Sailors, chanters and politicians
Proselytize our new dimensions
Warriors, weavers and priest-drawn blood
Sanctify our new haven.

The sun comes up
We chop wood
Toolerize and gamify our fun
Still the same man under the same sun.

And for millennia
The new is suppressed
Marked as devilry
To keep us meek.

Feeling crazy today
Going to have my say
But first I'll impregnate
The Chief's chief lay.

I regret (usually too late), the authority
Of the sitting government.
Any government.
Once in power (I regret that word)
The back room broking good ole boys
At the exit polls loose their senses,
Sight and hearing.
Feelings get hurt.
Taxes are wasted.
The trough gouging is too loud.
I resent lying.

I regret (mostly from the evidence),
The too full baskets of organized religion
Overflowing from indulgences;
The Roman fingers
Poaching coins for another memorial window;
The glass cathedrals
And get-a-way cars.
I resent hypocrisy.

I regret people don't arrive on time
(no matter the time);
Especially when outside anyplace waiting,
Perhaps a light for a smoke is needed,
Or there's inclement weather,
The nearby company is distasteful.
Waiting dinner.
Late children are the worse.
They cause worry.
I resent the selfishness of time.

I regret being diseased,
And hated for it.
When in remission I'm loved.
Active, not so much.
The know-its say it's a matter of will.
Like you can cure
Cancer or smallpox with thoughts.
The one symptom alone, hurt,
Would need temples of meditating chanters!
I resent condemnation.

I regret failed relationships:
Family, friends and women.
My thoughts are mine;
If I said everything
You'd have a different opinion
Of what I am.
So we don't
Because we can't
Say things: we would appear as socio-paths.
We think good and bad;
Therefore we're real.
A virtual humanity.
I resent blathering.

I regret an educational system
That believes in paradigm shifts;
Spouting new-age lingo:
If it's not broken, break it;
Selling out to athletics,
Or Mr., Ms and Mrs. know
All about education;
They went to school.
Bullies top the list.
I resent permissive parents.

Most of all,
I regret
My resentments.

I wanted to head to the African Union to speak my mind
So I wrote a letter so they could respect my kind
Then I thought maybe if I go to the paper they'd hear me out
Seeing as the newspaper is the bastion of the spectacle
But I got hysterical, as they told me I should come back later
So I voiced my thoughts and pulled out a hailer

Here's the story, the revolution is in labour
Africa is a child who needs hospice, he needs to go to theatre
But many would turn a blind eye so maybe this is a show that should play out in theatre
But maybe that wouldn't be enough so a black story should be told on a white sheet called the cinematic theatre
African child get your 3D glasses and take a moment for some introspection
This is a dedication which needs intrinsic meditation
So instead of fainting, here's a painting
Do you still treasure your body like the gods said you should?
Do you remember the time when the San were working on wood?
Sailing the seas and they would later be called the Grimaldi
They could sail the seas don't believe the whitewashed folly

African Child do you remember your clesetial roots?
Or have you been embossed in the culture of Timberland boots?
Do you still grow your hair for your follicles are receptors like an antenna
Or has the weave been weaved into your scalp so much that you only see white tapestries
Your afro was your beauty and now all you have in your head are glued and knitted seams
Martin Luther had a dream but the only colour that succeeds seems to be the one that gleams

Are we to remain a colonised progeny and have amnesia when it comes to our galactic ancestry
Yet we're quick to receive European ideologies
Soon after that we earnestly accepted American anthologies
And yet we know little of our African anthropology
Have the forgotten ancestors ever received an apology?
For accepting foreign religions and capitalist industry

But no they have all been reduced to slaves, what of our chiefs and sages?
No a millennium African would be quick to skip those pages
Instead we find wisdom when we're in cages
Our ancestors we've put in a box and that's not our original coffin
Through the coffers of the soul you see them in your past lives and they have been trapped in an X-box
Yes they are animated and we are left mentally incarcerated in the television plasma box
You would remember that many who still held the truth were given small pox

