Ultimatum

Look how old your zen master is;
You've come to him every day and never once looked up

I know zen masters;
When they die, they pass on their bone bags,
their old, black bodies of work
to happy-to-meet-you biographers,
museums with portcullis entrances
and the shark-toothed, snarling patriots
but their sadness will come to you
the way a flame worms down a match
or a Leonard Cohen song finds you
all these years on, slipping through fist after fist

and those who basked like warm cats,
watched passively with green eyes
as you wrote from a thin cut of experience,
will stretch themselves and vainly rise
as you finally experience your zen master's death.

And, as if demanding what has passed them by,
they'll force your head in the trough
of their own swilled, second-hand world,
their patience out-lasted. You're old enough
to approach 'culture' as you might a corpse