No Gentle Good Night

Seeming anodyne and inert, coal and gas burn beds fouled rivers cannot extinguish

as if paper and pencil jottings, as if a careless mistake

taken care of with a precise slash to mark

as worthless dust like     Them.

Coal and gas, body and breadth of Us and Our Place, given for fleeting gold

the existential shine of a false God, a transient fiscal gloss

fed to an ever-hungry soul as if good medicine for

kin and     Country.

Is that how easy it is to disregard life, to forget, to let go, to move on, to get over it?

Have you?

With navel strings uncut, stretch marks never grew of Us in 1901.

As you dress to observe your glistening church, did you notice that vague silhouette?

A cycad growing with ancient rock or coal bed,

before 1770 before I am sorry

before thinking became anodyne and     Inert.

Do you ever see who it is that lurks in your shadow?

That other Self, the one you deny and torture because you need gold and shine

and to save the whales and kangaroos and little white flowers.

I weep for you and     Them.

Tears and chants for whales and kangaroos and little white flowers but not

Them that you render as your Shadow, made to run at heel and Evolve into

different human form as if a Link Missing.

As if     Others.

Words jotted with pencil on paper or spoken with passion are easy,

performance Work is hard and needs a mind present

heart, body, hands, and rage,

to think, to care, to feel, to do for Them, the distorted     Others.

Liberate your eyes from the glitter and see Them, the more than 600

forever chained to 339 good suggestions

they will not be Forgotten, at night and morn.

We deeply     Mourn.

Ancient bodies lay in beds now burned for carbon and nitrogen and poisoned water

as if Crematorium

to Cook and heat without warmth yet they still lay there

because they are never more than your     shadow.

Are we forever body and shade, an analogous binary

of white and black? The wise are more than grey.

I carried Him, gently, one of more than 600, on my hip 26 years ago.