MANDALA

MADNESS





Poems 1994-1998





Tom Zurowski














Seventh Printing

WordPerfect 8 Linux

February 2005





FRESH





BEGINNING NEW AND FRESH



Beginning new and fresh, a child who

just born is dedicated to a life,

to light and love, to needing so much love.

Beginning now I need, with all reversed,

to love and radiate the brightest light,

to ever extend the possible, to implode

all that I've been. When so huge, too huge I

was born and spread my body out to space.

Now, it's space I make, negating lies,

negating hate, anything that harms.





FULLY WILLING



Fully willing to look at the ego's ground,

that smooth serenity, requires only

a willingness to breathe attentively.

I breathe in, out, remembering, but then

forget tomorrow is mine as much.

Winter exhales a green, and stars explode

nonchalantly, colored extravagantly.

And objects, like the ego, fall, splattering

the ground, loosening light, fully willing.





THE FOREST



The forest now is scented with the soil

cracked open by the swelling, stretching roots

and gophers tunneling and worms meandering.

The forest now is scented with a soil

that's wet and warm and dark and soft and sweet,

sweetened by last autumns fruits and grasses.

This grass, this fresh spring grass tastes sweetest to

the dogs. I watch them carefully sniff to find

the sweetest, eat and gaze completely content;

I also taste and am completely content.

This spring is not like others yet fulfills

an expectation of what spring should be.

I am not like I was, fulfilled by spring;

I do not expect this spring to be like others,

and this lack of expectation completely

freshens, unlike any spring before.

I am older, but always new, my mind's

opened by the brightening and warming, by

the swelling and stretching of visionary sense.



Not to be confined or freed by growth.

Not to be a person any more

than the budding trees, uncurling ferns or bright-

ening moss or blooming crocus are a person.

Not to feel embarrassment for swellings,

not to feel embarrassment when growing

thick with flowers as dandelions grow thick,

but to feel pride and say, look at this body,

to feel every aching, straining sense,

to feel the spring, and to expect anything.



To doubt and thaw the earth, and then to dream

a flower fierce with color, to dream

that meaning multiplies in every moment,

to dream that light and warmth endures forever.





HARD



Once I pretended I could not believe

the scent of soil turned up for spring planting

beneath soft sky. All winter I had prayed

to sky, prayed for release from frozen fears.

Then I pretended sky had entered in,

and from within had opened up my skin,

the wall, translucent wall, that kept me tight

and hard. I cried, pained like a flower plucked,

a forest sheared, but hoped, because I felt

that diamonds had promised me protection.

I felt full hardness, as if seeing brightness

that blinds or hearing screams that deafen; yet

I was not crushed, I was protected, kissed

by every sensual experience.

I faced my fears, from love I faced my doubts;

I faced and I believed that anything,

that even any suffering disease

could be faced without pretense. Living with

what is not with regret or hope, but with

what is so and unimaginably hard.





BEGINNING SOMEWHERE



Beginning somewhere uncertain, I stare

through falling flakes of snow. I blow

a word or two with every breath,

but interrupting is a thought of doubt,

a skeptical long look that questions.

But snow, each flake unique and innocent,

silences the lonely laugh. I laugh

with all the flakes each one hilarious.





SPONTANEOUSLY



Spontaneously straightened, the spine joined all heaven

with earth, joined all blazing light with dull dirt.

And grass began to sprout.

Spontaneously, one point

jumped and changed velocity and place

too quickly to catch, to wildly, as wildly as

a sky of rainbows swirling everywhere

we look, in memory or expectation.



Spontaneously, I was colored and you were colored

with waves of infrared and ultraviolet,

of soft seductive green. The grass has grown.



Spontaneously, warmth radiated and melted;

and boundaries in space dissolved in space.



Spontaneously, winter changed to spring.

I couldn't see the moment when it happened,

but the dogs were happy eating grass.







TODAY, IT IS THE EQUINOX



Today, it is the equinox of spring,

and warm. Within the filtered shade of trees

still black and barren, snow has almost melted

completely, and the soggy leafy path

sticks to my boots. Because the sunlight warms

my body, stripped down to the waist, and warms

the body of the many birds returned,

we sing full throated. All Wisconsin hears.





SOFT, WET SNOW FELL



Soft, wet snow fell. The branches hung heavy.

And yesterday there'd been no snow, so seemed

that yesterday the spring had almost come.

As snow rests on the ground, the thoughts rest on

the ground, internal ground. All thoughts are dreamed

freely, are unconstrained. The snow exposed

to sunlight melts. Buds on the branches spring

for sunlight. Heat has fallen, heat bursts outward.



A SHEET OF WATER, MELTED SNOW



A sheet of water, melted snow outside

the door, seen through the window, opens up

another world, parallel to this

looking in. We stand frozen staring. When

we step in, first our feet begin to melt.

Soon there's nothing to recognize; then

we're recognized by everyone. Even

the wild squirrels come down from trees for us,

and ducks waddle across the lawn, hoping for bread.





THICK, THE SKIN OF HEAVEN'S GOD



Thick, the skin of heaven's god,

thick clouds today. No wind, and summer

thickest also, the leaves deep green

their August fullness of color.



And I wait down on earth beneath, wait

for profound experience:

a rich full blossomed summery field

of life. It is about time. Bloom.



PLAINLY





THE WAY OF FORESTS



Awakening, I listen to a crow.

He squawks about a squirrel cracking walnuts

and the spiders webbing on his branch.



Listening, I awake to sounds echo

between the leaves; they vibrate down the spine

and up, tingling leaves and ruffling feathers.



If I stay so still, the cities quake.





THE GRANITE MOUNTAIN



Over the granite mountain boulders flow

orange and red lichen; and splashes in

the rapids seem frozen, ever the same;

and the pine trees slip snow from heavy boughs

that play with slow low flying clouds. When clouds

open to warm blue light, the rapids sparkle,

so too the melting snow. The campfire burns

resiney pine, and chinese tea made from

aerated rapids tastes sweet and made in

mountain breezes tastes pungently clear. The breeze

blows scented with pine, columbine, lupin, elk shit,

moose shit, sheep shit, our bodies long unwashed,

or quickly washed in glacial water. The breeze

inhales deeply, then exhales slowly

with wondrous indications: "Look at the light

playing on that jagged cliff and on that peak.

No film captures such subtle majesty."

Also no word captures the majesty

of our appreciation. Our senses

are open wide (yet how much wider when

we climb that peak). Our mind are opened wide

because all memories of city life,

industrial clanking easily slides though.

We are not here as visitors, we are here.

We are the here! Together with the lichen,

we move, our wildness ever the same.





CRISP MOUNTAIN AIR



Crisp mountain air makes meditations crisp.

But this crisp air has blown a thousand miles

here to Wisconsin, down from Arctic glaciers.

The mind, it rises up beyond the grasp.





THE TREES SHAKE WILDLY



The trees shake wildly, southern winds

breathe fiercely. The leaves of May, so young and soft,

breathe fiercely, gulping, humidifying the breeze.

My life joins you, in the wind, in your breath.

My life no longer mine, set free to breathe.



The trees shake wildly, I shake in my roots.

My skin toughens, creases, braced hard against

what tears me loose. Already flowers fly

and cling to mud. I feel older, worn;

I feel wise, experienced, elastic,

and ply the fierceness of the breathing mountains,

oceans, jungles, animals, humans.



My own breath in this hallow has returned.

Everything in this hallow returns to itself.





INFINITY



Waiting, beside the flower garden

we sniffed a hundred roses, while a breeze

from the lake chilled. An afternoon inside

the shelter of an open windowed car

was intimately warm. There was no where

to go, and we weren't in any hurry.

I'd wanted to say the word "infinity"

but was afraid. The world at that moment

serenely moved on to the next moment.

But I refused to spiral down into

my heart of hearts, or open like a rose.





I WATCHED THE RAIN



I watched the rain drizzling slowly on

the river, I saw each drip. But on

the snow, I didn't notice dripping till

I finally saw the dry, brown skeletons

of autumn's blooming asters. Remember when

their purple petals penetrated within

the deep green shade. That was the time when, on

the mown lawn, you were laying, looking in,

and saw the purple of the aster in

the god with hot, perspiring, sparkling skin.





PICNIC POINT



Blown yellow leaves fall, rippling red shadows.

By the shore green moss on rocks catches these waves.

And ducks pull weeds. Once frost-bit, flies bite gently.

Loudly blowing through branches, northern breath

shakes bones. My body ripens, sweet fruit

for many creatures. Acorns press my foot,

oak leaves crackle and cushion. A marching band

blasts silence, but a calm water fills my head.





WHEN THE WIND PICKS UP



When the wind picks up, waves pick up; and hills

grow shorter, losing leaves. Soon, being ice,

the waves will stay, unmoving; and soon hills

will shine a bright white in the winter sky.





SNOW PILED ON THE ROCKS



Snow piled on the rocks; and from the edge

of rock, ice creeps into Yahara river.

Snow piled in the crook of branches must

confuse the birds which already started nesting.



Snow piled on top of crocuses in bloom,

white covering over yellow and lavender.

Snow piled over roads, pressed under by

heavy cars, trucks and feet that kick their way.



Snow piled, just snow. I don't have to make

it a metaphor for something foreign

to itself. The sunlit spring fields reign

over imagined whiteness with plain snow.





BRIGHT DARKNESS





BLACK WISDOM



I walked through a savannah of oak trees

twisted, old, and now wisely teaching what

the color of deep reddish brown would teach.

The self referred to point became a point

of reddish brown, the color of those leaves.

I was that color and was nothing else:

and all my passageways of vein and nerve

and dream became that color. When night came,

and I walked through it's dark, black became

all that I knew. The deep dark wisdom of

the color black protected me from harm,

and winter's whiteness couldn't even ripple

the shadows in my porous skin or frighten

the freedom of my memory which sinks

deeper, deeper into wisdom, black wisdom.





