Jesus Loves Wine

2011-12-07T17:18:00.000-08:00

Thank you for reading. My new and active poetry site is 'Beloved Within.' LINK

Un-Meditate

2011-12-01T11:28:00.001-08:00

Close your eyes and repose in the space of not meditating.

The deepest samadhi is simply to watch.

Your gaze is bigger than anything you gaze upon; this is absolution and remission of sins.

So watchfully silent you see not only the mind happening inside you, but the world happening inside you.

Hug the madness of all thought, every simultaneous opposite mind-spark partnered with its darkness, every doubt fear worry rage craving tasted as unlabeled electricity.

Float amidst entangled nots of Yes No never untied exquisitely twist-twirling fractal-lusciously free in an effervescent mirage of fragrant silences.

Unsolve and triumphantly abandon all dilemmas in the space where those countless Yes's rest on this single irreproachable No.

These wave-particle neuron-thought dichotomies, misfired as little sparks of me, dissolve when merely let-allow-go with laughter.

Past-future anxiety bombs bursting in aerial ideas the infinitesimal orgasms of toxic neuro-peptides, fire-flushed, expanding this embodied God to full-statured cruciform paradox, your Christ.

Clustered galaxies at play in a womb of stars, your Body.

Ten trillion sub-nuclear phosphorescent choices unchosen shouting So what! So what!, each a sparkling path of return to sunrise on a choiceless ocean of possibility, your Mind.

The gaping emptiness of perpetual approach, the asymptote of the probable not realized, dead upon arrival, your I.

Arrival is collapse, a singularity that starts all over again.

Perfection is a mistake. It doesn't matter what you choose.

Even your darkest pain is made of light.

What bubbles out of sea-foam, ineluctable electron-flux, is none of your business, Venus or not.

So what if one void-quivering neutrino popping Yes from No becomes a world? The future is none of your business.

In the beginning, before that, not yet, your busy-ness? It doesn't matter what you choose. Just bubble up and do.

Probability of songs without a singer. First and last chants of chaos. Alphomega muse of random beauty. One sound.

Tinturnnabulations of silence turn Words worthless under Planck's constant seafoam, threshold of God's zeroing mouth, where bubbles of babble bespeak the vacuum in recurrent murmurs of mantric chaos...

Ghost electrons in the void, a virtual world in-whirled, churning chants to illusory threads of liquid logic, congealing thought, dense now, hardened to belief, massed, outspoken in stone cathedrals...

O Random Goddess, dissolve me into what I am. Back to mereness of so-ham, so-what, a flower bowing loamward to its om-seed. No thought.

Abandon languid leaves of Summer to Autumnal hushes, breathing rumors of mist and dance: let Fall, let sink, relinquish green opposites, and grace me down.

Whitely rooted in night, enwombed and mother-sung by Winter's all-unknowing, energy of gentleness suck I, milk from your umbilical Am.

In the beginning. no matter but magic, incantatory wicca-woven God-spell, atoms sent whirling by Word. Who sings? It doesn't mother matter, does it now?

World weaver, weave me. We spell each other in perpetual beginnings.

Music from the matrix of zeros. Random chants. Just bubble improbability up and do.

What doesn't matter. Mother will still love you.

Selah.

Whirling Stillness

2011-11-18T00:46:00.000-08:00

I studied all the world's scriptures
and made a list of banned foods.
I put them in a gourmet bisque
and served it by candlelight.
My friends and I broke all the taboos
we could find that night.
Surely the world is a dream
but you don’t have to sleep.
The Lord of Parties invites you:
There's no cover charge at his dance.
When the banquet's almost over,
he’ll turn your water into hard stuff.
And when you waltz home at sunrise
in whirling stillness like a rose,
you won't be able to read a single stop sign.
Jesus loves wine, not grape juice!

Turn

2011-11-15T23:05:00.001-08:00

There are realms of pure light to be seen in your heart.
Don't be netted by them, you are not a fly!
You are the one who spins
such brilliant threads of death and birth,
sparkling with love's dewy saliva.
What did you think the world was made of,
some other radiance, some other hunger?
Now turn, seer, and see
the dark spinner.

How to Write Om

2011-11-14T05:32:00.001-08:00

In fire write ah, oh in water, mm in air,
bindu in the vacuum, a dimensionless dot.
Every atom of your body is a bindu like that,
whirling out of ceaseless disappearance.
How weightlessly your flesh and spirit meet
like lovers in this breath, each poured
into the other, ever so briefly dissolved
in midnight, emerging bewildered,
entangled in moonbeams: so savor
eternity again and again, one moment
at a time.

November

2011-11-09T22:33:00.001-08:00

True lovers abandon this word "love."
It is no substitute for a thud of plums
dropping in the mist at dawn,
cocoons where leaves were,
invisible pulse in furrows of sky
as the dauntless gander beats Southward,
berries swelling with moonlight,
loon mourning, pine breeze, fallow sweetness
of the naked Winter garden, grace
of whole afternoons without speech:
only the word of what things are.

Well

2011-11-07T10:30:00.001-08:00

The future is a memory, the past a premonition,
the present an infinitesimal mirage
of zeros within zeros, imploding
toward some dark pointful of emptiness
at the bottom of a well where you have shouted
"Love!" and the echo is this world.

Stumble

2011-11-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

Blessed are you when you stumble
into the next step
of your perfect
dance.
Blessed are you when you trip
and fall into your planting.
Like an apple tree who gives
its fruit to worms
and scatters a thousand seeds
but one only
grows,
be ruthlessly forgiving.
God does not apologize for her mistakes.
Why should you?

Photo: Persephone in her late Autumn colors, my garden.

Skill

2011-11-05T11:53:00.001-07:00

You think the Goddess is not there.
That is because she is here.
Even under dark clouds
you can feel the moon
like a pearl in your forehead,
a chime in your silence.
You also have this moonlight skill,
the quality of being here in the dark.
This is why your friends cherish you.

This Is What We Get

2011-11-04T20:32:00.001-07:00

I think maybe
we need
to forgive each other
for being
human.
Once the world begins
it just gets
curiouser.
God has no idea
what will happen.
This is what we get
for drinking so much
freedom.
Would you rather
drink from electric wires,
cathode in a thermionic
vacuum?
Old oaken barrels
smell sweeter.
Let us drink wine.

A Cup

2011-11-04T20:32:00.000-07:00

There's a cup in your chest where breathing out
and breathing in pour together,
So'ham...
A cup filled with night, stars, clustered galaxies
and other kinds of glory,
So'ham...
Keep this cup empty, that it might be full.
Honor the golden alter the cup rests on
just beneath your heart,
So'ham...
Ten thousand times a day
you pass through this place without pausing
to drink, to taste who you are,
So'ham...
If a whisper could invite you
to the silence between thoughts,
that whisper would say everything.
So'ham.

Samhain Song (Pronounced 'Saw'hin')

2011-10-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

The veil between the worlds is thin,
Bright to dark the seasons turn,
Green Man's fire in the Jack'o Lantern,
Light above shining within.

Come dance in the circle of Samhain,
Buds of Beltane burnished in frost.
Honor the Old Ones, nothing is lost.
Whatever you offer is born again.

