One Day Our Shadows 

Will Hit the Ground Running

We keep our tragedies hidden,

choosing instead to live 

by design.

Those who reach for Personas

often do so because their truth 

went unaccepted

by those around them 

at an early age.

A Persona enables

an individual to adapt

to society's demands.

Personas serve as a template

and are often chosen 

for their integrity.

To be rejected for 

how one truly feels

causes a wound. 

The wound heals over 

but leaves a scar

on the psyche

that like a burn 

continues 

to blaze beneath

the surface years later. 

A Persona is a way 

to live with a wound 

because the pain 

finds camouflage

and can be hidden

from others.

Personas allow us 

to stand apart from 

who we are inside

by the acquisition of 

a template

for behavior and

consistently adhering to it. 

From here on

the Persona will live

life for us;

an invisible barrier 

between who one was 

and who one wishes

one was. 

One now must live

defending the Persona

as over time it metamorphoses

into a brand. 

Brands are marks

of ownership

like that of a slave.

In this way

one can, in fact,

be one's

own slave.

Personas are generally

positive images,

often admirable

if not entirely good. 

They persuade in order

to keep us in the good graces 

of others who've only ever met 

the Persona 

and not the Original. 

Originals are invariably imperfect.

Having been abandoned

early in life, they remain stunted,

hence dangerous 

because their instincts 

live hidden and are

hopelessly subversive.

The law is: 

That which is interred

in darkness will grow;

potatoes in a drawer

sprouting grotesque

arms and legs.

Eventually eclipsed, 

the Original

continues its life 

un-integrated

and in darkness. 

The Original

is now one’s shadow

and despite how bright

our Personas become

the shadow grows

equally as dark.

If the original was abandoned

at eleven years

the shadow resurfaces 

still at eleven

while we are ourselves

middle aged. 

Our shadows want to live

a life beyond us. 

The Persona must defend

its existence with 

all the pent up energy 

of an ex-con

denied parole. 

That said,

there need only be a breech

for our shadows to bust out

of their confinement

and hit the ground running.

Shadows prefer to set up shop

in a sunny warm climate.

Sunlight strengthens them.

Long tired of dank basements 

and cramped quarters,

they want to make a big stink

and they have revenge on their minds.

Shadows feel their oats

and need to prove their worth.

Having been denied for decades

they're ready to shock us all

right out of our senses.

The moral:

Never bury parts of yourself alive

if you can't find it in your heart

to forgive the world.

2/16/22

                                               drawing by Medi Belortaja

My Cat, the Existentialist

Imagine always having to wait 

for someone to feed you;

having to rely on the kindness 

of otherworldly familiars

who often appear remote, 

if hopelessly preoccupied.

Wouldn’t you sharpen your senses

into one long prayer?

Imagine if your God lived 

right down beside you

but kept departing the premises 

for God knows where.

Imagine realizing that to be loved

was all that could assure your survival

and to love kept you 

in treats and fresh water;

wouldn’t you use your tongue

to make yourself more beautiful?    

Imagine a God so unpredictable 

or unmanageable that you

are forced to cry out

for everything you want.

And finally, if set free

could you watch over yourself, 

when like you, your God

is always in danger 

of putting himself first?

2/1/22

 

When Not to Think

Never think in the woods.

And for God’s sake stop thinking in traffic while driving.

It’s actually not good to think while chewing food.

Never think while climbing a tree.

Do not think when petting a cat. They prefer you don’t.

Never think at night when you go to bed.

Do not think while smelling a flower.

Do not think with a toad in your hand.

Never think when staring at a sunset.

It’s best to do away with thoughts when washing your hair and bathing.

Try taking off your thoughts as you take off your clothes.

Never think about eating when you’re cleaning a commode.

Don’t think thoughts in a high wind.

Don’t think while doing chores, like washing dishes or watering plants.

Definitely do not think if you’re being tortured. 

Case in point: don’t think about your life in the dentist chair under anesthesia. 

Don’t let thoughts wander while painting a picture. 

Drawing a picture is something else entirely.

Don’t think when having a photo taken, as it reduces frowns.

Resist thoughts when preparing a meal, especially breakfast for two.

Never ever think while kissing.

Don’t think when operating heavy machinery unless its to do with operating procedure.

Do not think while napping.

Resist random thoughts while pumping iron.

Never think while having sex.

Don’t think about other things when you sing. 

In other words, you are the world

and to enter fully into that world,

its best to lose yourself.

1/28/22

 

When the Hours 

Fall Silent

The hours flow through hands 

afraid to be swallowed.

The hours sift through fingers 

meant only for ground.

The hours flee  

for fear of being noticed.

The hours flow

like recalicitrant holy water.

The hours slip by

in ungovernable love.

The hours weep 

from the wound of ourselves.

The hours tumble 

both unsayable and said.

The hours fall away

in unfettered joy.

The hours topple down

in their hurry to depart.

The hours pour out

to avoid our embrace.

The hours weep 

the clear blood of starlight.

