to a friend i have long missed

where have you recluded, secluded?
perhaps escape, self imposed isolation 
banishment for pro tem, 
due the crushes of the world's vice,
its squeeze of human soul?

you must know of pristine places
accessible but difficult to reach with all their beauty
may as well be on mars rather than on this earth 
perhaps its there you've gone

given our fleshly limitations, including those barriers,
walls erected by vicious men, steel and trench
guns and dogs, bureaucracy and detention camps
barbed wire and starvation in every border crossing nation
is it possible you've dared to cross and reached your goal?

those pristine places on every hemisphere
those riches of candy jewels of this biosphere to the eye should be ours
we be human, born into this earth, inheritors, but kept at bay
by the jealous greed in the poison atmosphere

i hope you've made it there somehow

candy jewels to your eye, untasted but by few of human tongues,
all upon the earth our sphere of birth, everywhere exist 
their gleaming beams of light, i hope you might fully behold

most of us, we're stuck at jobs and imposed pursuits, 
forced by hunger pangs
those sweet jewels, we can only imagine,
hold in our sleep, our dreams, yet forever out of reach
due our weakness, harsh fallen, softened tortured state
cannot fully access, never will 

those candied gems may as well be outside our solar system
nature's treasures belong to us, but we can't ever have them now
our lives too short, temporal breaths and aspirations almost nil
death awaits at every bend, hostage held

another bomb went off in the world today 
made me want to rocket off, rid of this place

trapped as victims, 
we tame nature, create habitats with technology
most earth's teeming millions, most in poverty live 
escape is outside ourselves

so, my friend, like you I seek the peace of nature, 
himalayas perhaps, are where you've gone, 

frigid cold for me, not as easy to survive and so i rather seek
a dry desert, hostile place no doubt
cactus thorns, poison plants, animals that kill you, 
scorching heat, torrid barren, mammalian body is no match

just like bombs out of the sky, 
just like bullets, by surprise, 
not by reason or by rhyme, 
at any given time, nonetheless can kill you

this desert biome albeit deadly barren 
sports candied jeweled landscapes that the eyes bedazzle 
albeit in short order, will torment and kill you, 
but in the least, before i go, i'll view 
the colored sunset of her blazing, setting sun

there is peace of mind there that cannot die
escape is there from fellow mankind,
escape from myself
let the poison plants and animals kill me then