I know what you mean

But maybe I have to tell you
now already that
these pressures of ignorance and subjection
will only get worse.

You will gradually feel your control
over the environment slip away,
but this is just an impression
since it is really your view
on the world
that is enlarging.

Adding years to your age
expands your mind and thoughts.
And you start to realize
that there are actually
only very little things in the world
that you can deeply
understand.

The only thing you have any power over,
if you are born so lucky,
are your own actions.
Your emotions and even your opinions
are mere slaves of circumstance.
They just drift along
helplessly.

This is of the essence in meditation.
Mastering your behaviour
through activity or inactivity,
to the extent that,
over the years, many years for most,
you feel that you can eventually
channel and steer your emotions.

There lies a first step
in the practice of ‘letting go’.
Your goal should be to let go of your emotions
which are mainly reactions to outside sensory impulses,
to aspects of life and death
far beyond your control.

I have, and still am,
experiencing this as a profound
and life shattering difficulty.

You can try to outwit and postpone
but you will not succeed in eluding
the reality of having to construe
something inside your self
that belongs and is understood
only by you.

Pull yourself together

No single one is better.
Reddened fabrications pass on
and through our heads.
Concocting weary tales of our stature
being different.

Swinging the big oak doors
wide open and
leaping from the granite steps
over the threshold.

Rolling down the slope
of busted skulls
and collar bones.

Sliding into the tar pits.
With losers emptying
large bags of feathers
from above.
Chuckling because they don’t
get the least of it.

Most of my days
I spend in my head
waiting for the second hand
to turn the other way.

Typing gibberish
that serves none of my
dreams.
Talking to others
instead of facing my nightmares.
That’s real dishonesty
for you.
It’s a defensive manoeuvre
in which I’m the first to get it.
Totally pointless.

If I practice what
the circles have learned me
I know that forcing the light in
works.

I know that the efforts
are rewarded
every time.

Still
the fall
kills me
time and time again.

The barrier of expectation

I freeze up when I hit it. There’s nothing I hate more than the public road to achievement. The expectations that line up like miserable mutilations of life. Because they have succeeded in fooling some that ambition matters. That things, other than real things, could matter. Which of course they can’t. The real things like life, death, food, housing, compassion, … are absolute to us while we are alive. Ambition is your pretext to justify egoism and hedonism. And while I love exploring, enjoying and developing my senses, there is no point in glorifying them at the cost of others. Mistakes: yes, ruthless ambitions: no.

My disdain for objectives and milestones is inflexibly exaggerated, beyond any realism. I carry it in front of me like a doctrine. Strutting like a peacock. Wielding my contempt like an axe. (It has become the perfectly accepted excuse for my ongoing mediocrity, which almost feels like a Zen practice. But I’ll tell you about that some other time.) Ambition is on the cutting board today. You can’t trick me into believing that ambition is the equivalent of purpose. You can fool only yourself on that one. Your position on the ladder means absolutely squat shit and once you really close in on the end, you will feel it, with remorse scraping your ego to the bare minimum of, oh yeah, nothing. There is no substance to ego. It peels off into oblivion. It leaves no trace or legacy. Nothing.

What is left is the set of excuses you have conjured up all these years, as not to confront your self. I have long ago let go of this. I totally stopped caring about where you think you are headed. It looks like a wearisome sitcom. A farce at times, but always dramatic.

Prudence by the fence

One of those days,
again.

Seem to be having many lately
and it all falls down
on my head.

All at once.

So I’m sitting back,
relaxing the shoulders,
lowering my breathing,
loosening the jaw,
lowering my eyes.

Days like cliffs.
Like tall building’s roof tops.
Days like rope.
Of reckless driving.
A forever sleep.

I can’t even pinpoint
what I believe to have lost.
It tells me nothing.
It shows me everything
without explaining anything.

Barely staying afloat in these days.
And no longer afraid to admit it.
I no longer have any practical issues.
But I’m left with inner turmoil.
Ravaging and howling.

