Jeff McCallum

Who’s Driving the Bus

Just who was driving the bus

which collided head on with the car at the crossing

where both were struck by the train

which maybe no one was driving;

after all there really is no engineer,

and if the whole damn thing jumps the tracks

well,

there’s an end to it.

For My Children

We are seed.

Our entire fragrance,

Color,

Life span,

Waits for germination to become exactly

Our entire fragrance,

Color,

Life span;

Yet we walk,

Talk,

Act and interact with garden;

Vie for sun light,

Die for want of rain.

Born a thistle

Strive to blossom rose,

Or seed at least as such.

Awfully Busy Now

One must trade something,

Perhaps as simple as time

To make the journey;

Plant the seed,

Tend the field, harvest the wheat,

Winnow,

Grind flour,

Knead dough,

Gather wood for the fire,

Bake the bread or trade something for it,

Perhaps as simple as time.

And should one acquire a taste for honey,

Desire marmalade or strawberry jam,

There will be more gardens to tend,

More time to find and barter away,

More disappointment to face even

On the meditation journey to immortal happiness.

My fellows,

My friends,

Shall I come with sandals and robe,

Thrust forward the bowl of my heart

Trust it will be filled, as will my belly,

Or wait on anonymous street corners for

Strangers to pass, drop dollars and dimes,

Trading my time for their indulgence.

May I bake at your hearth,

Break my bread at your table;

Offer silence,

Kind words, good intension,

A strong back in exchange?

Who will shelter the un-ordained;

The seeking soul,

The traveler contaminated with a lust

For honey?

Shall he live in a box,

Sleep on a bench,

Read by street light,

Meditate in the warmth of the library on cold northern days

Or trade;

Trade until the cupboard is bare,

Intention a memory,

The back no longer strong,

Kind words become bitter

Or too close to the truth

And only strangers fill the bowl,

Offer alms out of goodness or guilt,

Turns their eyes as they pass the homeless old person

Meditating their way to immortal joy.

I try and try, but politics keep sucking me in.

Delaying the Inevitable

Life does change,

Or things at least do;

Not change you can count on,

Change you can believe in, but change none the less.

It may take longer in some environments than others,

Happens quicker in bacteria and insects

Than slow moving humans

Who change their environment rather than evolve

To meet the challenge of change.

Bacteria for example become immune to drugs

As cockroaches do to poison;

Changing and surviving,

We purchase surgical masks and continue breathing polluted air

Or move to the suburbs,

A type of economic evolution I suppose.

America for example,

Moves at a different pace,

Is more insulated from certain pressures,

Certain types of social change then say,

South Africa.

Here, in America there is more;

More resources to delay at least

The inevitable.

We spend billions on Bird Flu which may or may not exist,

Taking dollars from unstable economies like a carnival barker

Taking dimes from the rubes

While in Washington DC HIV AIDS decimates.

We manufacture in the third world rather than pay

The true price of goods in US currency.

Here there are enough reasons and resources to

Lay off a few million while

Ensuring the rest of the masses have cake or

At least HDTV built by workers without

Health care or plumbing.

Strangely enough without the comforts

Many of them are or

Soon will be lacking as

The inevitable creeps ever closer.

Rich enough,

Powerful enough,

Stubborn enough to go to

War over oil

(Thank god it’s not wheat)

Rather than evolve a product or

Change life style,

Pay the cost of this stubborn refusal to change in

Lives and today’s dollars for

Generation that may never arrive because

She feels the interest on Her

Human Capital credit card will never come due or

The whore is just waiting for the next sugar daddy of a conflict to

Balance the books;

Delaying the inevitable until

Someone’s to blame,

Saddam is preferable but

Bush or Obama will certainly do.

 for Ronnachai Sivatanapisit and Victor

The words were not Thai

or English.

No one,

Thai or English

understood them.

Morphine or phentanol induced they came in bursts,

loud,

clear,

unintelligible.

Fits and bursts,

an occasional word in one language or the other

escaping from the mind,

mouth,

psyche of the dying man

sleeping wide awake and small within the arms of the recliner;

small, thin,

impossibly thin,

knees twice the size of emaciated thighs.

.

Soaring,

hang gliding through the universe,

speaking in tongues to god

or someone exactly like her,

unaware of me, the healer, she,

the wife,

him,

the older brother,

Victor,

the son pacing.

Me,

I could not touch this place although

I may have been there in some far off recent past,

visited a while, and ambled on.

She,

she is simply hoping he will say I love you or

I hunger,

thirst,

desire some thing obtainable in words she understands

as she sits and holds his hand.

Him, the man I do not know

sits and stands,

sees perhaps a shadow of the future, wishes resolution;

will leave and come to sit or stand until uncomfortable again.

Victor turns the stereo to full and sings

He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands

loudly,

alternating it with Kumbia again and again.

Chinese?

I ask,

His father was

and now he rides the dragon.

Great wings and fire rise, take him far,

so far he remembers what he never thought he knew,

chasing dreams and dragon’s breath beyond

the cords and corridors of self until

the face or form of god is seen.

The wheel becomes a turn of hands on clock,

the clock an abacus

counting, ever counting in a way that we,

she, he, I can not imagine

and only Victor’s seen.