Streams Of Words

flow  through us
warriors and cowards in there
heroes and villains
kings and slaves
everyone got 'em
lurking their past

whores and priests running madly convinced through our minds
living on the prayers of gods and groins
hell and brimstone preachers
and cool hipsters who just walk by it all
like nothing mattered and what the fuck if it did?

some will speak to our warriors
others the cowards
we decide
whether we will allow ourselves
 to travel on the stream of their words
or insert our own

walk up that fucking stream defying the currents created before we had a say
the only way to avoid waterfalls and rapids
built into every river
the pits where our beliefs shine no light
the prisons
when we are kneel chained and beaten
suffering the endless imprisonment in the flesh like stoic cons
living for an extra biscuit from our jailers

As I walked the husky through the swirling Chicago snow
a day before News Years Eve
I could see the streams of words flowing through the air
radio waves and wireless internet and phones
philosophies and quips and racist rants
republican and democrat all rambling around in my mind

They tell me they will baptise me in their streams
take me up the mythic mississipi journey of huck finn
to enlightenment
meditate my way into a whole 'nother dream of this life
save me some money with their sales
find our my credit rating

most of the streams
end up being
a tangled landscape of meaninglessly babbling, thoughtless brooks

the poet stretches the metaphor like a rubber band that is going to hurt like hell when it breaks
pulls his body through the rush of water
fighting the draw of just laying on his back basking in the sun
floating along wherever dreaming all is right with the universe
listening intently to cable tv commentators who stitch together stories
under banners that draw the worst out of us
ask for the hateful voices
the xenophobic monkey trying to live like a goddamn human being


oh what child would I tell you to do as you totterr out into the universal confusion
with this band of mental toddlers who have no idea how to cure the worlds problems...
nothing that will work without changes that will have to be fought for
harder than they are fought against

word for word
blood for blood
fire for fire
man who has always in the end befriended his enemies
sooner or later
historically speaking
for a few hundred years here and there

We know the path
We just don't know always who blocks us
who is beckoning us for their own purposes
who is just some Joe who knows the way and tells it like he lived it?

You got them in there
Jung's archtype/the marvel universe/Star Wars
the characters we will play by our own device and others

How you gonna live boy?
Will you be blindered young?
Taught to keep your nose to the grindstone
life focused?

i worry about the young girls chasing beauty even as I marvel at their ways
as stunned as an adolescent boy
and aware as a man that history bred younger than we do here
that the rise of tv and fashion warps
insert pornography in our every moment

i hear a young comic talking about how he doesn't want to scream issues at people
just wants to make them laugh
wonder how he missed any connection
to the frantic part of me that worries incessently about my planet
how he deluded himself into an island?
wealth does that/part of the appeal is the purchase of privacy
the distance of exclusivity
from the ever present mucky-muck
the stone cold downers everywhere
that seem to suck the juice out of life
leave only a vague endlessness
the wondering if any of this is really worth the arrows at all?

we can't take the humane society ads showing abondened animals in this house
have to change the channel
we do all we can already and don't want to go there if we don't have to
want to surf out our own way
find our own paradise for awhile
beat off or buy something or run off into a bottle/snort up a night
be mentally elsewhere

say what you will
I'll listen when I can
I tell the world
unless you are just plain full of shit
your agenda transparent
to my prying eye

I toss another pebble in the stream
watch the ripples disrupt the flow of the current for a few seconds and disappear