Awakening

Awakening

The inner I looks out, disinterested.
It is the same, the spirit realm in color—
a reality that I may know, no more
than those sweet mists of silence I adore...
keeping them intangible and rare,
yet absolutely there with each successive breath.

I am illusion, yes, incapable
of charting that which even brain
may not define. Yet I may be aware,
may listen, watch and share,
then store it all somewhere
that I may find within a mind
that somehow manages
to flout the blood, the ganglia,
the whirling cells
within this transient body—
fly awayto some transcendent realm
and play among the stars...and for how long?
The spiritwill not say
.
And here am I,
a hopeless little galaxy
with unknown tricks awaiting me
somewhere inside myself,
the peril and salvation my own laughter
at my infant consciousness,
my chunk of the divine
that whirls with all the rest
quite lost though quite deliciously
bemused.

Awake? Enlightened? I?
Join hands with me
in search of just ourselves. I sense
that it's the only choice that we can make
with all that mystery.
~

In the Name of God

In the Name of God

A fire was burning at the city's edge.
It seeped into the underground
and fed the twisted strandsof passion,
forthright in its zeal at first
and then like starving roots content
to feed upon the warmth of pabulum,
of mindless glory in patria,
even as the fatherland grew strong,
consumed all insight held secure.

A leader came that night
(for day was too intense, too bright
to bless the sleep of practiced dream)
and priestlike, signed upon their heads
the cross of victory and conquest—
as the sheep he led heard him proclaim
that war will not forsake the nations of the earth
but gather them together in its flaming arms,
and in the name of God.
~

En Garde

En Garde
There in the ghetto,rising with the pain,
it is as if the one deprived of consciousness—
targeted by ignorance, ego at the helm,
was born to anger—there, where raw emotion rules,
there the roots are suddenly exposed,
the unctuous light prevails, sardonic
in contempt of an intruding day.

The night is queen,
her reign upon the sodden street perpetual;
the housetops' failure to release it, slumbers,
drones through the torpid hours tenacious
as the sponge-like air of summer.

There are no choices here, no one
to single out the breath as savior,
to tender just the moment as a space
to set apart...no one, save the self.

Below persona,
buried as a blanket earth keeps faith,
the fever rests and bores into the soul.
The Trojans march and tears are burning.
It is night.
It is ever night.
~

The Mystery of Love

The Mystery of Love

Within the space of nothingness
there lies totality...dimensions
that the sailing ships will never find,
the lurking presence of the self
within the guise of consciousness
and yet unseen, unknown,
among the whirling wisps of every "I"
that stopped to trace its alpha
and in pretense face omega's fire.

There is no mystery in looking back
or building for the holocaust; the distant rumbling
celebrates the watch, the now in formless splendor
that the longing heart has waited for,
that still-creating tug upon complacency,
as if to draft a paradise forever new,
a mystical embrace to place imagining
too far beneath the stars. There is
a light bedazzling our fondest hopes,
devotion past desire that enters
like the dawn, makes saints to blush
at burning, the selfless rush to sacrifice
mundane.

It is enough to know, and not to understand
the stuff of all that is within creation's hands.
It is enough to burn in the refiner's fire,
consumed or no by a reality
that holds within its womb, itself,
its passion for the light, a birth of God
upon its bed, and ready with a bursting breast
to nurture with unprecedented awe,
the progeny of home.
~

To Gramps

To Gramps

An is, is there forever
where there is no fear, and like a fountain
joy is always bubbling up...from underneath.
The more is always still to come,
not summoned but released from unknown hands;
the light suggested only, stretched across the land,
cast in its power of gray, pervades
its heritage unto the day
...unto the day

and from the lost upon the lea
the cry of home regained,
the plow cut deeply in the ground again,
the patient men who found their glory
in the ones who rode along,
who loved and buried them—
these, enamored of the earth,
would speak forever, may
for those few listeners
who will not turn away.

It is a sacrament, this presence
half-remembered on a cloudy day
when now comes back with fresh,
refreshing grief, a smile returned again.
The light, the soft gray light
that filters through the grove
is harbinger of a reality
that makes of time, illusion,
scattering its rays across the field
of old regret, and leaving
only love behind.
~

Halfway to a Dream

Halfway to a dream

It lurks there, fitfully
around the corner of my mind
and will not show its face
like an April thunderfront, and
scarce aware that winter slipped away
a week ago behind a cloud of consciousness,
reluctantly occludes the air with nebulosity,
a shy Olympus in denial.

It isn't fair. Unknown, invisible,
it tests my patience, challenges
my paradise and leaves my equanimity
in shreds; reserves are meaningless—
my plaint as well.

It moves within my chest, a void
creating sleep, denying it
as some sardonic phantom torture
just outside the room...the stillness
its ally, not mine...the calm
a faithless sanctuary, death delayed
as if my very breath were there
to test a faith that I no longer own.

What kind of ghost reality
will mock its own existence...
claim its victim with an objectivity
in doubt...a phantom court
without a charge to read,
a plaintiff unidentified?

Indeed, what kind of God
could graciously endow
his Adam in a garden home
so redolent of unseen sin
diffused before his unborn eyes?

I do not know. For though millenia
have passed, I'm only of hominidae,
my blueprint is not finished and
my paradisal masterwork
amorphous , still.
~

Journey Apart

Journey Apart

The travelers had disappeared,
the trail obscured by choice,
the pale romance
of greed, of lust, and of the dancing flame
upon the hearth that always must distract.

If somewhere there were hidden tears,
there were the years to crowd into the way.
And in that cruel finality that settled in
between the glances when he saw her that last time,
wonderment
that it was right.

A body melts beneath the fire—
not so, desire.
~

As charged

As charged

For I am free.
Two stood upon a hill to watch the stars.
Will he who sees a lesser light create
a rhapsody? Indeed, will compromise
to glory sing of supernality?

The weapon of the liberator is his sword,
dividing thought. The one who questions
may not be the swallower of status quo;
the watcher on the hill will not become
the wallower in pain.Each one receives the gift
to stand aside, to celebrate his liberty
and not apologize. To join the flow of life, not death
and sing there in his heart
of flowering, and not decay,
to flout the politic with MLK
and see in compromise a death
to tolerate, and then to mourn.

I am free
to sing a thousand songs of love kept close
and bursting to adorn my tribute
to the marchers off to war. I would spread
the barrier of peace before them—
would display my tears without regret

and I would plead
my weakness, my hypocrisy,
my mindless hope.
For I am free.
~