So I say on this day, make things of clay
And stage your play of our beginnings - breathing in sun rays
Hold onto to your dread locks for some dread that that so many uneven black threads can lock
Made to believe that whiteness is intelligence and blackness pestilence
Well spell out your excellence in trance states and let them call it deliverance
African child, wake up, the planet needs you
You have been the seed Alkebulan
Way before Scipio Africanus canned us
Rid yourself of these heinous cancers
Hear them the Martian chanters
They are ululating calling out all ascended masters
We feel the sacrifices of the yajamantas
We are one with nature and we bleed with the sun
Rise and grow to unite the world for beyond complexion we are one.

write with the ambition: no one is going to write a book about me... i might as well write a book about myself - Hollywood vanity, the ones who can't write out the mundane with ferocious appetite to excite have hardly put a chunk of meat in their mouths, anaemic vegetarians, mantra chanters - well, anaemic vegans - the great debate about abortions, women's rights and the clinics condensed into an egg: is it a chicken? is it a chicken chow mein? no! it's a runny yum yoke boiled in 5 minutes! it's a completely different entity! what with the half-formed fetus that hasn't been ***** trained and hasn't developed **** or bladder muscles - is awake but is practically asleep - consciousness develops after the two precursor developments, it's not walking, it's still finding it easier to suggest onomatopoeia from words: it sounds like the great equation of putting an algorithmic-like interchange of vowels and consonants is creeping, but when it's there, there's nothing, a blank, no concepts stemming from the second other-worldly impregnation from the so called "imaginary" being, how long does a fully mature fetus spend time in the dark? 3 weeks? 2? the cut-off point from full maturity to: get me the **** out of here! i'm not an aquatic creature, i'm part amφiβiaν part cross-dressed monkey - or something like that.

i could be an entertainer after i stop being a monkish
poet, recluse and a father of the black wood
(since i don't have the desert like St. Augustine
the Penitent-Self-Reformist - a bit like Edward the Confessor, me),
the sober me doesn't like the idea of forgetting my
role as a poet-optometrist, still drilling out
the slightest differentiation into memory
between ν and υ - from now on - just so i don't stand
a 1950s style trial due to McCarthyism - i'll be
writing it as: θυκ - but wait... take the northern monkey's
perspective, a southern fairy picked it up with
upsilon - it's more like app Saigon - well, a salon -
so the alt. variation would be the northern θωκ -
but still the three letter aesthetic problem -
the missing c - **** you Byzantium! i haven't read enough
Greek to find an aesthetic pair where one acts as a surd
in pronunciation but not in the optics -
there's no equivalent kappa double to add - and i just
can't put in υω - but i guess i'll have to - what is
the de-digital format of contemplating such a feat?
handwriting - how easily could you write
microsoft equivalent typography of *mistral θυωκ?
i guess quiet easily - much of "ancient" orthography
(20th century) has changed, letters (due to the digital
adventure) have come akin to numbers, we can write
large sums of them because of the lost art of handwriting,
it's lost, i mean you can still practice some sort of
fancy typography, but i guess you wouldn't write
a book with a style like mistral, more like Coca Cola
or: beware of the dog. what is this leading to?
i admire, oddly enough, writers like J. D. Salinger
and Harper Lee, i wouldn't exactly call them constipated
writers like Bukowski would, or A. Dumas,
i just don't get the idea about how they treated writing
without any addictive tendencies, i have two worlds:
one things, indian spices, televisions, sun, moon,
clouds (which i kinda find as beautiful as a pile of ****)
and a world of encryption - symbols - silence and symbols,
the roots of all thinking being spared a constant daily
narrative, a moment to take something back, much
akin to programming, although, given the status of language
as the earliest way of making children see and recollect
and respond on a gravity-prone-pivot of balance
(modus primo - anti-Cartesian res absorbuit, a sponge
like thing, not a fully mature res cogitans / thinking thing) -
with those authors, i can't see how they could write
a book like that, and not even tread a mediocre path
of writing, i can't spend a day without looking at these
symbols... oh, and by the way, if Arabic will not punctuate
in a digital format its users will not find peace, mandarin
and hebrew are already cut up - the Latin users already
did away with the "painful" act of cutting up letters and
losing handwriting, Arabic should do likewise,
otherwise all they'll post online are jihadi beheading videos
as proof of their so called Islamic civilisation -
and for that part of inventing numbers? look,
the only thing akin to punctuation comes with the dizzy
heights of 1,000,000 (that's a billion), otherwise you
have the spiral π - and i am being condescending and sarcastic,
given the Koranic ref. to Jews: children of Israel...
well... kindergarten of Saudi Arabia.

