(Inspired while meditating outside my hotel at night during a drive from Chicago to New Orleans to welcome the birth of my granddaughter.)
One Hundred Million years of life’s passion and desire,
Gifts of uncounted lives, condensed lust of the eons,
All squandered in seconds on our sad industrial pyre.
Endless oily black pavement, trucks’ engines sprouting fire,
Rushing through the night bringing tawdry toys to peons.
One Hundred Million years of life’s passion and desire.
The food stops’ lights are burning late, nutrition to be hired,
Feed on that food, speed on, your life can’t stop; waiting is for morons,
All squandered in seconds on our sad industrial pyre.
Each plastic bag ten thousand years of algae’s growth in mire,
Each stoplight shines with Permian years on fern ennobled lawns,
One Hundred Million years of life’s passion and desire,
Refinery flames and steel mill smoke all rise up in a gyre
To ensure that all our lives are bright and exciting to our neurons,
All squandered in seconds on our sad industrial pyre.
I ask the oil we burn so fast, what its soul requires?
What is the gift it gives to us, what do we owe the eons?
One Hundred Million years of life’s passion and desire
All Squandered in seconds on our sad industrial pyre.
An Elder Apprentice
We must annual our souls in the heat of the ashes.
Rise!
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Brilliant.
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Fantastic!
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I love it. The Poet’s soul is what burns so bright in this age of darkness, it will lead us to the light and into the trees, despite the brutal starkness of clashing philosophies we do witness. Your rhymes are totally tight, with no lack of finesse. Keep it up!
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Love the recurring lines of “One Hundred Million years of life’s passion and desire.” & “All Squandered in seconds on our sad industrial pyre.” A hypnotic technique during the hypnotic activity of a long drivie across country perceiving a culture of hypnotized fast consumers. Thank you for addressing oil personally, revealing a pagan-shaman-witch’s intimacy with oil, the blood of plants & animals, dying, never dead.
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