Anti-ism

 What comes to pass?
 So much arrives, so much flees!
 Life is arithmetic of coming and going,
 In that sum the embodied mind seeks peace.
 When the mind riddles itself in body's folds...
 How much more can one life hold?
  
 Love gets divided,
 Romance lived and delusion forgotten,
 Hands change, coupling by coupling.
 One breaks while two are built—body pulls, mind shifts.
 This "coming and leaving,"
 This "bearing and remaining,"
 It happens and happens, after, before.
 Who will go, must go.
 Who will stay, will surely stay.
 Between these truths,
 What sleight of hand—
 Joys make us laugh then weep
 Some sorrows make us weep then laugh
 Griefs only make us laugh
 Seeing this, happiness only makes us weep.
  
 We never met in this life.
 In my mind's chamber, with what tenderness
 I keep you close.
 If ever at some bend in the road,
 By mind's impulse, through fate's gap,
 I fall before you, take your hand, weave stories,
 Will you recognize me?
 Or will you say, laughing as before,
 "What good is holding this mind?
 Come close, hold the body.
 In that holding lies all happiness!"
  
 Having lost everything, now I understand,
 Conflict and counter-conflict together make the male.
 Flexing muscles, staging disputes—hollow logic. That's man for you!
 Pleasure, pretense, hypocrisy, posturing—just this much sense, this is man!
 Victory and vagina—mirrors of manhood. Such is he!
 In the game of winning he sells life for a pittance.
 If life remains not, then where did the victory come from?
 Between middle finger and forefinger of his own hand,
 Between right and left of another's foot, of opposite nature,
 In this gap—man survives. Without this, it won't do!
 Thus forgetting the heart, following the flock, he walks ahead—a life full of conflict.
  
 One who pulls the body only through bodily desire,
 What does he know of bodily taste?
 Alas, the body!
 The body's pleasure flees in the body's trap!
 The mind's body lies murdered in the body-mind.
 Sometimes today I wish the soul would simply
 Mount a horse
 Fly through air
 And escape
 Somewhere far.
 If the soul left, the corpse would remain,
 Let everyone play as they will,
 Those who don't understand love
 Find their fun in soulless flesh.
 Those who don't want to have me,
 Let them just stay—
 Drunk on dead body's high.
  
 So I'm forgetting the body,
 The body no longer pulls me—
 Is this what you think?
 Listen, I tell you, the pull is still there, I am human after all!
 That pull is fierce!
 It pulls you, it pulls me.
 Where's the difference?
 My pull goes through this mind to that body,
 Yours goes to this body, that body.
 That's why if
 From that distance
 Eyes closed
 You should touch me,
 Body trembles
 Drunk on love
 Wakes in intoxication
 Heart runs wild.
 If you were like me
 Kept love with such care
 When love touched, it would do this—
 We'd float in happiness's breeze like paired swans in flight.
  
 This power you have
 To tell lies
 This power I have
 To accept lies—
 Still keeps me alive today!
 Your body will remain thus in my mind's funeral.
 Your living, my dying,
 My going, your staying—is this keeping oneself alive?