The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_
NEXT
a silk spider thread
glistening
through the shadowed hedge
Looking up from a cup of tea, the day to day plainly needs reworking. There is little comfort in the news, familiar words becoming toxic.
It sets 'good morning' apart. There is always this contest, like raking over well rotted compost, through rich humus, only to discover a peach seed, hard as a rock. It grates. Teeth that will never wrestle this hideous danger involuntarily shudder.
Old words have teeth
offering an apology, unneeded really, for mundane fingers spreading unguessable flower seeds that leap, unfolding spotted butterflies. And pathways beneath trees.
Regardless
of pages justified in their
standard spellings
safe phrases
set in motion with proper sentences that are held accountable to the standard senses. There is a way of jiggering logic to forge a fit. Twitch the white rabbit's whiskers and overturn the debate. It's time hallowed and to boot, the filigreed frame of ages: Subject. Predicate. Throw in corn bread and gravy for some of that good ole down home flavor.
climate, on the other hand
is soil
is Change shortchanged
is the Lawrence Expressway
the arrhythmic
people packed
squirming four-wheeled
air conditioned offices working illegally
with canned beans
a pillow
and rage
it's pandemic
I do not conjure an alternate horror, seeking banishment of mass imaginations. I conjure nothing and the shadow play disappears, leaving an immensity of stages, some of which I inhabit for a time, all of which I subsume.
mass shootings
home grown killers
militias, banners, patches, any excuse, any cause
Rebel Without A Cause
civilization has failed
the rivers
forests of blood, raped
mountains, lotto tickets, city yahoos
graffiti beaches
the overall disaster is a matter
of mass unconcern
throw in a genocide or two
civilians bombed are more gently chewed
schools of ignorance are funded by statutory theft
righteous causes
apocalyptic wine
screams of the disavowed are no concern
of pilots
above the fray
but as I have said from day one
the ordinary uses just won't do
screw
the unconcern
psoriasis is her out back symptom, hair burning, smell her breath, wear a face mask, that skin was our nourishment, of her mountains tears we drink and yet the call for more and more, the crushing burden as finally she collapses and sunset burns, rivers broil nuclear waste
and the limos go rolling along
unconcern
the unconcern
having made this scaffold
here on the ground
where the plaster was mixed
and the wheelbarrow sluiced
at last
awareness of Self
everything is the center
of everything
and
nothing to get
nowhere to go
it's ordinary
right here
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The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_