CONSPIRIT

Freedom is a Pogo stick. Just before gravity takes revenge, there is greatness. First you jump, then you jive, then you wail. A blonde woman enters the room and asks, “Are we having fun yet?” I've heard it called karma, but you know . . .

Then there was that moth-eyed butterfly once, in the eternal forest. So I wrote that down and said good, now take the weekend off.

Once I learned some poetry. That was before I dropped acid, and it came right back down again. Then I could answer. Her gills were breathing, we laughed at the alkies (prisoners of the bottle), tripping over Lucy's diamond earrings and ruby streams, there were squiggly red worms there in the clear water creek, and sort of like the Bible I said lots of ands, I said, If It Kills You It's Life! And that was profound. We put Pogo back in the closet..

Well there is something poetic, actually. Slips right through the words. Amusing.

On my seventh day, as has been written, came laughter. On Wednesday I am truly terrible, worse than lightning, wars and screaming, Oppenheimer quoting, pretending, I Am The Destroyer Of Worlds! Not to trivialize this, but you wouldn't sprinkle it on your salad. And how would I survive climate change? Hail a cab? My secret: There are more worlds than even I can imagine. And there are cyclic theories, held by some, look at compost. It depends on the rhythmic orbit of the sun, trailing off into infinite regress.

I digress?

So the butterfly also cycles. Pogo up, Pogo down, laughter is the best medicine.

Here in the backyard, long pauses . . . an ant stalks my pen. Words have become a slight eddy. There are spaces even in space. Mr. Finch schlepping crumbs for the nest, even he stops to just sit. We are philosophical.

Poetry. A blue napkin bib might have been her first surprise, laid out in pretty patterns. The old lady smooths her place, out where the wheat will came up again. In those days, poetry was a sigh.. We sang on for a day when the light was clear, and it grew right where she said it would.

How could I guess it would lead to war? When that place became ours, that's what did it. Then we learned ownership because the wheat got closer, easier to get. The song spread far on wings of words, reaching a young woman who was not one of ours. Celebrations became fields – ours, or theirs in ownership. More wheat to feed more people, more fields, more begats. The villages. And then came the walls. States. Arguments. Nations. Thermonuclear weapons.

During this hiatus in the disaster, Mr. Finch ignores my Kindle Fire, which has brought new words. In Japanese, wabi-sabi, whichmeans “dark, desolate sublimity.”Use it to speak of transience, the imperfection of beauty. In Sanskrit, sukha means “genuine lasting happiness independent of circumstances.”

We are plausibly the disaster which Mr. Finch cannot conceive even while suffering it, even as it literally increases by degrees. The mind which reads this is a visitor, too. Even as robin sings the Leaves that Walt sang, but without as much bluster.

Let us be metaphorical and imagine the boardwalk at Santa Cruz, the Ferris wheel, the roller coaster, the house of mirrors, perhaps some suspicion that it's a setup, a labyrinth of sand and fleas. That's not a bad guess. In plainer terms, it's climbing an apple tree and finding aphids.

We go under there. I let go of your hand. It's the light coming down through the cracks.

The sunflower blooming by the bird feeder, born of scratched out seeds, is sending tracer shoots that look like spider's silk. Straight up, delicate, almost disappearing They herald Fibonacci soldiers that will seed again.

Across the patio are roof leeks spilling out of concrete blocks laid sideways, in rows of square pots unimagined by the usual builders of walls. And beside them is a plastic recycle bin, itself recycled after the program morphed wheeled carts, and inside it is our ever-living hen growing baby roof leek chicks. She has become fat, an eight inch hen.

Why any of this matters doesn't matter. The collapse of the usual usual is fun. In the evening, when I get my writing time, it's talking with Mr. Finch, or as in chopping carrots. When morning people trod the sidewalk, there are some who swing their arms. At night this all stops. What won't fit even sideways gets its chance, and not indebted to any banker or house of books. It's that which can't be explained, much less written. But fun. And it's true, no matter fake news is thrown like shit to see what sticks, or ads in homage to the glory of competition, winning or losing the piney scent of Christmas, shredding lottery tickets for having been born black, or Syrian, Russian and rich, German and poor, down South, up North, lost in the hills of legislation, gerrymandered into submission. Ants we have always with us.

Spider's silk strong as steel spins the morning light in this silent night . . . holy night, all is calm . . . all is . . . sukha.

From a conspirator of language, flowing through the myriad ways.