I Don’t Know, Maybe

I don't know, maybe
the highest good
is to allow myself
to be destroyed 
with dignity
and some measure
of grace, 

to make a space in me
for the good and the bad
to coexist and remain
what they are,

the way you let
a flower be a flower,
and the cow be the cow
that eats it.

Maybe that's
the highest good,
knowing I am
friendly and forgiving
enough to realize that
I am both:
Selfish AND caring,
greedy AND generous,
cruel AND kind,

not one or the other,
not this one 
over that one,
just both
simultaneously,
and even more
spacious and 
uncertain than that,

like a newborn baby
who cries itself
to choking
and who can never
fill up enough
to stop it.

Maybe beyond my
personal reasons for
being here,
wherever here is,
I am here to cry,
here to give rise
to Want itself each
time I'm pleased

and forget that
there's a heart
underneath all of
this stuff I call me.

I wrote this poem after thinking about how when friends invite you out to places you both know you can’t afford to go, that that false invitation functions as a divisive kind of social exclusion. Sitting in my chair writing a friend a text about how things are more humble in Scandanavia, I got myself all worked up wishing for ideal egalitarian mindsets and places, and forgot all about the Buddhist middle way that taught me how to practice non-duality and equanimity. I think sometimes I feel so strongly about something I get swept up by my emotions, and income inequality is definitely one of my trigger areas that when pushed can sort of close my heart down and turn me into a bull that only sees red. Before I knew it I was in the chair typing this, and two hours later it felt like ten seconds had passed.