Another Piece Of History: The Apple Tree
From One Of The Fallen: Fort Robinson Breakout, 1879
Another Piece Of History: The Apple Tree
Another piece of history
is gone.
The apple tree.
I remember you throwing your shoe
up into the air
to knock apples down
from the highest branches.
And even though they were small apples
and deformed
compared to what we buy in the store,
you loved them
because they came from the tree,
and you were used to eating fruits
the way they came,
without being polished and disguised,
or nurtured by
big money:
struggling
into the world,
fighting every step of the way
to being born.
Eating them
was your way
of honoring them,
and giving love
to the wounded tree.
And the sight of you
shoeless
underneath the tree,
half-child, half-midwife,
playing, dancing,
worshipping,
just being alive,
is one of the memories
I most cherish
in my solitude.
But now the tree is gone.
A fierce wind
took it down, after
coating its weary branches
with heavy ice,
that weighed more than all its years.
I saw it yesterday,
just lying there,
uprooted, its trunk hollowed out
by age and sickness,
perhaps because you were the only one
who ever loved it,
and now you are far away.
And I thought - no
more apples,
to remind me of you.
Another piece of
history is
gone.
The snow fell yesterday.
But suddenly,
the snow is falling
again.
Not from the sky,
but from the trees.
The wind’s work.
And I’m all alone
in my private snowstorm
- the snowstorm
after the snowstorm
- yesterday’s snow
which is still falling
on me.
The maple leaf
and oak leaf
lying side by side.
Down on the sidewalk
like soldiers
shot down.
The maple leaf
and oak leaf.
From different trees.
Side by side
on the ground.
They look like brothers
now.
I see the branch,
jagged like a spear now,
a part of it broken off
in a violent way
by a storm,
perhaps.
Though it looks
so sharp and threatening,
what hits you most
when you discover it
is its pain,
you can almost hear it
snapping apart, all over again,
crying out in agony,
losing a piece of itself,
alone in the wind.
And the sharp edge
that seems so much like a
weapon
is really only
an endless howl of misery,
a stormy night
when no one came,
that will never end…
She played Medea.
She played Iphigeneia.
She played Antigone.
She played Lysistrata.
Then she was Cordelia.
Then Lady Macbeth.
Then Miranda.
Then she played Maud Gonne.
On a small stage, but she
made it great.
(Just like a soul that’s desperate
to be born
will come into the world
through a poor mother,
the Maud in her
had to emerge,
even off of a
dark street.)
Every mask
she wore
brought the house down.
Every line was real.
No one called it
acting.
"Can you play _____?" someone with money
would always ask,
coming up to her after the show with
the next person for her to be.
With the next theater for her to wear,
like a jewel;
like armor.
And the merry-go-round of lives
spun round and round,
turned by her talent,
and the world’s longing
to cry its tears
in the dark;
sometimes to
crouch behind the shield of a laugh.
Around and around,
the painted ponies and the cheers,
around and around
the masks
and the years.
It went on and on.
It was like hollowing out something
from the inside -
most everything was gone
before anyone noticed.
One day, she woke up with a glass
of vodka in her hands,
and the ice asked her:
"Who are you?"
And she began to fall
into the endless depths of that
unexpected question.
Dizziness,
terror,
an awful undefined regret
that left nothing else inside her.
A sense of being utterly lost,
like someone discovering herself on a strange street,
at midnight,
with no memory of who she is,
and no identification papers in her pockets.
There was no time to
sort it out.
Not at this stage of life.
She pulled out someone’s business card, and
reached for the phone.
"Hello," she said to a stranger’s answering machine.
"This is ______. I’ll take the part."
[Thanks to U2 for "One." It plays a part in this story.]
I knew her.
Through the wall.
For a few intense months,
she was my neighbor,
trying to make a go of it.
And her life came to me.
Through the wall.
I had seen her, of course,
sitting mysteriously in the hallway,
on the ledge by the window that she’d opened,
smoking.
It was like she was trying to get away
from the spotlights of a prison camp.
Each night she made the same escape,
and each night she was recaptured,
after the cigarette was gone.
We said "Hello."
What else could we do?
We lived on the same floor.
And then, there was nothing more to say.
This is the city,
and you don’t talk to strangers.
Which means that strangers
always remain strangers.
Still, I got to know her well.
Through the wall.
Of course, there wasn’t much to go on.
But just enough.
Those escapes into the hallway
gave me a face,
and an idea.
The beginning of
our story.
And then, one day, I heard the yelling.
An angry man.
Yelling in Russian.
Her replying in Russian.
No word I understood,
yet everything.
Her sobbing,
defenseless and wounded,
too hurt and broken to
crawl out from beneath the injustice.
It did not seem like a blow
had been struck,
it didn’t need to be.
It didn’t need to be.
Whatever he said,
I could tell.
Through the wall.
And then, there was another glimpse:
this time, she was dressed up,
going to work,
it seems she’d finally got a job.
There was a certain pride and joy
in not sitting around,
any more,
I could see it in her smile;
and new hope that the money
would not run out.
But then, I began to see her sitting around, again,
smoking more than ever.
Leaving cigarette butts
beside the hallway window,
that had bars in it
so that children wouldn’t fall out.
But those kind intentions
didn’t keep it
from looking like a prison.
And I didn’t see her leaving to work,
any more.
And then came the song: her final friend.
Her final dream.
The last chapter in our story.
I heard it.
Through the wall.
"One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should…"
Over and over again.
Four times, five times,
back to back:
her discretion as a neighbor,
her invisibility overpowered
by her dying,
the volume suddenly turned up.
I knew she was trying to ride
that song to somewhere,
out of the pain,
trying to climb up it,
use it like a ladder
out of the pit.
I knew she was sitting down,
alone, maybe on the bed that had
brought her so much pain,
along with liberation (temporary -
so high, but only temporary);
and I could feel the tears
in her eyes,
and the soul filled with hurt and hope,
on the edge between flying free forever
and breaking into pieces that would never
fly again.
"One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should…"
It felt like she was calling out to me.
Through the wall.
But, of course, she wasn’t.
She was calling out to God.
And I couldn’t help but wonder
if He would answer.
And I couldn’t help but
become a satellite of her drama.
Through the wall.
Like a soap opera addict,
who must tune in every day
to see what happens next,
I would stop whatever I was doing
whenever she decided
to come to me through the wall.
Would she make it?
Would her heart’s longing outrun
the dark shadow?
The man?
The rent?
Would it survive the dream’s interview
with reality?
Would the sad sitting around and smoking
finally have a happy ending?
Sometimes, I thought so.
"One life
With each other…
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other…"
Other times, it didn’t look good.
"You ask me to enter
But then you make me crawl…"
No, not good at all.
"And I can’t be holding on
To what you got
When all you got is hurt…"
Sometimes, I felt like knocking on
her door.
But her life was too much for me
to handle.
I could tell.
I couldn’t even handle mine.
And so I just kept listening.
To the song.
Through the wall.
The song with pain
and hope.
Tears
and freedom.
Hoping she would
catch the part of the song that rose up,
out of its own grief,
above the grief.
One day, leaving the building for a moment,
I saw two suitcases standing outside her open door,
waiting for someone.
There was no person with them
to give away their meaning.
But after that,
the song ceased.
I listened for it -
my steady companion for over a month -
but heard only silence.
Weeks passed,
and the idea of a vacation
began to lose force.
More silence.
And then, one day,
unexpectedly,
voices speaking in Chinese.
Through the wall.
And I just sat there, numb,
wishing I had flowers
to lay beside the wall.
The song hadn’t been enough.
The cigarettes had known,
all along.
For months,
she’d been smoking
her last cigarette.
And now, at last, she’d had
to go.
She couldn’t pay the rent.
I knew it.
And love hadn’t been there
to soften the blow.
Instead it had carried her up
on its wings,
then let her fall.
She had thought she was a child
in an angel’s protecting arms,
then discovered she was only like an oyster,
lifted up by a seagull
so that he can drop it
to break it open.
And I could tell, her soul left my building
with a black eye.
And her heart left in pieces:
like fragments of a treasured keepsake
carried away in a paper bag,
just in case somehow,
someday,
someone might be found
who could put them back together.
And that’s when my wall stopped
playing: like an instrument
that was broken.
Like a violin without strings,
or a piano
with nothing inside it.
The life that had made my wall
alive,
for so long,
was gone.
No more song.
No more tormented heroine.
No more possibility of a happy ending.
I could tell.
Through the wall.
And I wonder about her, now.
And about the wall
that is trying to hide her life.
And about the wall that keeps
us all apart.
The eagle reaches God
by flying through the air.
The fish reaches God
by swimming through the water.
The horse reaches God
by running across the land.
The earthworm reaches God
by crawling through the mud.
When you tell someone
to take your way to God,
you end up losing your own way.
A friendly whisper of advice
is not the same as a
Crusade.
If you think that you have
gold in your hands, share it
with all the travelers
that you see,
but don’t kill anyone
who does not accept it.
Maybe they have an
emerald or a sapphire,
or a ruby
or a diamond. Maybe they are, themselves, gold
- walking gold.
You don’t reach God
by using him
to divide the world.
God loves life
more than roads,
and for him,
blood drops
ruin everything.
Forget about Heaven,
forget about Paradise,
forget about the angels with harps,
forget about the dark-eyed houri
bringing all the love that the world is missing:
they’re not for you
who try to drag
corpses through the holy gates.
God doesn’t let
killers into his house.
Everywhere he has given you signs.
Weeping mothers
and the eyes of orphans.
Signs that melt your
cross, your star,
your crescent moon.
When you truly look at a
human being,
you see something greater
than a church, a mosque, a temple:
you see
the reason that they
were erected.
No prayer can
purify a
violation of that sanctity.
As for the holy books, they are
filled with gems that sparkle
from amidst the rocks.
Everything is in them,
but not everything in them is equal.
God thought you could tell
what sparkled.
He didn’t think words could
hide the heart that
lives there.
He never thought you would
tear the gems out of the rocks,
then leave the gems behind
to take the rocks, instead.
What happened at Jericho happened
on the way to God;
the people had not yet reached Him.
The trumpets were holy,
but not what happened
after the walls fell down.
Spare the people.
Go to the gem of Isaiah, saying:
"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks:
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war
any more."
The eagle reaches God
by flying through the air.
The fish reaches God
by swimming through the water.
The horse reaches God
by running across the land.
The earthworm reaches God
by crawling through the mud.
What happened on the day that
the eagle asked the fish to fly,
and the fish asked the eagle
to swim?
What happened on the day that
the horse asked the worm to run,
and the worm asked the horse to
dig his way through the earth?
That’s when death
rained down upon the earth.
That’s when the fire of a great gift
fell like a burning roof
upon the head of the world’s
search.
The eagle reaches God
by flying through the air.
The fish reaches God
by swimming through the water.
The horse reaches God
by running across the land.
The earthworm reaches God
by crawling through the mud.
Each finds God in his way;
and God is more important
than the way to Him.
Brothers!
Let your brothers live!
Love them for who
they are,
do not say,
"I will not love you unless…"
Are not some
statues beautiful
even without their arms
and heads?
If you would be perfect,
accept the imperfection
of others.
Let them take their own road.
You take yours.
The eagle reaches God
by flying through the air.
The fish reaches God
by swimming through the water.
The horse reaches God
by running across the land.
The earthworm reaches God
by crawling through the mud.
Understanding this
is the way to
peace and holiness.
Brothers!
If you listen to nothing else
I have said,
in this long, long life
of hurling my heart into the wind,
listen to this!
From One Of The Fallen: Fort Robinson Breakout, 1879
He told me this in a dream:
I couldn’t get the horses.
I ran and ran,
but they came too fast,
on their own horses.
Over there, on the ranch,
they were waiting for us,
the wings we needed to fly away.
If I could only
make it through the cold,
hard and piercing my lungs,
before they got to me.
The ones who had their own horses.