Surname

2011-10-30T17:48:00.001-07:00

The donkey brays, mistaking the sound
it makes for the voice of the donkey-driver.
This is how my body repeats its given name,
"I, I," without a drop of sweetness.
Some mantras are not really alive.
But there's another sound, plaintiff
deep down thunder of my surname,
"Am, Am," the name of my creator,
heart-whispered before I even breathe.
No need to repeat That. I am That.
Seeker, stop chanting all those names
that you receive from the world
and dance to inner music!

Sleeping With Animals

2011-10-30T17:30:00.001-07:00

My sleep is sacred, hallowed by the fur
of a golden poodle and at least two cats
who come and go all night.
We fall together through the dark element
of touch.
So Jesus must have trembled
in the cooling wetness of Mary,
just born.
My futon is a manger like that.
Sleep with me.
I invite two sheep and a donkey,
a pair of turtledoves and a well-behaved ox
to get under the covers, trailing odor
and straw from wherever they've been.
I do not disdain the flea,
but please, just one apiece.
I invite humans too, those of you
whose first mode of knowing is fur.
The wonder of touching runs under the pelt.
Allow forgotten creatures
to breathe up your spine.
Break the membranes that set us apart
as in a birth pang.
Let all the animals in, the old kingdom
of quivering silence.
_____

Painting, 'Amburgh and his Animals' by Sir Edwin Landseer, 1839. Isaac van Amburgh, an early American animal trainer, was the first person ever known to stick his head in a lion's mouth.

Gaze

2011-10-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

Your gaze is larger than anything it gazes on.
Gaze into your pain.
Gaze into the policeman.
Gaze at the giggling Chicano apple picker
who sent all his money home to Mexico
except a little to get drunk on Friday night.
Gaze at the soldier coming home from Iraq
angry and joyful and scared.
Gaze into the flameless eye of the Manhattan stock broker
hailing a cab and dreaming of a Carolina golf course.
Gaze into the homeless mother shouting at her child
among the dress racks at Goodwill.
Gaze at your blame.
Gaze at your kitten.
Gaze at the stars.
Gaze at the smallest creature, yourself.
Now gaze at the galaxies.
Gaze at your birth, your life, your death.
Are you not forgiven?
Are we not all forever forgiven?
Gaze until you become so silent
that the world is happening inside you.
Gaze until you are love's emptiness,
wider than whatever it contains, wider than God.
Here are my eyes. Take them.
Gaze and bless me.

One Thing

2011-10-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

When I no longer need to be right
and no longer need to be sure,
no longer need to perfect myself
and no longer need to be pure,
no longer need to be smarter than fools,
for knowing is not to be wise,
when I no longer need to ascend,
for to fall is as good as to rise,
when I no longer need to seek heaven
or search for a place beyond earth,
or tighten my belly, or armor my heart,
or wash off my afterbirth -
then I need to do nothing more
but one and only one thing,
to open my heart to your Radiance -
Then laugh, and cry and sing.

Garment

2011-10-19T07:24:00.001-07:00

The Earth admires the marrow in your bones.
The Wind is in love with your breath.
The Ocean longs for your tears.
The Sky seeks the hollows of your body,
dwelling completely in each atom.
Gazing into your eyes, the Sun remembers home.
Your designer made no copy
of this star-woven garment.
So let the whole creation slip into you
and dance.

Wind and Lehua

2011-10-11T22:33:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry. Forgive me.
I don't think in straight lines.
I think in soft explosions
like a rose, or red lehua blooming
on the slopes of Mauna,
sending feathered seeds into the wind.
Perhaps not even the wind knows.
Yet surely, somewhere
they will root in the good darkness
and live.

Secret Wanting

2011-10-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

Secretly, I want faith.

Secretly, I want to bow to the poor old god of my fathers, begging at my heart's door.

Secretly, I want to fill the bones of the ancient temple with my marrow.

Secretly, I want to hear the commandments as if whispered by a sweetheart in the darkness.

Secretly, to be silly as a wrinkled crone kindling her thousandth candle at the shrine of the Blessed Virgin.

Secretly, to kneel at my bedside with pressed palms, to abandon fine learning and pray to the twilight with the voice of a child.

Secretly, to perform the old round ceremonies, and empty myself the way suns and planets orbit their wombs of darkness.

Secretly, to circle my own heart, so that people feel a stillness in me.

I want to remember the rites of breathing, the sacraments of moonlight, the rosary of seasons.

I want to come back again and again like Spring, and tether my burro in the village of my ancestors.

However many mistakes I've made, I want my lover to treat me like Adam in the morning of the world.

I want to bow down to my barefoot lady, and press to her immaculate toes my fevered brain.

Secretly, I want to return to the village of my ancestors.

To return to a place I remember but have not known, and receive a gift of laughter, a gift of tears.

Spell

2011-10-08T20:16:00.000-07:00

Lovers of God can't spell.
God's name wanders through every sound
from Alpha to Omega, from Ah to Hum,
containing all vowels and consonants
in the music of our mistakes -
the sound of frogs rehearsing for dawn,
the sound of chrysanthemum buds
gurgling rain into their seed bellies,
the sound of lovers turning over in the dark,
making love before they wake,
and this sound - listen! - the blood
tumbling down from a mountain of silence
through the whispering forest of memory
into the sparkling pool of your heart.
Good luck spelling that name of God!
A sigh, however it comes out, is true.
What breath is not a revelation?
The frogs pause, then start over again.
They'll get it right.
The peonies burst open, do you hear their cry?
What morning is not the morning of the world?
When your longing is sincere, whatever sound it makes
is God's sweetest name.
Remember what you said when you discovered a newborn fawn
gazing out of the long grass with the eyes of your mother?
The sound of your amazement was the Lord's most secret name.
Make up your own language, spelling doesn't matter.
Leave the classroom and tear off your shoes!
Run through luscious stinging dewy pathless green.
From your belly to the soft spot
where foolishness becomes the sky,
sing the silliest holiest name of all.
What sound is your breath making now?
Look, even the weeds are blossoming,
each tiny petal scribbled with a syllable of prayer!

Mandala: From the spiritual art of Paul Heussenstamm (mandalas.com)

Within the Within

2011-10-02T23:17:00.002-07:00

There is a space within space
where darkness hides its wealth
of brilliant light.
That is where the world comes from,
and many other things too beautiful for the world
until we imagine them
in ourselves.
I know there is only One, but
God loves mirrors.
What is within the within
mirrors itself through countless faces,
all singing the name
of a hidden splendor.
That is where you and I met
before we were born,
and Christ was in Mary
like an eternal seed.

A Way

2011-10-02T23:17:00.001-07:00

In this manner of vast sitting,
the mountain is a cloud.
In this manner of luminous breathing,
the air is full of diamonds.
In this manner of combat, you move
like a ruby serpent among the obstacles.
Your sword melts into a river of silence
plunged into the heart of the world
without being touched.
You don't need to run on empty,
you walk.
Hollower than a moonbeam,
borrowed sunlight never burns
but showers and shatters over your body
in its deep and nameless bow.
A new kind of light comes from the Master.
It is why no eye can withstand your beauty.

Definition

2011-10-02T19:25:00.001-07:00

On a morning in late September
I practice God, a single tomato
dangling on a twisted vine,
a naked rose still nodding
on its spent stem, edges curled
to umber teased as if by outed fire.
I practice boundless confidence
in Being, whether muted or golden,
a loamward bending rain-washed
wasting into Winter blackness,
odor of abandonment, the pungence
of broken globes, a garden in air,
tomato musk escaping from collapse.
The flame points inward now.
I go with the turning, the blessed compost,
boundless, naked, no different
in differences, indifferent bliss.