.
From out of the smoke,
And impromptu silences,
A lone piper plays at reels,
Beyond the borders, his knees
In a trinity of keys, breaching
Low dun black ****** hearts,
The public house is enclosed
Out in the open, under a plow
Of mossy stars, peat and bog,
Wrapped, within chanters throat.

From out of the smoke,
And impromptu silences,
A lone piper plays at reels,
Beyond the borders, his knees
In a trinity of keys, breaching
Low dun black ****** hearts,
The public house is enclosed
Out in the open, under a plow
Of mossy stars, peat and bog,
Wrapped, within chanters throat.

From out of the smoke,
And impromptu silences,
A lone piper plays at reels,
Beyond the borders, his knees
In a trinity of keys, breaching
Low dun black ****** hearts,
The public house is enclosed
Out in the open, under a plow
Of mossy stars, peat and bog,
Wrapped, within chanters throat.

From out of the smoke,
And impromptu silences,
A lone piper plays at reels,
Beyond the borders, his knees
In a trinity of keys, breaching
Low dun black ****** hearts,
The public house is enclosed
Out in the open, under a plow
Of mossy stars, peat and bog,
Wrapped, within chanters throat.

Time has rounded in the world of men;
The winds blow hard toward Anarchy,
While raving sailors hoist their leaking sails
To gather, jubilant upon the floods.

Howlers peer into the burning winds
Seeking ****,
Spread indignant fire,
Seeding hate,
Burned with desire,
Drowning protesters
Die between tides,
No chanters chanting peace,
No aspirant hope of love,
The baby's in the gutter with the bath;
When mobs exhibit wrath.

Tear old history from dusty shelves,
Forget true hymns that honored God,
Forget the tired Truth,
Or rather Truth of which we tired;
Rules now only Chaos,
Fervent fuel of howling mobs.

Riot in the streets;
Ride the lawless swell,
No plan for reconstruction,
No lessons from the past,
No vision for the after glow;
Discordant voices chanting
On the ****** road to hell.

Yeats proclaimed the Second Coming
Must surely be at hand between World Wars,
Yet still the Second Coming holds its fire,
While ranters tear the old ways down,
Dictators ratchet missiles toward the skies,
And our leaders twitter platitudes and lies.

squirt (title): pompoms scream (body) - to bypass the 502 Error Gateway...

