Meditation on Love

(Canto I)
It is vision, not desire, that moves us.
It revels in its glimpse of each eternity
All that is real may flood our eyes
and feed our hearts--a universe
our hands may never touch.

It is the priceless gift of weakness
we may cherish now,
not in ourselves alone, for need
provides love's moment
as love's catalyst--
rushing in upon us suddenly
as if it were a wave
to drown our cloying peace.

The well of tears is deep, compelling,
offering the draught of memory
so soon released before,
so set aside for laughter's sake,
so alien to the desert's rootless plain.
There is new joy in weeping here.

Then feed upon such love as this.
Breathe it as each quantum particle
may catch and send its spirit light
between millennia--translate the longing
in each chest for loveliness
and weep with me
among the wounds of innocents
that cannot heal.

Weep, and rage, and pound
upon the thunder in the sky
that speaks of love unable to return,
that speaks of loss within soft rain,
forever unredeemed.

The wound is open when the love crowds in.
Somehow the irony of joy and tears
must dwell together;
tragedy must marry triumph.
Ke who celebrates undying breath
must cling in kira love to kira death.
~
Canto II
Though love may be the bond
that seals the universe,
it may not be defined...
not created, nor brought to an end.
Unseen, untouched, unjudged,
it may attenuate its fire
but never die
despite the cooling of desire.
It is the blessed tie that speeds
its "yes" across the emptiness
of loss, and of the darkening day.
~
Canto III
My mind swept through
the gamut of analogy
to teach what love is.
Only one who knows
may understand, for knowing
of itself is undefined.
The promontory made for leaping
is unreachable--love's gift remains
the mystery creating all the world
of this unending now.
~

And there was evening, and there was morning--another day

Aware of light beneath the eyelids
clinging to the world just departing,
folding silently away,
I feel but slight reluctance...
as if the final chapter of a book
were too soon taken from me--
is that what death is like?
Is that the way the spirit I-ness planned?

I think these shifts of consciousness
are slivers of the pie,
surprise rehearsals
for a laudable adventure
in transition soon to come,
when breath is softer still
and with the barest touch of sadness
drifts away to die.
~

The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man

My thoughts keep coming back,
reflecting on the hour glass,
and knowing with the bottom mostly full
and darkness closer by,
the thing I was supposed to do
is undefined, retreating
in the now descending dusk,
a most sardonic eulogy, indeed,
for I shall never even see myself!

There is a cadence beating
as I turn within. It echoes
as the truimph's hollow drums
would sound beneath the pines
along the Appian way, a counterpoint
to whispers that thou art a man,
a shell, a fallen leaf thrust by the wind,
accountable the least of all
to some invented pride.

There is a song within such turning,
that is unsung, unending,
like a silent god, an unobtrusive,
still insistent art in parallel
along the corridor I walk.
It is the spectre that I also do not see.
It is the consciousness I share
unborn, undying,
and the I-ness that I do not dare
to touch.

And were I then to reach for it,
would you as well?
And are we not dependent
on the swell of every soul fulfilled?
Upon the hope clean ecstasy
may bring to sing at last
when all the silence bursts
upon us...

Come, and bear with me
the crashing of the sea,
the fire emerging from beneath,
the planets crumbling,
the blackened sun--for that
we shall espy
within an endless cosmos of the mind
that cannot calculate
the way to die.
~

ParaDieu

ParaDieu

Time floods my consciousness
with pretense of reality that like a mist
is faithless, vanishing,
exchanging slavery with me.
That which I know, I am;
that which I see is merely me,
an object over there, apart
from unity.

Yet all is one. Subject, I am
and which I am, is not.
And was it not a God we heard
to claim to be? I like it not
to be a God within,
without a trinity
I cannot fathom--one
I surely cannot know.
Empty, therefore,
may it ever be
that I am not?
~

From a Christian in Exile

From a Christian in Exile

Do not think me cold of heart
if I decline to kneel before your God.
For I may pass within my mind,
into another room
and find its walls have given way
to vastness such, that if a man
before a throne were there, then he
would draw his hands before his eyes
in order not to see--my ecstasy
is by default...the rooms,
the rooms give plunder to the heart.

There are mansions in my father's house,
and still undreamed,
prepared by still another Lord
who will not wait for death,
imparts no benediction, just a place within
where time will drift away, and love creeps in.

The Savior knew about the lonely place
--led us there in life, and not by dieing;
(There were crosses quite enough
to teach us all of sacrifice) our salvation
trumpet sounded on a silent shore
before a stranger kingdom
than the one we knew,
before the outrage of a second birth,
before the blazing tumult
of a Galilean peace.
~

To Doctors Murray, Minor, Furnivall, and all

To Doctors Murray, Minor, Furnivall, and all

The breaths of sighing are time travelers
that draw one hundred fifty years up close
and reify old ghosts who will not sleep
between the pages of a history that they created.
Setting self aside,they died
with only slight regret, aware
that they would never see the end, yet knew
the glory of the OED* in birth.

Look back at them, who saw ahead to us
and breathe your sighs in concert, for you are
fulfillment of their dream to prowl the earth
beyond the breadth of England, or the sea,
to hold a candle high above the page
of humankind that speaks from every age.
~
*The Oxford English Dictionary

Come, let us reason together

Come, let us reason together
It was at the gate we waited
hoping that the wind would change,
and still within our hearts that cavity
of sure despair.
It was denial that sustained us,
and the flame of rhetoric
that threw its light upon us;
mutatis mutandis we shall win!
And we do not.

The war grinds on
and victory dies at the breast;
mother love is its undoing.
Second hand, her own sustaining
feeds our weakness
and preserves our infancy.
Most certainly it is the toys
of adult contrivance that we hurl
out of the motherland,
out of the treasure store we filled,
out of the crib of hate
we cannot understand.
~

Confessions of a Panentheist

Confessions of a Panentheist

There was no tearful parting from my God.
I merely saw him pale before the light of truth,
and fade before me. It was as if he knew
I didn't need him anymore, although
he didn't need to say goodbye,
for he was everywhere.

How can it be, his love is stronger still?
There is no "he," no icy realm,
no flame within his breath
to ward off beasts,
engage the penalty of death,
or thunder from the mountain
as we cower in holy fear.

No, we created those,
and they were phantom devils
masquerading in egoic foil
to all the weakness we might gather
to our prayers, all the feral predators
beyond the fire at the door.

The love is just for us,
the taproot of that true reality
that groans within us.
It is the stuff of Namaste
that snuffs out darkness,
re-creates a spirit peace
within each minute particle
someone forgot. How may it,
in its quietude,
rage as a storm around us,
as a hurricane within?

In truth, there is no object
to its furious assault. It is us,
in wonder absolute that this strange wind
blows to and from infinity,
and yet still bends to our control.
This cosmic mind is such
to speak in whispers,
yet it spans the curvature of time and sky
for listeners like you and I.
~

Quixote Lives

Quixote Lives

What tablets yet await our opening eyes?
What murmers through the ether rise
and coalesce on stone and slate and monitor
and on a consciousness transcending art
with but a thrust into a calloused heart?
A single year or a millenium times ten,
one prophet dreams to see a nova ray of truth
exploding o'er his longlost grave.

Feeble eyes are open,
gathering energy and filtered light,
not theirs alone.
For as a savior and his ragged band
upended sense forever after,
it is not the stalwart phalanx marching
to proclaim a magnitude of grace
beyond a bloodied beach.
It is the flaming chariot Elisha saw
that throws its light on all the history to come
when time is lost. It is the steadfast search
to offer up the blood of life,
the glistering ghost upon the mountain,
precursor of a spirit light
that floods all humankind.

The door is for the entrant,
lock unknown. The feast in splendor laid
beside Siloam's pool, Zaccheus' tree,
or the lordotic leper's bed;
Teresa's cup of water turned to wine
that I would sip after the beggar tastes and dies.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
~

And as for me

Out of the sodden earth
a mystic truth arises,
out of the frozen tombs it flies
to salt the morning air,
for there is nothing fair in mindless axioms
or second-handed loyalties
compressed within cliche.

What parentland became
a favored childof God?
What ravaged forest
may invite the honor to become
its sanctuary? No, I shall not
profane my heart with some vain
gesture of obeisance
to a bloodied flag. It beats
within the ground
where those true patriots
who only gave of life, not took it,
lie with honor.

I pledge forever, my allegiance
to the spicy breath of day
from which we came--
the spirit breath of all that is,
and all that we may ever be--
the soil caressed beneath the rain,
the passion of the dead
beneath our feet
who feed the day with love,
that we may not forget,
may not forget.
~

Molly is angry

and it's about time! We need some anger these days:
http://progressive.org/mag_ivins0306

Full emptiness

We poets ought to shy away
from homilies concerning love.
What manner of creative thinker
might presume to take a single step
in front of all the ranks of millions
who have wept out tired or inspired
words to probe its depths
or sail upon its turbulence?

