Globing, Probing, Peeking, Searching ...
A campfire song for the orphans of a world-gone-global.
Globing
Probing
Peeking
Searching
For belonging.
I will never belong to a globe.
To anything round or sphere.
For as soon as I reach the top.
I will slide off of here.
And into the vast cosmos
Swirling around with the stars
Maybe I’ll become an influencer.
Perhaps go live on Mars.
Meanings, identities
Braids of the soul
Die at the expense of creating the “whole”
None of us knows
Who each other is
We completely make up
Where each other fits
We’re always standing up
No one ever sits.
My face is a dead squirrel on the side of the road
Swiped, scrolled, and rolled on
By Instagram posts.
I’m starved for love in a corner of self
My integrity panicking
Heart falls off the shelf
And into my palms,
Shaking and twisting
Wringing with fear
Where do I belong?
Belonging can’t be here.
Imagine 150 beings
Living and gossiping
Sleeping and eating
A small tribe, unknown to a globe
A sandy dunescape
Or a forest with toads
These are the worlds our ancestors lived
Not round or circle
But malleable, wet; rooted, rootless.
The world ended where the sky got cut off
Where the birds disappeared
And noises fell soft.
The great beyond was a place of less meaning
For meaning was found
In foraging, waking, being.
I look up to this sky
This strange-ominous God
And I ask him or her, why? Why am I not?
Famous? Successful? Accomplished and brave?
Why do I feel I live in this cave?
This cave is my friends.
My partners. My locals.
The people I sing with, dance with, and yodel
Beyond this world of silly tunes
Lives a world of suffering
Downloaded through a strange device called YouTube.
This world I don’t know.
But it seems always trying, I am
To be a part of that world.
Like the little mermaid. Go walk up on land.
But down here in the sea, is where things are rich.
Brief conversations, a caprese sandwich
And still there are symbols and signs of the global
All the ways social media tempts us to rape the local
We sell ourselves like meat on a tray
When all any of us actually wants, is to take off our toupee
Put our feet up
Cry and relax
Why don’t we think simple?
How does a “globe” so successfully make us forget that?
By placing us in a horizontal line
ducks in a row
We wait in invisible space
Waiting to grow.
But each and every push and attempt.
We fall more sick.
We fall more verklempt.
We fall into the pits of what used to be our homes
Our villages, our tribes
Our trails and our roads
Toiling to create the spine of a sphere
Twisting our bodies
nervous systems flooding with fear
Never belonging
And always striving
Never living
Slowly dying
Until all that’s left is those at the top.
The ducks who seemed to never fall off.
Never fall into the grief or the pain
Nestled in a lake beneath the globe
filling up with our tears, blood, and rain.
It is here I swim, a back stroke and saunder
Waiting for joy.
Joy must back I wander.
Globing
Probing
Searching for meaning.
Two coffees, no lunch.
Now I am peeing.
Washing out my mind
With a biological cleaning.
A body, a system, a fruit on a tree
Perhaps this is what I should aspire.
Perhaps this is me.