Got Lost Just Trying to Hide

All these years I kept trying to shield my mind behind a stand of mental trees

Trying to ignore and hide from the blind confusion raging on the other side

There was a vision that I followed, stumbling upon the rocks as I traveled

And everywhere I went, people quickly showed me just how wrong I was

But I was so sure I could make a life in the quiet, way back off in the shade

I tried hard not to notice the thoughtless waste and wanton destruction

I thought I could escape their dust and shouting and live the way that I chose

There should be a calm place that I could find, where they would not want to go

I trusted in myself and, despite all of our history, in the common sense of man

But the sounds of that brutal folly echoed, unimpeded through the trees

As I lie awake and listen closely to the stream and to the birds

All the sounds of our own mindless braying just keep running through my brain

At last through unending repetition, like waves upon a battered point

The force of their unconscious wisdom grinds my dreams into tiny grains

And whenever things seem to go a bit too smoothly, I do not dream too long

They awaken me with their cruel yet unconscious symphony of destruction

I hunker down somewhere quiet, that is good enough, because iI am alone

But quickly comes another Buddha, tossing empty beer cans instead of flowers

I always believed there was a place that valued wisdom over greed

Finally, I realize that our truth comes wrapped up like fish, in advertising papers

I remembered that I thought I might have glimpsed something, long ago

Now it’s just a tattered recollection of a lost memory that has lead me nowhere

All those years I watched my brothers drifting farther from the truth

And when I finally turned back around it was gone for me as well

I thought that I could find somewhere that people aged in grace and music

But there was no place for contemplation in our mass, fast-food life mentality

At first they treated me kindly, like foster parents to a slightly wayward child

Later came the mockery and malice and finally, their hatred and my failure

I merely sought a life with dignity, balance and respect, as in certain books

But found jealousy and greed, ignorance and false pride far easier to obtain

At last, convinced by dint of repetition, I see the error of my ways

So, now I struggle with the meaning of the emptiness that grows steadily within me

Finally won over, I glance about from within my spiritual tin roof and cardboard walls

God of perfect mercy why have you let me see just enough to make me ill?

Sobbing quietly in the dust, enfolded at last by the herd I had somehow lost

My eyes close now in warm acceptance as we blindly mill toward that beckoning abyss

There was a light that I followed, a chord within the breeze, a pleasing harmony

Now, all that is cast aside, as we swarm the promise of a gray universal mediocrity

I threw off old preconceptions, I groped and finally grasped the new reality

I embrace the media waves breaking over me with quiet tears of gratitude

I grasped at straws and came up short having accepted the true faith very late

Now I live with the gnawing guilt of having doubted for far too long

Striving always to find that place where the life I sought might await

Pushed back on the freeway so many times that I began to like it there

In the end, sweet surrender to that mindless groping for immersion in consumption

Sadly, too late for total binding within the fold of terminal channel surfing

From a ridge long ago, I saw a town in the sunlight of a forest clearing

I sought a small place amid its green gables near its one white steeple

I am no better than my herding brothers, just a bit unsettled for my dreams

I sought no place of honor, fame or fortune, but merely wandered off a bit

Now I find my absence has left me behind with the limping stragglers

Scorned and shunned by the healthy and an easy mark for any hungry predator