Whirled

2011-10-01T17:08:00.000-07:00

Whirled drops of buttery light,
that's what we're made of;
and inside that,
dark sweet melting
chocolate.

Here

2011-09-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

It is not enough that we touched before we were born,
but in this place, again, among such
perilous illusions of separation,
such distances fraught with mirage,
just as in eternity, I close my eyes, and you are here!

Describing a Place in September

2011-09-28T10:39:00.000-07:00

The place neither inside nor out,
the silence before thought,
the stillness more me than I
is the space of the final rose.
Its scent drifts through burnt-umber petals
as a soul exits a crinkled body, except,
the soul is only a description of itself,
but the odor of withered roses is real,
unpredicated on speech.
We say, "In the beginning,"
but this place is before the beginning.
We say, "was the Word,"
but whydo we assume it is a noun?
"In the beginning," then, "is the Verb."
Without declension, neitherfirst,
second, nor third person,
which brings us to this world of nouns.
Or does it? Perhaps
there is no world of nouns.
Perhaps there is only our description of it,
and the real world is a terrible
sweet fire.

God of the Opposite

2011-09-26T00:32:00.001-07:00

Suppose the opposite is also true:
God is powerless.
God is seen in darkness.
God knows nothing.
God makes us hungry.
God does not say a Word.
God goes down with you when you fall.
God flees from the mind of the theologian
and dwells in the heart of the fool.
God never washes his hands.
God has no idea where this is going.
God listens to your laughter as much as your prayer.
God is not interested in your good works.
God has spilling breasts and enormous hips,
giving birth without male seed.
God passionately acts out.
God does not respect sobriety.
God wanders away from churches and mosques
to find solace among prostitutes, hobos, and anarchists.
God can't remember.
God desires your body, just as it is.
God left heaven years ago to dwell in you.
God asks you not for obedience but a song.
God appears in human form on the outskirts of your empire,
in one of the old brown-skinned lamb-sacrificing tribes.
God comforts the poor and troubles the powerful.
You crucify him.

One Thing Left To Do

2011-09-26T00:14:00.000-07:00

When I no longer need to be right
and no longer need to be sure,
no longer need to perfect myself
and no longer need to be pure,
no longer need to be smarter than fools

for knowing is not to be wise,
when I no longer need to ascend
for to fall is as good as to rise,
when I no longer need to seek heaven
or search for a place beyond earth,
or tighten my belly, or armor my heart
or wash off this afterbirth,
then I need to do nothing and nothing more
but one and only one thing:
to open my heart to your Radiance,
then laugh, and play, and sing.

Between

2011-09-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

The space between the stars
is the silence between your thoughts.
Drink this emptiness like wine.

2011-09-20T09:23:00.001-07:00

There is a mother
who always takes time
to be present with you
when it thunders.
Now this thunder is the ocean
of her silence
and you are her wave.
She casts you on this shore
to shatter and mingle you
in a trillion grains
of diamond and sand.
Why not use your inner tide,
the moon-pull of her
generous shattering,
to erase every footprint?

2011-09-20T09:22:00.001-07:00

Give up the politics of anger, the politics of polarization.

Give up left and right. Form a circle.

Stop shouting. Start listening.

Listen first to your own body. Then you can listen to others.

Ownyour anger. Your anger doesn't belong to "them," it belongs to you.

Instead of projecting anger onto the "enemy," feel anger as a nameless sensation in the gut, brain, boiling blood and bone marrow, pure blue flame, sacred and guiltless as any other energy.

Let anger burn itself away to silence. This is the inner work.

Now the circle is truly gathered. Centered presence, listening silence. Not closed silence, but open silence. Not the silence of suppression, but the silence of pure possibility.

Only in the silence of possibility can the heart speak.

The voice of the heart is not your old voice. It is utterly new. Without shouting, without defensiveness, without taking "a stand," the voice of the heart speaks healing and vision.

The voice of the heart reveals the solution, and the solution is simpler than you think. What is the solution?

Form a circle, listen, find out.

Ma

2011-09-09T23:04:00.001-07:00

There is a mother
so huge and mysterious
that the universe is just
one nipple.
Light is her milk.
Peace is her body.
Here even God
takes sustenance
and grows bigger.
How do I know?
I drink what God drinks.

Squeeze

2011-09-07T21:38:00.001-07:00

Squeeze the wild juice out of Buddha
and all you have left is Buddhism.

Squeeze the wine of bewilderment out of Jesus,
all that remains is a Church of stone.

Squeeze out Mohammad's musk of wonder
and there's nothing but Law.

Castrate Krishna, conceal the sexual longing of Shyam,
what's left is a skinny lingam covered with ashes.

Do you really want to be a seedless indoor flower,
rooted in a book, yearning for a garden?

Why don't we throw this old engine in the forest,
let honey suckle, morning glory, entangle its gears?

Oxidize these steely pistons and stiff antenna,
dissolve, soften the machine in a rusty bruise of loam.

I'm talking about this hard religion of ours,
sharpening rose petals into bloody scimitars.

I'm talking about the way we churn our silence into words,
turn billions of glances into a single blinding sun.

God used to slip into each dancer's bed at night.
Prayer was a voiceless undulation of nectar.

Ages ago, something woke up and walked away
from needing to believe.

We could do that now. Each of us could become
the space where all the others dance.

A Place Your Mind Never Travels

2011-09-07T21:35:00.001-07:00

Most of your life happens silently
in a place where your mind never travels.
There is a forest full of unnamed flowers
opening in secret pools of sunlight
where every toad and serpent sparkles
with beads of emerald nectar,
bittersweet, holy and poisonous.
"Good," "evil," "left," "right"
are sounds never heard.
Why would the dripping dew
or moving panther make such noises?
You lost the map to this region
when your mouth shaped words for things
that cannot be spoken, and your path
became entangled with the past and future.
Yet far from civilization, your wild and naked heart
still dances in the space between thoughts.

Entropy

2011-09-01T15:55:00.000-07:00

Don't be afraid of entropy: it contains a secret counter-force

that organizes everything in complete relaxation.

Life is a slippery slope: God only knows where it leads.

To the amazement of gardeners, buds open by themselves.

Fallen petals navigate on silent forest streams:

we call this "drifting."

In warm wind wings don't beat: they soar.

Who shouted "ooze" to this grape, "ferment" to the nectar?

Don't make up stories about it: stuff just happens.

I'm not suggesting that the universe is a lullaby

whispering "don't do anything."

I'm saying its a Gospel tune.

Or a bolt of lightning in a spine of blossoms.

I'm saying that galaxies expand, flinging stars away

with no intention of ever getting them back.

And God sails out beyond where any voice

could ever call home, singing and singing

nevertheless, "Do what you love!"

Cycle

2011-09-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

First you get fat,
then you turn to sugar,
then you rot.
Soon you are black
soil again, neither living
nor dead.
This goes on forever,
or nearly, until
a bolt of electrons
zaps your hyothalamus into a quivering "I"
and you are selved
by dancing light.
Don't miss that one brief chance:
grasp the lightning's tale
and ride it into the stars!

I Want to Thank Blueberries

2011-08-27T03:26:00.000-07:00

Now that it's September, I want to thank blueberries.

