John McCarthy

The Twelve Fold Chain AvijjāYour mind mistaking the limits of your mindfor the limits of the world and suffering without cause or effect. SaṅkhāraYour body thinking it is words thinkingit is a mind thinking it is a limit. Breathe. Exhale and awake. ViññāṇaSix senses of consciousness make up your body,make up the eternal. Your body will become an earth of water and stone. NāmarūpaThe name becomes two, a form and name becomingno form, no name. Consciousness is an opposite. Truth starts to glint inside-out. SaḷāyatanaYou are always some kind of earth. Your eyes open,palms spread, nose flares, tongue laps, ears twitch; cosmic dust is a thought of you. PhassaYour non-form touches an earth of no form. Youbecome you out of an earth’s nothing. The Phoenix arises from ash a virgin. VedanāFrom ash comes thought like water. To ariseis to burn. The sensation of your non-form is a wave of thought. TaṇhāOut of non-form is a craving to be form, an earth.Where there was no pain there is now suffering, craving the earth out of your body.
UpādānaOut of craving comes your earth clinging to you.Your senses and self, light and darkness, open and close with practice they open. BhavaYou become you but do not get to keep you.The form craved non-form. Your eyes watch gently body into night. JātiYour earth will become an earth again and youwill become another form out of nothing becoming a cycle. JarāmaraṇaYour earth will dissolve an earth again and youwill dissolve another form into nothing dissolving, a cycle. John McCarthy's work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Pinch, Salamander, Oyez Review, Midwestern Gothic, Jabberwock Review, SPECS, and The Lindenwood Review, among others. He lives in Springfield, IL where he is the assistant editor of Quiddity.