The plot’s restless.
Newness grown
stiff from disuse.
To believe to have lived
through the end
of something
and still to remain
in that tight ruse
of the habitual.
Slice a day open:
the padded announcing,
coils of debts and balances
and that dull spray
of the first person singular.
My god, the thick paste
of the past
collapsing fresh
from the tube!
You envy children’s eyes,
how they chew
on parts of the world
that lack firmness.
And what was it
the lama said last week
over Zoom?
The more he practices,
year after year
after year,
the more ordinary
he grows.
You understood
this was welcome.
Meager ambitions
require discipline—
pouring the slosh
of desire
over and over
until it thins.
It’s like this:
time is this
and that.
And the ordinary
is hardest
to dream, yes.
Much easier to pull
at the tufts
of a thousand illusions
falling through one hour
into the next.
