Dazzling day in New York City
Vendor fry sweet and salty and fatty
      mainly fatty
            in the nostrils
                  at Walker and Centre
As a third of a planet away
      bullets with aerodynamics crafted no less thoughtfully
            than the applied physics of an interplanetary probe
Dart through human flesh
      in our service,
            in the service by proxy of our collective hunger.
Just now we are concerned with receiving the
      correct change
In time to beat the light.

The deceptive seriality of thought
      makes, of Being's Unity,
            tiles—
Tiles just as easily arbitrarily clumped and hawked
      and resold to the shallow mind
            as cared for or loved
Or ignored.

Return always to the Questions.
Rather than Contentment, you should have Questions
About how things, people, and events come to Be
      as they are—
About your role in this Being.

Although it is fashionable to be aghast at personal, particular
      Crime,
Through the deceptive seriality of thought
      you appear not to be a quantum of drive
            of distant Mass Avarice.
Yet your own greed
      sorrow
            hunger
                  exploitiveness
Are indeed the storied microchaotic flip of a butterfly's wing
      that powers, through the collective,
Hurricane after hurricane of mass assault
      on peoples, planet, creatures
            and climes
That your individual glance might capture
      or be captured by
            a prettier tile
                  or tiles
                        or clumps of tiles
Or stories or rumors of the same.

So return always to the Questions
When, through the fragmentation of serial thought,
      your head returns to its nod of Contentment:

There appear to be problems, suffering
      in the world—
            are there?
If problems and suffering exist in the world, do they arise
      from natural calamity or from the violence,
            avarice,
                  competitiveness,
                        of people?
To the extent that people cause problems and suffering,
      why? How?
How are you related to these events and conditions?
What classes of seeming high activism and action to end suffering
      are merely engines for the production of yet more stories
            to be treasured
                  in our sparkly treasuries
                        of tiles
                              produced of, by, and for
                                    the deceptive seriality of thought?
Can we choose to Be otherwise?
Can there be teaching, nurturance, toward this emancipation,
      that is not merely
            the distribution or redistribution
                  to the few capable of holding out their hands
Of a few additional sparkly tiles
      of contentment
            and self-congratulation?

Return always to the Questions:
Is it a mirage,
      a pretty picture,
            another sparkly tile,
                  that through the same grid by which operates
                        Mass Avarice,
                              the network through which we individually power
                                    war,
                                          planetary destruction,
                                                mass suffering,
                                                      Sorrow,
We might instead power
      through the microdrive of individual Understanding
            an equilibrium
                  that does not depend on oblivious, self-delusive contentment
                        and inattention
                              enabled and maintained
                                    by the deceptive seriality of thought?