Where Is the Forest?

It Just Looks Like Trees.

Where Is the Forest?
It Just Looks Like Trees.

Slung over this desk,
phone on shoulder and hands on keys
in the fourth waking hour of a day
marked by earth shrieking heat,
I’m Shiva the destroyer,
an octopus of intentions and limbs.

The time thief plied me with good coffee
and a careless hour of early morning comfort
then stole the rest from me.

What you engage, you will become:
A web.
Flimsy, unsubstantial,
covered in dust for the sitting too long,
you are a trap for thoughts
you can’t digest.

Scanning the web;
watch out for the links.
No way am I going down that foxhole.
That’s how daylight is lost.
Open no link until the reading’s done
or disappear on Riding Hood’s scavenger hunt
bewildered in the woods
forgetting where you started,
wandering exhausted and hungry.

Don’t kid yourself.
You can only do one thing well at a time.
You won’t remember what you were reading
before the first link is done.

Words, so many lovely words
shove their way onto this tiny screen;
I anxiously scan them for the sake of time.
But my head turns just slightly north
to the horizon beyond this window
and at once there is no rush
or refusing the invitation
for wordless thoughts.

Here time is not clipped
but expansive as the horizon
till I turn back
and all is compression.

And what are we talking about?
It seems there are two topics.

One: We are fucked and this is why.
Two: We are perfect
and life is beautiful
and this is why
and this is how.

Guess I know which this one is.

Link it, like it,
share it, pin it,
tweet it, stumble upon it,
tumble over it and sell it;
especially sell it.

And what changes while we’re talking,
I wonder.
Perhaps time will tell.
That’s what we people say
when we don’t know.

Perhaps the leadership of this planet,
that behemoth global constipation of intransigence
will shift as a result and meanwhile……..
Busy so busy. What a joke.
How’ve you been?
Oh man, I’ve been so busy!
Oh really?

Task: Another name for burden.
We are multi-burdening.
Buried in burdens
multiplied by complicity,
we do more than we want to
and agree to do all halfway well.

We have made a new agreement.
If we are to succeed
it will be in partnership here.
That partnership does not rest
to wake at dawn
but never stops.

Who is leading this dance?
What consciousness created this?

Awash in this confounding confusion
of metal and plastic bits
that I can’t touch
and that I can’t really know
despite all its offering,
Has allowed access
to souls I have touched
or been touched by
and how much I have learned
even if most is forgotten!

This world is open wide
and I might be wise to stay the course.
But the life before me
is disappearing.

Reformatted from the original courtesy of Bob Weisenberg