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Perspective
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
--Friedrich Nietzche.
Camp alone on the high desert,
near midnight, when coyotes voice
your frustrations, your anguish;
while staring hypnotically
at the molten shades of flame
within your fire--
tracing the swarms of live sparks
that launch skyward above
the popping & snapping
of burning mesquite.
Hold your gaze at the trajectory’s apex,
where the sparks drop back to ground--
then further up into stratospheric ebony,
that ant’s nest of stars that choke the sky,
dancing like Navajo silver jewelry
around the blood moon.
The cosmic conundrum congeals
behind your eyes, beyond your
visual cortex, as you ponder
on how anyone can grasp
infinite universes expanding--
a never-ending metaphysical drama?
Are we but dust mite microbes
in a macroverse residing
within a viscus dew drop
on an illusory Joshua Tree?
Are we co-creators of AllThatIs,
or simply window dressing
created by hordes of gods,
unseen, faceless, genderless,
beyond comprehension?
Then rejoice, for at those moments of projection
& introspection, when quantum insights have to
be distilled & rendered down to coherent thought-
bites, we are simply too awed by our infinitesimal,
yet colossal, essence, fully encased within the
meaty manifestation of our spiritual entity,
to really give much damn credence to the
present neo-fascist alternative facts barrage
that pelts us like corrosive acid rain in a foul
continuous Trumpian turd-storm.
People survived
concentration camps, so we
will survive the Trump.
Glenn Buttkus
Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub MTB
17 comments:
Fortunately the world is bigger than the speck that claims he has the power in his fist.
This would have been sheer perfection if you had not fallen and added yet another allusion to Trump. Come on Glenn! Reading of the night in the desert and the descriptions had me but then, you added trump to the perfect poem...Haivng spent nights in the desert, this poem took me back there. Take out the trump and you have a spot on poem.
I enjoyed the word "turd-storm" coming shortly after "meaty manifestation of our spiritual entity". It brought me back down to earth. I suspect Nietzsche is right about facts and interpretations, but I don't know.
You always make us think and feel. Thank you for that.
You present the age-old questions, who are we and WHY are we? I liked the Joshua tree question! You are, indeed, a master of words!
Visually, this is fire and ice and 'stratospheric ebony' and 'Navajo silver jewelry'...I can see the dewdrop on the Joshua tree, metaphysically sweet and unique. It helps to know there is something greater going on, mathematically and spiritually, and in that perspective '45'
will be but a dot of no value sucked up a worm hole to a destination unknown.
Yes, we will survive Glenn ~ This is a cosmic beauty and inspires delight:
that ant’s nest of stars that choke the sky,
dancing like Navajo silver jewelry
around the blood moon.
Good friend, I have to agree with Toni--strike out that last paragraph and you have an absolute masterpiece. I suggest creating 2 separate poems out of this.
You engaged the senses so well...I could smell the mesquite, see the flames sparking and remind me of why I do love the desert and why I love Nevada.
Toni & Victoria--my sense of where the poem was headed came to fruition--the point being that regardless of the daily dose of stress we experience in Trumpland--there is egress--it's all a matter of "perspective". But I appreciate the railing against my political rants. I just have my poetic juices fired up by current events; smile.
Love the desert scene, mesquite burning, and "stratospheric ebony" of night sky! You should have stopped before you mentioned Trump...agreed :)
I just want to go out to the desert and listen to the coyotes, there is a sense of peace in that place, a place where perhaps answers can be heard if one stills the heart from the outside chatter.
I do know how your feel about the one who thinks he has the ace. It grieves me so. I might need a shot of tequila out on that desert.
Great cadence of the last paragraph. Have to agree: Trump was a little bit jarring, but it actually made sense with the movement of your poem. Excellent job.
In the final scene, setting the Trump against the underlying divine reality of the cosmos you have perhaps, offered a way to step back from the absurdity of it all. Tis nothing more than a masquerade in the scheme of things or the dance of Leela.
http://www.sanatansociety.org/yoga_and_meditation/hinduism_philosophy_leela_lila_lilla.htm#.WMvr5LgeTIU
I don't know - I wonder if I didn't get the idea that if, we're (you) are capable of such musing, that in the bigness of things, to bring home the fact of the jarring on the senses of a Trump ruling the world. Maybe it was meant to wake people up to that fact. If the poem stopped without the Trump stanza, it would just lull people into a false sense of beauty and security? Dunno. We need to wake up big time here in South Africa as well. It's just terrible!
Profound and passionate. I quite enjoyed every stanza.
You really painted a lovely picture until the Trump reference. For me, it divided your wonderful painting. I don't think Trump belongs with the impressionists. Lol!
Good job Glenn..
If one cannot
Express all the
DArk and LiGht
As Poetry.. it is
A Set of
Alternative
Feelings..
True Art
Lives out
Of HeART..:)
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