Forget About It

It is night – very dark.

I come around a corner

and there is my face, disembodied,

just the face, the eyes and the rest,

mine, like a mirror in the blackness,

looking at me as if I was it,

straining to see myself in the black night

and yet knowing at the same time

that this is an apparition

waiting for me, born out of my brain

like a sea urchin with spines of truth

that it is me, my eyes, my mouth, my skin

and yet, as I shudder in the terrible moment

of fear, it smiles at me,

its eyes flicker, its mouth trembles,

sweat is on its brow, and I see

that it can be afraid of me

as much as I am of it.

The awful moment of seeing myself,

the infinity of time I dwell on it

from when I was told I had a self

to the time I believed it…..

there is no mystery.  The deep cavern

of introspection is sweating with laughter

because it is a grand comedy.

One who sees himself and fears that visage

is a vagabond of character

who cannot ever sleep well,

who cannot ever see the sky

for seeing his own skin.

Sunlight is like a shadow;

there are no spaces wherein

the eyes can contain what is there

since nothing is there.

There is only one’s face,

one's breath,

one’s eyes,

one’s mind.

The wide, wide world that others embrace

is an oasis of invention,

a mirage, hovering like a laser dancing

on top of the consensus of reality.

Just lay back and become sick

with the tones of those immutable songs

that buzz like hornets in your dalliances of life.

Forget about what you think is there.

There is nothing there.