Sufficient Self

As a youngster he had dreamt of moving to a potato farm in Ireland To escape from the brown rot of German post-world war II contamination Just another plot on the map to sufficient existence and to break rusty chains Blight or might but the famine of established ways had yielded necrosis Naïve teenage rebellion no doubt but the grass is greener where it rains To drop out of established offerings into a commune seemed like a valid idea He is not certain whom his middle finger was for but a green digit it was Field stone cottage wild roses blue outside loo with a heart carved into the door To find existential experimentation and leave excremental increments behind He opted for a solid university degree and career with a doctor’s white coat Without mud on his ‘healing’ hands a syringe pointing away from himself No digging of tubers but life support and psychoanalysis fresh from exams Meaningful job good income and latex instead of mucky gardening gloves Alternative medicine became a fig leaf for big pharma and the Buddha was far Lotus flowers don’t grow well in hospitals or conveyor belts of remedial curing A life planned out well with star chart rewards under a canopy of performance Suddenly the Sun and the Moon took him hostage into a hermit’s eclipse A man cave of an unpleasant kind without tools to conquer life’s lesson The exit was barred by thistles stinging nettles and a thicket of brushwood Blackberry hedges grew in abundance with fruit only on the far side of his hole Stethoscope rusty reflex hammer bent in half and leaking blood pressure gauge Mindless days and nights merged into a long meaningful void of oblivion An endless loop of dire thoughts provoked reverberations of vacant echoes Myopic eyes reflected a mirror opposed to a mirror and the prism fell foul Cave art resembled a child’s drawings only with melancholy charcoal on grime A gong measuring cacophonous illusion became a provocative token of time His voice choked on memories and all he could taste were rumination of bile He found a way out of his self-imposed (?) gaol once he ground through debris Inched his way forward away from the underworld and electric currents of pain Let go of what would not sustain his wilted soul and thirsty dehydrated mind While he made progress the bramble’s fruit were luscious tasty and quenching As he gathered courage nuts and seeds the winds attached wings to his roots Which guided him to a beach by the mountains to find Source ever more Today he lives more removed from temptations of self-destructive torture Left behind toxic waste and poisonous venom of false promise false friends Gave up on potatoes and has settled in an orange grove of sufficient Self 11th June 2019