I have promised patience
in exchange for a kingdom of happiness
I have promised patience
in exchange for an appearance of love
I have promised patience
in exchange for unattached enjoyments
I have promised patience
for you, so we can complete the path together
So I wait, like a princess in her tower
with patience, my Buddha nature I empower
I promised patience, and I wait for you
with faith unwavering, my heart is true.
Why do you torture me?
Does your eye boast truth
or do mine bear fiction?
I write lies to soothe me to sleep
a samsaric slumber steeped in tales of attachment,
happiness served on a silver platter
just a taste and, absent of addiction,
I’ll be satisfied — just your touch
and I’ll not want more — a lie
like salt water quenching thirst —
only thirstier I grow for
— just your tongue lending sweet
nothings to an indiscriminate ear
incorrectly discriminating — just your
taste to tease unintentional senses
dependent upon such sour
senseless ignorance dependent upon
countless causes, rebirths, misunderstood
and non-existent selfs — but maybe still,
it’s just your self that will satisfy this self
& somehow, still, we will escape samsara
— a lie of attachment, a joke, a wink
Is that what you mean to give,
when you torture me?
I lost your number
a long time ago
— right away
after the lock broke
it was clear
I couldn’t be trusted
how things have changed
and mistaken memory
makes you
bigger, then smaller than
you were, are
who are you now?
I wonder
I lost my privilege
to know
the you
grown in moments
now passed
I want to be
someone who loves you
with no demands
with no expectations
with no history of delusion
I want to be
the pure love always within you
yet still,
I cherish only myself
I want you to see me
I want you to love me
because of this
damned self-grasping
And then I laugh remembering
we is just a dream
I thought when I received, I would be grateful.
I wasn’t.
I thought to be pursued would be fun, a real romp.
It wasn’t.
I thought to be beheld as beautiful could give me confidence, know my beauty.
It didn’t.
I thought to be loved to could open my heart, make me love.
It couldn’t.
I thought when tested, I would pass.
I didn’t.
“We will only engage in pure spiritual practice if we have definitely understood that we have a precious human life and we have to use it now. We can die today. It’s possible.”
Gen-la Kunsang, Kadampa Podcast
I am in the tub
I am dissatisfied
this tub has taken me nowhere
I’ve been round this way before
it ended with suffering
slit wrists in the clawfoot
or just the bath water ran cold
It ended with suffering
and I wanted escape
from the tub
*
I can’t out-damn-spot my misery
I can’t wash away the pain
purification doesn’t exactly work that way —
unless we carefully imagine it does (in four steps)
but who has the mindfulness for that?
not I, as I search for meaning in this worthless pleasure
careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water
I transform this all-too-addictive
suffering through wisdom, and will
tuck this teaching
into the continuum as I tuck myself
into bed
careful not to slip as I stand and step
out of the tub
I am an ocean of wanting
I am discontent
How dissatisfied I feel
with samsara’s gifts
Prison-barred burdens’
more like it!
Now, I have the instructions
for escape
Yet I cling, I grasp
at less than straws
Mere suffering ensnares
it claws
I should let go, I think
I know
And still,
I let my desire grow
Dear Karmic Potential,
Are we meeting again?
Have we met before?
Your appearance undoes me
but when I search
I cannot find me at all
nor can I find you
It’s like you’re in a different city
— certainly not here
and yet your closeness lingers
as though you are still near
Suddenly I am all the days
you choose to ignore
and I am the grasping
and I am the craving once more
Still, I cannot but hope you
also feel my presence
maybe yearn for my embrace
begging time be brief ‘tween now
and next you’ll see my face
I pray it be this lifetime
I pray delusion-free
Yet if I have to wait another ten
rounds to serve with you, I will
Love wishes only happiness
so that is all I wish for you
I know it’s all wrong
if ever samsara feels right
but this I am certain of, also,
we can, we will escape
Why not tonight?
Love,
A past and future partner in (escaping) crime
The lid closed slowly —
it used to slam,
startling you
lots of loud noises
offended, scared you
one day, I saw
I had become a loud noise
now I’m quiet,
tamed and evenly tempered
my mind is trained,
practiced, wise
the very things you wished
by the very method you hated —
blessings.
I see the toilet seat
fall — slowly
silently
and wish blessings
upon you
still
Some things come
Some things go
At least that’s what
We think we know
Yet no thing can rise
And no thing can fall
For there is no out there
Mind is all
The Halfwit Writer