The Poetry Marathon

The forest doesn’t need WiFi

Doesn’t need a clear signal and broadband connection

It speaks via chemicals
Data transmitted via fungal colonies
An underground information superhighway
Mycelium networks under fallen leaves,
Allocating nutrients to every tree

An intricate symphony,
Interconnected mycelial filagree
Every blade of grass, shrub, and tree
Existing symbiotically,
Following patterns established by Fibonacci

Following the golden mean

Ever expanding

Fractally

There’s goat on the hill

He does what he will

He’s a bit of a pill

But it’s chill

He’s a grumpy old bugger

Kinda mean motherfucker,

But for a goat, that’s kinda run of the mill

He’s a great mountaineer,

Has a long billy beard,

His eyes a wise yellow,

Pupils square

He eats near whatever

From tin cans to cheddar

Because he, as a goat, doesn’t care

Behind a fence made of wire

Tied up to tire

The old goat spent most of his days

But on a hot summer morning

A terrible fire

Engulfed the whole farm in a blaze

So he chewed through the rope

And ran from the flames

Climbed up in the old gnarled oak tree

He nimbly climbed out on one of the branches

Hopped over the fence, and was free

The silly old goat,

Running free through the woods

Stumbled over the the old whiskey still

He drank all the whiskey

So, feeling quite frisky,

He returned to the farm on the hill

The farmer was glad for the old goat’s return

But saw in his eyes murderous glee

With a snort, the billy goat lowered his head and butted him right in the knee

The farmer fell down on grass half burnt and brown

And the old goat ran away free

No

No, I will not read T.S. Eliot
Nor submit to revisiting the age old themes
Of all the classics

Drives me batshit

A path well worn means safer travels
Means more traffic,
More regulation
More stupid people in the way…

I’m too impatient

Give me a machete and a pickaxe
I’ll blaze my own path,
Channel the Iconoclast

Bombastic self-expression optimized

No rules for the radicals
(Sorry Saul Alinsky)

No boundaries

Crossing every double yellow line

Sleep deprived
Reactionary
When I’m tired I get defiant

Nevermind

-In response to “Giving A Fuck”-

Dwelling upon these systems of control

Is hypocritical

Because an obsession with oppressive systems of control is in itself a form of control

An activist becomes reactionary

Anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-war…
But what are you FOR?

The only way to escape these systems of control is to create a new system of your own

While decrying oppression is empowering,
Defining yourself by what you stand against is dangerous

Any progress made just a contradiction of external control mechanisms,
A treatment of symptoms,
Ignoring systemic causes

Thumb nose at pop cultures,
Dismiss statism in all it’s forms,
But all that anger,
Frustration,
Defiant rage

Imprisons the individual
Far more than any piece of totalitarian legislation passed by governments

Illumination of the problems doesn’t solve them

If all focus is on the external,
The internal atrophies,
What makes us original and unique
Lost
All energy expended on everything but ourselves

Freedom isn’t too far out of reach
But to hold something,
Grasp lightly,
Think mindfully,
Act righteously,
Walk with Purpose

Because talk

Is cheap

You miserable thing,
Full of holes and stinking

Why can’t I throw you away?

Your partner is gone
Lost in dryer’s abyss
But still you persist
Why?
What is the reason for your existence?

Why must you lie there on the floor,
Smugly stinking, totally useless

You piece of shit

One foot follows the other
Path obscured by blowing sand
Forward, ever forward
Pushing into the unknown
Destination indiscernable

Nothing but a bearing
A compulsion to maintain momentum
Knowing stagnation leads to breakdown
So keep moving forward, ever forward
As long as this body allows.

Man crawled from the mud and saw god
God sneered and said “Get the fuck off my lawn”

We’ve been cursed all along
And wonder why the songs all sound dissonant
Why religion becomes irrelevant

It’s as if heaven sent us down to see if we could make it on our own
Angels looking down, making bets on our demise
We laugh at the futility because it’s too damn painful to cry
And perfections unattainable but still we try,

Still we strive to be more than the ones who came before us
Still strive to please god, even though that fucker ignores us
Still planting acorns with dreams of a future forest

Still

Because turbulence is abhorrent

Man crawled from the mud, saw god and turned away
Looked to the Sun and found another way to pray
Bathed in life-giving rays and found his own divinity

So the angels grew bored and found another game to play

The Void yawned, exhaling a vacuum
Not space but the absence thereof
Not darkness but the absence of light
An empty space welcoming the all-that-is
The universal balance of opposites

In the beginning, there was no separation
No start and no end
A mass conglomeration of dark light,
Underground skies,
Burning ice,
Pitch black day and blinding bright night
Everything wrong perfectly right

Then deep within, a conflict
Disharmony
Division
A fracture across the grand unification
Masculine pulls from feminine
Dark from light
Matter from emptiness

The duality created turmoil
Created motion
Created the ebb and flow
The grand expansion and contraction
The instigation of rhythm into the stillness
And the beat goes on…

And on…

And on…

The land knows you, even when you are lost
In times of uncertainty, seek the Wild
Search the rolling hills, the craggy peaks, the blistering desert for guidance

There are lessons if we remember how to listen
Wisdom embedded in sunbaked stone
In thick bark of sentinel Sequoia
In ferns unfurling through ash,
In lush wildfire aftermath
In swollen mountain runoff streams
In twilight screech of owl
In ecological balance of all species

The land knows you
Knows your ancestors
Knows your lineage and all that’s come before
Knows your power and your insignificance
Knows your place in context of the greater web of all life
In context of all that is and all that’s ever been

An omnipresent witness
To endless cycles of evolution and extinction,
Creation and cataclysm,
Growth and entropy,
The primordial ebb and flow of everything

When in doubt, sit under a tree
Lean back, watch branches sway in gusting wind,
Watch leaves dance to forest floor

The only thing truly lost is our connection

On the streets, a tension
Atrocities an every day occurence
Fights at family gatherings
Battle lines drawn
Opinions divided
Polarized and radicalized

Every action garners a reaction
And a reaction to the reactionaries
Perpetual pandemonium
While pundits preach lies about the other side
Blue vs Red
Rich vs Poor
Black vs White
Left vs Right
Right shuffled aside for the need to be right

But both sides are really wrong
Embroiled in conflict over trivialities
While elite contemplate humanity’s finality

Isn’t it possible to align but not agree?
To accept variety of opinion as a means of better seeing?
Better scheming ways to subvert the powers-that-be?

We dither over nonsense,
Obsess on the inconsequential,
Attack the unknown with preformulated views and arguments
As if we could ever decipher the immense spectrum of opinions
As if we really know anything at all

Anyone claiming absolute truth
Drives me up a fuckin wall