Red Velvet Cafe

How does one think
Inside the Red Velvet Cafe?
The rattle of that AC
The phone ringing at your counter
The constant pop music
Just a few notches too high
So that one must raise one's voice
To speak over it.
The customers
Trying to use the wrong door
And order at the wrong counter

What good is this espresso bar
With Wifi only for the credit card machine?

Endless mountains
And palm trees blowing in the wind...
Look away
There's enough going on in here already
This huge salad doesn't fit on its small plate
It will take all my concentration
Not to spill it.

For eighteen days I stared at water.
Water that will kill me.
Rocks that will break me
And tear holes in my boat.

Silent Ancient Canyons
That have never talked
In a million years.
And the only thing
That existed in the whole universe
Was the angle
And the speed of the water...

Shield your eyes,
America.

You can vote
You can shop
You can procreate.
But you can not think.
Your life is a chaos of formless sediment
Origins unknown
Suspended and colliding in a dizzying,
Incomprehensible,
Assault from all angles.
The daily anaphlayxis
Of The Electric Merry Go Round
Casino.

Where you can always pull another lever.
And you can always buy another chance.
Or alternately,
Rob a stranger of one of theirs.
But this sun visor will not save you
As you operate heavy machinery
Under the influence
Of full spectrum overload.

There are too many people, America.
Momentarily supported
By your army of diesel trucks
Flying J's
And coffee.
Ferrying your Lettuce,
Doritos,
Corn Syrup,
Chicken Fingers,
Sprite,
Cupcakes,
And pre-breaded, frozen, coconut shrimp
Into your children's stomachs.

Your children cannot resist.
They cannot refuse.
Your crack babies
Of sugar, salt, and oil.
But the tadpole did not imagine
Nor choose
The form of a frog.

The autism speaks
Articulate words of diabetes
Heart failure,
Depression,
And suicide.
The body speaks words
The mind is too distracted to string together.
The mind chooses not to think about.
The DNA never thinks
As it mutates into cancer
It reacts more honesty
Than any of us dare
To think.

You were not meant to eat lobster in the desert
And high fructose everything.
There is no such place as heaven
Where angles sitting on clouds
Watch you masturbate
And lay traps ahead of you.
Your vagina was not designed to bring life into the world
So that souls could be created
To one day enjoy eternity.
You are able to give birth so many times
Because most of your children are meant to die
At a very young age.

Armed with vaccinations
Rite- Aid
And The Golden Hour
You must produce less children.
For already there are far too many people.

How much growth this year?
A third perimeter interstate?
The geometry of concetric rings
Mimics the spider's web
Where small things go
To become trapped and die.

How many more millions can we house within a square mile
That we may still manage to feed
And haul their waste away in sewers?
Are these the questions a culture asks
That expects to endure for thousand years?
These are the questions of a man
Who is trying to sell you something.

Already you cannot value this many lives.
What is the point of worrying how to feed
More people whose presence only annoys you?
They only make you happy
When you see them do things the wrong way
Or hurt themselves
In a way you never would.
You must know you are smarter than other people.
And you want other people to know it.
People you can use up and throw away
People to yell at
And run over with your cars
Because there are so, so many
You cannot see them all.

You were designed for smaller groups
With long distances in between one another
So that after a time when you come across someone new
You are thankful for what they may contribute
To your life.

There is no doubt about the direction this is headed.
When you are too low that you can never see the complete picture.
The waves are too high and too unpredictable
You are no longer on a path to a certain destination.
You are floating in a current
Driftwood
Responding to whatever it decides to put in front of you
With your best face forward
Expecting any minute
To be entirely overwhelmed.

You are entirely overwhelmed.
You stop even trying to plot a course for yourself.
Or for anything.
Each day is interchangeable
As you drift through life
Coming and going with the tides
Occasionally bumping into one another
Human Algae
Bodies drifting to the bottom
Forming Limestone
And concrete dust.

As the Theropods grew larger
With each successive epoch
Until Tyrannosaursus
Towered over everything,
All cultures have collapsed
The day after they reached the highest stage of their development.

There is no surgical way to save your life.
You can only save yourselves.
I will not bother connecting tubes
And wires
And removing spent fluids
If you will never speak again
Or open your eyes
With clinical death a foregone conclusion,
I cannot save the walking dead...

The person on this planet who cares the most about saving you
Is you.
Why are you still waiting
For someone else to come to your aid?

(I have for years suggested
The path to enlightenment is the same
For every prophet.
And it is enlightenment that matters
Not how any one prophet
Used it to interpret anything
2,000 years ago.)

Remove yourself
Go to the wilderness
Of wild honey
And camel hair.
Live, struggle,
Die if you must
But come back with open eyes
And a fresh brain
Capable of deciding for itself.
And a body
That is accustomed to act.

Head for the hills
And leave behind everything you possibly can.
Rip the cord out of the wall.
And the plug out of your brain.

When you come back
With your clear eye
And your voice
You must speak as well as you can
For as long as you can
Before someone stops you
As they most undoubtedly will.