Bubbles

It doesn’t really matter

that we think first

of ourselves,

and not of others.

It doesn’t really change things

that life is egocentric,

and we alone

define what is real.

It doesn’t really cause pain,

or offence, or disdain,

if misery is  

a neighbour’s concern.

It doesn’t really matter,

when at last the bubbles burst

and nothing

redeemable remains.

Ethereal Reflections

Morning mist travelling,
tenuously,
up the valleys
of home.

Full moon on the bay,
illuminating
the Mackerel Islands

with silver.

Happy beagle, baying
at imagined squirrels,
and rabbits laughing
just out of sight.

The crispiness of maple leaves,
and the juicy tartness
of blackberries
awaiting frost.

The old man, 
lost in thought,
refuses to project
beyond next week.

Stationary Journeys

Not necessary,
those foreign climes
of which we often dream.

Not workable
our vain imagining
of whom we’d like to be.

Not logical
to say what if,
not facing what is real.

Our journey is progressive,
moving in serendipitous ways:
one can’t really know
if here and now
isn’t really there and then.

The secret,
gleaned from atop a mount
where the guru hid away,
is simply to continue
being you, each and every day.

And when tomorrow dawns,
as tomorrows always do,
just realise
that now is here,
and you are always you.
 

Fragments from a Fading Dream

Wispy, and tantalizing
glimpses of peace,
with an embraced
commonality:
sharing.

Floating, almost unseen,
at the edge of reality,
a fading symphony
of love,
of inclusion.

The solipsistic gale
from countless
societies of one,
shreds compassion,
with blades of hate.

There was a time
when hope, when optimism,
filled our dreams:
when people mattered,
not things.

These fragments
from a fading dream,
now simply
existential haze,
that obscures tomorrow.
 

The Fluttering of Other

The fluttering of different times
whispers softly in my ear,
and speaks of ancient sagas
in places far and near.

The muttering of ancient crimes
shame me for our past,
and sadden me to realize 
our species will not last.

The guttering of dying flames
that flicker as they go,
symbolise such sorrow
as we shall never know.

The puttering of undone tasks
batter around my head,
reminding me there is no time
as all will soon be dead.

The stuttering of unsaid words,
“I love you” said too late,
often transit rapidly
to spiteful thoughts of hate.

The shuttering of windows beckoning
when I’m so near to rest,
destroys my hope for successful
completion of my quest.

The fluttering of different times
has now become today,
and, for us, we can’t look back,
condemned to stumble on our way.

Fragmentation

       

Clouds, soft and fecund,
punctuate a sky relentless
in the pink promise of evening.
 
      Humidity hangs like a shroud,                 The past presents a poignant pain  

 giving shelter to myriad bugs,                     neither cured, nor improved, 

and encouraging fantasies of sun.                   by the medication of time. 

 

The dead road-kill crow
offered visual recompense
to the folly of life.

One sole loon laughed sardonically                 The spaces between jackpine
    at the thought of carefree fish                      and populist spruce guard access
           only metres below.                                    to a mossy living magic.

In a random and chaotic universe
expecting the unexpected
guarantees nothing.

There is a lesson to be learned 

perhaps a moral to be discerned

but interpretation is best left to Janus.

Skirting The Void

(umm)


(umm)


Heaviness assails senses.
Thought becomes static.
Alternatives do not exist.
Hiatus becomes eternal.


(umm)


Gravity envelopes.
Sensory acuity falters,
diminishing to infinity,
as concept redefines reality.


(umm)


A slow, heavy return,
girded by renewed intentions,
bolstered by the exhilaration
of skirting the void.


(Aum)


(Part of series: Cannabis and Creative Cognition: Bubba OG)

Digging a Hole

I’m digging a hole in this fragile earth,
and closing it up behind me.
My hope is that, when deep enough,
hate and stupidity cannot find me.

The air is thick, and cool, down here;
I’m surrounded by muffled silence.
No sound vibration reaches me;
no echoes of cruelty nor violence.

This self-internment will end one day,
and my wish is that I shall find
we've evolved into a better world,
one shared by all mankind.

This Volatile Core Of Rage

We have all sensed it,
simmering there,
just beneath the surface
of our new reality.

Our paths have been blocked,
our trajectories skewed,
and resentment seeps
through the shock.

The public mask
that we now must wear
does not quite muffle
the bubbling of potential violence.

The commonality of our plight
must now unify,
and inspire us to share
a better future for all.

Microcosm

We have been reduced.
We have been diminished.
We have been shocked.
We can, however, now see our world
as a place of interconnectivity,
and the  rapid spread
of rumour, or distrust,
and disease.

