The Abyss
There is no eternal, closest is the cosmos,
continuing to push and grow into any finite.
Revelation begins with a cry for retribution,
the fourth seal is the rider of death
followed closely, immediately by Hades,
the nightmare of the first three,
the savagery of man slaughtering man.
The seal that follows speaks of natural disaster,
fires, misery to all they touch - California
knows this inferno, the purgatory of nothing left,
the death of the apocalypse.
Siberia lost 55 million acres, Australia’s
hellfire took 61,000 koalas.
The planet was the hottest it’s been
and immediately broke its own record.
It is not eternal damnation that should be feared.
It is the abyss of the present, unleashed
by the heat burning our homes, boiling our oceans,
the grand denier of these truths,
his cult hugging the flag and party sycophants
sacrificing the future, sucking on power,
searching for spine amid their state’s ruins.
Acid Year
Being raised had become foreign,
not real, not mine, no growth,
someone else’s field.
I had become a weed,
in need of a modest, naïve
pilgrimage in search of self.
I didn’t know a want or plan
only that there was a trail.
It didn’t go far or last long,
but it was in another direction,
with forks that would beg me to make
the wrong turn, go the wrong way.
Nothing changed, nothing was the same,
roads still had red lights,
entrances still said Do Not Enter.
Tuned in, dropped out to proclaim newness,
wanting to plant seeds of enlightenment,
that would grow wherever I slept.
The thought of home,
made the return journey easier.
A need to walk through old doors,
the desire was a simple sentence,
with hinges and knobs
that always opened on request.
Years later it was a footnote,
stories to laugh about at wakes.
The Xmas tree upside down until Easter.
The green mescaline was the best -
God came out of the sidewalk as trees,
the neighborhood was never the same.
Craig Kirchner