Trigger Warning

("Contagion III", 2020, original pen and ink and oil) Trigger Warning From the safe space of my hardened little heart I send out my love In waves of conditional bliss To all who are just like me. And since that’s actually no one That love only fills the hollow hardened space A geode no one will ever open. Yet within this mirror-facetted crystal cave A whole world revolves Like a Whoville on a clover blossom Hidden from every other by the simple Abundance of endless pink waving plains. Last night a friend shared these words of wisdom; The cause of Suffering: “Reifying Nothing” The end of Suffering: “Reifying Nothing” With the sobering effect of pinpointing That the contentious sides of anything Are always looking at the same thing The thing itself Being so gracious to effortlessly accommodate Any and all projection The little distortions Our hardened little hearts Create in the vibrating space Of their solitary confinement. Each of us all together all alone The ultimate truth Being that all truth is relative; The kernel of ancient wisdom At the heart of the postmodern cancer Multiplying in ever increasing mutational loads Consuming itself Killing its own in a territorial imperative Of survival through ever dividing Identities Each standing on the head of the oppressed beneath Each consuming the flesh of those who died before In the struggle for a cosmic justice That lives nowhere but The perfect world of our own crystalline hollow Now in disarray Each waiting for a Horton savior To hear our tiny desperate plea Acknowledging that we too are a person No matter how small, or brown, weak, foolish or ***** That we too are All that we dream. (11/21/23)