Mother Earth's Maker
From the open window of my room, the yellow-gold lights of the city look like dead baby stars that have fallen to our Mother Earth in a desperate last attempt to stay alive. They are the only stars in sight; I don't know if that's because of the fog or the smog or my blurry contacts or what, but the sky is only a mass of cold charcoal gray air, and the fallen stars are lining far-away streets and highways, illuminating Banana Republics and 7-11s and a small A-frame house where a father is yelling and a baby is crying. And when I hear a siren in the distance, I can't help but wonder if the corresponding blue and red lights are the spinning remnants of a fallen planet.
Why do we think that we are so far removed from the heavens when they are really right here among us? And why are we so far removed from the earth when all of our worldly possessions are mere products of it? We've turned our blessing of a home into a death trap, where stars are plummeting to their untimely ends, only to illuminate narrow alleys where teenagers are being shot, and the memorial candles which mark their graves, this city of fallen light and soul...
But it's ok, because when we pass on, we'll all have these silly smiles on our faces, because America just beat China in the World Cup, or because we got a fabulous deal on a pair of Nikes, or maybe, if we are incredibly lucky, because we just told our friends how much we love them. Or maybe YOU'LL even be so lucky as to have strong enough lungs to last you till the day they discover water on the moon, and you'll be a pioneering colonist. We are bringing Mother Earth to meet her maker... why not bring along the Man in the Moon?
The Fogs
You pine endlessly, poem after
Confession, after
Poem,
Each winter I read
Drives me deeper under the snow,
Until I can no longer breathe,
And I succumb to the cold numbness...
Your dark unfathomable winters
Creep under my skin like icicles piercing,
Puncturing the skin whose smoothness
Is your way with words
Your bone-chilled words
Echo in my heart:
We both are
Plagued with loneliness
And no sense of direction
As we cry our way
Through the foggy metropolis
You sing of
Deep seasons which grace
My atmosphere every day.
But your lonely winters
Differ from the cotton-candy fog
that sticky-sweet layer of cloud
which melts as you approach it
and swim blindly through it
Which is always hovering
Like a San Francisco tag-along friend...
No, your winters are harsher,
Leaving you to navigate through the
Merciless London fog
alone