All & Nothing

A poem

Maudlin sentimentality draws us to the known past as a way of avoiding the uncertain future.

That only seems to work with regrets. Ernest Hemingway killed himself after winning the Nobel Prize.

Anthony Bourdain is another lesson in personal tragedy. What more could the guy ask for from life than death?

I remember James Ellroy, the “Tolstoy of Crime Fiction,” talking about having panic attacks in LA.

The most talented and successful in his genre, so many books, movies, all meant nothing that lonely second.

Moment to moment, station to station, prior accomplishments don’t help us, and failures need not inhibit.

As if we’re reborn every instant, immersed in the now, trapped in time, like helpless Gods we pray.

They go unanswered, of course, because we’re missing the point, asking the wrong questions.

Instead, the answers are found elsewhere, usually right in front of our faces. Did you hear that? A whisper.

The voice said something about light and love, attention and joy. So easy to fall, just hang on.