My Fool Errands Led Me Here

For so long that false but pervasive urgency molded my perception of how it is and what it should be

I always awaited some trite event which quickly faded off into my incomplete and jumbled blur

At times I thought I was stepping sagely back, but really that was just one more, too hurried task

I strained so long under that pointless stress that I felt empty when I was casually cast off for good

Thought I saved time religiously, but although I never even spent a bit, my account is empty now

Drove thousands of angry and wasted miles between demeaning jobs and dysfunctional homes

Found novel ways to make foolish noise when I should have known to keep to a good silence

Exhausted by the vapid over-stimulation, I convinced myself I had grabbed for all their gusto

My fool errands led me on, time and again, growing older without noticing, almost til the end

I thought I traveled widely but I viewed everything with the same unquestionable beliefs

My lot was insipid variation upon pointless tasks prodded by the greedy, shallow and insecure

Overheated by implanted artificial needs I nosed blindly towards this infinite shared abyss

Their droppings stained me from above as we raced on the same treadmill for canned rewards

Any brief satisfaction was rapidly eroded by the over-hyped flood of the New and Improved

Often in the frenzy I caught short, sideways glances at details I vowed I must later consider

Sometimes I awoke from odd, confusing dreams, and felt thankful to be rapidly re-absorbed

Briefly disconcerted by my elders passing, I was quickly reassured that our lives must go on

I stumbled on after that hazy HappyEverAfter always radiating just beyond my event horizon

I never realized how the endless greedy distractions merely kept me quiet and uncomplaining

Expensively-empty vacations and merchants holidays kept me pedaling furiously in place

I lay in the night vainly craving the hollow diversions they had convinced me were so important

Too willingly did I suffer chronic fools in a synthetic hope of achieving their venal illusions

Slowly I realized I must race ever faster towards goals I clearly had never really specified

But, For Right Now, I always had this to Get Over With and that to Get Out Of The Way

Dutifully, I carted the kids between enriching activities they quickly and indifferently forgot

I envisioned a contemplative future but, sadly, my body wore out and my mind grew confused

Sociopaths set me to useless tasks, seeking only to lend some meaning to their own wasted cycles

Kept in the dark, led by the greedy, I slapped up their Just For Now with my own Quick And Dirty

I repeated their vile catechism of eternal vigilance, always preparing for more savage conflict

Brought back tiny inscrutable nuggets of extra-media clarity from times of sickness or injury

Forced myself to attend to their ever-changing office plumage and corporate sloganeering

Pretended my noisy, gas-powered wreckreation provided a fulfilling and re-invigorating relaxation

Gorged myself into obesity and illness mistaking nervous, gnawing emptiness for real hunger

Left the awful, incomprehensible future to the fuzzy heaven I financed through His Sales Reps

In the end, tried in vain just to stay in the rat race that I thought all along I was striving to escape

Struck finally into deaf silence by the blind truth of an everlastingly colorless and empty void

Hanging On With No Assurances

Stumbling blindly into sunlight

Filling up with inner darkness

Straining for that long lost silence

Ringing from the foolish noise

Breathing hard on rocky trails

Nodding off to inner plans

Lighting candles after dinner

Bombing villages from far above

Observing simple fossil starlight

Blinding them with LEDs

Laughing without hurtful smirks

Sobbing softly from leafy branches

Jumping over corporate hurdles

Tripping up on contract details

Staying focused on their message

Waltzing by important minutiae

Standing up for squishy causes

Remaining rigid on silly issues

Holding firm to other’s opinions

Hanging on without assurance

Counting down to a miraculous

Betting upon the quite impossible

Standing firmly upon shaky ground

Building higher without foundation

Damming up the inner flow

Blocking out the quiet voices

Blasting apart the fearful silence

Stopping up that ancient wisdom

These are the days I often spoke of back then

These are the days, I used to say, when we would only remember back then like a dream

