blowing in the wind

 fuzzy wheat grasses

sway in the wind

hard rain's gonna fall

some bent to the ground

some stand tall

two days before an election

most important of our lifetime

besides the ones that follow

the times they are a-changing

all things mortal degrade

what ascends, falls

you either bend with it

or stand tall

this story is not about Paul McCartney

 no one does the Beatles

better than Paul McCartney

and his band of ringers

young'n's, sons of studio engines

and no one does Sir Paul

like we did

in Rodd's brother's car

the four of us listening to WMMS

Let It Be, rattling the hood

so drunk, so very high

my discovery -- when you try

just to imitate the singer

feel his words shape your mouth

roll out across your teeth

breathe out

with his breath

he has possessed you

and, though you know 

you probably sound terrible

you realize exactly 

what David Byrne meant

by his appropriated concept

"speaking in tongues"

dream journal #271

 extra rotund actor

fiend from 70's cinema

Victor Buono appears,

expertly killing off

my loved ones, one by one

my friend appears at my door

with a baby girl in his arms

I am terrified they may be killed, too

but we escape

and he tells me,

the girl is my daughter

and Victor shoots my friend

and we are on the lam

this little girl in my arms

but I know, 

in my dreamtime way of knowing

at least she 

will make it out of this

alive

the Dalai Lama goes to China

 the way he describes Mao --

like a poet,

paints a portrait 

of his speech

his hands, how he

turns his head slowly

from left to right

like the inexorable leap forward

"religion" the chairman leans over

to say to him

"reduces the population,

curbs progress"

Tenzin Gyatso feels a burning

sensation in his face

an intense fear

an answer

 we venerated gods

we venerated the One

worshiped trees, saints, and demons

ghosts, ancestors, the sun

we pleaded to the stars

"take us to where you are"

we lay down on the Earth

chest, belly, face-first

we went everywhere

a seeker could go

across the country, across the ocean

in wind and storm and snow

finally we gave up

the truth too hard to find

an answer arose 

so quietly, kindly

arose from inside

on fire

 

tear up your livelihood

from the roots, the money tree you watered

with scraped nickels and dimes

 

the storms and the aftermath

the incessant building and leveling

galaxies on fire

 

life, this breath

are enough to take you through

are sufficient, dayenu

Cause Because

 

I don’t know how it all began

A flash of lightning in pond-pocked lands

In an ocean floating like a child in a womb

Biomolecules woven on a nucleotide loom

 

Maybe there is nothing magical mystical or holy

Undone when it is done, in a future no one is controlling

And the Universe will leave no trail of love, hate, no mist

No bones, no trace, no record written like this

 

But, maybe there is some cause, that itself is also its own

That sees what is seen as it knows what is known

All of this occurring in an instant the same

As consciousness is conscious, speech speaks its own name

 

And here is my belief, or hope or faith

Because that’s the way I roll

Raised without much notion of a God

I found It in a furious hole

Saw a light or a dark or rainbow, or a grey

Chased it all down through the years

I cannot prove it beyond my own heart

But it’s empirical to me – it’s a miracle I’m here