Special Sort of Parachute

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

What I want to say here today is about how we build towns in low places.
Now I don’t mean lowly, or head stooped, or humbled. I am talking altitude.
Down between the bases of barriers. Mountains. Like rivers.
We even seem to dig valleys deeper.
So everytime I come close to town I am walking down.
It strikes me in this moment that this is not a rare
or new or unusual instinct for a creature to have.
In fact, going over the historical math, we, as a species,
have a longstanding history of stacking lives up high in low places.
So it makes sense so much of our myths are full with fear of floods.
Waters rising. Of frantically fleeing above.
And I want to say the answer today is not a bigger boat.
Or a taller tower, higher stacked along quartz clay barriers.

It’s simpler than that.
So simple in fact.
It fits in a backpack.

Hanging from the dented shoulders of just about every person
I’ve met and shared space with on an average hiking day.
A little food. A liter of water or two. And some shelter.
A sort of parachute to carry you once you abandon the plane.
Climb away from the town we built up tall in a low down place.

We are intended to fear floods the rest of our lives
for never following mountains to their full height.
And see, even then, land sandwiched by sea.

What I want to say here today.
I don’t believe a flood could swallow this place any more than oceans already have.
I want to reconsider how many myths were written by people who only build in valleys.
Never lived out of a backpack. Clearly haven’t climbed high enough to know
there are places in this sort of place that will never be touched by floods.
If you don’t believe me, you should go. Spend some time with mountains.
Just be warned. After a month or so,
you may have to find new things to be afraid of.

A thing to end all things.

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

Wake to thoughts of Armageddon; a dissatisfying end to all things.
The thoughts that follow eerie revelation.
The broke-nature an event of this sort brings.
Carried to our doors. Sat heavy in sore hands.
The last of wanting nothing but more, finally.
Alive with the world. Not living off the land.

Leapt to make up a big frightening word for an ending.
Sunk chins rested depressed against fists, dented into chairs,
sad angry about a bitter name for a new beginning.

Creation, myth, confusion. Not a clear dramatic term, like Armageddon.
The end of things, rings and binding shackles, food and the plate
and the servant of a spoon, gone, with shoes, clothes altogether,
with pillows stuffed by bird’s feathers, life, in some weak sense,
a thing, an object, beaten broken, thoroughly germinated,
and dead, disappeared, alongside fears, hopes, joys,
alongside tiered mountainous buildings and cloud crowns
forming powerful arches and then torn apart.

Armageddon.

A thing to end all things, or perhaps, things in general.
Not a conclusive end to all, but just one damned divisive wall,
tall built between people and places and the things we brought along.
Certainly these objects are not you. Or me, which would mean,
as sure as hell, parts of ourselves are tossed out in the trash.
Organs and resources external, external only to imagination.
An ego let go returns like a loyal dog, dead squirrel in its jaws,
a bribe, alive, to live like you own your world, preyed to hunt for,
played with the lifeless limp bodies of things you twirled, hurled,
threw away uneaten whole, apart from the shallow signatures of teeth.

No use, no purpose. To king mentality it is right to never be wrong.
Devour weak to feed strength, guilt, regret, these real emotions,
leftovers from a more sentimental time.
This is the era of the sentiphysical.
You and all others must keep your heads on. Awake.

Armageddon. The end of living for your own sake.
A world no longer your reward.
All things destroyed. And gone.
Nothing left in the world, yours.