Thursday, January 14, 2010

utah phillips on the lanai

(reprinted with permission from the author, i.e. a much younger me)


I despise trends in society towards casualness

ways to be that tend towards the easy and least resistant

instead I flee towards the wilderness

or just some place like the Feather River Canyon

a place in my head

that isn’t all worn and decrepit and weary with time

but that is too

at the same time

something like that

I have a hard time with going along

fitting in with the nonsense and noise that most people call their lives

or that is the world to them

a place that is not a place at all

like joining the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in 1999

just an idea of something that is not even that anymore

I don’t always eat when I’m hungry

I drink even when I’m not dry

but songs are prayers in a way

that is not always apparent

to any of the parties involved

I smile at people walking by me on the sidewalk

sometimes they even smile back

time is a nowhere that

we are all

continually

being led towards and away from

at once

and

not at all too

I have a hard time with sunshine

I often hate the wind

sneezing is as perennial as the grass

when the blooms are doomed

to fall and disappear from the start

there is everything and nothing to be done

what we have are degrees of things

not this

or that

just levels or ways of comprehending

that make idiots

out of the most fortunate among us

and a genius of the moon