Yet here am I, the foolish ingenue
compelled to sigh again,
compelled to co-create a god
up in the sky, or some seductive muse
upon the shore, inclined once more
to let me maunder through the swampland
of bathetic sentiment before a world
still too polite to say "enough."

Somehow a love is least bereft
of purity, when left alone,
the lover sans beloved, never lost.
When form or wit or lovely face,
much less a deity, a sunset or an art
is gone, the one who sits apart
may still, enraptured, know
the flow of love is its own source
and its own silent grace.
~

Second sight

Did you see it?
Something blurred the air that day
just as it does sometimes
above the asphalt
in the heat of summer.

Two souls, I think, in discourse,
roiling energy in passion,
sent a tiny spot of cosmos into chaos--
in contempt of time, and for the moment
let us in.

For us, we would not have known
that Love has its insidious side
reaching forth from places
that seemed not to give a damn--
the little tragedies of yesteryear
that never were resolved
still lodged within the earth.
There were fragments of rejection
that we left there when we knew
they couldn't stand alone
and the years that pounded down on them
could never heal but only
make the hurting stronger still.

Some god gets blamed for over- parenting,
for all the better motives we acquire.
Some scraggly, gruff old fellow
out in space, who keeps an eye on things,
and shakes his finger
when we do not think to love,
finally will sigh, and tell us it's ok.

I'm sorry. That is not the God for me.
This guilt is one I own alone,
the one I cannot fashion to adorn
the man upon the cross.

The human creature thrives on fantasy
and rises from his bed each day
in discontent to face the glory of the wind,
the hints and shreds of change
that were not here before.

His state of bliss is unaware
the ocean at the door in silent raging,
poised to flood his consciousness
with seas of a reality he never dreamed,
is an insistent guest.

No. There is no rest from this.
No flighted messenger to sing
an alleluia. No, I think we need
our scourges and our chains.
I think we need the air that trembles
in the day, reminding us
that love is never free
and only perfect eyes
may know its clarity.
~

As others see us...

" I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S." ~Eduardo Galeano

From the Cradle

It seems I have just found myself
not in this body, rather in the wind
where I have always been,
and lost to grimy fingers
scratching inside out in wonder,
chasing old identities,
and not quite happy with the latest one--
who joined his greedy fellows
at the trough wiith thoughts of lust
and later, rusty arteries, and death.

I much prefer the breath, the spirit ride,
creation's thrust returning still again,
the journey through a cosmos
that a man will never touch with fingers.
Suddenly I am aware that one is born
when he is old--must be, as we were told
by one they called the son of God,
but then it never dawned on us

that all those blinking particles
were playing games,
and in the changes that they wrought,
proved quite immortal--you and I
behind our eyes, looked out
and saw it all.

And it was good.
~

Meditation at Ebeneezer Church

Martin and Coretta knew
how straight the road ran
through the wilderness. They knew
that some would stray
and turn across the meadow
toward the woods.

They felt the love rise
from the aging marchers,
knowing when they too would disappear,
the road goes on.

The knowing is
that they shall not return--
and still the road goes on.

Will newer marchers fill the ranks?
And will the flow of love be strong?
And might the breath
beneath the song prevail
unto this joyless day
that we may overcome?
~

Quintessential sobering thought

"From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair." ~William Blum

Naked soul

Do you want to know what I search for?
Totality, nothing more.
And would a man content himself with less
he would embrace a cinder for a sun
and turn his back on love and light.

To see beyond his vision, something looms
that he may never touch, a symphony
that he may never hear, a love out there
that races by in parallel,
one not to gratify, but rather hold in place
the all that is, and was, and is to be
and feeds the dreaming of the still unborn

forever, is my muse. I shudder
at that cold wonder of it.
~

An Awakening

A sliver of life is all it was.
Someone was crying,
caught me there within the moment,
made me wish profoundly
that it were not I
who needed to be strong.

It was those tears that overpowered me,
wrested me away from all the safety
of my observation post,
and in their weakness, gifted me
with some strange love--
a gift I could not stand.

It was another's pain
that offered a release
for my compassion; there was I
confirming it was not enough--
this looking out between the towers
of my little parapet, as lord;
I needed to become that agony

My fortess stood upon the moors
as on an alien sea, and I the alien,
the prisoner bereft of suffering
had nothing that I could return.
Disarmed and disingenuous
I knew and understood the certainty
of absolute despair.
~

A thought for today

"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in
destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love." ~Martin Luther King Jr.

On Aging

Taking stock in my 70's, I think,
Foo, I'm the same fellow
I was at twenty,
with a bit less energy,
somewhat more certain either way
about my shrinking future--
dead and uncaring,
or transcendantly alive,
a spirit properly incredulous
and grateful--not a bad deal.

Everyone my age wonders
where the time went;

I know where it went,
preoccupied with number one,
and constantly denying it.
We called that sin, but now I think
I really missed the point
when I forgot to look inside,
behind the skin, to find
the spirit there already, looking out
upon the world I made,
manipulated, then laid out
for visitation that I hoped
would mercifully be brief.

Such is not the case.
A man gets patronized for what he is, compromised
for what he wants to be.
We dodder, so we're told,
a point against us on the scale
of worth, of dignity--wise we are
when we are called to be,
and otherwise when passengers
upon our cosmic ship are not
so well equipped with consciousness
as we, and mindlessly
race off to war.

So let it be.
So let the ages line us up
by phalanx in the quest for life or death,
and we shall march to our last breath
as some imagined victory we could not
set aside, loomed much too far ahead,
and we shall march,
and we shall march...
never looking back behind our eyes,
yes, we shall march.

The Eyes of Saul

He walked along the country road
suffused with guilt...the archetype
of arrogant despair
bearing unknown void
as some monstrosity ballooning;
thus encumbered, saw the gloom
take on decay, Damascus fade
and then upon his solemn march

a grace appeared; he saw no more.
His hands were warmed
as one who understands compassion--
suddenly may seek to let it heal.
Reality wore different dress;
allthough there was duress
that still prevailed--a wretchedness
confessed within a new holistic fire
created endings for a man
faced with a birth that centuries
beyond would celebrate.

He would see again the choice;
the restless rest exchanged,
he would attain quixotic glory
in the pain that he could own,
and thus refreshed,
would make it known
across millennia.

Hard-pressed without a doubt
for kira self to find serenity
inside the passion of this
feisty little man obsessed
with lightning and with love,
the one who from the darkened path
had stumbled to a martyr's paradise
enabled by the eyes of God.
~

From My Corner House

Looking out enables me
to see the world in microcosm.
Those who travel in an opposite direction
now for me are doubled,
now to stray from one straight path
is cordially invited and encouraged.
Indecisiveness and sometimes fear
are common traits, and warning signs
are commonplace..

Snowplows clear one surface,
and in process fill another;
now the chance of hazard
grows by increment.
My vantage point surveys both double joy
and double sadness
in an avalanche of tenderness,
I'll never understand.

Like legerdemain, the passing colors
weave their fantasy of crosses,
while inside the cars
metallic voices, disembodied, blend
with those from flesh, enough
to rival Pentecost. In the drifting ether
all around them, oratorio
and slamming rock guitar will coalesce,
and are no more.

I, however, choose to be deceived,
aided in my madness by the silent
churning scene beyond my window.
Gifted by a mantra for the eye,
I lift my world, and gently turn it
upside down to watch the snowflakes fly.
I see them settle on my corner
as my neighbors find their driveways,
caring little for my shrinking world,
minding little that it is too late for me
to step outside, and enter.
~

"If" ......by Robert Steinback

12/27/05 "Miami Herald" -- -- If, back in 2001, anyone had told methat four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admitthat he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored theConstitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulatehim for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republichad crumbled.Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, thenadmit he would have invaded even if he had known there was nothreat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would havethought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embracetorture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for yearswithout charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call suchprocedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would havelaughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agentas revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propagandaby bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators,and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S.military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested inwhether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would havecalled the prediction an absurd fantasy.That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, andwe've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.What is there to say now?All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of thiscountry appears more concerned that saying ''Happy Holidays'' couldbe a disguised attack on Christianity.I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's characterthan I once believed, because I would have expected such actions toprovoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks andtorches at the White House gate. I would have expected prouddefiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threatcould send this country into spasms of despair and fright soprofound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisanceand perfidy a privilege.Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged strongerfrom a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars,endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign inSoutheast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principlesof liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to``protect us.''President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretapsagainst U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'llcontinue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is thatking? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet orcongressional mandate to protect the American people.Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terroristattack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more importantthan this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written,``What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects mefrom death?''Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deferenceto the ''war on terror'' -- a war, it should be pointed out, thatcan never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not anopposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty ofa terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-timeterrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fightinginfection -- even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight orit will strike again.Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defythe law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in:Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doingthings his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting forterrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud,confident republic can hunt down its enemies without tramplinglegitimate human and constitutional rights.Ultimately, our best defense against attack -- any attack, of anysort -- is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which thisnation was built.Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we?

