Crossing the unfeeling surface of this
ugly city,
lost in broken reveries &
the sophistry
of melancholy without origin,

thought begins
to blend into visceral abstraction:

the nausea of a simple creature
wanting only to know why it knows it
must suffer.

Wouldn’t it be better
not to think at all,
to be

innocent & free

from the thoughts that follow
the hollow feeling
that everything

is meaningless?

                        …but meaning is a concept,

one of thought’s
many children,
so without thought
there would be no concept
of meaning to be lost…

through a clumsy succession of steps I
try to accept
that the words bring this suffering & yet
are the only source of my salvation:

no affirmation without negation;

                        nothing is something,
            & something
                is nothing

without opposition…

this is what brings me back to a fleeting
consolation,
my one broken prize;
a thought
that isn’t mine:

the tree is really rooted in the sky*;
it is the light
falling continually from above
that provides
the energy
needed
to defy gravity,

by finding it’s way upwards while
sending roots
deep into
the earth.