No Zen Required

 

No sunshine will touch my shadow any longer. They've agreed to keep their distance. Agreed to disagree on some critical matters. Not sure of their relative place in the universe as long as the other is present. I am told they are not willing to compromise on this matter. I've tried to help them find reason, bury the hatchet. Worked out the angles between tripping over myself in the darkened room or hiding my eyes from the burn.

It starts early. I'm dragged to darkness by my shadow. He has lost his sense of proportion. Does not know his strength any longer. Pulls me deeper into the corners of my bedroom. Hides me under another set of light-eating blankets.

Sunshine calls me, but my shadow slaps the phone out of my hand. I have to trust him. I have to stay the course. I must not feel the temptation for warmth. For the outside to let the breeze sneak up and gently hug me. For the sounds of birds to welcome me out into the world.

My shadow, he knows me better than I know myself. The sunshine, radiating off of the sidewalk, zeroing in on my pale frame, it is a destroyer of peace. A bringer of skin rash, scaled flesh, eventual cancers, 

Here in the dark, I'm told I am safe, a proper temperature. I am contained. Controllable.  

My shadow, locking me into an iron tether. We shall never know the world apart from one another.

I try to tell him, light will bond us. He reminds me that vision is not a bond. This, this proximity, under cover of multiple darknesses. Us, alone, held fast to one another and shaking, this is the only true connection. Everything else is a sleight of hand and a trick of vision. Illusory. Disguises not fit for truth.

And here we are, in silence, and I just want to sneak a gaze out the tinted window, to see what might be outside. 

If only I’d let me.

Zen Ruination Part 3: Horticulture

 

I spend a little time each day

Before the Sun shows its face,

Speaking sweet words at the flowers

I planted in our backyard’s oft-neglected garden.

Bent over them, shining my cell phone’s light to aim my voice in the appropriate directions.

I practice my intonation,

Even pacing

inflection up.

Dulcet tones

The tapping of the clavas underneath the smooth 2/4 love in my song.

My eyebrows raised,

Loose body language.

Willing them to continue growing.

To grow up safe

Without bends in the stem

To know they are valuable and don’t need to compare themselves to the others.

Each one

Blossoming and arcing towards the growing light.

Each one,

More beautiful than the moment before I shined the unsparing light from my iPhone 11 plus.

Before now,

I would bark out commands

Grow straighter!

Blossom more effectively!

A drill Sergeant

Demanding results without exception.

As you know,

I’ve burned everything I loved

Away from Me.

In the shrill demands

the impatient scowls

The disappointment

That oozed from my pours.

Each has left Me.

You have left Me.

Maybe these flowers I planted,

When You told Me you were leaving, told Me that I kept You down

Under water and struggling-my hand firmly and figuratively on your head-bubbles screaming without interruption,

These things I have tried to talk into becoming something other than the weeds

Of our home’s ruined garden,

Maybe I’ll speak the words in the right combination and unlock my fingers from their collective, and figurative, scalp. They’ll bubble up through the surface and I’ll tell them how sorry I am. How much I’ve learned. How proud I am to have witnessed them grow.

Maybe I won’t fail them

This time.

Zen Ruination Part 2

 

and

Delivery

Is 

Guaranteed

On arrival.

Not in the space before it.

Before arrival

The space and time continuum

Bends and moves like 

a dull lava lamp,

Lamp extinguished.

The vacuum

Of free space

Travel on roads

Waiting and moving

Into and out of the void.

Cue those sweet,

Goddamn

Pianos

The gentle 1-2

of snare clicks

tap tappa

Tap tatata tat

A rich sub base

Sneaking up through the floor.

Something in the water.

Your package will arrive?

When it does

You will know

It was from us.

Not by the label.

There will be no label. 

-Cue the horn blast-

Still,

all is right and everything is in place again

And we just need your signature

-tinkling scales up the high notes of the piano-

the space between has been circumnavigated without the need for dead reckoning in and without running aground in tide pools of great inconsistency.

-sour saxophone bellowing-

Just sign

Dotted line

and we’ll take you right past the chorus

To the way the pieces come together in a final appreciative din and an end that writes itself.

Zen Ruination Pt 1

 

let the rest

Take care of itself,

the circle meet its end

of it’s own volition,

the age old questions

passed from our scholar fathers and their scholar fathers remain unanswered-untouched and unblemished by the ravages of brainwork,

a rock falling down a chute forged in the shape of the rock,

smooth,

made for the moment and her indeterminate visitation,

despite the distance traveled,

coming and going,

unchanged.