~painting by J.T. Thompson

The Hidden

Predicament

in the Living

of Every Day

 

“We do not see the world

 as it is, we see it as we are”.

                      ~Anais Nin

 

We pass certain thoughts like stones

most of which are hardly our own,

but instead, some coagulation of

narrative bits curated closer to home.

 

Our thoughts think themselves

with such a narrow sense of purpose,

they’re writ larger than life as they arrive

solely to help their thinker thrive.

 

We counteract mistaking the world

for ourselves by continuously doubting

our conclusions because uncertainty

of anything is to admit our infallibility.

 

In the mind’s effort to parse

the world, it inadvertently severs itself

from the full spectrum of beauty

which by contrast includes all strife,

tensing us from the tenderness of life.

 

Imagine reducing the unitary wholeness

of the vast universe by selecting one

tiny segment of it and calling it “I”

and narrating life in the role of “my”,

 

A delusional gulf gets created

between things as we think they are

and things as they actually are.

I doubt such a view can take us far.

 

Still, off we go mistaking the real world

we’ve made with our own thoughts

for the real world minus personal faults;

some shadows are born to cast a pall,

and the God’s truth is: that’s not all.

 

Evil and dysfunction or obnoxiousness

occur in proportion to how solidly

a person observes that his projections are

correct and aggressively acts toward that effect.

 

And so it goes: I think, therefore

I’m wrong. My wrongness falls on

someone else’s wrong thinking

leaving us both thinking wrongly

and because so few of us can bear

to think without taking action there

and doing only makes things worse,

I offer the following consoling verse:

 

Best to resist our version of others

as insightful as they might be

because we’ve an invisible axe to grind

and are too for or against to see

or not be biased or unentrenched.

 

Our solution is to deny ourselves

the comfort of always being the same;

one who arrived at an answer

some time ago but takes no blame

or has reason or chance to doubt it

because the world is full of sleepers

who eat, walk, and witness life

without a corresponding conscience.

 

 

04/24/23

 

     Cryptic      

(A Tryptic)

 

i

The body remembers

what happened.

A perfect burial ground.

The mind,

not so much,

busy as it is

with self-administering.

The heart grieves

the loss of each moment

only to keep

them suspended 

inside a jar

like so many

pickled eggs.

 

What do you suppose

weighs more?

A moment in 1975

in September

on a Wednesday

afternoon at 4:17

and 11 seconds,

or the one now whizzing

past like a telegraph pole

outside a speeding train?

 

A moment buried

safely in the earth

is a moment

that is sure to grow.

Expect

a new shoot

any day,

followed by a blossom

foreordained to flower.

 

Welcome to the garden

of buried delights,

each seed a holy relic,

a holographic snippet

containing the whole

of a life in

a negative image

of a positive moment

in time. Or vice versa,

as both will have

aged to perfection.

 

Just as a life well-lived

transpires from

grape to raisin to wine,

there’s a glory in the cellar

waiting to be imbibed.

By watering

what’s in stone

with our tears

we bring

back to life

hours made

of minutes 

and stand them upright

like turgid statues

to perform the play

of those we loved.

 

ii

 

Yes, a sanctuary

lies beneath us.

Or I should say: within.

Our bones form the cross

we see through stained-glass eyes.

Below that, a crypt

full of unused altars,

while no worshiping

they abide,

only prayers unfurled

from folded hands

anxious as a dream.

But don’t forget:

remembering is a discipline

and memory itself

a cathedral in miniature

recalled via one's

mental masonry.

 

iii

 

Where else will you find

a steeple underground?

A belfry beneath

where gather all

one cherishes and holds dear.

So, unsheathe the crowds

of cloaked

stone statues

inside this darkened room.

Tucked in a corner

sits an alabaster urn

ringed with celebratory dancers,

and inside that urn

the radiant smile

of imperfect youth. 

04/4/23