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

Once I Could Make Sense

As I lay before you here - gray, thin, bedraggled, sick and weak - Hang on for just a moment!

Just as now I am pausing in my vigorous, full-color life, equally as vibrant as yours is to you

Just as the long-dead doctor who spanked me into life so far in my past was, way back then

Do you try to imagine as he did then, and I did later, that you are me and I am you?

I was a boy who was glad not to have been created as an adult and especially not an old man

This useless and wornout husk you see now, did once actually quiver and overflow with life

Slowly, so slowly, despite all my best efforts and intentions, it must have all come to this

I lay gurgling, learned to crawl, walked, ran, walked again, sat down and now lay here, still

I apologize in advance and thank you so much from the real part of a life to your busy future

I likely don’t have a lot to say right now, but know that once even I could make a little sense

This shrunken and dried chrysalis, from which I am about to emerge, actually served me well

These bent and twisted fingers that can now barely even feed me, could make a daily music

I know not if memories of any of this will remain across the years, to my shrunken perspective

But once a light burned so furious and bright it often brought joyful tears to my eyes

I sat with my elders and later, my loved ones closer than you sit to me now and pondered

Are my eyes empty and blank, drugged or filled with pain, with no trace of this life now?

Once my faculties were sharp and my reflexes quick and I took the measure of this world

Its hard now to believe that I will strive merely not to soil my sheets and can barely sit up to eat

Yes, I knew the impossibility of imagining the weak and withered as the young and strong

But, I swear to you that my own life was no faded photograph, incomparable to your present

The meaning of my time may well be invisible to you and forgotten by me…but here it is real

I may have forgotten running miles, skiing steep slopes and swimming those huge blue swells

So, go ahead and make your pronouncements but simply remember that I made them, too

For all that remains to me is all that will remain to you, far sooner than you can prepare for

I grope for clever excuses, You replace what you said

I am turning happy pages

You are there, between the words

You are closing outside doors

I am rustling in the curtains

I have left things best unsaid

You are nailing me on the head

You tended to the garden tulips

I swept dream leaves late last fall

You are saving forgotten pictures

I finally cleaned off our north windows

I am spinning sugary fairytales

You are calmly filling pickle jars

You are taking copious notes

I try sorting random memories

You write letters by your flowers

I feel quite safe down in the basement

I am combining unrelated lists

You take off wandering an inner pilgrimage

You decide not to bother now

I spend way too much time, back then

I will often soundly daydream

You take naps with your dead mother

You still have what was a good line

I replaced the tattered script I finally lost

I am finding clever reasons

You replace what you had said

I look for more missing pieces

You struggle with the increasing autumn darkness

You are standing quite nearby

I just could, not quite, grasp your hand

Just one snowflake swirling

Just one snowflake swirling during the height of the mighty storm

A single quark in an atom of a protein molecule on one cell in my brain

A single note in the chorus of the marsh as the sun grows warm again

Just one voice among the billions either dead, alive or as yet unborn

Just one moment, quite important, except light years away in any direction

The only tree in miles of forest where lightning chose to strike

Just one small planet of an average yellow star midway out in a common spiral galaxy

One billion years of geological change witnessed by absolutely nothing

Colorful patterns emitting subconscious messages from the wing of a butterfly

Just one boy notices for the briefest moment as she alights just one time

Just a ripple of the many on a single lake when the breeze comes up one day

One mossy, glacially-striated granite boulder in that vast northern woods

An eye falls upon a single pebble among hundreds of thousands strewn about

Just one neuron fires in the hiker and no conscious thought emerges

Just one photon emitted long ago speeds past a blue-green cloud-rippled paradise

A billion cries for food and shelter turn into white background noise

Water dripping from the glacier has not yet become the river we will experience

Just one small flame from the roaring bonfire rends a single word of my book

Just one dream may fuel a people’s imagination for entire generations

A single skeleton encased in stone gives rise to a moment’s pause

Just one instant in the implacable present, so quickly gone despite my many efforts

Narrow beam of reason disappears in a fog of ignorance and superstition

The pallid sun of December briefly lights the room and then the long night falls

Just one more acre cleared will help to feed us and cannot do much harm

Just one life condemned to ignorance, hunger and filth cannot sway our faith

Just one salty teardrop falls drying in that hot, red desert sand

A single prayer cast outward into the twinkling black of the celestial firmament

Just one more futile gesture in a city fueled by desperate need

Just one more forgotten moment in a string of days from many years, now all long gone by

A single-celled creature living large in one drop of greenish pond water

The very first fat raindrop lost in the dust raised by its approaching storm

Just one life form based on carbon given over to a moment’s passion

Just one light ray refracted through one water molecule in a rainbow

The last waking thought in a meditation that morphs slowly into restful sleep

A single simple stone among all the rest in a long and winding gravel road

Just one shortest riff of the sound of a creek roaring in the Spring

Just one more filthy refugee trudging amid the sighing, shuffling pilgrims

The anonymous steer in the slaughter house with brown eyes so very full of soul

Simple problem that unravels systems far beyond its own importance

Just one second before the explosion and things remain quite ordinary

Just one more drink should solve the problems plaguing me like biting flies

A single golden leaf spins ground-ward on a still and sunny autumn day

A child alone whimpering in a cold building with shining antiseptic floors

Just one more winter comber slams itself upon the ancient rocky shore

Just one more bitter pill to swallow in a lifetime of mental self-medication

One and only one inattention brings on death in a quick, but casual, fashion

Just one happy smile can lift the gloom that settled in like some densest fog

The faintest chance of one small victory vies evenly with the certainty of death

A single light after miles of driving may seem either lonely or inviting

Just one brief thought spreading out from but a single soul among the billions

Just one day in an era of an epoch on a short-lived, but fortunate, planet

Just one more Monday arrives too quickly as yet another weekend fades away

Just one song in the misty pre-dawn stillness begins the entire avian chorus

In a single flash of insight an old problem is finally solved, for once and for all