TO MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL



To make it beautiful, all dualisms

have to unite, in sexually ecstatic

embrace, inseparably: the form and contents

in love, compassionatly, joyously.

The form is sometime given you, the viewer;

the content looked at carefully expands

and branches out indefinately, far

into the emptiness of timefull space-

lessness, or vice a versa, less and full.

Amazed, I too infuse myself right in,

and magically transform, transcontent.

Deep penetration, a tree digging deeply

for water down below, and light above

without the limitation of division.







A DARKNESS CLEARLY SEEN



The sun, bright sun in sky that never

clouds, never dims, time frozen, time liberated

from change, decay and nakedness, the kind

of nakedness called sometimes emptiness,

sometimes wide openness. And sandy beaches

stretch, burning any foot that nakedly

would dare to step, would dare expose itself

without the shadow of an animal

or plant, without the shade of death's wrapping,

without, at least, a darkness clearly seen.





THE LUMINOSITY OF SHADOWS



The luminosity of shadows in

your world makes my eyes spin. Your eyes, though,

like jewels appear as if they'd captured time

and froze it to this instant, now. And you

bore, staring through my eyes to light my mind.





SAME RIVER



We've dreamt a dream about the same river.

We've woken to the same mid-May morning,

tittering between spring and summer, and

found we've already drowned, and now our frowns,

no longer pale, no longer swollen, transmit

clear luminosity with a smile

grown like light lotusing from some dark muck.





WHERE DARK AND BRIGHT CONTEND



Somewhere, where dark and bright contend against

each other, fearing a contamination

of greyness, fearing otherness, fearing

for personality, awareness wears.



NO, YES





NO, YES

1

The non-negating affirmation is

the source of all creation. She's the one

I've lost myself to. She's sky within, within.



The non-affirming negation is

the end of all destruction. She's nothing

I've found myself in. She's sky through and through.



Neither of these nor a third has ever

been spoken or heard. From the one and none

she's free. She's the sky that no eyes see.



2

No, the grey November sky is not

true grey or sky because what has a name

of color, number, thing, etcetera

are resting in our imagination.



Yes, the grey November sky freezes

the lakes and chases birds south and sends

us running from our imagination.



No and yes, resting and running are

extremes that ripe us from grey November sky,

creating sky for our imagination.



3

Golden autumn turns to winter whiteness,

But searching what's left of autumn, no cause

is found to witness. Has it left with the gold?







TWO THOUGHTS



Where is the meeting of two thoughts?

How can calm thoughts meet the anxious?

How can what is, meet with what is not?



Tired of anxiety, I marvel

when another anxious thought appears.

Who am I to think my thoughts are stillness?



Here sky is clouded and somewhere sun shines.

Some things are never doubted, so it seems.



Anxiety and peace, let go. Doubt and belief,

let go, let go. Let go and watch

the ways of sky. Watch and simply know.





READY FOR SURPRISE



Ever ready for surprise, I jump

into the moment and every other time.

The past and future instantly become

companions, cause-effect without between.

And then, too, space is not a here, a there,

or that unnameable between these two.

Space is not between abstracted twos.





I am surprised, I do not hope for life.

I think I could be dead, but am not dead.

Alive, I do not know what's not alive.





WE ARE WE



How can someone conceive the duality

of doer and doing? Done and done to? Can

the sky itself weave blue with what is blueing?



The distances between the self and other

have been insanely argued. Here, birthlessly,

we're awkward thinking openendedly.

In seeing what's between, we are we.





CRAZY WITH AGONY



Guilty of the fear of "no", I let

your harmful wishes go out to accomplish

other's pain. Letting go, I am insane.



To say "no" depends on saying "yes".

And to say neither depends on both.

Holding still within the roar of stars,

I hear your every wishes painful birth.



You're all perfection bloomed from love's flower,

so to this you are doomed never to die

till all has bloomed. But all has bloomed, just look.

Your friends are crazy with their agony.

Help them with eyes full round, like sun, like moon.



Letting go of all that's good, all evil

flies away. When summer leaves begin

to yellow, why grasp, wishing they would stay.

THINKING, THINKING





WHEN POINTING TO AND NAMING



When pointing to and naming inner space,

all of a sudden someone else owns it.

Where did I get ideas of an "it".

What's going on? It seems I don't fit in.





GREATER THAN



Greater than a god, than any god,

I am. But not the god you think I am.

Thinking has nothing over you and I.

Thinking moves far beneath. We live relaxed

and smash, distilling all thoughtways for our drink,

for our and us, for mine and me, for it and

what it is that an it can it to it.





NOT SEVERED



Without whitened clouds or silvered rain

of dimming age, the sky of clearest light

above brightens, and calm ocean below

mirrors without horizon. Then together,

clouds grow and waves ripple and thinking moves,

splashing up shapes and words; we swim with fish

through currents, feeling either cold or hot,

depending on the depth. Deep suffering

pervades not severed from enlightened bliss.

Not severed! Who am I to sever? How?





HOW FAR BACK



How far can you be found in memories?

Find the one the beginning sees, and throw

it to the breeze, let it fly away

as free as sun through summer leaves. I know

where all thought shines supremely nought, and where

so many thoughts rot in the manured history.



Remember the cool sheen while hallucinating,

and flash a warm hand before that sober thing.

Memories, that's all we have, all we

can hold and call our very own being.



HOP IN SEARCH



A squirrel hops the trees in search of nuts.

I hop from thought to thought in search of mind.

I bite this thought and that, unsatisfied.





BESIDE THE RIVER



Beside the river, wild grasses, drying

from a long winter, rustle in the thawing wind.

The sky without a cloud seems motionless.

I find a piece of straw caught in my hair,

and slide my fingers up and down its length,

and bend it, sculpting it into zig-zags.

Aquinas bountifully harvested

some million concepts, then he called them straw.



May I be half as profound while I judge

my own thoughts, sitting here beside the river.





THINKING, THINKING



Thinking, thinking so much about silence

I don't know silence, all I know are thoughts;

but when the thinker leaves the room, I hear

the door close, and don't think about the door.



Between wood and my ears, the violin's music.

Between paint and my eyes, the paintings art.

The beauty, does it float between, joining

all things with me? Or is it somewhere else?



Silence and darkness, where do they exist?

Beyond all things? Behind myself? I squint

my eyes and strain my ears, but find nothing.



I hear a baby bubble subtle rhythms

as far from nonsense as the wind in trees;

as far from measured brain waves, meditation.



Most of the time I spend listening,

not speaking. Soon I hope I'll do neither

or, at least, do both at the same time.

Even now while I listen, your words roll

out from my mouth, given for your own ears.





SILENT SPEECH



While he speaks, even air hides in the shadows.

Soon nothingness, no sound because no air

to transmit though. Just silent nothingness.

But he stands in silence on the verge

of sound transforming into transparent light.



Words, however sung, in the end, fall flat,

but like fertile soil when thawed by warmth,

spring a forest full of buzz and babble.

All these are echoes of the sunlight's warmth,

both your words and mine. Don't worship words,

silence eats them as soon as silence wakes.

Words live only in dreams, the forest shadows.



Aspiring to love, offer this special silence,

with open mouth, with open throat, offer

this openly. Then ravenously eat your words

before they're spoken, feasting with all others.

What are things if not just food we sense,

and words if not just food we offer ears,

and thought if not just food for memory?





WITH GROWING AGE



With growing age, the want, the hope to change.

What's wrong no longer's sung; instead a church

of tarnished silver spires through the sky,

and silences the burning throng of thoughts

desiring change. It seems deciding what

and how to change, changes, has changed too often,

and now are startled, stunned to stagnant silence.

I can't continue toward the visionary.

The songs have mere nostalgic meaning; that

is all, a very shallow meandering

of days that seem like moments.

Stop! I scream

into a super multiamped microphone.

Exhaust all age! Deny experience!

Then singing will take charge of change.



LONG GAZING





MEDITATE

on my 39th birthday



Now quickly learn to meditate in light

brighter than a candle, in the sunlight

while the full moon is bright on the horizon,

the horizon that is lost in morning mist,

where splashing ocean meets a blue, blue sky.

Meditate while the morning star,

Shakti, Quezocoatl, Venus, Buddha,

shines, shines not palpitating, not hesitating,

not shaded by a cloth, shines cleaned by sweat,

luscious in summer's heat, clean as the wind.

And as the wind, flow enlivening the dull,

liquefying the hardnesses in mind.

And flower fragrantly full. And flash.





IF WE ARE QUIET



If we are quiet there is not a pulse

or spark of nerve we can not feel flash.

No light escapes, losing itself in night.

I heard the autumn leaves in the north wind;

I heard them crackle when they broke or bent.

The night outside was dark, but stars inside

exploded, galaxies spun all around.





LONG GAZING



Long gazing at a white wall, it became

a dazzling grey during a snowy autumn's,

or was it a winter's, day. The morning sunlight

slide from wall to door and hid all thought

of working for whatever, or something more.







CONTEMPLATING HATE



When sitting on a river rock, just size

enough for myself and some biting flies,

I contemplated hate with focus on

my swatting hand, my killing hand.

Around the rock, the clear, dark river mirrored

sky piercing cedar and carried cedar scent.

The river itself mumbled over red

lichened rocks, on toward the setting sun.

When my hate blazed, I swatted wildly

and splashed red drops, each drop reflecting sun,

to chase the flies and cool their stinging bites.





SITTING



Sitting with crossed legs in bright spring sunlight,

sitting as long as a gopher sits

above his hole, I calmly wait, then stand

shirtless and walk barefoot on tender grass

where honeysuckle petals fall. Then kick

dust clouding this vision. Beneath my feet,

the earth is wide and flat; beneath my feet,

the earth is springing grass and honeysuckle.

