Meditation

Meditation
I walk down the frigid city street, deserted this time of night, my shift over at the hospital.
Memories follow me.
I hear their footsteps.
Darkness behind my lids.
The organs operate in the cavities of internal night,
Seething in their nutrient liquor,
Throbbing, constricting, quivering.
The self–--you can smell it, taste, it, hear it,
 Feel it.
But you can’t see it.
It sees you.
The “I” can never solve itself,
Like the “now” can never be pinned down.
The final frontier—mind, not out of matter,
Neurophysiologists blowing in the wind
We all have a feeling of a certain age,
That younger age inside that watches the castle walls crumble under the relentless onslaught.
The clocks are at the gate.
After age 70, the years are counted in dog years.
They melt away like birthday candles.
To contemplate the loss of my mind, the dissolution of consciousness, the loss of self ,
The greatest fear besides the inevitable loss in death.
“I knew you before you were born,” sayeth G-d to Jeremiah.
Are the living the lucky ones?
I preside over a dwindling empire while the unborn multitudes line up to the edge of Aleph Zero.
And G-d said to Jeremiah, “I knew you before you were born.”
Does he know me after I’m dead?
The Earth is dying.
Nobody around to go to its funeral,
Coyotes will walk down the middle of the street.
Mountain lions will crouch in second-floor windows.
Where the wind howls through the gaps of my teeth,
Bury me on the moors where I belong,
Folded into the crypts of wet mud.
Syphilitic Caravaggio wandered in the wilderness to be killed by bandits.
Will I see him in the high chaparral off  395, north of Bishop?
He killed a pimp in Rome; the outlaw genius fled with his art squirming inside,
Dead on the desert sands like a Rousseau night painting,
Rigid like a fallen statue—
Ozymandias.
A lion bent over beside him, curious,
And a Black gypsy is standing in a white jellaba with a blue guitar.
Where the dead suck, there suck I.
Cakes and pastries in a Paris bakery window,
A park bench in Luxembourg Gardens, a child is holding a balloon gathering fleurs du mal.
“Our regrets breed like vermin on foul beggar’s skin.” *
We forgive ourselves too easily.
The repentant Magdalene, she sits in candlelight, stares into the flame,
One hand on the flagellation rope
One hand on a jawless skull.
Once she was a whore; once she washed Jesus’ feet with her lustrous, long black hair.
Sayeth A’gur the poet in Proverbs 30:19
     There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not
     The way of an eagle in the air
      The way of a serpent on a rock
      The way of a ship in the midst of the sea
      And the way of a man with a maid
Her legs straddle in high heels across the railroad tracks, waiting for the midnight special.
Complexity is simplicity iterated, and there’s nothing simple at all.
Thanatos and Gaia are the main event at The Garden tonight.
My money’s on Thanatos.
Swell the gourd, plump the gourd—the worm cometh.
Make no mistake, meaning is threatening to break out.
Does a robot in Blade Runner have a soul,
Or can you tell?
My name is not on the marquee.
A stranger comes to town, a bundle under his arm. He comes to a stream, kneels down, washes his face, combs his hair, dusts himself off, and walks into town looking for a job. He doesn’t care that much what happens to him; his life is not that precious to him. I wish my life were not that precious to me.
* Charles Baudelaire  Fleurs du Mal