by Gerard Sarnat
Sit
breathe
empty out all gravity.
Pure white light down the center.
Sauna, hot tub, fur family forest home.
Organic blueberry granola skimmed milk breakfast.
..Oh my god what to choose among Hindu Varanasi on
the holiest Ganges or Bodhgaya where the Buddha was
enlightened under the Bodhi Tree or my namesake Sarnath
where he gave his first sermon in the Deer Park; I always
wanted to be in the Himalayas' low stress zone, Dharamsala
with the Dalai Lama's exiled refugees - a quick trip up north?
Down to cold rainy asphalt homeless center parking lot corner
where hypertensive diabetic tobacco-hacking single men stand
around under high pressures of real life's mixed blessings.
Yesterday okay (sort of), today not so much, on the edge.
Day old discarded trans-fatty charity baked goods.
Rats gather amid psychotropic noncompliance.
Two doctors' appointments blown:
-- got rolled late last night
now catch as catch can
everything's stolen
one ankle broken
bum two smokes
dentures lost
police fight
meds gone
drenched
stoned
alone
until
a uniformed SamTrans lady
came over to guide the blind man
with cane in red Stanford hat and jacket
and blackout sun glasses to the train held
it seems for him -- yes, held just for him!
While he slowly crosses the drizzly tracks darkly
she whispers, "Don't worry, Sir, don't feel no pressure."
Gerard Sarnat splits time between his San Francisco Bay Area forest home and Southern California's beaches. He is a seeker and Jewbu, married forty years/father of three/grandfather, physician to the disenfranchised, past CEO and Stanford professor, and virginal poet at the tender age of sixty-two. Gerry has recently been published or is forthcoming in Aha!Poetry, AscentAspirations, Atavar, AutumnLeaves, BathysphericReview, Bird&Moon, BlackZinnias, BlueJewYorker, ChicagoPoetry, CRITJournal, Defenestration, Etude, EZAAPP, Flutter, FurnaceReview, HissQuarterly, Jack, Juked, LanguageandCulture, LoudPoet, MyFavoriteBullet, NewWorksReview, Nthposition, OrigamiCondom, PensonFire, PoetsAgainstWar, Rambler, RiverWalkJournal, SlowTrains, SoMa, Spindle, StonetableReview, SubtleTea, SugarMule, ThePotomac, ThievesJargon, UndergroundVoices, UnlikelyStories, and WildernessHouseReview among others. Just Like the Jones', about his experience caring for Jonestown survivors, was solicited by JonestownAnnual Report and will appear later this year. He is currently working on an epic prose poem, The Homeless Chronicles. The California Institute of Arts and Letters' Pessoa Press will publish his first book. Gerry is a member of Poets and Writers, qualifying in both Creative Nonfiction and Poetry.
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