the divide merging 2o/2o
by
tofer perkins*
“We are here to awaken to our illusion of separateness.” Fearless Soul, Thich Nhat Hanh
*The first half of the collection is available in The Road to Wisdom, the third issue of the Living Commons Collective Magazine
II. El camino a San Pedro de Atacama
Becoming familiar with my Spanish headspace once more is
My greeting a lost self, a lost language, a sometime homecoming
Of felt experience. The other side of midnight is
When all this happens. Una mezcla de sílabas
& una maravilla late entre los monótonos dentro el Valle de la Luna.
Déjame ver cómo va. Déjame ver cómo va.
Where will you go once the land is burned?
Oh, where will we go once the land yields no more?
Glass Shards in the Desert—
These glossy specks litter the dusty, cold desert floor.
I see them far away from the road.
It must be a thing there to shine as these arid copper, sun-drenched lands,
Blooming en el camino a San Pedro de Atacama.
& una maravilla late entre los monótonos dentro el Valle del Luna.
Déjame ver cómo va.
Where will you go once all the land is burned?
Oh, where will we go once this land yields no more?
Lo dejo en el aire, como siempre.
IV. Santiago, el Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino & Bellavista
The thing about communicating in more depth
Through a foreign language, at the heel of humility, is the mishearing
& the filling in of blanks–our minds are so good at this–the allowing of the prediction
Machinery of the mind, notoriously faulty, unimaginably wild.
El chamán en los andes originales hace cosas
Padres con los aves—el arte plumario—
Yet today’s commercial hyper-individualism can be synonymous with apathy,
Where raw capitalism is a violence.
We got caught today on the pacos’ side; the undesignated town crier howls:
“¡Pacos Culiaos!”
—& their gas spills out onto the sidewalk dining crowd. “Es una guerra,” Vicente says.
The staff quickly pull in the umbrellas, tables, & chairs while others shutter their fronts
With dinted, tagged metal. (here, the lines are not so clearly drawn.)
David charges,
“La libertad no vive en una estatua
Allá en Nueva York,
La libertad vive en tu interior
Circulando en chispas de sangre,
Enjaulada en tu cabeza
Y pisoteada por tus pies.”
& the people chant.
& I wonder, kissing Pachamama:
Where will we earthlings go once the oceans go silent & overtake land?
V. Valparaíso--Gassed & Hosed--Fire--Ka-Ka!!
All about is super dry.
Even regrown forests are wilted, browning.
It’s a tinderbox, una yesca, out here.
& the thick smoke from Australia’s fires is here.
No Christmas glow. No firefly night.
Heartbreaking as it is, this calamity,
The building of Planet Earth twists & contorts with geological time,
But now it transforms in human time, oh, children of the Earth.
Somos testigos to lost tree consciousness,
The longest living organisms on our Pachamama...
News Flash: the second hottest year ever recorded on Earth was in 2019.
No grand mobilization came together to mark the event.
I want to expose the hidden gas plumes, the volcanic combustible engines, all of it.
The many bored out of their skulls,
& they’ve forgotten their hearts, stilled in fear, &
Unaware they sold their minds to a slick conglomerate.
I wonder: Does everyone have to be a driver--& live so far away from everything else?
It’s expensive either way–physically damning, emotionally expensive,
intellectually astronomical…
A esa charla sobre contaminación, arte en edificios, cambio climático—
& las bellas artes reflejando on power, glory, & memory,
& la fuerza del Eros en la antigüedad y como reproducir la vida & la muerte....
&, I’m all wonders out there [from in here).
From her eyes,
It’s an all-out love affair with fire, Prometheus Unbound.
& yo recuerdo rooting two aspen trees in our front yard,
& they birthed many saplings, but weekly we mowed the youngsters down,
Each snap pained me each time the spinning blade gobbled one up. I looked
Underground to feel a living, breathing
Network flourishing, supporting our foundation, a Woodwideweb, the Woodwideweb.
I hug the mother tree, & by doing so I embrace the many.
I remember when you pretended to die, yes,
Transformation can look like that.
Gigantic granite boulders shape my hometown, carved out of the Wasatch Mountain,
& I yearn to be back on the land. To be near radical roots.
You can make somebody who’s not RE-rooting regularly do a lot of different things,
you know?
Where will we go once the land is barren?
Where will seeds root once the soil is gassed and hosed?
VI. Air Latam: ida y vuelta, full circle
& yet just as quickly, the salmon & quinoa dishes, the earthlings, los terrícolas,
& the ruby tomatoes in the sky fly along in a huge firestorm chunk of metal:
From the sky’s point of view, it’s always unearthly flying, whirring.
Weather obeys no borders.
Reaching the shore a land manifest with paranoiac greed
Where I smell fear everywhere I turn in Miami Dade Airport.
A culture of fear where our borders & checkpoints acknowledge
A country waiting for retribution. The writing is in the sky.
I just feel different, feel the fresh residue of being there & here,
Experiencing, exchanging in all of the energy from all earthlings, arte, de Todo.
Burnt out buildings, the burnt out buildings, the graffiti on the walls,
But here is (Not) my vibe? Did my homeland ever exist outside?
Future, past, present, where will you go once the air is unbreathable, water undrinkable?
QUOTE AS:
tofer Perkins. The Divide Merging 2o/2o. The Living Commons Collective Magazine. N.5, July 2026. p. 14-20
