cycle – The Halfwit Writer

Even You

I always wanted the best for you
that’s kind of why I wished you knew
what you wanted in life, mostly
and, you know, kind of who you’d like to be
maybe one or two simple goals
a job, career — a commitment-phobe
is what I got instead
with stress and anxiety round
his balding head, and don’t get me started
on the gluten allergy

okay, I’ll try not to make it personal –

as a bodhisattva, with bodhichitta
I now pray
for each and every being to be happy
each and every day
for all suffering to be gone
for even you to get your fill
for not one enemy I claim
not one ounce of ill will remains

I hope you’re happy on your path
I hope you’re surrounded with love and laughs
I haven’t left a bit of wrath
to blame anything on you
even when I wanted to
instead I saw the good you grew
in me and many others

despite the bumpy, gritty roads
calves in ditches and girl scout notes
the ups and downs and round and rounds
and endless suffering,
I’d choose it all again —
if I don’t escape this life
we’re bound to repeat that goddam strife
because we couldn’t close the loop
our destiny will be to regroup

unless one of us is liberated,
one of us is freed
although I wish it would be you
I must know it will be me

if what I see in you,
is merely a mirror of myself
a bloody tormented soul
I’ve now left upon the shelf
a chrysalis ripped apart
the snakeskin that I shed
unlike losing hair upon your head,
intentional,
even you remember intention
maybe you even have it now

I believe we all can change

I’m doing it somehow

all beings will destroy delusions
all virtue will ensue
all beings become Buddhas

even me
even you

Elemental Insanity

I am of the earth

and I do not trust the water

It laps my shore
I lick it up, moistened
soft and damp
left yearning
unoiled lamp
left polished
but wanting wear

I’m earthen
–yet rarely feet have trodden here
while I walk the substrate bare-
footed, rare to see another
with the will to exhaust
such karma there–
upon my earth
travellers now fear
such dirt
and toxins leached have
run amuck
now gotten stuck
upon my shores
where you wish to lap me up

I do not trust
I will not harm the beings near
and you, my dear

I stretch my eye to the edge of
the horizon — trying to find where
water ends and sky begins
unaware I’m standing in
that ether now
my waist deep wading
transcends liminal space
and I no longer seek
to stretch my sightless senses far
but rather remain to feel
the space around

I look up and down and see that
in the sky, reflected back,
a different sea, a cloud
soaring condensation
ready to transform at any
moment, dark and massive
holding deceptive weight
threatening to rise the tides
and drown us all

I don’t trust the water

— — — — —

I am of the air

I do not trust the fire

I love it, though,
and how alluring
it dances and matches
my rhymic fancies
alighting neither
here nor there

like spark to ash
rising into the night
up to the stars –suddenly
dying, vanishing and descending
silently — crying and proclaiming
that life’s not fair

the fire burns me up
its heat draws me in
as if an answer
to the ice around my heart
as if it could possibly melt
lifetimes of anger
turned sorrow to rock
how I wished the fiery
heat-of-passion-
spawned aggression
was the answer
crystal clear —
yet the delusion’s not
so before I’m eaten up
I make like a deer
and run

I do not trust the fire

— — — — —

I am of the light

I do not trust the space
my depth perception’s off
my conception’s out of place
I do not trust the time
the way it moves so slow
to the uncomprehending mind
that dims my afterglow

I don’t like the space between us
as messages get lost, and
when you’re seeing me as separate
with problems you are fraught
I see emptiness before me
yet mistakenly, I know
naming ordinary appearance
where boundless magic grows

I do not like refraction
how it contaminates my rays
I am pure light
I feel it
yet space eliminates & constrains —
though I am the brilliant being

I don’t trust the space

— — — — —

I am of deep ignorance

or else I would escape
this elemental game —
this cyclical existence
in which I’m continuously betrayed
by each and all delusions
that gather round my head
and constrict my heart’s pace so
I can barely catch my breath
it’s time to let this go
into the water I will drown them
& with the current
let them flow