Separation Energy: No Way Out but Through, episode 4

Oh People,
the fourth episode of No Way Out but Through  is live.

Stories, poems, and monologues with music for that special sheltering-at-home time of your life.

1.
Messages

10,000 birds circle around
a single point, she says,
spreading seed in patterns
on the tiles of the town’s small plaza.

To the birds that have landed
on her arm, she says,
if, over there, any of you
see my mother, tell her I’m fine,
despite everything,
as are my daughter and sister.
Tell her that we fixed,
finally, the front porch step
that used to creak
when the rains were done.
Tell her also, she says,
we miss her. Every day.

Then looking each bird in the eye,
she says, as for my husband,
as before, as when
he was still alive,
if you should see him,
and I hope that you do,
make sure he knows
that, coming from me, there is
no message.

2.
Sweet Darkness

by David Whyte

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

3.
Cosmodemonic

Hi. You’ve reached the Cosmodemonic* Cellular Network,
If you’ve called to solve your issues,
if you want support,
if you want to be seen, to be recognized,
to be consoled, if you want compassion,
if you want to feel more grateful,
if you want to connect to the world
in a deeper way, on a deeper level,
if you want a better world
for your children and grandchildren,
if you want to be acknowledged,
and overcome the loneliness and angst
of living day to day, hand to mouth,
in a world that just wants to keep you down
in a world that wants hold you back,
that just keeps grinding you down
until you’re old and hunched
and every last dream
has been sucker-punched out of you,
if you want to speak to a human being
who will sympathize and empathize
someone who will actually listen to you
and help you to solve your problems,
please press 9 now.

I am such a kidder.
Please press any number to be disconnected.

* See Henry Miller’s The Tropic of Capricorn for more details

4.
I Am Waiting

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

5.
Separation Energy

The temperature has dropped,
the constructs have vanished,
and the woman
the lab assistant’s been seeing
will not return his calls.

He shakes his head, saying,
The tensile strength of the bridge cables
will not hold if the vibration continues
at these unprecedented levels.

How will it continue to function, he wonders,
if the party in power
channels her resources
towards some candidate
of unknown potential?

Only the victim, he says,
ear to the ground, will know
and only after speech
has failed him already.

6.
When Death Comes

By Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world