We are the good guys!

We don't torture?http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121705C.shtml

Spirit Post Mortem

What was this unarticulated joy
that beat inside my chest?
That was both expected and is past,
reflected numens chanting
to my spirit, as if subdivided
in my superconsciousness--I may not
have borne them as a whole
though holy they may be...one mystery
selects a lifetime as its drum
and makes the years crescendo
poco a poco from its infancy
unto the crashing storm of age
when breath itself implodes.

I think it is too much--
a joy the mind at quest must know
and not to be endured.
I think a man must shake his fist
in protest as Beethoven did,
unable to sustain it to the end.
It is the depth and height of ecstasy
of which its single aim
is to expire.
~

This too, shall pass

There is an unseen magnet in the lure
of solitude. I seek it hungrily.
In it, I draw down silence as
a cover, insulating truth, but I
deny the need for joy. For as a boy

I sought too often, all the places that
my friends avoided, sanctuaries that
would give the groping spirit in the heart
of me some rest. Of all my friends it was
and still remains, the best. Yet finally

as age invades this shell, the mind has learned
to swim in consciousness, to question and
to laugh, to know that truth alone,
while still supreme, will also reach about
in love, and also with the cosmos that
it rules, may celebrate its restless peace.

I chase down thoughts, and wrestle with them now.
I make them work; they may not get away
with merely tantalizing fantasy.
They are the mortar of a spirit house
I'm building from a curious design
some spirit architect passed on, but it
is mine, and will bring smiles, I think, at its
grand opening.

The years are good, the friends as well, for as
they came along I saw at once that they
were not a mirror for my greed nor just
a sounding board for some vain homily
my ego had prepared--no they were sons
of God! I laughed again, but now the joy
is sung in concert in a universe
without an end.
~

To December

Racing in to us, dull season
short on daylight, long on endurance,
that for once I do not dread,
although I do not know
just what severity may come--
I laugh at old presumptions,
tattered hopes,
sophisticated fears
that seized their own close skies
and pulled them down like shrouds
around me...not this year.

A wiser soul may welcome cautiously,
arriving wnter,
tolerated for its piquancy,
its stinging air,
enough to foil the colorful bravado
of the schoolgirls' scarves,
uncompromising skirts
and blushing, sensuous knees.
And should that soul retreat to kneel
before some stodgy saint in penitence,
the stuttering shame it bears for looking
may become salvation
if indeed its god still smiles.

Mine does.
He understands old men like me
who suddenly, like frosting on the years,
will notice pleasure seeping in
between the breath of one more tomb
or its cessation in the death of gloom
that mortal skill alone creates...
Audacious men, indeed,
who sit at wizard keyboards
punching out the will of God

...and graciously forgiven.
~

For Children Only (revised)

The gentle monsters
live just over there across the hill,
and there are those who will attest
to their unerring skill
in the selection of their kill,
for they are kind, and wise and good.
Their weaponry is sanguine sweetness,
eyes upon the prize of triumph;
burial is for another's tears, not theirs,
for buried consciousness is quite enough.

And though the stain remain
upon the yellowed pages, there is more,
for war in constancy insures
a generous, perpetual supply
of heroes.
~

My Impossible Dream

To find and elect leaders who will not lie to us. Is that unreasonable? Is that too much to desire? Here in the land of the free, what kind
of freedom is that?

Reflections on Spirit Reality

If life is just what it appears
and that which we may test,
then we are just the lonely ones--
looking out between the bars
of bones, and dressed
imprudently in softest armor
spun of flesh.

A spirit may not laugh
at such a spectacle--
may not collapse in tears
as wonder such as this
is contemplated...years
of such illusion form
the phalanx of our refuge,
make our outer gates secure.

The camp is pitched upon
the edge of darkening days.
The loss of sunlight only marks
the end of fading time; one may
crumble it between the fingers
as grave dust, and turn away
to consciousness like reborn youth
inside unending day.

Perhaps we need not turn away.
It may be just remembering
that we are visitors upon the earth,
each one a changing chrysalis
beneath the light of changeless love.
Another metamorphosis is ours,
and ours again to be.
~

Molokai

I'm an island,
though aware that old John Donne
would never treat me so. He didn't know
that there are particles of me
that I would never show to anyone
...could not; the sacrifice
may not be contemplated, now
or even then. I happily
maintain the sham
that is this body, fondly gathering
my little evils deep into the nest.
Once bursting forth, they rest within
until I call them, dressed again
in camouflage.

Do not molest my island, for
not I, nor you could bear it.
Let no priest, no lover probe
beneath my skin where sepsis lies
protected from the truth,
and let no friend believe
when some seductive creed
flows trippingly across my tongue.

I am an island, here for you to love--
you who are above
a superficial loyalty,
you whom I can count on
to see past the scars--
not to look at me too closely,
never to possess me as I am,
but merely hold the fantasy
of what I wish to be.
~

To my son

The signposts come along much faster, now.
And I fear most of all not my own death
or even your own sense of loss or grief,
but my betrayal, for I cannot go
upon the road to everlasting life
that you will travel, reaching for my hand
and at the close releasing it as I
release your paper lord--and then I die
without your blest assurance
that I made him mine.

You cannot understand the god I breathe,
the one who breathes in me also-- the one
who holds his peace and thus enables me
in dying, to inflict more pain, for if
I make an honest life and then in death
deceive, I do not pull away your prayers
but neither do I then impart the love
I hold within my chest. For I do not
beneath this tent address your god or your
devotion; and thus become for you
the merest husk to blow away.

How may I speak to you of mystery?
How may I share with you
a cosmos that embraces all--a love unstoppable?
If I could creep with you upon my knees
into a throne room in the stratosphere
that our old fathers fabricated in
their heads, then I would plead that you
perceive a later portrait of
transcendence.

Then will you let me grieve with you
that you must grieve eternal loss?
(while in my heart I know with your
same certainty the opposite is true)
--That I remove the father of
the lord we love, as I suffuse a
deity beneath that canopy of truth.
I might explain forever what I know
of that supreme and drowning ocean,
overwhelming fear--but knowing inwardly,
it is what you may never see.

You own a most capricious source
of immortality. Of after life,. I do not doubt,
but see it through another spirit lens
that you have spurned, as I in turn
have laid your own aside.
There is double dying as the price
for glad reunion, and for one of us
in--creed-able surprise.
~

The Legacy of Helen Keller

We thought to care for her, to give her life
inside her tomb,
surrounding her with sound and sight
though second-hand, with all the light
of knowledge and the color of our joie
de vivre. We would create in her
a channel to a world she couldn't understand--
then revel in her gratitude.

What irony, that she, the partial woman
that we playful gods created
showed her partiality to other suns she knew
that we did not. Outrageous!
She the teacher that we had to teach
to learn? She, the one who found serenity
in that rich silence unoccluded by
the lightning swords, the battle hymns,
the marchers' vanity called truth.

No, Helen's sight emerges from a realm
that we, encumbered by the ear and eye,
must be denied, lest she let us in to see...
lest she share with us the symphony
upon her private stage, and via
some miraculous device that she
would like to give away to us who wear
our blindfolds much too readily.

I must confess to jealousy
sequestered in my shadowed room,
upon my little bench, and wishing
that I knew what Helen did, and had
resource to reach into my dark
and bring out light, too magnificent
for me alone to keep.
~

Revelation

Inside the chamber in the earth
the darkness teaches,

never ceases, though this whirling ball
sets forth its glory in a thousand frames.

Pain is the carrot on the stick, sacrifice
and sorrow just the stuff that will not sell--

yet through the stifled sobs, it resonates,
and though it gives us tears

it is the spirit provenance
that lets us travel back upon the years

and find humanity within-- locate the self
distorted, broken, brother to the adam

and the eve scarcely able to remember
paradise. The newer heaven and earth

is said to leave behind
the sorrow and the sighs

but they are gifts that mold us still
and hammer on our consciousness

that we who seek the new Jerusalem
will find it in the shroud.

I saw the broken men walk from the mines
and when I saw their eyes, I hurt like them...

I loved them, then, the black upon their skin.
I loved the knowing that they never would

grow old, their dusted lungs would be my own,
their breath grown shallow, drowning me...

that from the gift of tragedy I was enchained
within those other hearts, admitted without test,

without a crumbling document
to certify my worth before the fellowship

of those repulsive soil-stained arms
embracing me.

