Juniper
What color is juniper at this time of year?
A question that came out of the blue into my mind’s ear
I looked it up on the internet and found it rather gray
Isn’t it green all year round no matter the day?
Juniper has that smell, you know the one, the one I forgot
It has become just a word and an image, that’s our lot
Memories disjointed from any tangible reality
We live in prefab houses surrounded by plastic banality
I downloaded a juniper jpeg from the internet
Changed the color to suit my mood in a photoshop applet
And now juniper is whatever color I decide it should be
Gray on boring days, lively pink or red when I am happy and free
And blue or dark brown black and beige when I am sad
Who cares what the color of juniper is, the world’s gone mad
It used to be that nature was outside the windows
Now we can view it through Google and Microsoft Windows
See how horrid it all is? Even rhyme has been tainted
Corrupted and deformed so that dull sounds are painted
On a wave-editor to play with like so many Frisbee throws
And so why are windows any different than Windows?
I want a real juniper not a jpeg pixilated imitation
I want to smell the scent and grasp the texture, I want elation
I want real nature full of wild animals ready to eat me
Not the sequestered preserved national park variety
Oh, what use is it to get angry and excited, I should just chill
Play some virtual solitaire, I have a couple of hours to kill
And while I am at it, I should ask myself a query
It is a beautiful spring day outside, I have no place to hurry
The sun is warm and kind, I am in full bloom of my strength
I have the ocean almost at my arm’s length
The forests are just an hour away
The afternoon is lazy, and yet long is the day
So why am I sitting at a computer typing this poem up
Wouldn’t my love of reality be better served by a nap…
By the beach or beneath a juniper canopy full of buzzing motion
Next to some underbrush not far from some living commotion
Within a walk of some wet, mountain stream
With nostrils full of mountain clean air, half in a dream
Far from the madding crowd of internet proxy servers
And Starbucks coffee shops, and bureaucratic file wavers
Far from the electrical feed of the sprawling concrete city
And the traffic choked cars on the roads all dirty and gritty
Far from the people with their endless PowerPoint presentations
Of the wonders of nature from all the Earth’s forgotten nations
Far from the emails and the video feed from CNN and Fox
And the need for car keys and car alarms and automatic locks
Far from the sound of a can being opened and the fizz of pop
Oh, why can’t it all just stop, stop, stop, stop…
What color is juniper at this time of year?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I have forgotten, I fear, I fear
That without the internet I’d have been unable to recall
My memories are fading the net has erected a wall
A surrogate mind for me to rely on, to question, to ask
What color is juniper, magenta or life, what is my current task?
Tell me what to do, oh great God of the Overmind
Give me purpose, for I have lost mine and can no longer find
In my mind even the remnants of nature and existence
As it used to be, before we’ve given up all resistance
To the plastic era of our time, to the pixels and bandwidth and time
For I fear that I know what color juniper is at this time of year.
It is the color of thought crime.
March 18, 2010 – Konrad Tademar
Good poem. Thank you.