Teresa White

BUDDHA IN THE SPARE ROOM

Buddha,
Who could love you,
fat and oily
in your perfect calm?

Mother built a shrine --
your plump statue
on a little table
with her best embroidered runner.

Unlit candles, sentinels
by your side.  I didn't know
whether to laugh or cry
at the eight-fold path inked in calligraphy
above your shining head.

She went through religions
like a woman trying on clothes.
I wondered what you could
offer that no one else had.

Jesus was never her friend.
He lacked the exotic,
hadn't sat for days under a Bo-tree;
asked too much.

I remind her that you,
Siddhartha Gautama,
left your wife and child --
the only one she ever left was me.

I knew she had a reason
but now, as I come to her
for newlywed advice,
she stares at your altar;

says someday I'll know
what destruction
of desire means.

Date of Birth: 3/27/47 Location: Spokane, Washington Email: whiteheart_1998@yahoo.com Website: http://members.tripod.com/~whiteheart2/index.html Publications: Blue Moon Review, Conspire, Eclectica, Eye Dialect, La Petite Zine, Mefisto, Poet's Canvas, Savoy, Undressed, 3rd Muse, etc. Awards: Nominated for Pushcart in 1999 by the Melic Review

- Poetry -Slightly AskewSix Stab WoundsSomething Like ThisGhazal : CircumferenceDiaphanous GlazeCapitalist EyesBefore a RainMort the CatIce HouseStill Life with Oysters and LemonGrizzlies in Glacier ParkThe Great Gatsby Breaks My HeartThe Conductress of MilkOleanderEmpty MirrorBuddha In The Spare Room- Prose -Keats in BostonBalmCherry Colored Crayons

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