Fashion (9/21/14)

Fashion is a tale told by an idiot,

full of gowns and hunger, signifying

double standards,

manipulation,

self-objectification,

unhealthy perversion,

fake ease and fake love,

dishonesty with self and others,

body dysphoria,

eating disorders,

lust for money,

and the one drop of perfume

slept in by a fictitious French starlet

in the movie ‘La Dolce Vita.’

It is still sold as sexy.

But genuineness, which does not require funds,

comes without money-

with greater cost, and greater effort.

With greater joy, and greater pleasure.

Authenticity is sexy.

I don’t even know what fashion is, in a word,

but it signifies more about human longing , and misery,

and the thousand damaging ways

in which people try to change themselves every day,

for the wrong reasons,

than the expensive perfume

that some spray so easily.

September 21, 2014

At the Great American Health Bar, Manhattan (9/20/14)

Fruit salad and green tea in Manhattan,
all my friends left for Columbia,
writing a poem on a napkin for the first time in months,
perhaps years,
and remembering Brandon Labonte,
for he often wrote poetry on scraps of paper ready to hand,
like this.
I’m waiting to meet a friend from Brooklyn who has a fever,
feeling overwhelmed by life and its sensations.
Sleeplessness, you lay on my thoughts like an ether 
where only slow motion is possible;
but my eyes ache and the colors are bright, 
and the streets and the people have the pace of normal life,
or a greater pace still.
For such a city life, I suppose,
is not so suited to what we evolved to thrive in,
no matter how typical it may be now-
how desirable, how exhilarating.
I am reminding myself of what Caitlin said about seeing people,
and even these many strangers, in the light of eternity,
each having God within,
a path that is right for only them,
no matter how similar it may seem to other paths.
The great muchness of things notwithstanding,
peace is here for the finding, each and every step,
each and every beating, beating, beating on of the heart,
each rattle of the grates on the sidewalk with the subways beneath,
each glance of sky between skyscrapers at dusted blue
and clouds like daydreams,
floating through the consciousness of a great world.
I write this, and the waiter-
one of seven billion thoughtful sons and daughters of God,
a son of this same reality-
sees me filling up the white space in blue ink,
and puts another napkin beside me
without my even having to ask.
People are thoughtful,
people can read each other.
Amid the tiredness, bustle, fevers, hunger,
and lust rattling our grates like subways on schedule,
we are the quiet gesture, the warm glance,
the ignorance and not noticing,
the excessive dwelling on
and the too-swift passing on
of the God that is in us,
and remembers this, and forgets this,
over and over again.
Whitman of New York!
Ginsberg in the fruit aisle of a supermarket!
Okakura of green tea!
I remember to eat my fruit salad
and drink this tea,
and as I do so,
I forget my anxiety.
Still tired,
still knowing a friend is probably dead,
still waiting for a call from another friend in Brooklyn,
still hoping I don’t catch a fever,
still hearing lust rattling the grates.
But I feel less hungry and closer to reality,
to goodness right here,
and I glimpse the everyday God,
the every moment God.

September 20, 2014

Hope (9/14)

There is nothing here,

a wasteland

smiling out of the craters

on the highlands of the mind.

  But aren’t there some things that are not wasted?

There are truths to find

which are harder to grind

a tooth upon

than the bread that you eat.

The soul is hard to clean

but green is the sheen

of a leaf, a life, in the wind

past the craters’ great mouths.

Things go south

but the soul is north,

and let’s go forth

to the fields of no disaster;

There is no master

but the self-possessed.

Lest we rest

in the sleep of the not-so-blessed,

let us keep walking and waking,

not forsaking

any pain or pleasure.

Let us care for ourselves

and the people around us,

even if we do so with a longing

not quite fulfilled,

above our heartbeats.

In the pendulums of fortune

and the metronomes within us,

find the swing

that perhaps shall bring

the chance for might

or freedom.

     It is a good music,

     and louder than the birds.

2nd week of September, 2014