Just Focus On Your Breath...

 Find a place where you can be alone,

A place where silence and darkness preside over this earthly oblivion,

And then place your body in a comfortable position,

Allowing your body to arrange itself around your breath,

Effortlessly accommodating the flow of emptiness as it fills and flees you.

Now deliberately draw a deep breath, all the way in,

Holding it for one full, but fleeting moment,

And then allow the air to exile itself from your desire to draw & hold it.

Don’t think about how easily the emptiness of the world fills you,

How it floods the void within the depths of your very soul,

Or how it absconds and abandons you no sooner than you can welcome it.

Don’t worry about the intensity of this omnipresent oblivion,

How its vastness only seems to expand with every breath you take in,

As if your lungs were not swelling with each inhalation of air,

But perpetually collapsing both inward and outward on this perpetual void,

Becoming all the more empty by this void's ouroborosian abandonment and indifference to you,

While you forever gasp for but never quite grasp ahold of all that both is and isn’t there.

Don’t do any of that right now. Just focus on your breath…

Now take another intentional breath in, 

Noticing how your body adjusts itself without effort,

Accommodating the air as it acquiesces into an autonomous alignment,

As if the abyss itself were obliviously molding and commanding all things without any consent.

Go ahead and breathe out now, exhausting this abstract air out with any existential anxiety,

Letting the implications of your breath’s subtle, simple subversions of will pass along,

Permitting its lethargic circumventions of your every conscious intention.

Don’t worry yourself with any delusions of free will whatsoever now,

As this constant invalidation by the reality of breath negates it.

Don’t let your mind fester on impotent attempts to empower itself,

Or its futile efforts to imbue itself with illusions of any false fullness.

Let the essence of existence flow from nothing to oblivion instead now,

And quite simply allow yourself to just focus on your breath…

Allow your lungs to guide your breath on their own now,

Noticing how easy it is when you let go of your false sense of control.

Pay attention to how freeing it is to simply notice your breath,

Just being present as all things conduct themselves,

Animated by this perpetual flow of invisible air.

Don’t worry if your mind wafts in and out of random thoughts now,

As if it were still trying to subvert the will you thought you’d released.

That’s just your mind’s own misguided way of mimicking breath,

Altering between inflated awareness and depleted oblivion.

Allow your consciousness to drift along with your breath.

Allow what you cannot see or understand to fill you.

Allow your breath to give life to your lungs.

Allow thoughts to bring wonder to your mind.

Allow the abyss to numbly tug upon your very soul.

There is no need to struggle or hope for anything more than this.

Hope is just gasping for a breath which may never waft into your lungs.

Letting go of hope is allowing yourself to breathe each moment as it comes.

Don’t worry about the fact that the world will cough you out of it all too soon.

Of course, your life is just an incidental breath in the scope of existence,

A spasm or hiccup it experiences with little notice or concern for.

That shouldn’t worry you anymore than your own breath,

Although, it’s possible that the world is more aware of you than that,

And perhaps it’s as focused on you and your life as you are of all these things,

As if the thoughts that waft along your breath were a microcosm of all life,

And your own focus on your breath may mirror the world’s focus on you.

But perhaps you shouldn’t pay any attention to all of that right now,

Perhaps it would be better for you and the whole world to relax,

To let the world worry about the world as you breathe, in & out,

And just focus on your breath…

KostKoLandious...

I met a shopper from an American land

who said, one vast membership club

is right off the interstate. Strewn about its lot

countless carts & hoarder-scooters are on hand

Near them in the store, half drunk, a vested greeter cries

whose bloated waist, gaping mouth, and useless hands

tell that well upon these products fed

whose nutritional facts remain, stamped on these sordid things

the 100 gallon ice cream drum, & the rucksack of insulin

to keep them from dropping dead

And on the labels, these words appear

"The manufacturer assumes no liability,

for any diseases derived from things in here.

Our prices for these things are more than fair."

No produce section remains, 'round the decay

of this KostKo. mess. Lost in vacant stares,

the lines from listless checkers stretch far away...

I Don't Know What We're Doing Here...

I see people incessantly pointing cellphones

at themselves & the world

like vicarious, outsourced eyes

I hear people perpetually proselytizing

about how some politician, app, or cryptocurrency is the only ideal

with voices that all sound like someone else's in disguise

I smell an ever-surrounding smog of cities and fuel

forever burning their secret, essential scent of existential fear

I tase too much sugar, salt, and altered chemicals with alphabet-long names

in every omnipresent, faux-food thing, bringing death so much more near

I feel no love extend beyond the flesh or reach to touch in ways

which know more than mindless fingers 

that swipe calloused across some screen

I don't know what we're doing here, 

I'm not sure what we mean,

but this can't be It

I look for the divine

but see only spectacles

performed by false prophets

with horns, furtive or flaunted

I listen for truths

but hear only lies

that fall for themselves

or slither, hissing to "snuggle"

I stop to smell roses

but there's no longer bees

or at least not enough 

to pollenate and provide them

I try to taste pure bliss

but I can't bite onto anything

that hasn't been pummeled into 

a product or content which contains and produces

nothing more than a bad taste in my mouth

I reach to hold onto anything

that's not kept on the other side of some glass,

be it that of some screen or the glass-houses

we've all been confined to & sentenced to throw stones

to break out of or into

I don't know what we're doing here,

but none of this fits

History relentlessly casts a shadow of itself

from forever forgotten eons ago

to eternal futures we only pretend to know

While we all speak of dark times

as if they were foreign lands

which we've tried to exile ourselves out of

since we were yet primordial ooze

or which we quietly counter-conspire against

as invaders intent on our extinction & doom

But the sun, 

it just stares at us

shimmering in silence 

while we dizzy ourselves

to submit & support some 

other source of artificial light

which we aim to illuminate 

an oasis on both sides of our eyes

while it cooks our brains like heat lamps 

left on far too long

And the birds flap their wings exhaustively

to migrate through these schizophrenic seasons

and so many other mammals appear to need no greater reason

than the reasons that guide gliding fish through plastic-pulp oceans

from the unseen depths of their secret abysses

to the heights they can leap to with their fin-winged emotions

I don't know what we're doing here,

but perhaps this is it