second shift at Craven Cottage, the Fulham stadium...
well **** me...
i was in luck! Tony, this ex-military supervisor
asked me straight up: you want to do pitch-side?
do i?! the first shift i did was walking around
the park outside the venue, meeting & greeting incoming
fans... but to be allocated a more responsible role?!
you cannot believe how refreshing work has become:
you cannot believe how refreshing tiredness from
work has also become...
i don't know how it happened, but...
ARBEIT MACHT FREI is... ringing high and loud...
perhaps that slogan over a concentration camp
was always a bad joke...
i can't imagine that the Germans thought all the Hebrews
were lazy, not diligent workers...
even my grandfather remembers Hebrews in Poland
selling matchsticks and getting rich,
after all, what was that pre-war saying the Hebrews
had when putting down Polacks?
ah... wasze ulice, nasze kamienice...
your streets, our tenements...
maybe the Germans thought that a lot of Hebrews were
studying in the Yeshiva? nothing practical for society,
or that all Hebrews were somehow rabbis...
whatever it was... well a slogan above the entrance
to a concentration camp: where in a concentration
camp you'd perform a parody of work,
e.g. move one sack of rocks from one end of the camp
to another, to later move it back...
it's not like concentration camps were... munition factories...
a German bad joke...
but if, like me, you spent your 20s and early 30s
working in patches... the odd week on a construction site
doing some roofing, the odd month...
but mostly concentrating on writing...
and now this, steward at a football match...
some rigour re-imbued, some strategy,
some responsibility... i can't press the matter further...
sure, i'm not a football player, i'm not a film actor,
i'm not even the head safety officer in the ground...
i only put on some identifying clothes...
an accreditation badge and a uniform...
what did i get? people asking me questions as to where
to go, if they were sat in the correct seat...
for a man to feel useless, to be without authority:
that's horrible, writing poo'ems would never give me
that...
a compliment from a supervisor when i pointed
out that a woman was drinking wine in view
of a football pitch: which is illegal...
'nicely spotted'... after he approached her and asked
her to finish her wine from view of the pitch...
at the end of the match three boys came up to me
and asked me whether they could
pinch a piece of the pitch...
i let them... how their faces illuminated the place:
it was so dear to them: i couldn't just not let them
(mind you, they only pinched a piece of the astro-turf
lining the actual grass pitch, they didn't hear
that they were pinching fake grass...
let me leave them happy, after all...
i was providing a service)...

prior to leaving for Putney Bridge from Newbury Park
(first getting two buses there,
oh, i'd say a good decent 2 hour trip,
i've started to fall in love with commuting)...
one quick hot dog, with a Turkish toppish
of squeezed onions, parsley,
white wine vinegar, salt, sugar, gochugaru chilli flakes
& some sumac - well... squeezing the onions
releases their juices, making them less bitter:
actually sweet...
i only came back to Romford on the 86 bus
having arrived by train from Stratford
to Goodmayes - it's still zone 4...
all buses are zones one to four... Romford being
in zone six (if using a train or the tube)...
a two piece chicken meal with fries & a coca cola
zero... gulped down at approx. 12:20...
then... the most glorious cigarette to add smokiness
to the digestion...

starting work, proper, in your mid-30s...
while your 20s were spent unravelling a psychotic breakdown,
borderline schizophrenia:
that wouldn't fly, my supposed "schizophrenia"
dissolved when the element of bilingualism came in...
why should i only "hear voices" in English...
when i didn't hear them in ******?
the illness made no sense...
it didn't tap into my bilingualism...
why?! i read up a lot on this topic,
from Julian Jaynes, Jung, Richard Bentall,
R. D. Laing... no mention of schizophrenia coming up
against bilingualism...
misdiagnosis?!
i was never going to be merely a ******* victim...

now i see the bigger picture, music always helps...
the overseer - glass + unbreakable soundtrack,
James Howard's theme...
sure, the bonus of being pitch-side was also being
able to watch the match...
making new friends... well... colleagues...
i talked with Danny about our interests...
his was crypto-currency mine was music & cycling...
he used to cycle: until he hit a tree...
blah blah... time flies when you're talking...

oh such a little role of heroism on my part...
just minding people...
all this life truly requires is these little roles of heroism,
of responsibility...

i was at university, dated... i worked as a sub-contracting
roofer on construction sites...
i'm sorry to say this...
no relationship with a woman comes close...
to the amount of satisfaction received from
having a role that's more than a mere job you get paid for...
being responsible for the safety of others is...
probably somewhere in the hierarchy of where
the status of teacher is placed...
yet not with the current affairs of pedagogy:
of indoctrinating younglings into ideology:
whatever it's called these days...
intersectional *******, anti-racism, critical race theory...
teach them ******* English: the language,
teach them geography, chemistry, history,
don't turn them into spineless zombies
where they resort to a "rebellion" of succumbing
to football fanaticism...

me & Danny concluded: he "supports" Arsenal,
i "support" West Ham... but, "support": not really...
i just love the sport itself... i wouldn't be found a mile away
from the nearest crowd of avid club chanters...

