked teeth.
Pearly white puffs of cloud
and it sounded like many voices
at once
a septic symphony of harmonious
brutality
and the children looked to the adults
who looked to each other
everyone looking
like a sightseeing tour with
its eyes closed
and later at dinner
came that waiting for the knock
on the door
no one overly boisterous
as though laughter were a living
breathing thing
that could betray you
to save
itself.
