Bubble Machines

By Kurt Peloquin

Sky-high ceilings and hot summer days 
                                  are best for bubble machines—
                and dreams, and streams.
Tough on modern air conditioning of any kind, 
                                              especially
                   a fragile mind like mine.

Talk about a bubble machine.

Pop goes the fantasy.
My Instagram feed is a blend 
of Buddhist philosophy 
                       and borderline pornography.

          A catastrophe of causality.
Casualty of a thirst for shiny things.
                                      Diamonds do attract thieves, don’t they?

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, they say
Shamatha is the length of the day you get in the Bardo
—That space between life and death—
And you get eight of those days to choose your next life.
And the length of each one is the time you can remain fixed 
On your object,
Single-pointedly.

Beneath the bubbles
The breath
As life invites ten thousand guests
And you decide, for now, to let them rest

And the more you try and try again 
The more the bubble machine gets quiet—
Sparse and soft.
And suddenly you’re caught catching that truth they taught
Before bubble machines were a thing to be bought and sold.

And you remember that the way you do one thing
Is the way  
You do it all.