As a post-Jungian shamanic practitioner, with enormous respect for Jung's contribution, I feel that, even when people think they are on board with (whatever you want to call it) the new "woke" culture, if they haven't done their shadow work, it's not going to be revolutionary enough or deep enough, so this is a poem from the perspective of one of many of the collective shadows of our time.

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I'm a veteran
Of WW3

I've got the scars and the stories
To prove it

And I'm signing up
For another tour

That is to say
My soul signs me up

Even though I haven't
Recovered from the last

I limp I have night sweats
I wake up gasping for air

I bought myself a cane
With the head of a dragon

Years ago like
Taking out an insurance policy

I use it when I want respect
If someone lets the door close

Because they didn't see me behind them
I can use it as a wedge

Against closure on my
Next entrance or exit

I'm what an elder looks like
I'm covered with language

Anti-war slogans
Old tattoos of extinct animals

Don't get me started
Don't push me

Don't mess with me
If you don't want to be judged

Don't invite me to the party
And if you do invite me

Don't pretend we're old friends
I'm your shadow

I'll tell the truth about what we did
To the planet in the name of progress

And science, race, democracy
Religion, commerce

Higher education
Law and order the free market

The free world
The expanding universe

I'm a jay-walker
A bullshit stalker

I'll cut across your logic
I'll squat on your private property

I won't ask for your opinion
I can see what you think

It's in what you just said
And what you're going to say

It's written all over the world
And by the way

If there is a WW4 it'll be
Against our legacy

Authors Website: https://garylindorff.wordpress.com

Authors Bio:

Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of five nonfiction books, three collections of poetry, "Children to the Mountain", "The Last recurrent Dream" (Two Plum Press), "Conversations with Poetry (coauthored with Tom Cowan), and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music". Lindorff calls himself an activist poet, channeling his activism through poetic voice. He also writes with other voices in other poetic styles: ecstatic, experimental and performance and a new genre, sand-blasted poems where he randomly picks sentence fragments from books drawn from his library, lists them, divides them into stanzas and looks for patterns. Sand-blasted poems are meant to be performed aloud with musical accompaniment.


He is a practicing dream worker(with a strong, Jungian background) and a shamanic practitioner. His shamanic work is continually deepening his partnership with the land. This work can assume many forms, solo and communal, among them: prayer, vision questing, ritual sweating, and sharing stories by the fire. He is a born-pacifist and attempts to walk the path of non-violence believing that no war is necessary or inevitable.