Possibility

Possibility

Forget about what is probable.

Concentrate instead upon possibility.

The simple fact that you are alive

reading and comprehending these lines

in a Universe as vast

and varied as Mother Nature

is already an astronomically

improbable accomplishment.

You can be whatever is within

the realm of possibility

and that includes virtually

anything because the realm

of possibility is as large

as the imagination

of all Mother Nature.

You are a sentient part of Nature

and above all, she is your

friend and advocate.

The only trick is to be

as good of a friend

and advocate to yourself

as Mother Nature is.

Dewey Dirks

Money

Money

Money, money

everybody's gotta use some

everybody's gotta gotta get some.

After it's gone, you gotta gotta

get some more.

It acts a lot like a drug,

get a little at first,

and you're happy for awhile

until you discover you want a lot more.

The more you get,

the more you tend to want

The more you get

the more you tend to use.

When you run out, you go into withdraw

and get all worried and crabby

until you figure out how to get some more.

Money, money,

has its good side, it's true.

It provides incentive for great numbers of people

to work together to make all sorts of things

and as the world grows closer together economically

the harder it is for countries

to be fighting with each other.

Most of the really powerful nations have so many

of their fingers in each others money pie,

they really can't afford

to go to war with each other anymore.

The trouble is that

at the basis of money's incentive, is greed,

and greed is irrational

and often drives people to shit on each other

in their scramble to get as much as they can.

I've seen money drive a wedge

between sisters and brothers,

between a father and his daughters

and more than once, I've seen it tear

whole families apart.

Personally, virtually all the times

I've been truly done wrong in this life,

money was the driving force.

Money, money you gotta to get a clue about it.

It's best to have an easy come, easy go

attitude about it.

You gotta not get all caught up

in the debt racket or you'll find yourself

working as an indentured servant

to the bank for the rest of your life.

When comes the time to make a decision

about money, you gotta learn to ask yourself,

'Am I making this decision in favor of people

or in favor of money' because the defense

against greed boils down to the decisions

you make when money is at hand.

In my experience, most of the people

who can keep their heads when it comes

to money, have all been poor in dollars

and rich in heart.

Money, money, the catch is that

the more you tend to get, the more of your time

it takes up and the more you tend to want to spend.

A lot of people think getting a big load of money

would solves all their problems

but having money is its own line to tow

and having a big bunch can multiply your troubles.

Don't fall for the idea that having more money

makes you a better person.

The ideal situation about it

is to have so little, or so much money,

it really doesn't matter anymore.

If you get a bunch,, the trick is to

not fall into the trap of spending more and more

until you're all out of it again.

To have a bunch only means

that you have more than you care to spend.

I've known people who only had a little pile,

but because they didn't care

to buy a lot of things, they had enough

that it didn't matter anymore.

The poorest people I've ever known

all had great big piles of money,

but only tiny amounts of love and fulfillment

because they had turned away from their own

heart and soul in name of money.

Dewey Dirks

Enculturation

Enculturation

The other day I was talking

to a young woman, bright eyed

and intelligent as she explained to me that

when she sold something

on Craigslist, she made sure

to arrange to meet potential

buyers in a public place in order

to guard against serial killers.

She didn't realize, of course,

that the country

is as safe from violent crime

as it was forty years ago

when people didn't lock their

doors at night and that her chances

of being shot by a cop were

much, much higher than being killed

by a serial killer.

Not long afterwords, I was having

a conversation about climate change

with a man in his fifties, intelligent,

full of experience and informed, as he mouthed

the corporate media's misinformation explaining

to me that even though climate change

might be real, it couldn't possibly

have been brought about by the

actions of Man not realizing that the link

between global carbon-dioxide levels

and the behavior of mankind since

the beginning of the industrial

revolution are a certain as the fact

that the ice-caps are melting.

A few days later, I was talking to another

man in his forties, liberal, and well informed

who mouthed the media's liturgy in some detail

about how America has to guard

against more terrorists attacks

not thinking about the fact that

American soil hasn't seen a terrorist

attack in almost thirteen years.

As you leave the fog

that is the mass-media enculturation

of American society,

You begin to see how pervasive

and often misleading the institutions

of our culture have become.

The more you become aware of

the actual state of the world, three things

become resoundingly apparent---

First, virtually all of our mass-media

marches in lockstep with the desires

and goals of American

corporations, military and government.

They want you scared, obedient, and feeling

as though you're dependent on them.

Second, our culture has trained millions

upon millions of people to be afraid

of everything from the cause

of their own daily aches and pains,

to the beliefs and goals of people

in other countries, to the motivations

and personalities of their own

next door neighbors.

And finally, you become

more and more conscious

of how unimpaired by fear your

journey through life can be.

After awhile, you discover you don't even

need to be afraid of the institutions,

that are trying to control us,

because when you lie as much as

they do to as many people as they do,

you become increasingly incapable

of recognizing what's real

and acting in your own best interests

until the day the truth walks up to you

and smacks you upside the head,

which explains our ruling classes

inept responses so far

to global warming, doesn't it...

Dewey Dirks

Gargoyles

Gargoyles

Fears, regrets, lost hopes,

failures and smashed dreams

can chase you, chase you

in the shadows until

they catch you like a disease.

Building insidious inner demons,

they try to overwhelm you,

put blinders on your eyes,

tell you that you have

no freedom of choice,

tell you that all the world

is forsaken and made of pain.

Each time they win a battle,

they get a little stronger

If they win too many times,

they'll bind you with fear

and suffocate you with ignorance

trying to snuff your life spark out.