I want to thank peaches, cantaloupe, cherry tomatoes
and corn on the cob. All summer long while we griped
about Republicans, you were lying there in baskets,
blue eyes silently watching, blinking back tears.

Some of you were whole crimson sunsets in my hand.
I'm not sure what antioxidants are, but thank you:
I know that you were full of them.

I loved your fuzz, buxom peach, your sass, blackberry.

I loved your smile, honeydew, halved and split

as we slobbered together. Local strawberry,

just one of you gushing on my tongue was almost
too much to bear. Next summer you could do a better job

of staying under four dollars a pint: otherwise, no complaint.

How erotic a plum, lounging in crimson stillness
among heat-waves of golden sunlight! You, plum,
should be ashamed the way your purple waves imploded
on the beaches of my mouth. Well, it was a scene, but thank you!
I also want to thank some of you flowers: begonia, peony,
chrysanthemum and lucifer crocosmia.

I do not forget the morning glories, those soft trumpets
made of sky, calling us inward toward granaries of moonlight.
And now, just as the rest of you are languishing,
the apples arrive! Round crimson shouts
from the green caverns of Autumn afternoon.
O humans, we too might be in season, like pear trees.
Wild but rooted down, laden and bowing,
we might drop to our knees at the edge of the meadow,
silvered in flurries of milkweed and thistle-down.
Why not give in to our ripening, the pungent smolder
of inward sugar, the grace and gravity of fall?
Why not bow to the blessed snap of sagging branch,

the gentle bruise of surrender?
We could lie on the bee-festered earth,
hollowed and wormed out with inner paths,
free from all striving to rise. Why not
let the planet have her way with us, and do what she loves?

Your Beauty

2011-08-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

It’s not enough for me to tell you that you have a beautiful soul. You are beauty.

Every atom of your flesh is an awakening universe.

Your breath, your secret smile in sleep, the tilt and sway of your ambling, the tingle of wet grass on your bare feet, your wrinkles and soft spots, the skip of your mortal heart, your moments of silence, your shadow, the mistakes you make, the things you leave unfinished, settling just where eternity intended them;

your sacraments of bathing and eating dessert, the landscape of your body rising and falling under the close and distant stars:

beauty that can’t be helped.

Be Troubled Water

2011-08-22T11:15:00.000-07:00

"I don't believe in God, but I miss Him."
(British philosopher Julian Barnes)

Be a stream of longing
from the secret fountain of O
to the ocean of namelessness.
Why cry "O Jesus" when O is enough?
Prayer happens first, then God.
Give up beads and words:
the Lord is not an echo.
Be troubled water
where river touches sea.
Why stand on the shore
measuring vastness with a spoon?
Throw your cup into the waves,
then dive in with your whole body.
If you must take a boat, quit rowing
when the wind hits your sail.
Don't be a candle at noon crying,
"I'm sorry."
Such sighs add nothing to the whirlwind
that cleansed you before birth.
As for, "Thank you," no need for that either.
Anyone who gives you
even the smallest sip of water
is God, and God is already drunk
with your gratitude.

Han Shan's Secret

2011-08-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

"If you look into stillness,"
wrote Han Shan on Cold Mountain,
"it gets even stiller."
So I looked, and the stillness
started babbling like a fool.I yelled to my head,
"Where did all these words come from,
because they're definitely not mine!"
Nobody answered.
So now I just listen
to Nobody.

World Without Metaphor

2011-08-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

We do not say, "Annihilate the ego."
Why choose nothing?
We do not say, "Expand the mind."
Why enlarge sorrow?
We simply say, "Suffer the unutterable
ecstatic explosion of now.
See who survives the ruinous beauty
of the present moment.
The past and future may be compared,
but this is not a metaphor.
Therefor, a red-tailed hawk
upon a blue cloud pregnant with Spring rain
circles this meadow near Unionville, Pennsylvania
where a chestnut filly, 13 hands tall,
bows her black mane in the summer wind,
drifting through buttercups, munching a path
for no one, like nothing
but herself.

Disguise

2011-08-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

I am the one inside
who knows all your disguises,
even the disguise you were wearing
before you put on a face.
Do you remember my name?
The name of the sky, the name of the dust,
the name of the atom,
the name of wind in tall cedars,
the name of starless night
are just like Mr. and Mrs.
The spoken name is not my real name.
I am the space between the letters,
the empty roundness in B and R,
the O before it is a prayer.
I am birthless silence between breaths.
I am naked.
I have no disguise.

Unbelieve

2011-08-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

Silence spoke, saying, "Unbelieve in Me.
I Am, therefor don't think.
No need to have faith in what's already here
on the tip of your tongue,
whose name you never quite remember
because I don't have one."
Then I stopped believing, started yearning,
breathing, seeing, touching, tasting
what merely is.
I used to be a daylight Christian,
but when I fell asleep I dreamed
of love-making while God was away.
At the moment of death,
names, creeds, philosophies
all vanish in a tidal wave of light.
Why not drop them now and get it over with?
Doubt is the believer: the doubtless need no creed.
I doubt the past and future, but how can I doubt now?
How can I doubt the breeze stroking the window sash,
the drowsy sun on the fur of the cat,
earth's pull pressing my body to its warm heave,
the rise and fall of belly breathing?
This moment is holy, believe it or not.

Song of the Very Old Man

2011-08-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

I was embryo.
Ripples in the amniotic sea
jarred my barnacle loose from womb wall,
first fall. Current wanderer, I called
like a lost dolphin, no one.
A fang of sperm tasted my membrane
like a grape. Was that the beginning
of darkness-sharing, double occupancy
bodies? Or was it before, when no shadow
no shape, no mist had fermented
furious spheres from God's sleep?
I fall again into that slumber,
making grapes from wine,
reeled into the old roundness,
string of years wrapped in a nutrino
dissolving in a tear. Look at me now,
a wizened thistle blown among the rocks,
teeth gone, cranium bald, beard so long
it drifts beyond my ankles white as snow,
outflowing my cave over rocks into valleys,
melting to an icy stream, then a river
roiling through Rishikesh, surging to Benares
where fools bathe in me for blessing, pour
their ashes in my current for salvation,
scoop up vials of me to carry home,
to drink for healing and fertility.
I'm absorbed in the lymph nodes of movie stars,
distilled in hospital ventilation ducts.
I illuminate your leukocytes, engulfing
the virus. I blast your nostrils in bastrika.
I bathe the fetus you wait to indwell,
rehearsing its heartbeat, tethering
its rhythm to a quasar. When I hold
my breath your soul is suspended
in eternity. When I sigh, you are born.
Your garden sprawls at the end of a path
that started in the cave of my navel.
I am the ancestral whale who swims in your milk.
These faltering landscapes, are they really
outside us? Walk with me. Fall inward
like a moth exhausted by its lover, the flame.
We make centuries go faster than forgetfulness.
My song awakens you again from death.
Didn't we visit and kiss before we had mouths?
Your Playmate has chased you to exhaustion.
Your ancient Father, who dawdled you on his knee,
Your Mother's best friend, who bequeathed his kingdom
to your only child, have perished together in your body.
How else should the music of the galaxies move us?
How else should the wise become fools?

Political Action

2011-08-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

1. A political act of great courage.
Do nothing for half an hour.
Go barefoot slowly nowhere
like a toddler learning to walk.
How can you change the world
if you can’t feel it with your toes?