It seems so small,
so fragile,
that we can sense
it could disappear,
and human-based time
would end.

We pick sides;
we assign blame;
we rage and cry,
and yet it seems
all we really want
is an impossible
return to “normal”.

This is our one chance
to sculpt a new normal.
A standard where equality
and compassion
are the pillars
upon which we might build
our new, and inclusive,
tomorrow.

Knot Of Anger

There lives a tight knot of anger
deep inside my head.
I have set up mental retaining walls,
but they have broken in the past,
and the beast ran free.

I am not always aware of the dark
and foreboding animosity
that rumbles and complains,
pushing against the restraints,
ranting about freedom.

Some time periods are calm,
momentarily,
until a fevered whispering
blisters my sheltering mind,
and sends me paranoia.

There lives a tight knot of anger
in a cage devoid of light,
coalescing into fierce emotion
as society devolves slowly, surely,
into change, or oblivion.

If I Suddenly Cry

If I suddenly cry
please do not be alarmed.
It passes like a thundercloud,
and leaves
unsullied skies.

Sadness sneaks,
and jumps out from behind
ordinary things
(is anything ordinary anymore?)
to beleaguer your soul.

It is not so much
that I am sad,
rather simply overwhelmed
by this paradigm shift
to some Lovecraftian dystopia.

If I suddenly cry
kindly know it will pass,
and I shall momentarily be distracted
either by something slight and shiny,
or perhaps unimaginably horrific.

I Should Like To Think

I should like to think
that, in my head,
there is a place
where a boy runs
with a stick
by a picket fence
that goes
thack, thack, thack.

There needs must be
an ocean vista
where this old man
can look at tomorrow,
faithful beagle by his side:
but it seems,
in my dilemma,
to be quite out of reach.

I should like to think
we are smart enough
to learn, and to correct.
Our threatened, locked-down spirits,
are withering, while we wait
for a global realisation
that “normal” is gone,
     for good. 

Just Another Day

Chet Baker on Spotify;
bread rising;
dog basking on south verandah;
dinner planned of scallop mornay;
why, then, does comforting,
predictive,
and linear thinking
seem so difficult to achieve?

Tendrils of like-minded thought
tantalize the web-me,
but the rising insanity
from manipulated masses,
goaded by their ideological masters,
terrifies me,
and keeps me from contemplation
of tomorrow.

The pandemic of group-think
is achieving equality
with Covid19:
if the one doesn’t kill us
the other will.
There is no conspiracy,
other than conspiring openly
to survive.

Wishful Thinking Kills

And yes,
we are so very tired
of isolating,
and of being made to do
that which we do not willingly do.

And weeks have passed,
and the sourdough starter lives,
but there courses through us
a spirit of rebellion,
a mighty scream of
“fuck you”.

So they open the parks,
and relax the rules,
and all you can see
are people too close,
too exposed,
too vulnerable
and anxious
to pay attention
to
the
bottom
line.

Are we, then,
so fragile,
so dependent
upon the contact
with others,
that we completely,
abjectly,
foolishly,
abandon logic?
Whatever happened to
“self isolate and stay safe”?

It is time to evolve
beyond climate,
beyond politics,
and beyond having to cope.
It is time
to abandon stupid,
and embrace common sense.

On Long-term Planning During a Pandemic

The cogs ratchet slowly
upon their allotted circuits.
Vibrations of the
“click, click, click”
cause time parameters
to shift,
to morph into vague sepia images
that bear
unimaginable glimpses
of an obscured,
and uncertain,
future.

This country does this:
that country does that:
politicians waffle,
granting themselves
exemptions
unavailable
to the non-elite.

Conspiracy theorists
scream of government control,
of 5G electromagnetic manipulation,
of chemtrails,
of the removal of “freedoms”,
and of how vaccinations will
kill everyone.

“Click, click, click”

There is a future,
but it is unclear
how it will progress,
other than with vast societal

CHANGE,

for the betterment
of all.

Thoughts On Sheltering In Place

Domm, domm,
heavy 
hollow
echoes, 
shadows
of what may come.

Thunk, thunk,
sculpting a thought
one chip at a time,
but time
becomes the harmonic
that shatters
the opus.

Weird sounds,
unlikely linkages,
and hiding,
hiding,
hiding and sheltered
in the backroom
of my mind.

Once there was a time,
and once a time there was
when we knew who we were,
when we knew where we were going,
when we almost
knew why.

I Never Pictured Here

Sure:

imagining on occasion
     being other,
          being elsewhere,
               being headed
for someplace
     that I could not recognise
even
     as I arrived.

But then,
there were,
you will know,
events.

And stranger things
have happened
that
I never pictured 
here.

