This Ghost by Donald L. Simons
The roads I walk do
not lead anywhere now, not even to the end.
And the people I pass are all me.
The only way I can get here is by not being here.
I have come upon it many times, this place that is no place, each time as if the first time, always the last time.
A map was handed to me once more, the same map with the same roads going nowhere, except that there are fewer of them now.
What happens when there are no more roads? It means that there are no more roads.
As for the hour here, it is all one hour, the same hour.
I found God this time, although not where I thought I would find him, not in death, not in this death.
But now who is this who delivers the map to me each time? I have believed it was myself always, but it is not, not yet.
Standing over myself I am only corners now.
Calling after God
I saw God in the hallway and called after him,
but all he would say was that he never promised me anything.
I told him that I knew that already.
He didn’t want to be blamed, he said, to which I replied that I wouldn’t want to be blamed either.
It was encouraging.
There are residents here who are born, live, and die here unseen.
Eternal Spin
And so here we all spin for our eternity
In this forest of eternities
Emptying into where we have already been.
My leaves
I have fallen away from my leaves
These leaves of me so innocently old
As to miss me.
Vacuum
Death is a vacuum that
Only another vacuum can fill.
Shallow Grave
I am a shallow grave.
Reality
There is no such thing as water here,
Only the river it flows in.
Nestor
My name is Nestor
I hand maps to people.
Second awakening
The floor dropped out from under me then
And I was standing in a bottomless pit, a hole in my mind
Nothing but darkness all the way down
To madness.
I wanted to say I told you so
But I didn’t tell me so
Because I was the one who insisted on unraveling myself
Of purging myself of myself
Leaving only this yarn of me
This pile of yarn in the dark.
Whereupon God opened his eyes all at once,
Not that God but this one, and we recognized
That neither of us recognized the other, and
that all we were was this steep space under the floor where neither of us had ever been before.
Corner of the night
Time chiming in the dark, in one spot in a corner of the dark, the same spot in the same corner of the dark, a high flame on a tiny candle staring at me slowly, dripping down the sides.
I have confessed to monkhood, but nobody heard me, having not heard me myself. I have also admitted to killing myself, in this same spot in this same corner of the dark, in this same dark of the night, the chiming.
There are no isolated events in the world, never just one of anything.
Spirals
Spirals do not end well. Mine did not end well.
I no longer have a foreground or a background.
I want to be gone without a trace but I already am.
I do not want to be dead but I already am.
I left my breath behind.
The truth is that I do not want to be anywhere. I cannot be happy anywhere.
I am lost but now in death I am found.
My thinking mind watches as it ceases to exist.
Missing Person
I found myself missing.
Maps
The maps that Nestor handed out were not of roads but of catacombs, showing where all the buried were buried.
Again
All I remember is buzzing through a long barn,
When there was a loud crack from a far-off shadow
And all that was, was nothing again.
Out of the way
I have always been in my own way. Now there is no longer a way for me to be in my way of.
Passing thoughts in passing.
Is death to keep people in or to keep people out?
Death is a prison with higher walls.
Death is come-as-you-are.
Death is the next step into death.
Talking to myself is talking to no one now.
The word end rhymes with the word end like an echo.
Remembering Nestor
There is this memory, although I do not know whose it is, of a Nestor, his name was, he is here, who mowed his lawn all day. Across the street was another Nestor, he is here, too, who constantly replaced his front door. The first Nestor’s grass grew back, and the second Nestor’s door grew back.
Hanging Bones
I miss my bones to hang me on.
Other half
I stood upside down in a tree to see what the other half looked like,
Only to find that there was no other half, not even this one.
Birth of time
I miss the smell of birth
A mother’s exhalation
The inhalation of my eyes
The birth of time.
I was raised by monks for centuries.
When I was a monk
When I was a monk, I did not fight with anybody if it could be avoided. When I was a monk, I did not fight with anybody even if it could not be avoided.
When I was a monk, I did not want anything, even to be a monk.
The end can end only so many times.
Last thing I remember
The last thing that I remember occurred on the winding trail just beyond my hermitage. I was on my way back from my morning meditation when a crow spotted me and leapt into the air. It flew across to the other side of the path, then dropped what it had in its beak.
What it had in its mouth and which laid now in the short grass beside me was the head of a jackrabbit, the head only
As the rabbit had no expression on its face, I could not discern whether it died in terror, surprise, or ecstasy, or all of these, its having never been eaten before.