2. A political act of historic magnitude.
Sit on a hard cushion or wooden bench,
spine straight, brain hollow as a poppy.
Let thoughts buzz around until
they abandon you for weightier flowers,
worry-mist dissolves in the noon of silence,
the whole garden re-blossoms inside you.

3. A radical new political institution.
Gather in a leaderless circle.
The only minister is breath.
Breathe in pain, breathe out joy.
What gathers in your quietness
is a the quietness of others:
silent voices of the disappeared,
silent prisoners’ tears,
silent stares of motherless children
in Somalia, gathered
in the blessed poverty of Now.
Your heart is indistinguishable from theirs.
You are the missing mother.

4. A bold political plan.
Full of that old hankering for forgiveness,
confess that your doing is never enough.
Perhaps the one whose love is always
already finished
will give you permission to rest.
To find the Beloved Within:
all other tasks unfold and fling themselves
like thistledown in wind from That.
If you don't believe me, then Silence
has not yet made you radical.

Fana

2011-08-22T07:35:00.001-07:00

I dipped a cup from your blue sky: it was not blue.

That's what happens when I'm taken out of You.

Disappear all you want, Beloved, I'm still there:

the sapphire in your emptiness, the azure in your air.

This heart stops beating in rest unbroken,

pouring sighs into stillness, pouring prayer

back to what cannot be spoken.

Annihilation is a small price to pay

for the privilege of filling all that you are

with all that I am not, and cannot say.

Host

2011-08-22T07:33:00.001-07:00

Show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware. (Epistle to the Hebrews, 13:2)

God opens the door to God.The host is disguised as a guest for love's sake.Pretend it's someone else who begs to enter your house,even though you know it's yourself.Welcome whoever shows up to the feast in your heart.We're all invited to this party.You see the invitation in my eyes, I see it in yours."Eat, drink, then tell me who you are."That's how Telemachus greeted the wandering beggar:Athena in disguise.The host is the guest in the heart of the guest.Hospitality is a golden mirror.

Hike

2011-08-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

14 miles on the mountain today:
Off trail beyond Indian Henry's cabin,
beyond Mirror Lakes, beyond the last footprint:
Gateh Gateh Paragateh!

Off trail into lost meadows under silent peaks,
misty gorges, empty whiteness:
Parasam Gateh!

Saw mountain goats but no bear.
Fell in love with shy purple penstamin,
blue lupine, alpine asters, flames of Indian paintbrush:
last gifts of snow melt at tree line.
Off mountain by first star?
Gentle darkness, fearless steps.
Bodhi Svaha!

Buddha says that friendship is the whole Dharma.
Why am I so happy all alone among white peaks?

One

2011-08-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

One made itself
a Thou, a Me,
and got lost loving
so that yearning could breathe
and holiness could feel
its own touch: Tell no one
we were ever
not two.

Be Drawn

2011-08-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

Don't seek, be drawn.
Don't wander, be led.
A blossom doesn't open by itself.
Something warm and golden falls
into it's heart from another world.
You have two centers:
one here, one beyond.

First & Last Religion

2011-08-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

The prophet: your Mother.

The scripture: your Body.

The holy name: your Breath.

The temple: your Heart.

The alter fire: Awareness.

Eternal Life: Now.

All religions: Shadows.

All rituals: Rehearsals

for Conscious Breathing.

This is the first and last religion.

Banquet

2011-08-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

We don't create this world of laughter and weeping.
It's poured into our cup at the wedding.

We're not the center of creation.
We're the tilt and wobble that makes the spinning
finally come to rest.

Don't even take a breath
or worry your heart like a prayer bead.
Breath is given, not taken.
The heart doesn't beat itself.

Something else beats and whips us
like cream into this sweetness,
then dollops us onto everything.

Don't be a guest at the wedding, be the feast,
even if the one who invited you
remains hidden, like a jewel glittering
under a sleeping eyelid.

When the host arrives, he'll stop at your table
and feed you fermented berries by hand.
Don't worry if your lips can't whisper
his Name.

What matters is that he whispers yours,
and makes you remember that summer night
in the darkness of Love when the gardener came
and you couldn't tell the difference
between moonbeams, fingers, seeds.

You were planted then: you burst open now.
The sign of recognition is falling inward
from a great height, and never reaching
the bottom of your heart.

But really, how could you be sure?
This cup is so deep,
and everyone is pouring wine.

Still

2011-08-13T10:54:00.001-07:00

Windless midnight, quiet water,
gentle ripples in the moon.
Don't just be still, be moved
by a deeper stillness.

Our Love (for Dana)

2011-08-12T19:16:00.000-07:00

In our love,
the sun and moon are not enough.
I am the night,
you are my darkness.

Breaking

2011-08-11T04:22:00.000-07:00

Poke the darkness from inside.
Crack the shell with a throb
from the center of the egg.
Emerge, unfurling wings of light.
That is why your little world is breaking.

The High Point

2011-08-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

The high point of my day is waking up with the rippling laughter of silence in the space between my atoms.

But the real high point is breakfast: mueslix with blue berries, crumbled walnuts and soy milk, and a mug of freshly ground coffee.

Later in the day, an even higher point at the gym, belly crunches, free weights, stationary bike and elliptical sweat, luxuriant shampoo shower.

Then at sunset, the real high point: the breath of my Guru, cycles of longing and fulfillment, pranic bubbles bathing every cell in blue waves of bluer emptiness.

Followed by dinner with my beloved, tofu and broccali washed down with a mug of brown ale from the Iron Horse Brewery in Ellensberg WA, where we own wild sage lands with no money to build anything on it, bequeathing it therefor to wandering elk, whom I now toast in their desert emptiness with every sip: a high point.

Followed by a walk along the sunset-tinted waters of Puget Sound with Willy the golden poodle, to the holy mother's statue in front of the old Catholic church where I sing Hail Mary every evening, hoping Willy will learn the words, or at least form deep samskaras that will burst forth in his next and hopefully human life as pure devotion when he hears some old candlelit grandmother muttering, "blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus."

Did I mention that this is the high point?

Back at home, a cuddly fireside high point which I choose not to speak of, but it's so very nice!

Then gently reading Dickens and writing a poem that comes out of nowhere: definitely the high point of the day.

Not to mention the highest point of all: falling asleep with God's name bubbling out of my heart like sweet overheated wine...

It is good. Very good. Tomorrow will be even better.

Whirl

2011-08-09T04:39:00.000-07:00

Don't be a star, be darkness.
Don't polish cups, become wine.

Chew the old commandment-bones
until you taste the marrow of doubt.

Soak withered creeds
in the juice of uncertainty.

Stop fasting! Make soup
out of holy things.

Be a question mark,
a serpent dancing on its head:
the shape of God's backbone.

Now the Bible's a closed box of echoes,
but it once was a lyre in the breeze;
an instrument for shepherd voices,
leading songs home to silence.

You could have remembered
the end of your journey
before you even started
if you had not fasted from the sweetness
of what was never forbidden.

Whoever made this appointment
has stood you up:
abandon the rendezvous!

Be center-less, become night,
not some lonely spot that night contains.

Every creature is a galaxy
whirling slowly on its soul -
the pureaxis
of silence.

Privacy

2011-08-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

I have adopted you all
as my heirs and children.
Come, live with me.
Everything I have is yours.
Still, there is a private room
full of secret splendors
that no one can enter
but me.

