October Processional

(Part of the series:  Cannabis, and Creative Cognition.   Reference Leafly.com "Romulan")

The flight of a lonely seagull, crying,
across a westering sky,
seems a cosmic metaphor
with the meaning not quite clear.

The clarity of the harbour’s reach,
bending with lodestone truth
towards a hidden sea:
frozen moment in a transient beauty.

Thoughts skip to and fro
across a multi-dimensional Rorschach,
sometimes winning credibility:
more often not.

It seems that Autumn has arrived.
She brings her own time,
and colours her personal agenda
with crisp memories of peace.

The Open Door

I once stepped out an open door
in some far distant past.
At first the path seemed barely there,
in this landscape new and vast.
One step lead to another
as steps are prone to do,
leading from familiar and mundane
to vistas bold and new.

Often storms assailed me
and I huddled lost and cold,
but then my skies would clear
into a sunrise of beckoning gold.
Some hills turned into mountains
swept by bitter gales,
while others were cloaked with flowers,
and soothing forest trails.

Phantoms flickered around me
but they did not stay long.
They vanished in the distance
as I sang my lonely song.
With wonders to distract me
I would sometimes lose my way,
and sit, crying quietly,
then move on another day.

Time often seemed to change,
and lose chronological coherence,
often speeding through the days;
sometimes held in abeyance.
Faces flashed, and words drifted by,
no logic, just confusion.
I was not sure if this was real
or just a strange illusion.

One day the road became less clear,
its call was less demanding:
the lure of the path was less profound,
no longer so commanding.
I rested now, more frequently;
less able to endure,
when there, in the peaceful valley below,
I saw an open door.

Brain Worms

I’m oh so tired, intellectually bored,
with people mouthing memes,
and slogans over and over again
as if logic is not what it seems.

I hear so much stupidity
that I question whether or not
I have early onset dementia,
or if my mind is just shot.

In the Guardian the other day I read
that pollution has made us less smart:
from some of the thoughts I am hearing
I’d rather listen to somebody fart!

Our world is completely polarised
between the left and the right:
given the choices that we now have
I think I’ll just give up the fight.

We had so much potential
to forge social justice for all,
but now each side is only concerned
with new marginalising names to call.

I’m oh so tired, and I feel alone,
as the world rants around me, insane.
There is so much good that we could do
if we’d just lose this worm in our brain.

We used to boast of great thinkers,
of intellectual gods:
but hate and time destroyed all that:
we are now just stupid sods.

Carousel

No Coney Island ride is this,
nor Rodgers and Hammerstein romance:
more Bradbury’s dark undertones,
offering retrogressive trance.

We buy our ticket with childish glee,
hoping to grab the brass ring,
but the longer we ride, the quicker it goes:
a gaudy and sinister thing.

Riding garish hobby horses,
we head gladly into the past,
and circle ‘round and ‘round and ‘round:
each cycle may be our last.

Why must our minds be stuck in time,
refusing progress and change,
cycling through the same old ways,
rather than improve and rearrange?

I jumped off long, long ago:
no recycled past for me.
Now I just watch the pretty lights,
and dance to the calliope.

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.