by D. R. James
Swimming
Apparently it has been said
that two lions guard
the door to Enlightenment. But
Paradox and Confusion, two
of the best friends a guy could hope
to leave behind,
seem more like two winos
blocking the door
to your apartment, trying
to avoid enlightenment,
though they don’t know it.
You could step over them
but you’d risk their awakening.
I wish I were an abstraction
in the form of a non-cognizant
but ferocious mammal. Not only
would I be warm-blooded
and highly respected and
sporting a non-thinning mane,
but I could save all the time
I now spend attempting
consciousness. It has also been said
that I tend more toward
the cold-blooded (possibly
reaching luke-warm when sunshine
heats up the lagoon) and not
regularly regarded, since I’m off
swimming the world, looking
for the world I swim in.
Which is funny if I think about it.
Which I can’t. I’m like
Prufrock in his flannel pants,
pushed around by a Symbolist,
three teeth cracked on peach pits,
love life always aground
around tea-time, sleeping
just out of earshot
so as not to drown.
Couldn’t Be Happier
How do I know I don’t need what I want?
I don’t have it.
—Byron Katie, Loving Reality
I couldn’t be happier, I’m saying
to myself this damp gray day,
late April, forsythia blazing anyway
across the street, rain dripping
from the porch roof eave, because
I’m not. Likewise, nine thousand
additional dollars aren’t called for
against the latest unexpected expenses
since they aren’t showing up, and thanks
and appreciation from the kids—hell,
from anybody—obviously aren’t in order:
none’s coming in. How do I know that
nobody should know that melancholy’s
returned? Nobody knows. And who
was ever supposed to think that shredded
shingles, general meanness, governmental
homicides, and this next pandemic shouldn’t
have appeared? They’re here! Such drove
François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire nuts:
reality daring to define what’s real, this
‘best of all possible worlds,’ happiness
with what is. Try telling that to all
the bloody survivors, the skeletal ones
with so-called victim mentalities who make
the nightly news do-able, the imbeciles,
like us, who can’t see the bigger picture.
Next thing you know they’ll want water,
nutrients, UN intervention, still
not comprehending if they don’t have it
they don’t need it. Next thing you know
they’ll all be challenging reality.
Dear Consciousness,
and you are, you know.
I know, I still curse you
in the cynical night, in my
stumbling through the numbing day,
calling you out, indifferent hex
on homo sapiens.
You’re why
I can’t rest in a shower, or
in the cool cavity of my skull. Not with
the world’s open sewers, polluted alleys,
those impossible bellies and the flies
plying the sweet corners
of children’s mouths.
You’re why
the soft, inexplicable give
so satisfies and why the take,
abrupt as a thought, snatches
the calm of veiled being,
a permeable haven, after all—
what we didn’t have to feel
to be salvation.
But horses
run for being muscle and horse,
and birds, even in cages, sing
for a sake all their own,
and I
am you. I am the knowing
to anticipate my sons’ returns
in joy, my sons’ returns
in the skinnings, the exiles
of their own lives (a throbbing
knot in my throat
in either case),
and their one day
not returning.
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