MILLENNIUM

Bring on the next millennium!

I'll wear my silver spacesuit;
you bring your little horn to toot.

Hands conjoined, we'll share champagne,
sing that Robbie Burns song
six billion weak and strong trilling ancestry and hope, their ache
staking off millennia from Jesus, one of us
who spoke his godliness, only to be felled
whose spirit, tortured, sputtered; held.

Two thousand years and more, men pontificate.
Two thousand years--and more--still women wait
      to celebrate balance.

Hear us, heed us, heal us
on this sanctifying night: Come home; we need to mediate this war.

One by one, we're shrunk a size too small.
One by one we're stranded, estranged and explanted
     disenchanted after all.
Two by two they diced the flood.

Let's gamble on our old acquaintance Ovid, metamorphize.

O night divine I'll bless yours; you shrine mine.
You shoot the moon; I'll brew up fireworks for breakfast,
sparking synergy of genders joined in fecund symbiosynchrony,
a gift to pass into an age of pain and hope we'll barely see.

II. The Power

Abound in me,
      root equation of all your science
      cleaver of paradox, origin of source
      parent of conception, animus of the dead

Bring on your next millennium
,       you who count in turns around an obscure star
Before I brew my morning coffee and zip up
      your dusty atoms will be the building blocks of cockroaches and desert sand
Your names for me are the prattlings of a toddler
      conceived in ignorance
      whacking his friend over the head for a toy, calling it a holy war
You pray for peace and plenitude
      Try dragging the oceans in which you drowned your humility,
      those decorated with mercury and black oil
You dare call me male?
I'll spit you from my self-seeded womb again and again until you know better;
      clone myself until you're dizzy
Gender I engendered to disjoin my mellifluous omnipotence
      the apple was eaten before the tree was even born;
and even I couldn't have foreseen the feat of divine engineering it would be!
      right from Adam's tattling, blaming Eve...
and the colossal collusion of your females!
      a monument of kudos to my savvy foresight

Criticize, yes, but anthropomorphize? Keep going--I dare you.

Color you have, true-blue dogs, orchards, guilt and flights of fancy
a galaxy of burnished, self-invented languages with which to fashion
      soothing strings of poetry, the jewelry of jokes, the luxury of lyricism
sunrise and sunset, guitars, hills to climb
the foundations and beams of civility
recipes for reciprocity
elephants, rainbows, grace
flowers, candles, baseball
movies, smiles, stormclouds
seeds and soil, bicycles and beaches
redemption and radiant energy...

Go wipe your knees--
stop blathering to me and heal yourselves.

III. "Mother Nature" Has a Word

You call your God the Father?
Sometimes I think even you daughters are smitten with those Y chromosomes.
But remember this: yang doesn't work alone--
Your mother feels neglected when you forget to phone.
Maybe some calling card is due:
      a midsized asteroid or two? or, better yet, a homing hunk of space junk?
      a real rumbler beneath your Yucca Mountain?
      a few volatile volcanic fountains?

Forgive me; I'm not myself today ;
      my veins are visited with the discordant discarded
      my skin is noisy with various versions of greed
      my breathing cries out for conscious concentration
      my heart is pressed to perform under pressure
But that's okay; I know you're busy.
Go on back to your reliance on science;
I can take care of myself.

IV. Lament of the Lost

Where are my people? Where is my clan?

My blood is thinned by a passel of passing strangers, sucking
My labor is labored, milked and misused
      horded for the unborn progeny of impoverished souls seeking solace
      I am spent
My culture's uncultured; my walls built of debt
Smoke knocks at my windows, gathering like a curse
I cannot find my kin.

I commune with the confused
      cast myself outcast
      sojourn with the distant, the disturbed, the diffused
      ride beside misfits
Our pleas cannot engage the eyes of the empty
Drying out, dying, we sniff for rudiments of animation, drink tears

Who has broken the bones of my ancestors
      paved over their paths
      scrambled their signals?

Now children killing children; raising themselves, each other
      mother's milk dried of disuse
      languages beaten into submission, dulled
      ancient stories autopsied
      healing wisdom walled off
      integrity defrauded
      government ungoverned
      sustainability dissolved
      puberty unplugged
      nature declawed
      passion drugged
      insight pronounced legally insane
      respect disrespected
      cooperation coopted by corporations
      science conscripted
      poetry dictated
      guns glorified
      denial denied
      parents discarded
      business deified

This is my culture.

