Archive for the ‘Irvine’ Category

1983-09-27 More thoughts on anxiety

Tuesday, September 27th, 1983

More thoughts on anxiety

At times I’ve zeroed in on this or that as the possible cause
my unbidden anxieties

Lack of sleep,
lack of exercise,
excess of calories
fantasizing,
internal dialogues,
lack of religious faith,
personal inadequacies,
lack of women,
lack of people,
lack of privacy,
and lack of personal freedoms.

And, at some point or another, each has been vanquished for a time,
with the possible exception of religious faith,
and, during that time, proven to not be the answer.

No, I suspect they each were a compounding factor
which happened to be present at the time
and which was labeled, guilty, by association
rather that by causality.

gallagher
27 september 83
orangetree


— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1983-10-03

Monday, October 3rd, 1983

My moods come swinging harder
more brutal between the good places
eye fogged anxious days
women who turn me like a card in solitaire

Hours that wait like wounds
and demand confrontation, wine or madness

I still hear Bhagwan and the Sufi’s
still remember Monika and Nirala
I can still see Danny and Chris’ and Rose’s eyes
but here, where my moments are mine
I come down to some line
some deeper pressing reality

Women and wine used to save me from confrontation
but wine can kill me, as it did my mother
and women; women find me less these days
through the filters of age, affluence, and truth

so we come down to it: mood slugging and slogging
aerobics and smiles, sweat and hedonism
balanced against karmic mirrors
like Adelle, the psychedelic pharmacist
and Kathi M., the Jewish-American business woman/wife
and Maria, the waitress
and Lorrie, the aerobics instructor

I can offer no one anything and I go upset
from each meeting where they tell me so.

gallagher
03 oct 83 – Orangetree


— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1983-10-05

Wednesday, October 5th, 1983

Sometimes I think moods are born of events
and sometimes of biochemistry and genetics
and from one theory to the other I’ve bounced
analyzing, watching, trying to see which it is
so I can either turn off the swings
or know that it’s not within my power

but I’m beginning to come to a third way…

let them come…from where they will
no more will I bargain, give in or resist
I wish to just accept, hands down, unresisting

to find the good and the bad
equally a part of my life
this perfection that Bhagwan describes
and which I see so imperfectly

gallagher
05 oct 83 – Irvine Club


— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —