I've been talking to myself again ...

Did I invent a country as a kid?
Did you invent one, too?
What's it like? Where did it go? How do we get there?
Hop on, I'll cover the air fare
Sure the seats are uncomfy,
But Air Serendipity gets you where precisely when you need to be.

I've been talking to myself again ...
I'm re-rehearsing my “what's wrong with the world” words.
I do this in between trips to the unfair.

Do you do that?

Practice what you'll say on that one day-day
When you stand before the powers that would-if-they-could.

They sit staring; as would be powers would,
While you stand speaking; as guest speakers should,
In The chamber of changes made through speech making.

You j'accuse these would be's of dissing interests,
Of serving their selves and selfing concerns.

You express your concern at the poison these hypotheic pathetic pretend powers keep spilling
A spill that keeps filling-in the hole in the heart in the heart of the world!
You then penalize the penny pinching, politico point poachers, the ones who want to score, more than they want to play,
Cause their win-at-all-cost game is maiming your country: both the true-north and the strong and free,
The one you can only now seem to see in dreams
But you can't see it, cause you can't sleep,
Cause sleep can't compete with the screech of
“it's not us it's them” excuses, “I'm sorry I'm not sorry” apologies, and many many insults to a memory of a time and place you can't even remember forgetting.
So you just lie there, fully aware of the sound your body makes when you're breathing.

This is where my speech runs out of air.
It gets reduced to one repeating appeal to the powers that should be to help me, help me, help me.
Because there's a hole in the world,
And despite my eagerness and education,
I somehow missed out on the lesson entitled: all the know how on how to bury a hole.
So I simply say: Help me, help me, help me.

And I realize this is a lot to ask of the imaginary powers of would could and should.

The unfair goes everywhere, and everyone everywhere is rehearsing their own words between visits.
They've a hole in the heart in the heart of their world too
and they're filling it in, in between beats as best they can,
And for now that's about all we can do.

As for this latest draft; we'll shelve it for now
Till the next time the unfair's in town.

And I kid myself, these words won't cure a coronary gap.
Words rarely do, or even our actions at that.
Our intentions in this grander grand band stand will likely never be heard
over the insomnia inducing noises...
But if it could, I wouldn't want it to be with would words or could words.
It's the should words, that should be heard.

So we should choose some should words to change the world.
Because if we could: we would.
And if we should, we will.

I suck at making metaphors

The metaphor for my life, of late,
Is a college grad begrudgingly selling his car.
In this I am the college grad,
The car being sold is the car I'm selling.
I'm selling my car, so it's not a metaphor.
It's something that's happening.
And it sucks. Like this metaphor.

It made more sense to own a car
When childhood was 3 hours away,
On a drive open wide and city-free.
Save for a few spots
Of stop-overs I'd never stop in.
Except in my brain.
Where my mind would encounter
Mind-brain men and brain-mind women.

There they'd offer small town stories and small town snacks,
Which I'd compare to small town fair I'd tried just up the tracks.

These mind-brain men and women would sense something amiss
In my imagined amiss-demeanor,
And asked me where I was going and what I'd seen.

“My Grandma just died.” I'd replied,
Or say, “My family's selling the home.”
Or “A girl I like just asked me out, and I'm leaving the province tomorrow!”

Then the simple folk from my simple mind,
Whom I'd invented on a 3 hour drive over a skip-skip-skipping cd,
would smile, and say nothing.

Then we'd take a time out from weighing worries and woes
To acknowledge just how full of awe it all was.

To acknowledge my one part passive, one part active participation
in such a complex machine of so many-moving.

It's morbid now, to look back then on what didn't actually happen,
And to think how happy I was in light of such tragedy.

And all that while;
while acknowledging my part passive/part active participation
in a complex many-moving-many-parts machine,

I was moving forward to backward.
Backward being forward: back home.

I'd smile and sing over the skips,
I'd laugh off the loss.

In the wake of death-dying and loss-losing
We were choosing to sing.
We laughed and smiled
While, in a little more than a little while:
We'd soon lose sight of this appreciation.
This profound pronunciation.

Appreciation for a life lived, one one finds ones self truly alive in,
Venturing and adventuring in.

Even in the case of those not really living
Especially in their case.
And when we arrive at the end of the drive:
I kill the engine and they die. Like I will, one day.

At the end of a long day, on a long ago rode
To a home, no longer home 3 hours from okay.

On a day long after I sell this little engine that could always get me there;
Wherever there was.
And there might be a metaphor to make about there.
But I suck at making metaphors so I don't care.

The folk-from-my-mind-in-my-car-on-the-road wouldn't care either.
They'd just smile, and say nothing.