And I could hear my heart beating all the way
like thunder in my chest,
and that feeling of sickness
that you push through
crept into the pit of my stomach,
and suddenly I was all alone
in the night,
with the vapor from my breath;
and the sound of my running footsteps
became as bright as the moon,
in my mind.
I was all alone.
Behind me, I heard the shots,
and the cries,
and thought,
if I don’t reach the horses, soon,
I’ll really be alone.
There’ll be no people left
to ride away on them.
No one left to see the
miracle of the
beautiful ponies
appearing suddenly like
a vision
out of the
night.
Brown and black
and streaked and spotted,
like earth and snow
running free.
Stolen from the corral,
and given back to the plains,
escaping,
and carrying us on the backs of their escape.
Two spirits that are the same,
theirs and ours,
never meant to be
behind a fence.
And I thought:
If I don’t get to the horses soon,
a whole world will end.
The children will not be born
and the ghosts, who need the
living to walk, will be forever lost,
searching for a memory to feed them.
Who will tell the stories
that keep the campfires
burning?
And I was all alone.
The women were yelling, still,
from somewhere far behind me,
and the men were shouting out like
wounded bears.
While gunshots spoke,
much too loudly in the night,
like a couple thoughtlessly arguing,
saying things which everybody overhears.
The cold night air
carried it all to me,
like a messenger,
saying, "Hurry! Hurry! Before it’s too late!"
And I ran, bursting from my desperation.
On and on.
Until finally I heard
the hoof beats - not of the
horses I was running to,
but of the horses
that the soldiers were riding on
to bring me down.
The horses too used to saddles,
turned against their own hearts.
A terrible fear
came into me then -
a fear that I would let my people down - and
then, an unfathomable sorrow - a
premonition.
That’s when a bullet hit me in the back,
as though I were a coward
abandoning my people.
If only I could have told the soldiers, then,
that I was not running from them,
but towards the horses that could save
my people.
That my running away
was really a way of fighting,
just like a charge
straight at them.
I wanted my death
to look right into their face,
and laugh at them.
But I didn’t have the strength.
I just stayed there on the ground.
And then I thought of my people,
and the beautiful horse herd
I had tried to reach for them,
laying just beyond me in the night.
I failed, and the people had to turn away from
the life-giving hope of the ranch:
the pursuit was too fast.
From then on, it would be them,
on foot,
against the soldiers, on horseback.
Right in the middle
of the winter.
And I thought, again, of the beautiful horse herd.
It was like a star
in the night sky,
its light was the
most beautiful dream I ever had,
though it never stood a chance.
Tears were still coming out of my eyes
when I heard them say
"He’s dead",
and ride away.
That night,
shots continued to sound,
like a storm sometimes close,
sometimes far away.
Even though I was dead
I crawled a few feet more,
just to show them
I was a Cheyenne.
And then I stopped forever.
"Please, save my people," was my last prayer.
Then the tears froze on my face
and I was just like a rock
that had always been there
and would always be,
though now,
I only move in dreams.
Friend,
Dreamer -
part of what you have seen is true,
and part of it you got wrong.
But the heart is there,
and that is what matters.
You are a house
that the ghosts can live in.
You are the end of winter,
because you can still hear
those who
died, trying
to reach the
spring.
Brothers - get the horses!
His voice comes from me!
It is not too late, even now!
Yesterday, I thought it was,
but today I see that it is not.
In the past,
he would have saved your
life.
He would have led the
charge.
He would have
brought the most food
to your people.
He would have left
a legend everywhere
he went.
He would have been
the most loved.
In the past.
Now he is sitting in
a jail,
because you turned
the world upside down.
Now the hero
is the one who
lies, or cheats, or
doesn’t care,
or lets himself be used
to spread darkness.
Now the
warrior is the one who
sends others to die
for him,
or says Yes to a fool.
Now the one who brings
the food
is the one who walks over
others to get it,
or lets others walk
over him.
And he doesn’t share
it with the hungry,
he takes it right out of the
poor man’s mouth.
How could you expect
him to be a great man
in this world you’ve made?
In the past…
But it is not the past.
It’s now.
The upside-down world.
Where ugly is beautiful
and beautiful is ugly.
