}} After His Death, The Dalai Lama Down on Humans in the Modern West |

Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










After His Death, The Dalai Lama Down on Humans in the Modern West

A scrappy, dogged species,
they’ve crawled to the top,
shoveling their genes into the next generation,
made possible day after day
by a grand illusion,
(that the self is closer to wood than wave).

Still smitten with the fiction
of a singular self,
still on fire with fight or flight,
their brains, itchy nests of thought
perched high above the trunks of their bodies.

Before he left, he warned them
of that bulky mind evolution left them,
the thuggish one,
designed for hunter gatherers,
all gunshot and adrenalin.
He told them not to buy into
all of its thoughts,
instead watch them,
note their magnetic pull,
the suck of their maddening orbits,
say to them gently,
how interesting,
there now,
it’s time to let you go.

So now that they’ve won
and their planet bleeds inconveniently at their feet,
isn’t it time for the Darwinocene to end?
Surely they’ve noticed
how quickly happiness evaporates
under the current regime?
It’s a subtle thing, meditation,
a hard sell,
a rebellion against natural selection,
but a tool no less game changing
than the wheel.

How exhausting it all must be,
even though survival’s a given, their belly full,
the tigers and cave bears locked in zoos,
still, their instincts misfire like bulky canons,
the last grand fireworks of a forager’s DNA.
Their tongues dry from the gummy prune
and lick of their ego,
hissing at predators
that no longer exist.

And yet he missed them all.
No one loved humans more than he.
How beautiful they were,
at night calling to each other like owls,
their loneliness voweled into sound,
the past pulling them like hungry ghosts,
the future a sterile space they have yet to find cozy.
Restless, they sweep from limb to limb of stiff
old Gods they nest in a while, then fly off,
disgruntled.

Despite this liminal time,
when oceans drag villages into their distended bellies,
these humans gather and feed the sick,
they laugh and joke.
Deep inside their skulls,
shocks of brilliance startle over and over,
like a flock of birds that never rests.
All night, their imaginations
pulsing like fireflies.
And even though they’ve forgotten they’re miracles,
haven’t they noticed,
even their longing is so terribly beautiful?
 
 
 
← Adrie Kusserow