Brew

2011-08-07T14:19:00.000-07:00

You rummaged through a thousand flowers
searching for the stuff called "honey,"
fingers and toes sticky with strange dust.
Then you gave up the search and went home
to your little one room cell.
The garden was only for gathering.
Sweetness comes from somewhere else.
There is work to be done in your secret chamber.
The golden ocean of God gets brewed
inside you.

Old

2011-08-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

What does not droop

after sixty years

was never alive

to begin with.

Ask the daffodil

bent by a cup of rain.

Ask the panting moth

after the long singular day.

Even furious God-flung light,

through the ancient curves

of the star ocean, stoops

to greet us at morning,

searching for our name

on the tip of its tongue.

Here, old one,

take my hand.

Barefoot

2011-08-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

To break the hierarchy into kindling
and throw it on smoldering coals -
To make a murmuring circle around the fire
and need no leader -
to remember where flowers come from -
to root down in what we've forgotten,
in what we are becoming, the sacred earth -
to do it now in the darkness
while the birds are still asleep -
to walk barefoot on mossy stones
and keep our balance with empty hands
as water sings beneath us -
to close our eyes and imagine
nothing but the night -
to feel the suction of dew in our toes -
to let the yearning of ancient dawn
weave its sinuous beam through the body's mist -
to germinate, to swell, to burst open -
to let it be said of us, they grew
in darkness and light,
then they danced."

2011-08-06T05:27:00.000-07:00

Moonlight descends into this body.
Leaves open, still holding pearls of morning rain.
Yearning matters even more than fulfillment.
Every gaze is a gaze of passion.

Somehow

2011-08-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

I'm always certain that, somehow, we'll survive.
Then I hear a voice inside say, "Not so sure."
Is that your voice, friend? It's not mine.
Doubt is just an ancient echo rattling
in caverns of the skull we once called home.
My real voice has become gazing
into the coral sunset of a rose,
into a handful of dark seed-bursting loam,
into the whirling galaxy of your retina.
Here's the secret: Gazers do not speak.

Generosity

2011-08-02T08:10:00.000-07:00

We're in this forgetting together.
My silence is yours, friend.
We who are truly generous
must share our bewilderment.
Someone who fell in love with you
long before you were born
now calls your name.
Answering 'Here!' is not enough.
I know a bettter way.
I'll help you move like a cloud
and disappear like a ripple in a pool.

Epitaph

2011-08-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

All I do is wonder.
The light that shines from my center
comes from somewhere beyond me.
When I get used to that radiant blindness,
it seems more like a garden.
Sometimes I hear a flute deep inside
and yearn to know who lives there,
dancing in moonlight.
Write this on my tomb, friend:
All he did was wonder.

Ask the One

2011-07-26T11:15:00.001-07:00

I have a question for the One
but none to ask it to,
since there's no one other than this Being.
So I'll ask you, rose o'sharon,
in the coral light of dawn,
though you are but a softness in my seeing.
How can you sparkle with a thousand drops of dew?
How can each robin have a song?

What Can Be Spoken

2011-07-26T06:48:00.000-07:00

I no longer speak of stars.
I make the sound of the caterpillar
scratching her hundredth belly against a stick.
I make the hum of taught silk in a moonlit web.
I make reverberations of an egg
traveling inward toward the embryo
as the Mother of Buddhas ruffles her void.
I speak not of the soul but of the body
who is God, the sexual electron
zeroing in on its singularity,
the glissando of This against That, the kiss
in whose murmur are ineffable distances
where light will never reach us.

The Garden of Seeing

2011-07-24T23:31:00.001-07:00

Forgetting the story is your journey now.

Falling into your heart is the romance -

there the world is your beloved,
your charmed center touches everything.

Homecoming happens at the crossroads -

be the guest of each stranger.

In the garden of Seeing, don't grow anything -

let the golden dahlia grow you.

Scattered and gathered again,

be made of Light.

Soul Mate

2011-07-21T23:43:00.000-07:00

Your soul mate lives inside you.
God hooked you up with your own heart
when you took your first breath.
With a lover like that, you should be satisfied!

Meet the one who turns this ray of seeking
inward: bask in the shimmer of folded wings.
Come home, there is something delicious
bubbling in the kitchen of your body.

If there was ever a journey, it ends here.
The world is the pilgrim, not you.
All creatures enter the doorway of your face
searching for a hearth, a fireside.

Greet each one with the name, "Beloved,"
a cup of soup and common bread.
Some of them feel they have nowhere to go
but You.

Sword

2011-07-21T23:31:00.001-07:00

As soon as I call this whirlpool of stars in my heart, "the soul,"
it becomes a shadow searching for its echo.
As soon as I call this ocean of sweetness, "my body,"
it sinks like a stone into its mass.
When I call the sky our forms dissolve like mist in, "love,"
we're jolted in two again: rules fall out of emptiness
like cinders.
What's really true is warmth without words,
using books for kindling and toasting the commandments.
Let your actions arise like fragrance from this melting.
No more gold-leafed burnt seeds, each containing a "should."
Rumi said we'll meet in a field, out beyond right and wrong doing.
Don't we like to quote that verse!
But who has the courage to cut off the "should"
right at the throat with a single stroke
of the blazing sword of silence?

Photo: Manjushri Buddha

A Language

2011-07-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

Is there a language without Yes or No?
At the moment of dawn, a robin
tilts the world toward light with a song.
Do you agree
or disagree?

2011-07-20T05:18:00.001-07:00

I am fluent in 3 million languages.
I have visited every star.
On each one, I met you.
We spoke of love.

Have You Forgotten

2011-07-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

Have you forgotten?

You were hatched in the air from an egg
by the mighty Simorgh.

Have you forgotten?
The sign of God's presence is Wonder,
the second sign is Singing,
the third is Beauty that brings tears.

Have you forgotten?
The sign of fleeing from God's presence
is meticulous insistence on the rules
of your religion.

You went hunting for the chatter in your brain,
seduced away from your nest beside the throne.
There your own eggs are filled with wine.
They tremble, crack, and spill all night.

Go home to them!
Spread your wings and glide silently
back to your heart.

Moonlight will guide you
faster than thought.

Dew

2011-07-16T17:59:00.000-07:00

In the morning a dewdrop might feel,
'I contain the Sun!'
But is it true?

In an hour, both borrowed light and dew,
mirror and reflection,
were never real.

2011-07-16T05:25:00.000-07:00

As tongues want L's, I want to plunge
my rolling heart into your gaze,
the deepest pool of you, and drown.
The scarlet tanager that stays
for one song only in the rowan
plucks a berry and is gone
until the Autumn of next year.
So fickle faith, and numbered days,
and moon-tossed tides across a sea
of cares, turn me from constant love.
No fixed star in a voided space,
I am the wind, the wing, the dove:
And yet it only takes one tear,
one breath, one brief momentous kiss
to fall into eternity.
My dear, will you not grant me this?

Choiceless

2011-07-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

When you opened your eyes this morning,
you broke every law that made yesterday real.
Why insist on being who you were before this breath?
The ocean won't return to a stream.
You can't take back a kiss.
Bees don't bring flowers honey, whispering,
"Here's the pollen I borrowed."
Once the morning glory gives sugar to a hummingbird,
it withers with joy.
So be a pilgrim who never comes home.
Blossom to death from sweetness.
Let your chest show hospitality to a stranger's heartbeat.
Bread won't be wheat again.
Don't water your vineyard with brandy.
Grapes can't understand what they become,
or why you crush them under your naked feet.
Just dance. You too must ferment.
Once it starts, be choiceless.
Don't turn your Spirit back into juice.
Juice is for children: Jesus loves wine.