I stand erect. I feel energy from earth rise up

my body itching the top of my skull.

I feel energy from earth rise up

my longest hair, and through it's pointed tip.

The energy leaves, sailing in a cloud.





WHAT IS MINDFULNESS



What is mindfulness, when all I think

is a distraction that continually

attacks from a dulling imagination?

When there's not love and hate, and when the net

of interweaving thought unravels, then all marvels

like the glisten in the rainbowed dew

which refracts, reflects and re-evaporates.

FOR ALL





GOOD FRIEND



To be beside a good friend goads me out

of myself into the open, the possibility

of being a good friend beside all things.

A cold breeze on a bright midsummer day

through buzzing prairie grass, doesn't frighten

the mosquitos or the flies. They are still hungry

for blood or skin. I'm in the open field,

I am the field, just the same as they are.

It isn't logical to think that only

tall grass spread vastly under still vaster sky

defines a field. The breeze, it too is sentient,

a cold that's hungry for the warmth. The breeze

does not obscure, but reveals me, opening

a field of possible experience.





FOR ALL



1

I know, I realize that taming thought

will open mind, my mind and let all other,

all other minds, dissolve in freedom. Call

it love, the mutual melting into

wholeness. When each in each has reached the peak

of perfect harmony, at this time, moments

will stretch as far as farness can be stabbed;

and fully stretched eternity will shrink

down to the size of a small grain, a bit

of food. And then this food will be dispersed

and planted as a crop for all to live.



2

For your sake, you, all others, I remove

myself, to give you space, wide open space,

not space in any way conceivable,

but universes in which obstructions feel

as hard as rainbows and as clear as thought,

your own most personally intense thought.



Going down deeply to the flowers root,

the dark, and from there pushing for the sake

of bees and gardeners and butterflies,

just for the sake of life, one's own sensation,

one's own appreciation of breathing

drinking, thinking, singing, especially

singing, just letting go of everything,

all pain and joy. And then we start to grow,

both blossoming and rooting, totally

entangling ourselves with other selves.



3

"All for your sake", I've said it always late,

too late; I wish it were an impulse prior,

producing word and vision.

I've worried about

you, who personify all living cells.

I've worshipped, too, your openness to grow,

expanding without pretense of control.

Today is mid-September 'ninety seven;

all heaven melted down in summer's heat

and blossomed purple phlox and golden rod.

It's for the sake of these I wash away

my self within my self, those odd words joined

imaginatively in the purest mud.

It's for whatever happens that I do

not want to miss, it's tenderness. I sit

and watch a golden wave rise up,

a silver wave relax, and black shadows

slither into the light. Nobody knows

what to believe or speculate. We're free.



4

When submerging self into the other,

then arises inner sweetness, peace,

and outer spiciness, so many gestures

projecting every possible expression.

Expressing with one word, I say love,

not I love, only love. Love merges with

the open, and is as far from nothingness

as from expressing with lips tightly pressed.

When the other submerges into us,

then arises inner galactic explosion, fire,

and outer oneness, a universe alone.

Wisdom opens itself from opening itself.





PERFECT PERSON



Praise to all wise beings with bright eyes

who don't see anyone or anything.



Praise to all stupid beings who see clearly

all whirling cells, all writhing thought of praise.



Praise to all those beings who are free

of all this wisdom or stupidity;

and praise to all those beings now enslaved.



The perfect person was discovered each

time I relaxed. And each thing when looked at,

began to glow. And each thing I saw seemed to know

that I was looking, also loved my looking.

For each thing loved attention; when attended,

began attending. I watched. I am watched.



For a weak body to feed strength, what love.

For it to house a million germs, what love.

For it to be dust blowing in the wind,

to weigh dark in a cloud, to pile up

a mountain, to explode in stars, what love.





FULLY GREEN



With summer fully green, and many colored,

thick with so many flowers, rainbows caught

in crumbled rock, the worm composted soil,

ripe summer words I sing up to the sky,

beyond the reach of rainbows which I see

redoubled, arching over arch, as countless

as the night's haloed stars, the godly eyes

of beings burning fierce with great compassion.





FROST THE SCORCHED



To ever feel warm enough, never

too hot, never too cold, never an ache

for something else, for anything, not just

a change of temperature, for any change.

To ever feel adolescent health,

surprised when hearing complaints of suffering;

in wonder, wide eyed, wide armed, wide lipped and

wide, open-hearted, hearing hellish stories.

To ever want to grow up strong, to ever help,

to burn, warming the cold, to frost the scorched.





DESIRE FOR



So many people pained from knives of hate

that kill their desire for peace. So many dogs

tied up and waiting for their desired human friend.

So many rocks split open to the sun,

with microbes shrinking from desire to live.



The root of my desire retracts, inflaming

the sky. My head no longer thinks. All thought

turns to food for desire, desire for desire.





THE ONE PAIN



In the heated night of words that bite like bugs

abundant after rain, I do not wish

for winter quiet, but that all bitten bodies

be eased from pain, knowing all seasons as one,

knowing the one pain present in all seasons.



CONTENTMENT



I, myself, with myself am now content.

I can not find or know myself because

I'm totally gone, empty; hopelessly

I'm stunned. I know the world aches in my stiff back,

in ancient oaks, in sunburnt grass and most

in that Rwandan child who, in war,

embodies all imagined aches, who is

our warring, dirtied planet's sign, who is

our father, mother, our realized one, who is,

who has come now to go with us, to stun us.

In contradiction can we be content?

So I contentedly spit on contentment.





THE SYSTEM





SYSTEM OBLITERATION



1

Why have the religions taken charge

of guarding, even from themselves, the seed

of every conceived systems obliteration?

Taking urgently the love of all,

there is no time to fear or to complain

in any limited ritualized refrain.

This urgency of boundless love, this need

obliterates any speculation;

this urgency of no inherency

instantly reveals eternity.



2

Religion imprisons inside, science, outside

the magic circle, the atomic center which

when focused on ignites the eyes with joy,

believing frozen forces do exist.



The inner truth devours sea, trees and sky,

vomiting worlds gloriously hypothetic.

The outer truth devours sea, trees and sky,

shitting out gods increasingly atomic.



Released, the bubble, a ball of colored light,

in dark water floats up and vanishes.

The in and out is gone, always has been.

I am one whose life spans a bubbles burst.



3

All of the gods impermanently shine

for one long moment, then rot in the slime

of the imagination. All diamonds

crumble slower than a flower dims,

obviously. And the gods are counting time.





4

I leave the caves of darkly painted worlds

with mutating gods, and walk a bright

snow covered mountain, vanishing into clouds.

When snow blows across my eyes, I brush

it aside, and the night is one blaze of starlight.



5

Passing from everyday physical

routines, passing into mythic realms

where mythic bodies hold artistic visions,

which I believed more real. I've never been

so scared, and never been so happy, as in

these dreams. And passing into wakefulness

in dreamless sleep, there's no one to hold vision;

but there is holding, naked, pure holding,

which I believed least real, then the most.

I've ever been so blissful there, no where.





MAKE AN IDOL



1

Make an idol of experience,

worship in a wild dancing trance.

There I am the child, there the boy,

there the young man, there the old, old man,

there I am spirit, catch me if you can.



2

It has been said a trillion times before,

it has been said before the first microbe

swam a watery slime or crystal creaked,

growing from the ceiling of a warming cave.



3

Ducks swim slowly in circles. They must be cold.

And I stand huddled in a heavy coat.

Relaxing without comment, I'm deluded.

And always finding ways to make the world

conform to old thoughts, I must be deluded.

And always finding ways of blinding, new

exotic ways, I am exotically deluded.



Shivering, shaking I'm shot into summer.

When dying, memories within the bone,

muscle and fat, within the creases of the palm,

within the charges of the brain, all fade,

all subtle dualisms fade, dissolve.

Nothing holds, nothing, but then something

desires again to hold, and I'm deluded.



The harmony between an act and lack

of choice, the pure seeing, pure loving, the freedom

of deep faith without wavering doubt, leaves

no time or space in which to be deluded.



4

Ever ready for surprise, I jump into

the moment and all time. The past and future

become instantly a companion, love

itself, so much itself, complete and pure.

And then, too, space is not a here, a there,

or that unnameable between these two,

or in-between all twos, that dream abstracted.





TO FEEL



To feel, not just with the body's senses

and memory, but with a striking symbol: art!

And not just art, but with the subtle, with

distrust for both the sense and symbol, with

the heart! Gone, the three dimensions sensed;

and gone, the two dimensions pointed to with

the breath; and gone the single dimension,

the heart, the point in inexpressible sleep,

our empty changeless, lightening flash of self;

and this too goes, goes, goes when we open up

our small black pointed eyes to all of space.





With concentrated connotations, art

sears, setting flame to stars. All radiance

absorbs all other radiance, so light

within our knowing knows. This is a truth

that is not true from any judging point.

No point is bright enough. Breaking the egg

of luminescence opens up darkness

and empties into all encompassing space.

This has been said by friends and enemies,

said again and again, but different each time.





TO STAB A SNOWFLAKE



1

To stab a snowflakes center, stab before

it melts, requires equal delicacy.



2

Under the two edged knife of life and death,

of being and non-being, I chanted

for you. I yearned for you and yearned for you

to yearn for me. Can chanted yearnings stab

enough, like one bright snowflake stabs enough

when gliding through blue sky, it cuts one flake,

then cuts another flake, as gems are cut.

Or do they melt too easily? I was

a snow man shivering tearfully in the heat,

with words glistening from a pebbled grin.

There was an inner glisten, too, lite by

the inner heat of yearning. And into

this inner space all frozen patterns melted.



