Some Saturday, 12th Grade

Hey mom,  sorry for not calling earlier

I'll be home late, after curfew actually.

I'm drinking heavily and won't remember

leaving this message tomorrow I'm sure.

I'm about to go out with people I don't really know

to a party at a house I've never been to

and don't know the address of

and the driver has only had five or six beers

so he's fine.  We'll all be fine.

We're in the car smoking marijuana

that we bought from some dudes

who went to the city recently.

They said it was the best of Mexico

and the ecstasy is 95 percent pure

so not much risk there

but I feel hot, on my skin,

and my mind cannot be distinguished

from any other thing.  I wonder if I'm here

if I'm alive but I'm okay

it's just philosophy.

Love you forever.

Sorry for the long message.

Okay love you.  See you tomorrow.

Bye.

Samsara, Impermanence, and the Will of Love

Always self-identified as a Buddhist
and so believed that escaping from the cycle
of suffering that is Life was it. That was the goal.
But I've met you now and am confused
like I was before I met the Buddha.
I now think, well, if you're coming back
then I'm coming back, too.
Again and again I'll come back with you.

And I have this poem I read back in high school
getting all jumbled up with my own ending here
and it goes like,
I have many lives to live before I leave.
And I have many lives to live before I leave.

Amidst folly and war and laughter and risk
there is togetherness.
We decide if it is permanent.
And if we decide that it is,
then it is, isn't it?