Zen Poem

Playing again with found/collage lines to form a poem.  Here the lines came (mostly ready-made) from a variety of cuttings I have on file, including several poems.  In a few instances I've dropped a word or changed the tense or a pronoun.  I've called it a Zen Poem because it's somewhat reminiscent of that Zen approach in which a non sequiter often seems to follow a straightforward question.  However, the 'wisdom' that appears here may not be quite on a par with the tradition of Zen.  And it's possible some responses could be shifted to answer a different question....

Zen Poem

Why are you washing and smearing windows?

Sometimes you catch your face in a mirror.

What happens if we bring all the little pieces together?

The dawning awareness of the thinness of disembodied life.

Where was easily the most exciting game you ever played?

In the online ecosystem I’m inhabiting.

When is the placebo helpful, and when is it not?

Always in the supermarket, and out and about.

What are the usual superficial divisions between Right and Left?

A team snaps out of its streak and wins a bunch of games.

Why won’t attempts at control be abandoned?

The subjectivity of others is confirmed by a failure to point.

Why do you court silence as prayer?

Everything I do is instantly news.

What if you were patient and could spare the time?

I view relationships as based on utility and exchange.

Would you self-impose a moratorium?

Nothing so conclusively proves one’s ability to lead.

What if change was discontinuous with the past?

The depression years take up large chunks of my story.

Have you been reduced to doling out slops to pigs?

What I really want is someone rolling around in the text.

What is the sweet heat made from two bodies in the bed?

Despair, a side of mutton, roaming the slaughterhouse.

What if you became a hunch-backed old man?

I accept that we just have to live with sandflies.

What if I asked: what is it like to drown?

Vigilante tactics, smashing illegal stills, flogging drunks.

What is it about correlation and causation?

You can’t tell the story of rage in soccer without talking about managers.

Is solving for motivation the wrong solution?

In dreams of reason you may drink of life’s streams.

Are you going to die having missed nearly everything?

You can still get out of jail free.