“I'm not a Buddha in the sense of I can sit under a tree for a thousand years. Who can? The climate doesn't allow for it, anyway . . . ”

I hold a pair of scissors over my head and open and close the blades to cut off the air from its source. I lower the scissors to the ground and snap at the surface to punish it for its errors, such as grass, trees, flowers and fruits. I turn the scissors point towards myself and snap the blades open and shut at my nose, my eyes, my mouth, my ears. I have to be angry at my-self too who lives off earth and air.

Now that we have ordered well may we turn back
upon suffering; after the fixed moments and precision,
to seek comfort in release. Peace being with us,

I am about to close my refrigerator after removing a package of meat when I hear my door lock turning and a crew of men, without so much as first knocking, walk in.

I dream I hurl a spear into the body of my love. I am brutal, but the spear begins to glow along its shaft and transfixes me. I stand covered in its radiance, unable to move, magnetized towards the spear that I reach out to touch and then grasp and stroke and carry myself forward along its length until I have touched the body of my love itself at the point where the spear has entered. I sob, I shake in convulsions and the body of my love bends forward to comfort me as I support myself against it in a paroxysm of leaving my body.

I paused in my car at a street corner before entering a broad, busy road, looked in both directions for traffic and then eased into the road ahead of distant, oncoming cars, a warm feeling of accomplishment that once more 1 had entered the stream of things to become part of America, on the go. When I reached my house and entered I slid back into a chair and felt stranded, forgotten and apart in my own home.