Dust

Childhood dust has gone

with only the echo

and vague memory

of the warm smell

and summer sparkle

of roadside ditches.

There is no dust today.

It has all been

vacuumed 

sanitized

processed

and shunned.

In losing our dust

we have lost 

so much more.

Hiatus

 Hiatus

Evolution tsunami crashing

through every age.

Unfathomable speed

broken 

by cosmic ripples.

A vast endless symphony

of joy, 

disaster, 

love, 

hate,

and universal indifference.

The wave continues in all directions,

all times,

all branes.

It never reaches forever,

but continues always.

The brief spark throughout 

is that flicker

of love, of pain,

enhanced by each of us

by our knowledge that

this is all…

ever.

Dust Motes

Each alone,

needs only to be heard,

and not to listen.

Each is central

to the small,

and insignificant,

orbit it describes.

United

is a state untried,

as none are bothered

to see any view

not emblazoned

on the mausoleum

of shallow lives.

Fading

in a dying sun,

their lonely dance slows.

Do they contemplate

why and what,

if anything,

it all meant?

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.