People Don’t Change

People don’t change.
They have always been kind,
Helpful to a stranger;
Sharing food and water,
Smiling at the neighborhood children.
We know they’ve been that way
Since ancient times:
In a word, considerate.

People don’t change,
Until they feel threatened.
Then, they will rip your face off.
Yes, they will cheer and jeer
While you are being
Slowly
Turned on the spit.
And they are so easily threatened.

Yet, even while watching you roast,
They will share their snacks.
They will stop
To lift a toddler up so that she can get a better look.
The good people
And the bad people
Are mostly the same people,
Under different conditions.
Kindness and cruelty
Depend only on frames of reference in a world
Where true virtue,
Absolute virtue,
Is so rare,
Perhaps absent.

People don’t change.
They take offense at the slightest encouragement;
Don’t stop and think;
Can’t resist momentum,
Like those bicyclists who don’t really want to knock anyone down.
The inability to resist momentum is probably the Original Sin:
What is a mob but people with momentum?

People are improved by culture,
But culture can be dropped
Instantaneously,
Like a harlot’s gown—
Which is all it is.
People don’t change.
Evolution moves too slowly for that.
So don’t expect too much.
Tread carefully,
Don’t be tempted to hate,
And be wary.
You are forever a stranger.

Something About Trees

There’s something reassuring about trees.
Look up at the branches—
Always eloquent,
Always inching forward,
Reaching for the light.
Think of the innumerable lives that trees harbor
And nourish;
The winters they pass through,
Naked.
Trees endure
More successfully than ourselves,
Though they eat only air
And drink only water.

They were home to our earliest ancestors.
Later, villagers constructed huts from them,
Traders hammered out boats,
Pioneers built cabins,
Furniture, fences—
Trees still smell of home.

There’s something reassuring about trees.
They call children to play,
As children must;
They call old folks to reflect,
As old folks should.
They encourage everything
To find its proper place
And breathe.
They leave room for others.
They even purify our air.
Like the sun and the rain,
Trees refrain from judgment.
You can trust a tree.

There’s something reassuring about trees:
Deep in the infested city,
Humanizing the concrete,
Calming the populace;
Their movements too slow to perceive.
A tree will never sneak up on you,
And you can never sneak up on a tree—
Nothing surprises them!
Yet they catch us off-guard,
Releasing bold new colors every fashion season.

There’s something reassuring about trees.
They are never agitated.
Angels might go to war, but not trees.
No matter how often we strike them,
They never hold grudges—
As far as we know.

What kind of tree would you be?
Any kind.

Why?

Persistence is not justification;
Therefore, survival counts for nothing,
And reproduction also counts for nothing,
Contributes nothing,
But only begs the question:
Why?
What is a meaningful life?
What is thriving?

The answer is simple, but not logical:
Connection—
Positive, shared experience.
The reality of us alone,
Of me and you,
Of good will
Is solid.

A smile,
A nod,
A wave,
A bow—
Sparks of recognition
That ricochet from heart to heart
Are the cherries that top off our days.

Connection is not reducible to meaning,
But rather gives meaning meaning.
Why live? Because it’s worthwhile;
Why is it worthwhile? Connection. Belonging.

You can’t deduce it,
But you can feel it in your marrow,
As a certainty,
Because believing this really does make it true.

English has no serviceable synonym
For that unwieldy word, worthwhileness;
Yet, it is what we seek,
And that quest is seeded in every cell,
In the DNA,
Of which our consciousness
Is the flower.

It Will Make the Game Harder

It will make the game harder:
Dealing fair and square,
Making sure nobody gets hurt,
Or left behind,
Keeping your commitments,
And leaving vengeance to the law
For those who evade theirs.

It will make the game harder:
Making kindness your default,
Prioritizing the good of the whole world,
Now and in the future;
Treating everyone with respect,
Listening to them,
Helping them—
Sharing your good fortune.

It will make the game harder.
It’s no path to riches,
Just the only way to keep your triumphs pure,
Your joy whole,
So that you can look in the mirror
With a happy heart while you live
And die contentedly too.

It will make the game harder,
Not easier,
But it will make your life bigger, better,
Your satisfaction more profound.
If you want that,
You have no choice.
It will make the game harder,
But it’s the only way to win.

Mourning Has Broken

You will die,
Really die;
Not go to heaven,
Or transmigrate,
Or watch, or haunt,
Or even sleep in peace,
But only die,
Like a burst bubble,
A forgotten song,
Flushed toilet paper.

This is your gospel,
Your Good News,
Because if you can digest this one thing,
Death,
Once and for all,
You can be free.

Right here,
Where you are,
In spite of Death:
The rain continues to fall,
The breeze continues to blow;
The Sun warms,
The ice melts.
Couples row on the river;
Children play in the sun;
The laughing lady kneads her dough;
A dog pees against a favorite tree;
Church bells chime;
Colors riot.