Each time you rise

to meet a new day,

you win the prize

of one more chance at life.

As you face the day,

with every choice you make

to believe in yourself

in spite of them, you win.

Each time you embrace them

teaching them of compassion

you win against them.

Each time you stand up to them

all or alone in the darker

alleys of your mind,

you win a battle with them.

If you win enough battles

by believing in your own magic

they'll transform

into peculiar allies---

You'll learn from them

to have even greater

empathy and compassion.

They'll become gargoyles

who protect you

with an amour of scars

that they've created,

guarding you against

any new strife you chance to face

in the long years ahead.

I've fought many of them

many times over the years

and I have many scars

because of it.

But my gargoyles have learned

respect for my spirit,

because I know in each place

they pierced me in times past,

in the white of my scars

shines the light of the sun,

and moon, and stars.

Dewey Dirks

On The Front Porch Swing

On The Front Porch Swing

Hello humans, I'm a bacteria

on your front poach swing.

I was born long ago

thousands of miles west of here

high upon the leaves

of a tall palm tree

on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

There, I lived in many different colonies

of bacteria on tiny specks of dust

until the dirt and my colony

were swept up into the clouds

by a windstorm passing

over the Pacific ocean.

I was separated from my colony

and lived with my daughter cells

for many months in water droplets

far up in the white and gray clouds.

Later, I was dropped in a water droplet

as part of a August rainstorm

onto your porch where I bounced

in high speed splashing water onto your swing.

My life cycle is special and because of the way

I divide into two daughter cells, I'm essentially

immortal when my lifespan

is considered by human standards.

I speak to my cousin bacteria

by use of chemicals,

and you can consider me multilingual

because I can speak to many species

of bacteria besides just my own.

I can also transfer parts of my DNA

to other bacteria without reproducing

and viruses can transfer DNA to me as well.

My kind has lived on Earth for billions of years.

My personal lineage dates to long before

humans walked the Earth.

My kind is among the most common

forms of life on the planet.

For every human alive

there live billions upon billions of bacteria.

In myself and my kind, Mother Earth finds

continuity of life and diversity of DNA

even through the mass extinctions that

periodically plague larger forms of life.

Cousins of mine inhabit Mother Earth

high up into the sky

and deep into the ground.

We live in almost every other form

of plant and animal on the planet

all of whom could not live long

without the help of my kind.

I'll live many more years

upon your front porch swing

in a colony with my daughters

unknown and unseen

by your cumbersome human gaze

and fleeting human attention.

I've seen many forms of life come and go.

I've talked to scores of different species

Oh! The stories I could tell,

and the wisdom of Earths long ages

I could give you if only humans

had the ears and the hearts

to hear my secret melodies.

Listen now and I'll sing to you

songs of ten-thousand million lives,

of friendship and hardship,

of love and life and death,

of great alliances and deep mystery,

of seeking souls and of consummation,

spanning the long, long eons,

and carried out on vast stages.

Dewey Dirks

Drifters Faith and Saving Yourself

Drifters Faith

We each have within us

a natural will find what's true

and they say, my friend,

that while the seeker looks

for the water, the water looks

for the seeker in return.

You know, some people

are made in such a way

to have faith

that never shakes,

while others have

a drifters faith

that is built to forever

be on the move

questioning everything.

Everyone we happen across,

everything we each do every day,

all the things we feel, see and say,

and everything

we don't see, feel or say

are as so many miracles

in a vast ocean

of unlikely chance and happenstance

where probability dances near or distant

within the sea of endless possibility.

If you want to find

miracles happening right now

you have only to feel

your own breathing

and you have to look no farther

than the moon and stars at night

and the sun and clouds each day.

We each dance through our lives

to a grand symphony sung

with empty spaces and silence

and never set to paper.

Your own heartbeat keeps time

with the beat.

Search outward and see yourself.

Search inward

and see the Universe looking back.

I'll keep my drifters faith

traveling on day by day renewed.

I've found more

than I ever thought possible

and I've learned that just as

we each are alive in the world,

we all live in a world that is alive.

Dewey Dirks

Saving Yourself

There is only one person

who can save you

and that is yourself.

The only things you need

to save yourself from

are your own

fear and prejudice.

You overcome your

fears and prejudice

by learning to

care for yourself

as Mother Earth

cares for you.

When you learn

to have compassion

for your own shortcomings,

you also learn to have

compassion for the shortcomings

in everyone else

and all the world as well.

As your fears and prejudice

begin to subside

you'll become ever more aware

of many things that

you've been doing right all this time

and many things

that life has been doing for years

to help you along.

A lack of compassion for others

is a sure indication

of a lack of compassion

for yourself.

If you want to do your part

to save the world

you need only to set yourself right

after that everything

will fall into place.

Lighting the bright flames

of compassion in yourself

goes far in lighting

the flames of compassion

in all whom

you come into contact with.

In the fullness of time, you'll find

the world doesn't need saving

so much as it needs

to be loved.

Likewise, you'll come to find

that you don't need saving either.

What you need is to love

and to be loved.

Dewey Dirks

Ignorance, Knowledge and Wisdom

Ignorance, Knowledge and Wisdom

Ignorance is seeing

in the world

only what your culture

and education

tell you to see.

Knowledge and growth

mean learning to look

past the blinders of your

culture and education,

to find problems

in the world

and then striving

to set them right.

Wisdom is seeing

with clarity all

of Mankind’s problems

and still finding

us beautiful.

Dewey Dirks