TEXT:

I come to think of it,
the cellar
under the kitchen;
that cold, damp space
into which you descend
along a steep, ladder-like stairway

My thoughts are sucked
into this almost unreal, dreamy amnesia
that stands silently introverted,
other-worldly
under the world
in another world,
below our common day, everyday feet,
stepping back and forth,
motioning our absentmindednesses
hither and thither
'tween stove and table, fridge and sink,
sunlight or moon ditto seeping in
through the windows,
the cat around our feet, tail raised,
begging for food,
the smell of fresh coffee
permeating our minds

While inhabitants have arrived
and departed up on the surface,
that periodically all but forgotten
quiet hollow
has remained the same
since it was dug out
in the 1930s,
mostly used as potato storage;
a cubic space about 8 ft x 8 x 8,
much like a tornado shelter
out in Oklahoma or Texas,
'cept hollowed out
under this farmhouse on a low moraine hill
in northernmost Sweden;
its entrance a hatch under the carpet
in the kitchen floor,
opening upwards and swung back
over the floor, allowing descent
into a dark chill
on a par with slipping into the hypnotic,
dreamy state of visions
between wakefulness and sleep

It passes unnoticed by visitors,
like murky family secrets

I've fantasized
'bout going into hibernation
down there,
hiding in its micro refuge
in a dark smell of soil and age,
silence and prehistory
and secrets,
but now I daydream
about squatting and crouching
in that cold darkness
with The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
a box of matches and a candle,
when the hot, white blast wave
of the Kremlin Spider's nuclear rage
flashes by
in the splintering annihilation
up above,
making everything even,

and the early Dylan song
Let Me Die In My Footsteps
starts circling my mind;
the poet's bitterly clearsighted comment
on the Kennedy – Khrushchev fallout shelter era
of the nuclear testing heydays,
when last there was a very real risk
of the world succumbing
in a storm of doomsday blasts

Heart drives me,
thoughts and all,
over the surface of a skinny terrain,
some moments blasting
like steelworks steel
falling
off overhead cranes;
others barely reaching the outer perimeters
of bleak borderline hunches

I rest in gamelan gear shifts
and old age finalities,
interpret facial expressions
with sensitive expertise
and swing through Allen Ginsberg's Planet News;
his energy energizing these tumbleweed words
out of the grave,
bopping 'cross a winding road
in the West Texas wind
that blows in my skull,
howling
with the ferocity of a thousand burning warhead spirits
rising out of a confused leader's might and fear,
while tucked away lakes
in the coniferous belts of Alaska, Canada, Lapland and Siberia
sit silent in Zazen,
their surfaces mirroring the undisturbed Rigpa;
the smell of boiling yellow peas rising
out of giant indigenous pots,
each cruise missile blast as flash
of Satori,
Tellus shrugging its mountains, avalanches roaring,
coffee breaks holy down the trenches
and deep inside the rocket silos
across the mono cultures of Nebraska;
time rushing back into its singularity,
evolution imploding in the existential backwash,
all phonemes sucked back
into a final choking gasp,
not unlike the final stanzas
of Michel Chion's Requiem;

the thimble with humanity's gene pool lost
somewhere
in the artillery shelling of Kiev
while Everything rushes toward Nothing

It's zero o'clock sharp,
and all is well