There is no choosing grace like this,
no pain accessible, no paradise

to promise sweetness,
for of all it is the gift most free...

down in the chamber of the earth
where wisdom hides within the dark

beneath the guise of agony.
~

Dimensions of Love

I thought to analyze this basic stuff
that is existence...taking love apart,
identifying every alias
that I could name. There was compassion and
humility; there was romance in all
its ages, and upon its fringes lurked
desire. But that must now be cast aside
as faithless, though there was compulsion deep
within, that may not be denied.

My vanity in such an exercise
was clear enough, although there was a man
named Paul who wrote a letter to his friends
in Corinth--could as well have stopped it just
as greatness loomed to crown his song about
a word, for with unconscious eloquence
he crowned himself with need of nothing more.

Old Paul knew how to say unlovely things
and seldom held his tongue,
but in this thirteenth chapter there emerged
the poet's saint, a mortal's dawning of
creation's mortar--quintessential truth.

In those post-lightning years he was no less
irascible, but bore within himself
an overflowing heart sustained by that
one ineluctable constraint that holds
us all together in a spirit sea.
~

Listen

Paradox is singing
sometimes, when you choose
to be alone.

If silence is ineffable,
there is contained within it
sadness, too...never understood,
but nourishing, feeding on the quest--
as if to widen its dimensions,
color it with that most proper dress
that makes solemnity a mode apart.

Perhaps it is the hovering
of that unconscious self
which rules us all, reaching back
to distant moments when mortality
first introduced itself...
a calm, insistent friend that we
were not yet ready to accept.

It is only now, it has become
a well of resource never dry,
the sweetness of regret
and who within its reach
escapes unbound?
~

Dream Ocean

The breathless seas expire across the shore
as if still more to dramatize decay,
as if the spirit realm were threatening;
unseen the children of the day who swim
within reality you cannot touch,
who bear no name, who are the aliens
encamped upon a planet floating in
a world of dreams.

As such, it is illusory to read
the ink upon a non-existent page,
for lucid reverie is ours when we
can touch this fleeing fantasy of skin,
and see just how it molds itself around
our skeleton, creates the apertures
that let us see and hear, the brain that lets
us stop and wonder, and the tear that takes
the moment into memory.

In such a night alone, the love we share
is just a gentle brooding shadow of
beneficence that hovers over all
the stones, the souls in flight, the messengers
of light. It is the commonality
to which we cling, and some of us
will call it God.
~

The Grace of Cowardice

Finally
I sent it off, and knew

you could ignore it,
set the piece aside, and just forget.
You could skim it, dutifully,
perhaps become enraged,
or only choose to be amused.

But no, we chose to stand together,
you and I, among the others,
in our silent tribute
to the shivering emperor

and to the noble walrus,
to the end, discreet.
~

Author! Author!

Ideas gleaned from poetry and books
should be for sale in little boxes, that
were optional at extra cost--and I
would find inside, the little people there
that I could set upon my desk, and shake
my finger at them, questionning without
offence their origin, or their descent.
And as a gentle Gulliver, perhaps,
remember to remark upon their zeal.

Of course if I found feedback from the air
that bears my voice, or from my friends who care,
I would. But yes, it is too much to ask,
and much too little to depend upon.
No wonder that the wee ones live for us!

Beware, my tiny leprechaun, for we
are scavengers who would invade the night
to capture you, for you are rare indeed.
Within your packs, the wonder drug, insight
to know, to understand, embrace, believe!
~

Look to your right for a moment

You will see that the Iraq war has now cost us over Two Hundred Billion. Do you think we have our money's worth?

Last full measure

There was Mike's famous creeping smile
and then the punch line
spoken slowly, in his style...
we laughed, and felt the pressure
in our chests, saw his hands thrown up,
and in an instant, saw him die
and that was it, no interim,
not a single second of respect
to get us ready.

Then when we came home
we couldn't say to anyone
that he was more a hero
than the rest of us; you know
it doesn't seem to be
quite fair.
~

August 16

Ignition...on
and in an hour, it was over.
One slash of time made ridicule
of caution, for the silence that he chose
was not enough; he hated it,
chose death instead,
and that without regret.

I wonder just how long it was
the engine poured its fumes
into his ambience,
and he beyond a care...
how many passed just yards away,
how many chronicles raced
past the brute unconsciousness
of the undead, as they sped by.

It was a double silence that prevailed
upon the darkening day--
a double irony as that frail candle
smoldered when its destiny
was light.
~

Please... no selling on my site!

This is a blog for poetry, opinion, and discussion of current issues. It is not for the promotion of someone's commercial blog. All, of course, are welcome and very much encouraged to leave their comments here, and visitors make it better, and more interesting. However, of late, some have left commercial "hints" publicising their own money-making activities. That is not what this site is for, and I hope this shameless activity will be ignored whenever you come across it.

His last concert

I wasn't there to hear the choir
though once I sang with them,
but I still think of Holliday
at closing--cadence coming up
and his conducting stern, impassive
just as always
with the same authority,
demanding and receiving
absolute attention,
pulling them along .

What were his thoughts, I wonder,
'mid those final measures of polyphony
when glory filled the room?

When as the homophonic chords
resolved in the "amen"
his gaze still far away, aside,
just before the cutoff,
then he turned, perhaps,
to look directly at the singers
--that faintest hint of smile appearing,

wrists in last release,
the frame of stillness introduced...
his hands suspended...
four seconds of eternity
and he stepped down
to face the last applause,
what then?

Through all the years thereafter, I am told...
they offered him the podium as guest
and he, as always
quietly declined.
~

My Higher Self

I sense him watching with amusement
at my foolishness,
though I have need of him
else I would run amok.

Yet sometimes I resent him for his caution.
Let him play within his spirit world;
for mine, though just a fantasy
outranks his in its solidity.

I must admit it is the best
illusion I could ask;
for though I know that time
may only trickle out at my life's close--
the world is on a suicidal binge,
whiIe I may stay the game

if I remain within the present, cling
to it tenaciously; mine is not
the gloomy prophet's role. I am
the celebrant, the last remaining lover
quite as much adored and unrepenting,
thank you, as your bleeding Lord.

No,
I do not mock him as do those
with ears which will not hear
or hearts that will not bleed.
I mock your truth...and as I speak my own,
that too is just a hollow creed.

May I instead look up,
enabled (not at all enlightened
by pure truth) rather by desire
to sense its fire within,
where words may never
win the day.
~

Eccles...2005

Still there, amid the change,
the girl was speaking.

There was something
in her voice as she explained--
something
blanketing her fears
and yet revealing them
for those who wished to know
...something stealing softness
from between the words
and leaving gentle crusts of doubt
within her hand, seeds not of hope,
but resignation.

It was time to celebrate the wave
that crushed the innocent, the lost,
the weak that could not stand aside.
The truth she spoke, could never be denied.

It was time, assuming power at day's end--
a time that crushed remembering.
No seamless victory, perhaps, but still enough
to make the dead capitulate.
It was time to hate.
~

Evensong

Each day at five o'clock
the shepherd leads his flock
across the bridge,
the waiting traffic in suspended time,
serene, yet unaware
that they are gifted by
uncommon grace.
~

At the Gate

He walked beside a wall that day
and knew its silent stones
held something back,
no thing that might compel him,
yet he was compelled.
It was the opposite
of everything he knew,
a state of nothingness
that even God obeyed.
Someday he would press through,
engaging it with echoed stillness
of his own.

He walked the edge
of his own consciousness
with that suspended,
ever pristine void of the unknown
beyond--another blessed question
waiting in its paradise,
the answer in its hell.
~

Earthbound

It is the night that brings the spirits forth
in some ironic twist of the mystique
for they know only of eternal day,
and play upon the dark side of the moon
as readily as frolicing at noon
on some outrageous court we cannot see
with stuffy eyes in stuffy bodies bound
in time to contrast their eternity
.
It is no wonder we compare them with
the stuff that hallucinogens promote--
that nether world of dreams that science dares
to waken from a state of fantasy,
forgetting yesterday is but today.

Some say that life is just illusion; may
I then convey my deathless gratitude
to every soul who may come by to see
this new reality I made?
~

All the reasons

why the wrong president is in office. Anyone who does not agree should be prepared to explain why the reasons are not true:

(after clicking on the link below--scroll down a bit for the actual article)

www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/voter_fraud.html

Pernicious Insight

"Oh, the kitty, the kitty, the kitty!"
my litle sister cried,
as the screendoor closed behind me
on the kitten's neck.

Regrettable, I thought.
For what at ten I knew of death,
was like penumbra
on a cloudy day,
and little more of her,
at three.

Her state of shock and grief, however,
threw the flashing sun at me
and I, amazed,
could see how poignantly
I loved her.
~

In my Studio

I know that I must not exist

in synchronicity with you

nor may my soul create

within this lumbering

and evanescent form,

an odyssey of light,

no, not alone--

it takes a higher self

that I do not remember very well,

to make it swell

within a breathless chest--

that this is art!

