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I’m no bodhisattva
Actually, that’s the title of a most unholiday-like poem I wrote just days before Christmas in 2013. Peace and goodwill to all men was MIA. Here it is just eight months later, and the grouse is still grousing, but maybe a little less snarkily, as you’ll see in “In the Garden.” Lordy, lordy, there’s hope for me yet. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The archeological dig into my poetry archives led me to other pieces I’d completely forgotten, and actually enjoyed on second reading. I’m going to string together a selection in a kind of ragtag biography, not meant to be sequential or even very consequential. This is another case of expediency overcoming writer’s block.
Since I invoked the bodhisattva in the title for this blog, let me begin there.
I’m No Bodhisattva
Crap news on the Internet.
Depressing stuff everywhere.
Cheating spouses,
stupid politicos,
spiritual angst and
Facebook rants.
There’s no line
between the public
and the private
any more.
I could give
a rat’s ass
what’s going on
with you.
And I don’t think
the Buddha meant
for me to wallow
in your stuff.
So please,
stop shoveling
as if my compassion
is your due.
I am ready to go
off the grid
with nothing
to do but
sit and watch
the sun rise
and moon set
outside my cave,
only the
rising and
falling of
each breath
marking the
passage of the day.
Oh my. But see, I wasn’t always this hardnosed. More fearful and anxious, perhaps, as too many “coulda, shoulda, wouldas” surface as they did when I watched some really jerky old black and white home movies. They led me to bemoan paths not taken, even though I had no idea what they might have been. As any analyst worth her salt will recognize, so much of it is tied to wanting to measure up and not disappoint others, especially our parents.
Perhaps
Seeing my parents in grainy home movies,
younger than I am today, was a strange
and heart-rending thing.
I wanted so much to climb
into the frame and be a child again.
Perhaps I could become the girl
I imagine they wanted me to be.
Perhaps I could rewind my life
to a time when I still could be
anything I wanted to be.
Perhaps is such a sad, regretful word.
Fast forward, please.
Then there’s the wish for my younger self who couldn’t fool the camera.
The Girl
Flickering images on the screen
reveal myself to me as I was
so many years ago.
So naïve, so innocent,
and so very young.
My heart aches for her
as she flashes a bright,
self-conscious smile
at the camera’s eye,
bravado winning out
over uncertainty.
She doesn’t know enough to be afraid.
If only I could save her from herself.
But then, she grows a pair (you know what I mean) with this little manifesto.
A Fucking Rainbow
You know what? That’s it.
I’m tired of blue funks, and
black sulks, and gray miseries.
I want to be sunny-yellow
for a change, like the perfect
“have a nice day” yolk of
a sunny-side-up egg.
I want to be the show-off
sunflower, cheerful and
irritatingly perky.
I want to be day-glo orange
and green and purple, and
relentlessly neon,
even in the dark.
No more dingy cellars and
spider-web corners for me.
I’m a fucking rainbow.
Yes, indeedy. However, all too often, the rainbow is darkened by rain clouds and blown away by storms. But that’s life.
(Sorry, no rainbow photo, but I love this one by my grand-nephew Bron Moyi)
The trick is to find a little lightness in the midst of our collective pain. This brings me to the end of my little literary odyssey with a poem I wrote several days ago after OD’ing on CNN and HuffPost. It’s a bookend to the bodhisattva lament.
In the Garden
It’s so hard to breathe in the
stinking miasma
of anger, hatred and
sheer cussedness that
streams like a toxic flood
from my computer screen.
From Gaza to ISIS in Iraq
and Ferguson, Missouri
where pitched battles pit
brother against brother
and the innocents in the
crossfire pay a horrible price.
To Liberia, where terror comes
in the form of a killing virus called Ebola
named for a peaceful river in the Congo,
and we say to victims,
“Stay there. Don’t come here.”
To the twisted theology of
Baptist fundamentalists
who threaten to spew their malice
at a beloved funnyman’s funeral because
“God hates fags.”
I hardly know what to make of it.
I can only still the beast
by taking a walk in the garden
with my little grandchild who sees
nothing but wonder and beauty
everywhere, and drawing my eyes up
and away from the destructive trail
left by slimy slugs and scavenging snails.
I wanted to end this with a really clever saying about poetry, and went searching for famous quotes. I rather like this one, although I’m still scratching my head.
“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” – G.K. Chesterton.
Poetry is the
language of the heart when the
head can’t find the words.
