ALWAYS

All ways always leads me back to the same sadness. Still, I remain hopeful that always will become Awe-ways. Until then . . .

I am, to quote Richard Farina, “the son of an angry land.” I try to curb my rage by writing poems and imagining myself writing under some Zen alias. But my writings are not yet Zen simulacrum, not even simulation; nor do I yet merit my Buddhist pseudonyms.
 
I remain David Fred Federman, a 15-year resident of Ardmore, Pennsylvania. I have been granted the clemency of living across the street from a spacious public park where I practice a form of sitting I call “park bench Zen.” I have few companions in this practice, except dog walkers and parents pushing baby strollers. I love my outdoor Zendo because its greenery acts as a local anesthetic and sometimes serves as a merciful enclosure of true detachment.
 
Recently, I have been reading collections of ancient Chinese poetry, and discovering that these venerables saw poetry as an addiction like after-dinner cocktails or Cuban cigars. Some laughingly called it a devil, but all kept writing and we are the beneficiaries of their unthwarted habit. So there is no need to feel guilt about the constant need to scribble notes on a pad or station myself at a keyboard.  
 
But Fred has had to face certain hard facts about his uses of poetry as a fire escape since he often flees after setting his study aflame. He is no Olympiad bearing a torch. 
 
So who or what is he?
 
He is a storm watcher, a meteorologist of despair, hoping his writing can serve as the eye of a storm. But it is no Third Eye. It is smoke- or tear-filled and semi-blind. He is both en- and out-raged, alluding to peaceful states of mind others found and for which he longs. He is 83 and has limited time to find the final condolence of imperturbability and equanimity. He knows enough to stop chasing God, Buddha or any embodiment of realization that does not reflect his face in a mirror. He must be the last man standing or, better yet, sitting in an all-inclusive aloneness. He must not be the Lone Ranger. He must be the Last Ranger. Let his words be the silver bullets he leaves behind.
 
As for now, Dave's poems are cloudbursts of words that bring a false peace of calm after a storm and leave him subject to and object of recurrent flood or monsoon. His world is still lit by lightning. Amd his ears ring with thunder. Jis forlornesss is understandable. The weather forecasts have never seemed grimmer or more grueling. The truth of my condition digs deeper every day, as I lose more friends over issues and woes they no longer want to read about or discuss. I feel I have earned a gold medal for alienation. I hope I soon test positive for steroids and must forfeit my trophy.
 
All of this leads to the following confession-booth poem.
 
ALWAYS
 
1
Always wanting to say something.
Always wanting to write things down. 
Poetry keeps my mind busy
trying to be unbusy
and achieve No-Mind.
I teem with thoughts
about thoughtlessness.
My cup runneth over
with diatribes not dithyrambs.
I pretend to spread truth
found by and stolen from others.
It is a Ponzi scheme I run
to convince myself my writing is of worth, 
that I am part of a brigade of beatitude. 
Thankfully, the bodhisattva next to me
to whom I jand mu bucket of water
doesn't give a shit if I feel myself a fraud.
 
2
Gaza is no longer a topic of conversation.
Yemen, where America does the Saudi's dirty work, 
never reached the discussion stage.
African, Asian and Middle Eaastern famines 
now exceed those in central Europe
during the 1930s and 40s.
But try to tell a Zionist 
that just as many Slavs 
died of hunger as Jews
and he will call you an antisemite.
Tell him that more Jews died by gun not gas
and he will tell you how Holocaust musuems
taught him firsthand that I am lying.
Since no one understands cryptocurrency,
financial talk is out of the question.
So there is silence, but not the kind
the sages taught me to seek.

3
In 1968, when I visited Berkeley,
a student taught me how to make a Molotov cocktail.
I didn't stay long enough to throw one.
The Democratic Convention that same summer 
proved Al Capone still ruled Chicago 
and all cops can be bought off.
J. Edgar Hoover was our real president.
Now L.A. is under siege 
as protestors try to stop 
plane loads of dissidents and immigrants 
from being airlifted to shithole countries. 
It's enought to make a grown man groan
until the sleeping pill or pain medicine kicks in
and drowns you in a sleep as thin as April ice. 

4
I am a survivor of my own despair.
One copes with tropes written by the masters.
One skis on slopes smoothed and glossed
by winds and snows and pilgrims.
So many ancients wrote of mind relief
by the turbulent elements we moderns fear and flee.
Keep that "mind of winter" even in June
so your gaze is as steady and stately
as the view beauty vouchsafes 
to those who take
what Zen calls "the broader view."

5
All I can offer is this advice:
Narrow the circumference of concerns
you can do nothing about. 
Stop worrying yourself to death.
Let loci of unblocked wonder 
become your coordinates.
Bear witness to the world's pain
but as one who can be cured of it.
Even if stranded in a cave or grove,
let cosmos crowd the space 
in which you find yourself
a cliff dweller or a monk on park bench.
 
—David Fred Federman, June 9, 2025