intrigue

He's there, I know it.
Staring like a gargoyle.
He never says a word.
I don't think he can talk.
I think he's pre-verbal.

Don't gimme any crap
about the essential me.
No hippie blathering,
no crystals, no gurus.
This guy ain't higher,
but he is quite deep.

Maybe some India yogi
reaches his own depth
and finds his own me,
that other me staring
from an elemental pool.
He calls him “essence.”
If he says it's cosmic,
he's full of mystic goo.
That phantom staring
is more like a reptile
than a star vibration.

Well...I was too rash.
He's not really a reptile,
though he probably lives
down in the hippocampus.
I think I actually saw him
once a very long time ago,
when I was staring into
the mirror like an idiot.
My face began to warp.
I scared myself real bad.
The phantom surfaced
and just stared at me.

I think he's a doppelganger.
I think he shared the womb.
I don't think he's the sad me,
wandering around in dreams.
That me is this surface me.
The me that I am is so lost
in dreams and in life. No...
my doppelganger isn't lost.
He might be in my dreams,
but only as quiet observer.

Sometimes I wish I was him.
I think he has powerful mojo.
Powers from the spirit world.
Sometimes I do wonder a bit
if others ever catch a glimpse
of that other me staring back.

And sometimes I do wonder
just what he's thinking about...


* * *

O, man who thinks he sits on a settled throne!
Know that your kingdom is always in anarchy.
I have watched the parade of your nonsense.
Your arrogance, your humility, your aestheticism,
your daydreaming, and your romantic delusions!
And I keep silent, here embedded in the abyss.
Yes...you are right about one thing only. How
you came to know this thing is beyond even me.
Yes...far from the weaving of threading world
lies the Great Abyss. I am there and here also.
Those strange roses when you were a child?
You fell into their spiraling blooms, those echoes
of deep absence, mirrors of the scarlet fantastic.
And I am still partly embedded in the formless
weave of sighs and spreading desires inside.

But let me not ponder such strange things.
If I could speak, I'd tell you of life and you.
This world of colors and uncanny textures
is a helpless child. You and all of the others
are moving through the surreptitious creases,
through the moaning folds of matter into time.
And in this textured time, you and the others
are unknowingly urging the Great Bloom open,
opening into dangers and glories of capricious
possibility...into layers of the unexpected.

And you, yes you, turn on a spiral of beauty.
It is your curse and your blessing. You love
that gracious being who glanced from mystery,
whose smile is perfection. You adore because
she is a symbol of those roses still enchanting
you from a distance of dream and old ecstasy.
She, like those blooms, burst the coils of stasis.
So she is the analog of your Imagination. You
have spent many years breathing and weeping.
So she is now the great culmination of breezes,
gentle rains, and fragrance. She brings peace.
Do not tremble, do not strive nor desire. Simply
receive this gift from the Abyss – the air of her.
If she smiles toward you, know you have lived.

Now...the weight of roses and ancient waters
fills the groove between us with a dark veiling.
I fade and go on to the regions of long waiting.
In hallowed shadows, I will hear the whispers
of others who are the others of who you love.
And I will attend the quick moment after death,
blend into you, quell the fever and the shock.


* * *

And sometimes I wonder
what he would say to me.