Wisdom Teeth

The Gospel According to Napkin #7

There he is again. My younger self.

A metaphysical desperado,

chasing truth like smoke through rafters.

(as if truth were something you could catch

like a butterfly in a poem-stained net)

I watch him now across decades,

a holy fool wrapped in thrift store prophecy,

wearing enlightenment like a secondhand hat.

O, you beautiful, pretentious idiot—

with your backpack full of borrowed wisdom

and your lungs full of borrowed light—

did you really think Nirvana lived

at the bottom of a coffee cup

or in the pages of some dog-eared Salinger

you carried like a passport to profundity?

I see you there, 

scribbling manifestos on coffee shop napkins,

each word an existential hiccup,

thinking you're Kerouac reborn in Jersey

because you learned to spell satori

and could quote Ginsberg while stoned.

Acts of the Mad Prophet, Vol. I

The mad ones found you, didn't they?

Just like you wanted,

just like you prayed for,

never realizing "mad" meant exactly thatnot

the romantic kind of crazy

that gets you into poetry anthologies,

but the real deal, the genuine article,

the kind that leaves you wondering

if your teeth are government spy devices

(and yes, that really happened:

Tuesday night, Summer 1998,

outside the gas station on Main Street in Madison—

I haven't forgotten).

And those women—Christ, those women—

who saw right through your paper-thin philosophy,

your dime store mysticism,

your "I'm so deep I can't even see myself' act.

I remember how you loved them

with all the selfish grace of a broken teacup 

trying to hold the sea,

thinking every girl who read Anais Nin

was your soulmate in waiting.

Stations of the Lost Cross

They knew, didn't they?

Each one a prophet warning you

about the boy you were,

the man you weren't ready to be.

Their laughter still rattles in my ribs

like loose change in dead men's pockets.

(Remember *****, who told you

"Being deep doesn't mean you have to drown"?

You wrote three bad poems about that,

then proved her right anyway.)

Look at you there in your spiritual mosh pit,

thinking every neuron you burned

was a sacrifice to some higher truth.

We were soldiers in a war,

eventually fought with spoons and borrowed fire,

every battle lost before it began—

generals in an army of one,

fighting for a kingdom

that existed only in our heads

(and maybe in that weird coffee shop

where they let you pay in haikus

until they realized you couldn't count syllables).

On Enlightenment

I want to reach across time,

grab you by your nicotine-stained collar,

shake some sense into that dharma-addled brain.

I want to tell you 

that TV dinner philosophy

and midnight parking lot epiphanies

won't add up to wisdom,

no matter how many times

you reorganize your vinyl collection

to mirror the I Ching.

But you wouldn't listen—

Dharma & Dreadlocks

Remember how we prayed

in the temple of Sweet Dreams?

Burning clove cigarettes like incense,

chanting Ginsberg between sips

of lukewarm enlightenment,

every barista a bodhisattva.

You wore revolution like a secondhand coat,

too big in the shoulders,

frayed at the edges with someone else's glory,

accessorized with buttons that read

"QUESTION REALITY" 

(but never questioned

why you thought wisdom came with a price tag

and cosmic consciousness could be achieved

through the right combination

of black turtlenecks and bongo drums).

Ordinary Revelations

Jersey parking lots became Dharma halls,

every streetlight a bodhi tree,

every all-night diner a station of the cross

where you'd genuflect before jukeboxes,

praying to Bowie for redemption.

Now, years deep in the ordinary world

I look back at you—my mad prophet self—

with something between love and horror,

like finding an old yearbook photo

where you thought sideburns and corduroy

were the height of spiritual fashion.

The scars have faded from our arms,

but the map remains:

every wrong turn taken,

every beautiful mistake,

every moment we thought

transcendence could be bought

for the price of a hit

or a handful of pills

(plus tax and next-day regret).

The world has changed:

the mad ones all got jobs or died,

and connection comes in gigabytes,

not shared cigarettes or stolen kisses.

But something in me still honors you,

you beautiful, desperate fool,

writing your soul across the night

in ink that would never dry,

convinced that every poem

was a lockpick for the universe. 

You were wrong about so much,

but maybe you were right about this:

the sacred lives in the profane,

meaning hides in empty spaces,

and sometimes you have to break yourself completely

before you can learn how to be whole.

Sleep well, mad prophet.

Your words still echo,

your fire still burns,

but I'm glad I'm not you anymore—

glad to know that real enlightenment

tastes less like revelation

and more like morning coffee,

ordinary and warm

and somehow,

finally,

enough.

Appendix

(P.S. - I kept your journals,

those midnight manifestos,

not because they're good—

trust me, they're not—

but because they remind me

how beautiful it is

to be young and certain

of absolutely everything

while knowing

absolutely nothing at all.)