poem/prose mish-mash

I'll try to get on the synthesis thing this week Mike. 

Beatification

 

The earthy scratching of coarse denim

stirs me from ethereal visions.

Mind descending from heavenly sylvan bliss,

Eyes follow natural course down.

Down to mankind and his omnipresent sprawling iniquity.

Just an angry little beehive from up here, but

a few thousand paces all that separates my mad mountaintop

from the furious clamoring, clawing, thieving hands, spewing mouths of millions.

Only the belief that there is a divide to protect me/us/them

from the dangerous blind searching arms of unknowing.

But a quick cherub laugh and I’m off like a thundering diesel train

Crashing through oak and shrub and soil

—   down, down, in rolling, flailing spiral to meet the ground

To soft-spoken broads in corporate coffee-shops who’ll give it up

for a beady-eyed lobster and a bottle of wine.

To old Jim losing his tired mind sorting mail

in dingy backrooms. Or Peter up on a city roof

sifting cocaine with his permanent glowering scowl.

Too much, but I want/need/have to swallow it all up, so it’s deep in my big bull belly, and mine 

to sort and scour and breathe out and back in again. One or two senses not enough, It’s not in 

me, and I’ve got to have it in me.

I’ve got to taste the steely hollow needle and smell jagged bursting pine.

A final seizing crash and I’m out of the serene,

pristine mountain air,           

and home again.