In the lunatic asylum,
it's quiet after the meds round.
R's mind was in the madhouse,
but his body was in a lifeboat,
or maybe vice versa,
he couldn't tell for sure.
He only knew that he was floating,
and, sometimes, it was too choppy,
and if life got too happy,
he felt that it was fake.
The open sea 's a harsh place,
but no worse than the where he carried
everywhere he ventured
inside his dense brainpan.
A fatal, futile option
was selected with a button
that may -- or may not -- have resided
within his very soul.
So thirsty and so lonely --
side-effects of something.
It might have been the meds,
or, perhaps, the salty air.
He chose to think he wasn't
bounded by a nutshell;
though his brand of crazy
was quiet before the storm.
One day his kidneys gave out.
Who could've ever imagined
that such a thing could happen
in such a place as that.
I am not the fallen,
but the falling --
he who never hit
the ground.
And you may hope to
know my call,
but I was never
there at all.
I was sitting on the
tower.
I was dropping to the
ground.
I never emitted a
flash of light,
and never emitted a
peep of sound.
I am the falling,
not the fallen.
The one who never
hit the ground.
Rain sidles up in a commanding cloud
-- early --
And so it waits in its cloud,
like the awkward party guest
who sits in his car,
waiting to be fashionably late,
but - not having decoded
what "on-time" really means -
arrives early, nevertheless.
I stare at the flowing river,
and, for a moment, it seems still,
as the world whips into
a wild ride of vertigo,
leading me to question
all I believe about
the still & the moving.
Everything that's still
is spinning, orbiting,
and expanding
Everyone who's still
is a seven-jetted
space monkey
on a rocket ride.
They say hands are the hardest human part to artistically render --
to draw or sculpt or paint,
causing artists to hide hands,
or at least to not replace them
when an earthquake or inept movers
break them off.
I believe them.
The perfect curve is not easily attained,
all those random crenulations and creases,
the lumps and knuckle nubs,
the veins and blemishes,
all that is necessary to convey life --
be it a hard, hammer-wielding hand,
or the soft suppleness of an unworked hand.
Straight digits can create an uncanny valley
as surely as does a rubberized face.
Emotion is expressed through hands,
as through faces.
I heard that the straightened fingers of
Olympia's left hand caused quite a controversy
when Manet presented the painting,
causing almost as much of a stir
as the fact that she was an ashen,
syphilitic prostitute.
In Dream Yoga, we do reality checks with our hands,
looking at the hand,
looking away,
flipping it over,
and then looking at it once more.
Doing this whenever one sees
anything strange or suspect.
It trains the brain,
which - in sleep - shuts down its suspicious bits,
to take note of the nonsensical.
If you're awake,
you just see your same old [underestimated] hand.
If you're asleep,
you won't see five perfectly curved fingers,
you might see an expansive fractal pattern,
or a cloven, bifurcated, mitt.
Even our sleeping brain can't keep track
of five wriggling little digits.
No wonder they give artists such fits.
In the early morning hours,
a staggering drunk asked me
if I were him,
thinking he was looking
at a mirror
rather than through
a glass door.
I told him it was too early
for such metaphysical inquiry.
I watch a frangipani blossom --
its elegant five twisted petals
swept downstream,
drifting toward the smooth laminar lip
that rolls over the cascade.
And I feel a teensy queasy,
watching it be lifted and whipped
over the edge.
As if I were it,
and it were me.
to be poured steaming tea
from a dented kettle,
in a wooden building,
hanging at the mountain's edge,
at the end of a long day's journey,
has a special spirit-raising force
Tiger Riding for Beginners 