Madhuri

This poem visited me insistently over a period of weeks, demanding that I write down the stanzas even in the middle of the night, in the dark, on a pad I kept on my bedside stand.

I had become fed up with cries of doom I’d been hearing from many directions – so many; you’ve likely heard them too – whether the doomsayers be New Agey or Christian or Mormon or the year 2000 awfulness coming just because of the numbers… or merely neighborhood prophets who have dreams and recount them with eyes prominent. Crystal skulls and Mayan Calendars; Earth tilting on its axis (now that would be an adventure; and over so rapidly – would we even have time to descry our fate?) – how the water will run out first, and then society will deteriorate into barbarism… and all of it.

I just felt fed up. My mom told me how, when she was a little girl, the end of the world was predicted for a certain day. Everyone in the small town in Northern California gave each other their furniture, since they would no longer need it, and on the appointed day climbed a hill behind the town and waited. And the bees buzzed and the grass grew and the birds twittered in the trees, and the sun rose and fell and at evening the people crept sheepishly home. And then they had to go get their furniture back.

I’m not saying this planet won’t end – nothing remains forever; if it did all things would expire of boredom. I just object to, like, the style of it all – the certainty about things uncertain. The Saturnine frowns. And this poem came to me.

It’s long – about 15 minutes I think. It’s been fabulously well-received at every venue where I’ve performed it. I recently brandished it before a young relation who persisted in trying to warn me about the evil plots of the Illuminati, threatening to read her the Whole Thing and if she could produce any Illuminati and show them to me, I’d read it to them too.

It gives me joy to stand against the whole world if necessary and say Hah!

And I don’t even care if I’m wrong – right now I’m on target – for me – and that’s all one can hope for; and it gives me joy to stand up for… dancing in the streets; hugs abundant; life lived in the body. Awareness and love expanding.

I have a Poet’s License and i use it.