Where are my people? Where is my tribe?

I am shattered, scattered.
The scent of my trail is trapped in traffic
      trampled by
            last year's fashions
            older models
            the unrepaired
      some wearing my fingerprints.

I chew at my children; claw at myself.

Where is my tribe? Where is my clan?

Corporate cancers choke their hosts, drop their dross, bowl us over growing, growing...
The apples are poisoned, waxed, polished;
      so we sleep.

I ache for awakening.

You, whose fur fits this skin, your claws this curve
      whose bite bites this shape, whose foot pads this print:

Can we invent a reinvention?
      renew, rebuild, restore
      handle our land with quietude
      harvest our own labor crops
      customize our customs
      honor honor?

Can we heed a need to breed relation, communication?

Drop messages in bottles, your redolence on corners
tune in, send out scouts
sign
bounce smoke signals from satellites
paint petroglyphs, code missives
flag
sharpen your feelers, fire flares
scratch characters in cinderblock
mark
tattoo symbols of solidarity
weave web sites...

Can we extrude communion
      without fatal intrusion on imagination, ingenuity, evolution
      or not?
What will the verdict be--in a thousand years, did we ripen, or rot?

V. A Little Chorus

The Cynics:

Behold the human marketing of moments
wherein these players,
      who, upon the rise of any other sun,
      would meekly to their daily duties schlepp
      with half-closed lids and hearts and minds to match,
do, on this rouged and sequined day, deck themselves out in chump hope
as if the gods lay on them a reprieve
from negligible lives this close to too burdensome to bear.
But that they keep such gods' bellies yo-yoing with yuks
preserves them only.

The Symps:

Hearken to the spirit exhibited anon:
for all the lifelong nudges they endure toward the walls
of their mortality, no horror bounced out by the gods does take,
nor terror break, the bright wombs of their souls
that do harbor their kickin' creativity
with music morph their rages and palettes eighty-six their grief
Behold how they are down for this dance, their dance--
      they steal the gods' own blue suede shoes.
This turn in time is of their own invention:
They celebrate themselves.

VI. Finale: A Bigger Sound

Bring on the next millennium.

You nab your snappy, new-age drum;
I'll grab an old guitar to strum.
We'll put plumes on our party pants
      let fly a new galactic dance.

Collect the clarinets, the castanets
      triangles and trumpets
Bring on the banjo, bongo, bass
      piano, congas, lute, sitar
Slide on over that trombone, a tuba and a saxophone
      xylophone & mandolin, zither & accordion
Join up a Jew's harp, bequeath a washboard in a will
Wrangle some recorder, magick metallophones
Ferret out a fiddle; fetch a fat French horn
Rustle up some speakers, amps--don't forget to plug in cords
Nick some nyckelharpas & borrow balalaikas
String a song on a sarangi & procure piccolos
Bag up bagpipes, a bassoon
      we'll have a howl at the moon
Oboe, meet marimba
      Cello--tambourine
Hijack a hi-hat; snare a snare
Timpani, you're over there
Snag cymbals & a bright steel drum

           tap, snap, rattle, shake, clap, hum

Hola, ocarina; pedal, need a push?
Hunt up hurdy-gurdys, harps, ukeles, flutes
Ahoy to you, didjeridu; come on in, theremin
Oil your bows & tune your toes
Resin your lips, polish your hips

Y, et, und, and we're going to the boards with velvet vocal chords

Bring on a new euphonious noise--
Women rhymed with men; girls cheered on by boys
      (you appellated "queer:" you, too, are welcome here)

Let's let loose on the universe
      attract an alien or twain
      paint neon rainbows on our pain
      snake-charm big, bad bosses
      abrogate our losses
      fill angst with dread of harmony
      alienate our anomie

You wear your magic memories;
I'll face the future on my knees.

Bring it on, we'll grin & sweat
We may be beaten, but we're not dead yet.

You pass out gold antennae;
I'll share my shekere.
It's time; the time is calling us
to play and pray, to pray and play.