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.
~