rises to the murky surface
like a 3:00 am mermaid
who siren-sings you
into near-irresistible oblivion,
only this time, you’re listening
with newfound acuity
to the music of fluency
and—like that old man
back at the coastline,
standing on the sandy shore—
you’re metal-detecting,
searching for resonance,
fiending for feedback,
sweeping your
coin-seeking contraption
up the beach
of your own lone psyche.
Foresight, by definition,
requires a respectful listening
to your own inner wisdom;
is, in fact, intuition,
which is no hermetic mystery,
rather, it requires a
radical dismantling
of the inflicted imprisonment
of pseudo-intellectual
infrastructures
that have been scaffolding
the last gasp
of the toppling facade
you’ve been dragging along
like a cinderblock mask.
I’m asking if the deadweight
is still worth it,
I’m saying to maybe consider
thanking it for serving its purpose,
I’m saying to
release it,
let go,
take it
off,
get emotionally naked,
I’m saying to be
inwardly brazen,
I’m saying we’ve been
running low
on oxygen
in an extended bender;
a dissociative state
of suspended animation.
This is a collective soul retrieval.
It does not require your buy-in
nor does it need a co-signature
from your belief system
for its effectiveness.
It does, however,
respectfully request
that you lay down your weapons.
I call forth every portion
of your little inner witness,
I call forth every disintegrated bit
of your limitless spirit.
Armed to the teeth,
could you be triggered
if you weren’t already a loaded gun?
What could pop off
if you weren’t already filled with
(righteous, valid, understandable,)
ammunition?
At this point,
we have no choice
but to empty our violent
and dangerous magazines
and start tuning in.
This is a call for the
sweetest of ceasefires;
the ultimate armistice—
I get off on dropping defenses.
I am here for it.
I came for the disarmament.
Let’s practice iconoclastic accountability.
Let’s admit that we’ve botched this
earth school experiment
within mere inches of total annihilation.
We’re acting like flunkies
who don’t seem to have learned anything:
We still have madmen
shipwrecking us against
the twinned icebergs
of xenophobia and capitalism.
We’re still caught in the riptide
of shortsightedness:
while the shore slips
beyond the horizon line,
we wish for connection to
our sixth sense,
second sight,
foresight…
hindsight
is 20/20—
but like they told us,
over and over,
objects in the reflection
are closer than they appear.
We’ve been driving a thousand
miles an hour
towards the cliff-drop
of our own collective destruction.
We need to pump the breaks;
slow down
before cranking the wheel
180 degrees,
or we’re going to roll the vehicle,
careening hood-over-heels
into the roiling and ravenous ocean.
Entire continents blaze
while species are razed
from existence.
Rainforests gasp
and choke on their own
rasping smoke.
Drunken industry thugs
pump and chug
and thrust
their crude oil
into the sea,
already strangled
by 300,000 tons
of plastic-bag islands.
We got deadly viruses
causing racist panics
and real pandemics,
cancer after cancer
from faster and faster
Gs of radio frequencies…
and the sad truth is
we had it coming.
We had it coming.
None of this was unpredicted.
None of this is surprising.
If foresight could override
ego-desire and greed,
it could be the medicine
we desperately need.
How will this world forgive us?
If we can remember
that we are built
of the raw material
of this sweet,
generous planet
from the ground up,
then we can listen in
to the thunder
in our brainstorm
and the bloodstream
thudding beneath our skin,
and the earthquaking
in our aching hearts,
and when we aren’t afraid
to face our shame
for the destruction we have created,
for the havoc we have wreaked,
for the sheer savageness
of the damage
humanity can bring,
when we stop splitting,
when we stop dissociating
despite the pain,
when we find a way
to stay awake,
there will be no suffering,
no harming of others
that we
could ever
tolerate.
When we slow down,
stay present,
regardless—
regard this,
our minds will be
flooded with insight
spill forth with foresight,
our hearts,
resplendent with compassion,
we will splash in the depths,
dance with the fishes and
swim with the mermaids,
and know
with every breath
of our bones
of our own
gentlest
conscious
potential.
Photo: Metal Detector Pasquale Paolo Cardo
