Meditation

After Rothko’s ‘Black Blue Painting’

Would you like to wish

you’ve seen nothing—

as if it were an imagining,

deluding your eyes,

twisting this truth of perception

out of your control?

Would you like to wish

you’ve never seen what you’ve seen;

that you’ve never witnessed

this searing divide,

forcing you to weep like a fool;

that there is a rusted fire

built around you like bars

of a cage, holding you in

seized paralyzation.

Yes,

you wish you weren’t

stuck on every hue of the abyss,

unable to part from

its endless chasm of inquiry.

You can only fall further

into its deadly everything,

so very easily,

keeping yourself to its allure; the mystery in its allure,

wishing you would

let yourself go because

it is devouring you whole,

like you are devouring yourself whole.

It is a misery

hammering into your heart,

like a stolid fear, muzzling speech—

you cannot speak

words to escape nor even open

your throat to gasp;

you are trapped in everything

and in nothing;

hundreds and thousands of cut

lines meeting in absurdity

and here—

  yes,

it is no salve to save

your stunted sanity;

no medicine in meaning—

only the beast of a god,

malformed and ascendant,

who guards the wish of freedom

from a lifetime of solitude and addiction.

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