The Awakening

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”–Stephen Daedalus

And if you go far enough
& live long enough
you shall come at last
to where the remaining bodies
are excavated below
empty malls & coliseums.

There you will find a truth
wind-blown & decomposed
unlike any small sorrow
you have personally known.

The great human record.
The archives of deconstruction.
The Auschwitz of Nicolai Ceausecu.
The bloody shoe-closet of Imelda Marcos.
Chernobyl & the killing fields
of Bosnia, Hiroshima & Waterloo.
The long inhuman legacy
of ego, fear, greed
& testosterone.

On a good day, madre
the sun may shine on your garden
& you shall hear birdsong
& feel the rhythms of imagined desire:
blue/green, or so it goes.

So enjoy your latte moment.
You’ve earned it, kid.
Put jam on the unthinking
scones of ignorance.
Pretend & above all pray
to something larger & better
than this or your self.

Pray that some walls will
remain standing after all
you’ve ever said or half-done.
Ponder for once now
the pillars & forgotten dreams
of the multitudinous dead.

………………………….

Recalling the political upheavals of 1990; written then

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