POETS OF THE NOW
Hoarding shards of perceptionless vibrations,
Smiling down tirelessly suffocating fears,
Crossing rivers on the backs of formless jealousies,
Climbing over the last dead, rotting insecurity.

There and then, the Now appears

Opening arms so as not to take them up,
Lifting the front end of strollers up subway stairs,
Listening to the silence of the void, before the first
note touches the air,
Gazing on the endless power and possibilities of the
present.

Witness this harvest of the Now from which such
sweet fruit is bared

Glint of night retreating from newly sown seeds of
breath,
From behind glass walls, fragile self-esteem steps
aside
As soul reaches out, knocking it all away --
Free to connect to the world again,
Sending isolation to its lonely grave.

Yet staying vigilant, listening for the next crowding
in of thoughts,
Unwittingly ready to erect new enclosures.
What’s it like to live in the past or future of your
mind, I’ve mostly forgot,
Confusing the Now with the fantasy of some other place
and time,
Some other experience, never resembling mine.

Maybe seeing where I am right now is not where I’d
hoped to be,
But being able to BE that NOW in THIS time and space
and KNOW
The transitoriness of a situation and NOT let it
determine who I am,
But to know the wholeness of it all
And not be swept away, lost, somehow, in the cluttered
musings of some illusion.

This is the lucidity of the immediate,
The arrival of living.

No more prisons of the mind, body or spirit,
No more how-it-is-your-supposed-to-be police,
Rambling, ramble
Slowing, slow
Center, centering
Now, now

The five skandas, both simultaneously present and
destroyed,
This is the challenge.

The rich, the poor,
The shuckster, the hustler,
The businessman, the homeless,
Those most proud of being gas guzzlers.

All in need of this Now,
Not simply a bunch of words,
But something once found,
The beauty of which paves a lush path to the infinite,
Transforming the victims of the swamp into the
Poets of the Now.

Steve Swell