Testimony

He easily ignored
the stares,
the crude comments,
the threatening gestures,
engendered
by his street-corner ministry:
his testament of Faith.

He overcame his fear
with his Belief
that, even in these squalid
ghetto streets,
the Word
should enlighten.

While he sang
“What a Friend we have
in Jesus,”
a hulk in gangsta garb
spat on him,
and he worried that
his Testimony
only made
his God
sad.

But I’ve Got A Plan

I’ve got a plan, and it is good,
and long-range,
built-in safeguards,
kind of plan,
and, oh yes, 
I know...
shit happens.

AND IT IS SO DEVASTATING
SO MIND DESTROYING
IN THAT/THIS INSTANT
ALL
HAS
CHANGED

I shall go slowly at first,
and cry,
and shiver without control,
and go slowly
at first.

I saw a glimpse of colour today,
but when I looked for the source
it was gone.

I heard me crying today,
hearing for the first time
the encapsulated grief,
the engrained sense of loss.

And I stopped.

And stepped into today
where joy is the norm,
and love is the root.

Unfolding

(Cannabis and Creative Cognition series.  Leafly.com “Granddaddy Purple”)

Heaviness seeps in,
blurring the sharp edge
of reality.
Outlines shimmer
with nascent interpretations
of being,
rendered in gentle memories
of black light posters,
and throbbing day-glo colours.

Kaleidoscopic tunnel vision
offers brief glances 
at thoughts that lose cohesion
as they unfold
into the frozen magic,
the stillness,
of here, now.

Bouquets of visions
dance in fractal perfection,
drifting in profusion,
as they seek solidity
in the changing abstract
of this, then, and when.
Coffee anchors,
and quiet review
reworks the wonder
that continues to unfold,
just beyond
the present.

Ballerinas of Deception: Chimaera of Deceit

Ballerinas of Deception: Chimaera of Deceit

(Series: Cannabis and Creative Cognition (sub-set: Tropicali- See Leafly.com))

Flittering, always random motion,
but you sense
a guiding,
a forecasting,
a constant

vibration
of unity.

It would be easy,
if seeking verity and variety
were simply buttons
on our I-have-just-opted-out
remotes.
But no.
Things just seep in,
flashing and whispering
in eleven dimensions:
not just straightforward.
Ever.

And the interaction,
the incessant interplay
of individual realities
clashing
against the familiar.
Familiar?  Is not familiar 
simply a dream
that doesn’t hurt?

And wait...
over there in the corner:
a shiny promise
of intellectual rewards,
and the present is abandoned
to the moan of the different,
or the thought of
the real.

Existential Layering (Blue Dream)

(New to “Cannabis and Creative Cognition” series.  Ref:  Leafly.com "Blue Dream")

A summer verandah,
with birds twittering
their constant gossip...
the jays scoff.
Wind wisps sweep 
in ever-changing directions,
seeking to surprise themselves
at the next sudden turn.
Electric and gas motors curse
at the pressure of coiffed lawns.
Distant traffic hum across a bay
silver-plattered by cloudless sky.

The sense of otherness:
an expectant feeling that 
something completely unknown
is happening.
To you.
On a level of which you are not,
yet,
aware.

A graffiti of goldfinches
flirt
in the lower branches
of the jackpines.
And the old man,
lost in being,
at home
in now.

In The Process Of Extinction

We live in a static bubble,
a constant place called now.
Past and future flicker on temporal walls:
causal pictures of why, and of how.

Our lives are egocentric, greedy,
and the need to acquire is strong.
We’re conditioned to want and to use.
We are right, while others are wrong.

Corporate masters control us,
supplying false memes, and lies.
They teach us to suspect the different;
what to hate, who to demonise.

We live in a shiny plastic sphere,
with fake news and chemical food,
and if reality should seep in,
we take pills to adjust our mood.

So our masters do just as they please,
while we ignore our plight.
Our environment is being killed.
We’re on the edge of nuclear night.

We are taught to expect Eternity,
but Forever doesn’t care:
the concept of Always does exist
but we will not be there.

We could have made a difference,
but we would not see:
in the process of extinction
there is no you, nor me.

The Button Box

Skipping stones
across the pond
of time.
Coleco
SNES
Nintendo
Internet
smartphone
tablets
and good old
D and D.

My Mum had a button box
full of magical tokens.
Rainy days,
                   or sick in bed,
those tokens were all mine.
Armies on the field,
arrayed bright and dauntless,
                  against the glittering foe.
And the Wish Market,
where the correct combination
of contrasting coloured counters
purchased your wildest
                  dreams.

Now, in a later time,
the buttons are recalled
complete
with memories of innocence
                 and youth.
But the security
                 and the surety
of those wondrous,
those different
                 times
remain,
safe          and          real,
in a button box
          on a rainy day.
      

The Cage

The outside was brightly painted,
adorned with cheery slogans,
inspirational memes.
Inside was dark and dank,
with an acrid smell
that spoke of captivity,
and pain.

Outside the sun shone
with the insistence 
of a Norman Rockwell painting,
and the joy of an ice-cream van;
bright memories
of a kinder, happier time
of swimming holes and dusty roads.

The captive stalked and grumbled,
biting his chains in angry futility,
and clawing at the steel bars.
People came, paused, pointed,
and poked at him with pointed sticks,
as they called him by the myriad names
of the Demon.

The moon, his faithful and only friend,
came to visit one evening,
with heat lightening on a dark horizon.
Ozone crackled as the bars melted
to the sound of an arcane lament,
and he stepped out
into a changed and different world.

He adapted, and learned the language
of networking and power-dressing.
Master of the easy smile
he was sought for his insight,
for his erudition, for his charm.
Alone, however, at day’s end,
he remembered the cage, and cried.

Timeline

Some of us base our lives
on traditions of the past;
and tribal beliefs and customs
keep life from moving too fast.

Others live for tomorrow,
and plan lives years ahead,
embracing a religion
that promises life when they’re dead!

We marginalize, and demonise,
discounting others’ points of view.
Our tribes care not for probity,
and discount veracity too.
Huddled around our little fires,
in the midst of our simple caves,
letting enhanced tales of our history
soothe us like gentle waves.
Or let us live for tomorrow,
and pretend that we’ll never die:
our tribe guarantees us all
an eternal home in the sky.
Today and now is so frightening,
filled with hate, greed and war;
we refuse to focus on solutions,
and return to our group, secure.

It is not easy to live in the present,
to be in this glorious now,
surrounded by difficult problems,
that ask what? when? and how?

Now requires great commitment
to accept that we live, then we die.
We can build a truly utopian world,
but we must stop complaining, and try.

Odyssey

Nothing.
Darkness.
A blue shimmering
that morphs into
light.
It begins.

Storms of love,
of hate,
of the sour taste
of anger.
Siren songs
of promises,
of lies,
of truths now false.

Rocks and reefs
gut tender vessel,
but the voyage
continues
in grief,
in exultation,
and, finally,
in relief.

The mighty gift
of direction,
arriving too late
as the horizon looms.
A harbour of home,
of completion,
of wonder,
and of fear.
It ends.

Light
that morphs into 
a blue shimmering.
Darkness.
Nothing.