Blank Threats

 It threatens me that I will feel fear so I fear it

I fear it not so it threatens me with a longer fear

I fear it not so it threatens me with a longer longer fear

I fear it not so it threatens me with a longer fear

I fear it not

One

 One more step

and I'll hurt you forever

One more step

and I'll hurt

One more step

and I'll

One more step

and

One more step

one more

one

Twelve Years

 Man spends twelve years

        at the window

                of a primate enclosure

Worried 

they might get out

He adds mortar to the walls

Blotting out the 

sun

Cuts a moat 

at the edge

Fills it with water

Spills

Ground becomes

mud

Steps back to more

solid ground

Surrounded by mud and moat and mortar

Man looks around

Man spends twelve years

        at the window

                of a primate enclosure

Until one day someone

        opened the door

               and he stepped out.

World so bright he was blind

But he took their hand and walked 

Promised if he walked through the shadows

he would see again

Man spent twelve years in a primate enclosure.

Windy Edge

 He walked the Rim of the World

for years

They tried to push him off

He stepped a

They stood in his way

He walked around

They pressed close

He looked down

They went to choke

He made himself smaller

Walked faster

Further

Pushed harder 

They got stronger

He walked slower

Took the direct path

Smoothed his tissue

It was but wind

Gently caressing his skin

Spring Out of the Mud

 Man spins in a blanket of rage

Heart aches from the grater life has been

Tear shed tears for being locked away

In the dark

Never to dry until they see light

He flails and screams like a dancer on triple speed

Longing for the days his bones knew how to shake

Shaking is too fast now, too fem, too unsafe

Cry and get your ass beat

Rage and get left alone

Loneliness caps the feelings into a dark cavernous chill

Body slumps like a plant locked in a box

Once he has run away from the love

His heart needs most

She makes him look at it

Feel the rainbow

But it's only red that is thick enough for the city

Violet magnetized victimized violence

His circle of loneliness grows larger with each grown of angry sorrow

Shouting away all other colors like a spinning wheel

As I watch him storm away

I wish I could blow the dark veil of clouds away from him

Grab the sun and force feed it into his eyes

Remind him he is made of leaves and to not despair

In the bareness of winter

He is meant for heights only his bones know

Alas he is gone now

Drudging the muddy waters

Of the Once was Wetlands

Oasis for avian aviators travelling the globe

Now cemented over

For the coyotes of clothes and fur

The last dark corner

In an artificially illuminated cement cemetery

Where brain rules all

and soul has no soil.

Travel in peace my brother

May you find a place to rest your salty tears upon

The arteries of the ocean

May your feet find Earth and

Your skin find sun

May you grow fresh branches out into the world and 

Shed the

Dead leafless interior branches which

Fester old wounds and

Become so full you leave

A slug's trail of smiles

Behind

Everywhere you go

May you find

A healing haven within

Blessings and

Love

Brother

I love you,

Ben

Infused Together

 I turn down the slow road.

The Cypress has seen this land free of rectangles.

I pull into the shade of the carport

which once sheltered a man overnight

in my Dad's Karmann Ghia.

I open the castle door

wishing I could still ring the bell.

Up the stairs my uncle built.

Past the shutters I opened and closed with my day

a lifetime ago.

Creak open the screen door my cousin replaced.

Slide the key into the door just below the axe marks

from when the firemen couldn't open the door.

I step inside and leave my shoes where

my hardworking grandfather laid his to rest.

On the left is the bedroom my grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and cousins' kids slept.

My grandmother's table and lazy boy and lit up with colors

filtered through her fingers in the form

of stained glass.

Floorboards squeak under feet as they did for my

Dad and Uncle in college.

I walk through to the kitchen where my

Dad's old card table rests.

The croaks of the cormorants fade in and out with the wind

as I walk out the back barefoot.

Pinching my feet on the rocks 

my grandparents did when they would go

swim in the ocean together.

I walk to the shore where

my brother and I used to pass four house

before and after lunch in the water.

I enter the water which once

held great-great-grandparent Fishermen,

grandparents and parents afloat and

which now holds what remains of all of them.

The sting of the cold reminds me

I am not to be mixed in just yet. 

See the Zoo - Seek the Jungle

 The same people who designed zoos designed cities, warehouses and factories. Efficient storage, minimizing maintenance and cost were prioritized. They gave us enrichment activities and mental chew toys, so we wouldn't sink our minds into chewing something more natural. They store people in efficient grey rectangles, transport them along durable grey linear pathways and ask them to remove themselves from the elements 5/7 of their days into an even more artificial environment so that while they recover on the other two, it doesn't seem so bad. 

The bear pacing back-and-forth in its concrete enclosure is not a sign of something being wrong with bears. It is a sign that someone decided that profiting off of their majesty was more important than their wellbeing. They extracted from the bear until it broke. That's no different than homeless veterans or the broader mental health crisis this country is in. 

The systems are designed for maximal extraction of wealth to the 0.1% of people who in 1776 were referred to as white male property owners, aka "all men." 

We live in zoos. We are creatures from another environment who were collected here to produce more capital for the wealthiest. Cities are rigid in design and made far closer to the antiquated model of cement cages with viewing platforms. Politicians discuss equity in park access like novel zoos with attempts to mimic a natural setting, despite the dramatically reduced freedom to roam and inherent unnaturalness of being captive against your will. They plant stand alone orphan trees in parkways and parks and strip them up to look like telephone poles so no birds or Brads can find a place to rest. As technology and free trade displaces rural work, cities become more dense and the effects of their poor design amplified. until people at the margins of sensitivity drop out of the system.

Those with resources and support may have the privilege to redesign their lives into a niche blend of inside/outside or simply remove themselves from the zoo. A lot of Californians with significant home equity are leveraging it to do just that, going out of state and out of country. Those without support and resources are laying themselves flat on the ground, fully in the elements, refusing to participate. Like the coyote, these people are pushed to the margins, where they can't be seen, or their freedom is taken away if they steal or hurt someone out of desperation.

Inevitably the sensitive bear in the small enclosure cracks and the survivors with just enough "enrichment activities" kill off a part of themselves to survive, as the long-term bureaucratic office worker must do. Some of us feel the cracks forming, and escape just in time, and after years wondering what our problem was, realize we are, in the end, just nature and not meant to be separated from it by screens and concrete.

In don't feel optimistic for the future of cities. At some point there will be very few birds in these enclosures unless they net the tops. When people put away their phones, VR goggles, alcohol, drugs, TV, scrolling, trolling and status symbols they will realize their wings were never clipped. 

The Monarch Butterfly doesn't search Google Maps for directions, their path is borne in their DNA, just as it is in ours. Old Souls are awakening. People know that they are meant to move freely and that the conveniences and safety of a long miserable unnatural grey life are like a misaligned zipper on a jacket, yet today all they know for sure is they feel cold.

I write this from a place of tremendous privilege to be able to both see and have resources to redesign my life, even if through baby steps over the course of two decades. I have suffered through the patterning of neurosis driven into me by an unnatural life. But that same suffering has been my beacon calling me to be true to my heart and escape from the zoo. So I just keep wedging myself into the crack in the wall, peering over it and planning my escape when my resources stack tall enough.