(room)

As your room is
so is your mind.
I have been cleaning
my room for twenty years.
getting it down to
what is true to me,
to what I have enthusiasm
for.

I cannot talk to her
on the phone now
I have begun to hear
her room, through her
laugh designed to disguise
the truth it tells.
She talks good humoredly
of the small trail
the plastic boxes
stacking up.

I watch women trudge
out from discount markets
their carts stacked up
with these plastic tombs
and think I am glad
that is not me.
kwhich is not to say
I don’t have my own
hidden horrors.
as I have confessed
everything is in good
shape , except for what’s
just mine – which
has been put off to last.
til late in my life.

files in drawers that I
have lost all knowledge of
poems I had forgotten writing
unattended photographs
and manuscripts I never
get completed.
clothes and kitchen cupboards
I can manage,
books I can let go of.
Miscellaneaous possessions
I live to eliminate them
all.
But every time I clean
the house, my desk is last
and this has happend all my life.

by now I am quite behind
but I have not given up
I am cleaning up
my mind.

I have wondered
why I always have
pack rats for friends,
people whose rooms are
so far gone they cannot
have anyone in.
I’ve learned something
over the years,
of how this debting
works, that it nevers
gets better, only worse
and worse.

Houses with Rooms
no one is allowed into
where keys are hidden
until death.
I have one clear objective
and that is to leave
a clean life when I go,
one that reaquires no one
have to enter the darkness
of the unattended,
gum wrappers smashed
against second trust deeds.

I have seen into these
rooms, all things treated
equally, the great egalitarian
collections where all things
are treated equally,
gum wrappers smashed against
second trust deeds.
I don t know why my life
takes me there,
again and again.

Once I obtained order
for myself, it seemed
I had to look at every one
elses mess.
a room where I lived
against my will
things piled higher and higher
a blanket throw on top,
a woman I worked for
who did big sortings
again and again.
Maintence is a very hard
lesson to learn.
some of us resist
it , like the straight
rows in school where we
sat with our feet in the aisles.

I find a photograph
of her addicted daughter
in the bottom of black
plastic bag,
a little girl then
and wonder how does
this happen, where
does this innocence go?

As our room is
so is our mind,
I have been cleaning
for twenty-five years.
dAnd have it down at
last,

I have made a pact
with myself
to keep a clean desk,
and have figured out
how it works.
I have to clean it
every day.

these rooms close in
on me, as a prison never coul
could, if it only had
one small bed and sink.
I visited junipero sera’s
room once and held it in
my mind forever,
a single cot, a small writing
table, one straight back chair.
Just the essentials and nothing
more. Essentials are personal,
of course, but the necessity
of self-limitation seems to
have excaped us. culturally
we have left this idea so far
behind we may never see it again. In fact, not I fear, until
it comes from the outside,
at which point there will be
no self to it. We do without
what we cannot get our hands on,
and nothing more.
We do not know what is enough.
We do not know what is all we
have room for, or time to use.
we do no know why we have,
why we hold on to it,
because we have no trust
that life will continue to
provide.

I have been
in these rooms
where hope is gone,
the moldy rooms of
lonely school teachers,
and single women no one
checks up on.
Twine balls and bundles
of newpapers, the homeless
stack up in grocery carts
a bunch of meaningless mes
sbecause we don’t remember
what home really is.

beyond a place to gather junk,
that junk is a measure of a life
he who leaves the biggest best wins.

Our mothers and grandmothers
balled twine, to be frugal
we misapplied the lesson
and saved things we would
never need.

we are burying ourselves alive
in our tombs of appliances
and gadgets, and the organizers
we continue to think will
make it all work.
Strike a match I want to say,
the way nature creates healing
burn to keep the forest green.
balance. We have lost sight
of this premise. There is no
end,

I try to explain to him
that it is like eating
meal after meal without elimination.
that our space is not
growing.
He hoards boxes in
every corner, unable
as a junky always is
to keep his promise
that he would not.
in our brief time
spending ten thousand
dollars to store old
magazines.

we do not remember
how to be alive,
this is the disease
of our age,
the result of our over
consumption
we haven’t had time
to listen to ourselves
so we don’t know what
we really need.
I return a bag I have just bought
when I realize
it was time, I really wantedj,
to be in consort with the
divinek, and that the object
is in direct opposition to that.

Now and then there is a good
pure thing, a clear glass jar
to hold our beans. Dinner
plates that delight us for years.
A favorite piece of cloth we
treasure for years.
Objects that serve us or
b ring us joy, which deserve
our respect for how they enrich
our lives, so much so that we
have traded a bit of that life
to get it.

As your room is
so is your mind,
I have been cleaning
my mind for years.

the stuff is sucking
the life out of us.
it has gootten the upper
hand, and now the thinking
is so confused we do not know how to clean things
up. In ayurbeda
we call this ama,
mental ama. Ama is the
accumulation which becomes
illenss if not cleaned up.

but if someone comes in
to help us, he disease
acts out. I can’t let go
of that, it screams.
like a ill-behaved child.
l offered once to sit with
her while she tried to face
her demons, just be there
so she did not have to be
alone, like a junky detoxing.
like always it is that
first step that is the
wide one.
the first aleration
in the direction we are
going.

Stnad up and clap your hands
energize your room.
breathe life
back into it
listen to it,
and it will tell you
how to clean it up.

I’ve gone the other way
trying to avoid this
fearsome thing
and turned my house
into a museum
where spices sit on
shelves more to look at
than use.
untouched

Feng shui says cloets
lose consciousness

he likkes density,
I prefer intensity