The Drunken Monk

This is the power you don't know you possess:
to say
I am weary of this reality that I have created for myself
and for my next trick
I will slam-dunk it into the trash and create a new one.

This life I've carried around in my head
it is old
and I have lived it so many times
over and over
always following the same steps:
once this happens, then do that
and these predictable results will follow
a familiar pit in my stomach will result
or something, some part of me, will break
and have to be put back together by someone
I don't trust, don't understand how to love, and who
doesn't know how to love me
but we will lie to one another with the skill
acquired by years of practice.
This is not why I am here--to spend my days
tangled up in teary pillows and silly fights
or teary silly pillow fights
or fighting of any kind; look, there is so much
I could be learning that does not have to do
with tears or pillows!

Here is what a divinely drunken monk once told me:
No.
You must practice saying no
to the ones who say they love you
but only throw you back on spin cycle
washing your pillow cases and crying
the same old tears you cried
the last time you had that same old fight.
You must practice saying no
to your ego, who longs for love
and seeks it outside the realm of your own heart
outside the boundaries of your own skin.
Be comfortable in that skin
learn to wear it like it's yours
for who else lives there?

Make a new life inside your head.
Tell yourself you aren't a sad person
a bad person, a crazy person
and it will be so.

Say to yourself,
I am lovely. I am sweet
and full of the juicy goodness
that comes with a rich, beloved life
a life that is beautiful to behold and better
because it is filled with love, with well-earned joy
(and fewer pillow fights).
Turn your darkness into light
and your nightmares into friends;
find someone who loves you, and let that someone
be you.


KB © 6/9/2013