Poetry by Ed Buffaloe

VI.
             
I dream myself leaving,
Every vehicle a boat
To cross the ocean
Of fictitious being.
         
Departure so sudden I surprise myself--
Running from the part of me I
Don't like, don't understand,
The pain in your eyes.
        
Emptiness the only pure metaphor
In a world awash in language,
Connotations, implications.
I try to imagine myself empty.
       
We don't so much think our thoughts
As our thoughts think us,
The self a simulacrum,
Metaphor for the inconceivable.
       
I dream myself arriving,
Barefoot scurf dweller
At some distant shore,
Empty and smiling.
         
Here I am, in my breath, my
Palms, soles, lips, chest,
Feelings, thoughts, and the multitudinous
Objects of mind. 
    
Here I am, dweller in the elipsis,
Begging salvation and forgiveness.
I dream myself an old man
Whose mind is like the sky.