Dear Michio, Goodbye

Dimensional slippage

conceived from without

Length, width, and height

time squared thereabout

 

Spacetime endemic

on gravity’s spire

Black Holes ill rumored

supernova inspired

 

Fourth, fifth, and sixth

but then nobody’s sure

With logic’s deception

embraced more and more

 

The system it’s flawed

in both structure and form

Pulling you into

the physicist’s norm

 

Till that day you falter

and turn from it all

When the out becomes in

— and you answer the call

 

(Dreamsleep: July, 2024)

Calling Out

A rainbow on my shoulder

as storm clouds lie ahead

I stop and wonder ‘why go on’

the rain beyond my tread

 

Halted from my wandering

a stillness reappears

The world to spin and trap in place

surrounding me with fear

 

My rainbow slowly dimming

its pot of gold has gone

And in its place a darkness comes

the shadows growing long

 

But far off in the distance

the sky a new portend

Calling out in vibrant hues

— to walk that way again

 

(Dreamsleep: June, 2024)

‘Rising Sun’

Can we ever own

anything

that won’t own us back

 

Can we ever say

anything

we’ll never retract

 

Can we dream

in the future

while freeing the past

 

Can we give

without taking

not first ever last

 

Can the reasons

become us

excuses be damned

 

Can fidelity

triumph

the truth in demand

 

When sleep

reawakens

its light shining through

 

Today and

tomorrow

— forever anew

 

(The New Room: June, 2024)

As I Ask …

If I tell you everything …  

how much of everything

are you willing to know

 

If I give you everything …  

how much of everything

are you willing to take

 

If I promise you anything …

how much of my promise

are you willing to keep

 

As I ask you for one thing …  

but how much of that one thing

— are you willing to give

 

(The New Room: June, 2024)

The Real Cost: From Searching For Crazy Horse

The real cost of technology has not been to jobs or the economy, but to the human spirit.  Huge cyber wastelands have replaced what was once a society of human interaction.  We’ve sold our souls for the convenience of not having to know that they’re there. We’ve sold our souls with no repurchase guarantee.

Some people have many channels in their head like a radio.  Others have only static, interspersed with very few moments of clarity. They live in a self-imposed interference. The reality of their nature being FM, as they ramble the AM stations consumed by the noise. So many of my early years were filled with this AM wandering, always in motion, with my direction in doubt. The clear channels, usually unwanted and tuned out in my programming, were hidden resevoirs of what I had forgotten to learn.

Some of us though, have only one clear and consistent channel. It is a short wave to the future and the past but plays loudest in the present. Crazy Horse was like that. Like all true prophets, he saw through the superficiality and into the meaning that connects all of life together.  His channel had no on/off switch, and he needed no advertising or endorsement to drive home his message.

The price for this clarity he had already paid, and he would ultimately pay again. His message, although often unwelcome, was the warning that his tribe needed to hear. His station was not a place on the dial, but a frequency into the heart of one refusing to change. It was a respite, and last hope, from the threat that European civilization posed to the Oglala Sioux.

The truth, resonating from the deepest places in his heart, burdened him because so few wanted to hear.  His message was ignored by those who still lived in denial. He would remind them: To live truly free comes at the highest cost of all,and like many great men the idea of Crazy Horse was more welcome than the reality of who he was.  The line crossing over from storytelling — to living the story — left many behind.  The message in his words was often covered over by the smoke of what many still wanted to hear. So often he said: Looking into the fire you either know or you don’t know, and the difference lies not in the music of the dance — but in the dancer. 

The campfire oftentimes had an illusion unto itself. Its chanting would enlighten the few while only warming the many in a comfort that could not last. Like Muzak, which tries to convince us today that any noise is better than the quiet it replaces, the Oglala Sioux continued to hear a similar monotony — with their heads in the sand.

As I pull into Tuba City, my memory yearns for the simplicity of my old BSA Gold Star, where more was not necessarily better and whose soul I could always find.  The clarity of its exhaust note would reach deep inside me, reminding me that the truth is always spoken to one directly, and the importance of its message only strengthened with time.

Kurt Philip Behm: June, 1971