In the darkness, his
great heart and soul
lost their way -
going where
they always go,
they found it had
moved,
and suddenly,
they were caught in an ambush
called the law.
Trying to be great again.
Trying to save the people
who were in his heart,
but who he could not find.
You left the door open for cowards,
and turned the door for heroes
into a prison gate.
Not everyone will
understand this poem.
But this poem is
not for them.
It is for who he was -
in the past -
not now.
Please, Universe,
help the world
to be made over
without an apocalypse.
Please let love come first.
Please let love erase the need
to erase the world.
Please let the human heart
bloom
even in the darkness,
so that there will be no need of
floods, earthquakes,
fire falling from the sky,
plagues or beasts.
Please put a new beginning
in our minds
so that we will not need
an end.
Please purify us
with life’s possibilities,
not death’s torrents.
Please let the beautiful things of the earth
win over the ugly things,
until everything is beautiful,
and the lightning can find
nothing to strike.
Please let the world be rebuilt
by changing what is inside
what is already here,
not by wiping the slate clean.
Please let us crawl
out of the old snakeskin
of who we were:
let us shed it,
not die in it.
Please keep the Horsemen
off the earth,
let the children grow up
dancing in
sunny fields.
Please, Universe,
help the world
to be made over
without an apocalypse.
Let the whole human race
float above
the madness,
let the Rapture carry us all
to the new world,
not just a few.
Please spare my enemies,
so that they may become my friends.
Please spare the sinners,
so that they may
find their way.
Please let us struggle
to perfect the imperfect,
don’t give us
the fresh start
of destruction.
Please give us a chance
to find our way through the maze,
don’t save us from
the complexity,
by blowing down the walls.
There are beautiful souls
down here,
please don’t fire into the crowd
just to "get your man."
Please, Universe,
help the world
to be made over
without an apocalypse.
He was born again?
Yeah, right!
What kind of birth was that?
The sad lizard
became a happy lizard,
that’s all.
There was no wisdom,
no peace,
no humility,
no sacredness,
only greater joy
in his teeth
and tail.
That "Hallelujah"
was just a great big
"Banzai!"
More confidence
as he slithers on the ground,
because now he thinks
it’s what God wants
of him.
And his appetite
has become
a holy war.
Born again?
Yeah, right!
How many people has
his birth consumed?
How many more
will it prevent
from being born?
He sure takes up
a lot of space.
His birth forces a lot
of people
over the edge,
into the night.
Born again?
Yeah, right!
[Note: In my mind, abortion is a complex issue - that is to say, deep emotional dimensions are involved that transcend the basic legal conflict that is taking place in our country. I have known people who support abortions, and have had abortions, and, among these, people who, on a personal level, regret having had abortions, and people who do not regret having had abortions; just as I have known people who are very much against anyone having abortions - and I have found basically good people on "both sides" of the fence. Different perceptions have produced different attitudes. This is not a poem about abortion. What it is, is a poem about consistency. I see, on January 22, 2003, as President Bush prepares to launch a war against Iraq that most of the world is against, that he has spoken out against abortion, saying that Americans "must protect the lives of innocent children waiting to be born." Although I know that many anti-abortionists must also be against the impending war, the paradox of some ardent "right-to-lifers" being in support of a violent war that most observers feel can and should be avoided, has provided the basic motivation for this poem. - JRS, Jan. 22, 2003.]
Your sign says
Right To Life.
I’m in another crowd
but, still, I don’t dismiss
you cheaply.
But I do have some questions.
Your sign says
Right To Life.
I wonder:
Will you help her to take care
of her baby
once she listens to you,
and steps back from the "place of death"?
Will you give her your hand
when what should be the greatest joy
becomes the heaviest weight,
and she starts the race
from last place,
always behind,
always trying to catch up
for the rest of her life?
A girl
broken by a card of beauty
shown
too early in the game?
And I ask you again:
When the roof is falling down on her head,
will you be there to pull her out from the disaster?
When the flood is sweeping her away,
will you be there to pick her out from the waters?
Will you adopt the child
you save,
if it comes to that,
or just leave him to grow up
in a world that doesn’t care,
not because of her,
but because of everything that
led to her,
which flies the flag?
