You live in a world full.
You live in a world full of isolation.
How can both those statements be true?
They just are.
John Donne said that “No man is an island.” However, if you think bigger…might you notice that every piece of land is an island?
So perhaps what he was trying to say is that no man is land.
Does that make sense?
That no man is like a piece of land? Does that ring as true as what Donne said IF you agree with what he said?
It seems logical.
And if you are following the logic there, and you can see the truth in the idea of no man being separate from ______, then you might want to spend some time thinking, “if man is Not land then….what is he?”
Put some thoughtful time into that metaphor. There are, after all, only so many other elements to choose from. They might offer you an interesting way to look at man.
All that aside, focus now on the current experience of reality; one that seems to be rife with isolation. That doesn’t mean YOU are alone. Certainly not, who would imply such a thing when you have a husband, a wife, significant others, kids, pets, friends and co-workers who give you books to read and music to listen to.
You are not alone. Right?
Then how is it there is still an incredible amount of isolation living in your life. Can you see it? Can you feel it? Would you appreciate it if someone pointed it all out?
Where is the isolation if it is not in your relationships? It is simple really: the isolation is in your mind. It is BUILT Into your relationship with absolutely everything, everything you see no connection to or see no connection between.
In your mind it is as though EVERYTHING around you has its own box. Every thing is boxed up, squared off, and framed in: isolated by a lack of perceived indivisibility.
The world IS indivisible, however, every boxy bit of it. There is a constant flow of relationship, there is a constant stream of cause, there is a never ending line of effects and the energy that invisibly exists between all of these never really changes or stops moving. Despite how often you draw a line where a line can never exist.
You think that all these pieces of life are separated somehow. You think it so much that you have divided the entire world with your thoughts. You think that everything fits into its own little box, affixed with its own little label and you like it that way, you like it that way a lot. You like that everything is distinguishable and clear. If it wasn’t so divided and divisible and clear, then pieces might start to overlap and when things start to overlap, suddenly there are RELATIONSHIPS that you’re not so sure about. Like a white supremacist who refuses to look at his family tree because he suspects—pretty much knows—there’s a nigger in there somewhere. Maybe two!
If the world wasn’t so divisible and clear it would suddenly be a lot harder to hate…….ANYTHING. If the world wasn’t so divisible and clear you would end up with so little to fear, and….what would you do without all that fear? Really. What would you DO without all that fear?
If it wasn’t so divisible and clear, you might inadvertently find yourself associated with and questioning so many things in the world that…you don’t want to think about. Because, after all, your understanding and definition of things is just fine. You got a family, friends, a house, a church, a God, a bible, a job, a car, a dog, a cat, a tv, food on the table and a vacation once a year. What more could you ask for in such a disparate world?
This is the world, your world as you see it. And all those basic pieces you’ve worked so hard to acquire are hardly even related in your mind. Your dog doesn’t have anything to do with that tv. Your friends don’t seem to have anything to do with the food on your table. Each one is in its own little box, unless the connection is OBVIOUS to the 5 senses of course. Hence why it takes some people so long to figure out that the invisible dog dander in the air is having a direct effect on your respiratory system. Not to mention the dust all over the tv.
The air in one room of the house has nothing to do with the air in another. They are as unrelated as the two different colors of paint on the two rooms’ walls. This is how you treat all of life. Even though you know a dog can smell something a mile away. Even though an elephant can smell water (that is underground) from ten miles away. Even though you’ve heard accounts of twins on opposite sides of the world sensing the other’s pain. Even though you’ve heard of more than one pet going crazy or dying the moment its owner passes in another place. Even though women who live together often experience an alignment of their menstruation cycles, like the face of the moon aligning itself with the Earth. Even though you, yourself, have a story of your own, maybe from a half-remembered dream, much like this.
For you, that is all neither here nor there. To you, these are all anomalies in a system that makes perfect sense. For you, these are “mysterious” exceptions to the rule. The unwritten rule that states, “I am only connected to what I see myself connected to AND, regardless of even that, what I AM stops at the tip of my finger.”
