Energy is bubbling up,
jumping out of me like the water at the top of the fountain
in the Blue Bottle courtyard.
Pretend you are in Spain
or somewhere along the Mediterranean.
Looks like it
Sounds like it
White noise enveloping your senses
So you cannot hear what people say
Because you don’t want to hear it
Because it’s not worth it
To wake up from your daydreaming.

Your senses pulled away from the water jumping out of the fountain
in the Blue Bottle courtyard.
This is not Spain
and nowhere along the Mediterranean.
This is the Valley
where people speak buzz when they mean business.
Flowery talk to enchant investors into believing 
that you really want to change the world,
that you really are the one to disrupt the world as we know it
and make you both stinking rich
because this is the language you breathe in and out all day,
the currency you float in from early in the morning til late at night.

He’s famous because he’s rich,
and he’s also disrupted the world as we know it.
And did this make the world a better place, you ask.
Depends on who you ask,
and if better means 2 more hoodied 1 percenters
roaming around in the wild wild west 
of the valley of the heart’s delight,
stomping on fertile ground,
crushing memories of golden apricots,
stomping their way to the top,
leaving a wasteland behind,
compressed soil,
no way to breathe or break through.


Is this what you wanted, you ask,
what were your dreams when the fountain tried to reach you,
did you even listen,
did you ever listen to anything or anybody?
I feel sorry for your lack of proper education.
You plodded your way through prestigious private places, 
and dribbled your disruptive dreams on paper napkins.
You look exactly like what they were looking for
and talk as if you could read their minds.
They don’t want to be surprised,
they want to be confirmed.

Quick, find your way back to the Blue Bottle courtyard,
get closer to the fountain, squint your eyes!
Can you see the water jump into the sunshine,
can you hear it whisper?
Trust the sound,
it will be here tomorrow and the day after 
if you don’t drown it out 
with your stomping and buzzing.
Ask yourself from time to time
what kind of world you want to wake up in.

19 Oct This entry was published on October 19, 2023 at 12:44 pm. It’s filed under A poem a day..., ENGLISH ENTRIES, Silicon Valley at its best and tagged Bay Area, mindfulness, Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, Valley of Heart's Delight, water. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.