my god, how refreshing to be in a position of authority,
even if it involves being at the bottom
of the hierarchy, being merely a pawn...
i can pull it off though... a welcoming yet intimidating look...
6ft2, 98kg... two jackets clad...
arms folded in front of me, arms folded at my back...
calm, collected... smiling... observant...
perhaps relationships with women were great...
they filled that void i was fed by literature prior
to my engagement with the opposite ***...
did i leave these relationships disillusioned?
of course!

   would i ever return to them? my heart is a stone...
mein herz ist ein kleinstein...
it has stopped bothering me, it bothers me less & less...
i'm not built for love, for romance,
that's why i don't want to write about it,
or even think about it...
i imagine that should a scenario present itself...
i'd be loved: but i wouldn't be able to love...
i'd merely... insinuate... i'd be on the receiving end
whilst doing the utmost minimal to
reciprocate... i'd be a cold-hearted *******...
oh... the mushy-colt aged 21 is long gone...
thank god...
could i love again? intimacy i can get with
a ******* in a brothel and not think twice
that a girl outside the profession of prostitution might
not give me an *******: again: is there something
wrong with me? why can a ******* give me
an ******* while some random girl picked up
in a bar, can't?!

i prefer talking to strangers than i ever preffered
talking to established friends...
it's not high-school anymore... there's no more
high-school banter... come to think of it...
the formality and the clear lines one cannot trespass
when conversing with strangers / colleagues...
come to think of it:
i'd tend to tell strangers more than the people
i was friends with... taboos enter the dynamics of friendships...
you can't tell of your innermost woes to friends,
after all... with friends you're supposed
to have a good time! no?

**** that... with strangers, with my shadow...
i burned down the bridges of my friendships a long time ago...
now i walk in the realm of Hades...
and i'm all the happier for it...
there were four major attachments in my life...
i lost one in the past year: my grandfather...
under circumstances that are, to be frank... rather horrid...
and... now that over a year has passed...
i feel... no... not relieved... i feel: RE-LEASED...
from some sort of heartbreak *******...

it's coming up to a quarter to 3am...
i have a shift this Sunday at the Wembley Stadiun
for the women's FA final,
my supervisor told me as i left Craven Cottage
that there was a good chance i'd get a chance to work
indoors... **** yes...
plenty of children to burn my eyes out:
not mine, not mine, thank god for that...
i don't need to be a father to them...
what a release from some bogus obligation that
in life you have to procreate...
hell... others can do that for me... i can just stand watch
and observe how...
this be the verse, Philip Larkin...
little chance of failure, or disappointment...
the Pontius Pilate approach...

it's a quarter to 3am and i just finished my shift,
my feet are somewhat sore, somewhat chilly,
who would have thought
that standing in one place, or two places
could be so exhausting: i'd rather walk a length of
a marathon than stand on duty...
the air outside looks like... a glass of water
with someone having splashed a dollop of milk into it...
it's so... murky, so... ambivalent...
so literally foggy...

no, not me... i was once the great romantic...
after being injected with the three musceteers,
with Stendhal's the scarlet & black...
i'm the one now saying:
work is better than an intimate relationship with
a woman... moi?! pour putain de l'intention
(is that, for ****'s sake?)
i'm trying to word with with spite...
i'my trying, i'm trying... no... no good...
on the way back some girls eyeing me up...
i try to think of the guys not being eyed up...
invisible creatures...
i hope i'm not much to look at either...
but can a woman do more for me than work?
i don't think so...
i'm such a fan of this hierarchic dynamic,
a work ethic, professionalism...
i don't think i could give myself up, on a whim...
my life can leave traces of fulfillment i generate myself:
this writing... well... it's obviously not Tolstoy...
just a product of these times...
i'll settle for that...
i'll also settle for being merely any overseer in a football
stadium than a rock-star, or actor:
never mind being a heart-surgeon...

