Train Ride Thoughts

I am wearing purple, with a red handbag; talking to strangers, the scraggly ones. Releasing resentment, breath, clothes and rules that don’t fit. Grabbing on and holding lightly to train rides, strange dogs and old age, I observe that an open heart brings in interesting people. That’s what lots of Kundalini Yoga and solitude will gift you.

I sketch. I doodle. But why do I draw imaginary landscapes from the soaring eagle’s view? Why not micro: a blade of grass, a single ripple? Why, for serenity, of course, that sere peace: the philosopher’s perspective, not the prophet’s painful connection.

Trump

Putting children in cages
What the hell are you thinking?
Sins of the parents, you say.
But what sins? Fear and fleeing are not sins.
Sanctuary seekers, hope walkers need no penance
It seems the genocidal maniacs are back in charge.
ICE armed and goose-stepping.
Justifiers and jugglers
Apologists and god damned liars.

Diamond Dave

On the bus ride from San Fran to Eugene
Diamond Dave (google him)
Offered another way to use my voice
Tickled my fancy with recitation
Fear is fallible, says he.
Just move into it and let it flow
Rhythm, rhyme, intensity
dance to this new tune:
Learn to love
Love to learn
This never ends…
Teaching love.

Purple Spandex

The oldish Woman in purple spandex is
Me Journeying in geography and metaphor.
Absorbing 3 Worlds at Once. Stay Awake.
The Rainbow Snake is Speaking

Ode to Columbia

Wild Beauty with green skirts all fancy worked in white and magenta (frankly overpowering on any but one of your vivid coloring). Here a primrose yellow scarf drapes your long neck. There thin wires move the electric sparks of a flimsy dam across your strong artery.

The scars and wounds of of men are love bites on your firm thigh. Erased by time. If only these and their machines would succumb as past civilizations have done. Stupid thoughtless men don’t necessarily seek to cause harm. (Oh some intend evil, in the name of the dollar god: those who stay in their remote towers; jet in and out or stand and fish where smart guides have predetermined their luck.) The rest of us build and break and wonder why we are here; cry for purpose and meaning like mother’s milk.

We are your beloved biosphere, the parasites who live in you as bacteria live in us. You are “as above” and we are “so below.” What would it mean to live here consciously? Would we harvest the junk along the roadside? Would we kill the memory of JP Morgan, tear down the statues and hold up Tesla’s free energy; travel less or harness your abundant electromagnetism to move us cleanly in our search for truth and meaning.

For we are adventurers, made for it, can’t help it, must journey like we eat or sleep. And you, good mother, don’t oppose, rarely condemn. Offer a caution or a reminder without judgment or demand. You, good mother, care and affirm, forgive and embrace until we learn to do for ourselves.

That bundle of cloth and stink beneath the trestle, a homeless Jesus healing those who believe themselves damned. No one, nothing is beyond your redemption, Beloved. The most tentative, trembling reach brings a wash of grace; a firm path, where before there was only swamp.

We traverse your impassive face. (Though in Hawaii Pele rages, in Yellowstone Gaia fumes, beneath the seas, in the dragon’s mouth, great plates slide and crash.) If we are in the way, no remorse. If we are able to flee, no delight. Just this: creation, destruction, renewal and Truth. Sat Nam.