Something New (written after Jason's death)

"I" prayed, and nothing happened –

Jesus did not appear, there was
no "peace that passeth understanding,"
not even a numinous chill…

I watched a Guru on TV,
telling me all the religions were the same,
that the truth would set me free,
and on and ona ndon ananda ndon and on
until his droll chant ceased - and
                            he a$ked for money -
there was no truth, no peace,
and he blamed the nirvanic absence on ego.

Then "I" felt…

My mind extended into my chest, a cavity, a cavern
filled with a thousand swirling wraiths, angry
nondescript, terrifying in their discordant flurry,
not asking me to pray, but to enter…

"I" breached the mood, through my throat,
down a windpipe raw with grief
into a claustrophobic corridor, met by
a monstrous yelping dog
nearly chasing me back to my prayers
and the chanting Guru. I moved past,
and there,

Across the dark cavern I saw
a single shimmering wraith
rising from an urn held aloft by a
five fingered song, and two soft glowing eyes emerged,
brownish-black, somehow familiar…

There were no words,
but by his luminous glance the cavern, or my mind,
lengthened, and a million fathers stood around me,
and a million mothers, wives, children and
others too…

And that brown-eyed specter nodded at the horde,
saying nothing, making it clear that my hollowness
was not from his absence,
but from the presence of the empty multitude
as lost, as sad, as confused as me.

I turned back to the wraith, a wry smile,
also very familiar, had replaced the dark eyes,
and slowly he faded from my sight.

I returned back through the dim passageway
crowded with groans. 

I felt no sweet resolution, no truth,
none of the peace I had hoped for.

But there was a slight comfort,
a solace in the necessity of my ignorance,
the brilliance of hopelessness
in order that love
might crack the angry chrysalis of a lost race,
giving birth to something…new.

end/Michael Bogar  9/20/2008