It’s a day for heading to bed early.
And to sleep in late tomorrow.

Just made a mental note.
Will do.

Be gone, pathos

If the dialogue has no chance to develop, our pathos has no space to grow. Contrary to what you might assume after reading these regurgitations of mine and other people’s words, I am no fan of dialogue. I am no fan of words. They are lost before they hit the floor. The life has been forced out of them before the waves bounce off the skin of your face. Once they leave the ravine that is my empty mouth that articulates these destined to be empty words. Born hollow and absolutely pointless. The only thing that moves in words you hear or read is the reflection of your feelings. The recognition of your own abandonment. The incapacity of your own expressions. Every conversation is an immediate road to defeat. As much platform as there might appear to be, nothing supports the absence of whatever these words were in their premature state. To utter means to disconsider. It is better to bury and possibly forget than to deprecate the initial thought. All the rest is losing energy. As life is just a frozen state of death and the beyond. It almost leads to saying: why bother? But I do bother. I have to bother. The alternatives are the bridge, or the rooftop, or the train, or the rope, or the pills, or – like this friend – the rifle. None very appealing and only supporting the pointlessness I’m trying to refuse. Fuck, imagine the balls it must take and the depths you must feel to just head out to the shop in the morning, buy a rifle, drive home, sit down and just blast your head open. I can’t get my mind around it. But then, I’m not depressed. I’m just numb. And numbness is inactive. I just get carried. Like I have no more passions, only activities. Like I’m dragged through the room by my feet, face down. My cheek scraping the floor, my eyelid getting caught in some nails. Bleeding rust, but not caring. Not since that day. And I don’t even remember that day. I don’t remember what started me off. It was with me all along. I noticed that when last night I found some paper I wrote in college for a free assignment. It mentioned how hollow I felt back then and it surprises me to see that I haven’t been able to fill that gap. A lurching assassin that keeps hanging around. In the darkest corners of our debauchery. What do I want? I don’t know. I know that I shouldn’t want or crave. And most of the time I’m good at that. I have mastered it. I have suppressed it. I have pushed it down into irrelevancy. Because it truly is. Irrelevant. But I still wish it weren’t.

Something on a friend

There’s a heat wave. Statistically even. It was on the news and all. And that’s where all the truth comes pouring out, no? That’s the moment we look forward to so we can feel informed. I’m sleeping like a charm though. If I take some precautionary measures. But during the day I’m dragging this awful thing along. It hangs from my spine as if it is attached directly to the cord inside. The pain is like metal flashes of memory cutting and slicing away at my breath. I feel bereft. Cleft in twine, straight down the middle.

It made me think of the wounded, dying girl that cut off her own face as she sank to the floor. Not to be recognized, nor remembered. I thought about the reason for that mutilation in those last seconds for a very long time. Because I did not have to convince myself that it made absolute sense. It just did. I even liked the concept.
I don’t just talk to myself, you know. I do speak to others about this amour for the negative. It still is a delicate subject cause it makes me feel like a sickness to realize that most of my drive and effort stems from the darkest places. I have found myself in others. Not in their words or looks. But in their mistakes. In their experience of weakness. And those weakest of things, we all share. We boil down to the same sordid laughter.
But you are right, most of the time I talk to myself. I don’t know if that’s normal, it just turned out this way. Not like I’m treating ‘me’ as two or more people, but like someone else altogether. This inner blabber is highly active. As if I’m trying to consider myself. Explaining and justifying. There were far younger days when I subscribed to a code. And while it gave some support, it also meant absolutely nothing. I saw people, friends, completely undermine themselves. Completely fail themselves. And eventually blame me for it. And these wounds run deep like thoughts. Unreachable. Unconscious of where they were born.
The reproaches remain active even after many years of separation and so called growth. Trust is not something earned. It isn’t even real. As many things are not real. But who am I to force this on you. After many years, either you or me, will be proven wrong. So keep up the front and take the gamble. That’s all there’s to it, my friend.