THE MAD GURU OF BROOKLYN
Mel Waldman
Can’t make sense of the ubiquitous evil around me.
Can’t breathe, for I’m suffocating in the noose of
Humanity.
I pray mournfully to a god I stopped believing in
half a century ago.
In the winter of my despair, I walk along the Boardwalk
after midnight.
Looking up at the Coney Island sky, I eat snowflakes
drifting to earth.
And suddenly, a mad guru leaps out of the darkness
and approaches me.
Says reality is an illusion. Evil’s unreal. There’s only
Heaven and oneness, peace, joy, and love.
When I shriek sounds of separateness, pain, sin and evil,
the mad guru tells me to forgive. Then he saunters off,
vanishing in the darkness.
As I gaze into the Void that swallowed the stranger,
I hear an explosion on the desolate
Boardwalk,
followed by an anguished silence.
A deep sadness grips me. I whirl into a violent seizure,
shake uncontrollably, and spiral to the ground.
I forget this earthly existence and sleep.
In this ferocious sleep, I have shocking visions of the
universe. I am dumb. And after this tempest,
I am free.
A distant voice in the labyrinth of my soul whispers:
“Forgive!”
At dawn, when I open my eyes, I see Heaven for the very first time.
Or am I still asleep?
