I found somewhere
back down the line
a sense of doom
lived deep within

lurking
just below
or above
the fog line
of awareness.

It's a subtle haunting,
a foreboding fear,
where you just know
beyond all doubt,
that whatever you think
you need
you'll never get
can't keep
and don't deserve

where nothing good
lasts,

where the best it gets
has a noon check out
and takes your wallet and keys
while you're passed out
on the bathroom floor.

I thought I could tame
this incipid despair
with pot and acid,
sex and love,
work and money,
rum, Irish whiskey,
and gin martinis,

all of which
did their part
well enough,
I suppose,

though even fools
like me
can't confuse
oblivion with nirvana
forever.

So, not counting cigarettes and coffee,
I gave it all up,
electing instead
to see what happens
when you stop running
from ghosts and pain.

It's funny, now
looking back
a ways
into the gloom and shadowed past,
how at the time everything seemed
so bad,

like concrete and granite,
as real as these tables and chairs
and trees and sky.

Maybe even more.

The Buddha taught
how with our thoughts
we make the world,

grasping that,
pain flies away
like eagles
trolling northward in Spring
searching elsewhere
for their fish.