Category: Poetry

I

I wake from a dream
sweat pools around me
although
               just moments ago
I was cold
                   in

a basement… a  … funhouse
with a tilted floor… and
       I…  crawled
               in perpetual mental pain to a wall of mirrors
              toe-to-ceiling, reflecting
back at me, a hundred
                 topsy-turvy, curvy
                                               selves
not one I could identify as     me
    and yet all of them were
and were not         so I turned
    to run
                  and the reflective wall
appeared behind me –            now in front
and I cried
         loud enough to

startle myself back
          to a reality
     with a different feeling

later

now awake,              I carry a mirror upstairs
on my back
          like the cross
pretending I’m Christ
          like I’ve made
any kind of
            sacrifice
            and compared to what?

I place the mirror
          on the floor –
                  it’s taller than me
an expensive beauty
        broken frame and all
and staring through the glass
        seeing a version of
                            my hard eyes
I cannot help but recall
all the faults, the harm
I continue to perform,
           as if addicted to
such impure actions,
           as if, on a lower level, I believe
they’d bear the fruit
                  happiness

I know they won’t
       they can’t

I reach out to touch
the other me,
             as if she is outside my mind
and
           maybe because the frame is broken
I transcend

II

My hand melts through the glass
as if it was water pooling,
                   gently falling
         and re falling
I am still recalling
           my regret, which melts into reliance
as the drink pours,
             so slips away this
dirt, this grit, this sticky mind
      that clings to labels like
victim and judge and unkind
        stuck with thorny negativity
and unwell-wishes, murderous minds
         diminished to the doom they
longed to cause –
          I no longer seek
  to plants those seeds
            for I see they are
the very flaw in my design,
     my own suffering mind,
now and in infinite future lives,
                                        my pain

         if      I allow evil
               to remain

I step through the frame
       and my old world falls away
flipped upside down and landing
        right side up, upon my feet
destined to meet each opponent
when applied correctly
so I may kill the weeds
in the garden of
                happiness

         by mere name, or magic,
I am handed impeccable causes
                      and a spade
         of virtue, in a foggy field outside
     under the lavender twilight ceiling
peppered with twinkle-
         twinkle little stars
    a voice descends from the
peri   winkle night
and makes requests to me

                      to not
take this dream too seriously

   then
            oh!   how!    summer’s dawn
             blossoms to a
halcyon day,
          seasons that
             quickly come are
                                                              faster to go,
              oh! warning signs
cannot prevent karma’s ripening
              only remind us,
                               now! appreciate … ah! still –
                               winter’s here without delay
                               (no one believed me)

hardly harvest rose and went

well, I’ll still learn from cyclical existence
                                    (until I, too, forget
                      it should happen soon – as I )
at least enjoy the present,
                       this moment, now

before
           I feel it fade away
                                 (if I only I could
                       remember it somehow)

time has passed… how much?

    we cannot say as history’s been changed
and I’ve been trapped
                      prompted to play
      in the dirt
             burying effort
for another day

I could beg for pleasure  
      but it’s a little late
                        
as I fully believe
                   my senses
feeling               as the soil dampens
my now-dirty hands,
still neatly folded
                     dividing dirt,
               I’ve become the spade
just a tool
           in somebody else’s arsenal

so indeed, on knees, I pray
                    this meat body remain
                             only long enough
to attain
          swiftest enlightenment
in this life

(not too much to ask
with a Bodhisattva mind –
            if only I could be
that mind and see the emptiness
                         of me!)

for the suffering of many is great
and I am but one  
             one who can transform
the greatest suffering
             and the
             the happiest temporary mind

so let me be of use!

 let my grip loose on the solid self
       let me see the impermanence of man
             bathed in sorrow, in such sadness
                                as if he never had a plan
                                (you know who you are)

                           an appearance, a specter
the impermanence of all phenomena

I see this as I sew the seeds
       I never asked to receive –
  but I’m certainly not discarding
       until at least I’ve tried!

damn the fact I’ve never had
     a green thumb –
                   that’s what friends are for

It never occurs to me to
go back through the mirror
now my attention has
               got a new  mission
and my senses tell me
                      this is my reality

I rinse myself
 under water that falls from a tap
      I call mine
           walking with legs
      I hate
         but that I call mine
    living a life I hate
                 but I call mine
         it doesn’t occur to me to let go
so  I garden
         and I don’t let go
I was given a chance
         and I didn’t let go

I waited to be awoken
         instead of waking others
and I didn’t let go

         I insisted
    that I tried
                but I just tried to make it real

and the dream could not be made real
                         because   –
     compared to what?

I probably should have let go

              I listen, mistakenly,
                    to samsara’s music
touching my reflection
                                 and wondering

can I go through the mirror
                     again?

                     why try at all?

   what do I think I’ll find
             outside the prism of my
silly,
             silly
                                  mind?