“True perfection seems imperfect…
True fullness seems empty…

True straightness seems crooked.
True wisdom seems foolish…”

~ Tao de Ching

*****

Recorded Reading (3:09):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/t6jpor3joplsvk3xntjwd/Their-Own-Standards.mp3?rlkey=syl1zpm705oi31ns46pnb6tfs&st=8ris0cma&dl=0

*****

Their Own Standards

Once, when I had barely passed
My very early childhood,
My mother gave a wisdom
Which I have thought it good
To meditate on, all the decades
Which have passed between,
Whenever fickle fate hath deemed
That I must be misunderstood:

People cannot understand,
People cannot well condone,
Behaviors you may manifest
By any standards but their own ~
Too high a motivation
By lowered eyes cannot be seen
Thus, a one who carries it
May find themselves too oft alone

Nonjudgment looks like recklessness
Weakness forgiveness appears
Smiling, to too many folk,
Denotes appeasement of the fears
Of power which their own near presence
For the smiler mean,
So that smiler’s self-abnegation
Neither short nor tardy seem…

Evaluation, in most minds,
Focused is on expiation ~
They cannot imagine
Any motivation
Other than the craven,
The venal and the mean,
Always selfly aggrandizing,
Bottom-line interrelation

Since by such low calculation
Little insight can be won
About nefarious intentions
With which you must have begun,
If in dim light of base resolve
Your motivations can’t be seen
You must be meaner than they are:
Time to get out the big guns!

Primary in the motivation
Is to bring you down
To somewhere that they understand
As closer to the common ground
Torn from your proper place
This earth and heaven in between,
Which they will accomplish
By making you look like a clown

And, what’s more, they will find it
A sincere relief
To bring your laughter and your light
Down to ugly grief
They want no one to tell them
Each could also be a king or queen ~
They’d much rather see affirmed
Their original belief

That it’s no good you’re up to
You play an even deeper game
Than they can figure out ~
Your wickedness must wrong reframe,
And your calculations been
Deeper than the Carribean,
Wider than a hippo’s bottom,
More evil than they can name!

So, my friend, if your own actions
Though beneficently meant
By some other folks perceived are as
Toward other objects leant
Than those toward which genuinely
You aspired to lean:
Remember that you earn your karma
Not by result, but by intent

*****

This poet/editor is physically disabled, and lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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