The podium on the stage of the Art Hall in Koreshan State Park, Florida, where the utopian religious group, Koreshan Unity, had its community, whose founder and prophet was Cyrus Teed. A visit and a meditation there inspired this poem.
If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
In dreams and visions my voices speak. What are you doing over here? I’m a religious nut. I can’t control myself I hear visions. I count the salesmen in my dreams. Go wake up humanity, I can’t count the number of times I tried. I can’t even get a word across.
This is not save the world vision. I mean like I’ll never forget that I made the wrong sort of mud pies. I write poetry to reach the world. I’m not a religious figure to charm it. I’ve opened up consciousness inside. There’s no barnstormin’. I’m a quiet place takin’ a mile. I sit and read muse, no religious fanaticism, but I answer questions bluntly and with sarcasm. Let’s see what stinks here. Your mind.
Flying saucers from outer space did not tell me a thing. I have not been visited by angels tellin’ me I’m the man. I don’t want to get in your pants. I don’t want you to obey me. I would like a better society. I would like to say things that mean somethin’. I would like to hold your hand, where you don’t look down on me. I would like to lift you up in your mind where you think and touch that heart of yours.
We have a society here growin’ money and hate your neighbor. The mind of us is not the best of us. Our souls are only beliefs not houses kept. We think each other wrong. We don’t hand out society so you’re a prized member. That’s the rich and famous. We don’t know how to do it, be kind to one another, and it’s not a social laugh, the uncomfortableness of putting each other down to get at time with one another, or at best we keep our distance from heartfelt communication. We laugh at one another and wear big social masks to prove it, or we’re tryin’ to sell somethin’ when fake that sincerity.
Who is vulnerable and sweet? Who lets their guard down and give people meaningful communication? Our minds are full of the kingdoms of ourselves. And I’m not sure how to write that. Would you group with me? I’m a group-minded person, and I give group to my human being. I don’t consider other groups human, the Democratic Party for instance, or those Republicans. Man I love everybody. Now you everybody’s get off the bus. I’m lying to my social lying. I can only tolerate certain people.
You disguised my I, and I’m sharin’ in your business I don’t understand. You’re not the biggest people in the world Americans. You’re not even tryin’. What happened to me? There are changes in consciousness ahead. I’ve had some previews. I was not someone you handled correctly. You didn’t know how to see me, and I just fucked up. I got intah trouble. The previews came as a start to help me feel you as I feel myself, even if you look down on me.
I saw humanity. I’ve seen the world as my eye, no, no, not its offerings to me. I am a vision of the world as we speak. We look out each other’s eyes, in the world being that we are, and we look out the eyes of God, who is the vision everything. It is possible to break free from single vision’s number lair, from one pole of consciousness don’t you see? I’m about that vision. It’s universal. We all share it.
We’re lost in me’s and the boundaries of our group. I’m so sorry this chain gang has defeated my eyes too. Can I help you some see the truth, reality as it is, no religious overlays, no scientism that can’t see past its own nose? Reality’s bigger than you think, and you have identity outside of time. You aren’t this puny self laboring on a hapless globe that can’t see itself and know it’s true. You’ve put on actors wings, and it’s a hell of a ride ain’t it?
And all your dreams represent things to you because you are representative in time. You’re bigger than you think, in household wears, not your peckin’ order. You are actually beyond the stars lookin’ through a thin pigeonhole at that embarrassed I down in time. We’re all naked down here, and pride just can’t seem to go with us to sleep. It takes coffee to perk it up, and who knows the master plan of the universe? Kids we are and kids we’ll be, until we wake up on ourselves.
Do you know a mature notion? It’s not here, in every man for himself, in the little world we’ve made, in the societies we’ve engendered that make you obey it like it’s a real group but blames its faults on individuals, a world that does not know itself.
Good works and technology, you can’t move the field there. We have consciousness to change, and that’s not a thought process. The consciousness changes into its larger type. I’m puttin’ this in your hands, the ideal for the ages, the thing we’ve been workin’ at all along. It’s not a messiah you see. It’s not wings from outer space. You do the change and me, and we get bigger than ourselves. Blinded I am?
Harm's End 