These days, I now recall saying, we would wonder about what happened before

Now is when back prior to then joins easily with only a confused haze in between

I always felt then that now we would retain but little from that dizzying spiral

At last, these are the days I often spoke of as our emergence from that rapid blur

Details would disappear even as we finally try to consider them during our awakening

Now is when I meant that then would seem to have been too many years, gone by too fast

These are the times I said we would look back from, only to remember so very little

I always knew we could not possibly be digesting all that we were seeing every day

I always thought now we would look back on then as if through rapidly shifting mists

I always told you that it all would pass way before we would even know that it could end

These times, I said back then, we would regard like some old movie, stuck on fast forward

These days I see I was right to say we moved too fast then to have any appreciation

Those days are the ones I always said we would now remember like their old pictures

These are the times to which we left but little to be summed up, in too a short time

Now we have no choice but to try and grope meaning from our own ambivalent contrails

Those days recede back beyond our buckled event horizon into a jumbled darkness

Now memory has compressed the tight wavetrain of bygone days into indistinguishability

Those were the days from which so few events even remain still jutting up enough to be seen

The rest lie blanketed by heavy clouds viewed from far above here in this blindingly blue sky

Tulips in a crystal glass, Litter in the mud

The tulips in the crystal glass are so very fragile

The litter in the mud and grit has nothing left to lose

There is only so much good in the whole stinking lot of us

But that blind spring of entropy flows on forever

The best of us is glimpsed but rarely, and only in a few

Thus we mostly live immersed forever, in palest mediocrity

The beauty of humanity shines through, for the briefest of instants

The emptiness of our normal lives casts an enveloping pall upon us all

The moments of our uplifting are truly few and far between

Torture, greed and death are always just below the surface

The good we do with modest forethought is like a tiny candle in the wind

The brutality of our indifference wracks the world and its people

The innocence of children is but the briefest shower in the drought

The never ending corruption fouls everything just like that dirty tsunami

Music briefly fills our souls with the knowledge of a morning peace

Smashing, shouting and hoarse cackling fill the noonday heat

The calm strength of the ancient mother rights our course just a fraction

But mostly we plunge on blindly, proudly honoring an unconsidered ignorance

The just must often struggle mightily for the smallest victory

Indifference tramples without malice grandmas, sprouts and babies

Those things that truly sustain us are so very quiet and unobtrusive

The smashing sounds of progress fill our ears and drown our thoughts

Sunrise and sunset may awake us for the briefest instants

nights are no longer truly dark and the days are too long, too hot and too loud

New found love illuminates our worlds and fills us with great joy

And then the ash of indifference begins to slowly, thickly, coat it all

The apple tree then blossoms and stands outstretched in a silent exultation

But for months stands gray and wet and naked in the freezing rain

Somewhere, by dint of sheer persistence, a people toddles forward

The mass of us roil on, enveloped in dirt and greed and hate

Somewhere a masterpiece gives rise to a momentary superposition

Elsewhere the fecal tide rolls in a little thicker and higher every day

In a quiet glade, a gentle mother softly licks her newborn fawn

Meanwhile, in surrounding areas, smoky fires burn and diesels roar

One child in a million casts off the chains of poverty, pollution and neglect

Generations without hope share a dirty cycle of need, crime and disease

A man works very carefully for many years and fulfills his one small dream

The masses vapidly follow only the flickering of electronic images

For the briefest moments gentle north light fills our souls

Throughout the crushing work day we are forced to stare into the sun

Our memories are scattered pearls we hope one day to string together

Reality is a strangling vacuum closing in from all directions

A strange and compelling bird cry haunts our thoughts for a brief moment

Commercials blare forever and the laugh tracks never cease

An oarlock squeaks and the water drips upon the twilight dappling a quiet lake

The rain washes used oil from our cars into every little stream and river

The peaceful smell of moist wet spring earth awakens our better instincts

Our children prefer to stay inside gorging on fast food and electronic media

Facts learned about our universe provide a moment of perspective

Truth ground into us daily covers us with a soot that we cannot wash away

Considered opinions adapt like plants to changes in the sunlight

The average impulse purchase provides about twenty seconds satisfaction

Our better instincts serve as measuring sticks for the progress in our pilgrimage

