WHY MEDITATION DOESN'T WORK FOR ME

WHY MEDITATION DOESN’T WORK FOR ME


While trying to discover
the realities and facets
of my spacious present,
I become camouflaged
in real physical time,
where senses become
distorted and where
all experience comes
from second-hand energy
and ordinary circumstances.


I am trying hard to stay
within my bony skull –
in order to travel outside
my plane of existence, but…


Can I help it if I am
obsessed with the theory
of beginning and end -
and that I conceive time
to be a series of moments?


OOOOOOOOMMMM…

A NEW GETHSEMANE

A NEW GETHSEMANE


Following Candide’s advice,
I cultivated my own garden
in rich black humus that was
as soft and as cool as the
earthworms that churned there.


I became a messiah
to the strawberry plants –
the expected deliverer of the fruit.
Day after day, I worried over them,
as if they had mortal souls to save.


They strayed from the righteous path and
climbed into the beans, tomatoes, and corn.
They were not interested in possibilities,
but wanted only to live for the here and now.


I absolved those murderous strawberry
plants that strangled the delicate snow
peas standing innocently in their way -
strangled them until their blossoms lay
white upon the ground like translucent
eyelids cut from tiny alien corpses.


Beyond tired, I would sit under
the tulip tree at night to rest.
I would try to forget the
strawberry plants for a while.
But always, looking toward
the garden, I felt restless -
as if I were about to be betrayed.