Everything has its limits;
Everything has an end;
Death is simply the wall
That surrounds our little garden:
Why stare at the wall
When there is a garden?

We are the rowers;
We are the children;
We are the laughing lady,
The dog, and the tree;
We are the sun and rain;
And when Death takes us,
Being all these things,
We remain.

Stand still.
Be silent.
Watch,
Listen,
And be this world,
This world that doesn’t have you in it,
Because you are already
Dead—
Contentedly dead.

The Thing

Make a new relationship
With the Thing
That hurts you most.

You have three choices:
Destroy it,
Get away from it,
Or endure it as cheerfully as circumstances allow.

If the Thing can neither be removed nor escaped,
It must be managed:
Give it boundaries
In space and time—
Know where your safe spaces are.
Don’t let the Thing go everywhere that you go.

If the Thing cannot be confined in space and time,
Set boundaries within your mind—
Mental oases from which the Thing cannot drink.
Though your life is hard now,
Life is always good for somebody somewhere,
And that is a blessing for everybody everywhere.

But don’t blame yourself for the Thing:
You never wanted the Thing,
Why should you be blamed for it?

The Thing burrows deep within your mind,
Beavering its three-dimensional labyrinth.
The meal it seeks is your essence,
Your dignity—
This, you can never let it feed on.
Stay one step ahead:
Create a new dimension in your thought,
One its claws cannot penetrate.

Make a new relationship
With the Thing that hurts you most:
Be its Master.

I Am the Rain

I am the rain;
I am everywhere
And all I do is fall;
I fall on your hair,
I roll down your cheeks,
I get into your eyes
And mingle with your tears;
You feel my icy fingers against your sides.

There is no escape;
You cannot turn away from me,
But you can turn toward me,
And when you do turn toward me,
And accept me,
The miracle occurs. . .

I become water,
Pure, refreshing water.
I enter your blood,
I replenish your heart,
I nourish you,
I sustain you.

I am water.
I am everywhere,
And all I do is lift you up.
You are feather-light;
You are sailing;
And, wherever you sail,
The rain that falls down on you
Is the water that lifts you up.
I hold you; you are safe.

But, remember that the Tao is impartial,
So you must never fight me:
Those who do are drowned,
Swallowed up by their own power.
And do not take me for granted,
For I would become solid ice:
I would crack you.
I do not know my own strength.
Don’t make me be hard
When it is my nature to be soft,
Accommodating.

I am the rain;
I am the ice;
But let me be water;
Let me be everywhere always water.
Do not perish on that cold, rain-swept sea.

The Laughter of Children

The pot of joy bubbles over,
Unconsciously:
Children laughter.
Nothing surpasses it.

Delight is always within our reach.
We know that,
But not deeply enough,
Not to the bone.
Otherwise, we would fight our way back there.

The pressure that we create for ourselves
Keeps us miserable—
The very thing we don’t want.
What incompetence!

To step back seems easy,
Like waking from a nightmare,
But these grown-up habits,
Clouds that feed on their own blackness,
Leave us smothered,
Impotent,
Unable to reach what is well within our grasp;
Only very bad habits indeed can do that
Because without joy what do we have?
What is this force that fixes our backs to the wall?
An illusion of thought,
Which only thought’s unraveling can extinguish.

Slow down the merry-go-round, bring it to a halt,
Then step backwards, into childhood, into sanity.
We can awaken ourselves from dreams,
Why not from thoughts?

Ode to Time

Oh Time,
It is not that you are an enemy
But that we have rejected you,
Refused to work within your confines
Of growth and decay,
Life and death—
Parameters that even you cannot alter.
We have been wedded to you,
But we have not been sensible;
We have insisted that you change,
You, who cannot change.
We ourselves should have changed,
As we secretly know we could have done,
Since there is no divorcing you:
It is you who divorce us all in the end,
Leaving for your future consorts
Unimaginable marvels
To be relished in our absence,
The absence even of our memory.
Perhaps they will accept you as you are.
Otherwise, that wondrous future
Will be just like today:
Love and loss,
Fear and loathing,
Happy face, sad face.

Our naked ancestors hunted shells along the seashore
In the cold drizzle,
Longing for the warmth of evening fire,
Where they huddled together,
Before slipping into sublime sleep,
Just like we do,
But with less drama,
For they were more at peace with you,
Oh Time.

Come, let us begin again!
No, we are too old now.
Find somebody new,
Oh Time.

Dust to Dust

Dust!
We have to keep on dusting,
So that we can respect ourselves.
Even if you have someone to dust for you,
Keep dusting,
Because, ultimately,
It’s better to be a duster
Than to employ one.
The rich do not dust,
And look how they usually turn out!

