The Poetry Marathon

All hail the 8-track

Hard blocky box of memories

Soundtrack to the past

Quarantine my heart with yours darling

Let’s isolate together and let the world outside fade away

Turn off the news

Forget about the future

Intertwine your soul with mine and focus soley on today

The here and now

The power of connection when our fingers touch

Shuddering rush

Eat from fruit of you until your skin is flushed

It’s all too much

But not enough

I see you blush when I sit next to you

When you’re just texting someone else

You might be detrimental to my health

I think I’m starving

You’re too charming

Cast a spell on my attention

Can’t release you from my thoughts

What you are is everything that I am not

Got me on lockdown

And as the world gets more uncertain

Chaos reigns

The times get hectic

You  will always be my beautiful pandemic

Stuck in this metal tube

Air stale and recirculated

Single serving fruit cup tastes like claustrophobia

Knees jammed against front seat

Can’t sleep

Wet wipe dry against red eye flight stubble cheek

Weeping internally

Economy wasn’t made for 6 foot 3

No I don’t want your shitty burnt coffee

Just let me be

OGG to SFO to PEK to BKK

WTF

International flights fucking suck

Let me outta here

The one that stewards land

Is the land that stewards one and all

To try and separate creates the disconnect that leads to chaos

The symbiosis of our biosphere isn’t near, for it is us,

We a part of all the living, not apart from all that’s living

Breathing

Feeling

All connected in our being…

But civilization makes it hard to hear,

Life’s quiet song lost amidst concrete cacophony,

Amidst fossil fuel’s demonic combustion

Amidst plastic wrapped processed foods

Amidst chemically separated muscle tissue…

So near but yet so far removed

Never new and not improved

Quiet, listen…

Deep breath

Inhale salt spray

Scan swells, stretch shoulders

Time the set

Plunge into the crashing waves

Return to source of everything

To where that first fish slithered onto the beach gasping for air

Where that first single-celled amoeba divided,

Setting off evolutionary chain that led to this moment.

Settle into rhythm of stroke,

Breath

Stroke

Breath

Stroke…

Until movement and breath fade into unconscious flow

Flowing through primordial womb of all life on this planet, waves crashing, splashing face until the break fades behind and the open ocean opens my mind to encompass all life, dancing to gentle tidal rhythm

Swimming through the sea

As if it was the infinite, the physical transfers to mental, to spiritual and back again, all to the rhythm of tidal swells and…

Breath

Stroke

Breath

Stroke…

Out to the edge of the bay and back again, return back into physical and time sets back to the shore

Slide out of that salty womb to stand back on sand,

Turn to face the majesty with a nod of gratitude and one more…

Deep breath

Inhale salt spray

This is how I pray

The iridescent twilight
Casts radiated shadows on her face
Exposing circuitry just beneath her skin
She grins

Stretches cybernetic spine cat-like
Slides out of cold metallic bed
From underneath my arm
Pure sin

Purity spinning webs of memory
Liminal timescape gently trembling
Paralyzed by the remembering
Oily tears run down her chin

Emptiness within her shell
Echoing the sirens,
The silent cries of violence
Incite the ghosts that dwell within

Acidic state of mind like it’s 1967
Damn Trustafarians
Boho fashion victims stuck in drum circle repatitions
Totally blissed out

Peace and love and DMT vape pen hits
Masquerading as insight
Up all night candyflipping to the rhythm
Of a drug-induced spiritual blackout
What’s that about?

Smoke pounds of pot
Listen to Allen Watts over drum and bass ambience
Whoever’s wokest is the champion
Virtue signalling ego-driven ignorant little snots
Quit posturing

Love’s what I got
But in case we forgot
Dude died from an overdose of ‘medicine’
Quote McKenna and claim culture ain’t your friend
But what the fuck do you call what you’re embedded in?

-written immediately after listening to ‘Up All Night’ by El-P

If I ever lose my muse
I’ll search the dark side of the moon for inspiration

Hopefully find some source of shadowy drive
To substitute for lack of patience

And if the moon becomes eclipsed
I’ll turn and stare into the sun

To shine it’s rays unto my soul
Until dark and light fuse into One

If my reservoir of words runs dry
I’ll listen to more Yusef Lateef

But on that day I’ll probably close my eyes
Because his voice makes me want to go to sleep

Got a message in a bottle
Written in gas, helplessness and a lit rag
Labled with an inverted cross
And an upside down flag

Thrown by a Zoomer
At the Amerikkkan Dream
For propping up a vision
That is nothing that it claims to be

For every politician’s pandering
For every lawmaker’s lethargy
On passing policies requiring police department accountability

Riots for the unheard,
The marginalized

By the masked youth
With fire in their eyes

For every armchair activist
Decrying what happens in the streets

For every opportunist
Starting fires just to feel the heat

For the apathetic staring transfixed into the flames
For a world that’s getting increasingly strange…

We used to sit around campfires
Watching shadows flicker
Listening to stories
Passed down from generation to generation
Tales of creation
Tales of battles won
Of friendship and adventures
Of loves found and lost and found again

Now we read 240 character tweets
Of nothing but biased opinion
On complex topics
Attention spans too short for nuance

Bypass well-written articles
For attention-grabbing headlines
Hours spent scrolling…

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

Scrolling…

Through comments section
In search of those who think the same
Something to disagree with
Something that outrages

Something…

Something to fill the void once occupied by wonder
By Awe and appreciation
Not shock and depreciation

We used to stand carving heiroglyphics by torch light
Preserving ancient wisdom
Mysteries of the afterlife
Of medicine
Of consciousness
Of goddesses and gods and mystical technologies

Now we sit
Around processed food dinner table
Staring into flickering screens
Faces expressionless
Addicted to microdosed dopamine
Every ‘like’ a little hit
Every ‘share’ a substitute for interaction

We once told stories
Carved them in stone
Painstakingly scribed them in sacred ink
Into hand-bound books
Pages intricately stiched into leather covers

And now
We’re writing poems
With fucking emojis

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