There is too much- The coming and going of pixels, products, and personalities, Demands, desires, deadlines, debts, Bandwidth saturation and buffering, Buffering, always, While the world continues to clickclick. Who hears anything? Who sees anything? Pay attention—a friend of mine just died. I didn't write acquaintance. I wrote friend. He needed things. Not much. I couldn't pay attention. It isn't all my fault, but Really it is. Not his death, but He could have left with more love and Care. Instead of waiting… Waiting for the buffering to clear.
Tag Archives: poetry
The Vigil
This is the vigil-
To protect you from the wolves
After the nights
Sitting up,
Singing to you
Heart Sutra.
“Don’t leave me.”
I won’t.
Holding your hand,
Touching your heart,
Fingers in your hair.
“You don’t get tired.”
It isn’t time for me
To rest.
For you though –
Watching you breath
Watching you stop.
Open the doors.
Sunrise.
Keep the wolves away.
Wait.
Feel the sudden change.
“Where is she?”
Gone. Gone. Beyond gone.
Beyond beyond.
To the other shore.
Let the people roll in,
Roll out.
Gather the sheet,
Tie it around your body,
Carry it away.
Carry it away.
Something Holy
I heard the jingling of a collar last night. Throughout the house, the tag against tag. I could hear them jangling from the denim in the cadence of her jaunt, side to side, side to side.
I looked outside. No dog. Certainly none inside. Back to bed, then, the jingling toward the room, side of the bed, stopped. I slept well.
I can’t remember when she left. A year? Two? But I remember her eyes. And the sound of her heart. As well as I remember her gutteral moan and her whistle. The rhythm of her step. How her face fit perfectly in the curve under my knee when she leaned into me. And how she looked at me when I knew she wanted it over. Her eyes, if they had been human, could not have made them more holy. 
Something Holy
I’ll find something holy in this.
In the blood and the vomit,
The urine and sad almond eyes.
Bodies come from the Earth,
And these are of the body.
So I will find something holy in this.
I will find something holy in the
Seizures, tetany, drugs,
The cost in dollars and sense.
In time, I’ll find something holy in this.
I will find something holy in the
Far-off stare, in the long breaths,
In the scent of wheat because
She always smelled like wheat
And was the color of golden bread
And, certainly, there is something holy in that.
I’ll find something holy in the last breath,
The closing of the eyes that won’t reopen,
The beat that slows, stops,
Leaves memory. And certainly,
There is something holy in that.
Peacocks
When I think of peacocks
I think of you and
There are so many peacocks
Here. Their colors are
Everywhere. You are
Everywhere. Teal, turquoise, and
Azure surround me as
The color of you. Your eyes,
Electric blue, Blue –
The eyes on a feather,
Royal, The color of Sky and
Oceans of blue,
Sapphires of blue,
Everything your eyes see
Makes everything I see
Iridesce with, flash with
You, Now
Everything reminds me of peacocks.
When I think of peacocks
I think of you.
Letter of Resignation
Letter of Resignation
(On my third reading of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse)
Vasudeva,
Is it really necessary
We live in this hut together?
Isn’t it enough
I gave you my clothes
For the privilege of tending oar?
Can I only find myself
In the eternal now of the river
Always flowing, but never the same?
Must I sit under that tree
For an entire week to find myself?
After a week, I should have found my navel by now.
Must I sit there to
Defeat my demons? Afterall, they are
At my heels no matter where I happen to be.
The lotus
Grows from mud, I know,
But I want a bath and clean soft towels.
Why can’t I find myself
In a club somewhere,
Meditating in the beat and the groove?
What about the
Constant flow of people and machines,
The never-ending now of the ever-changing traffic?
Why can’t I
Subdue my demons
Over a great meal or between olive thighs?
I resign.
Besides, Vasudeva,
You snore horribly.
Metric
If I had been brought up with the metric system
I could hold an orange in my hand
And tell you how much it weighs in kilograms.
But I was taught with pounds and feet
And I can tell you how much a whole bag of oranges weighs,
Just about,
Or look at a board and give you the measure of it.
But how many meters it is?
How much the orange weighs in kilograms?
I’m lost. Dumb.
Right in front of me,
Any guess as good as another.
Love, I think—
Love is measured in metrics,
Or some other unit.
I can look at it,
Heft it.
No matter.
Ask me how much I love you:
I cannot say.
I can only look at you,
Sigh,
And trust it can also be measured
In those sighs and desires, and hope
You do not ask.
In Response to William James and “The Will to Believe”
Sometimes one leaf
Will wave, oscillate.
A perfect repetition
again and again.
A dancing leaf machine,
Just the right shape,
Weight, tilt and wind—
Bent back by breeze,
Pulled forward by the
Spring of the stem
Twisted tight,
Bent back by breeze,
Twisted tight again—
Leaf and breeze in
Harmonious twist
And spring, twist
And spring, twist
And spring.
That can go on
As long as the breeze
Remains constant.
External forces,
Internal reactions,
Cause and effect.
Sometimes just one,
One leaf in an entire tree,
Waves. I imagine
It looks at the others
hanging still, and wonders
Why it is the only one
That has chosen to dance.
When I Am Alone At Night
When I am alone at night,
When I go to bed,
In my head,
I disperse my goods.
I write notes,
Letters, long, detailed.
I imagine deep long rest,
Wonder if I’ve had enough.
When I am alone at night
I roll myself against the walls,
Scratch, stretch,
Rub, rock,
Hunger for sensation,
Pray for contact,
Want for touch,
Wonder if I’m here long enough.
When I am alone at night
I fail to create ambitions.
In my head,
I disperse my goods,
I write notes,
Look at bottles,
Estimate pills,
Wonder if there are enough.
Adam Byrn Tritt 