Hermes Underground

.

Two women wearing traditional Korean dresses posed for pictures at Gyeongbokgung palace in central Seoul, South Korea: photo by Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse, 2 March 2016

Two crows scrapping over flotsam, down there in the gathering dark, making it impossible to forget

the sidewalk exchange earlier with the polite young black Witness who told me God is going to come down

and take everything away and lift everybody up and make everybody high I said

O looked down saw two mushrooms emerging at the base of a sycamore
we evolved from mushrooms, in an overlapping mosaic web of cells that wrapt and enclosed

us and is still with us, stealthy, always accumulating, holding things together, spreading 

and extending itself below the ground as the pervasive surface evil spreads above, salvific, hidden
savings account we didn't know we had, databank of species and responses, invasive, remedial, all
hail the reparative fungi

which protect and enclose us and creep and crawl around and beneath us every second

though we don't even know it, because we can't wake up, we think our databank has been depleted,

we can't stop or help thinking about their terrible elections, we're total wrecks, but we can still pretend
here on the hunted haunted expense of spirit in a waste of shame highway, the long bloody cruel

stupid refusal or omission of the requirement to become a human being road, the bait unreasonably swallowed

over and over, as though by one starving, then once taken in impossible to digest, but we can still pretend

 

to speak publically, even though we're pretty sure no one hears us, still we can turn, we can

slowly very slowly turn our heads on our broken necks
so that the onrushing blind shitmobiles appear at the edge of the trap 

created by the field of vision, warning us just in time turn around and study the life of fungi

we can turn, we can turn and live with fungi -- the sporedust is everywhere

around us, in the walls, permeating and coalescing, getting into the dry rot, its mother
the mass of interwoven filamentous maternal hyphae tangled underfoot and crawling
and climbing into over and through everything, here by the hunted haunted expense of spirit in a waste
of shame highway, in a sodden midden beneath the overarching 

redwood, thin small fingers inveigling their way into and sending forth the vegetative
portion of the thallus of the fungus blooming, still submerged in another body yet

the mycelium running three quarters of an inch in one day under the ground
the Hermes of the plant world, the winged messenger of sunken planet

worlds, those worlds over there near that fallen limb, under that dark branch, beneath those
bent boughs, as the rain comes down, the invisible dancing spores, the fungus, creating cell by cell
the worlds in which it expresses itself through us when we breathe it in, stir

it up, blow it round and round, unnoticeable to those in the great blind armoured shitmobiles, as they whoosh madly past

Anti-abortion protesters demonstrated at the Supreme Court in Washington, where the justices heard a major abortion case from Texas: photo by Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times, 2 March 2016

Fawzeyah Shalan, a Palestinian, held her son Mahmoud Shalan at his funeral near Ramallah.  He was killed by Israeli forces after allegedly trying to stab an Israeli soldier.: photo by Nasser Nasser/Associated Press, 2 March 2016
 

Migrants hold a baby as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos from Turkey. Europe has now offered Greece financial aid to ease the cost of caring for the migrants.: photo by Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse, 2 March 2016

Kiev’s subway staff waits for female passengers in order to offer them flowers ahead of International Women’s Day in Kiev, Ukraine: photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters, 2 March 2016



Kiev’s subway staff waits for female passengers in order to offer them flowers ahead of International Women’s Day in Kiev, Ukraine: photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters, 2 March 2016

"The descent beckons..." 

 

A woman reacts while walking among the ruins of damaged buildings following heavy fighting between government troops and Kurdish fighters in the Kurdish town of Cizre in southeastern Turkey, near the border with Syria and Iraq: photo by Yasin Akgul/AFP, 2 March 2016

A woman reacts while walking among the ruins of damaged buildings following heavy fighting between government troops and Kurdish fighters in the Kurdish town of Cizre in southeastern Turkey, near the border with Syria and Iraq: photo by Yasin Akgul/AFP, 2 March 2016

Blind and visually impaired Palestinian students walk down the stairs at a school, where they are taught English through song and music, in the West Bank city of Hebron: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 2 March 2016



Blind and visually impaired Palestinian students walk down the stairs at a school, where they are taught English through song and music, in the West Bank city of Hebron: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 2 March 2016

A boy jumps between sofas in his ruined house in Cizre, Turkey.  Turkish authorities scaled down a 24-hour curfew imposed on the mainly Kurdish town of Cizre in southeast Turkey, nearly three weeks after declaring the successful conclusion of military operations there: photo by Cagdas Erdogan via FT Photo Diary, 2 March 2016

A boy jumps between sofas in his ruined house in Cizre, Turkey.  Turkish authorities scaled down a 24-hour curfew imposed on the mainly Kurdish town of Cizre in southeast Turkey, nearly three weeks after declaring the successful conclusion of military operations there: photo by Cagdas Erdogan via FT Photo Diary, 2 March 2016

Demonstrators from Indian Youth Congress (IYC) burn an effigy of Indian education minister Smriti Irani during a protest march near the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Hundreds of activists gathered to protest and express solidarity for Rohith Vemula, a student of the University of Hyderabad who was found hanging at a hostel in January this year.: photo by Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters. 2 March 2016



Demonstrators from Indian Youth Congress (IYC) burn an effigy of Indian education minister Smriti Irani during a protest march near the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Hundreds of activists gathered to protest and express solidarity for Rohith Vemula, a student of the University of Hyderabad who was found hanging at a hostel in January this year.: photo by Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters. 2 March 2016

New Commander of Resolute Support forces and United States forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Army General John Nicholson, attends a change of command ceremony in Resolute Support headquarters in Kabul: photo by Rahmat Gul/AP, 2 March 2016

New Commander of Resolute Support forces and United States forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Army General John Nicholson, attends a change of command ceremony in Resolute Support headquarters in Kabul: photo by Rahmat Gul/AP, 2 March 2016

A security agent stands in between floors of the Great Hall of the People ahead of annual sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), in Beijing: photo by Damir Sagoli/Reuters, 2 March 2016



A security agent stands in between floors of the Great Hall of the People ahead of annual sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), in Beijing: photo by Damir Sagoli/Reuters, 2 March 2016
 

A security guard patrols at a construction site in front of Petronas Twin Towers, center, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: photo by Joshua Paul/AP,  2 March 2016



A security guard patrols at a construction site in front of Petronas Twin Towers, center, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: photo by Joshua Paul/AP,  2 March 2016

 along with all the other floating spore cells

Soyuz TMA-18M space capsule carrying the International Space Station (ISS) crew members prepares to land in a remote area outside the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan: photo by Krill Kudryavtsev/AP, 2 March 2016