Because it was fun

Because we were young and wilful

Because the sun hadn’t always been a good friend

Because solitude, like wisdom, offered a tough but viable option

Because intimacy was peddling an even tougher option for all the wrong reasons

Because the past was clearly bollocks

Because the future looked more of same, our planet’s wobble cranking up

        with indifference

Because secularism was playing peek-a-boo with longed-for landscapes

Because memory’s lonely tabula rasa was skulking around in a see-through negligee

Because Rorschach’s tiresome old inkblots were talk of the town

Because Lacan’s panty-knotting fantasies were deemed heavenly manna

Because commando insurrection spread like wildfire through Beatlemania

Because the vortex of self-importance had to be avoided at all costs

Because our duffle coats reeked of sure-footed impudence

Because mum and dad said No!

Because a negligent Church, colder and stiffer than Greybeard Almighty, couldn’t stop

        flattening the Earth

Because every creepy white male was just that

Because silver screen M*A*S*H would spawn eleven seasons of grey screen mayhem

Because Yasujirō Ozu seasoned our humanity with labyrinthine contemplation

Because Watergate, like glyphosate, kept fertilising the court jester’s public tongue

Because the My Lai massacre deserved a little more than a pardoned soldier’s remorse

Because our eyes sparkled like crushed glass

Because our hearts were cascading to an endless drug-fuelled tsunami

Because Roland Barthes had other ideas

Because Martin Luther King held firm

Because Rosa Parks sat tall

Because tyranny had become the sine qua non of metaphysics

Because balance and harmony meant next to nothing

Because dark energy was everywhere

Because retreating never entered our minds

Because letting go lodged deep within and gripped tight, our only certainty

Because silence draped delicately from every moment, febrile, reciprocal, inexhaustible

Because poetry was a lambent black hole, the fugitive soul’s midsummer collapse into

        midwinter space-time

Because the Big Bang had never ceased and we were surfing its crest

Because we were contortionists on the run

Because splendour was our heresy and our birthright

Because La Dolce Vita drove fascists bananas

Because the Dalai Lama hit the West with a bang on smile

Because Jiddu Krishnamurti was the full DIY carnival

Because a banana lounge, beachside, fostered solemn introspection and follow-through

        readjustment

Because a woman in bikini wouldn’t bend from the waist lest she trigger penetrative thinking

Because oceans, savage, immortal, roared to life in our whispers, to which we cocked

        a deaf monastic ear

Because thunder and lightning meant more than a jazzed up light show

Because the lie of the land was garbling our ley-lady lai with toxic reverb

Because Hendrix was belching black magic from one blisteringly volcanic guitar

Because Miles Davis had pictured us wildly cool in Dorian blue

Because Marcel Duchamp was still breathing

Because Pablo Picasso, unstoppable echo, could be spotted out and about, walking, talking,

        thinking

Because Antonin Artaud’s kaleidoscopic shamantics, newly resurrected, were haunting souls lost

        to the Readymade Age

Because the tree of knowledge was speechless

Because the mind was embodied and desperate for company

Because dancing colonised the body the way mythologies annexed the mind

Because distraction, swamping our cities, cozied up, yoked us to murky tides

        of hackneyed engagement

Because ecocide, backstage, was fast becoming our most spirited achievement, outdazzling

        the war machine

Because the psyche, outflanked & outgunned, was thoroughly jaded

Because the Four Horsemen were having a field day

Because our conscious existence was wholly consigned to preserving the illusion of control

Because we found it so difficult to be honest with ourselves

Because mercy was getting a bad press

Because sincerity was front page news, dutifully reborn as commodity

Because commodity was editorial know-how, stirringly repackaged as heredity

Because heredity presupposed wisdom

Because presupposition was our circadian fulcrum

Because trailblazing was all the rage

Because hard-core sleight-of-hand was our tutelary spirit

Because capital was deftly engineering the optimal version of self-nullifying humility

Because the colour of money rankled, but only marginally compared to the colour

        of the money-maker

Because human rights were not intended for Indigenous communities

Because rights for women, animals, plants were ‘dead body’ rights

Because for all the hype, Ulrike Meinhof would never be validated as a role model

Because Betty Friedan had us groaning in our sleep with much fist-shake and teeth-grind

Because Germaine Greer refused to market herself as anyone’s best friend

Because a howling Allen Ginsberg rang out from city rooftops, grounding our skylines

        like a call to prayer

Because we’d rhapsodize on life’s preciousness, notwithstanding history

Because belts tightening to the heart’s pleading tug loosened too willingly round the gut’s

        scheming hearth

Because a sense of fullness constantly eluded us

Because getting naked could be terribly awkward

Because in so many communities, God was still on 24/7 active genital watch

Because Diane Arbus feted us through beauty and complicity

Because Bugs and Daffy towered over Donald and Micky

Because Stephen Hawking was already a genius

Because Ludwig Wittgenstein had known precisely how tall he was

Because the Book of Genesis passed muster as a ripping yarn

Because Sitting Bull’s statue was sculpted using 1.4 million Lego bricks

Because Ken Kesey’s Magical Bus wasn’t colour-coded for Little Goody Two-Shoes

Because an early warming Summer of Love would fast transform into an over-the-counter

        culture

Because smug was not a badge of honour in distinguished syntactic circles

Because the inner-city wheel horse was quick to grasp the need for zebra crossings

Because one small step of star-spangled revelry planted with a giant toe-tapping leap

        rippled like a shadowy dream

Because the ball and chain belonged to bygone days

Because mass extinction belonged to bygone eras

Because dystopia belonged to books and cinema

Because Motown was the place to be

Because tea houses were all the go

Because Armageddon was in the tea-leaves

Because sabotage was a crucial component of liberté, fraternité, égalité

Because timeless heir-conditioning made for blockbuster folklore, shallow breathing

