Ever Present

Obviously if you focus on the real, the real comes to life
and a life of living is worth your while
while you carry on as if nothing is happening, everything is.
That is, as it is happening it carries you along with it.
Snap your fingers and the dancing girls appear, it’s that simple.
Oh, they are dancing women. Now they are men.
Do you see what I mean. I have taken you over. You have become
a control freak. A control pervert. A wrong shoe on the right foot.
And something to be desired on the left. Watch the left, it’s
the right side of your brain. What you think is to not think at all.
Politics is like a cushion to sit on. Sit down. Sit down on it and
don’t let it wriggle around. You are your own King, the Queen of your King.
You decide what you have done. Now presses on into the future.
Which you’ll never know. Everything evolves but time. Just go with it.
As if you have a choice. Your choice is to not choose. Although
you can fight Ennui like the French masters did. As they got bored
their poetry froze. Continue to be a hot number but don’t think
you know how to lead. You’re a born follower, at your best.
Open your ears, shut your mouth, listen to what’s not worth hearing
or hear what’s not worth listening to and you’ll be the divine prince
of all time, or some of the time or maybe not divine and actually
     not a prince but just an innocent individual
not so innocent after all as you face your faults
raining down around you – nothing is perfect
including yourself. Your self that is not your “I” as “I did this”
“I am” since you have no idea what your “I” is
and yet you’re as palpable as anybody else –
your prayers are breathing, your heart beat is your lust for life,
gratitude fills every boat you set sailing from your mind.
Thoughts that set their streams on wings. Calculating forward,
calculating backward. Life, Tao, anyhow,
what’s flying now, flying out from your dreams.
Your bungling self is not in the way for a change, you’ve read
some masters of the mind and soul, what is soul, is it soul-delicious?
Something you can eat, digest and perfect? Or is grace ever present?
As if you can force anything. “Man” ahead you say, knock it into place.
Hammer the soul into some prescribed shape. Just try it
just like Dr. Johnson lashing the wind to get it to stay still –
language grows through your fingers, it’s wild, you can’t stop it
or why should you try? You know good and well you have something to say
and nothing to say if you truly listen. Slice the wound rubber bands of a golf ball
with a sharp razor blade and they spring free, you’re suddenly unwound,
you relax, easy does it, as all your clamps explode, your vices loosen
your vice-grips pop open, as empty as all those water containers you emptied out
the outward of you is connected to the inner, a giant zero, a nothing
a sense open sensefulness, a relaxed oo and ah, willing and ready
to receive or open to the nothing that is there which is liberated by your own silence.
What is there is everywhere as long as it doesn’t go to your head.
What head, the head on your shoulders, or my head.
Who am I anyway, as if saying something is my prerogative only.
You better shut the heck up, or I better shut my mouth having said
all I have to say about receiving grace, not Grace Kelly, not Grace Atkins
but plain ole grace, like a lovely tiara for men as well as women
or a circle over the head, but not an old-fashioned halo, not a glowing
a lifting without wings, a commitment out of self, self-annihilated under
the dancing feet, the game of dance, the dance of a game where everybody wins
that is its nature as your feet touch the ground, why shouldn’t they
walking hiking exploring returning sitting lying down with feet up behold
it’s time to sleep, don’t you think it’s about time to give it up, release,
let go as they say, isn’t that the secret all too obvious, now ever present
for everybody.