The Moment (Individual Worth, Buddhism, Christianity & Let It Be)

I dreamt I had paid my dues:
I had done my research;
I had sat quietly;
I had taken notes,
organized them carefully
and waited patiently--
not minutes,
not hours,
not days,
nor months, nor seasons, nor years,
but decades--yes decades--

and finally that moment came.
I stood, for I knew I had something to say;
I knew it would not be easy;
it never is in a world that talks on incessantly,
but I stood anyway, not because I wanted to.

I would rather have gone fishing,
and I don't fish.
It seems absurd to lure the hungry,
hook them and yank them from the known
out into a dry existence
where their eyes are too big
and their lungs no longer see,
where their tail flaps,
but there is no longer resistance--
the comfort of something pushing back
gently, with ease,
instead one yank out into an unknown
expanse of thinness,
of clarity.

No, fishing is no sport for me.
Let the fish swim happily
in their thick little world
of mirror liquefied
and wrapped around them
like a great quilt--light, shadow,
birth, death, movement distracting them
from the alpine air
above the lid--

Who would want to be a flying fish anyway?--
to arch out into the unknown,
to know sunlight unfiltered,
to soar up into the heavens
above your old home,
and to find everything you once knew
an illusion, to know worlds
stars, galaxies and universes without end
await your discovery.

Yes, fishing is not my sport,
but I knew my time had come,
I gathered my notes--

There was Marla's chin, eleventh grade,
perfect, and she didn't know it.
She talked on about clubbing,
about fake ID, about drunken nights
on McKinney Ave and the West End,
about meeting the members of KISS,
about going back stage, but not about
going under, being violated
by Gene Simons' foreign tongue,
nor blacking out, nor waking up
in an empty hotel suite, stumbling naked
to the bathroom,
clasping her clothes around her
as if she could remember being swaddled,
as if innocence and safety
and love were still garments you could slip into
like blue jeans and a tank top--
how she looked into the mirror and hated
her hair, her eyes, her nose, lips,
especially that chin with such intensity
she reached two perfectly manicured
fingers down the throat, tried
to offer some sort of sacrifice
to that porcelain alter--
The heaves were dry,
she had nothing left to give.
Her chin would remain beautiful,
as would her thick hair and dark eyes
to God, to me, probably many.  Perhaps
even Gene Simmons
saw the very pinpoint of creation,
of unspeakable truth and light
shine up at him as he penetrated her
and placed her forever
on the alter of Mammon,
the electricity of the whole damn universe blinking
for a millisecond, glitch after glitch,
year after year,
millennium after millennium
as small flames snuffed out.

I looked out on a great audience of incessant talking--
young couples and old, from every nation, kindred, tongue,
wine glasses in hand, slurping on pizza
or octopus, draining down Big Gulps
while stuffing mouths with popcorn and crickets,
chattering around the fringes
of their stories,
carefully stepping around
the black holes
that keep their galaxies spinning,
their tails flapping,
their gills pumping,
their eyes wide and metallic
as they navigate
their way the best they can
around the fish bowl.

I whispered, "I too have sinned"
and sat back down.

A man in a white suite, wearing sandals
and bright red socks smiled,
"Well said, brother, well said."

And I swear I saw that light
that once glimpsed
leaves this world a drop
in a sea of glory.