Fear and Anger in a Mindless Universe


Silver gleaming ideas floated along unparalleled paths
Dreams of what will be
Ambitions led to wasted lives and no one can change that
The world, this world, what a god-awful place
Starving children of pregnant women
Forsaken brothers and sisters find safety in refuse
It's criminal that we allow our lives to play out like this
And don't make the slightest or greatest attempt to change it
If we could
The momentum builds like a steam engine
Only to end in disappointment
How cruel!
What a waste of time, breath, atoms
Only a person with the ultimate answer can understand the question
Like rubbing the genie's lamp for her help
It is mystical and methodical
The plague of life
How it continues to devour more and more every day
Understanding area and volume don't add up here
There will be no more room
There won't be a prayer in the universe to help us.

Now I Lay Me down to Sleep

Half asleep
Soothed by Vicodin
My body lies like a corpse
But instead of slowly rotting
My eyes slowly pace back and forth across the room
My heart struggles to beat
I sink deeper and deeper into the comfort of my bed with every shallow breath
Maybe I took too many this time
But I feel good
Or maybe I don't
Or maybe I'm not sure because this time is different
My legs are numb and my finger itches
But I don't have the strength to scratch it
I can see the moon from my window coming in and out of focus
That saucer in the night's sky keeps bouncing in an uncontrolled hurry
Wait, it's just me shaking unwillingly
One tear streams down the right side of my face
My eyes leisurely close
Now it's time that I lay me down to sleep.

The Lonely Ant Wanders

The determined ant was the only moving thing
Among the thousands of acres of grass
I was of many layers like the Earth
On which there was only this one lonely ant
The ant wandered in the desert heat of the California summer sun
It was a small part of the epitome of nature

A boy and a girl
Are one
A boy and a girl and an ant
Are one
With nature

I don’t know which I prefer
The wet smell as the sun rises prematurely in the morning
Or the beauty of brown-tinted youthful skin
The ant searching
Or getting lost

Piercing rays penetrated the east facing window
With glowing glass as clear as the fresh Lake Tahoe
Cast a beam of burning shadows
Onto the ant as he tried to escape it
To and fro
Only to trace the edges in one of many circles

Crying out sharply
In the shadow of cremation
Never finding the gleaming Kern River
So feverishly needed.