it’s 3:23 in the morning - hieroglyphic stairway by drew dellinger

"it's 3:23 in the morning

and I'm awake

because my great great grandchildren

won't let me sleep

my great great grandchildren

ask me in dreams

what did you do while the planet was plundered?

what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something

when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest

when democracy was stolen?

what did you do

once

you

knew?

I'm riding home on the Colma train

I've got the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I have teams of scientists

feeding me data daily

and pleading I immediately

turn it into poetry

I want just this consciousness reached

by people in range of secret frequencies

contained in my speech

I am the desirous earth

equidistant to the underworld

and the flesh of the stars

I am everything already lost

the moment the universe turns transparent

and all the light shoots through the cosmos

I use words to instigate silence

I'm a hieroglyphic stairway

in a buried Mayan city

suddenly exposed by a hurricane

a satellite circling earth

finding dinosaur bones

in the Gobi desert

I am telescopes that see back in time

I am the precession of the equinoxes,

the magnetism of the spiraling sea

I'm riding home on the Colma train

with the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I am myths where violets blossom from blood

like dying and rising gods

I'm the boundary of time

soul encountering soul

and tongues of fire

it's 3:23 in the morning

and I can't sleep

because my great great grandchildren

ask me in dreams

what did you do while the earth was unraveling?

I want just this consciousness reached

by people in range of secret frequencies

contained in my speech"

- Drew Dellinger – Hieroglyphic Stairway

Sent from my iPad

Tonight I Can Write

2:55am

I have two books of poetry by Pablo Neruda on my night stand. I read from them rarely, but they are always with me, just in case.

One of my favorite poems is number XX, number 20 in the book "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair". It is titled "Tonight I Can Write".

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, "The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the sould like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Anothers. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer lover her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through the nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

By Pablo Neruda