(Read about the 21*5*800 challenge here.)
Today’s exercise began as “What to do when the world is ending…” and ended up being “This is how the world ends…” It’s not finished, and never will be; a creative expression of my own overwhelm at the state of Things As They Are…and my own eternal and present solution to the overwhelm and pain. Read if you like. Comment if you will.
What to do when the world is ending…
crouch under a table, cover your head, shield your eyes.
What to do when the world is ending…
point a finger in blame, hang our heads in shame, cry.
What to do when the world is ending…
Keep on living.
Trees grow from rock
flowers bloom in fields of concrete,
cracks revealing dirt,
sun, wind and rain converge to create, sustain, reinvent new life.
This is how the world ends…not with a bang, but a whimper
Or standing tall we
Reverse the order of things, finding a rhythm to the secret standards that fly
Wind borne
high above heads
that cower
The sky is falling, the sky is falling…
Raining thunder and crashing lightening,
this is the way the world begins
again
Towers crumbling
Cards face up on an ancient table
Ending
beginnings
beginnings endings by nature
a grand design
we forgot somewhere along the way
Dark night
Is the only way to get
To day
A new world
a new realization
a new song
to sing
a new story
About worlds ending, worlds beginning, crumbling, cracks, fissures
all a home to things that fly
There are rumours of peace
whispering
in winds of
damage showered upon
nations without flags
Freedom flotlillas
the victims of
premeditated
piracy
This is how the world begins
not with a whisper, but with a bang.
I heard the news today
that a 19 year old was among those shot on the flotilla
bringing supplies to Gaza.
(Not that it should matter, but he was also an American citizen.)
And yet, no outcry
from a government afraid of losing
a foothold in a nation half a world away.
We are allied with the aggressor,
oppressor,
a million lives lost to unending piracy
no man is an island.
We are the aggressor,
oppressor,
we are the oppressed.
Tired of a million years of war
you think we’d learn to lay down the weapons
sit at the table
learn how to use our words
learn how to talk.
If the pen is mightier than the sword
than why are we not a world united by
words of peace written
in the blood of a million martyrs
from a million wars
for a million causes
all freedom fighters
all seeking liberation
all allied and aligned with some
higher purpose
a million bloody years, a million bloody wars, millions upon millions of wounded, dead and dying
and we are all dying
a million little deaths
the space between me and that
an illusion, a trick of smoke and mirrors
we’re all earth in the end, or air, or ash.
There is no end to a
cell that divides
divines
A new future built in the cracks and fissures
a million broken bodies fertilizing a resurrection
seed taking root in the cracks
Today I saw footage of the brown pelican, of fish, of reeds and soil soaked in oil,
This is how the world ends
Not in a bang
But in a spill, a slick, a gush, a geyser
Moment by moment fewer species
swimming in the gulf
This is how the world begins
night leading to day
every morning, every moment a new place to stand
I read the news today, about a million reasons we can’t change the way we live quickly enough
The sky is falling
or rather, it’s opening up
A crack, a fissure, wide enough to let the sunlight in
like never before
A million dinosaurs can’t be wrong
bleeding their seasoned blood into
a million tankers
We cut the trees
and the rain stopped falling.
what will happen when we have bled the earth dry
substrata rubbing roughly
rock against rock
dry, chaffing, no lubrication
I read the news today and saw the carnage.
Choose your battles, cries an overburdened mind bent on
saving the world.
What’s a bodhisattva to do when
a million sources of pain pour in,
pain pooling in a heart
dedicated to liberation
like a million freedom fighters
This is how the world begins;
a heart choosing
to feel the pain and love anyway
to pick up the pen and write
a new story
What is there left
when we realize that all the work that has been done never outweighs the work there is to do
like a river breaking through a dam,
healing or pain?
Farms downstream washed away, lives erased by millions of gallons of water
yet for the fish that finally swims free, there is liberation
in a dam breaking
There is nothing to hold on to
water rushing past
the choice is simple
This is how the world
ends
how it
Begins
every moment a choice
to do no harm
There is no choosing
there is only presence
samscara released in liberation
an eternal letting go
This is how the world ends;
attachment ceasing
into presence.