Painting by Stella Alesi

Descent

2011-07-12T03:20:00.000-07:00

You enter my breath and descend into Me:
something glows from my chest,
the place where the pollen was held
before You stole it to make that honey
which others sing about while I
rest here, ravished in the absence
of all but the echo
of your furious wings...

I enter your breath and descend into You:
ten thousand petals burst out of your heart
from the place where seeds of madness were stored
until I stole them, and turned them
into poems, scattering your sweetness
everywhere...

Only the wise, the careful, the sober
can decipher this descent into each other,
this drunken theft and blossoming of selves.
Only the sane can determine
whether we have two hearts
or one...

Head Stand

2011-07-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

Doing morning yoga,
I realized why the world seems upside down:
the Head Stand is the True Way.
We've been doing everything wrong.
For God's sake, stop all this running around!
Your brain wasn't made for the clouds,
it was meant to be a seed.
Plant your head in the sand like a cracked nut.
let all your tubes fill up with sap.
Your arms and legs are branches,
your hands and feet blossoms
with wiggling finger and toe petals.
You've been seeing and hearing too much,
and you've been speaking gibberish:
stuff your mouth and ears with dirt,
smear your eyes with loam.
If you have to see, see through the robin's nest
in the your heart.
Let a squirrel perch in your crotch.
Imagine how peaceful this planet will be
when human lips is sealed with potting soil
and our brain cells do the real work
of rooting down in the rich black Earth!

Picture: David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, doing headstand.

Rumi

2011-07-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

I've seen major league ball players named Jesu, but not Rumi.

Taxi cab drivers named Muhammad, but not Rumi.

Computer software engineers named Krishna, but not Rumi.

Rumi leaves hints like scented ransom notes to lure us: but where is he hiding?

And how do I ransom my stolen heart?

Rumi buries secrets like sprouted seeds in a hundred websites; words for us to Google like "garden," "wine," "beloved," and "madness."

It's all a tangled path back to ourselves, leading to vineyards of virtual grapes, web-clouds with no rain!

First Jesus, then Shamz, now Julaludin Masnavi: who will be next?

He is neither Persian nor Arab, Muslim nor Christian, Yogin nor Sufi: neither mad nor sane.

Rumi is the should-less Dancer in us all!

Shades of Green

2011-07-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

One good hike is a whole journey.
On the way up you see the spectacular.
on the way down you notice the subtle.

A forest shimmering with countless shades
of one color... Don't just think about this,
get a little lost here.

When you spot trillium among ferns,
three white petals bursting from deep shadow,
you'll know why beauty is rooted in darkness.

The best place to grow is on a nurse log:
don't be so independent.
Find an old master, even a dead one.

The woods will teach you, we don't really die:
we're just used up by the living.
Linger awhile, don't be in a hurry.

This trail is endless, it's a loop.
On the peak you discover God,
in the valley you find your soul.

2011-07-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

This morning

a white peony

is enough.

The Moment

2011-06-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

As tongues want L's, I want to plunge
my rolling heart against your gaze,
the deepest pool of you, and drown.
The scarlet tanager stays
for one song only in the rowan,
plucks a berry, then is gone
until the Autumn of next year.
So fickle faith and numbered days
fit me not for lingering,
a fixed star in a voided space.
My moon-drenched tide keeps turning,
flinging these drops across the sea.
And yet it only takes one tear,
one breath, one brief momentous kiss
to fall into eternity.
My Love, will you not grant me this?

Ishq

2011-06-25T23:47:00.000-07:00

Because your sighs have fermented my blood
I need no wine.
My name on your lips is the longest Sura.
I begin the Night Journey in your eyes
toward a wild desert fragrance.
The only revelation is my face
reflected in your gaze.
Keep this window open,
do not turn your emptiness to glass
lest you profane the Prophet
whose eye is dissolves in Am.
Ignore the pictures in your skull: like a lover's map,
they were sketched by trembling.
Look instead to grounded seeds, and in them
the hollow before conception
where zero becomes two
in the bright space of unknowing.
We are each others' search
for what's between mirrors -
a wilderness of purity.
You, the last veil of my desire
and I, the veil within that,
translucent, blue, the color of yearning skies.
Spin quickly now before the other vanishes
so that we may catch God at the center of whirling.
You lit me on the wick of your eye:
I danced as seeing.
From the golden oil in my bones I kindled you,
a soul for my soul, gushing through my hollow places.
Anoint me now! Drip down this broken necklace
of seven dangling pearls.
From throat to thigh unite the sea and setting sun.
Of purple curtains in the King's chamber we may speak,
but never of what happens on the other side!
When dawn comes, we'll whisper which
of us was stillness, which the dancer.
____________
Illustration from 'Rubaiyat' of Omar Kaiyyam, Yale University Library Collection

Soltice

2011-06-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

On the longest evening of the year
I compose an ode to silence -
nothing more than breathless sighing
in green caverns of hydrangea
where sparrows rustle and doze;
a glistening path where the young snail
senses moonlight and inscribes
her patient journey over the roses;
a blue moth settling on a peony's lips
like a first kiss. Just so,
summer comes without words.

Solstice Hike, June 21

2011-06-22T00:31:00.000-07:00

Between here and there,
where nowhere usually is -
breakfast at Twede's in North Bend,
the diner in David Lynch's Twin Peaks,
a low frequency grouse bong
under the huckleberries,
a high frequency marmot whistle
from the glaciated rock pile,
then the dazzling summit where I touch the sun -
but still not there, and not quite here either,
I move from one climate zone to the next.

Mastery

2011-06-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Wrap your body in silver
filaments of pure possibility:
but do not cling, be ready
to unravel at a moment's notice.
Be the cosmos in each atom
without becoming small.
Cover the Earth but remember:
you are only her lover for a night.
Slip into the lily's womb again
and again, the bee, not the pollen,
O honey thief, marauder,
pressing hidden cries of beauty
out of the nameless, the naked and ordinary,
stealing your self from the unselved,
your feet dripping sweetness,
your scented eyes sober in the crush
of art from the ripe fattened world,
distiller of what you do not drink,
silent seducer of poems
from the stones they are about,
yes you, Transparency, do not forget:
you are the lens but not the image.
You are the emptiness of the flute
before music gushes through it,
the hollow of the bone when life
is over and nothing remains
but light untangling itself
from what is not there.

2011-06-17T08:50:00.001-07:00

Blessed be the small. Bow down to the particular. Namaste to the missed detail that might have altered the plan.

Praise the radiant singularity of a whisker on the leathery cheek of the man who waits in line for soup and shelter.

God is hollower than an atom in the green weed: that's what hallowed means.

Let the whirlwind of seeing spiral deeper into littleness, vippasana, the gesture of an eye, polishing the sacred chaos of edges with perception, a sunbeam surrendering its morning Mass of photons to a petal of unfolding iris.

Satori of the finite, freedom of the bound, delectable glory of the appointed sip of tea, dissolving mind with razor grace in fractal amazement at the calculus of limits in the infinitesimal dot on a lady bug.

Ayn sof tip of lily-stamen, dandylion tattagatta, quidditas of crimson-speckled moth-wing.

