I have looked at these things, these dramas, these
Games that people play from so many angles and different perspectives
That I have confused myself.
Writing about them in the third person, I’ve invented characters with pain so
intense only
Hell could relieve them,
Some of them are believers of political rhetoric and sinister propaganda
And religious dogma so inane that believing must be a sure sign
Of mental illness.
Walking in the park, or standing motionless in front of a spectacle that
They never notice, you can find them gnawing on
The bread of life, fingers dripping with the sticky entrails of their feast.
God, their god smiling over the endless fetish of their insatiable desire
Goads them on to
Conquest and empty absolution.
Sometimes they gather in rooms with gilded altars and raise their voices
In song, self absorption and vanity, soft little prayers
Floating slowly up to heaven on little, fluttering wings
But most are mired in the filth
Of petty self righteousness and tacky, meaningless, pretentious displays that
Fall over on the ground in the rain.
Then there are the ones who live in a world of plastic things
That don’t quite work.
They keep throwing them away and replacing them but each substitute is
More perplexing, and more expensive, the instructions
Make less sense, and the easy open packages only open
When chewed apart by teeth.
Out on the highway they feel the pulse of the world, they drive
Here and there but nowhere they ever get to is where they want to stay.
They chat incessantly into cell phones but most of what they say
Is never final, it only adds to the crazy chatter, the only constant,
intelligible word is more,
And at the end of the day more is never more, the more there is
The less the soul is full
Tomorrow they will try again to fill it up while it only empties its essence in
defeat.
But then there is you with the center always holding
True to the simplicity, the essence, the aura
Simply predictable because truth never changes it stands fast
While fashion becomes extinct, styles one by one drop into memory
Some locked away in forgotten closets
Are resurrected and celebrated
For a little while.
In your little house there is always the real, there is
Black coffee and nicotine stained fingers the eagle’s view out your window
Close friends and family meeting and embracing on
Holidays and occasionally by accident, furniture well worn
And loved, the use not fading away the memories
Lodging intrinsically into the fabric of your surroundings.
You are an inspiration to me with your minimalist lifestyle and your
Disdain for the plastic and the disposable, your
Quiet patience with the great unwashed, you have traded the quest for the
unreal
For the essence so long ago that the road is now old and worn for you
But it is still going only forward,
Now there is only pain and loss ahead.
This is the way of the warrior, and now even in the golden years of living
there
Is the choice of a warrior to know that your most important work must
Be done in pain and hopelessness. To know that the desire for things is
All around you but to be dead to the earthy passion of it all.
To sense at the end of life that the love of the temporary is an illusion that
shields the heart from pain
Leaves one alone and small in the big unknown.
If you could see in yourself what I see you would know how incredibly beautiful
and special you are,
You would see the years of decision and childbirth, work, peace, love, loss,
pain, joy and soul changes
Emerging beyond it and looking in the mirror one day and asking
Is this really, really me
It’s never a question of what does it mean, in the end we all wind up wondering
How did this all happen?
As all things go, we are eternal, even when the hour grows dark
Dreams of death and agony and separation from love and comfort
Wrap their steely tongues around our dreams,
We must cling to our beliefs
I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve come to believe
These things we have come to feel, these items that we’ve trusted to be true
Are in fact real.
– Mike Glover