3

I chanted toward the sky and smeared my words

on clean white paper to be hid away

in boxes. Stabbing the sky with my tongue

or stabbing paper with a pen, I knew

that I was dying. In the time of one,

or one plus countless moments, I'll be dust

gathering in rain clouds or feeding trees.

These, rather these, than gathering on the white,

dark smoothness of some paper in a box.



RATHER



Rather to do nothing, that is, all things,

than to create a new exotic pain.

All that I rant about is sex, the union

of multitudes, of blacks and whites and grays.

Where could I possibly construct a line

between or point of contact. Where do nothing?





RESPECTFUL SACRIFICE



People and principles beg for respectful

sacrifice. What hasn't had its martyrs?

I'd die for life and nothing less! I didn't

consider myself, other selves or things

as objects in an ordered quality

(good, better, best, bad or worst),

but as subjects in chaotic quantity.

When pictures of people and principles

had been unframed, then even dirty walls

were masterpieces arisen naturally.



When in the black night sky, framed in black and

spot-lighted by the stars, all life arose.

I, then, respectfully had sacrificed

myself, and was reborn in quantity.





I AM NO WARRIOR



I am no warrior, I have nothing to fight for:

no books, not even words enclosed and passed on

through human memory. My people,

they are the seas and dogs and grass. My people,

they tell me how they feel. If they're afraid

of enemies, of those who do not see

their consciousness, of those who do not see,

then I see with them, with their every sense.

I do not fight but join with them in love,

increasing natural strength. And then the ocean

storms against polluting cities, and

the dogs rule urban nights, and grasses break

the pavement. I've everything to fight for.





BUCCANEER



Wandering oceans of civilization and

stealing what can be stolen, a buccaneer

of words, of memories, of symbols and

of anything that's treasured in the mind.

This is my craft. Ashore, within my home,

my shell of plastic, glass, aluminum,

I rest marooned and catalogue those goods

which I had stolen. I put them in a box

and call this box a poem. Here listen, here

for you I give, for you I've placed my life

in danger, stealing. I, if I alone

lived at this edge, this beach and watched the waves

of books, movies, recordings, computers

flash colors and designs, I would get bored.

My gaze would drift out to that white horizon

where effervescent haze joins sky and sea,

where dream joins wilderness and civilization,

that in-between, not clear and not opaque.

And then, my gaze would cease to be my gaze,

then nothing would by mine, or anyone's.

No stealing and no giving would be mine,

or yours, and all would be just as it is,

belonging equally to each of us.





HARNESSING



I'm proudly harnessing wildest nature,

building a sand castle on the beach.

Reaching out after the receding tide,

my hands chafe, scraping, pushing faster than

designing thoughts. But then I pause and stare

at one grain sticking to my finger tip.

With thoughts harnessed, the beach is proud of castles.







WHERE DOGS HAD PISSED



Although the lake remains frozen, spring moves

in the southern wind and in the creak of oaks

and in the howls of dogs. I howl too,

and yearn to hear an echo from the far shore,

but echoes soak into the soft thawing snow.

I curse the quiet, hoping to hurry spring.

But when I piss where dogs had pissed, a warm

steam rises.

I am a dog, I am the piss,

and especially, I am the barren oak

who, thinking spring had come, stretches roots

for that hallucinogenic drop of nectar,

water, piss.

I am whatever I am

imagining, and am everything imagining.





RIDING



Riding the crest of inspiration, light

shines in a liquid form. And when I sip,

my body grows transparently. Soon all

seen through me glows. And I see through myself.





SOMEHOW I WANT TO WRITE



Somehow I want to write while hearing waves

in rhythm against the sandy or rocky land,

and want to see those waves, the alternating

crest and tough. Music of sight and sound.



MUSIC





MUSIC



1

With flute and sax, he blew me down into

personal intricacies, melting paths

of brilliant colors and geometries;

and intimate bodies, umbilicated

mother, father, brother, playfriends, lovers.

We, right then, with ears attuned his way,

elongated, blurring down, down, down into

personal hells (aren't hells so much mine),

personal heavens (heaven so much everyones),

and the dark brightness, bright darkness,

the waver between ecstasy and void,

the out of head and heart, the depth within

the deepest place. Then suddenly, as if

nothing happened, the universe pulsed with

his, his band, the bar, our blood, and I

was there as I am here, listening.



2

The universe in harmony, the music

of trying and failing so hard, the two

together and embraced and in deep love.

Experiencing tears our ears; we give

our ears to those defying music, all

kinds of amazing music, more and more

revealed as the rhythms of trying

to stick to steady off-beat moves, trying

to lose ourselves in a beat, trying

then losing, and then finding the music.



3

Hear rocks, hear winds, hear waves, hear animal music,

hear OM. Then hear so clearly every groan

of the old, sick and dying, the one

I am and everyone is if we listen

in laser guided wars, factories, temples,

bus stations, hospitals, our very own homes.

Then hear A, a drenching, soaking rainfall,

and the ever present light of stars,

and the electron trailed map of thought,

and the fresh unocculted, open

unpreoccupied living ear. Hear HUNG.





SO WHAT!



Each thing changes each other thing. So what!

What is remaining of that geometric

sculpture, that snow flake admired, remembered

now? Nothing but that at that time I was,

I was so agonized by thoughts of death.

Coltrane, Beethoven, Lennon, where are you?

Where is your music? Angels do they echo

your refrains, and do they strain their ears

to listen, not to rhythm or harmony,

but to the music? And I know silence.

I know not information, knowledge, wisdom

nor enlightenment, but I well know

each thing changes each other thing, I know

the music. Yes! So what, so what, so what.





SO NEAR



On moonless, cloudless nights, the stars shine brightest.

And on a journey like the stars, so bound

by smoke and fire, by the twinkling on

and off, I view the sky, an eyeless self;

I view the sky of wish fulfilling jewels.

And on and off the ground I step, shuffling

in rhythm with my breath and beating heart.

Behind the rhythm what? Behind the stars

what is obscured? I ask and ask and ask.

This is the laziest of tasks. That's how

a practical opinion curses. Now

I have another whim. To hear the sky,

to listen as if it was near, so near.

HEAR



On warm spring nights I hear the shoots pushing

up through the dry brown autumn leaves, I hear

leaves move, and after rain, I hear the worms.





CONSIDER CLOUDS



We can't consider clouds too much a friend

or we'll be lonely for hard flesh to press

against. If lost in clouds, listen to wind

to lead back down. The music of the mountains

that harmonize, pressing sound to skies,

pressing open for nothingnesss to fall

from anywhere out there, gliding down

from universes not detected by all

our normal human senses, senses that

refuse a labeling, a category

that is the glowing cloudless person,

someone more than an image, someone we

discover without our imagining,

someone who is similar to who we've known

before, compared in parallel, but shown

as variation on a cloudy theme.





OF TIME AND SPACE



Knowledge of time and space? So much to know

it's easy just to lay down, laugh, then sleep,

forgetting that there was a question. No,

it does determine how we wake, if sleep

is just suspension as it often seems.

Wake up with the same thoughts, I slept with.

Knowledge what's that? Another question, one

more difficult unless you're cute and sad with

ennui, the I-don't-care, I'm-half-asleep,

a half-human. Not to know a thing

about even myself, how can I care

about the rhythms of a cloud in sky?

NUMBERS





UNCOUNTABLE LEAVES



I woke in darkness counting. Money, debts,

folded my face into well handled lines.

I sat up like a public statue, stone.

I should have shed blankets, but instead

I crumbled, losing hair and skin and mineral.

I opened up a window to a field

of autumn yellowed grass, a granite boulder

and fluttering, uncountable leaves.





SUNLIGHT



Anxious for the woods, I shove through traffic.

Then looking to the open sky, I glimpse

one falling leaf, as yellow as the sun,

and learn a slower, much more even pace.



Suddenly, blowing through a loosened mind,

bright leaves spontaneously somersault

in a burst of spontaneous sunlight.





DOMINION



Late on a humid morning the sun sparkled

on leaves. For the sake of everything,

I'll be without my own dominion.

Do I own the sun or the leaves? Can I

lose this dominion? A million leaves

in the light are a million greens competing.





THE LINE BETWEEN



A calm river reflects deep blue sky.

Yellowing leaves drift equally to all places.

The autumn leaves pattern rocks. Then patterns change.

I see rocks, arranged by gravity.

A vee of geese shadows, changing patterns.



A drop ripples calm water, a perfect circle.

The ripples enter in and out from thought.

Round eyes see so clearly. A perfect circle,

a perfect art reflects round, blinking eyes.



Inside is the circle; outside, the circle;

and invisible, the line between.





COUNTING TIME



All of the gods impermanently shine

for one long moment, then rot in the slime

of the imagination. All crystal gems

will crumble slower than a flower dims.

All of the gods, this way, are counting time.





PLAYING



The more impermanent the work, the more

it's serious. I play with children in

the sand, creating architectures from

luminous grains, each grain a little sun.

We work with undistracted seriousness.

And of us children playing by the lake,

some age quickly, some, with smiles, slowly;

and some laugh, reversing all that flows,

and leave behind a hollow light filled body;

and some lay playing dead, and some play killer;

and some feel played with by, and some play with

their bodies death.

But all the children were beautiful

before a sperm convulsed with egg, and will

be beautiful after they harden with the sand.

And some, they see what now is brightly seeing.





LOOKING INTO



Looking into myself, limitless space surprises

and stuns. All stars inside could not be counted,

but stars could be divided into sets

for a prognostic knowledge. Stars, if let

alone, just to be known directly, free

from artifice, freely wild without regret,

horrifies the laws of happiness,

the laws of probable solutions, bets.

I've loved my laws, my lines and circles, so neat.

I've loved and yet have known that they were nothing,

nothing, nothing more than momentary means

of pleasure, not permanent dreams of heavenly hope

in egotistic gods. So who am I

to be more bold than one who views a star?

