Responsibility To our children’s children, just what
Besides a touch of beauty do we bequeath?
Frightening delusions, a few timid
Dreams and an ocean of debt; a world
Consumed by greed, and plagued
By true believers spewing hate. We betray our birthright for a mess
Of steaming pottage that rots
Our souls and fouls our only nest.
Like a tone-deaf cellist
Lusting for an ever higher note,
we wind the complaining peg
until a tortured sinew snaps. Like old King Lear alone on the barren heath,
Adrift, naked in the great storm,
We still howl our long denial:
“No...! No…! No…! No...!”
O Lord, it is not our fault. And, like self-cursed Lear stumbling
Across the blasted crags, mad
With epiphany, we too must some day howl,
“I have taken too little care of this.” Zits Please donīt stare
at those tender young volcanoes
spewing white fire,
poor confused children, their faces
livid moonscapes radiant with pain.
At the mere thought, old scars boil:
the hot, wet wounds of puberty.
But no wonder their faces erupt.
Recall all that new sexual energy?
And the terrible joy, boiling
Like magma through confused blood,
With nowhere to go but? So Shine! Each budding self exists
as one translucent slice of time
that plays across the gifting sun
but once. Every breath
depletes the finite gift. Even at birth, as we swim
towards first breath, we catapult
into space as glorious rainbows,
and fade just short of bridging the abyss.
So plunge into the circular dance, and shine. —TOP OF PAGE— | 
