Watch out now
Watch out now
for all the psychologists,
mystics, TV preachers.
If they’ve got it right,
it means you’ve
got it quite wrong.
So go back, retreat,
to the purity of song.

Catchphrases and
the latest crazes
are so much
rock ’n’ roll.
Noises to ward
off the beasts
of the night.

Then one fine day
when the sun don’t shine
you can’t quit your crying.
There’s no solace,
in the solstice, no
armistice in this
endless war, no
comfort to be found.

Just this, and that,
and then again.
No exit strategy,
only comic relief,
dissing all your
ill-considered
cosmic beliefs.

Up jumped humanity
as weeds grow ’cross
the threshold, our
convoluted evolution
could quickly unravel
our precocious web
of superstitions. We
cling to it with tenacity
All the while knowing
It’s a passing fantasy.

What’s left? The mud of
the fields in which grows
our sustenance, with
all the riches of the
universe distilled by
tiniest creatures unseen.

For that is which we
partake, our history,
our fate, our finale.
Then someone pulls
out the drum again,
the 11 dimensions
convolute and unfold,
leaving our slight lives
in the dust of stellar
dissolution. Now,
like Newton, make
your New Year’s
resolutions, to behold
the whole damned
thing and then some.
           ---Jack Oakes 12.21.2007