Never underestimate the power of denial. Never underestimate the power of disbelief.
The double-edged sword of belief/disbelief has severed, cut up and divided more of this world than any other ability. More than the ability to start a war. More than the ability to stone a woman to death with the sharpest stones. More than all the lies and half-truths and broken marriages combined. It has the power to split giant, old churches right down the aisle!
If the ultimate goal for the globe is unity, then this dichotomy is dichotomously the greatest ally and the greatest threat. If only there were some way around it…
If only there were a way to get you to see more, see bigger, elevate your point of view just like you did at the beginning to see that every piece of land is in fact an island. If you do not expand your point of view, how do you ever hope to understand or expand your relationship with the world around you? Until then, you will continue to think in small, boxed up terms, in very straight lines while concentric circles dance all around your imprisoned perception.
No wonder you are so easy to overwhelm, you must feel dizzy nearly all the time, you must feel like you are on the verge of vertigo every moment something sudden happens. You are completely out of rhythm with the regular flow of life. You are at odds with it. You are blind to the fact that everything constantly flows back into itself. Like it or not. As if seasons were a symbol for all that is on this planet. You haven’t figured out through experience that time does not exist and that energy is, in fact, overabundant.
You think you have to make a choice, you think that you have to make big sacrifices, that you can’t possibly have or do everything that you want. Cake or death. Cake or life. Cake. Icing. Crumbs. Death.
This point of view is understandable. You think everything you do is separate and you must allot this amount of time to this or ELSE. And you must allot some other amount of time to that OR ELSE as well. So many choices! So many choices consciously made that do not need to be scrutinized at all. So much thinking that gets processed and colored by isolation and tainted by your fears. It is possible that 80% of the choices you make you make out of fear. Thankfully, that 20% you make out of love are mixed right in, and due to the potency of these choices, they are the only thing keeping this failed system afloat.
“Just another day in the life, livin the way of the knife, can’t get away from the strife cuz everyday is a fight. Like a buffet where every bite is full of dismay and plight. I pray for light, but everyday is dark as night, without a spark of hope in sight, the rope’s too tight and I choke more the more I fight...”
That is how you see and speak about things on most days, isn’t it? This is why you believe you have to make a choice between inseparable things, like raising your children today and actively creating the future world. And yet you guard this choice like a den mother, as if the two “choices” are not part of the same circle. As if the future is not being determined by every single decision you make today. As if everything you do in one will not flow directly into the other, without any EFFORT at all. As if helping me help the world or help YOURSELF is very selfish of you, and will never be anything but.
Such a limited point of view….no wonder why you worry so much. No wonder why you choose fear so many times out of ten. No wonder why.
It’s all on you, huh? Yeah, it’s all on you here on planet Dirt. There’s just nothin else workin for you here, is there? It’s amazing the whole place doesn’t implode, doesn’t dis-integrate—considering the lack of belief you put into everything it tries to teach you and every carefully woven olive branch it offers.
Each of us has the power of a lion, and yet we live with the meekness of blind mice.
We live in a world full.
We live in a world full of lions who have forgotten they are kings.
We live in a world full of lions all part of the same pride.
And so you live in a world full of fear and isolation, in which every other breath bespeaks desolation. And begets it in the next exhale.
In truth, you live in a whirlpool. You are but one of 7 billion circular drops being slowly pulled into a few million smooth curves and some of you are fighting this process every single ripple of the way.
You are all bending in the same arc, in various perfectly turning circles, all moving in the same direction, all getting closer to the point of center. The center. The center where there is nothing but unity, where you move so fast everything seems to be standing still—long enough for each piece to tell you the tale of its existence and, by doing so, bring you more peace through a grander vision of Purpose in place.