That search within goes on,

for what is there that speaks?

What tiny cell is fired,

freeing up the stuff to change

a universe?

Or is there mystic sperm and egg uniting

there within a spirit womb,

there in a microscopic cosmos?

Might there be a spirit bishop

or a phantom God

to launch the swarm of particles

in Botticelli's mind?

There go my children,

fending for themselves

and never looking back

upon their hollow birthplace.

You and I are equally

without a clue to where we came from,

how or why, or what the process means.

And when I graduate to death,

quite willing to forsake my breath,

not wonder, (for a heaven of answers

surely is my hell) I'll not neglect

as my last opus, to create

a gracious God who may

receive my gratitude.

~

Connection challenged

I just remembered.
It nearly got away from me...
the day you died, nine years ago.
Even then, you let 800 miles come between us;
you are closer now
than you were then--

you simply died at your own hand,
and that was it. That passageway
is now as filled with rock.
I heard you call just once
although you typed hellos,
i love yous, notes like that,
and then the probe comes through
once in awhile.,
getting just a little better.

I will wait
and further store my love
like bricks of gold
stacked in the vault
somewhere near that damn tunnel,
800 spirit miles
of instant flight for you,
solid mystery for me.

I have time.
I'll wait.

From a better poet than I:

"Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
So I will know my people's plight.
Free me to pray for others;
For you are present in every person.
Help me take responsiblity for my own life;
So that I can feel free at last.
Grant me courage to serve others;
For in service there is true life.
Give me honesty and patience;
So that I can work with other workers.
Bring forth song and celebration;
So that the Spirit will be alive among us.
Let the Spirit flourish and grow;
So that we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those who have died for justice;
For they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us;
So we can change the world."
~Cesar Chavez

Read what Cindy Sheehan has to say

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sheehan/sheehan10.html

The Inner Circle

(Thanks to Barbara Mades for the inspiration)

I've learned to deal with funerals.
They celebrate a history both far and fresh,
cementing it with closure just as earth
would close a grave.

There's not much room for victory,
despite the words of triumph in the rite.
But all the faithful ones
who could and would be there,
looking at the moment of departure
saw transcendence
at the bedside or the battlement
and drew upon resources
that they never knew they had--

not I, apart, spared from
the crisis, glory-drenched,
that turns good-bye
into transforming art.
Not I, the chosen one
to see the flight
to timelessness.

It is this tiny brittle stone
in shattering
that marks the apex of a pathway
that humanity or other
walks no more.
The confraternity of those
who walked with them until the end,
alone will understand.
~

Some words we need to hear

"A Feast of Death "
By William Rivers Pitt /T r u t h o u t Perspective

Now thou art come unto a feast of death. - William Shakespeare, Henry VI

On Tuesday, some took solemn note of the fact that the total number of "Coalition" fatalities from the invasion and occupation of Iraq had reached 2,000. On Wednesday afternoon, that number blurred upwards again to 2,015 dead soldiers. 1,821 of those served under the American flag. Fourteen US Marines died on Wednesday when their vehicle was shattered by a large bomb. Six other Marines were killed together on Monday, and a seventh is reportedly being held hostage. Two more Marines also died Monday, both from car bombings in separate locations. We are only three days into the month of August, and 22 US soldiers are dead. 54 died in July, 78 died in June, and 80 died in May. The occupation has lasted 868 days. More than two thousand soldiers, almost all of them young American boys and girls, have had the life blasted out of them because they were sent by their commander in chief to find weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Those soldiers who remain, those soldiers who have been redeployed into the war zone two or three times already, wait with grim resolve to be brought home to their families whole and sane and safe.

Acclaimed novelist E.L. Doctorow has penned some words about George W. Bush and his understanding of death and this war. "This president," wrote Doctorow, "does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country." "But you study him," continued Doctorow, "you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life. They come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq. How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing."

The occupation of Iraq is almost a thousand days old now, and as the self-serving justifications for invasion wither in the desert sun, as the neo-conservative "Bush Doctrine" collapses in a swelling flood of blood and total failure, as more and more people see impeachment as a moral necessity, as those who stand in opposition wonder what they can do to thwart a corrupt and crazed administration that exists entirely without checks and balances, there remains one act of defiance and strength and solidarity that cannot be ignored. On Saturday, September 24th, there will be a protest in Washington DC. This gathering could possibly dwarf all previous demonstrations against this administration. That weekend will see far more than a protest. On the 25th, Progressive Democrats of America will host a wide-ranging strategy session at the David A. Clarke School of Law on Connecticut Avenue. The purpose of this gathering will be to prepare progressive legislative and electoral strategies for the 2006 midterm elections. That Monday the 26th, activists will be walking up and down the halls of the House of Representatives to lobby congresspeople to demand a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

That is for September. This very weekend will see another gathering in Dallas, Texas. The Veterans for Peace are holding their national convention from the 4th through the 7th, and will be celebrating their 20th year as an organization of military veterans committed to ending war, and specifically to ending the occupation of Iraq. Among those who will be speaking in Dallas will be Dahr Jamail, the courageous journalist who spent months in the most dangerous places in Iraq so he could tell the world what is really happening there. Michael Hoffman, a lance corporal in the Marines who participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and returned to form Iraq Veterans Against the War, will also be speaking. Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq, will be speaking as a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. Those who would defend Mr. Bush and his deranged war policies are fond of labeling dissenters as unpatriotic, un-American cowards. In Dallas this weekend, there will be a journalist who risked his life over and over to report the truth of Iraq from within. There will be a Marine who fought in Iraq and returned to organize against the war. There will be a mother whose sacrifice and sorrow is beyond description. There will be hundreds of veterans who have served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere, who stand now for peace and the end of the occupation.

It has been a hot summer so far, and this feast of death continues in Iraq with no end in sight. The Veterans for Peace, the Gold Star mothers, the Iraq veterans, the journalists who have seen the reality of Iraq, and the hundreds of thousands coming to Washington in September appear to have every intention of making this summer hotter still.
~

An Odyssey Untouched

In the beginning was the truth transcending
Alpha and Omega--too dazzling to catch
the human eye.--too patient in its vigil
through the trillion years of night. And
there were gods aborning, fanciful creations
of the creatures from the sea,
who learned to breathe and watch
the warfare in the sky and finally to write
about the wonder of it.
.
Then there was El, Baal, and Elohim,
Astarte, Gaia, Artemis
and hundreds more
upon their heavenly thrones
who played among the dust and lust
of Earth, and made the Nephilim
to rise from bones, and blood, and art.

So humankind cherished their gods
and goddesses, but at a decent length...
it would not do to genuflect too much,
to bare too much of angst
before the peerage bar, to tremble
as one more is turned away
short of the mercy seat-though justice
cries somewhere, and that lament
is strained.

And there were some who looked beyond Olympus
to the trees, the starry trails,
the ether of another time,
the silent void that speaks of worlds unseen--
and some are watching still.
(Some look back at them as quanta flash
across the ether, forth and back again!)

There are no heroes in this self-effacing song.
No dragons slain, no perfidy one may lament--
A boy in wornout coveralls may see the glory
his allowance could not buy...but then, alas, forget.

He sees his counterparts and wonders.
Do they wonder too?
Do they look back before their birth,
ahead beyond the tomb?
Do his feet retrace the prints of wonderers
who walked the timeline, knew they did not walk
as prisoners alone,
both breathing and creating history?

The boy sweeps up those sixty-seven years,
departs the stage
and violates his youth with wisdom
no one wanted, a breath of history
that no one understood, and few regret.

Souls have their day upon each earth home.
Some reach out when interfering eyes have closed,
creating mystic openings they never knew were there.
Others feed on prayer...alone.

Then It is All Souls Day
and time is but an artifice
that lets the work be done;
it is the enemy of little boys in coveralls--
of high school graduates like you.
Remember?
You seized the little summer there
before the car was loaded for the trip
to academia...the precious time
for meadow basking underneath the clouds,
the time to entertain regret
for words you did not speak
to that shy pretty girl who smiled at you
the day her life crossed yours.

You were the one who wondered.
You were the one to store up lifetimes.
You were the one to cast out gods,
creating new ones, fallible
but somehow more enlightened,
more accessible when awe, not fear
is the transcendant path.

It is a day for souls to gather.
It is a day for songs, and weeping,
looking back and forth along the timeline,
unashamed to introspect.
It is a day to know salvation never was
an instrument of God, but of ourselves.
It is the heaven only we create.
~

Just for fun

Unique

Were I inclined to be
a double personality,
I might impart to such a phantom twin
the power to create within
a prototype of his own self,
and then there would be three
or none at all,
if you may follow me.

Such magic maunderings
do have their way of teaching
that the quality to be unique
that may be present in the mind
quite possibly defeats itself
by replicating, don't you see?