Too Many
Always too many of me,
Ever squeezing closer
Nowhere to put myself anymore.
I have come upon it many times, this place that is no place, each time as if the first time, always the last time.
A map was handed to me once more, the same map with the same roads going nowhere, except that there are fewer of them now.
What happens when there are no more roads? It means that there are no more roads.
As for the hour here, it is all one hour, the same hour.
I found God this time, although not where I thought I would find him, not in death, not in this death.
But now who is this who delivers the map to me each time? I have believed it was myself always, but it is not, not yet.
Standing over myself I am only corners now.
Calling after God
I saw God in the hallway and called after him,
but all he would say was that he never promised me anything.
I told him that I knew that already.
He didn’t want to be blamed, he said, to which I replied that I wouldn’t want to be blamed either.
It was encouraging.
There are residents here who are born, live, and die here unseen.
Eternal Spin
And so here we all spin for our eternity
In this forest of eternities
Emptying into where we have already been.
My leaves
I have fallen away from my leaves
These leaves of me so innocently old
As to miss me.
Vacuum
Death is a vacuum that
Only another vacuum can fill.
Shallow Grave
I am a shallow grave.
Reality
There is no such thing as water here,
Only the river it flows in.
Nestor
My name is Nestor
I hand maps to people.
Second awakening
The floor dropped out from under me then
And I was standing in a bottomless pit, a hole in my mind
Nothing but darkness all the way down
To madness.
I wanted to say I told you so
But I didn’t tell me so
Because I was the one who insisted on unraveling myself
Of purging myself of myself
Leaving only this yarn of me
This pile of yarn in the dark.
Whereupon God opened his eyes all at once,
Not that God but this one, and we recognized
That neither of us recognized the other, and
that all we were was this steep space under the floor where neither of us had ever been before.
Corner of the night
Time chiming in the dark, in one spot in a corner of the dark, the same spot in the same corner of the dark, a high flame on a tiny candle staring at me slowly, dripping down the sides.
I have confessed to monkhood, but nobody heard me, having not heard me myself. I have also admitted to killing myself, in this same spot in this same corner of the dark, in this same dark of the night, the chiming.
There are no isolated events in the world, never just one of anything.
Spirals
Spirals do not end well. Mine did not end well.
I no longer have a foreground or a background.
I want to be gone without a trace but I already am.
I do not want to be dead but I already am.
I left my breath behind.
The truth is that I do not want to be anywhere. I cannot be happy anywhere.
I am lost but now in death I am found.
My thinking mind watches as it ceases to exist.
Missing Person
I found myself missing.
Maps
The maps that Nestor handed out were not of roads but of catacombs, showing where all the buried were buried.
Again
All I remember is buzzing through a long barn,
When there was a loud crack from a far-off shadow
And all that was, was nothing again.
Out of the way
I have always been in my own way. Now there is no longer a way for me to be in my way of.
Passing thoughts in passing.
Is death to keep people in or to keep people out?
Death is a prison with higher walls.
Death is come-as-you-are.
Death is the next step into death.
Talking to myself is talking to no one now.
The word end rhymes with the word end like an echo.
Remembering Nestor
There is this memory, although I do not know whose it is, of a Nestor, his name was, he is here, who mowed his lawn all day. Across the street was another Nestor, he is here, too, who constantly replaced his front door. The first Nestor’s grass grew back, and the second Nestor’s door grew back.
Hanging Bones
I miss my bones to hang me on.
Other half
I stood upside down in a tree to see what the other half looked like,
Only to find that there was no other half, not even this one.
Birth of time
I miss the smell of birth
A mother’s exhalation
The inhalation of my eyes
The birth of time.
I was raised by monks for centuries.
When I was a monk
When I was a monk, I did not fight with anybody if it could be avoided. When I was a monk, I did not fight with anybody even if it could not be avoided.
When I was a monk, I did not want anything, even to be a monk.
The end can end only so many times.
Last thing I remember
The last thing that I remember occurred on the winding trail just beyond my hermitage. I was on my way back from my morning meditation when a crow spotted me and leapt into the air. It flew across to the other side of the path, then dropped what it had in its beak.
What it had in its mouth and which laid now in the short grass beside me was the head of a jackrabbit, the head only
As the rabbit had no expression on its face, I could not discern whether it died in terror, surprise, or ecstasy, or all of these, its having never been eaten before.
Too Many
Always too many of me,
Ever squeezing closer
Nowhere to put myself anymore.
Comments
Post a Comment