I
May my calling be concealed from me
From my thoughts and my tongue
For they can hold no secret;
And publish at the slightest prompt
Tall claims during small talk.
II
My heart is a keeper of secrets
Occasionally it confides in me
And now that it has
I find myself immersing in a sea of silence
My lips sealed by a quiet smile.
There’s a price to be paid
For both
Your ignorance and
Your knowledge.
The difference is
In knowledge I step into Reality
Whereas in Ignorance
I suffered my imagination.
Even though I now know
the difference
I still don’t fit my imagined concept
Of a good human being.
But now I stand aware
Of what goodness is.
And in this awareness
It becomes a joy
To bear the cross
You, who have deemed me an anomaly
Have selected for my redemption.
The little girl’s dress
Was a little too big for her
And it looked tired and worn
Handed down
It was clear
That’s the thing about charity
It’s usually disproportionate
Ill-fitted and ugly
Given away as good riddance
But dressed up as kindness
Little do we realize
In our guilt of owning
That charity is what the charitable may receive
But it’s never theirs to give.
How unsophisticated
is the simplicity of my life.
Every purchase made
Every plan plotted
Every grand gesture
I recall
Had seemed so right
As if I had at last discovered
The secret of (my) sophistication.
And yet today
It all seems so foolishly naive.
Something within me is embarrassed…
…does that mean I now understand ‘sophistication’?
How engaging it is-
To occupy the mind
With a full spectrum of affections
From the basest desires
To the highest virtues.
How intelligent it is-
To draw up the warp and weft
Of random events
And to weave a rich tapestry
With my very own patterns of thought and imagination.
How gratifying it is-
To believe in ‘my person’
As being native to an undiscovered Being
And to proceed therefrom
On a lifelong journey towards self-discovery.
Long after you left…
Your pointed words stayed with me
Often acting as effective antidotes
To the excesses of my own mind
All of my wild leaps of imagination
Swiftly cut down to size
By your pre-emptive acts of concern
Had it not been for you
I may’ve been lying fallen somewhere
Ditched by default of my own design.
Yes, the credit for my salvation
Must be rightly accorded to you
And to the corrective power of sarcasm
For what could’ve otherwise been brutal
And left me hurt and wounded
is now only a persistent dull ache…
I continue to exist- corrected, but wronged
Alive, but dead; breathing in a coffin
Shrouded in a symbolic spotless white.
It’s pitiful that I should try every cheap trick
To appear larger, more accomplished than you.
We, who are riding on the tides of Time
Must instead surrender to its power and mercy
Now, no matter what fancy threads you wear
Or how compelling a yarn I spin
You and I will fail to live up to
All the expectations we set from our self-constructed greatness.
You appear phony to me
And I, to you, insignificant.
Our greatness if any, doesn’t lie in appearances
But in our every effort to step away from them.
Appearances after all, it must be remembered
Arise from the imagination, and not from reality.
Time, will eventually, strip us off our masks
Freed from our caricatured existence, we will fall from our castles in the air.
So today, even though I co-exist with you
I am contemptuous of your insignificant life
You annoy me, and I disappoint you
You seek acceptance, and I see you as being worthy of rejection
But remember, we’re not made to relay reactions
We have the power to send forth powerful action
That powerful action is unconditioned by appearances
It may be mined from your heart
It’s in the lap of time we must seek our nurturing
As it is time that will render our rhetoric in pantomimes.
How great is life
In the possibilities it holds!
Enabled alike in blindness and vision
Or in richness and poverty
Even so in vice and virtue
And in love and hate.
Life is not a road
It’s a vast presence
A space within which we stand
Blindfolded, but supported
Allowed only to imagine
And live out the absurdities
Of our own ideas.
It was a three-hour drive that drove us.
A six-pack
inert
Silent in thought
and throbbing in pulse
Each of us immersed
in a reality of our own
Wombed together
in a pregnant pause
We each emerged a little
in clumsy attempts to connect
Islands adrift
In a sea of consciousness
Aware
but unknowing
Too close for comfort
Yet far away…
None of us had anything to say.
3:15pm:
I lie down for a nap.
Thoughts are racing in my head.
They fight each other
One must emerge as the winner-
The most powerful thought-
The one endowed with most reason…
The fight in mind should settle it
Once and for all.
I shut my eyes
I consciously step away from the arena.
Their argument becomes dimmer as I walk away…
When the noises become faint
I slip into bliss…
4:20pm:
I’m up…
The thoughts are now a memory.
Time transported me into the future.
Having left thought behind
I feel older, wiser
more mature.
This is the way to grow:
This is the way to win:
Yes, thoughts will enter
And claim your space
Allow them to fight out their dialectical destiny.
Stand up
Walk away
Realize that
The attainment you seek
Doesn’t depend on a thought’s victory.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 