Whatness of the merest object bathed in subjectivity, a pixel of sunrise reflected in the finch's eye, singing her ineluctable one note: "now!"

Photo by Peter Shefler

Yin

2011-06-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

The precision of emptiness,
space between the limit and the asymptote,
flying white among brush strokes
in the letters of every language,
shape of blue between clouds,
hollow of a comb before honey,
naked O! that begins each prayer,
the mouth of a woman just dead,
momentous pause of the raised axe,
widening void of the drawn bow,
spreading like hunger's stain
between slowly lengthening claws
of a cat intent on its living meal.
There is nothing soft or imprecise
about any of this. It is all exact
as what gets sharpened away
from the gleaming blade.

Born

2011-06-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, the One
looked into the mirror
of her own Spirit
and saw the face
of the Beloved.
Then the Beloved looked
into the mirror
and saw You.
You were born
of that Joy!

I to I

2011-06-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

Don't just look, linger.
Knowledge is dissolving
into shades of blue
in a blossom of periwinkle:
spirals of emptiness, whorls of sky,
thunderous as what was not spoken before light.
Maelstrom at the center of the small,
spinning with seeds and stars, ships full of wine,
monsters of the deep, swimming
in the baffled amazement of a speechless Creator
before he conceives of the simplest sphere.
What then, my love,
in the wildest flowers of your face?
A Silence even older than God, a universe
floating unfertilized on waves of joy,
eyes tangled in a chaos of glances,
rays falling into one cup where
nothing has a name and we fearlessly drink
our golden selves to death.
What we speak now is just a rehearsal
for gazing without words.

How Long To Work

2011-06-01T05:34:00.000-07:00

I am rooted, but I flow. ~Virginia Woolf

Work until by grace
you become nothing
but a gesture of silence -
then dance.

Those who comprehend
are already smiling.

Moses had to be told,
"Take off your shoes,
this is holy ground."
But for you no
commandment is required.
The soles of your feet
already understand.

Take off your socks.
Take off everything.
Now rise, plant the weight
of your ocean-scented body.
With such devoted toes
are you ready to walk home
in the ooze of grapes?

You are not called to an abstraction.
You are called to make wine of yourself!

What is this gesture of silence?

Mist disappearing on the shore
of a still inland sea.
A poppy bobbing along the breeze
to celebrate its root.

Body

2011-06-01T05:33:00.001-07:00

Inside this body made of lions,
made of cobras and rabbits,
made of frogs and dogs, locusts and fish,
is another body made of breathing
and of the feelings your mother had
when you gently kicked her from within.
And in this body is a joyful body of light
made from memories of dancing
with the angels of the rainbow.
And in this body is another body
so near you cannot feel or grasp its form.
It has no form.
This body is boundless, empty, still.
As husks are filled with nectar, lungs with air,
so the body of Silence fills all bodies
with a fragrance that has no name.
Tell me, luminous dancer,
tell me, lion,
tell me, embryonic breath,
kicking your dear mother from inside,
which body are You?

Warrior's Prayer (Memorial Day)

2011-05-28T03:54:00.000-07:00

You enter my kingdom by ten thousand roads of death.
Each chariot wheel rolls toward its center.
No restless search for honey in some other garden,
but this dark syrup, stillness, wine of my heart.
Some pray until dawn, and some ask, "Who listens?"
But you have become wonder without words,
dazed and worshiping the lance that pierced you.
Never crying, "Withdraw it!" you seek no immortality,
the whisper of your ebbing breath, my Name.
The song swells up your throat, a voice
that is yours and not yours, the way
smoke curls from a wick just blown out.
Then you return to my lips.

Rendezvous

2011-05-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

Let's meet -
neither your place nor mine.
Conversations start
where silence is complete.
A window in the mind,
a doorway in the heart.
If you expect to find
a future,
abandon the first fruit.
Sever the thirsty root
of your fire.
Emptiness is wine.

Deeper

2011-05-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

Deeper than sadness, deeper than sin,
the state that I have fallen in;
closer than silence, nearer than breath,
seed before life and ground under death;
after the cross, where Jesus went,
twirling the flower, what Buddha meant;
call it non-being, it smiles like a face,
call it a person, it melts into space;
womb of all mothering moonless clear night,
tomb uncreated consuming all light;
hollow heart beater, hallowed I Am,
my hell-healing self, a hologram.

Survival Technique

2011-05-24T18:34:00.001-07:00

Breathe in the morning stars.
Breathe out the old story
down to the seeds.
Shut up and listen.
Sniff the present moment.
Eat slowly as a grazing elk.
Like a sleeping lion, hug yourself.
Move your spine to the music
of wind.
If you have wings, use them.
If not, don't pretend.
Let sap flow through the break in you
where a new branch is grafted.
Never close your wound.
Let it be the eye
you see me through.

I Don't Join Peace Movements

2011-05-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

I don't join peace movements:
all that otherness and blame.
Peace is my nature.
The violence of the world
is my own confusion
about who I really am.
To understand this, fall deeper
into the center of the rose.
Become a dewdrop where bees drink
too much and disappear.
Solve conflicts on the surface of the earth
from the place where seeds die
into green possibility.
The answers come from below.
Plunge your soul into dark matter.
Sooner or later, to survive,
soldiers turn themselves
into gardeners like Jesus.
Warriors of truth
take both sides.

Refuse

2011-05-21T13:34:00.001-07:00

Refuse to quench the blaze in your body that is your soul
and you will surely wander out of the rubble of the past
covered with smoldering ashes of the future
like a freed slave dangling the broken chains of believing.
Let an inner heat consume the Palace of Hesitation
where the King of Certainty pampers his Harem of Doubts.
This parable is about the insurgency in your heart
called God: don't try to understand it.
Just let the House of Perfection get burnt to the ground
by a glorious destroying Fire.

Burst

2011-05-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

Just before dawn,

sparrows blame no one for the darkness;

they just start singing.

Free from outrage,

the daffodil opens its golden throat.

Listen to that music.

Even if you can't carry a tune,

there's rhythm in your breathing.

This yearning for light that awakens your heart

is light!

*

I look at the news and get discouraged too.

Then I remember that we human beings

are the creatures who invented ice cream.

We invented pasta, tomato sauce, red wine.

No one commanded us to dance on grapes

and drink the blessing of our toes: we just did it!

We turned weeds into tea.

We devised elegant Yoga, imitating

the posture of lions and flowers.

What other creature would conceive

that wife and husband making love

reflect the caress of earth and sky,

Shiva-Shakti, Christ and Church,

Shekinah-Adonai?

For the sake of our communion,

we helped God turn One into Two.

Feel the sun rise in your belly.

Remember how to laugh.

This breath is the rapture...

*

Some random ray from a distant star

touches the bud of your buried heart

and the whole garden explodes inside you:

jasmine, poppy, chrysanthemum,

Jesus, Krishna, Muhammad

all mingled in a single fragrance:

nameless wild flowers too,

you and I among them.

We're planted within each other,

seeds just waiting

to burst.
__________

(Poems read with flute and piano at the annual meeting of Interfaith Works, Olympia WA, 5/14/11)

Credo

2011-05-20T06:22:00.000-07:00

I submit to the authority of my breath.
This heartbeat is my commandment.
I surrender to the radiant emptiness between thoughts.
My will is an opening flower,
a white azalea covering itself in snowy surprise,
a plum blossom amazing its bud.

What I obey does not lead me:
it is who I am.