Message from Beyond the Senses

(This poem received an enthusiastic reception at an open mic recently, with several fellow poets urging me to post it for general consumption.)

Message from Beyond the Senses

Silly boy who wants to be a man,

you practice how to kill an enemy
when you don’t even know how
to swing your own sword.
“It’s not a club to hack your way through,”
I want to say.
“It’s a wisdom which divides the false from the true.”
But I guess you’re still in training.

Now a new age is beginning.

You take the bold step to join in
rather than defend a failed past.
Clearly the world must be completely remade
or we won’t be here, either first or last.

Meanwhile, the rich save up to survive

the end of this present historical era,
leaving all of us to likely extinction.
And if only they can invent the right rocket ship,
costing billions of dollars to contrive,
they’ll escape to some other planet in space,
the remnants of our human race
still living to conquer, dying to survive.

But fast as our technology is moving,

driven by addiction to cash,
it’s not likely to advance enough in time
before the gates of the gated will crash.
This isn’t revolutionary talk,
it’s simply informed observation.
Any fool and his dog are already aware
this world is no more than a mirror reflection,
and what seems up is really down
and forward is really backward.
The joke is on those who think they can kill
to possess a paradise they never will.

We are more than our bodies, more than our souls,

and while competitions and fights can be fun
and abuse of power the ultimate drug,
we don’t have to live on that hamster wheel,
round and round, never to stop,
past wives and boy friends repeating themselves
over and over in life after life,
and no one for long ever staying on top.

Making peace with the past and the dead
and those who are absent from us
can readily be done in the head.
That technology is already given,
which no one has to invent.
And as, in the privacy of each of our minds,
we say what we now wish we’d said
at a certain place and time,
or undo something wicked we did,
the warrior in our heart relaxes,
relieved to withdraw into peace of mind,
where jubilee replaces our guilty back taxes.

How do I know this? you might ask.

I have a clairvoyant friend
who describes a world that once had been
and desperately longs to become again
with humans onboard for the ride.

Then whatever it takes to let go of your pride
will definitely now be extracted,
whether you’re rich as a lion, or poor as a rat,
or above or below, you can count on the fact
that the pressure is on to clean up your act,
even if your uncle sits on the board
or you’re the only child of a man so poor
he’s sold you into the human trade.
Victims and oppressors both must release
the other from the grip of false security.
Each one of us is alone and unique
in this strange world of bodies and sex,
yet we strive for a common identity
as we eat one another to stay alive,
with torture and murder thus justified.

But to live in this place intelligently

means crossing traditional boundaries.
Au revoir! Bon voyage! Bonne chance, mes amis!
Let the great migration of minds now begin!