1/6/19
To wake with a dog licking and biting
Without a phone
Without time
A night of watching porn for minutes
Hung over and sick at the thought
Of beginning again
Of going back to work
Of trying to be something
And this morning
The window gives: a broken-branched pecan tree.
I want to be anything
Other than what I am
I want to sleep
To love
To know that everyone I encounter is me
To know that the man with the moped
The man explaining how well he is doing
How sick others are; he is me.
For so long I have judged those around me
I have known what I needed to do
And what they needed to do.
I have taken the inventory of others
While saying that it is only a mirror
I did not fully grasp
This.
There were exceptions
There were times when I failed,
When I sat before another man
And found myself better
I used this discredit of him
To boost and to lift me up:
I am afraid to go back to school
Afraid that my house will never be finished
Afraid the money will run out
Afraid of what might come
Out of my mouth
In brutal honesty
I know that all of this is just the ego
Yet I am afraid of the ego dying
I am afraid of the tender heart
And maybe the reason for 2019
Being second person was to know that all the I’s
Are not me, so I say I write
As an experiment and to determine the space
Between ego and god
Between thought and muse
Between the rooster outside the window
And the chatter inside my mind:
A horny man that would not know what to do
Alone on a Saturday with sixty people I do not know
A fact that fit into all of this:
A dog that will not stop biting and licking
Over ten years without alcohol or drugs of any kind
A member of no church
A member of no gym
A member of no club
Except for the one where some people stand up too much
And some get coffee and go to the bathroom
And share only what they think is needed to be shared
I need to meet with my sponsor
I write this only because what I am doing is about show
What I am doing is wanting people to look at me, exposed
And to take the wound on my flesh
And cover this and pat me down and announce
That you have gone religious and come to take me with you
The answer will come if you have tried this
The message is business
The message is to keep asking
The message is to stay fit
And to stay strong and the thoughts that
Keep coming. Go swimming. Try yoga.
Continue to listen. Even the moments when
Everything that everyone says annoys you
Even when the moped driver says he looks around
And sees dozens of people, sick and suffering
From untreated alcoholism, how in his church
The pastor has been sober for 28 years
And you have your truck and you do not say that you agree
You instead tell him that you love him
And love, you have realized is all that is left
At the end of all of this, you think the trees will set you free
You think that what you plant is more than a dog pissing
On dog piss. All of what you do is look at me
Hold me. I hurt. I have always hurt
I feel things too much. I am alcoholic
And if I could be as committed to love and acceptance
As my dog is to licking and scratching
I might be happier. I might know. I might not
Feel so all alone in the morning. In the hangover of porn
That started with facebook, that started with a search
A wondering how an actress I once met might be doing
With her film career: the almond eyes that showed her sadness
Caught up in all of this. Caught up with the wish
To be different, caught up in trying to hide
Caught up in letting people only see what and when
I want them to see: the dog may bite off his leg if I don’t intervene
The house is for the most part clean
Except for the dishes
Promises have been made, my day set up
By choices of those that have asked
I drive and think what it might be like
To be without Carrie, to be on my own
A sense of lust comes
Followed at once by a deep and overwhelming sadness
Not the sadness of the reindeer warrior nub
But the sadness of a speck of dust floating through the darkness
After meditation:
You spend the entire day trying to survive
On three minutes of meditation and interaction
With others the patience can come, the silence
Can come, yet beneath all of this is a desire for change
For more, for the ones giving you gifts
To take away whatever exists
Inside a ball of balled up ego
A shredded piece of still trying to figure
A rag that needs wrung and a moment:
Where a bird without a name chases a cardinal, where:
A hummingbird flits from Turk’s cap to Turk’s cap:
The same red flowers you ate last night
When you sat without answers: certainly
Certainties are what is craved
On the highway when bugs no longer hit the windshield
There are the gifts given and first sentences
And the notion that those that say it can’t happen are cursing the Source
And therefore cursing themselves
So you think about what to set intentions for
And the same thing keeps coming: life from the eye of a bee
The magnificence of goldfish, orange and black and pink
The survivors that swim, the intentional wishes for them
The turtle food of a turtle long gone
An attempt at temporary freedom, a grasping
A holding onto the realization that maybe there is no connection
Not when trapped inside the mind
When the voices act up. Not the voices of a man crazed
But is not every man crazed when relying upon the mind?
How to fit in the puzzle, to be of the world and in the world
At the same time, to let now be the present
To take what is made and cast away what anybody thinks?
This temporary pause to spot what is beyond and see
Loneliness cannot be solved by people
Nor by the bird that lands beyond the window
Loneliness is a desire for connection, and something
That can be relieved with or without people
Your gift is the traffic humming in the moment
Your gift is the sound of water hitting water
Your gift is the breath each morning, the kiss of your own lips
Your gift is getting rid of the I and turning off that sound
Your gift is in knowing what it is to be turned down
To be stopped in the path of hay brought as God
Your gift is to see that every moment is delivered for you
Your gift is of the utmost experience
Your gift is not to sit in self-inflicted burden
Or to run through the crowd of 12th night when what you want
Is silence, is fire, is midnight to come without tossing and turning
Is the world spread on a plate that knows no bounds
Is to sometimes find the source amidst all of the other voices
To never give up and walk past what anybody thinks
This is what you want: to be good, to be a good man
Not to be cool or calm or seen as a real man
But to be seen as a good man and know
Sometimes the actions do not always produce a sense of goodness
Know that guilt is like eating a pound of sugar
Know that guilt is a river where many swim
Quicksand stretched around you in all directions
Head west to the sound that pulls you, to the voice given
To the men that do not need you and know that there is Icelandic licorice
Just as there are Georgia peaches and 9th ward honey
There is the wind before the night turns dark
The sound of car horns and barges
Both of them a need to be known
Most of us trying to write our own ways home
To take directions from maps we no longer use
Trapped by immediacy and the need for more
Back to back to back to back
Episodes of The Wire or The Simpsons
Or whatever is your current nom du jour
To the want of right now
To be fixed right now
To be saved right now
To think that right now comes from outside.
Inside there is a gift connected to the all knowing, to
The notion that you are not the worst
You are not the best
You are not sure
This is a blessing and a curse
Depending who is writing the script
Ego or god, muse or thought
This is the drift that comes between wings
This is the gill of another sun
This is the substance of which galaxies are made
This is today
This is the snowdrift of ambition
And a stuck truck that never gets out of gear
This is tablecloth torn away
And the dishes still sitting
And the glass half full
And a mouthful of unspoken words
The realization that you might be wrong
That everybody is your teacher
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