March 30 2011

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, the attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and peculiarities and by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone implicit in the culture of progress and technique impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct every culture that disappears diminishes a possibility of life.

-Octavio Paz (1967)

To be dirt is my desire

To be dirt is my desire
To give back to my provider
not to be burned to ashes by fire
or locked in a case of cement and wire

I want to give this body its ultimate wish
to be served up as food on a worms dinner dish

I'll give this body to the roots of plants
who provided theirs for me while mine could still dance

For my body to lay lifeless should incur no expense
I wont need a receipt, paper or plastic for this.

Some would call this foreign or strange
but I see it happening everyday
As dried leaves let go of their limbs
and fall to the ground to be shelter for ants
So too does my dry skin fall
providing minuscule nutrients for the tiny life in the soil

Please don't be scared of my dead body
Focus on the beauty it provides to all that surrounds me

To be dirt is my desire
To give back to my provider