Hieroglyphic Stairway by Drew Dellinger

it's 3:23 in the morning and I'm awake because my great great grandchildren won't let me sleep my great great grandchildren ask me in dreams what did you do while the planet was plundered? what did you do when the earth was unraveling? surely you did something when the seasons started failing? as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying? did you fill the streets with protest when democracy was stolen? what did you do once you knew? I'm riding home on the Colma train I've got the voice of the milky way in my dreams I have teams of scientists feeding me data daily and pleading I immediately turn it into poetry I want just this consciousness reached by people in range of secret frequencies contained in my speech I am the desirous earth equidistant to the underworld and the flesh of the stars I am everything already lost the moment the universe turns transparent and all the light shoots through the cosmos I use words to instigate silence I'm a hieroglyphic stairway in a buried Mayan city suddenly exposed by a hurricane a satellite circling earth finding dinosaur bones in the Gobi desert I am telescopes that see back in time I am the precession of the equinoxes, the magnetism of the spiraling sea I'm riding home on the Colma train with the voice of the milky way in my dreams I am myths where violets blossom from blood like dying and rising gods I'm the boundary of time soul encountering soul and tongues of fire it's 3:23 in the morning and I can't sleep because my great great grandchildren ask me in dreams what did you do while the earth was unraveling? I want just this consciousness reached by people in range of secret frequencies contained in my speech ©2003

Request permission to use this poem

Written by

For You?