I Punched Buddha

I Punched Buddha

I punched Buddha this morning,

hope this doesn't give me bad karma.

Sitting Bull stood witness to the mishap,

spear in one hand, peace pipe in the other.

Frozen Idols of forgotten faced Gods

didn't move a muscle in response

for they too were statues

like the Buddha who tasted my fist,

all symbols depicted as people

with liquid lives solidified,

propped up for others to lie

prostrate in herd mentality,

in fear of mortality,

pieces of broken hearts offered

to those who were flesh and blood,

fractured souls collected and frozen

in sacrifice to show faith

in Gods made of plastic,

base metals and wood.

I punched Buddha this morning,

it was an accident,

meaningful coincidence,

Freudian slip of the hand,

not meant to cause offence.

In recompense I offer this:

It's safe to seek divinity

in another's footsteps,

it's a path well trodden,

cobbled and tarmacked,

leading to universal truths

shrouded in words and symbols.

The path I choose is equally divine,

no cobble or footstep

has passed this way for all time,

at least none that can be detected,

for it is overgrown and forested,

almost directionless,

with a divine knowledge

that this is the way

I'm heading.

It didn't start with punching Buddha,

but that felt like tolling

the bell from a different ship

of fools in the distance.

Why did I punch Buddha? He's a chilled out guy after all, not really the sort of bloke who'd be partial to or deserving of fisticuffs.

However, it is a true story, I really did punch Buddha, well, a statue of the dude anyway. It was an accident. He sits on my windowsill in my cave of a flat in Oxton, Wirral. He meditates next door to a statue of Sitting Bull.

I was sitting there on my sofa ignoring something crap on the TV screen while facebooking away, wanting to write something new and wondering why I had writer's block. The sun was shining through the window onto my computer screen, so I went to close the curtains, lost my grip and actually punched poor Buddha square on the jaw. He hasn't got a glass jaw thankfully, I think it's some kind of clay-like material - anyways it didn't break, but I sat back down and thought

fuck, what if there really is something in that karma thing after all? I just punched Buddha, I'm screwed!

Then I wrote the poem.

I wouldn't say I'm a religious man, I believe in my own thing. I happen to think that organised religion tends to be corrupt and hierarchical to a point where it doesn't really take into consideration the needs and the inherent divinity of the individual and everything else within that individual's universe.

Instead of being a means to set people free on their own path and their own belief system, organised religion sets boundaries where there should be none. It institutionally seeks to control the belief system of each individual so that we all conform to a particular way of being and it seeks to eradicate individuality and humanity's ability to come up with our own set of beliefs.