The hours spill our

memories turned into dust.

The hours flow 

like weather wrung from hands.

The hours drain 

our tears through a sieve.

The hours fall

silent in order to be heard.  

1/24/22

 

Words to Love By

When we expect nothing

we can be more easily ourselves,

alone or with others.

Adept at containing our thoughts

as the breadth between book covers!

If the condition we’re in

is the result of our successes,

or failings and strivings,

aren’t we equally the result

of all our contrivings?

After all, our lives are 

their own consolations

if all we've to offer

is what the alchemists

call permutations!

Don’t you think its time

joy acknowledged it’s debt to pain,

as suffering encourages joy 

to know itself

before it can attain.

The dark makes light palpable

like paint on blank canvas,

through paint the heart

recreates us while

loving expands us. 

 

Then why not agree 

to call this our blue period?

Rather than thinking woe is me, 

and besides having read

 Homer’s Iliad.

For trials are meant to clarify 

each happiness and joy; 

our sweat and our tears 

moisten the colors

they employ.

Accruing hues both singular

and pleasingly plural

so that what’s begun 

a self portrait ends up 

as a mural.

1/23/22

 

Prima

Materia

“My quietness has a man in it,

he is transparent and carries me

quietly, like a gondola through

the streets.”   ~Frank O’Hara

                                                   In Memory of My Feelings

By day, I live my life.

By night, my life lives me.

How can they

weigh the same?

It would seem an absurdity.

I dare to ask

which is more true

or any less fictitious,

a life that lives itself

or the one with

self constrictions?

Asleep I practice letting go.

Surrendering to the silence,

a dormant thing set afloat

in a boat of mulch and ballast;

a laid out Moses 

ferrying forth, 

whose finger steers

its rudder North.

Below are dangers no less real

with dramas more deranged.

Life on the surface no less

more than surgery

performed in a haze.

Like Eliot said

I go then like a patient

etherized on a table

the evening spread out

before me, and myself

a hapless fable.

Tonight I'll meet

my mother wrapped in

a snarling stole,

beside her my twin brother

clutching a shard of coal.

Who will play my father

is anybodies guess

seeing that he's

long since gone,

his memory

put to rest.

Still, that doesn't mean

he'll be a no-show,

as dreamland

invites us all back.

Like the time machine

made from a freezer box,

if death's a fiction

the past's

an immutable fact.

 1/18/22

 

How Our Looking Ripens Things

“Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic.  

 And each symbol is an open gate, through 

 which the soul can enter the inner part of 

 the world, where you and I and day and night 

 are all one.” 

                                       ~Hermann Hesse

The literal minded see me as their enemy.

We barely speak the same language.

I believe in the implications of things.

They believe in the things themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I know a thing’s worth

like any other.

But things themselves haven't need

for believing in; 

they are themselves without us,

objects reflected in a predatory eye.

Believing in the implications 

of said things gives them a life 

they don’t have otherwise.

Take Gwendolyn for example.

She lives in a tower but longs to live

in a house in the valley 

with a garden. She’s conflicted. 

The literal see Gwendolyn

through a telescopic lens. 

They think she suffers from

the grass is always greener fallacy;

being that A) a garden is involved

and B) a tower can keep her safe from 

crime and rising sea water.

But those who believe in implications

have observations far less chaste.

In searching for self empowerment,

Gwen is engaging in a construct 

of male empowerment whose aim is to rise

above the vulnerable and defenseless.

In living more vertically she assumes

a defensive position against the

passage of time being as horizontal

as it is linear.

Her longing

for a house in the valley might be seen

as a loss of the eternal feminine

which though positioned lowly

by nature, invites all things

to flow towards it.

Her quest for verticality is a spiritual one.

She reaches upwards for inspiration

for a higher (all seeing) perspective.

Gwendolyn’s desire for a garden is her way

of staying in touch with what nurtures

her by spreading its tendrils, 

a green embrace born to be

given as much as received.

Consider Vincent.

Vincent is a hoarder. Everything he touches

he paralyzes, preserves, and keeps

as if in prehistoric amber.

To a poet the image feels metaphorical

but not at all how Vincent sees things. 

Vincent is literal minded and does not apprehend 

the difference between things as they are

and things made otherwise by coveting.

Vincent’s behavior defies logic, offending

the literal tendency regarding right and wrong. 

For the literal, chaos is wrong and order right.

One only sees the gluttony and therefore

their judgement throws up its hands.

If I tell you that Vincent is intelligent

and sentimental, easily hurt, and defiant,

he becomes more like the rest of us.

But the rest of us aren’t grabbing onto

ephemera and holding on for dear life.

Vincent is an over-cherisher.

And here’s the kicker.

His dis-ease is literal,

not metaphorical.

He cares not in dabbling in implications,

believing things are what give life its meaning;

that the things themselves will explain him.

Not, as a poet might offer:

as bread crumbs dropped 

in the foresight of finding

one's way home.

1/16/2022