Having a Kafka Moment

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
~ John Milton

i’ve been growing old slower
with all this beauty around me
my peers lately, have been chatting
about the power of gratitude

every revolution evaporates
so why bother, bureaucracy
prevails, politicians are corrupt

i’ve been growing old slower
since i started not doing politics
not being political, learning
to be productive in the spheres

that aren’t touched by the marketplace
i’ve learned not to lie, by staying silent
i no longer read advertisements

i no longer occupy my time with wanting things
i’ve been growing old slower
with a quiet beginning of understanding
the first wish to die has risen in me

like a bud that will flower
a medication from my own substance
i have the true feeling of myself

only when i give up happiness and unhappiness
there, the world will present itself
to you with its unmasking
like a child that only wants to play

i’ve been growing old more slowly
in theory where I abandon the second world
the idea that suffering is necessary

that pain is a natural argument of time
i’d rather read a book
that serves as an ax for
the frozen sea within me

and associate myself with human beings
that not only lure me into a self-observation
but allow me to laugh at myself better

or realize how pathetically scant
my self-knowledge is compared to say
the awareness that I am growing older
and care less for my youthful failures

by consequence of a natural decline in memory
it’s there, that evil is whatever distracts
me from whatever I consider my calling

at the time, did I mention that
i’ve been growing old more slowly
since I’ve surrounded myself with kind women?
it’s true, women are precisely

my favorite religion, i could hide
in their dogma for any number of years
feeling totally young in their emotions

find many hiding places listening
smiling to their relationship-antagonists.

Compassion-scape

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.
~ Denis Waitley

Let’s go dancing to the ceiling
with candles for our soul
let’s hide out amidst the fireworks
and wait for hypnotic words

so in awe of our time here
with an insistence on revolution
for the genuine rapport of living beings

Let’s go afrolick with the world
in countries and clans of sympathy
let’s appease the nomad within
strike a chord and bargain with elements

outside of our comfort zones
let’s go gawking beneath the stars
miracle-work on the front lines

unbridled like a spirit without melancholy
let’s become somebody else
change our name, our address, our friends
discover romance without shunning

deeper questions, write the screenplay
of the poetry of our human evolution
without fear, tonight is clear

i can’t afford a star anyway
but they say sunlight is free down here
a smirk for fate’s untapped paradise
a joke for these pioneering twitches

that do not end, but ascend, ripple and contend
that to describe a moment is impossible
joy has an essence of improvisation.