Karma (a poem)

 

“Someone,” in their pathetic trailer park existence,

sits in extreme despair

and ponders truths far greater than they---

in their sad intellectual limits—

can fully comprehend.

Truths like karma---

truths that the Buddha pondered

and wrestled with

and expounded upon

and gave insight for.

 

“Someone” wonders why their tokens---

an insignificant North Shore agate,

an oxidized dime---

left to appease some unresolved guilt to the dead

is impermanent,

raptured from the place “someone” placed them---

on property upon which they have no claims,

no rights.

 

So, let us set “someone” straight.

Let us help “someone” to din the enlightened path

and shine the exultant light of truth

upon “someone’s” mind, clouded

by the toxicity of pot and alcohol

and make-believe trauma.

 

Karma is this:

 

Karma happens when greed drives “someone” to wonder

in their greed

why the inheritance they thought they were owed

was never theirs in the first place.

 

Karma is what happens when gluttony dominates “someone’s” life

and their body expands and expands

and the weight balloons

and yet none of it can cushion them

from the starkness of their existence,

and the rawness of their bitterness.

 

Karma happens when,

in their extreme darkness,

they get so sick from Covid

that they are left bareheaded and stripped

of every last visage of their former beauty.

 

Karma happens when the toxicity of their life

turns them away from family, from former friends,

from the world “someone” once knew

 

Karma happens---

without a single doubt---

when “someone”

is  convicted of a felony.

 

And karma happens when “someone”

rises from their bed in the middle of the night

and terrorizes bereaved old women in their sleep

with bells and whistles

so they can blame others

and further divide and conquer.

 

THAT is how karma works.

So, let us sit back and watch its effects.

Let us wait, as we do for the police

when neighbors rise against their “spouses”

and violence rears its ugly bandanaed head.

“Someone” always pays the prize.

and those chickens who left so confidently in the morning

always come home to roost.