Saturday, June 7, 2014

Spinning out of control

Spinning out of control again.
You should know by now how not to let it happen,
but you don't want me to depend on you,
you want me to be the man
and live without needing you. Or you me.
It is too much tough love for me.
All I can do is give you what you want
and leave.

===

"What?" He said. "You can't see that it is over
and that you should forgive me,
because that is the Vaishnava thing to do?"

A real karma-yoga attitude --
pick yourself up and get on with it.
This is the show and it must go on.
No time for confessions
or fretting about inborn tendencies
or whether there was something to be learned
from the damned incident.

No, we just pick ourselves up and go on,
hell be it where we are going,
mindlessly stuffing our fantasies
like a football into our chests
and running hell bent to the goalpost
trampling the antiparty as we go.

Ah but we are going to Radha and Krishna, we think,
we are going towards prema we think,
and if we run, eyes closed, it is still better
than spinning out of control.

===

Truly I exceeded the bounds of good taste in love.
I whimpered. I cried.
I cried loud tears.
I shouted and screamed in angry frustration.
I banged the door with my bags packed.
I threw myself down in silent samadhi sashtanga pranams
and each time I looked up
I saw my seemingly emotionless ice queen
unmoved and talking of something else,
la belle dame sans merci.
To what masochistic fervor did I give myself?

And all to be told the truth
that for all the emotion
I was missing the point --
the point being you need to do something
Emotion on its own
cannot stand.

And I admire all of you
who in good, Anglo-Saxon stoicism
can stiff your upper lip
and go forth for God and England
taking up the White Man's burden
even while your insides fester
and your eyelids twitch.

Oh yes, you stoics are way ahead of me in this game.
I could not pass the test, the true test of love,
the prove-it, show-me part.
When the going got tough, I gave up.

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