It’s far too long for even eternal love to last

Cantor’s diagonalization argument for uncountability > infinity: The real numbers is an extraordinarily special set. If one were to graph the real numbers on a line, any segment on that line contains the same cardinality of points as does the whole line itself.

It’s far too long for me to plan for any future

It’s far too long for my constrained imagination

It’s far too long to engage simple emptiness

It’s far too long for even eternal love to last

There’s just too much time after this blue-green-white earth is gone

There’s just too much time when my memories are thinned beyond recognition

There’s just too much time to be totally senseless, thinking nothing

There’s just too much time to be far less than alone

It’s way too much to even outline

It’s way too much to hold inside

It’s way too much to get a grip on

It’s way too much and still, there’s so much more

I have extra time that I did not even have to save

I have extra time unfolding like a burden I cannot hope to lift

I have extra time growing longer and more overwhelming

I have extra time moving ever faster beyond my shrinking comprehension

I have nothing to do and no way to get it done

I have nothing to do and all the time in the universe to do it

I have nothing to do then and do not even know it

I have nothing to do and cannot get over it

I don’t have to work anymore or ever again

I don’t have to work because there are no workdays

I don’t have to work and I have no boss

I don’t have to work because I flow like water

Freedom at last without any more choices to be made

Freedom at last chained in molecular compounds

Freedom at last in the vast black and near-vacuum

Freedom at last at so close to absolute zero

I’d be happy to live in eternal sorrow

I’d be able to get by with constant pain

I’d be alright with poverty and suffering

I’d be better off than unconscious in that empty and unknowable void

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

Wait, What? Was I Ever Really Here?

The seconds making up this roiling present always seem to be speeding up, don’t you see?

Still, they pass through the portal of the moment one at a time, but just faster now, for me

That really old clock still slowly ticks off the numbered minutes of my wandering musings

I think I may have been dreaming since I cannot really prove that I have not sat here forever

It’s been hours since the twilight shadows were enveloped by that cold winter darkness

They had filled me with their emptiness and then simply gone off in some uneven silence

Then I thought about how long its been since the first time I said that I never saw you again

So I was left to question once more, if I had ever really even been there

But then, after maybe a brief ten thousand years, who was I who might have said anything at all?

Less than the shadowy blurs of all the memories I fumble through, as if in the dark

That small boy who, thinking back, came to that one memory before which there was nothing

Me, confused in my senility, losing sense of the life that I never had time for, in my prime

This recurring sense of unreality in my present casts a very suspicious light upon the past

Looking for a way out, I even try to rouse myself – As if this might be some sleeper’s dream

Calling forth pictures of who they are now, I cannot recall the path back to what I knew

Yet, scraps of old papers with names and dates do seem to locate me at given points

It all passed by so quickly, leaving an ever-compressing set of hazy, randomized images

I really did await, one at a time, each of those brief holidays I simply cannot separate now

Guess that probably wasn’t me, so who was it then in that there, which doesn’t exist anymore

So that must mean, in point of fact, that I am not really here right now, as well

We watched their futures become our past

As our days we slowly passed

we watched their futures become our past

In all those instants nothing changes

Then all at once it’s rearranged

Born as children, not like those with that white hair

Yet slowly we assume their shady chairs

As three generations pass while we grow tall

At last we become the next to fall

The minutes pass at first so slowly: Summer never seems to come

then the years fly by so quickly, as life flees before it's done

Through all our moments we string together

a tiny blurred fraction, we think of as forever

So slowly do our days we gather

it takes quite a while til nothing matters

Cast with fossil bones or glimpsed as insects trapped in amber

Brief, sideways glances we now scarcely remember

Our lives and history seemed to be so everlasting

in brief insights revealed by merest instants flashing

Long awaited events stored in half-remembered jumbles

Lives so short, but memories only incoherent mumbles

Time spent always looking forward to myriad trivia

Then off into the insensate void, delivered to an empty oblivion

In the end and looking back, it seemed as if it were quite long

yet I know I could not finish my confused little song

Both far away and long ago take on different aspects

On that day we stare back so blankly from empty caskets

Still we bend to pray for guidance with our knees to the earth

round our sun inside the galaxy, within a cluster, in just one universe

Having written in the beach sand, the hand of man, it shortly pauses

and just as quickly all life ends of insensate causes

Just as all things we thought important so surely disappeared

Their monuments and their memories shall no longer be revered

In the eternal mountains we lay our dead to rest in peace forever

though science tells us the peaks will not resist the weather

We work away the many years with vague promises to ponder later

then comes the day that quickly ends our short stay here

Our breaths will have a finite number, our heartbeats too, a small round figure

But time in the void cannot be grasped by any mathematical rigor

Long the sunset, fine the twilight, in that wondrous, warm June summer

but at last full darkness must induce, a perpetual and dreamless slumber