GRIEF

It’s a Peanuts world of suffering,

and the Buddha is poking me on the shoulder

saying, “I told you so.”

He points to a path and says,

walk, it’s only eight steps,

and a smiling Jesus is standing by the gate.

 

He’s got a little white lamb in his right hand

and a bloody sword in the left.

“Remember the Passover?” He asks.

The Buddha puts his arm around my shoulder

and looks into my eyes.

The first noble truth is all about suffering.

So, don’t forget to get old,

make sure you get sick (painfully if possible)

and be prepared to die,

perhaps alone and forgotten.

 

I open my eyes and it’s a lead blanket blues morning

shrouded in a cloud of gray fog and stale coffee.

It’s a dog crap that sticks on your shoes day

and spreads over your clean white carpets,

and I don’t even have a dog.

It’s the 2 a.m. sleepless night

when the clock ticks and the pillow is hot

and my nose is stuffed

and my head is filled with a damned stupid commercial jingle

that just won’t go away.

 

Grief! Is it really so important

that we need to focus our minds on it?

It’s there all the time.

But I want to talk about it,

the anger, the frustration,

the endless Twilight Zone episodes

and visits to Motel 6.

 

Strange phone calls from sick children.

Emergency room visits

and mixed messages from doctors and medical staff.

 

I want to spew out my sorrow

and get it out of my system.

It’s therapy,

like howling at the moon

or chopping wood.

 

I’m trained to be an expert

at listening and hearing people’s pain,

but – oh, woe is me –

I’m a terrible listener, I guess,

especially when it comes to the people I love – my family.

It grieves me because I think I’m deaf

or have some mental defect or brain tumor

that drowns out their words.

 

I am a reformer and a helper

at least that’s what my Enneagram test says

getting out of bed every day

to do battle with the forces of sin and evil.

I turn on cable TV

and it’s another visit to the Death Star.

 

I must be crazy to think that a large orange tyrant will change

or that we will soon wake up

and discover our nation under the leadership

of the sane and the sound of mind.

 

My dreams are filled with mushroom cloud-flavored atrocities

and chlorine-gassed infants.

I see Gaza, Ukraine, and remember Viet-Nam.

When I look away I see Adolf’s ugly face

reflected in a thousand mirrors

and goose-stepping North Koreans

pounding out the monotonous sound of war on steel drumheads.

 

The rise of the new dictators and the strong men

portend a world that goes back to the Dark Ages – of the Twentieth Century.

 

Vlad the Impaler now resides in Moscow

and I’m reliving a world where little children

duck and cover beneath their wooden school desk shrouds

and basements are converted into concrete fallout shelter mausoleums.

There’s a corroded five-gallon tin can of peanut butter

that’s good for the next ten years.

My cell phone even has a Conelrad symbol.

 

I grieve for this world which is drowning in sorrow,

drowning in the hot water of melted glaciers,

drowning in ignorance,

drowning in injustice,

and just plain drowning in stupidity.

But while my grief comes from without,

it also comes from within –

my body, my mind, my soul

and spreads out like dark water on glass,

an angst-filled syrup

that often leaves me pallid, dry, and wasted.

 

I grieve for my children

who drift in a techno-millennial world

that is shallow, wasteful,

and wallowing in a mindless sea of social media and video games.

I am sad for their futures

because they don’t speak of spirit,

joy, service, enlightenment,

or even of God.

 

And I think about what I did wrong,

or perhaps what Sunday school lesson

I didn’t present with truth or passion.

If they even mentioned Jesus, Buddha, or Adonai,

I think I’d faint!

Did I not pray hard enough?

Was there some salvific gene that just didn’t make it through the blood-brain barrier?

 

I grieve for this body

that is aging and sometimes beginning to fail.

For tired eyes and ocular migraines,

for aching lower backs,

for painful knees,

for too much gas

and not enough peace of mind.

 

I despise this grief,

but strangely it provides the energy to fight back.

It is the yin that is essential for the yang.

It is the darkness which is essential for the light.

 

It is the emptiness and weakness of the human spirit

which is essential for the penetration of the divine immanence.

It is the paradox, contraction and contradiction

that enables creation.

And strangely it is the seed

that is transformed into joy.

 

Ah, Blessed Joy, Blessed assurance.

Jesus smiles and caresses his lamb

and Buddha claps with one hand.

 

(C) Richard Gordon Zyne

061224