Above Domination

"From the top of his tower, the philosopher of domination sees the universe in miniature. Everything is small because he is so high. And since he is high, he is great, the height of his station is proof of his own greatness."
--Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Coyote, trickster god, looks down on us
And laughs in joy. He's laughing high above
Those who, in thinking they look down on us,
Are misbelieving all they know and love.

Nature's Beauty

The Great Bear rises over me, new moon
Allowing all the Milky Way to stream
Across the sky--I hear a cougar scream,
I hear the lamentations of the loon.
A burst of palest pink and green balloon
And dance across the sky--they only seem
Alive as they are given breath to team
Above by a sun of another's noon.

The chill is frosting droplets from the air--
I see my contribution by starlight--
I warm up to the cold that clears my mind.
The almost-quiet makes me want to stare
Into the inbetweenness from the height
And depth of nature's beauty, humankind.

Rhythms of Time

Diastole and systole push flows--
You hear the swoosh of your own life pass through
Like heat through day and night that ebbs and grows
Along the varied seasons black, gray, blue.

Just listen, hear your singing neurons link
The world to thought, the thought to world to make
Imagination realize we think
The things we see--we give more than we take.

The city flows with iron that it pumps
In strong, slow beats through fractal blacktop veins
From heart into periphery, the clumps
Cleared out as flows move slowly down the lanes.

He who has ears should listen, hear, amass
The different, subtle ways that time will pass.

On the Essence of Culture

A single gene mutation marks each Native
American--it's not enough to make
An essence, a collective soul--and no
More are their cultures something we can take

As constant and essential--they must change
If they will live, like every living thing--
They have a soul, but like each living breath
You cannot steal the wind, but only sing.

The eagle feather is not theirs--coyote
Is not the only trickster dueling rules--
And men emerged from earth onto the earth
A thousand times, ignored by only fools--

One bangs a drum--technology much older
Than all of humankind--with dreadlocks worn
By ancient Greeks and Aztec warriors both--
The ignorant deserve eternal scorn.

The Poser

You say you're from the ghetto
But you dress like Jared Leto
You only have the trapping
Of the poverty you're rapping