So Far Beyond Reach (?)

[Proprioceptive writing after recitation of Nothing Wants to Suffer, by Danusha Laméris. 04/15/2015]


Ensconced in our canopies, 
our eyes
looking out at each other 
but also at our selves
our self.

If God were a fly
would we each be an eye?
an eye ensconced in the canopy of the fly--
The God?

Yet we live as the stars,
lofty and beyond reach,
looking out at each other
as if we were alone
separate
unsure
of where and when we entered
and of how we will return
return to each other.

If, though, we knew.
If we knew that we were God
God looking out of many eye
would we then know to be tender?
I cannot assume it would be so
because, it seems, we do. 
Or, at least, 
we have been told.
And yet we suffer at each others’ hands
because our eyes are ensconced in their canopies.

Lofty, and beyond reach. 

The other day,
I ate a chicken.
A half a chicken
to be exact.
And it was good.
But I wondered
about the chicken
and if I were the chicken
tender in the mouth
and then the stomach
of another,
my eyes no longer discernible,
my flesh digestible
and becoming.

Eternity.

What eyes and flesh am I made of
besides the chicken, I mean?
Or are we all just God
repurposing God’s self
God’s flesh
God’s stardust
born of a conscious collection of chicken flesh
and maybe a salad, or accidental mealy worm
lost in a container of softness
dumped with care and covered,
born and disconnected again
grown by the suffering of others
and taken by yet others to a cross
taken then to a container
where, for a while, we are lost
in the softness of dark
until we are accidentally or on purpose
consumed, and grown
through the suffering of others
and made to suffer
before rising again
as the eye
of God?

He said to us, when he was yet chicken flesh
and mealy worm consumed
but not yet consuming,
that we were gods,
that we were in him and he was in us,
and that when we loved him
we loved each other
and each other
him.
When I look in your eye
am I
looking back 
at I?
And you,
at you?
And us
and we.
And now
—NOW—
we are One? 

But the earth has eyes, too,
and the stars,
all of them.
Yet a speck we are
in the eye.
The eye that blinks.
My point, though, is that my dog sleeps next to me
and also has eyes.
As does the tree outside the window.
And the leaf.
And the leaf
as a leaf
is seen
through the eye
as a leaf
not as an eye
much less the eye
of God.
And so I forget to love you
and you
and you. 
And thus forget to love God. 

Must, asks I, the distinctions
the ensconcement of leaf as leaf,
eye as eye,
star as star
exist?
Would there be existence without ensconcement,
without being contained 
and placed
in a gestalt?
And, if so, does the distinction 
of other from other
necessitate suffering?
Once God has many eyes
once God is a complete set 
of gestalts incomplete,
or, rather, when 
and as God takes on
many eyes within God’s self,
is there thus and therefore
suffering
as the separation
is created
like a knife 
to the flesh
of a chicken? 

And, if so, could the reverse also be true?
Is that what Jesus came to say?
That if we knew
(and we can know)
that the half of a chicken
that I have eaten
is the me
that will be consumed
to be you
or maybe another chicken
or simply
the dirt
from 
which
the tree grows?

If we knew this,
would we experience suffering as knowing
and less like suffering?
Or would we just suffer gladly?
Seeing with our eyes
ensconced in their canopies
of flesh and bone
that suffering was becoming
or becoming
was suffering
and thus gladness and joy
lost in the beauty of hardness 
of the containers of today
but maybe not tomorrow?


If I were to lose all my religion
but for one
small act
performed earnestly
and with discipline
it would be grace—
saying grace—
for the chicken,
for its life that is to be my life
with its eyes
out of which God sees
You.
and Me.
and God.