So who am I to be more bold than one

who, limitless in space, remembers all

the light of love when sperm met egg and birthed

a day that had divided star from star?





THE SEERS



The seers, they knew the secret knowledge.

They watched the stars, and watching saw the place

a star would set behind, and knowing

this, they knew time, and they defined what time

was, past and future sacred time, what time

to plant and harvest, and they knew what time

could do if we surrendered to duration,

starring long into ourselves, discovering

what they already knew. It hides from time.





NUMBERS



Frustrated with equations, I daydreamed

of zero, and heroically zero

destroyed frustrations, all frustrations. But

zero became a prison, so began

to count one at the end of countless zeros.

The end, though, wasn't in this lifetime, but

in an imaginary one.

My life

could be lived by an adding computer

if cramming it and then uncramming it

with ever greater speed fulfills my life.

This greed for speed twists up my nerves like wire

and wrinkles up my face like rotting plastic.





TEMPLE OF MIRRORS

Inside a temple of geometric mirrors

the god remains far, far away. And only

by following a geometric knot

a mobious path, do we come near, so near.

The far god is pure otherness, and only

when we too are other, other than

we've thought, do we come near, so near ourselves.





A ONE NEEDS MANY



A one needs many to define itself,

or one needs none. The none and many join

as one when many is viewed webbed together,

obliterating each distinction. On

the other hand, the hand stretches out and begging,

please, oh please, love me, this me right here

uniquely feeling pain that knows no bounds

imposed by thoughts. This is the hand of god.



THE TASTE



Some curl their tongue around the single taste.

Can the whole salty ocean's taste be held?

Some, they familiarize themselves with the vast

unbound mandala circle. And some, they

so realize dimension in the sky.





SPACE



In innerspace as in outerspace, all

floats weightlessly, floats freely as a leaf

loosened in autumn wind. When deeper, broader

awareness moves, a thought moves like a speck

of dust or a last star in pre-dawn light

or dew on a grass blade. Then up and down

means nothing, all is space within a space.





THE SKY IS NEAR



In innocence, I'm free in boundlessness

Who says the universe is bound? I've found

that I'm not anywhere defined.

I'm not a word of any language, not within

the neural net, and not a traveler

through time. The past, present, future lived as

relationships of hope and of regret.



In innocence, I see clouds in clarity.

Clouds, where do they go? The sky is why

I live, with little fear. The sky is near.





THE EDGE



The edge of where we rest isn't far

from where the atmosphere bleeds into space,

bleeds known into unknown, the unexplored

inner where unconditioned means a word

can not explain. Because this was already

said, and because this was just pointed to,

what further might be said could not conceive,

that is, could not be gathered on this side

of what we've named the edge. The edge rest here.





MORE AND MORE



More and more love moves aimlessly. The mind

can not be aimed at, mind can not be found.

I can't say I love this or that, can't say

this more, that less. Sometimes I draw a circle,

in thought, and say here is the center from

which I am loving. Sometimes I do this,

but this is limiting, a less and less.





OUT OF MYSELF



I was out of myself! out of what

I'd ever thought was inside! out of what

is now-a-days the unchanging, the DNA!



I was ferocious, hungry for a vision

that no star could limit, that no object

could imprison in sensual reason.

No, I was not human, was not limited.



I sat, walked, slept outside the circular,

the group with their set ways. I was alone

and smiled half a smile, the kind pretending

I have never been inside. But inside I am.

I've arrived, a human in all appearances.





LEAP OUT OF HUMANNESS



I dive with humanness I know and sink.

I sink behind the Mother's ripened breasts.

I sink beneath the dancing sperm and egg.

I sink deeply into unknown beingness,

then leap out like a fish, and splash the world.

DIGITAL WARMTH





COMPLAINING WHAT IS



Complaining what is simple is too hard,

I want something more complicated like clothes

with buttons, zippers, bows. Pure nakedness

is plain old painful northern breezes on

the crotch, rough rocks scratching the butt, and someone

might laugh. Let me hide under what is worn

traditionally with modern modifications.

Let me hide far away from what I am

exposed to light, to eyes of penetrating

light, light so fierce, it could be labeled some

kind of lightening that aims to put me down,

to bury me, as lightening aims toward ground.

Let me hide under dirt, I'll put some dust,

some ashes from cremations over me.

I'll glue it with my perspiration, with

my piss and spit and shit and semen,

or rotting vegetation, plastic or

whatever science can soon engineer.

I make it all so complicated, but naked,

that's simple, all I have to do is stop

believing what some other people think.





IT SEEMS THAT NOTHING SCANDALIZES



It seems that nothing scandalizes now

-a-days, we're dazed by TV, dazed by songs.

We've seen it all, we've heard it all, it all.

How can you even draw attention to

a throbbing muscle, throbbing for the hated,

the enemy, the ugly, the revolting.

Your energy is overloading, soon,

soon, soon, make room, open up wider, wider.

Shh, listen to the water, do you hear

a distant slapping. Oars, a duck, a fish?

Forget it, it's just another scandal, one

you'll never even read about the last

refuge for tediousness. What can't I love.





WHAT CHANNEL IS IT ON



Instead of from the heart, only from stores,

Instead of fighting my hate, only others,

Instead of flesh, only a digital projection.

Where is the passion? What channel is it on?





THE HUMAN INTERFACE



The human interface's functionality

is vastly upgraded by interactive

potentialities within the arch-

etectual design, he said, and then dynamically

down loaded code, that, though it didn't crash

my browser, overheated my processor.

I prayed my server would save this humble

client who is measured only in megahertz.





DETAILED DATA STREAMS

Detailed data streams can't be controlled;

a bug slips in, no matter how well coded.

Against the wall of skin, how hard the heart

tries holding year within a year of cold

hard facts, the history of experience.

Right now, even right now, it slips, the bug

of forgetfulness. And only ripples on waves

spread outward in the stream of sunset gold.





IN THIS, MISINFORMATION AGE



In this, misinformation age of a

bright blinking internetted televised

vision of capital investment,

the truth will make you rich, and riches tell

the truth because persuasion's power sells

whatever you will want, will want, will want.

To hell with information, I've enough.

As poet, I want metaphor. Just for

the fun of it, the depth of it. Tidbits

of bites just dust the mind, but metaphor

hooks at the core. That is the reason,

that orders blissfully all the things of body

into a whole, a hole my humanity

can love, can love, can love, not wanting, not

because, as if by inspiration,

I transform into money from writing.





THERE IS NO MUSIC



There is no music that's not digitalized,

not synthesized. In modem madness,

no one is making sweetness, only plastic

productions, gelatin suspensions, ooze

that's frozen. Zen, he said, means sitting still,

rock like, dead like. And I said, yes, pretend

you're at your end, you're dead. Let this flow down

from being just a thought in head, let feet

know it. And then get up and dance to music

completely artificial, the pleasure of

the fake, the pleasure that's eternally weak.

MAGIC





PLAY BALL



The boys across the street play ball. The trees

toss leaves, their own body, into the wind.

The sky shines clear and dry. A row of clouds,

tinged purple, guard the western meeting of

the sky and earth. All minds like balls inside,

completely focus on the ball that flies.

The playing ball catches the light, all of

the light. The light catches my eyes. I catch,

depending on the interlace of light.





PLAIN GRAY STONE



There never had been a color more intense

than those red oaks beneath October sky.

I reached into the lake and picked out a

plain greyish stone, and on a whim declared

it the all-wish-fulfilling stone, the Mani;

then on another whim declared it dirt,

a hardened dirt, and flicked it with a finger.

When plopping, everyone who had a wish

was satisfied and the oak dropped blue leaves.





MERGE



A hawk emerges, gliding from a cloud.

The cloud is still. The hawk is still, not flapping.

But sky is lifting from my lungs and frosting

the window glass. I turn away, blinded,

but do not turn away from dream, I merge.









TOO MUCH FOR US



Too much, too much, it is too much for us

to wipe the sky with clouds, to calm the ocean

with wind, to still the mind with analysis.

When we were at the furthest star, we were

inside the smallest cell.

Returning home

at red dusk, we stop talking and share the silence.

All is a joke, we laugh aloud and falling

leaves round us crowd. No more to say, we read

old books, and molding leaves beneath us talk.





WISHING



The mountains wish they were young hot volcanoes;

the valleys wish a marsh to pour a river.

Consoled, they vibrate with my imaginings.



I change the shouting neighbors to singing children.

I wish quiet! Then listen to my breath,

a mountain river tumbling over lips.





ALLS FROM THE SKY



Aware of magically manifesting clouds,

they do not dim, they do not distract awareness,

the watching clarity. The open sky

shone golden all the afternoon, and now

shines purple-black, the color of your eyes,

the color of the center of your eyes,

your naked eyes. And purple-black is the color

of the lake we sit beside, watching the shadows

of waves that shimmer stones. We are aware

that everything we see falls from the sky.





RAIN DRIPS

Rain drips from black bare branches into puddles,

rain drips creating rings with centers calm,

a calm reflecting calm white sky. A calm

mind fills with ripples and all thoughts drip in sky.



Water drops like jewels drip slowly down

the face, the neck, the chest, the loin, the feet.

And nakedness becomes adorned with rainbows.



Rainbowed dots travel in all directions

through veins, and explode into music, into paint,

and expand into devil, into saint.



That dry old shit on stone in falling rain

is a prayerful poem in eyes washed clean.





EACH OTHER'S MOTHER



We quench each other's passion with our kisses.

We quench each other's longing with our tears.

We shine each other's body with our sweat.

We fertilize each other's farms with our piss.

And we pretend we were each other's mother

holding very close and feeding our milk.