During the Second World War,
British soldiers,
Prisoners of the Japanese,
Were compelled by their own officers
To shave every morning,
Regardless,
Because one cannot stop dusting;
One cannot take that risk,
Not after being stripped
Of everything else.
From dust you come,
To dust you return,
But, in the meantime,
Dust.

Dust as free men and women.
Put on the music and dust.
Dusting is noble: ask your grandmother!
Dusting is never a waste of time;
Only the thought that it's a waste of time
Is a waste of time.
Dust briskly as if brushing off a hero’s statue;
Dust gently as if caressing a lover;
Dust reverently.
Chop wood,
Fetch water,
Dust.
The world is a big, jolly snow globe
Filled with dust.
The last thing you need
Is a vacuum cleaner
Because dust is the stuff of life:
Once you are separated from that,
What might become of you?

We Will Scatter Your Ashes on the Lake Today

We will scatter your ashes on the lake today,
When the sun shines full upon it;
Early,
Like you always rose early.
We will remember you,
And this remembrance
Will mark the beginning of our forgetting.

We will scatter your ashes with heavy hearts,
Because these ashes are you,
And we are at fault.
We will be silent,
At least we would be
If we could,
But we never can and that’s one of the reasons why ...

We will scatter your ashes in your favorite place,
Though these ashes are not you
And you will not see it.
If you were here,
You would only make sarcastic remarks,
As would be your right;
But you are not here,
Not now.

We will scatter your ashes in the midst of resentment,
All thinking the others more to blame,
Only agreed upon one thing:
That it wasn’t you.
We tried to love you,
But we didn’t know how. Old story.
Too late.

We will scatter your ashes with no sense of joy,
Though your life was so well-lived.
You were an example;
We are ashamed.
There is no redemption in tragedy:
Catharsis is not redemption.

We will scatter your ashes with barely a word,
For you have broken the bond that should have united us,
And by you have broken, I mean we have broken.
We would bow before you,
But there is no you,
And we would only be embarrassed in front of one another.

We will scatter your ashes sadly, shamefully,
Yet unrepentantly,
Because we do not learn from experience:
Not us!
But you know that already.
No, knew it.
You don’t even know that anymore.


This poem was a response to Visual Verse's monthly challenge to write a poem in one hour inspired by a picture provided.

The Gods Who We Are

Build an altar
To your wiser self;
Light incense and candles;
Await the presence
That comes only in stillness,
The presence that communes with you,
Is you.
Only you,
Who are so miniscule,
Yet infinite.

Our ancestors knelt before Osiris
And they received blessings.
Osiris, Apollo, Mary, Allah
Brahman, Buddah,
That flamboyant revivalist the Sun
And his soul sister the Moon—
All only you,
You and me.

However, like wild animals,
The gods who we are will not come
If they know that we are here.
So, silence first and foremost.
Fold into yourself,
That you might unfold from yourself,
Like the numbers
In an origami finger game:
Disappear so that you might reappear.
Still to active and back to still
Is the way of life and thought.
Be still all hearts.

Wait upon yourself,
At the edge of the night,
Reverently:
Hushed like a lamb,
Primed like a lion.
You are the only one who can receive the revelation,
And you are the only one who can give it.

Nothing to Say

Humanity,
Shuffling through the street,
Watching TV,
Driving cars,
All with nothing to say,
And yet so quiet about it,
As if they don’t even see it as a problem,
The “despair of not being in despair."

No, if you have nothing to say,
That’s a stage-four symptom of something deadly;
You should be crying for help.
Shout it from the rooftops:
"I have nothing to say,
Oh, sweet Jesus, I have nothing to say.”
If you have nothing to say,
I want to hear you say it.
We all need to hear it.

Scribble it on the wall beneath the railroad track,
Wear it on a tee shirt,
Or flash it to someone with a knowing look—
Even a glare would do.
Form secret societies,
And murmur about it.
Take that first step.

Let all the people who have nothing to say
Join together
And march on Washington:
“We have nothing to say,
Goddamnit,
And we’re gonna say it!”

Nothing to say is reason to scream.
Scream until the bubble explodes:
Who knows what mystery might burst forth?
Nothing to say—
Bang!

Creatio ex nihilo.

The stars have nothing to say.
Life has nothing to say.
Lovers have nothing to say.

There is nothing to say,
But that’s no excuse
For going about it in completely the wrong way!
From the silence of unconsciousness
We must rescue the silence of awareness.

Blessed Lives

We lead blessed lives,
Safe lives,
Never facing combat,
The slashing of iron against bone;
Never realizing
How resolutely the laws of physics
Stand to attention,
Ready to pump out the blood.

We go on gut instinct,
Ignorant of how quickly it all falls apart,
Of how readily we start putting people on trains—
Anything to be of help.
We only see the surface;
Living is not really living.

