1
Up and down long-midnight-drive-home freeways we wander
But is it art?
We most privileged among the privileged planetlings
Stop, and wonder
Where do we go from here?
Where is the next aesthetic step?
Were we too busy playing trolls and queens
in Hollywood rock'n'roll scenes?
Distracted?      too altered?
To hear the muse singing in our rock'n'ringing ear?
"It's here!" she whispered, "Where it's always been.
Like the forest, hidden by the trees."
And we were trying so hard to be different
Til change itself became ossified at last
Cast in modernist plaster, never again to stir
Even Albert E. said (or was it Heracleitos?)
"Only change is unchanging."
See?
Si... plus ça change, plus c'est la même chanson
 

2
Dream overhung our hero gropes left-over threads of wine
and midnight's so sound fabric, now frayed by light of day.
Half awake, he muses over oneiric snatches of muse-sung maps.
The see-through Calliope.
"Carpe Diem!" She cries, "Experience comes in just two colors."
"What do your own eyes see?
Your ears hear?
Tongue taste, fingers feel?
Is it true,  or is TV more real?  
Even the Voice of Authority comes only in second hand!"
 
How honest dare you be?
Paint what you fucking see!
And don't pull any punches.
 
Downtown, empulpited in concrete, glass and steel
Big Brass Cigargrin, and his friend Big Wheel,
holds their thumb on the button
What good would half said truths then be,
half lieing in ashdust,
atomized,
Hiroshimized?
 

3
Mama Mound was a happy planet.
Liked to play the spiral game with Chasing-its-own-tail,
Ouroboros the Worm.  
Too bad, gone and caught the fell disease.  
Megalocitiosis aguda
Now's crawling with those peskies
In their cubey gray coral castles
And stinking with their zoom-zoom's farts
But maybe not too bad
Maybe sing sweet song to peskies
And touch them in their hearts
 

4
"God!" she breathed eternally,  
"What has been left undone?"
In His own image we've been said to be
Or,  if you buy Darwin,  the last,  ultimate link
In either case, the Crown of Creation
Possibility,  capacity,  right?
Even duty,  some say,  to dominate,  control,
transform the environment
for our own benefit,  self fulfillment.
La ciudad no es mas que un cultivo bacteriologico
Mais on a le choix
"Excercise your choice!"  she sang
"The beauty of it is the choice!
You can do it here.
You are here.
You are so privileged!"
 

5
May there be many ways of music
Halleluyah!  Jai Guru!
It's not for me you see,  its for Chasing-its-own-Tail
 

6
Breathe then,  stretch
The morning has senses.
There's a groove out there somewhere
Find it and sail away
Hear them!
Xochipilli,  Calliope,  Ganesh,  Saraswati,  Terpsichore and the rest
They'll be singing irresistibly
"Be the mirror!  You are the mirror!  Be!"
 

Made at CalArts
Copyright © 1983 Juan M. Córdova
All rights reserved