Waves in my brain
to your cliche songs they entrain
Background music in the store
It takes me over to my core
Others keep looking for merchandise
Or converse with each other to break the ice
But I sing along with nothing to prove
Just taken over by a nonlinear groove.
(chorus)
Waves in my brain like a tidal refrain,
When you can't think, the vacuum's the pain
I sing other people's words, can't think alone
cobwebs grow on a stalling stone
My cortex resonates to the rhythmic beat
I start dancing in the aisles, pounding my feet
It's like I'm under a spell by a witch
As my brainstem resonates to a higher pitch
The people with the white coats come for me
My shrink is puzzled, he just can't see
When your brain is one big empty hall
Music rules it, better than nothing at all.
They were right, I'm just an empty suit
So don't play that piano, guitar or flute
Thinking is hard, But I'm going to be brave
I'll find a way to make my own wave.
I am organized.
At my brainstem.
The smells are underground.
Like bricks and her amazing cooking.
She turns her head.
Her hair flickers.
A crumb tumbles.
Beneath it all.
It is cold.
But there’s steam.
From homemade casserole.
I am even more organized than most.
Clumps of dirt in piles.
Organized by date and time.
I am in the basement.
Nothing is furnished.
Just me.
A creaky ceiling.
Pipes that could burst.
And my phone by my side.
It’s 3:45 am.
And no one is calling me upstairs.
The other night
Visiting in a dream a foreign land
We waited in expectation
The arrival of a group of alien dignitaries
Somehow involved in guiding the culture.
When they approached across the sound
In a dark and rough hand-hewn canoe
I ran out to take pictures
Only to find a half dozen or so headless chickens
Standing patiently in their effortlessly gliding craft.
Superior alien advisors in the form
Of small dark brown headless chickens,
Baffling for sure,
And frustrating when I couldn’t get any pictures…
A sure sign of dreaming or just a block by aliens.
Yet the humor of the moment didn’t escape me
As I turned to tell another baffled guy
To look up Mike The Headless Chicken
A real thing that survived almost two years
With only a brainstem.
Which provides some clue I guess
To the symbol of superior beings without heads
And thus complicating brains
Dark and primitive in their dugout
And yet still, within the absurdity of it all, superior.
(11/20/24)
Jumping over the jagged rocks of Jupiter's sixty-seventh moon
My soles are bleeding, but my soul continues chasing the memory
Maneuvering between boulder and ice
Irritating eyes to turn frost-bitten
Bitter wind whirling across my cheeks calling attention to the sky
Surrendering a quasar to quiet my noise and drown out darkness
Distant behemoths to haunt and torment
Terrestrial echoes of another life
Legs pumping violence since leaping across the volcanoes of Venus
Visions stream and seep into my subconscious, scratching the surface
Stars blind but ignite a fuse
Fueling the search for my story
Stored somewhere in the brainstem to throw my body off balance
Breathing hitches and heart rate halts, the race interrupted
Ions charging at one another
As the Greeks attacked Troy
Totally silenced for a mere moment in that grey galaxy sleeping
Soundly in the cold recesses as realization rocket-launches past neurons
Neon panic propels me to Neptune
Numbing nerves to prepare for judgment
My youngest
of three AfricanAmerican adopted sons
has profound nonwhite
nonstraight
nonverbal cerebral palsy.
Profound
in at least not being privileged
or victimized
by internal LeftBrain dominance,
violent micro-aggressions,
zero-sum competitive thinking
Either positively True and Good
or negatively False and Bad,
laughable
or humorless
Sacred indigenous consciousness
feels more Right-Elder brainstem
bodymind nondualistic synergy
friendly energy
which is my son's political blessing
and his capital secularizing
segregating
colonizing
economic disabled curse.
Youngest son communes
with music
more fluidly co-empathic
than linguistic communications
He touches
and sings
and chants
through echoing shouts
and exclamatory barks,
short nonphonetic phrases,
lip smacking,
and belly laughs.
When he cries,
which is seldom,
he cries silently
No vocal cords
Profound inhaling wet gasps
and exhaling sad sacred shakes.
He laughs unconditionally
from his root chakra
warm unguarded soul
and bicamerally cries
from his buddha
co-empathic eyes.
Look inside.
Open up
to the core.
Bone, blood
flesh
and more.
Look into
the organs,
heart, liver
kidneys
and more.
Look behind
the eyes,
brainstem,
cerebrum,
cerebellum
and more.
All looks
the same.
Where are
you?
Where can
you be found?
Where
is your
uniqueness?
Where is your
essence?
Where
is your
soul?
Look everywhere,
look very hard.
Nowhere to
be found!
Receiver,
your body
just a
receiver.
Your essence,
your soul
beams in
from a
different place.
A place
from
beyond.
I once heard frogs singing
a bridge between Earth's solar spiraled song
and my neuro-systemic brainstem
flowing down and out across octaved rib cage
and diapraxis hips
with skeletal smooth-structured hinges
folding in to bow toward Earth,
unfolding open to breathe in ProGenitor's
bullfrogged Yangish lusty air
Croaking through my sustained memory
of Golden Rules and Ratios
and Alchemical Elixirs,
Prime Zero-Culturing Relationships
coincidentally greeting co-gravity waves,
mutually resonant and effective economic
Ecologic Therapeutic harmonies
singing their bridge,
co-spiralling super-nuclear ellipses
living our Green Climax Commons
within this Earth,
our anthro-reforming Universe.