RigobertoRogier

Some days
I’d like to take
my bodhisattva vows,
and shove them
far up someone’s ass.

Anyone.

Some days

I’d lock the ignorant
inside the house they built
and throw away
the key.

Let them eternally pace
the same rooms
convinced of their freedom.

Some days

I wish I could drink
from the cup of delusion
without consequence.

Drink deeply.
Forget what I’ve seen.
Forget what I know.

Some days

I don’t want another lesson.
Don’t want another teaching.
Don’t want a god damn awakening
Leave me to sleep!

Some days

I’d rather be comfortably numb
than conscious
of this endless
breaking open.

Some days

I’d rather die ignorant
than carry
one more fucking ounce
of understanding.

Wild Phlox

In patches
along the landscape,

purple pink patches pushing
against sea shades of endless emerald green.

Radiant,
though unaware
of the beauty it offers.

Not trying.
Not allowing.

It simply is.

And this morning,
as a passenger crossing into Workland,

if I am paying attention,

I am reminded
that beauty need not be made,
nor summoned,
nor earned.

It is here already.

The wild phlox does not claim it.
The sun does not possess it.
Neither do I.

This beauty,
this love,

existed long before I took form,
before my name,
before my striving.

The same life

moving through root and stem,
through purple pink petals,
through emerald fields,

and through me,

for a brief while,

before continuing on.

What has his death taught you?
What has it taught me?

Impermanence—
not as philosophy,
but as bone and breath,
as the way a name
suddenly becomes memory.

The wheel turns.
Karma is not punishment,
only momentum—
a mind disturbed,
forever arguing
with the love it was born from.

Compassion
is the only honest response.
The only medicine
that does not create
another wound.

Dennis, like us
suffered
inside this dissonance—
my uncle,
your brother,
someone’s father,
someone’s son,
a husband still spoken of
in the present tense.

Like us,
he tried to soothe the ache
by owning things.
Ancient wisdom warned us:
no object can hold
what we are looking for.

Still we fed the ego,
this starving god—
did we nourish it
past the point of return?

When I die,
Denska and I
will be the same
for one perfect moment.

But will we?

What energy have we released
into the winds of this world?
What continues on
after the body loosens its grip?

Love?
Greed?
Ignorance?

What will you leave behind—
not in inheritance,
but in imprint?

A wind that returns year after year.

What do you wish
to bequeath
the land of the living?

My lotus blossom

Do I love you
More than I love myself?

On too many days
I tried
to make you other.

I placed my hands
where only light
should enter.

My expectations
pressed against
your petals—
petals not waiting
for my touch.

I called it love.

I thought
I was sent to guide you
through this land
of opposites.

I did not see
you arrived
as the teaching.

Your beauty,
your radiance,
your turning
to the sun
showed me
what is required.

You revealed
what must fall away.

When you hear
my orders,
my directions,

know they arise
from old vows
I learned but never chose—
a voice
learning silence.

My work now
is unmaking
with each breath.

I see
how your beauty
asks nothing,
receives everything.

Let me tend the roots
without name or claim,

and lean back
as you open
into the shape
you have always been.

You gave this madness a name,
called it demon,
called it enemy.

You learned its patterns,
watched how it fastens itself
to your longing and fear.

You trained yourself to recognize it,
to meet it head-on.
We tell ourselves this is courage.
We take pride in the battle.

But beneath this familiar darkness
is the deeper source—
the quiet current that feeds the beast.

A thousand unnamed thoughts
moving through us as we sleep,
as we walk this world
half-seeing,
half-awake.

The moments between moments—
this is where we are formed.
The slow gathering
of a thousand small storms.

The unnoticed ones.
The micro-judgments
of expectation.

Our reflex to classify,
to categorize,
to name—
as if knowing were mastery.

Go beyond this

All of this has been said before.

But to honor them,
you must recognize them

as the very ones
who have come
to unmake you.

The mystics
arrive from a distant land—
a place just past the fields
we know.

From that mountain meadow
they can see clearly
this land of opposites
that I call home.

Their hearts are vast open prairie.
soil they turn
without fear,
and take part
in their own becoming.

But we—

we who live
in two directions at once—
our sight is not so sharp.

Here,
judgment reigns.
And the kingdom of separation
does not loosen its grip
easily.

It reaches down
into the root of us,
feeding the small but gluttonous
I / me.

Wherever we walk
we drag its dirty silt
across the bright, colorful fields
of oneness.

But the mystics—

this is their work.
They came here for this alone.
To harvest this nutriment
without fear, 

knowing it’s the reason
The blue lotus
blooms.

She came suddenly
Unannounced.

The darkness has arrived

Tree leaves have relented,
leaving the spindly fingers
Of brittle branches

Reaching up in gratitude.

The ivory snowscape covers the land now.

The gripping cold sending us to our home.

The darkness comes early
and leaves late
asking us to listen
to what we’ve overlooked.

And our season of holiness begins.

The returning to stillness.

In order to
enrich our earnings,
We must
occupy our cathedrals of
Worship
nurturing the slow malignancy
we mistake for purpose.

Records must be broken
Again and again.

Those who decide
Can calculate the price of bread
Down to the crumb.

but they do not taste
its warmth,
its fragrance,
Its sweetness.

They are ignorant to the families
Who were given some sovereignty 
over time and space.

Who could create family
While serving their master.

This story is not new.
Greed breeds its own gospel.
Desire writes it down.

And the stones
that prop up.
these temples of commerce—
they are only pieces
of a restless ant colony,
waiting for the day
the Mother shifts her weight.

And what will be left?

What will Jamie Dimon grasp
When the earth buckles?

The same as me.
The same as anyone.

Nothing.

I begin
again
and again—
a human rhythm
of faltering
and returning,
losing
and remembering.

And the very fact
that I know
I am beginning
is the distance
between myself
and the sparrow.

Who rises
without hesitation,
moves
without reflection,
returns
without naming it.

She does not
measure
her starts.
She does not
name the place
she lands.

She knows
no other way
but the one
she is already living:
a continual
unfolding
so natural
it cannot be called
beginning
at all.

And standing here,
watching her lift
into the quiet morning,
I feel the soft ache
of being human—
aware of every step,
yet longing
for her effortless
flight.