Welcome to the 6th Extinction

Welcome to the 6^th Extinction,

No reservation required.

A waiting seat at every table,

No shoes or ties requisite

And tipping is declined.

The thought is overwhelming

If we ever had a clue.

Well we have a clue or two,

Deeply buried in the litter

Of life's routine distractions.

Our gods shall be forgotten

As our history turns to dust,

Like Ozymandias and his legs

Alone and weathered in the sun.

Behold ye mighty, yet again.

For all things rise

And all things fall

And the cycle begins anew,

Ceaseless and ever changing,

Oblivious to our will.

Lost

Lost town

Hidden deep in hills and shadows.

Abandoned homes bleached white.

Fragments remain,

Memories.

Beginnings

First star.

Final embers of cosmic birth.

A bang, they say, profound.

Eternal dawn

And night.

Always

Soft silk,

Like the first blush upon your face.

The quizzical stillness

Of our first kiss.

Always.

Family Snaps

Gelatin-silver, shadows fixed,

Tiny frozen snaps of time.

Old photos poorly stacked

In a box at the closet's back,

Buried in a crypt of

Mothballs and old coats.

Three generations reaching back.

Faded memories of picnics and

Birthdays and dinners and trips

And so many poses with so many folks

With the same bewildered

Frozen smile.

I have relatives I never knew

With names I rarely heard

In family tales that only

Grandparents ever understood.

About lost family friends with

Their ancient cars who drove

Just briefly passed the camera's

Impassive lens.

Perhaps, I think, one solitary

Figure may be my great-grandfather.

In a field somewhere, here or there,

Since a plain is a plain,

Hungarian or Midwest.

This one fuzzy photo is

All that's left, like a ghost

On a summer's afternoon.

A Thought on Herman Melville

That Melville guy did a number on us all,

Don't you see, when he

Struck the one great metaphor

And stole the perfect symbol

Of a doomed American dream and

Then, like a drunken sailor adrift

At sea, the ruined search for that

White whale indeed, that Moby Prick

That roiled its way into the canon

While leaving us, his inheritors,

Doomed to the dark eternity

Of referential scores.

State of Disunion

Do not turn my drama

Into panic

Simply to rob me

Of my self-indulgent fit.

Oh woe for me,

This narcissism is our

Common currency.

Irony is the singular curse

Of the cheaply jaded;

Glib and often meaningless

Like wilted roses

In an empty room.

We have all become

A lonely dancer

On a crowded ballroom floor;

Spastic motions of

Disharmony

Set to the beat

of a drunken drummer.

The commonweal

Broke up online

Abandoned in the rain

Like a rejected suitor

On a tea party afternoon.

Thinking of William Blake

Oh where are you Willie boy,

With your bowl of burning gold

And sword unsheathed

In poetic might against old

Satan's mills?

That sweet Jerusalem

You never found

Among the pastures green

And ancient footsteps still

Unseen in shadows lost

Among the hills.

A vision as pure as dreams,

More beautiful than any tiger,

Brighter than any flame.

Like your arrows of desire

From which Jerusalem

Yet will spring.