TO REALLY CHOP WOOD WELL



To really chop wood well is difficult,

as difficult as ending all the sorrow

in all the worlds. Usually when I

am chopping, I am thinking how I'll be

warmed by a fire. Distraction warms

only me, while yet the world sorrows. Wood rots

in pain. To really live's as difficult

as to transform chopped wood into a violin

and to perform a music in which to lose

my self, in which to lose all sorrow, all.



MYTHS





BEER BY THE RIVER



The river of time becomes a great burp

told while drinking beer within her moments,

while watching rhythmic waves, and rhythmic thoughts,

repeating thoughts that slur over themselves,

that alternate a mantra with a curse.

Om Mani Peme Hum Damn Damn It Om Mani.

All narrative slides down, becomes a grunt

in the sound and silence of slurping beer.

And then attention narrows to a point,

a crest of wave that's on the verge of whiteness;

and then attention widens to moonlight,

sparkling blue, ever changing patterns.

And then attention to the river, a river

plain and simple and completely beer.





THE MYTHS OF CONSCIOUSNESS



The many myths of consciousness are worshiped

with stimulating drugs and rituals

and psycho therapeutic entertainments.



The many myths of unconsciousness are worshiped

with depressing drugs and aimless beliefs

in black, emptier than dreamless sleep.



Between these myths we swing from cold to warmth,

from darkest sleep to brightest wakening.



Of shadows, there is much that we can say;

but of light, words lose meaning and only sighs,

that may become a prayer or mantra,

come close to meaning anything at all.







I MAKE BELIEVE



To give up everything, but one or two?

To live with joyful meagerness, then die?

The one, called hope, the two, the lucky hoper?

Or instead, to die before one thing is?



If dead, the confidence by which I count

will be loosened from my hold. Am I

not to worship every number known?

Are idols weird? I bow to farts. I groan

considering blind faith in computation.

I lower myself below zero to love

what's high, and everything is higher. I make

believe I am at peace and am a self.





ALL BOILED DOWN



All boiled down, no essence has remained.

We're stunned and stare, alert to cosmic lies.

We can not even ask, "where has it gone?

Where is the residue?" And so there is

no question, "what is it?"

                                  We boiled

with all the passion of both the myths,

of art and science. And we gambled all,

our youth, our money, friends and family;

we even staked our sanity. So now,

alert with all of the intelligence

of leaves in sunlight, we just move aware.





WHY CALL IT STREAMING



Why call it streaming consciousness, when sometimes

the waves seem to go up and down, without

direction, and seem sometimes glasslike stillness,

without horizon. High in consciousness,

looking down on the landscape, I don't see

a timescape moving this way or that way.



All of our myths collapse. We have no story.

No path. Even the river doesn't seem

a river; waves in golden summer sunset

don't move directed left or right. I sit

with out direction, all intention airy.





LOW





HOW HUMBLE, HOW LOW



How humble can I be, how low can I

throw myself down. I search for bottomless

black holes, so deep and dark that every sense

is sucked in. Light won't radiate, and sound

won't echo, and wall or floor go untouched, and tongue

and nose suspend all movement, and my thoughts

of past or future possibilities

cease, stunned within the awesomeness of what

is happening. This is the humblest

way I can be. How I can be? I can.





I LISTENED TO THE VOICE



I listened to the voice, my own I think,

that speaks in dream with surprising, lulling motion.

This seems to be the deepest, truest voice.

This seems to be a voice, but no sound's heard,

except by me in dream. What am I talking

about? Am I by saying "truest" de-

nigrating you, what you might say, whomever.





MY PAIN



My pain! My pain! It won't be told. If told,

instantly your ears would burst.

Diseased, murdered, dream it, I've been cursed.



Troubled because I love my likes and dislikes.

Troubled because I love them skeptically.

Troubled I see I am and soon forget all else.



Having written many words about my troubles

my ears and mouth and fingers feel dirty.

Then seeing dirt as a potential garden,

a flower blooms in psychedelic sky.





YOU ARE AFRAID



Because you are afraid of the unseen,

let's lay in dry, tall grass and there explore

the boundaries of fearful possibility.



That you have built a million bombs and pointed

all of them at Our Mother doesn't make

me afraid? I am dazed to see Our Mother

inside your every buzzing, living cell.



Do you remember when your boundaries

were fields of entangled autumn grass

beneath which insects crawled, above which clouds

puffed into clearest sky? Do you remember

mineral bone on mineral bone hitting

deep within the hardest part of heart?

Do you remember body evolving

from mineral? And wasn't that such bliss?





ALL BRIGHTNESS DISTRACTS



Reversed, all brightness distracts shadowing

the moon. I had not seen the simple motion

of a brain brimmed with boredom. Thirst negates

the answer, any answer to the question who

or even what am I, I dangling from

the claws of devils when I'm full, so full,

so glutted with myself. Today, the first

snow falls; how fortunate I am to stay

at home within the walls of my electric home.

The ducks outside, they suffer, moving stiffly,

and stifle laughter; all their movements short-

en, holding heat within and under feathers.

I'm hungry, not for dry old bread,

that food I toss into the air; what gulls

don't catch the ducks fight over. Whether or not

I'm entirely made a human, I

don't...can't...how could I know? To ramble

on, this is just an exercise in trance.





FAITH



Dark cloud, by day you dim the world, and

by night reflect all light. Dark cloud of faith,

when it is day, your shadow obscures what

seems endless endeavors to grasp and hold.

When it is night, desire can't find shadows

dark enough. Faith, your act is contradicting.



MY MESSY MIND



My messy mind I have considered sacred

and so profound; and my shit doesn't smell

to me so much as other's does to me.

But it's not sacred like one man, I knew,

hospitalized, who rolled it into balls

and hid them in a dresser drawer. He

was that way; I, though in my vanity

am not too very, very different.





OFFERING





COMPRESSED



Compressed or burnt, I was a ball of light

rolling into the shade and never let

myself lay still. I dreamed of stillness,

a place where I could calmly shine

in all directions from a place of rest.

But each year I grew dimmer, more selfish.

I dreamed that I could be preserved, bottled;

then dreamed I was, but when the bottled ball

was looked at in a green and purple sun

the sparkle was not recognizable.





CONFESSING



I confess I've created the distinction

between my breath and a cool summer wind,

my torso and a canopy of oak.



By understanding, I've destroyed distinctions,

I breathe a human breath, sometimes softly,

and sometimes spin tornados on a distant star.

Confessing, I am sad. But understanding,

I smile with all possibilities.



My promise to ever change, may it never change.

I'll be whatever for you, each atom I'll arrange.

My promise to ever change, may it never change.

I'll be whatever for you, each atom I'll rearrange.

I'll be whatever for you, each atom I'll rearrange.

Said twice this is a ritual refrain.





LOVE, HATE

There is no way to start cursing, not

until you stop to prove validity

for your grimace and say damn it, damn it.



There is no way to stop the hurting, not

until you stop to prove validity

for your smile, and not say anything twice.





PROSTRATE



When problems pounce before me, I prostrate through them.

They are the pavement of the path that leads

enlightening, they are the pavement polished

with my hands and feet and face. Only the path

needs polishing, nothing else needs a thing.

My hopes are pure, and my regrets are pure.

To these, and to all thoughts, I bend and stretch.

I bend and stretch my thoughts till they become

the pavement for whichever path. But pause,

please. I am my own biggest problem, and

so I perceive myself there in front of my self.

And too the pavement follows my stretched body,

the path follows protruding vertebrae.



TENDERIZED



Tenderized by beating tensions from

the nerves, allowing them to stretch completely,

expansively beyond the boundaries

of body, reaching to someone, to even

a near by rock; and then to infiltrate

and soothe. This wanting throbs and beats the mind,

the individual process of knowing, until

all knowing almost melts, so stretched.





I OFFER



The golden maple leaves of autumn drop,

thickening the river to the ocean,

where sun rises a pink and gold.



Standing on golden earth, I offer all

pulsing within my golden skin. I offer

hardening, flowing, swelling, twitching, flexing.



Piercing every golden thought, I offer

with the sharp sword of insight, my mind

imagined in the rising golden sun.





IN THE SHADE



In the shade, yellowed by autumn maple,

a white stone under clearest water shone

and fed the slight remaining green with light.

And when I too absorbed, the sky grew bright.



When lifted upwards into infinite light,

then all is light and all is well.

Aware, not wanting now to leave, I fall.





BY ADORATION WE EVOLVE



By adoration we evolve, we spiral

into what's or who's adored. If all's

adored, we see clearly light and feel bliss.

This is an exercise. Because we live

and lust for strength to help the blind and sad,

we exercise, expanding-contracting size,

the macro-micro game. This is the friction

that sparks, igniting lights, making clear what's here.





VULTURE QUEEN



My joy depends on you, you who depend

on countless years of cultivated beauty.

I am the vulture queen of open heaven,

the soaring Mother of enlightened beings.

Don't let appearance fool you. I look like

a scruffy middle-aged American male.

Look upon me with luscious, naked attention.



Sujectifying, all is me hauled in;

objectifying, all is other, shoved out.

Subject, bliss; and object, luminosity;

inversely, precious greed and precious hate.



If driven to despair, I better kill

myself right now. Kill quickly. Now. No time

for plans, for doubt, for regret, for expectation;

there is no time to eject consciousness.

So what if I have practiced mystical

disciples for zillions of zillions of years.

So what if I have drunk distilled nectars

and caught the light from furthest galaxies.

So what if I have manufactured the weapons.

So what if I have worshipped the clean shaven

vulture god, myself, the very queen.





IF YOU WANT A GOD



Now if you want a god, I have the one

who sprouts eyes, fingers, fangs, tails, whatnots

faster than all creatures birth.

If you want this god, die yesterday.





GODDESS



I open wide and there she is, the goddess,

white and naked, sitting in the snow.

Neither of us feel shy or lacking.



