Listen up.
It is hard to speak to this:
outdoors the low rumble
of something, trucks or
an unseen train, perhaps;
perhaps the accumulated
higher pitched rattle of cars;
I don’t know. It doesn’t
come toward me, that much I know.
It’s just a suggestion civilization
is making — that I ought
to get going. That I ought
to be out there, too.

Listen, please listen.
I did not choose this selection.
It was driven by health or maybe
another choice — perhaps
a semi-deliberate slip and slide
toward some edge I never recognized?
Trees, leaves, soil have gone to sleep
until spring; snow from last week
covers black tar, and none were involved
in my choices to stay inside and
to stay gone from this busy world.

Turn away if you must.
Reflection of my past in my darling
memory is all I have to hold.
All I have is bright memories
I love, or used to love. Whenever
I close my eyes I see them
in rumbling vehicles,
amidst shrubs’ barren sticks,
fading slowly off in unmelting snow.
I close my eyes yet again,
hoping for a listener to make sense
of all of this. I hold out my hand —
listen, I beg you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

I wake up to realize
it doesn’t matter what I say.
It doesn’t matter at all.

I am sitting in the living room
without a true care in the world.
Lots of false care, lots of forlorn hope;

none of it matters. None of it.
All of it is forlorn and nothing
is a true care. In a long run

of living, of life, I am still here
and that’s what matters. The sorrow
and the triumph all the same;

nothing matters at all. I just
don’t sit here involved in anything;
just sit, a blank look on my face,

an empty head on my stooped shoulders.
It’s almost a comfort to acknowledge it.
Almost makes it worthwhile.

The pure light of emptiness
lifts me up and holds me, transparent,
opposed to fullness.

I just said it: I am almost comforted
by knowing my emptiness, and soon
it will drain away completely.

And that’s a good thing. That is what I want.
The pure light of empty being.
The empty light, the light of being full

of not wanting any thing or thought.
I didn’t know it would be like this.
If I had, I never would have done otherwise.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T