but me, the once great romantic...
reduced to a function that mere guarantees him
a pawn status... the microcosm of overseeing
a football match: it is merely a microcosm...
in the grand scheme of things:
a newly found focus... returning with gladness to:
i am small... i'm a unit...
i am insignificant... writing creatively can rob you
of this perspective... infuse you with a sickly
megalomania...
it's best to return, to reality, to people...
away from the high-brow insecurities of an ivory
tower... it's so... refreshing...
after all, no Hamlet here, no Auld Lang Syne...

no... and all the better for it...
maybe it was a bad joke that the Germans posted on
the entrance of concentration camps:
it was... if concentration camps became
munition factories... but sieving sand:
in order to sieve more sand... to perform
Sisyphus tasks... while also exterminating the potential
workers? why not think of it as essentially failing:
when the essentiality of existence was lost?

but... translated, outside of the context
of a concentration camp? arbeit macht freit?
work set's you free... i can forget about my shortcomings...
my shortcomings are replaced with responsibilities...
i can forget about elaborating this tongue to my idiosyncrasy
and focus on formal communication...
i can live parallel lives...
i can have two lives...

as i have a prowess to wield of two tongues...
i can also... wield two lives....
and i don't even need to have a wife, to have children...
i can pass off being some loner since,
i hold a relationship with myself that grounds me
differently to others: others who are exposed
to their solitude, those who do not write,
who do not add form to their being,
who refuse to experience themselves with depth...
who switch off after their swift rather than switch on...

oh, these people are apparent... chamaleon me...
i turn into a right extrovert when a situation imposes itself
on me... yet writing is not a clear aspect of extroversion...
writing is an introvert's project...
yet how these two (aspects) are consolidated has
become... rather: a revelation to me...
i never put it into practice, mind you...
now that i have...

should all the final connections of significance die
and i'll be left alone...
just give me a "lesser" creature to bother me...
perhaps a dog... but more likely a cat...
i like the cats' take on placebo solipsism...

père corbeau...

   me, disavowing the chance of romance with a woman
over a desire to fulfill the role of steward,
sure, while i do my idiot writing on the side...
"idiot": it's never going to reach Fifty Shades of Grey
traction... then again:
i don't think i'll ever write something that exhausts me,
disappoints me... i'll just write what's made available...
what i want... come whoever may wish to come...
and a nice filter to boot... this will never be spoken
in either audio or a video format...
why bother unwanted attention,
made all the more accessible via audio or video?

what's it called? camaraderie? a select number of people
don't want something being spoilt,
by the intrusion of a greater number of people?
a loss of familiarity?
it's life... a phase of transition...
we're only taking a few people with us...
within the framework of memory, of a shared experience...
it's very much unlike a football match...
a football match consists of 11 players...
either side of the opposing teams...
the staff involved with the teams...
the stewards at the venue... blah blah blah...
very much unlike writing...

walk the moon - shut up & dance with me....
that sort of colt is not coming back....
even all those regretfully looking girls coming out of
clubs in Romford, stumbling, obviously not being
able to handle their drink...
oh, that guy is not coming back...
once upon a time taking a ******* a date to
the Tate Modern for an Edward Hopper exhibition,
then to the cinema to see a movie, Troy,
then some sushi... sending her off on the train
with my then friend messaging me
she said she felt butterflies in her stomach...
said "friend" later, years later, sending her a phallus-"selfie"...
ah.. RE-AH-LI-TY everyone's worse nightmare...
any psychotic's bread-and-butter...
so engrossed in it it would be impossible
to simply vacate it, leave it...
come the marriage with death... only then...

servus! neugefundenmann!
oh... hallo mich!

‘For thirty years, she called to me in a voice unclear. Today, a new pass leads me into the true magic of Shiprock.’


Insignificance:

Why was everything so big and I so small?  Why, from the very beginning, was the attraction so strong?  The closer I rode to what I thought I wanted the more insignificant I felt and the more important everything around me seemed to become.

