Oh World

Oh World

Oh world… how sick and weary I feel… but I still want to dance with you! I want to glide through the air and swim in the sea. I would like to be a sea anemone… oh how I would like to be a sea anemone, opening and closing to the heartbeat of the world. And how many new frontiers there are for a lone pair of claws scuttling across the floor of an out of the way sea.
Oh, yes, you wanton, modern world, I would like to build your sky-scrapers…all lotus flowers, I would make them all lotus flowers. And I would teach you to sing like a lion… to chase the African lionesses… to play and create. Yes, play and create all day in the coffee houses. There really is no more important question than what type of drink to have… to flavor your thoughts and discourses. An Indian Chai with a shot of espresso?...the bold spirit of Europe mixed with the ancient focus of India…to wash away the needless complications of the drunken monkey mind. Or a Boysenberry Latte, the fruitful melody of a new America...quite breaking from the meter of the bombastic conductor to swell forth, athletic and strident.
I should like to be a lizard, bathing in the sun of Zion. There is no time for a lizard and neither hot nor cold. What sort of painting should a lizard commit to canvas? Something very modern, very modern I’m sure. And I should very much like to make a movie… nothing but swirling vistas and triumphant music… somber cinematography and psychedelic animation. The Jurassic Fish will give his discourse, the Platypus will explicate upon her position.
And to see the cities of the future: the intergalactic cuisine, the simple and vital art, every pedestrian a thinker, thinking of yet another tomorrow, even a new frontier! I should like to be drunk again upon the art of the honey bees…order, disorder…rant then haiku, games, music and love with you. We’re dancing and spinning, destroying and creating; we hate…but we hate but in play. For depressed as I feel…I still feel the beat…calling me…pulling me onto to my feet to dance with this decadent age…and to perform once again on the flattering stage.
And I shall be the star, though I shall not do a thing. I will play a great red wood and Orpheus will play his reed beneath me, the nymphs will dance around me, the lovers will romp and carve their initials in me, Romeo shall hide in my shade and lament the coming day, great Antony, that great merry warrior-poet, shall take his life beneath me, and all this me will feed and feed and I shall and grow and grow till I quite over-tower the stage, a new world wonder, a dendrite personality cult, for I can’t keep it in, I’ve gotta let it out…why…Why not?!

Now

What will there be when we're all dead? What does that mean? No one will see; no one will hear; no one will feel. What we perceive is not real. When we die, there will be nothing. And who will know there's nothing? "Nothing"'s just a word. Who keeps the score of what is and is not? "Is" is just a word.
And the truth is, I have not been overly impressed with this life. In my youth, I retained a certain happiness protected by the biological strength of my mind and perhaps by the newness of everything. But, now, it seems to me a grey, drizzly world.
Perhaps it is merely my poverty that makes it seem so. There is so much that money can buy: plays, leisure, knowledge, aesthetic beauty. Perhaps if I were rich, I could hide from the ugliness of the modern world.
And yet, now and then, I am able to fly above the smog of this depressing world and again find magic in a throbbing, living Now.