March/April 2020

I never know when
it is,
but I do,
vaguely,
comprehend
where.

Plans are long interred,
to be celebrated, 
perhaps,
in requiem,
after this time
of now.

It is to contemplate:
it is to meditate:
it is to await,
without imagining,
tomorrow.

Lockdown Ping-Pong

It tantalizes,
just a bit,
     those rogue thoughts
of tomorrow.

Now you see them,
now...not so much.
     They morph,
crying in small voices.

And just when you think
you can look forward
     you can’t;
retreating callously to now.

Maybe tomorrow
will make transition
     more viable
than this shimmering,
          shadowplace,
                    kaleidoscopic vision
of what must be.

Return to Normal

Years from now,
when I am gone
but my lockup colleagues remain,
you will try,
through data analysis,
to formulate a question
that will help us understand
just
what happened.

You must be careful
to use your word skills:
no room for political 
policy statements
here.

What happened?
What didn’t we do?
Why were we so slow
to stop the spread,
but focussed instead,
on controlling the message.

Assigning blame allowed us
to ignore action
until
it was
far
far 
far
too late.

Let your future
give us an answer
that will not further alienate,
     will not further confuse,
but offer
some slight glimmer
of comprehension,
and of
Hope,
in an uncertain Tomorrow.

Lockdown

...and I have become
more threatened
more enfeebled
more focussed on the micro
letting the macro monster roam free
and out of my mind

...and I have developed mechanisms
whereby
I do not think ahead
I do not anticipate
I do not speculate
but by this diverse,
and constricting,
route
I avoid tomorrow

change will come
but it will be a nuanced change
a change of social consciousness
a change fomented today
while we are locked down
in our various ways
in our varied lives
waiting
to go slowly forward
into 
our 
shared
tomorrow...

Washing My Hands

It all comes down to this, then.
Manic hand cleansing:

no beseeching of the uncaring gods:
no besmirching of immigration policies:
no longing for other days that
forever
have passed.


We share, with our cleansing routine,
a commonality 
that long has been lost,
if
     it
          ever
                    existed
at all.

The parameters have been reset.
The future is ours
for
     the 
               making.

Be secure in your loneliness,
knowing,
                 paradoxically,
that you are not 
                                                        alone.

Count to tomorrow,
then simply
scrub
again.

Repeat.

The Ripple Effect

If life is
but a pebble in
this eternal  ocean of time,
how can we ever really begin to know
upon what exotic, strange and wondrous shores
the effect of our actions will roll towards, and expend?
Just a simple splash, a random wave, and the ripple begins.
Speeding ever outward, seeking resolution in harbour or shore;
the change that we have wrought will become, perhaps, catastrophe,
or vibrant inspiration, in ways we cannot know as we struggle
to keep afloat.  Perhaps this distance amplified breaker
will attain tsunami strength and speed, and crash
upon some quiet beach, bringing change
and pain.  Or, from some peaceful bay
the wave prisms radiant sunset,
offering solace and refuge
from a busy world
that simply
does not
care.

The Sentinel

It stood,
as duty
demanded.
The timeline
stretched
back                            back                     back
to verdant,
to other
times.

It stood,
as mute
witness
to devastation.
Time changed,
and millennia
became centuries
became decades
became years.

The sentinel
witnessed
those fleeting
those tragic
those final
moments,
until it fell,
and
      the
           timeline


ceased.

Constellations

Each point of light
a sparkling memory
brightening existential night.
Friends and foe,
and nemeses abound,
in a shimmering cosmic glow.

Family, present and past,
brighten our galaxy
with loving stellar cast.
Memories of pain
eclipsed by love,
sparkle again and again.

These twinkling recollections
guide us through the dark
with the warmth of our reflections.
One wonders if they will be gone,
in the rapidly encroaching
inevitability of dawn.

The Web

A captive there,
compelled to stay,
transfixed by arachnid multi-gaze,
he could not look away.

Vibrations spoke
with eternity’s voice,
and a frozen calm
removed all choice.

Here, then,
at the very end of time,
his reality
is symmetry,
is perfection of design,
and the final beauty
of each moment.

Stepping Back

It is easy to become involved,
but hard to step away
from something important to you
that you encounter every day.
With deeper contemplation
confusion simply grows,
and your cognitive dissonance                                         Free from emotional baggage;
offers credence to your foes.                                         away from conditioned response,                                                                                                       truth has a way of illuminating,
Remove yourself from the burden:                                           and of changing
step back and look away.                                                          all who can see.
Find a light and happy place,
and forget the eternal fray.
Free from constant involvement,
logic will weave its spell
and the sudden light will clarify
the shadows, dark and fell.