I'm taking the day off today and Allen just moved on out of this crazy place.
It sometimes has its high moments and a bit of cosmic bliss
but what really matters is the heart and mind within all of this.
And for now I'm taking self pity at midlife because I feel so damn important and on the edge
of my bed suffering age and lonliness and I'm moving slower but the world is speeding up
and there's fewer spaces left to dream. Even though it's spring and the daffodils and tulips
are in bloom and the oaks and maples are turning green and I am lost in a kalidescope of color
my tears pour down like overflowing rivers.
Someone's cat got hit out on the Northwest Expressway where homeless men hop freights
going north and south and that old cat moved on too out of this crazy world but not by choice
or natural causes unless an automobile tire is a natural cause of events in this melodrama
called life and some angry youth went around town breaking out car windows
and I think of the line in HOWL; "I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness."
So at midlife I think back on the good old days when there were still places to find solitude
and beautiful people to meet. I feel fortunate to have been around then hitch-hiking across
the country waiting at some crossroads reading "HOWL" and the "PLANET NEWS"
reading poems of the beat generation feeling like a dharma bum writing my own words down
as the sun would sink over some vast range and still no ride but no worry and no care
and finally making it up to some high mountain to chant "OM".
But these days as the planet grows smaller and water and air and psychic space becomes rare
like the ancient forests and aborigines and dangerous civilizations increase
there is only time to go inward with intervals of silence and prepare for the great passing
leaving this body to return to dust and ashes and when the Raven calls out I will go into
that great cloudless sky into the cosmic void to meet the deities my karma has created
and if I'm still in this body at 70 I'll look back to the old buddhist poet wild eyed screaming sage
and say, "Thank you for the inspiration".
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(c) Thomas Avery, '97