The dark crevasses
where
the failures of the American Dream
are hidden away
in the blackness of blame.
Down with the forgotten histories
of chains,
and vampires that stole the blood
of races and generations,
and Bible-toting monsters
with belts in their hands,
who sent their children
running into the night
where desire seems to be love,
and needs kill;
where the drug of a
hotel and a bed,
or a car seat,
promises to conquer the pain
of two-faced families?
Of two-faced nations?
And if you do adopt the child -
will you let it grow free, or
do you only plan to whip it until
it becomes another you?
Do you want it for who it could be,
or only to prove yourself
to God?
Or your neighbor?
Your sign says
Right To Life.
I respect that sign.
But still, I must ask:
Why so much energy
to save the unborn child,
when children who are already born
are dying all around you?
Everyday, they are being
aborted by poverty.
Every day, they are being
aborted by racism.
Every day, they are being
aborted by bombs.
Doesn’t that count as a
"late term abortion"?
From the womb of the universe,
precious life is being ripped,
all the time.
Even as I write these words,
planes are being loaded with bombs,
being made ready to
abort a generation.
The clinic
in which the operation will take place
is called Iraq, and
the doctors who will perform the operation
are called soldiers.
Where are your hymns, now, and your Bibles?
Where are your picket lines?
I see only flags,
hoisted above the death to be.
And that is not all.
What of the dark, loving wombs
of other lands,
filled with millions who want to live?
There, poverty is performing
thousands of abortions every day,
removing adults who are still the fetus
of what every human being longs to be, and
children,
too young to understand,
who are like insects without a chance,
about to be sprayed or smashed,
crying their whole short lives
in the arms
of mothers who seem so stoic,
though their hearts are breaking,
vanished into the bottomless depths of their wise,
sad eyes
that know there is nothing they can do,
that love can’t save,
only say good-bye.
You say the unborn child is alive,
though it is hidden in the belly of
the mother.
And you try to make the mothers
see that.
I say to you,
the poor peoples of the earth are alive,
though they are hidden in the belly of
other lands (sometimes,
just around the block).
And I want to make you see that.
And I say to you,
the people of the earth who
you have built your bombs to kill,
they, too, are alive,
though they are hidden in the belly
of your ignorance,
hidden by the distance
of their homes
from the planes that
only see targets,
never a face,
or the love someone feels
for that face.
Your sign says
Right To Life.
I respect that sign.
I only wonder
why you march until your feet are bleeding
for those not born,
but look the other way
when it comes to those
who are already here.
Is it sex?
Is that the problem?
Do you have something
against sex?
Is this your way of telling people
to take a cold shower,
and come more completely
into the gray world?
Or is it that the unborn
are like unshaped clay,
with the promise of being molded
into your image?
While those already born
have begun to take the shape
of something different,
something you might not
be able to control?
Are you, perhaps,
like the frightened parent
who, having no knowledge of what is safe
and dangerous,
rushes to kill every innocent spider
as though it were a black widow,
even though it is only trying
to survive in a little corner
of your house?
Brothers! Sisters!
What has happened to your
compassion?!
How is it that
you want to take over other people’s bodies,
and control their lives,
when you do not even
control your own - when you cannot even stop
yourself from killing, from hating, and forgetting?
From needing things that destroy others,
and from lashing out
at anyone who leaves the
"Sir" off of "Yes."
Brothers! Sisters!
Your sign says
Right To Life.
I respect that sign.
But I am wondering
why you don’t carry it everywhere,
why you only hold it up
outside of some doors,
and not others?
Brothers! Sisters!
Your sign says
Right To Life.
I respect that sign.
Now, I am waiting for you
to respect it, too.
If we all
would only be true
to what we say
is in our hearts.
Wouldn’t that solve everything?
For you
and me?
In the beginning,
don’t we all say we want
the same thing?
Don’t we all start with a few
beautiful words,
like Love, Peace, Justice, Hope,
and don’t we all stand there together,
in one pure country,
before those sacred words
begin to unravel
into angry specifics
that cannot live together -
into different flags,
and weapons pointing at each other’s hearts?