...and finally, perhaps to sigh,
to draw it all within
and disappear.
~

Another Road Less Traveled

They are nothing
if not taciturn--these spirit travelers.
They do not shock, or ridicule,
for they are single-minded in their quest
for timeless realms where magic dragons play
and roar for joy that cannot be contained
unless they are ignored for brighter flames
that drown the seas around their mystic shore.

They are not much
for words or diadems of thought to sway
the psyche, win the day, or call to arms
a soldier, surfeited with war or from
a restive peace. Theirs is the steady breath
to leave one breathless, voiceless, more removed
from what a dawning day reveals than they
had ever been before, and more in tune
with universal song,

although they do not sing,
for their metier is listening. and that
is quite unspeakable--they do invite
us yet, to take their hand and come along.
The journey is not wearying , and rest
awaits the patient ones. Vacation at
the cosmic level is the prize received
unending and forever new,
~

Challenge me!

I am an independent thinker. While I am no better educated, nor more sophisticated or knowledgeable than the average person who has been to college, I do have very unorthodox opinions about God, society and politics. It is highly unlikely that anyone who comes to this blog to read, will find all of those opinions compatible with kira own.

This being the case, why don't you raise an issue or two? When you disagree with me, tell me why...or at least ask me why I take that position. Tell me about yours, and why you take it. Invite me to argue with you. (I promise to be polite and respectful). This is the only way I know of that each of us may grow, may learn, and may ultimately be better informed. If we go about as little islands that no one else may visit, how do we impact the world...how do we express what we believe. How do we encourage thinking? As for me, I hunger for this. Is it not worthwhile? May we not grow together, and perhaps ultimately influence someone else as well?

You may respond to the blog directly, or contact me by email...read down to learn how. Will you come out of the closet? And, no, there is no implication to the question. :-)

Further thoughts on meditation

Openness, it seems to me, is the primary ingredient in producing a satisfactory meditation. Obviously success, positive benefits, or at least gratification are the goals of any worthwhile activity. However, in meditation, one may not concentrate on those goals in the actual process. If ke places kiraself in a postion of assertion, there is no room for the benefit to "get in." Only a faithful confidence that one is doing the right thing, has any real hope of producing satisfaction. This seems to be true, whether the inner journey is truly into the self, or an opening to some sort of divine intervention. Obviously one must be committed to the concept of meditation as something desirable, but as soon as one starts looking for revelation, or immediate fulfillment, the opportunity is lost. When I can tell myself (and then forget the effort of telling) that a deeper immersion into the realm of the spirit (however I may define that) is in itself worthwhile, that is when I become open to the often amazing experience of transcendance. It doesn't seem to happen to the same degree every time, but I seldom emerg from my period of meditation without some very positive impressions of the experience. For the novice meditator, it is worth "hanging in there." Meditation has become my way of praying. It is not a time for self-examination, valuable as that may be. It is a time for wonder and awe...the numinous in action.

My religious faith--as of 7/10/2005 (not a poem)

Universal Mind is my God, and I am part of it. If dualism is wrong
(and every indication of it points to that.....friend vs enemy, good
vs evil, God vs Devil, white vs black, right vs left, truth vs
deception, we vs they, ours vs theirs, public vs private, sin vs
purity, triumph vs surrendur, moral vs profligate, loyalty vs
betrayal, justice vs license, procreation vs lust, power vs
appeasement) and God is not a being (if he is, biblical
descriptions of "him" make him a lousy one)...then Unity is the
order of the universe (anything else is incomplete) and UM both
surrounds and is inside all that is. It is love, and nothing else. It
is what captures me and captivates me. I do not pray to it,
although I do express my gratitude for the state of order it rules.
How that state of order was created, if it ever was, is beyond my
understanding, or ability to define. For me to try to approach such a concept would bring us right back to dualism again. It is I,
and I, in a state of incompletion) am it. It is the only God I have.
Yes, call it the spirit of God if you wish, and in that sense,
Genesis was correct. Spirit--Universal Mind--moves over the
face of the waters. I feel it groaning...inside me.

Quizas

Across the universe a quantum flashed
"Hello" to resonate a billion, no
a billion trillion miles behind the plane
on which I stood. I missed it, but the one
apart did not, and dialogue began,
perhaps a son of man saw flames leap out
a billion ages hence. Perhaps the spark
that eyes could never see ignited war,
or peace, or some outrageous fantasy
within the newborn mind of God.

Perhaps the quanta still flash forth and back
in that same frail, persistent prototype
of love.

Perhaps we miss it still.
~

Prologue to Eternity

I draw into the artificial womb
and travel from the day upon my breath
until dimension fades, a silent shift
occurs, and there is no more self to pad
the absolute, yet from the depth emerg
the wonders of an ambience that I
shall only know in full when breath is gone
and I slough off this cumbrous body for
a flight of some flirtacious fantasy
which I perceive is hovering, perhaps
in readiness beyond the mist.

Until that time I long to tell you more,
but cannot, but to say that even this
is more than words or wonder will allow--
no god I ever met would try to speak
of it, nor lover of the truth reveal
that which I daily see. and know, and feel.

What tumult lies within the thought that you,
the reader, may elect to come along
one golden day--or let it slip away!
~

At her interment

I know.
I know that love is old
and that the young
can slough it off as merely
hormonal--cosmetic preparation
for maturity, but they do it
at some peril as a life retreats
behind some shadow it contrived
for self-protection--
some reality it built to stand
against a deeper longing--
teaching it to whisper at them,
"Not a chance!"

Yet there is older wisdom,
pulling at the years and entering
its wiser plea to "Stop!
Go back before it is too late."

And each will hear,
and most will turn away
and gather up the years
until the day fades
like an aging coverlet.
And then the stone is set
until it too returns to dust,
and even love forgets.
~

Her hundreth birthday party

It was quiet in the meeting room
just down the hall, as I came in.
I knew that she would be, as well.

And there she was, propped in her wheel chair,
body in pink jumpsuit, cocked
far to the side, not quite asleep.

For her, there was no false facade.
One saw, and got a mumbling ancienne
and no apologies.

Then suddenly it was time
for people, punch, and platitudes,
kids and candy mints and cake.

The honored guest forsaken,
just as if she were not there,
reached out...I saw her once,

accepting then one small remembrance,
but too late, the speaker
had already turned away

and I, but for the press of day,
had need to cry; they missed it,
souls who turned hello into goodbye.

The small ones never really knew you, mom,
and that's ok; your spirit longs
to break away. The authors

of the books you knew, will soon
make room for Elna in their dusty rooms
along a corridor in paradise

where dusty reticence is blown away
by one enchanted newborn breath
of joy.
~

Upon this Rock

Join with me now in the creation of a faith;
may yours become the portrait
of the father of a God.
Give us the words
that we may spread the glory 'round.

Faith is the flight, we're told,
to know that which cannot be grasped
....that which is not,
in fact, it is beyond
no thing at all.

What it becomes, is footsteps of the mind
directed well past any time we know
or any universe;
we may elect when we may go,
but never when we may return.

But isn't that the nicest thing
about a faith?--
that there are no demands...no limits...
nothing to define.

And so on second thought,
you need no words at all.
~

Bottles in the Sea

Hundreds

at the bottom in a finite reading
of forever, never rising,
washed onto an island shore,
caught in mangrove roots somewhere,
or floating still upon the wavelets.

Those well-sealed imprint
a consciousness alive
that breathes its shred of wisdom
on the window of the years,

and wait.
~

Epilogue

There are too many miracles invading the earth--
too many old ones, given short shrift,
gratuitous, and faded yellow.
I'd like to make a moratorium on time,
then stoop to look at them,
allow my fingers simpler luxuries
before they race away.
I see a page of jerks and starts,
forgotten hiccups, little coffins closed
and never locked. awaiting my return.
Something knew.

Now when the end arrives, I too
will think again of my own plodding
sentences that covered up the gaps.
While hoping it was not, I knew the pretense.
There was too much to do.

It seems to be a good thing
that lamentations can be second-hand.
To make a literary bent a slave
to such convenience it could trick a cardinal.
Or me.

Might it then be
for such nefarious purpose
that good prophet Jeremy lives on?
~

Iconoclast

We do not die; we live.
To call it "after life" is a mistake.
Consciousness is life, life is love,
and love is reaching.
It cannot stop, only be forgotten
after a new birth when the mother planet
conspires with ego.
Then it is that a man
becomes born again...
or wallows in the womb.
~

Caesura

I thought the night came in like fog,
like quanta, in degree,
the cosmic umbra of a consciousness.
But falling was the better choice,
a trembling twilight curtain,
then the blanket of the day
that threw itself at that last peace
and set the scene where all the particles
of dust were past remembering;
the skydome opened,
the latent breath a mystery.

