I have paid dearly for learning how to die;
so much so, I want to live.
But having seen death,
can one truly be alive?
Can one continue, knowing that the outcome is for not?
Is that what the prophets mean by the Great Mystery?
Perhaps our natural weakness is suspicion and anxiousness.
Our only strength, hope.
“Here’s my place.” I declare.
Strip myself.
Lie face down into the earth.
I use a piece of paper to keep the ants from nesting in my nose.
But it seems, this course of inaction was but an experience,
not the prevailing wind.
I am not the ground, dirt, nor rock,
which is to be tread upon;
however, I do know how it feels.
Though realizing it is not my path.
I stand up, brush the dirt off,
and announce, as I walk out into the world. “I am free.”
“Free from what?” the wind gustily inquires,
blowing the ashes of my own destruction into my face,
reminding me: what I am, and what I have let myself become.
My ash-filled eyes
bleed forth such an unboundable light.
My tears act as prisms to show me rainbows:
The dreams that fade as I wake.
But how can I hold on to those patterns and shapes,
the images of my life?
Blinded by my own darkness and desires
I crawled about the ground;
buzzards began to circumvent me,
while they waited for the immanent death;
However, by my thickening want to live,
or by destiny itself,
I killed those buzzards one at a time
with word and bite;
I plucked the feathers off each
to construct a pair of wings for myself.
When I finished, I spread those buzzard feathered wings.
The wind gripped me and hoisted me up into the sky,
elevating me above man, and his seven deadly sins.
For a moment, I almost believed.
However, I got so close to the sun;
its heat caused the feathers to combust.
Gravity did the rest.
I plummeted,
and realized, in trying to be free,
I was only attempting to jump while already falling.
I plunged into the ocean.
Submerged within the womb,
I siphoned fluids through my stomache.
What can I say without wanting to touch the Earth
with my hands and lips,
to taste her soil across my tongue?
I have been in the water so long,
that I have become a prune.
My fingers are no longer plains;
but deep valleys cross their width.
Smyon-Pa 