Ripple the age, dammit:
ripple it.
Throw yourself in, not because you’ll be
at the center of all those circles
for that instant, be a target, be a
bullseye; but because
as others join you, the circles
will disappear, interlace,
turn to full disturbance,
and then what you’ll be
is all wet, immersed,
what you’ll be
is in it for the long swim,
part of the stream, the flow,
the flood.
After all the partying,
the exuberance, the Stutz
and the backroom booze,
the easy money, the luck;
after all that, what I’m left with
is the best blessing of the modern age:
that we built these buildings high enough
to make the flight I’m about to take
certainly fatal. When I fall,
it may be that I will become
warning to those who come
after: don’t ever do this again. Make certain
that those who make the money
keep the money. Make certain that
we are safe from those we stole from
with promises and shell games,
and pad us well enough
so that if we fall we do not feel it.
Well enough that we will bounce.
Too late for me, of course — but
get to work,
and make a world where them’s that got
shall fly if they fall, fly over
those that have not, that never had.
Sparse-framed, reticent, particular,
the old hippies come in to the market
on odd weeks
for what they cannot grow
or raise.
A friend sneers at them,
calls them un-American.
I hear they’ve got a sod roof on the house.
Life underground:
a few acres
and a 1978 Ford pickup.
Here on the grid we’ve got
fear, troubles,
and the grind. We all
talk too much.
Hey, hippie,
go hug a tree. Go
bathe in the snow.
Get a job.
Sparse,
quiet,
don’t associate with us
unless they have to —
un-American
bastards, get in the trough with us
and bring some eggs or something else
to eat.
Metallica’s “Blackened”
is playing: loud, loud…Then
the tree breaks out back,
louder even than that.
Half of a two hundred year old oak
comes down
across the whole yard
with snow-weighted limbs,
tears out cables,
and only gently grazes the house.
Barefoot in the wet
checking for damage,
and
other than the tree itself,
there’s none. The power
has even stayed on.
Back into “Blackened”
once back inside.
“Callous frigid chill?”
Only outside. Life doesn’t always
imitate art. In here it’s warm,
blistering almost. I lower the heat
and return to the music
of promised disaster.
Dark Matter 