Here was a portrait sketched in blackness
from beyond the now...
the unknown second uncreated,
time in its arrest.
And yet to come?
~

Meditation on solitude

The light along the bay burned through the night
as if to emphasize the dark, not tame
it, throw the hours upon slow fire and show
that one keeps watch, and may not sleep, as if
there hovered over him a stillness he
could not profane.

From each high moment's passing ecstasy
a stubborn and exasperating love
lurked underneath, fed by a god, perhaps.
There was a wrenching, nagging urge to change,
to weep for those who can no longer weep
and offer them the tears. He knew

that every soul who finds himself alone
upon the stage when pomp and circumstance
is over, then might contemplate the bag
of lenses that he took from all the years
before, and testing one.......his very own,
would look for some far palace on the hill.

Alas

The child of every age is prisoner
between soft barricades of stubborn self.
No wonder death is the escape of choice,
for everyone makes change of circumstance
but when the night arrives the walls still hold,
the shackles are secure and freedom is
a strange and distant song.

He would not sing to dawn, unthinkable.
For set apart, his journey was within,
the walls his covering, and their soft flesh
his eminent domain. And all we need
to see is just the light reflecting there
upon the water, through the endless night.
~

Pet Peeves

OK, everybody, it's time to air our frustrations. Perhaps all of us can gain some insight by hearing about how others view certain things.

My own concerns include frustration with careless language usage. Nearly every mature person these days has at least been through high school. Why is it, then, that we have difficulty exressing ourselves beyond the fourth grade level? There should really be no confusion about the difference between "lie" and "lay"--among "their," "there," and "they're," between "jibe" and "jive," between "its" and "it's," between "to" and "too", and believe it or not, between "knew" and "new!" There are a number of other careless expressions as well. Generations ago we let the "setting sun" slip by to replace "sitting" and that is not recoverable, but most common errors are today. One has only to read essays written by academia to be aware that good usage is still respected by those who care. Of course there have been serious proposals to make english a phonetic language, and they make sense with respect to an example or two, but carrying such a trend to its logical conclusion would produce an almost unreadable result for most of us.

So that is just one of my own "pet peeves." Your reactions would be interesting, as would the sharing of your own concerns, and of course they do not have to be limited to language usage. Mores, custom, too-casual attitudes about work, corporate and governmental power, distortions to influence thinking, and much more, are all fair game. What do you think?

A bit of arrogance

Today I am assuming leadership (realizing that my chances are next to nil) in a cause that I have long endorsed. In these times of "political correctness" one of the accommodations that is definitely catching on, is inclusive language. English needs a neutral pronoun, desperately..."he" is no longer an acceptable substitute for "s/he", "he or she", "it" or "their" when a trans-gendered reference in pronoun form is needed. And, it borders on the ridiculous, when referring to a deity.Accordingly, whenever a gender-free pronoun is needed, I am suggesting "ke" (pronounced KAY) for the pronoun in nominative case, and "kira" (pronounced KEE-ruh) for the objective and possessive cases "him, her, his and hers" and pledge myself to use them henceforth whenever indicated, until someone suggests a better alternative. Of course, the traditional forms would be retained in the majority of cases where they suffice--males would still be "he" and females still "she." Remembering the "rule" is simple: When a non-gendered pronoun is desired, use "ke" instead of "he" and "kira" in place of "him" or "his." Thus for inclusive non-sexism, and theological use , as an example, I present my latest poem:
Divine Paradox

The greatest glory is the silent God
in kira wisdom meeting prayers without
a single answer, yet in kira grace
imparting breath to every soul in quest
of mystery.

Ke who would disagree might well recall,
ke cannot teach the one who knows it all.
There is no spark, no fire in what is done
to speed a victory already won.
A cosmic invitation to the dance
is life, a cosmic "yes" a fatal trance
imposed for every lethargy to come.
~

posted by Dean at 4:59 PM

Comments:
LolaMaria said...
First question: ~ what is the root of your new non-gender pronoun... is it Latin?second, ~ Did you know that there are genderless pronouns now being used?Quote:Depending on how one counts, there are between three and five groups using GNP's (gender neutral pronouns) actively on the Net. The two most popular seem to be "sie, hir, hir, hirs, hirself", (especially "hir"), and "zie, zir, zir, zirs, zirself". The latter apparently came into being after a German-speaking netizen objected to "sie" and "Sie", which in many contexts means "she" in German. Third and fourth, differing only in the first and maybe last word, are "e or ey, em, eir, eirs, eirself or emself". Fifth, some people use "per", from "person", which i assume has the set "per, per, pers, pers, persself", although i've never seen it developed that far. I've not actually seen this in use on the net, but i've seen people on the net who claimed to use it all the time in their own lives.For an excellent discussion of gender-neutral pronouns, see John Williams's site at GNP. Here's the link:http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/John's page is #1 of about 2,400 in its class, on Google searches. "Words and Women" by Casey Miller and Kate Smith is a great book about the genderless pronoun.
12:52 PM
Dean said...
To answer, the "root" is the process of elimination, not a particular other language. Contrary to most of the suggestions you refer me to, mine are simple, include the deity (whoever ke may be), use only two substitutes, and should be easy to remember. With respect to the discussion linked here, I'll put my own suggestions up as a better solution.
4:52 PM

My Heresy

I like my God much better than the one
who made his home up in the stratosphere
and favored us with visits now and then,
harrumphing down below about the way
that we behave, and tantalizing us
with sticks and carrots grown especially
for those who said the secret word or not,
by having properly proclaimed one man
a king: all this, of course. was indirect.
The voice of supernature wasn't heard;
the being had a handicap as beings will,
and yet the silence was as heaven-sent.
For I, the fallen one, would live because
the son would die. That was the sense of it.

But making sense is for the sensible,
and arms and legs and progeny fall short
of that pure consciousness which stubbornly
insists on such intangibles as wind
and breath and spirit time to mark
its age, its truth, and its enlightenment.

It is in such an ocean that I swim;
It is in such transcendant holiness
that I perceive a new enlightenment
to scale the mountaintops, to part the mist,
and finally to show the face of God.
~

Home

It was more than sentiment, more than familiar,
more than that persistent love
impossibly respiring in the corners
when the other occupants left me alone
one weekend.
It was the empty chair, left out of place,
uncaring whether its last user might return,
identity secure in its distinctive history--
sensed more than known.

Now I marvel at the ease
of turning back the years,
and in the picture of a memory
to see not words or faces,
merely furniture, a still in time,
a mental photograph,
poised to take again its function
hours or centuries ahead, no matter;
I, caught standing there
inside the silent room,
gave welcome to the flooded chest
that comes from that outrageous mix
of absolute contentment
and the pain of loneliness.

The mind is fond of this obsessive gazing,
tracing the indelible perspective
of a moment that would never count
as even an event,
never take its place in stories
one would share--
and yet make wonderment a part
of those few dust-encrusted seconds
long ago
when only pathos was perfection...

It was then I knew
for once I did not dare
to take a single step away.
I've not been home again.
~

The Courage to Be

This little two-stanza ditty may not be the best poem I have ever written, but I consider it the most important. Until a few days ago, I never realized how much of ourselves we bring to all experience, and how essential to growth is the inward journey.

The Courage to Be

"Will I be free?" he asked,
and Wisdom answered,
"No, for when you look within
you are both prisoner and prison.
See? Your sentence is eternal.

"There, inside of you
is all of humankind
and all of God
and all that you will ever know.
Without is never that domain
which you may rule or enter.
You do well to rest in awe, for
in your incompleteness
you are whole."
~

nice tribute to FDR here

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer
_041805X.shtml

(paste both lines together)

Thoughts from reading

I have been intrigued of late, probably stimulated by a recent book, about this business of how we see things...that each of us is prisoner of the unique lens within us, and how much that explains different religions, different social views, and even different preoccupations. We send out probes to examine questions that we think are important, and these probes do influence us, but they never create us. No one will ever see things in the exact same light. Evolutionarily speaking, we may be headed to that goal, but I think even in the spirit world, there remains a diversity of lenses. Each of us, no matter how much we may have in common with another, has his or her own "worldview." It is why we have an opportunity to learn from anyone--why no one is beneath us, or deserving of our contempt. It is also why we truly are unable to judge another person, particularly for that person's opinions....She or he simply is at that point in life, and if one ultimately changes because of something you or I have said, we may be sure that other factors were involved. Prisoners we are, and also locked gatekeepers to those outside. We may choose to let in their probes, but they will not gain entrance, and cannot. Therein lies the paradox. We are all one--we are made of the same stuff. Our quarks flash on and off with those of everyone else. Yet we are armored islands.

I want to place a sign on my beach: "Everyone welcome." Alas, they cannot come.

