I had coffee with the Dalai Llama
in
Central Park on an April morning,
sitting
on a bench and shooting literal breeze
with
our bony index fingers extended,
which
he thought was funny because it was chi,
and
one doesn’t want to shoot chi, no, not really,
and
his orange and maroon robes whipped like prayer flags.
He
stated on a more serious note that nothing was real,
and
I said, “Well, like Strawberry Fields
and
nothing to get hung about?”
And
he laughed again like a heavy branch
shaken
by the bright morning chi that guided birds
to
various destinations on their avian calendars.
But
he was insistent that the world was illusion, maya,
a
dream, and neither he nor I existed, not really,
and
there was no beginning or no end
except
Nirvana, which seemed like the ultimate end to me,
the
snuffing out of a flame bright as a Nehi orange soda
and
a break with the wave of sensations I’d been riding
since
I’d slid down a birth canal and found light
and
the Beatles and a great deal of wondrous lust
that
helped me get out of bed when my joints were stiff.
And
when he left for Katmandu, I rode the subway
and
saw raggedy straphangers thrown around helter-skelter,
saw
hookers on the street when I emerged from Styx,
and
they all seemed quite real and solid
and
in need of mercy, much as the homeless
in
the alley with the dumpsters and newspaper blankets.
I
thought it unlikely that these beautiful homo sapiens
had
rolled up so much bad karma or polluted chi
before
they slid down some big mama’s birth canal
that
they deserved to land on the sandpaper concrete
of
New York City under its cold skies and gray soul.
I
loved them all and shot them some breeze with my finger
before
going home and looking through my window
at
the brick apartment building across the way
and
the couple arguing and making love and babies
and
looking like people named Gus and Lou Ann
or
a million other people who lived in the matrix of matter,
and
in my omnipotence saw that it was good.
~William Hammett
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