Posts Tagged Compassion
Lessons on Madness and Flow
Lessons on Madness and Flow
Rolling back, go gentle,
pray with the blackbirds
as they scatter to the soft
trees, trees bending graciously
with bright air, and remember
the leaves are moving for you,
so move with them and when
particles of evil come after you
fast and hard, duck down on a
slight bend and feel the energy
as yours, and if someone greets
you, smile at the beauty of being
there and remember those knives
from people who don’t know you
are false, and dig with integrity
to live as you wish, and this I tell
myself, each day, trying to be
the man I want to be someday.
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Lightly, Not Trespassing
This is my late submission for PAD Day 3. My dog ate the first one and that is why this is so late. The prompt for this day was to write a poem on something tentative.
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Lightly, Not Trespassing
Her ego, too large, but perhaps not,
might it be a sensitive soul,
needing defense, causing compassion,
and I’ve fallen in, or have I?
She talks of her fans. They love
her, cause her to be reticent in shar-
ing, about how close they get to her,
and I want to be one, a fan, close to her.
More of her takes me into deep, warm
areas, and I must hold back, not tell
her any truth about my desires, so I
watch her, shiver, downed by longing.
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Being Human, Occasionally
My mind
strives for meaty
pieces of love, stirring
strangled wails from empty airways
choked dead.
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The Birds Mock Me, But Harry Loves Me
Wandering madness catches me briefly
after I skip exercise, after I stress over
my lack of discipline, and the birds come around,
they mock me, but it’s not personal,
and the pigeons vibrate detestably, so I
send Harry through the sliding glass door, and
while he smiles, he makes a lazy but quick lunge
at the pigeons, causing me to wonder whether they
can take off quickly enough, but they plod like
C-130s and off they go, and I wonder, where do
they go with such sloppy bodies. My enjoyment
of Harry’s antics, his smiles and circling tail, his
wiggly glances, sideways, quizzing my sleepy stare,
my enjoyment chugs uphill, fights my shame,
and I stay right here with Harry,
for a moment.
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Right-Sizing Traps Part III
After the meeting, I shrink to the screamer.
My brain withers against a firm spiritual
admonition. “Who are you to claim
you know,” I choreograph psychotically and
I grip tightly and label this a reverse form
of pride, a pride where I buffer myself
in a pocket of air, claiming my knowledge
as being on a higher mountain top, knowing
I’ve never been to the mountain top, knowing
I’m inadequate to the test, knowing that I have
no clue, acting as if I give the clues, but
the screamer is the ass, and I must work
on not hating, knowing that the unknowing
are fine because I’m with them. My pride
must shrink and I must mix like water
allowing the silt of the meeting to settle,
vowing to be compassionate for all
regardless of the their states of knowing,
not hating myself for my comprehensive
lack of knowing, my fear of hell.
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Where Did My Friends Go?
I hide from my friends.
They circle like airplanes
in the fog of Pearl Harbor
battles and the radar
is fucked, so they’re
sharks, and I’m in
the tower, but they’ve
tossed me in the basement,
or I’ve tossed myself,
and I’m cargo like
destroyed Buddhas
rolling off runways
into dense thickets
of barbed wire from
camps where when
we’ve lost our purpose
we’re carted off to die,
and I feel my face,
screaming at the fear,
as I’m chewed up by a
G.E. engine, splatting
and splashing droplets
falling near my scattered
friends.
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Back Into
It’s a brand new day, a new job.
The waterfall is brilliant, but the chatters
are annoying the hell into me,
testing my patience with humanity,
but I’ve coached myself
to be compassionate,
so I let the voices commingle
with the tumbling water.
My brain starts to hurt.
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As if I Have a Right to Transform
I want to make people bounce up and down.
Who am I to seek such delight? The light gray
cements laugh at me. I told a joke and it didn’t
fly well, so I feel rather sheepish in front of the punks
and the 90%-tattoo-adorned hippy freak, but I feel
justified somehow in my attempt to brighten this
sullen day, as if I have a right to transform people’s
lives, as if I didn’t make up this landfill overwhelming
my brain with a desire to melt into dirty floor tiles,
sticking to the edges, slithering into that sewer
which keeps begging me to write a story that might
transform people’s lives, but after all, none of the
chuckleheads go to the sewer for illumination. There is
a man in suit and tie even though very few of us work
this day, as though it were not long after the apocalypse,
and we are stupid monkeys, and the gods jerk at our strings,
bellowing all the way in triumphant laughter at all of the
dead who never had a chance to transform much less
get loose from the monkey chains. And the silly bitty lady
J-walks, jiggling her tiny bag of popcorn, feeling delicious.
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Today with the Doctor
I sent her stuff from my hero,
for the example of the truth
of drunks – it’s more authentic
when coming from real drunks,
and I say, It’s always scary looking
at this side from that side – so many stay
on that side.
The elevator smells like fresh diaper.
My brain surfs the grainy side of the home folks art,
art that I wish I could do, especially the green door
with the three windows
reflecting the honest and scary
world, failingly attempting
to block the bad spirits.
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Sundays, Never Lived Right
Some lie about it, some are resistant,
but it seems that we all have it, this carcass
of spirit, so why do we struggle so hard,
fighting the unnatural cycles that come
every Sunday? And it’s every fucking
Sunday, regardless of preparation, how
largely we’ve slept, how consumed with glory
we are about our Saturday. Those who love
their jobs, if they’re honest, yes, they
get poisoned also, and if you look inside,
you’ll see the gray fog made of snakes
crawling in muscular choking motions,
and we act as though we’re fine, as though
church is the activity to save us from our
spiritual deserts, and in the afternoon,
we clean and tighten the yard, we stay
slick, but we know that the only valuable time
spent was in maybe the half hour when we collected
dead grass, dead leaves, and celebrated that
idea that somehow, we’ve survived another week
despite our keen awareness of all the death cycles
around us, we fight knowing that our struggle
is against the real forces, we think we’re winning,
but we do nothing to value this gift of life until
we’re dying, not regretting the Sunday services we’re
soon to be missing, having no sorrow over the ugliness
of our yards that we can’t maintain as we disintegrate,
not knowing why our family walks around with holes
where our spirits should be traveling, should be sealing
with bundles of infinity, with terminal, unending organs
filled with love.
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