Roadside Dance of the Butterfly

A traveling video.

Well, I’m on the road this weekend so I haven’t had any time to write but I was able to record a video from the passenger’s seat and edit it into a music video here in the hotel room in the wee hours. This one is titled ‘Roadside Dance of the Butterfly.’ Enjoy!

I’ve also added an older haibun below. It’s one of those, “one woman’s art, is another man’s blasphemy” sort of poems, so feel free to hang onto your convictions while reading.

"Thus sayeth . . . "

Chapter 1:

In one of many beginnings, a race was birthed in incest.

Adam and Eve's children, by necessity, commingled. How else could we get from there to here? One might conceive Divine Conception if so predisposed. I wonder, though, what a race of gods looks like. Was there a less incestuous plan for the Garden? Ah, yes, fig leaves.

When was the missionary position adopted? If only missionaries had visited the Garden, the couple might have been "saved" from exile. Writings support the assertion that the Chaperon guided—from the beginning—the pair's inbred family as it swelled to cover the earth. Seems the current world population is nothing less than the result of an orchestrated-by-the-Divine orgy.

Then came the rules—Thou shalt not covet. Well, there was a precedent—Don't eat from the tree. Let's face it, the first sin was most likely a succulent one, but it was all downhill from there.

Was there sex education in the beginning? Did the Heavenly Father describe in detail what He meant by being fruitful and multiplying?

the Speaker
pounds his gavel . . .
sparks fly from the anvil

Chapter 2:

How did the plan go so astray? An olive branch was not enough. Sent babbling off in all directions, just dust in the wind, pillars of salt, and vinaigrette dressing—vengeance.

Let my people go—more vengeance. Many mistakes were made. In the end, bowed heads and sacrificial lambs. Oh, to have not thrown those tablets—perfect examples of penmanship.

It was not only the Word of God you cast to the ground that day; it was your FAITH. If you'd only had Faith Hill to entertain the crowd—a star instead of a calf. But that staff-to-serpent trick, a class solo act.

How many lands conquered to reach out from the mountaintop? To see with your eyes, the Promised Land, just beyond your grasp?

tower of glass . . .
a boy throws his baseball
through my window

Chapter 3:

Jeremiah was a bullfrog . . . but any modern-day prophet knows that. She's buying the stairway . . . with a fifth of Southern Comfort—too expensive—took an elevator instead. Live from New York . . . today's mantra—Santa Claus is real.

Clinging to a rugged cross, then a levitation trick. Just an alien in his mother ship, off to plan the demise of planet earth. Meanwhile, a rabbit-in-the-hat captures the crowd's imagination; propaganda leaflets flutter down like hailstones—manna in acid rain. Follow this, follow that—a blind dog chasing a cat. Got to find our way through the smoke and mirrors while the incense stick's still hot.

Ring of stones, ancestral bones, tarot cards, and carrots on a stick—the wizard said it best,

"Temples rise and fall—city walls in crumbles again. Off to see Nebuchadnezzar—let the revelations begin. Feet of clay, they all fall down—indoctrination won't fix it. So, let's agree we don't know the answer and stop declaring we've found it."

dogma for the masses—
sip after sip
of Warhol's soup

Chapter 4:

This week, as my thoughts evolve, I've come to believe my Creator is a computer that operates itself. It creates programs that create more programs, which, in turn, generate more programs. I am, therefore, a nano-program, programmed to create more programs. There may be a few ones and zeros out of place, a virus here or there. Still, whenever I stare at the screen, I wonder, What on Earth has the Almighty Algorithm loaded into its eternal memory for me to cling to today?

transforming lead
into a golden grail—
unquenchable thirst