The planet you live on is a whirlpool. And like a whirlpool there is sense in every element of its design. It is not a planet born of chaos, slowly rising up. It is, instead, made up of so many moving circles. It is a planet at one point of several overlapping circles. Circles that are all moving together in the same direction. Like a moon to a planet, like a planet to a solar system, like a solar system to a galaxy, like a galaxy to a…..
Do you really think that these exact parallels, these….living echoes, mean NOTHING to US? That we are somehow exempt? Even though we are in the middle of it all. Do you think these shapes have nothing to tell us even though they get repeated everywhere we look? Do you really think there is an END to their repetitions in EITHER direction? Do you really think that they are all NOT connected?
And if you do….why? Why do you see such chaos? An endless series of coincidences?
Is it because you believe everything that cannot speak was not given a story to tell?
A story that rings of truth?
If the wild animals of this planet could speak, do you think they would see chaos and destruction in what they do? In how they live? Or would they see order and balance? Maybe even symmetry? Would they see and sense sense and a constant given, a given constant, a constant give and take that seems to WORK just fine in seeming perpetual motion?
If the Earth could speak, and give its opinion on every species that exists….what do you think it would say about us? What do you think it would see in how we live?
Might it say: “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.” Might it ask us why “man serves the interest of no creature except himself?”
Might it even tell us a story of how everything was balanced in harmony until one species came into power and from that point on there has been constant disarray? And instead of blaming themselves for all the disorder they see and experience all around them (the disorder they themselves set in motion), instead of blaming themselves EVERYDAY, this species worships the power and projects the fault onto ANYTHING it can. Women, the past, sinners, snakes, the moderates, the conservatives, lack of this, too much of that, evil, human nature, and even the odd God.
Instead of blaming themselves everyday and seeing their “power” for what it really is, they simply create stories set in the past to blame their PAST selves. In a past where they have no power, as far as they are now concerned. A story of absolution for man walking the planet today, so that he or she can say, “That’s just how it is and how it’s always been, not much I can do about that really, but it’s not like I’m all that bad anyway.” Then he or she wipes his or her oily hands, as if that could clean them forever, and then goes on the interwoven way in colorblind ignorance.
This is the story being told all around us, but we have told ourselves to not believe it. We have told ourselves that our one story makes more sense than the billion being told for ages and still today. Doubt once gave rise to fear and fear begat the disillusioned, who came to believe in this illusion. But the greatest stories of all are always true stories, so it makes sense that the simplest, truest story of all, would also be the most fantastic, ergo—the hardest to believe.
The world is a beautiful whirlpool and it has been spinning and spinning and spinning for millions of years. And it is constantly working towards one thing: unity in balance. The sooner you see that, the sooner your life will start working for you all the time, instead of against you. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you will be able to enjoy every second of the ride, and an opportunity will never again feel like a burden. And every choice you make will never bring pain without also bringing the healing light of joy.
You like that everything is so “divisible and clear,” or at least you think that makes things clear: “SO…Definable!” The irony is…it is all these divisions that are confusing the hell out of you. Literally. And the longer we live, the more divisions we seem to make, and the more confused and fearful we become. When, at what point, do we start seeing the connections and start putting things back together again?
This is my question.
Think on it. It seems as though that is all some of you are able to do for now. Until you stop telling the universe everything you can’t do, and start remembering all you already have.
It's also worth noting that that means I didn't write it as a performance poem. I didn't know what performance poetry/slam poetry was at that point in time. But once I did learn about it a couple years later, I went back and a few pieces, like this one, just seemed to lend themselves to it naturally. And the true potential of the poem was born. Pretty cool. And now look at it, it's been with me a long time. And I even started using it in class to teach what satire is as part of my introduction to Animal Farm. Which coincidentally is right now! The only time I do anything with my poetry in class is performing THIS poem, as I just did twice last week and once more tomorrow. But that's not why I'm posting it now. I'm postin it now cuz I also performed it at a gig last week, as part of the Dine in the Dark WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY on June 5th. Which is really awesome. 
