The only visitor is death. No one else.

On the eighty-first night after my son died
he came to me in a dream.
He seemed happy and jovial, as he usually was,
but after a bit I began to notice something odd.
Things were protruding from his shoulders,
his neck, and his back.
Wires. Tree branches.
Vines. All tangled, wild.
I tried to remove them,
but I just couldn't seem to get them all.
My son laughed it off, as he always had in life,
and eventually we parted.
I woke up then, it was two in the morning.
What have I done?
Oh my god, where did I go wrong?

-

Dust on the books, dust on the tabletops. Silence. Sunlight from the window lays in stripes across the dirty floor. One day is the same as the next. Nothing has changed for many years. The only visitor is death. No one else. Past midnight he calls on me, like a ghost with nowhere else to go. At dawn he will slowly stand and leave. Will I go with him? No, not today, but try me tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.

-

"Friend,
what can I count on?"

"The brightly lit moon to define your sadness --
and your fingers, of course."

Just that, and moonlight through the open window.
Nothing else.

-

That I might let go my judgments, how easily they come. That I might learn to respond with kindness and forgiveness - to people, to life, and to myself.

-

james lee jobe 

In meditation, feel that lovingkindness and compassion—connect with it, soak it up, and let it cover your whole body. You can indulge in it because there’s nothing bad about it.

Bhante Sanathavihari 

When you don't understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.

Bodhidharma

My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.

Cary Grant

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

Jack Kerouac

McCoy Tyner, Giant Steps
(A Coltrane composition, done here on piano.)

Link: an armistice between my dead folks and my delusions, a poem by Ra Malika Imhotep

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-jlj