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.
~

The Celery Fields

Madre de Dios! Morning already?
The mud, still damp upon my pantalones--
how can I face another day?
My niña is so thin.
Two little oranges are not enough for her,
before she rides the bus to the escuela.
I must work harder, still--
hacer algunos dollars more
hacer su vida para el mejor,
si puedo.

I remember
when like my niña, I was young..
We did not work so hard,
y sobre las alturas
every breeze was cool...
not like this steaming
California campo
by the sea.

I remember, as we worked,
how we were singing,
'De la sierra morena, Cieli...'
Now there is no heart, no time to sing.
El jefe blanco will be angry
if I make him late.

The sun is high upon this field.
My back hurts me so much
from bending. Ay!
En muchas horas I can sleep again
and stop remembering.
Jesús amado, en mi sueño
solamente, take me home
............................................
to my brown mountain.
~

Voices

Cautious spirits test the waters of my world
and call to me....then go away.
Perhaps they are perfecting inter-mind
devices, just like psychic Edisons,
Marconi's revenant in breakthrough just
for me, or else perhaps
celestial wallflowers, much too diffident
to follow up my name with headlines
from beyond the grave.

Am I their snuffling guinea pig?---
their crude receptor in this mass of flesh
that yearns for finely-tuned antennae
(please God, invisible,)
and color pictures if I may,
upon my mental screen?
No, I shall stay the course,
though I know not the hazards of its path,
the travelers,or the design,
nor may I fine
their metaphysical intent.

The reader knows, I speak with some regret,
for there are those who will decide that I
bear watching, lest my touch upon their world
begin to fade too much, that I be too
entranced of waves they cannot, will not see.
Though I may fear the world
beyond white doors, I still invite
my curtained friends to part the night
with energy no instrument
that science met may sense just yet,
I iterate...just yet
~