RISING OUT OF THE MIST
They don't teach it in school, the danger of seduction,
or how the fool teeters on the edge of spiritual dizziness.
The mist rising from the lake on frosty mornings,
like a symbol disguising itself in its own nature,
won't reveal the secret, though someone ought to teach it.
The children need to learn what symbols do to people;
and the damage people do in the name of symbols,
the carnage and destruction carried out
with extreme ambition and godlike sweeping gestures,
leaving a smoky aftermath that hangs in the stillness,
a whole horrible history fogging the globe in a mist.
When the lake ice turns directly to steam,
the teacher will say it sublimes,
but leave the origin of the word for English class,
as if any would ask.
It all takes place below the hole, a subliminal experience
beneath our vision, beyond the event horizon,
over the rainbow, out-of-sight-out-of-mind,
on a rock of the sea, in the dear dark,
when the animals talked, and the earth was a crust of bread.
It's something everyone should know,
like Neruda's metaphors,
the medicine woman's herbs,
the shadowy trembling bridge of color
the snake skin and moon shadow
explanation of the cycle of birth and death...
or is it death and rebirth, all the same,
like the boy king's drowned face on the back of a crab,
the crab wouldn't know, it's not a crab symbol.
How many mirrors does it take to reveal our true selves,
as we disguise the truth in our own nature,
eat and go crazy from the halo of spores
that fertilize the convoluted ideas
that keep rising out of the mist toward the sun.
IIMy wife has a few rearranged limbs
that don't quite meet design potential,
however, they perform miracles everyday.
A boy in the swimming pool is asking,
what's wrong with you?
She responds, "Nothing's wrong with me,
I'm perfect.
Is there anything wrong with you?"
"No", he says.
"So why do you ask", she wants to know.
The hint of WRONG begins within,
but no one ever thinks to look there first.
I doubt if the boy will understand her deep knowledge of people,
but she and he get along just fine in the pool.
Maybe that's all it takes to get along on earth,
a little wisdom, tolerance, patience
and an inside track on how humans function
in and out of the pool.
It's all about death, really, waiting for it to happen,
wondering what to do until it comes,
daydreaming great white ships
hovering to take us off to forever land,
hoping something will postpone the vaporizing process
until the last possible moment,
imagining what it might be like to sleep thru it all
or shake the rafters rattling for breath.
OK, so it's not about death
or how we come to terms and learn to live with it.
Perhaps it is more like giving up alcohol, say.
Try celery, they'll say. Try chewing gum.
Try walking a mile, talking a mile a minute,
try standing on your head, anything you think will work,
It probably will. It's just a symbol.
Symbols cause miracles, didn't they teach you anything?
III
The children need to learn what symbols do to people;
Call it Joe Camel 101. Our motto?
"He's a modern Sibyl, man. To love him is to die."
Carson tried to tell us...you know that bit about
"the Schlossen cut-off."
He wasn't joking, people do that for a symbol.
We can all run up the mountain,
nic-less in rock-the-vote T-shirts.
Lotus petals grow in like sharks teeth,
another row of cutlery waiting to dine on you.
A petal with your name on it drifts and flutters
and bends inward on the down draft.
Comes to rest on the chilled lake of steam and ice and morning sun
and you didn't even notice a quiver of painful mortality,
just the thing to begin your non-being
the way it was before you were born, is now, and ever shall be.
Symbols, gray and distant, forever rising out of the mist.
ŠJimmy Warner Design, 2010
