I survey the landscape.
It’s history, it’s beauty, it’s scars.
Mountains of excuses and deadlines never met,
rivers of tears we later feel stupid  for ever having shed.
Dams built by perseverance,
Guiding the streams to stronger purposes
and stopping what must be stopped.
All in order to survive, they say.
And I must confess:
sometimes I wonder what the fuss is about.
Survival of the fittest and I wonder who’s really fit.
The ones who fight to live or the ones who embrace death?
Are we the wiser to keep on keeping on
in the only moments we know are ours?
Or are we better off striving toward perfection for an eternity we “just know” we have?

And I survey the ignorance.
Stories untold and stories
shouted so loud one would have been a fool to have missed them.
Waging holy war and waging war over who’s got the bigger metaphorical dick.
Politics fogging up our third eye.
Mr. Pineal Gland is getting confused.
Where we hate words that others have rendered meaningless.
Where we are entertained by watching celebrities eat too much
or drink too much
or start huffing keyboard  cleaner.
But, probably, they huffed it once.
And the rest of their psychosis is all because of that one time deal.
Not the mass media distorting their reality.
So we can laugh.
And their daddy can make a buck.

And....
I mean...
and....
Are you fucking kidding me?

But the subject on the table is fearing death.
Ah, yes, sure but to really get into the heart of the matter one should take a look at life.

So, I survey the hopelessness.
Suicide, murder, rape.
Suppose I’m also surveying apathy.
Not much difference between the two.

Ah, there’s the negativity.
As it is so common of my nature.
Pessimism has been rowing my boat ashore and gliding my jet
to every airport and beach I’ve landed on so far.
But I’m a poet.
And I’m a human who believes in taking chances.
Digging deeper and deeper than some have ever done before.
Because my Pisces nature is what it is.
And I understand beauty first and foremost,
throughout everything.

And I survey the whole of it.
I watch people dying in the street,
see them an hour later after squandering my 20 dollars I gave to them on cheap bourbon and a joint.
They don’t remember me of course but that’s OK.
They is he and he is happy.
Jovial and curious, alive all over again.
He tells me the secret to it all.
Waves his hand through the air at the city street,
whichever city street in whichever city.
Doesn’t matter, been to most of them and had this same experience.
He says:
“These people, look at them like glitter.
Like cosmic light beams of truth all among the air.
If you look at them like that
then their crimes don’t matter.
And, no, of course this is not going to last but let it last just long enough
to remind yourself that you love them.
For all they’ve done, have you done anything you know is better or worse?”

I watch myself dying in a hospital bed.
People coming to visit, holding back tears.
Holding back anger.
But they come no less.
Because they see the one thing I can’t.
That I am something worthy of breath and worthy of being heard.
That my frustrations lead me into places I should know I was never meant for.
But I was. That’s where they are wrong.
I was meant to see everything I probably could have avoided had I allowed my practicality to run my life.
My karmic path is transcendence.
And maybe I believe in that.

And I survey all the times I met just the right person at just the right time.
I survey every coincidence that maybe wasn’t a coincidence.
I survey every friend I’ve ever met
and all their beautiful thoughts
And I survey every being I have rivaled with
and all their contradiction that, without,
my own opinions would not fully exist

And, so, I survey humanity
And to humanity I say this:

We are bi-polar, sociopathic, oxymoronic, hypocritical, unenlightened, enlightened, freedom fighting, slave owning, truth searching, philosophical, addicted, wannabe purists, vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic, carnivore, omnivore, ADHD, ADD, schizophrenic, depressed, agoraphobic, republican, democratic, liberal, anarchist, GO AWAY WITH THE STIGMAS AND LABELS!

Why does it matter?

Because once...
We were just this:

A ball of energy. floating through something intangible.
Beyond all man made gods and beyond all of what science has so far proved. We were a gallon of rye whiskey on a sick drunk’s last buck.
We  were dynamite to men stuck in a coal mine.
We were the bottom of the ocean.
As our children imagine it in their good dreams.
No reality of the pressure that would crush us.
The possible monsters and exploding volcanoes.
Just shiny coins and beautiful plants swaying through the calm waters.

Once
That is what we were
And you ask me if I fear death?
Yes.
Because when I say were, I mean are.

We are that ball of energy.
We are that child’s dream.
We are, to some, God’s children
In their imagination’s scheme of things.
We are the proof that all systems neither work nor fail.
We are human. Fallible but beautiful
Without knowing for sure what’s next,
how could one not fear death?
Because with death,
no matter what comes next,
comes the end of all this.