Trash

[Guest guest]

There is a trash can. You look at this trash can.

It is dumb, and only you can give it a voice.

You look at things like this, but can you name them?

Look at things deeper.

 

A discarded and used polystyrene cup at your elbow, on a

diner counter. A disposable someone else’s nuisance. If you

don’t now the nature of cup. Why bother with words such

as disposable or polystyrene? It only appears here as a

polystyrene cup, because you do not honor the idea that

brought it into existence, you do not love the lip that paid it

homage. Look deeper.

 

Words like ‘disposable’ and ‘trash’ give things a

non-existence from you. You believe dead things are alive,

and alive things are dead. You believe you can fill the world

with trash and useful things. Just like when you go to war.

Nothing is useful to you then, but things made to give death.

Death is useful to you then. You only love death. You only

love that which can give death. Yet death gives you a

chance to understand the nature of cup, and drinking, trash,

and life.

 

Your life is back to front, and inside out. You are upside

down and insane in a point of view. You look at a corpse

and say a tearful prayer, or leap in joyous victory at a sweet

kill. Yet only love can kill, and it kills you to this insanity

forever. Look deeper.

 

I have seen you throw a child away like this, thinking it was

disposable. I have seen you kill a father, and a mother, as if

they were a polystyrene cup. Just a nuisance. Just trash.

Sweet victory!

 

I have seen you hang on a diner counter nursing an empty

polystyrene cup until they throw you out in the trash.

I have seen you trashed by others who name you so.

I have seen all of this in you. Can you see all of this as Love?

 

Love never tires of your craziness. For you cannot kill the

creations it sends you, only your view of Love. Only your

point of view. Only your trash. The way you name things.

Look deeper.

 

Love is the form you reject as a nuisance and disposable.

Love is all that you would throw away for the sake of a

greater love. Love is a cup you would disdain to drink

from. Love sees no distinction between polystyrene cup,

child, or trash, only you do, and you kill them with a name.

 

For love is your child to all things. Yet you trash it

indiscriminately. Love does not discriminate as you do. It is

a child holding a polystyrene cup in some disposable place

as you trash it. Sweet victory! Look deeper.

 

 

love

 

eric.

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2002. Eric Ashford.