I toss aside what few remaining words

have clothed my thoughts, no word is simple enough,

no word spoken in this world is naked enough,

no word in freezing winter is warm enough.



Words have clothed my eyes, pretending meaning

in shadowless transparent weightless snow.

Then, when a bare black branch falls, a black word

with more than enough meaning closes in.





IF EVERYTHING IS HOLY



If everything is holy, what then does

unholy mean? All of the snorting pigs,

the buzzing flies, the rattling autumn oaks,

the softly brushing summer grasses all

of these are they as equally holy as

a broken television? Through a smashed tube

I watch the holiness of broken glass.

I watch the gods of Africa and Tibet,

and watch the common oppressed people of

all countries and the squashed mosquitos and

the poisoned viruses. They're holy and

the fear of them is holy; and hope

is holy; their dualistic play is holy.

Going beyond and staying by is holy.

Distinctions and the lack of a distinction

is holy too. I am not someone who

can say what's holy or unholy. These

are my unholy words, and of my words

your ears fill noxiously. Because you are

and I am most unholy, all's unholy;

our conception of unholiness is holy.







THE NATURAL COURSE



Our air polluted by the burning toys

we bought last week; our park lawns by

the turds of pets we own; our water by

the pastes for brushing teeth; our warmth by

the ruins of gopher holes; our language by

these, my obscene complaints; and our space by

the natural decaying course of things.





EGO





MY EGO'S BIG



1

My ego's big, as big as New York city,

as the USA and China too,

as worldwide commercial dominance.



My ego is so big that it includes

your ego. I've devoured you with lust,

the lust of any mythic god or goddess

with swollen genitals and a third eye.



2

To be confined by limits, self imposed

is egotism, pure in essence.

Such purity demands I lock myself

away, so far away from anything

that distracts with enticements of freedom,

with poems of visions of gods in space, of all

that metaphoric limitless excitement.



3

Because my vision of myself was great,

so very great, I could not act with others,

I had to act alone. I was an eagle,

I flattered myself, and needed vastest sky.



My thoughts screeched shrilly, echoing from clouds,

the clouds, my friends, the clouds that came and went,

that best were gone to leave my thoughts alone,

to hunt for grandeur without distraction.



What I loved to hunt was what was small,

and all is small since I myself was great.

What I knew was graspable, for I could grasp

the hunted with ever greater technology,

with vitality of muscle and of nerves,

with wit. Too often, though, the clouds distracted.





HOW ARROGANT OF ME



How arrogant of me to ever judge

myself a better than a Hitler, Reagan,

Mao, Saddam, Longdharma, Gengus.

Each thought of how they're evil is my thought,

as much as any other thought's my thought.

But they are unapproachably other

than thought. Compared to other thought, the thought

of germs, those people lived quite like myself.

Comparisons I've made just prove my arrogance.





WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN



What is the difference between to praise

or flatter? Gods, they do not need either.

I'm ignorant of what I'd gain, unless

it is the magical intoxication,

the transformation into a god who

is praised or flattered. Do not flatter me

unless I am beyond, not needing praise.

And yet, I am beyond, not needing praise.



MY EGO HIDES



My ego hides beneath a prayer, hides

behind desires for fulfillment, hides

before rapturously beautiful

late summer depth of color, depth of green.

A white, dead tree in the deep green forest

absorbs and shines with early morning's whiteness.

How can I not completely bare my witness?

Naked I'm hollow. My halo flies to seen

illumination in the other, flung

by prayer that is free of named desire.

A white tree, jagged at it's broken peak,

black lined with cracks, dotted with ants and streaked

from lightening fire. Transformation fills

up every break in space; nothing hides.

I DO NOT FOLLOW





I DO NOT FOLLOW



1

I do not follow after beauty like

a fly will follow, buzzing round some ass;

I do lead beauty, saying let us go

together, this way through a pathless field,

then through the bramble at the forest's edge,

then through the forest to the ocean's and

the sky's bright glare. Why go this wild way?

I do not ask this question of some thought

defining beauty, but I ask the field,

bramble, forest, ocean, sky. And they

do not speak words as from a human tongue

or words translatable into a tongue's

symbolic twists.

The symbol of all things,

isn't it unknown, so thoroughly unknown,

yet obvious. Not there, not here, not between.

I breathe freely and catch my breath with eyes

wide open and with hands relaxed, not grasping.

I do lead beauty into bright black space.

I do lead by not thinking, because thought

is just a dusty path where nothing grows,

where nothing's worthy even of a name,

not even ugliness.

                              Yet I confess,

I've begged to follow and so have been lead;

I too confess that by going this way,

this way which is so obviously away,

I have been entertained, but that is all.

All paths, at least, lead into the open.





GOING INTO



Going into the forest where a path

guides, following the worn where yellow dust

kicks up, arms swing free, all movement steady,

all answers clear, believing traditions.



Or going into the forest where no path

guides, following instead the shadowy

and scratchy branches, following instead

all curious questions, not believing new

imagined forms of culture, law or art.



Going, I'm pulled toward what it is that pulls.

Going, sometimes a small blue flower bends

my back forward, or a vast blue sky bends

my back backwards.

Sometimes there is a story

in a wind sighing through thistle bush,

in a river rubbing over granite bluffs,

in a brain thinking through philosophy.

The story pulls the same, always the same:

all goers are only goers because they go.



Going, I go my way, you go your's, no!

Going, I go with you, always with you,

beside your path. Only staying are we

alone. Unmoving we are not detected.





GOING CONTINUALLY



Going continually, going nowhere,

to where a vision can't fulfill the eyes,

scanning for the eternal memory,

home. Circling the world continually,

discovering the open ended circle,

empty of anywhere except for as-

piration. Aiming to return, we can't

because returns occur in parallel

to memory, in spiral rings, like shells,

like onion skins. Unmasking dreams, we cry

when nowhere's found; peeling our surfaces,

our depths first fascinate, then terrify.

Then home is found where answers meet questions,

where speaking mouth and listening ears unite,

where searching eye and mirroring things rejoin.







NO MORE PLACE TO GO



1

If I look well I see that the wind

and the light have bent a blade of grass.

This is the way I walk when wandering,

not following the paths of deer or rabbit,

not following the paths well worn by humans.

But out of love I follow even worms

until in love, there's no more place to go.



2

I've power to smile at weeds, or is it with,

cracking the asphalt pavement. The road revolves

around the town. I'm torn by wild wantings.

I want to grow in the middle of sky.



3

Follow who or what? Some will say

this person, some this powerful god

this principle of loving other beings

as, or more than, children of yourself.

These many ways, the jungle of appearance,

snarl up with vines or snakes or paths of logic.

I never know! My self, afraid, can't know?







I DO NOT NEED TO FIND THE WAY



I do not need to find the way, the way's

found me and dug a furrow through my soul.

Now,on the flattened openness of me,

a hoard can travel to the personal

heaven of blissed out lusty chaos, life

in max. And when they get there, totally

deranged, they too will be a way of ways,

a way within a way, within a way.





COMPLETION ROAD



The dark red sunset veining through the clouds,

grey, softly layered and rolling into themselves

as folded legs in meditation roll

projected energy into myself,

projected many masks upon masked self.

The darkening mask of red maroon sunset

and blackening, vanishing horizon on my back

connect by a wet road, asphalt black.

The road under the face of the moon

looks round, perfectly round without equal.

The road to pleasure, under limitless

clear sky, feels all and glows on all

in return. Imagining this clarity,

right now the west grows black without a self,

and I withdraw from a masked self. Now naked

I open for the greatest pleasure. We

both, naked stand together naked with

the naked muddy youthful world of spring,

the naked emptying, gliding, glowing,

the naked ordinariness of animalness.





I'VE HAD





I'VE HAD



1

I've had enough harmonically designed

and archetecually designated withdrawal.

Today, I want the freedom of the wind,

the freedom of a whim. Today, caress

whatever surface, penetrate whatever

and reach the core that shines the eyes, that opens

shadows on a mountain peak ringed round

with fiery stars. Today, pure openness!

For nearly all of my life, perhaps all

my many lives, I've played caging myself

in myths because myths, perhaps all things, want

to cage. But I have had enough enchantment.





2

Not to conform my thoughts to thoughts of others,

new thoughts are free; not to conform desires

to ancient habits, any whim is free.

Not to conform, but just to form, and then

dissolve like faces form in clouds, and then

dissolve like language forms in wind, and then

dissolves in silence. This is how all "hows"

dissolve. Today I show my face to sky,

today I listen to the music of the stars.



3

How have I been unique? I'll think about it,

though it'll take time. It'll take alot of time

inorder to appreciate all things,

all moments, all that seems to come or go,

that seems right here and now. I'll think about it.

Please give me time perhaps a lifetime or two.

I do appreciate your question, but it is

impossibly difficult. There is no thing

I'll arrogantly dare to speculate

has come about and is right now unique.



4

When free from secrets there's nothing to hide.

Is it a secret that we are right now

enlightened? If saying that we are or aren't,

we hide something, some hidden doubt, some fear.



5

The totally accomplishing way is

to lie and cheat, to wildly break all rules.

Because dreaming beings, all hungry

and noxiously overfed beings number more

than the synaptic pulses in my brain,

than all of the electrons out in space.

My every impulse, if it were a prayer,

wouldn't be enough. So I don't hold to or

rely on impulses, however bright,

however sparkling bright a myth or art.



I've radiated and absorbed all light,

I lie. I've blessed all beings and stole blessing,

I cheat. I've no inside and no outside,

no boundaries, I wildly break all rules.



6

Impatient with methods, each method when

first head is practiced and passed by. I had

been a breath-watcher and thing-namer and

word-chanter and form-worshipper;

and a soft fleshed Tyrannosaurs Rex

who dances on the ruins of glass and steel

sky-scraping temples, whose right hand flails

atomic bombs, whose left cups polluted oceans,

who's necklaced with the severed heads of children,

Jews murdered by Nazis, Tibetans by Red Chinese,

Indians by White Americans. Children!

