skeletal enlightenment [and] stealing tranquility

skeletal enlightenment 

~

I'm building some sort of castle, now, 
with smoke and food and 
maybe some resilient bones if 
I exert myself 
carefully. 

I take this pill that's supposed to put me off 
of drinking -- and you can get nicotine 
gum just for 
mentioning 
a song. 

plus, panhandling. 
plus, collecting cans. 
Abstinence plays as 
fast as the Dharma 
but the wet meaty insides 
of your lifeforce's carriage 
will provide what strength 
its conditions inspire. 

go. 

the birds are talking and 
the night is warm and 
those shadows of people moving 
on another planet, somewhere--
that caravan of fragility. 
so many bones. 




**** 
stealing tranquility 

~ 

these perfectly useless trees more like 
giant weed/houseplants 
cut out of the ground earth like 
predators -- a dignified bodhi tree 
by any standards, or a car-thief with 
a wise conscience. 

this generous and graceful place 
sleeping in the bankruptcy of 
its anonymous former tenants. 

dragon lizard coiled up in 
the warm security of its 
girth & power. 

life can become terrifyingly tedious 
and empty and alienating 
and far, far worse. 
life will force you to consider 
death. 

these perfectly useless trees more like 
giant weed/houseplants. 
there's too much equanimity, here, 
take it. 




**** 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Various Appointments (to be completed, soonish)

ONE  At night, he'd lay a plastic tarp in a wooded area near the edge of the city he relied upon, a certain modicum of gratitude in the ritual. He'd remove the comforter from the large leaf-bag, unroll it, shake it, lay it upon the tarp. He'd take some default note of the temperature--typically cold--and provoke a small memory of endurance, push against the unkindness of his situation. It was all but permanently bad, hardly more than an accumulation of rudeness and inhospitability that consumed the energy and good will that wagered against it. He'd lay a backpack with a few books and like supplies and everyday needs such as a toothbrush at the head of the blanket and remove his coat and sweater and fold them into a pillow and set the bundle atop the backpack. The hard air running slow and steady through everything. And on nights when he was sober enough to, he'd remove his shoes, socks, pants, shirt, and set these somewhere dry enough, close enough, for the morning....
Read more

the respiratory habits of fish

if there's some habit, vitamin, pharmaceutical that corrects short attention spans I haven't seen it.  all day long my eyes drown in the hapless, abject conformity of turdsuckers overpiling with words and not a flare of meaning or  whit discernible,  their voices trapped in some world before language: immigrants of this unwanted country this timeline all futures would beg to be spared from-- the leaves and the rocks and the wind and what else move in the space of the expanding universe and I try  to meditate on the respiratory habits of fish: those whose ancestors navigated, bred  endured trials century and millennia old, hungry, thinking creatures with a perception older than dinosaurs, citizens of a world no name has been provided.  **** 
Read more

glass [and] razorblades

 glass ~ even the routinely-poor are afforded  some small mercies and graces --  earlier, today, for instance  a discreet 3-panel  animation of a woman  smoking in close-up  of narrowing proximity  rolled into my periphery of  a sudden at the weedstore  and, tonight, outside the church  where my eyes close to some rest:  the fierce stone of the architecture  spraying indismissibly into  the moment...  ...when counselors,  nurses,  clerks, interviewers,  doctors, various staff  ask me why I consume  alcohol to the degree I do,  this is what I can't remember  or manage  to tell them, this  perpetual, permanent  withering, something abundant yet  feeble in its abundance, the glass  before something else  that always  was.  ****  razorblades  ~ stuff this into your brain:  there's this overflowing pile  of billions and more...
Read more