Our overwhelming greed pits us against each other and the earth

A couple work their lives away sharing a dream of golden years

But far too soon one is stricken down and the other shrivels up

Children find an enchanted forest just outside their new home

Soon, however, come the bulldozers to smash and flatten and develop

The gurgle of the smallest stream gives comfort to those who lie sleeping

In the baleful light of Monday there is no time for contemplation

The smile upon an infant’s face lights and warms the entire room

Greed and indifference trample all the helpless little plants

Fathers teach the boys to fish and to preserve the lake for their sons

Armies teach each generation even better ways to kill and destroy

One small light gives comfort in a dark and empty countryside

The vast and pointless city glow simply hides the message in a starry night

A single action adventure story stimulates our imaginations

An endless stream of loud repetitions overwhelms and dulls our senses

Petty bureaucrats, caught at minor crimes, quickly lose our faith and trust

The large-scale lie repeated endlessly is slowly adopted as a working truth

A climax forest achieves maturity after many a dignified succession

Decisions made without much thought often prove difficult to undo

Small wild animals go on purposefully with the only business that they know

Species remain oblivious to the pointless extinction they undergo

Cherry tree stands with its raised branches in a crescendo of blossoms

Soulless heavy machinery gores blindly into the surrounding earth

Baker tends the sourdough starter with a reverent admiration

Corporate farms spread designer crops to pump up this quarter’s stock price

Once we cruised a scenic highway towards an enchanted destination

Now every day we idle for hours in the same anonymous lines of traffic

The ballet of a hummingbird traces a cosmic pattern in the air

Blind greed forms the very core of our best theory of economics

Just a tiny bit of soap could wash the little children’s faces

A gritty dust settles over all of us, from every direction, all the time

In early spring the birds return and begin to sing at dawn

The traffic roars by forever and the litter piles up down in the swale

The day emerges full of promise, still wet with its dewy afterbirth

Then noise and confusion from every direction carve out our insides, once again

Odd moments return to almost nag us in dreams not quite remembered

All our thoughts are slightly yellowed by this dreary, daily immolation

We win some of the smallest battles in the hopeless war that can never end

We fight the good fight daily despite the darkness that is encroaching from all sides

Accustomed to a total darkness we could only fear the sun

We can find no success greater than our most miserable failure

Death cannot even visit where no life is to be found

Even when none are beautiful we still choose the fairest from them all

Where all are obese, the least heavy is deemed to be quite thin

Our greatest victory always implies their equally agonizing loss

We can be no more uplifted than we have already been debased

If I can love with all my heart so can I hate with all my soul

If there existed no humility neither would we witness excess pride

The deeper my laughter the more rending could be my tears

Without knowing any sorrow, how much joy could we really feel?

Without such sickness they do not appreciate their better health so much

If most are blind, those who see even blurry shapes are deemed true visionaries

If war is our natural state then our peace must still be full of strife

The biggest lies always somehow ring with some tinge of truth

I would not recognize the greedy were I not raised by the generous

Water only satisfies us to the degree of our thirst

They love best the rain those who have been through the entire drought

They will not call out the evil if they do not know the good

To appreciate such a spring as this you must have been here for the winter

The instant of creation ensures an absolute and certain death

Small as we are, we view some among us as true giants

Little satisfaction comes without enduring some long-held desire

If all we ever heard was music, what would we think of this piercing noise?

Accustomed to a total darkness we could only fear the sun

No one knows an old thing if they have never seen the new

One knows not what it means to take if they haven’t been taken from

He does not know he hurts someone if he feels no pain himself

I did not know I had always felt bad until I grew a little better

A different future cannot be crafted should we choose to ignore the past