Ordinary Living in an Extraordinary Time

Can the mind, that great "reducing valve," evolve to recognize
its own demise?

For example, if Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of stars, jester's wife,
was not a hermaphrodite, her children would be British Lords.

This you can look up, but never explain.

Or knowing that my harvest of words, not taken root in either
the acid East or alkaline West, will be remembered somewhere,
even though my memory is only as large as the Columbia River
server farm.

This you can figure out, yet never solve.

And I who am only you, how can I account for myself?
No descriptions suffice, no arch attitudes will do,
no histrionic vocabularies will get you any closer
or further away to what's in front or behind my eye
at this moment.

Everything's a mystery, yet it all makes perfect sense.

And when the North Central Quadrant shakes as one
to hard in stem hip-hop bass,
we who share it veer off at a choicepoint:
either embrace the pain, know that life is always such
(love unreciprocated), open up to the terror of the streets
because the only thing we know how to do is love
(and even that we are slow in learning);
or, when push comes to shove,
block the whole mollywomp out,
as if we're choreographing a fight,
seek the squalor of the grand suburban gates
to suppress the pain and so, start dying...
These decisions are silently made as the noise dies off
and the wind brings its own chiding laughter.

I don't think we're supposed to think about this.

And I am left with only silly formulations
like "Texas girls are blonde, Arizonans' brunette,"
or "Kansas and Oz are really the same place after all,"
or "those who remember the past are doomed to repeat it."

I don't think we're supposed to think.

The future is uncertain because we still believe in time,
think there's something permanent about this 50,000 year
experiment,
think there's someone to fool, as if we could cry for justice
(and forget our complicity) forever.
But we only think we need protection
from the bullies with the big guns and little dicks
who always seem to end up controlling everything
because not every mistake, or debt, is forgiven
quick enough.

All I once held in my mind is now here in the wind,
jostling the greasewood, and all I can do is reflect
upon a youth I never knew:

The timeless moments of t-shirts and guitars,
rolling through the dust storm on a bike with my girl,
green bandanna covering her hair.