Do Not Let Them In, They Are Not Here

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Do Not Let Them In, They Are Not Here

By Jane Tawel

September 16, 2022

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She is not here now.

And when you let her in,

again and again,

you reveal your true insanity.

Not being part of

any true reality,

her presence has driven you mad.

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He is not in this space.

But you have flung open

the entrances to your mind,

and now you have to face the fact,

that though you have allowed

the thief of your peaceful thoughts

almost constant habitation there,

he is dead,

(or would be if you killed him).

Allow him to die an honorable death.

Kill him gently

without leaving too much blood

on the floors in your house,

and then clean up the mess.

Remember he only came because you bid him come

and then blamed him for leaving grey scum

on the walls of your mind’s home.

He does not live here today,

and need not live in the home of your heart

any more.

*

They come disguised as cleaning crews,

or helpful guests and family,

pretending to help

with the cleaning-up of calamities

or of my misunderstandings,

but my need for them, not withstanding,

it is a relationship of lies.

For thoughts are just a house of cards,

if peopled by things one cannot see with eyes,

or hear alive in the world that exists outside the mind,

or touch with skin to skin,

feeling the softness of your cheek or the cheek of a ripe peach,

or made with something I can taste or drink

or move with the circles of my speech.

All that would dwell in the shadows

of my darkened house, filled with the

blood-suckers that would steal awakening joy,

these are nothing more

than dust motes of past emotions,

or the fogs that roll in from the future but don’t stay — 

Oh, all of this is nothing of me

in just this place — this day.

Yes, I have invited all of you not really here,

under false pretenses.

But trying to make you feel at ease as my mind’s guests,

serving your phantasmagorical hungers

from the hard labors

of the meals of my perceptions and attachments,

I feel like an alien in my own home.

The people I let in,

who do not really live here in my space,

are dirty and rude

because I allow them

to mess up that within

the home of my heart

and that which should be hallowed

in the hallways of my mind,

and still I find

it is hard to say good-bye to them.

And all that is meant to be preserved for my good,

is filled with the flood,

and mud of thinking on and on and on

about things that are not present now.

*

Do not let them in; they are not here.

Kick them all to the curb;

and prohibit them from

the treasure-room of yourself.

Those who used to live here,

or have not yet been born to you,

must take their place

with the other hallucinations

that your mind would create.

We all hear voices.

And yet, we do not stop our ears,

against those who would crash us on the shores,

of wasted energy and emotions

of all and anything that is not love.

Why, oh why, do we feel guilt,

when we release those

who do not live with us today,

those which we would cling to from yesterday,

or yearn or fear for in our tomorrows,

tomorrows which should remain unimagined?

We must stop our remembering

and our imagining,

as we dream of and with only those present,

in the here and now,

dreaming them in the reality of today.

*

Let all of them,

all but your best present-presence,

and that which is only alive in you for just this day,

leave your home,

and live where they belong,

in the house of the dead.

Let those who are not here,

take-up their residence where they belong,

and reside no more in your now

where only you

can see God and live.

Yes, there is enough space for only you,

your very present God, and you,

your home, which is yourself.

Be still

and only know this moment

and only in this moment, know

the Truth.

And let all others go.

Set them free.

So that your true self

is not housed,

but truly sheltered.

And Love will then

find plenty of room,

to fill the empty spaces,

that ghosts and chimeras have left behind.

In your home,

may all your past and future

no longer look to you

for tents of understanding build on bogs.

And in the only place you ever need,

the place in you that you call home,

the home that is yourself,

may you live forever-now

in peace.

© Jane Tawel, 2022