There is, however, hope...hope that some nice amphibious boats will keep trying, while I stand on shore encouraging them. There is hope that the prison walls may be breached someday, if they are attacked from both inside and out. How is that possible? One way alone may sweep them down. One way alone may someday establish a beachhead.
And, that is love.

What do you think?

All in a mortal's work

God factories abound upon the mountains
and the plans are written in the holy books
but lack consistency from page to page...
reason enough to keep the cubicles apart,
unwired; the laborers are always free
to improvise.

So there are gods for sale.
Choose yours.
Some are free of charge
but then the prototypes are never up to date.
Others willingly accept a sacrifice or two
but do expire if not renewed.

There, I just made mine again,
my lump of clay as yet unfired.
Do you like Her?... Yes?
It is a pity that I cannot say the same
for yours.
~

Full circle

The day came bumbling along
when he found time
just to look across at Dad
and wonder if he noticed--
if he'd be there down the line,
when it was time
that he become a dad to wonder
at such sure magnificence,
that there would be another soul
t o pause...and look at him.

Twice in one generation,
thunder rumbling to be heard...
one kind of love
to be extinguished by the sun.
Unspoken.
Wondrous.
~

Meanderings and ruminations

I began to think of a state of mind, and wonder if it is a small chunk of universal mind, or is it all my own. Does it choose my dreams, or leave that to the unconscious? I'm thinking this is what time travel is all about, and before one returns to his home reality, has he indeed left his body? Has he crossed dimensions? What is the stimulus for separating realities? Is there a parallel between this, and what he can do when he leaves his physical lifetime, and becomes spirit alone? Here are my thoughts breeding questions...breeding a lesson in patience. The answers will come, and along with them, more questions. It makes one contemplate his death with the stirrings of appetite.

Another tongue

I want to share with you, the fact that the following poem is in response to a contest...to write on the subject of poetry! Here was my entry:

Another tongue

If passion speaks beyond self-centered will,
if stones may cry aloud because a man
keeps silence, or if whispers wash the mind
as storms in springtime will refresh the earth,
then it is poetry that feeds our hearts.

At birth it is a soft caress that would
protect and nourish thought in gentleness,
to draw from deep within, a song that prose
could not express, a sigh devoid of art
that art alone may sing, the singer but
an instrument, and that of conscious awe.

All this, and still demanding to be heard,
for if it were not so, we would not know
or speak of poets; wars might then be just
regretted or dismissed as lost for lack
of strategy; arms would be taken up
for power alone and men would then survive
in shallow grief, insouciant within,
a tired state of lethargy, where no one
ever cares.

The powers of heavenly places may be thanked,
for muses dwell upon Olympus, not
within the hell of circumstance or haste
or juvenile romance--for there
is power indeed when insight travels where
the lofty giants led and left upon
their pages majesty, and bled, and wept,
and gave us beauty that device alone
could try to emulate, but merely fade
and vanish from the mind.

Gossamer breastplate

There are the walls of flesh that hold us fast
upon this devil's island of an earth,
deceptive paradise of blue and green
that calls on birth to bond us, death to let
us go.

We are the restless spirits , ponderous
in bone and sinew, all but frozen in
a time continuum where only dreams
and stillness open windows to the light.
It is the soul's dark night that keeps us bound
when all the whirling universe holds court
outside, and we who touch the blinking quarks
but may not pass between them, are but half
angelic, waiting, wondering...

Perhaps there is a vesture that the mind
and not the eyes, may see and might there be
a trumpet to awake us after all,
a wonderhorn indeed, to sing of a
reality that may escape the dreams,
the torturous parade of lifetimes we
require to probe the mind of God?
~

Incarnate Dreams

There was a dome spread overhead
in that first lifetime, holding back
the waters and the gods;
perhaps there was a place beneath it
for the lesser thoughts that never grew,
but drifted easily away.

There was a summer when the mariners,
adrift upon the still Sargasso sea,
thought of the nearly-dead,
and though enlightened,
waited for the moment when
another dome, less tangible,
might, crashing down,
be shattered into evanescent pieces,
to their requisitioned end.

There was a pleasure dome,
defined by men at play,
in ancient time, and then anew
where thoughts were cast away.

There was a dome upon a hill
where men had once looked up,
spoken their noblest dreams aloud
...and everything was still.
~

A Song to the Unsung

These are the ones who dare,
these gloved old men with plastic bags
who roam the lanes on foot
while I drive by,
for they are more aware
of the adorning, aleatoric splendor
of the flashing crinkled cans,
the cups and wrappings
scorning those who prized them
for the moment, flying
to their rest, behind.

But now the countryside stripped bare
in naked challenge to the passers by
invites its heroes, still unsure
who they may be,the revellers who flee
before their minds take rest
upon their artifice, or those
who prize the green and see the art
of the pristine.
~

My Doppelganger

I've seen him only once
and then but feet away
outside the streetcar window;
whether he saw me,
or fled my sight deliberately
I cannot say, however

I still sense him near,
and might it be
that I shall meet him only
on the day I die--
some kind of irony in store?
Yet how I wish
there might be more,

that I might probe his psyche
as he brushes mine.
And does he pine
for yet another glimpse of me
confirming that October day
some fifty years ago
when I was borne away?
~

Is this the America we want?

http://www.bushflash.com/14.html

A challenge

to English teachers, poets, and linguists:

The language is in great need of a genderless, neutral pronoun. Poets must always compromise when referring to the deity, or when identifying anyone in the third person, and not wishing to confine that identification to gender. It is a limitation for which the time has come to be resolved.

The advent of the internet is that opportunity. Through lists, academicians from everywhere may confer together, make suggestions, have them analyzed, and eventually reach a concensus. What a boon to writers and thinkers that would be! I believe that this impediment to consistency and precision can easily be overcome without rancor, and virtually without prejudice. Yes, I have a few suggestions of my own, if anyone cares, but this is not the time to get into that. Ladies and gentlemen, heroines and heros. distinguished minds everywhere, may we begin? It is in our power to get this done. If there are obstacles, they are insignificant. Let us be consumed with the opportunity, not the obstacles. We can do it. Why wait? What better time?

Dialogue with a ghost

To the unseen and unknown presence that I made
I pour out all the doubt, the hopeless pemutations
of my thought, the dark intangibles, ideas strong enough
to tie the hours together and make of them pretenders
to a faded throne...a magisterium that everyone ignores.

My will is for some flesh upon these spirit bones,
an argument out loud, a sounding board
would near suffice, and I could carry you along
within a small attractive case, and bring you out
when no one else would care to pay attention.

Name your price!
And I will pay it joyfully.
Insulting, you may be; I do not need to win,
but only hammer at a patient ear
the inspiration of a simian mind
on impulse leaping out before remembering
the bars...and leaping...leaping.

Howl at me! I am your god.
How dare you fade
like those more proper shades
who first conspire with fame
before they take their places
in the heroes' books. and dignified
by fear. Speak now, or you shall have
no name at all.

I must conclude
that gods don't have much fun
with their creations.
Mine is such a disappointment.
Were he real, then all my thoughts
themselves might be more shy
and less inclined to play,
or fantasize,
or fight for me alone,

but merely drone inside my head
like stubborn bees
until the frosts descend
and by the winter fire
begin again.
~

Mind over Matter

His body sat there, in its chair, unmoved,
but for the whims of those who care an hour
or so, until the time clock sets them free,
yet he has left them long ago, his stare
misleading lesser travelers who stand
in elevators and in trains and are
quite unaware of their imprisonment
in other chairs less mobile, but much more
confining to the mind.

It is a question, truly, who may claim
to pity whom, and where the markers are
along the way. of when the watchers are
the watched, of how ideas play upon
the screens before or just behind their eyes.

And do we patronize a liberty
we may not know? Are there true, wondrous lands
to which the tiny particles within
alone may go? The Steven Hawkings of
the universe depart at will aboard
these spirit ships, invisible in port,
and then upon returning will report
the finding of an India that we
had never seen, or never ever dreamed
~

Corcovado

The plane approaching Rio sights
The God-man on the mountain
in the sunlight-- that cold tremor
just between the shoulders strikes;
we see the arms borne up by love
and reaching to the traveler,
the city, and the earth.

Then from below, the pilgrims mount
the heights to see the features
of the Cristo...first, the railway,
then the stairs climb higher
in the quest--
anticipation, breath and blood
now pounding in their hearts--
there comes the turning at the parapet
to watch the mists brush by his face,
gauze curtains breaking to reveal
that intermittent, scowling
countenance of stone,
once emerging in austerity
beneath the mallet, now
beyond the shadow of Elijah's peak
is seen again, and lost,
else one would need to look away--
before this stern,and re- transfigured God.

The city plays beneath his watch
just as the drama of
an immanent, transcendent deity
erupts in silent declamation, then to part
in a reprise of his ascension
in the cloud.
~