Is it too late to go back?
To the holy place,
before the waters divided
into many dark rivers
that say they never met?
Is it too late
to find the moment
when we would have died for each other,
instead of killed each other?
If we would all
only be true
to what we say
is in our hearts,
there would be no need
to tear up the earth,
to knock down the joy of mothers
with a wrecking ball.
We could sit down
and talk -
and share a tea,
without worrying
about a drop of poison.
I would listen to you,
and you would listen to me.
And if I said,
I don’t agree,
you would not
think it was because I was not
listening.
You would listen to
my No, and I would
listen to yours,
and we would both
give it time.
Why rush?
Like the sun, we
would set,
and return the next day,
shining with the light of
new thoughts.
Surely,
we would find a way - if we
were true
to what we say
is in our hearts.
And what we wanted
would cease to be what we could
only have
by making the other cry
or bleed.
And we would only covet
what brought life
to us both.
If we were
only true
to what we say
is in our hearts.
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
It I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
What is your gold?
What are your eyes?
What is your throne?
What are your lies?
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
It I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
I don’t have to be
what you want me to be.
I can just be.
I AM WHO I AM.
Take off your shoes.
Every life is holy ground.
Every soul’s a burning bush.
And I don’t have to get up.
And I don’t have to sit down.
And I don’t have to fly
or stay on the ground.
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
It I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
Life is you and me,
not me trying to be you.
Two YOUs isn’t life,
you need ME, too.
Love me, and you’ll see.
Hate me,
Laugh at me,
Use me,
and lose your power.
Because I’ll see
right through my kneeling.
Go on, judge me:
you’ll just open the shade
to the window
of the house of my
foolishness, and let me look in.
And then, I’ll laugh, too.
At the clown
you almost made me be.
Before I was free.
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
It I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
Like a soul
floating out of a body,
that finally wakes up;
that finally finds fear
is all smoke
and no fire;
that jumping through hoops
isn’t real.
That crowns are
just pieces of junk,
and that mountains are only
invisible specks in the
night.
And that everything
is all right…
That I am
all right.
Let this knowledge open
like a bud, tonight.
Right now.
In life.
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
It I was killed,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
If I was dead,
wouldn’t it all seem foolish?
Let it seem foolish today.
You’ve been walking
a long time,
over the harsh land
towards the thought of the sea.
You’ve wanted it for
so long.
The pure white beach
by the waves,
that clean, fresh air,
and the cry of birds
who know the sky so well,
that they barely need wings:
they’re on their way
to becoming clouds.
All the long way,
feet hurting,
endless dry landscapes passing,
dying trees,
withered grass,
a few gnarled plants,
the kind that know how to grow up
in a wound;
the kind that one day of not
being tortured
gives the strength
to last another
century.
Hard ground,
burned by the sun,
not the sun of life,
but the sun of
desire that’s
gone wrong,
like a rape.
Charring what it wants
but doesn’t love.
Every step,
like being whipped.
The daydream of pain,
a kind of endless sleepwalking
through the barrenness.
But the thought of the sea…
The thought of the sea…
And suddenly you
think you can begin to hear the waves.
And that fresh strong smell
comes to you,
the smell of the sea,
a dream?,
a reality?,
more heat -
no, there it is again!
And then the waves
begin to grow more vivid,
the whisper too clear
(though still not near),
to be an illusion,
the sound washing
miles of painful walking
from your brain;
and then, the distinct
cries,
the piercing welcome
of the birds.
It’s hard to believe.
The sea…
After such a long walk…
Tears begin to
come to your eyes.
The sea…
Not far away now.
You weren’t dreaming…
It’s still there,
after all this time
of living away
from it.
It hasn’t forgotten
to be itself,
and it hasn’t stopped
waiting.
All this time,
it never gave up
on you.
It never
went home,
saying He won’t show.
Each empty day,
it kept on
rolling onto the beach,
just in case
that was the day
you finally
made it.
No, it never
gave up on you.
The sea…
The sea…
Look how far
your thought of the sea
has carried you…
To the sea…