Because Rilke’s obsession with Centre sharpened our peripheral vision

Because a mystical Dickinson’s rustic Trinity bathed us in ecstatic mystery

Because ecstasy and mystery were rare brides indeed

Because marriage forged tiny glittering kingdoms of intricately scaffolded light

Because the female orgasm was far from centre stage at weekend dinner parties

Because the male orgasm was unshakeable proof of nature’s ingenuity

Because it felt like the Beast was continuously coming into his own

Because everywhere was suddenly nowhere

Because nurture became a buzzword that could only be fed with bullshit

Because conditional love proved little more than a bully’s social contract

Because we were judicious on the job, hostile in the home, enraged by the world

Because an age-old epidemic of childhood neglect was beginning to rear its brutal head

Because the body was masterfully keeping the score

Because trust gave way to trystesse & trompe-l’oeil gave way to trash & treasure

Because art, like philosophy and anxiety, was considered cool and dangerous

Because group sex was sad sack fabulous

Because inspiration was key

Because reading was far too time-consuming

Because knackered ambition was an all too familiar trope

Because lucidity was a middle finger raised to clarity

Because life was fragmentary with every figment up for grabs

Because not everyone was living out a coming-of-age story

Because some of us were working fervently on our inner space

Because stripped of inner space, we’d be no bigger than a dust particle, the earth

        no larger than an apple

Because facts and figures were shredding our mojo

Because Carlos Castaneda may or may not have been joking

Because Joseph Beuys was ticking all the right boxes

Because Simone de Beauvoir was never far from our ruminations

Because America, Russia and China were peacefully liberating comrades across the globe

Because the mirage of endless prosperity was transitioning into panoramic mode

Because Dr Who smirked more diplomatically outside the Tardis than inside

Because Hal could read lips

Because it was vital that one spoke one’s truth

Because too many pieces of the puzzle made zero sense

Because we could no longer count on one finger let alone one hand

Because the sins of the fathers had us by the clit

Because what was good and saucy for the goose was hard and fast proper gander

Because the brain was awash in filial dexterity

Because there was always someone awake in Warhol’s factory

Because our halls of confessional fame, spirit of intrepid go-getter diffusion & writerly

        flourish, were solidifying into vaporous shorthand

Because the Word made flesh dwelling amongst us was still yearning for grace and candour

Because generosity and compassion were benchmarks only when things were going our way

Because praying the gay away unmasked us at our constipated best

Because The Great Society’s wind chimes fell victim to twister trombones

Because Nixon called Timothy Leary the most dangerous man in America

Because Pop, Jagger, Dylan, Plant, all torso, lip, cheekbone, hair, had us sphinxed out

        on godlike seduction, tearaway ecstasy

Because Joplin jack-knifed through kosmic blue skies her feral hothouse abandon

Because romance and exile feathered our wings, tragicomic echoes of a redemptive void

Because sacrifice etched our forgetful portraits into the muse’s tired gaze

Because twilight would unfailingly flicker through its capricious assemblage of centuries

Because Zarathustra, out of his cave, had wormed his way into our silent devotions

Because Simone, with her spiritual eye, milked her pussy and bedevilled our dreams

Because Bloom the gentle outsider, androgynous voyeur, dwarfed us effortlessly

Because paranoia gave life its special zing

Because divorce would suck the oxygen out of civilisation, bring it crashing to its knees

Because our soul mate passed us by in the street, unheard, unseen, unforthcoming

Because salvation had played her last card and bluffed us empty-handed

Because Taoism wasn’t the path for the way-worn wayward

Because the second law of thermodynamics was and ever shall be God

Because absence made the heart grow fonder, then presence made the heart grow bitter

Because Sylvia Plath, haemorrhaging under fixed stars, left us utterly dispirited

Because Denise Levertov, heart in a canter, serenaded our sorrows with evergreen stirrups

Because trees have known everything worth knowing about us since the year dot

Because no storm was ever a threat to whales, no iceberg a menace to horses

Because lonesomeness could often snow a winter in

Because Antony and Cleopatra were now triumphantly afloat in our Milky Way vigil

Because Ophelia, increasingly eclipsed by an all too eagerly forgiven narcissistic Hamlet,

        was receding further into oblivion’s shadowy wings

Because primal fear would come up trumps in every bout of hide-and-seek

Because awakening daily could be an unbearable burden

Because we were adept at bringing the house down

Because time muddied and timelessness muddled

Because Agnès Varda emblazoned celluloid skies like an Easter moon

Because Aretha Franklin’s lush melismatics were a fountain of joy and solace

Because Nina Simone stripped us beautifully bare with every note

Because emptiness was next to godliness

Because it seemed that things so rarely went our way

Because we were footloose wrong-footed die-with-your-boots-on foot soldiers

        forever awaiting another boot to drop

Because hindsight was no more revealing than a candle in dense fog

Because foresight was your run-of-the-mill hair-shirt cosmology lacking empathy

Because we were each, ad infinitum, morphing back and forth from magical fool

        to theatrical monk to tortured saint

Because we knew not what, how, when, where, nor why

Because truth and relativity had been tarred with the same palette

Because we were free but couldn’t deliver

Because we were driven to toe the line

Because we were starved of crucial communion

Because we were strapped for genuine reverence

Because we pined for intrinsic motion

Because we were drifting in and out of one another’s dreams, witnessing self alive, sleepwalking

        innocent our earthly palace of crackling mirrors, blazing meteor bright

                 (snap, crackle, pop)

        the rhythm divine