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
(His last words)
I feel gooey inside
I mean more than usual
I think my insides are melting
something warm is happening in my heart
it’s making a bubble
something’s about to pop
this really doesn’t feel quite right
I think I’m rising from the inside out
the heat supposed to be external
but this is gutting me
tearing me apart
hot bit by bit expanding
and do you see this bulge here?
no! not my stomach!
hoo-hoo!!
don’t poke me at a time like this —
can’t you see I’m in pain?
oh! dire pain!
being wrenched apart
baked wrong side out
surely this isn’t in the directions —
can we trouble shoot?
something’s happening to my throat
the words aren’t
coming out good
no more
ooey gooey heart
hoo-hooo
Okay… so this isn’t the thirstiest. x.x but can you picture that it probably isn’t Mrs. Poppie Fresh Pillsbury Doughboy doing it for him. 😉
You might not need a tall glass of water, but perhaps a cold glass of milk and a hot, soft chocolate chip cookie would satisfy you.
Not fair!
I said I wouldn’t become
attached to you,
changing condition
yet, so much sorrow
fills minds that grasp
at the losing
a mistaken conception:
yes, it is the summer
that offers me joy
so easy to believe
when winter brings
us pain – in joints,
in frostbitten fingers
in the minds of
jealousy when our friends
flee to now-appreciated
tropical timeshares — now
no more summertime
to share
one dream ends
while we’re trapped
in another
romantic autumn’s
place will come, when
this dull and tiresome
sadness becomes boring
to my fitful, grasping mind
but now, I see only
a broken promise to myself
I wouldn’t become attached
I said
I must have failed
why else would I lay
blame with the season’s change
for my woe
written in 2013
Entice me with your words
pierce my walls with meanness
show me you have the power to break another person
yet you refuse.
Show me you have the willpower to stand up
and alone
have the ability to open your door
welcome a stranger
and trust they will not throttle you in your sleep.
Tease me with kisses and polite dialogue,
an intercouse of exchanged language
with kind innuendo but no
biting sting of
regretted words.
Demonstrate your strength
not in feats of power
but in exploits of courage,
the deed which you complete though
you know you’re licked before you start,
see it through.
Toss your speech with abandon
but not your ideas –
your ideals are by your heart
and you live not beside them
but by virtue of them
unto others
though they do not the same.
A vital man with an Achilles heel
I in turn choose not to sever,
a choice my own — as all my acts
are of my own volition.
For I have power too.
As you penetrate, I consume.
As you guffaw, I may also laugh.
As you devastate, I ruin.
As you toy, I play.
As you adore, I love.
I am passionate, above all else.
Prove you have a compulsion for life,
you choose endurance over death,
you have potential to be a
raft for those without
water-wings,
for my exigency for life
is almost extinguished.
Demonstrate a lust for adventure
that is comparable to my own
so we can rid ourselves
of this boredom, tedium,
this dullness, together.
You are a collaborator,
a fellow conspirator and colleague,
a fellow traveller on this quest,
upfront and honest,
sparing only of the sensitivity of others,
unless for a private laugh —
For laughter is god above all —
the ability to laugh at good and bad,
strong and weak,
not others, but ourselves,
in the dark and in the light,
a reason to go forth,
and conquer
not all,
but love.
Do not feel special because
I felt you so deeply —
I’m an artist
This morning, I wept for
a fallen tree, I had fallen for
over these summer months
Now it lays stretched, dead
over the creek bed, highest branches
brushing forest floor
ground eroded out from underneath
the roots
The artist’s curse is attachment
masked as lust, even love
but the object isn’t special just because
it’s the perception, the artist’s deception
that gives rise to conception
We may have loved this thing before
and here we are losing it, once more
Don’t be fooled
To be felt deeply
is no honour, because
an artist is a slut for feeling
And now you’re just a bore
Am I curious again?
Let me stay in the stage of discovering
Don’t let it end
Happiest I am dancing through the maze
Don’t let it end
I’m content being lost as long as I’m left here
Don’t let it end
In Samsara’s pleasure garden, no one wishes for
the end of the line
I’m satisfied to discover new suffering
Don’t let it end
The Halfwit Writer