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Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

~ Words For You, Just Ask

Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

Category Archives: Environment

Edging God Out

17 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by Bill Watkins in Environment, Poem, Poems, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Joy, Love, Peace

Ego is burning earth, flying above
her in a loud metal can reporting
on traffic conditions—cars burning earth,
flying over her at high speeds making
too much noise.

Ego is wanting a human king to rule
over us, to believe there are “good”
people, an expression admonished
by Jesus when called by the young man;
Only God is good.

The noise of planes is our soundtrack.
Locked in the city by financial uncertainty;
we accept abuse, when there’s no better
option. We edged God out, starting with
the apple tasted.

Forbidden fruit—real or a metaphor,
we were almost fully godly is the story,
until the Devil tempted Eve to be God—
to know things.  And she tasted.  And she
tempted Adam.

And he tasted.  And they knew stuff—including
guilt for transgressing God’s command!
Cain killed Abel next, and look at Samuel
asking for a human king?  Edging God out
started innocently…

We keep burning earth, going fast, making
noise—forget the bible a moment let’s talk
Tao Te Ching!  Zing, the yin and yang of hate
and love, noise and peace—we have a choice,
are powerless, actually.

“You cannot change the world.  It cannot be
done!” was not just true, it was fun—taking
pressure off us, but then we move a mountain
through faith, Wyatt Earp standing up to gangs,
stopping hate.

We stand up and do good things, but
not until we thoroughly meditate! Let
the horse out of the gate—naked let
your spirit find the native Great Spirit once
again, friend!

Stop driving.  Walk.  Breathe.  Use senses
gone to the devil in a propeller plane.  Gone
to Satan in a whirling, horrible helicopter
chasing “bad guys” that are actually just
you and me!

Shhh!  It matters what we do and say—this
our life, between the posts of birth and
the eternal—ideas sputtering in the wind
for us to Grab if gumption yearns more than
the ego burn.

Grab something better than your first move
to run!  To escape—the Jonah’s in the whale
heartbreak!  Listen to God and/or the most
high spirit impossible to reach through traffic
noise and speed.

Stop the rotors.  Get out of the chopper before
it crashes and burns into the hillside of Spring—
purple and orange by the sea impossible to
see, the glory of waves crashing impossible to
hear unless…

Unless we trudge back in history to grab some
provisions like God and prayer to help us
conquer the Ego and Fear.

Addicted to Cars

27 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by Bill Watkins in Earth, Environment, Poem, Poems, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

God, Joy, Lao Tzu, Love, Mother Nature, Peace

traffic-jam-388924__480

Going fast, what a blast, losing
our relationship with Earth seemed
such an innocent gas.

We burn her, Mother Nature already
on fire— “why not us,” you ask.

Given five senses, with an occasional sixth
that writes poems and other stuff:

We feel so few inside a speeding car,
you think you are doing so much—traveling
so far, but have really shut off your life

to the smells, sights, sounds and other feelings
of feet on ground, walking to and from
naked with truth—muscles at work, the body
moving, sweating fully alive.

But you would rather lock yourself in a
loud metal box and drive.

Concrete, metal and asphalt covering
Earth as you burn her, speeding past
experience, people to help, people to meet,
animals and attractions only available to
the feet.

Vroom, vroom, “I haven’t room room, for
this slowed down experience you write in your
poems, I gotta go!!!”

There is no better place than Heaven, taking steps
God gave us on the straight and narrow, those
on the path rooting for and welcoming those
on the scary Wide—

We cannot get there tense and flipping off
your neighbors as you drive.

Re-think cars, burning earth, being so loud the
crickets wanna die, Native American culture
squashed, first cultures and their ways of life—
Aborigines, Celts, tribal unity and Earth-led prayer
together with oneness and purity.

We love our Bible and Tao Te Ching, we love even
excuses that make us happy to turn the key on
our bright red metal thing—there it is so large
and loud in our concrete drive.

Ask if it pleases God, then decide a day that
puts you in touch with all Creation.

Locked in, locked away streaming by loudly
at high speeds, we miss too much, litter the
narrow path to heaven even while we clutch—

Let it go.  Walk.  And join me as I throw some trash
away.  Let us not defile ourselves with what we say
or do.

Give up some driving days, be more quiet,
and hear from God direct what it is we need to
be content in the land, clean it up—

Make everything fresh and new.

Poets Don’t Own Cars

14 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in Environment

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Joy, Love, Peace

We rent and we drive on occasion,
but lock us into payments?

Never.

The vroom vroom, powering and
speeding and smoking our way to this
and that? The noise, the hustle?

We prefer the slow stroll, the train
ride, the bus up the cliff, the hike
mile after mile, five senses becoming
six as we know there is more…

Rooftop to rooftop we hurl headlong
into vacant doorways of hope, dash to
and from buildings of dreams, scents
and poverty bringing us out of metal
and into the sweat of failure.

We must report something and so
stomach the stench, there must be a ground
if we are to elevate. Support comes from
loving people, we are dedicated to words
but know they are nothing compared to
what we describe,

The ultimate hope of all endeavor to
yield peace of mind, this one mine as I
deny the mechanic’s offer to ditch another
hunk at high speeds—

I take one look back at my old life as
I speed down the freeway of God’s
paradise in my wife’s fast muscle car:

I have an errand to run and I’m tired of
the walk, I’ll play this song, burn this gas
this time, but can’t wait to shed the metal

for a walk again my friend, toward the more
elegant train of rhyme.

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