The Crazy Bird -- Revisited

As my faithful readers know, I experienced a break with reality in January, 1973.

On the one hand, I might say that I spent three days in a kind of hell. On the other hand I have to say that it is an experience I deeply treasure because, although I said that it was a “break with reality”, in a very real sense, it was also a break into reality.

The fact is, most people have a fragile grasp on reality and that is why most of us are so easily manipulated by the Bankers of Illusion (i.e. media, adverts, political and religious charlatans, et. al.).

The reason that most of us have a fragile grasp on reality is that we tend to base our identity on what I might call our “every-day mind”, as if it were the core of our being – which it is most certainly not! This is what lies behind the asceticisms and mind-breaking techniques found in most religions with contemplative traditions, whose purpose is to enable us to learn that which is humanly possible of Reality.

Unfortunately, it is also what which religious charlatans of every stripe and outright totalitarians exploit in order to break and then control people.

What is the core of our being? Some questions cannot be answered directly and this is one of them. The answer(s) are found in the context of what one is as a total human being. However, I will go so far as to say that I refer to the core of our being when I speak of our “common humanity”.

All that said, some of which perhaps I had best left unsaid, most of my poetry since then refers in one way or another to that experience. The song poem which follows is one of them and also is my signature.

I'm just a crazy bird, I have a hard time touching down,

It's hard for me to keep my feet there on the ground.

It's hard to find me with the unaided, naked eye

When I'm singing my songs up in the sky!

But, that I'm up there – could there ever be any doubt?

Where ever you go down there below

You hear some poor boy in his agony shout:



CRAZY BIRD! O, CRAZY BIRD!


Won't you sing your song for me?

I'm just a poor boy headed for eternity...

I know I said eternity – I might just have meant something else!

This earth can be a heaven – this earth can be a hell!





I'm just a crazy bird, I sing about the things I love the best:

The leafy trees, the windy breeze. the eggs down there in my nest!

I try so hard to sing it all at once, God knows how hard I try!

To sing of all that lives and loves and loves and grows and dies!

When you walk through the fields all on a summer day

And the rye and wheat is standing, nodding,

Golden white in the summer heat:



CRAZY BIRD! O, CRAZY BIRD!


Won't you sing your song for me?

I'm just a poor boy headed for eternity...

I know I said eternity – I might just have meant something else!

This earth can be a heaven – this earth can be a hell!




[On the first level, “crazy bird” refers to the song of an actual bird, whose song gave me some solace that winter afternoon so long ago. For years, I thought it was a meadow lark, but it must have been a European blackbird. Perhaps I should exercise my poetic license and say it was both and neither of them – at the same time!]