Discorporation

There are times
I want to discorporate
Into my component parts –
Not lungs, kidneys, and heart,
But atoms, neutrons, and quarks.

The squawks of people passing
Beneath my window, well dressed,
Laughing stupid, yelling mad,
Melodramatically sad –

That young mother, distressed,
Blowing chewing gum bubbles,
Steps into the public bus whirlwind,
Dragging her little lad – where is his dad?

Televisions and billboards squawk around the world –
The sound and fury of the whirlwind – and all the girls
And boys on the bus plugged into their little sound systems:
Little bubbles of sound destroying ear drums.

If a society presses its fingers into its human bubbles
They pop, one after the other.

Many years ago I walked on the beach,
And I watched the seagulls, squawking;
Fighting, stupid and mad, over scraps of food.
Across the ocean beat the drums of war;
Their import I understood.

To fly like a seagull, soar like the whirlwind,
Burst like a bubble –
We cannot stop the hope that in the morning
Binds everything together,
Nor the despair that in the night
Tears everything apart.