Other people’s words
worked well and fine for them,
but will not save me.

I know, I have tried and tried.
But Plato and Kant and Faulkner
Kempis, Donne and Joyce
Freud and Einstein and Sophocles
none can save me.
The wisdom they held,
their creative genius
the joy or tragedies of their lives,
cannot save me.
Buddha sitting under the tree makes as much sense to me. How is it with all these thousands of years of wisdom, we are still looking?
Is there something vital missing?
Some key to the code?
Some philosoher’s stone?
That each new person
has to find on his own?
Laotze told about the Way.
Jesus said He was the Way.
I know I am closer when I cry;
for then someone within me gives up the lie
and there is a resonance between me
and awsome universality.
And, for a while, I am not in this constant dread,
and if death caught me at such a time,
I would not shake and tremble at cutting the thread.
But unintentional lying seems my holy paradigm.

The words of other people cannot save me
from that awful, awful abyss into which I continually see myself so very alone clinging so desperately to the lie of self assured personal immortality--
and which has to be given up entirely.

All the collected wisdom and knowledge
of all human history, for the rest of us
is essentially a waste of our time.
Certainly was a waste of mine....
unless you can count this: that now I know
Only God above may save me.