Was it those things around me, or was it the missing parts from inside my spirit that grew larger in the vast emptiness of space and wonder? Stepping outside of myself in that Navajo Hogan, a vision that Bearheart had foretold years before, allowed me to take that first step back — back inside a self that was prepared to greet me and call me by my real name.

I see my old self in the false images of things that I once thought mattered … things that clouded my sight and kept me from becoming who I was meant to be.  

Today, the great Shiprock monument looms ahead and checking the mileage I know I must be getting close.  The old cowboy expression of Riding For Days, But The Mountain Gets No Bigger hits home to me now. She sits alone in a sea of desert, and I feel her presence before seeing her image.  It’s easy to understand why the Navajo worshipped here, and no life was complete without a pilgrimage to stand inside her great shadow. No matter how much this mountain road twists and climbs, the eyes of Shiprock stay focused on me.

Small in my footprint, but growing larger in my understanding, I feel more important and part of this place. This is new and replaces the empty awestruck detachment I had always felt when passing through here before.  There are no small connections when timeless majesty reaches out to you, small is a term that we use to qualify others — and ourselves.
                              
The Navajo Nation, with its flat arid landscape and towering monuments, is a timeless reminder of how low most of us dwell. Until we feel our true connection, we are indeed small and isolated from the Great Mystery — and any chance at rebirth.  

Like much of the West, there is a magic here that is felt only in its presence. To become its visitor again honors me if only for the shortest time.  I finally realize that by taking nothing, I am given everything, as the ancient spirit of Shiprock embeds itself deeply inside me.  Some things only become real in your understanding of them and their acceptance, and before leaving, I stop the bike to look at the ancient Petroglyph wall that faces East.

The Kachina figures come alive and dance for my amusement, and I strain hard to hear the music and what the chanters are trying to say. In silence, I walk closer and hear a voice speaking: “Who Is Really The Ancient One On This Wall Of Renewal?”

As I watch Mudman move across the rock, I feel everything that I knew before change inside me.

In an epiphanic awareness, I point the bike north toward the high country.  I’ve been in the desert for four days, and I can hear the mountains of Colorado calling my name. The desert never says goodbye as you wander higher. Time and temperature will bring you back knowing that her light is always on. Like a faithful mistress, she watches you leave knowing that you must. Her trousseau is richer than before you came, and she is content in the knowledge that your betrothal is secure.

Darkness fell, as I pulled the bike into South Fork Colorado. Neither working town nor ski resort, it is the perfect waystop for a traveler like me.  I walk my nightly ritual along her one road, my shadow the only connection between tomorrow and yesterday.  In the waning light, I see the figure of Mudman again on the east side of the mountain. As he dances, he pulls the last rays of today’s sun onto my pathway ahead.

Walking back to the lodge the temptation to reach up and touch the stars fills me with the wonder of being so high, and the sky becomes a canopy of new light. Alone beneath the Milky Way, and wrapped in the marvelous insignificance that only a day like this day could inspire, my heart is at rest.    

In bed that night, I wonder about the contrast between the desert and mountains. Feeling like a piece of thread — I travel through the eye of their needle — looking for that one stitch that will keep me married to them both. I try to keep them connected in the tatters of my conflicted wandering. If forced to choose between the two, I choose not to.  One cannot exist without the other — and neither can I.

I am thankful tonight to be a tiny speck of humanity within creations bounty, blessed to have at least one eye open to more than myself.  As my one eye gives thanks, my other eye remembers how short my duration is with the moments fleeting to embrace the little time being offered me.  

This morning, I left Canyon de Chelly by a route I had never traveled before.  The main canyon road was closed because of mud, and my detour took me high over a pass I had never seen or read about.  It was newly paved, and the grade was higher than I thought the bike could make.  It was called Wolf’s Tooth Pass, and I’ve not found it on any map or atlas.  A good friend, who lives nearby, swears it doesn’t exist.   All I can say is that from the top, where Arizona and New Mexico meet, Shiprock called out to me in the distance. And in the importance of her calling — I stopped asking why!


Kurt Philip Behm: August, 1999