I listen
To that which speaks
A bigger
In feeleds of dreams
Wanting more
Then words
Aloft from fences
Of unsatisfying breadth
And stealy calculation
Dis passionate mines
As inevitable ballbusters
Descending from bona fide guise
Even handed lines
Powerless as me pick-up
As I have not
There be little left
Of right
And wrong
Targeted means
As I am
Made to feel
That I have
Gone nuts
Sow detached
Over looking
My groan
Up cast
For what have wee
To sphere
On earth
Like broken vassals
What have I too loose
As a flea wagging doggedly
In treating me too stay
As a thorn in my pause
As if I was lyin’
Or some thing
Crying out
Give it arrest
Only wonting
Hang round
Like sum constellation price
For nebulous reasons
Orbit
The bull it points
Forsake of the cause
Professoring each reaction err he
As if
I am
Missing inaction
And it’s time
To grow a pare
Seceding where others have flailed
More than a head
Of their times
Boosting their future
For this is how
They roll
Off the curve
Into the streets
Overwhelming every buy way
And what have anew
Thorough fair for all
And rout in justice
As we due it owed school
Where truth metes feat
In tuition
Of life
I’m publishing this poem and blog post instead of going to a meeting. I’m not big on meetings. And I’m getting smaller with each passing day. About the only meetings I go to are activists planning one thing or the other. I tend to avoid even these meetings. Unfortunately, I generally find them unsatisfying. Fortunately, the outcomes of these meetings are not sorely changed without my presents. Over the last year or so, after the occasional meeting, I have quipped that I only go to a meeting once a season just to remind myself why I don’t go to meetings. I have been to countless meetings in my life, as a recovering professional planner. These activist meetings fare above the average level of meeting satisfaction — though that might not be setting the bar very high. This situation is captured by another saying of mine: that isn’t beneath me; it’s behind me.
Of course, when I refer to meetings, I mean formal meetings. I like meeting with people, just more informally. I like planning, more like conspiring, for activist actions. I’d rather meet and conspire with activists at actions or in social settings without any driving agenda. Or, afterwards, just catch the gist of what may been accomplished, in a few moments. Then, see how I might participate. I find myself on a steady path of wanting to live more organically; that is, with a minimum of man-made organizational structures. My bullshit meter has become quite powerful. I find that formal meetings, by either design or effect, draw out our more base instincts of wanting power/influence and control over others. This tendency enmeshed with what I view as an over-intellectualization of the issues at hand poisons my experience. Of course, I am a recovering abstract intellectualist; and I deliberately practice avoiding taking that first proverbial drink of the ever-sought perfected ideology or strategy. I feel that I have found some balance between my head and my heart. I find most meetings stifling to my heart. My deepest yearnings are for our broken hearts to pour into the streets for the healing of the world. I suppose this is way too messy for the powers that be. I have studied the ways of personal and social change for my whole adult life, and with increasing frequency my heart overturns my distinguished head. I guess that am slowly gaining my anarchist credentials, which, of course, means not relying on credentials. I am deeply intrigued in exploring collective action without relying on cumbersome formal power. I am finding increasing peace on the margins of power, even the margins of activists’ power. I strongly suspect that nurturing the ability to sustain peace even at the margins of formal power is, in fact, a form of informal power of which humans could use more. May you be empowered to follow your dreams.