We must look unblinkingly into the abyss:
We must steel ourselves,
So that we can dare to think and feel.
A little suffering keeps despair at bay,
Enabling everything
Beautiful and good,
Virtuous and sound,
To come into being
And endure.
We must be armored,
Prepared to fight:
Only the hard can be soft,
And we must be soft
At any cost.

We Shall Live On

We shall live on
In people far away
Who don’t know our names,
And don’t need to;
In those who feel as we feel,
Share our ideals,
Rejoice in what inspires us.
Let’s make this world a little better
For those people,
So that when they come
They will be more hopeful,
More contented,
More fulfilled than we have been;
That would be enough.

We are humanity:
Circling each other;
Engaging with each other;
Loving each other;
Life loving life;
Each a splinter of the whole,
A bright fragment of the kaleidoscope;
Mysticism without guile;
Just being, not Being.

In our separate dreams:
We arrive in class naked and late;
We are almost crushed by malevolent walls;
We watch strange gods move across the indigo sky;
We fall downwards
Into infinite space,
Plummeting toward stone, or fire.
We awaken petrified,
Always alone,
But together.

In one dream, a mother
Gave me her baby to hold.
I carried it around with me
Through several bustling meetings
And finally returned to the room
Where the mother had been,
But she was gone.
Did you see her? In your dream?

Starstruck

Our polluted air
Has taken away the stars,
Most of them.
How did we lose the stars?
What were we thinking?
Once bright, steadfast. . .
Dimmed.
Some people want to bring back the stars.
Some people want to take away the few we still have.

Children are growing up today,
Deep in our cities,
Barely knowing what stars are;
An undernourished,
Star-starved generation.
Is it not enough that we poisoned their air and their water?
Did we also have to block out the lights
That should kindle their dreams,
That guided the magi,
Columbus,
The Polynesians,
Harriet Tubman?
How will we quench our thirst
Once the drinking gourd is gone?
Will we even know that we are thirsty?

How do you break free
Without first imagining,
And how do you imagine
Without the stars?
Some people want to bring back the stars.
Some people want to take away the few we still have.

Leaders

 

We can feed and clothe everyone,
Teach them to read and write,
Divide and multiply,
Give them the care they need,
Every
Single
Person,
For a few thousand bucks each.
But we don’t.
We are generous enough,
But we are incompetent,
Disorganized;
We fight over details;
We choose leaders who have other priorities --
We are that stupid.
We choose leaders whose souls are vacuums,
With no imagination for anything but their own careers,
Their own self image --
And even that is not original!
They suck up everything good and true
And shit it out
All over the rest of us,
Again and again.

We could thrive, though,
That must always be repeated.
We are blinded by religion,
Ideology,
Ethnicity,
Fear,
A strange fear that ignores the many real threats that we face
In favor of imagined ones;
A fear pressed upon us by authorities
Whose legitimacy derives solely from the power that we gave them,
Though they know even less than ourselves.
We could do it,
Easily,
If we trusted the right people.
But the right people are humble, hesitant.
Honesty is timid.
The right people don't try hard enough to appear trustworthy.
The right people are fools.
We were the right people.

Somewhere, Perhaps

Somewhere, perhaps, there’s a holy river
That isn't polluted,
And a holy man,
Who isn't polluted;
An altar where the greedy do not go,
With the statue of a saint
Who has not been tarnished,
Not even after meticulous biography,
The publication of his personal diaries,
And extensive interviews with his wife and children.
Somewhere, there’s a book,
Whose language is elegant,
Whose tales are all edifying,
Whose morals are crystal clear,
And always applicable.
Somewhere, there’s a summit,
And those who stand upon it
Can think only wholesome thoughts,
And conceive only practical plans.
Somewhere, there’s a community
Where none of the children are awkward,
And none of the uncles are creepy,
Where dogs are always welcome.
Naturally,
This place is hidden,
Nestled in a cozy niche,
And does not advertise,
Which is just as well,
Because that cozy niche
Is located
Between
Your ears.

Flowers Under Pressure

Some flowers we extinguish
By crushing;
Others, we preserve
By pressing.
It all depends on how the weight is applied.

There are also
Rare flowers
Whom we preserve
By crushing.

We remember their names:

Marilyn
Billie
Virginia
Joan
Amy
Diana
Sylvia
Janis
Hypatia
Whitney

So many Ophelias:
A garden’s worth when living,
A book’s worth when dead.
But the garden
Would have been so much better.

Mama Death

I will say to Death,
“Thank you for waiting for me!
I got nothing accomplished,
But I had a lot of fun."
I was a toddler in playschool,
Covered in paint and dirt;
Adoring the teacher,
Dodging the bullies.

At the end of the day,
Mama Death returned to pick me up,
Along with my empty lunch box.
She took me home
To wash me
And cover me again,
But only with dirt this time.