I am a child, an impatient child.



7

And patiently I die. I am death, I

dissolve, dissolve inside of everyone,

in every sprout of grass, in every dewdrop.

See me on the hottest summer morning.



8

Programming personal beliefs results

in a predictability; but death

by passes plans, insulting even dreams.

Beliefs sing with infinite melodies;

and listening we hear also a silence.



9

Believing in opinions pasted down,

trying to make them last one moment more,

what waste! I do not want to savor how

a thought tastes after it has rotted. Now,

philosophy and art and culture are

mere sabotage to an ex-static heart.

MIRROR





ADDICTED



I am addicted to an ecstasy

of words, the multitude of meanings spraying.

But, when this ecstasy turns to depression,

words lose their meaning; watch them spin through time.



A burning stick spins round, I hold the cool

end in my hands, and when I throw the whole

stick in the fire, I throw words and silence.



Addiction limits, compelling movement.

Yes, I depend on friends and am a friend

with thoughts addicted to thoughts of dependence.





MIRROR



Years mirrored in moments, skies mirrored in jewels,



God mirrored in empty mind, the infinite

the sparkling net mirrored in a full mind,



Mind began and never dies mirroring

mind always was and will become quite dead.



Mind was in the sleep of god mirroring

mind now is in our personally confused dream,



Mind has always been set free mirroring

mind will gradually become set free.



The mirror smudged by a greasy nose, a face

closely, critically, vainly looking.

The mirror cracked by a curious hand, a tool

minutely, scientifically analyzing.

The mirror splattered by soap, a ritual

to purifying religiously practicing.

The mirror scratched by abrasive chemicals

ecstatically, pleasurably itching.

The mirror fogged by a breath that's held

or nervously hyperventilating.

The mirror sealed in a factory plastic wrap,

naturally, freshly, dust free remaining.

The mirror shattered by throwing it across

a snowy field, a dewy morning lawn,

or a night sky on a mountain top.



For years, for years, for years, for years, for years

other people mirrored who I thought I was,

or dreaming mirrored who I thought I was,

or writing mirrored who I thought I was,

and so I sought out well framed mirrors, good glass,

good friends, good dreams and good words, good this and

that.

For years and years I thought that thoughts mirrored

who everyone and what everything was.

I was caught inside the thought of mirrors.



To see my face inside a mirror, I stop,

To see your face that's so alive that it

moves faster than light, I move faster than light,

I move softly touching on your thought.

Then there's no reflection, there's pure seeing.





THE ONLY CERTAIN REFUGE IS



The only certain refuge is, is not,

has nothing to do with the word. That "is"

believed in by another "is". The "being", I

is not. Also is not. There are a countless

number of "is nots" which when they're looked at

mirror each and every other like the lack

of "is" inside a mirror, but so much are.





TO DRAW



The skin stretched wide for sun, mind for space.

Skin deeply coppered, mind darkly blue.



Free innocent with infinite intent,

free to find food for body, food for thought.

To draw a picture on the flowing water,

to draw a lotus with ever opening petals.



To sit back resting on my hands, admiring

within the center of the drawing, then

to see the sun sparkling, the sky reflected.





WONDER



Wonder. New visions continuously, seamlessly

unfold, like flowers blooming, flowers falling.

Wonder, without a need. No referencing

to what I personally have experienced prior,

to what I pray for, propose. No preference,

just the picture profoundly spreading in profundity.

New and fresh, ever new. To know this, is to know.



As smoothly polished mirrors let all be

just as it is, so let all be purely

itself, reflected back the future showing

the past, a pure showing of what's been.







FIRE DANCE





FIRE DANCE



1

Feet stamping to the bombs beat, hands searing air,

songs breathing radioactive heat, breathing

through every pore; and every pore's a world,

breathing, sounding, speaking the wise words

that atom bows to atoms everywhere.



2

Make an idol of experience;

worship in a wild dancing trance.



There I am the child, there the boy,

there the young man, there the old, old one,

and there I'm spirit. Catch me if you can.





3

When dancing, dead to lies which had prescribed

I must not dance in any way by chance,

I dance as free as anyone whose vision

is exhausted. I dance until the dance spins out.



4

Intoxicated by a distillation

of a mashed ego, I dance "I",

one arm caressing, one slashing, and other arms

accomplishing whatever arms accomplish.



I dance inside your shoes, I dance feeling

your corns and warts, I dance with your fatigue

that aches up to your head and beyond in prayer.



No different, you and I, we drink ourselves

from froth to dregs, from swooning faint to the

sobriety of ego tasted raw.



5

Before storm wind and rain is deep dark sky.

Before strong breath and words is deep dark mind.

Then dust billows, limbs sway, hair tosses. Dance,

dance quickly to the lightening's flash, slowly

to star paths; dance to bomb blasts, dying breath;

dance to morning sunbursts, baby gasps.



After winter months of darkness, the willow branches

swing into light. Each branch dances in turn,

each cell ecstatic with chemical might.





6

My righteousness fire dances round your wrongs.

Fire desires such, such, any such.

Fire insanely hallucinates an entertainment.

Fire dries the fallen autumn leaves,

crisped by a frost that never melts, because

the power of frost blows from the judging heart,

the depth of self conceit, where DNA

uniquely burns consuming such and such.



7

The fire ignited from the myth of space

rubbing in friction a thing, the first thing,

The fire ignited from the myth of mind,

thinking with friction everything, and charring,

The fire ignited is! I feel our pain!



Our burn scars turn to ash and blow away.



8

Ourselves smeared with ashes of the dead,

or ornamented with the bones of friends,

or swinging the severed heads of those who've skimmed

a moments calm, or wrapped in our own skins

of rage for pained existence, or tangled in veins

of hope dead-ended millions of times, or ruined

by body weight compounded by an ego.



All of this nightmare vision is walled in by

the radiating corpses of slain gods, by

the radiating light of dashed ideals.





PASSION BURNS THE CONCEPT



No waiting, passion burns the concept, all

conceptions. Waiting, that is a conception

abstracted from our sleepy boredom; boring

it was so often, even while we flamed.

I guess the flames weren't hot enough, the flames

were tricks, a quickly burning alcoholic brew

we didn't really drink, just touched our lips to,

before we lite a match; wretched excess

we totally avoid because we fear

our soul will burn; I'm not talking hell,

but heaven. Love is fire hotter

than any anguished great imagination,

dreamed head, cracked heart. I can not even wait

a moment. What's a moment as a measure?

Sure seems too, too much too abstract. I can

not wait, no way. No matter how I try,

it takes a kind of patience to grow callous.





THE GOLDEN FIRE



The golden fire of the autumn licks

the clarity of blue, clear sky. My brain

bursts open for the warmth of color, for

the taming forms in color. Leaves lift me

and nothing matters but the flame, the warmth

I share with forests dreaming now. But soon

they will no longer dream, but sleep in winter

sleep, dreamlessly sleep. Now, though, fire flashes,

desiring not to fall into that depth.

Then hate rains down, grey sky weighs so heavy.

The soil absorbs. I walk and stamp it hard.





EMBRACING YOU, WHATEVER IS CONCEIVED



Embracing you whatever is conceived,

perceived, the web entangling what's awake

and what's asleep in dream I hold a flame.



You know that I am water, an ocean

of consciousness. Wave slaps against a wave,

a violent friction, faster than a fire

transfiguring into a breathing gas.





THE HOT AUGUST



In the hot and humid August air

when the grass and forest have grown thickest,

both in density and depth of darkness,

I think of dependency: how it thickens with knowing

as breath is felt, filling the nostrils

and widening the chest and wakening the consciousness.

This density of August depends on me.



Angel, whose sweat shines, reflecting stars,

your naked human form shapes my ideal.

And so I shape myself this humid day

in August. Heat enflames my abdomen,

star heat burns holes out through my eyes.

Angel, your gloss glows infinitely bright

and mirrors my conditioning, my lust

for beauty. View me swell, enflame

and blaze. This body's freed to move quickly

and pointedly and to expand vastly,

breathing out from unmoving depths of ice.





THE FIRE IN THE GUT



The pulse of heat, the fire in the gut,

passion, I want it, want it so bad, hot.

But "what it is" I'm ignorant of. An idiot,

I guess and guess creating symbols, myths.



The summer sun, here on this Yucatan

white sandy lavender watered beach, burns,

pulsing. The pulse balloons the skin up to

the sky. Soon I'll blindly see the god of heat.







WHITE SANDS



On the white sands of Yucatan beaches

a foot print barely shadows in the shine

of the tropic ocean's liquid light that has

transparently met sand and colored violet

met sky and sensually met my feet.

My feet, then drank ecstatic juices, prana juices,

at once a coolness and a warmth. A wave

climbed up the thighs, the crotch, the heart, the throat,

broke open the fontanelle and sprayed

for all the mists and sparkling sand to see.

From the white sands, all foot prints washed away.





DEEP IN



Deep in a tropic heat dripping like rain

and dew from trees, the body sweats and insects

delight in our taste. But we ignore

this body, aiming for the deeper part

of jungle darkness, and go down, down, down

while the soil softens and air thickens.

We aim for the empowering, the jewel

to save the universe, the holiness

of absolute tranquillity and life.





THE RHYTHMIC SPLASHES



The rhythmic splashes of the tropic children

in the warm river, and the bright red birds

singing in harmony with wind in trees,

broad leafed and towering, in hazy light.

Below the trees, in indigo shadows

green phosphorescent snakes sleep, waiting for

the magic incantation, praying for

lascivious insight into the joy

of love beginninglessly not begun,

the joy of universes perfectly,

pristinely free to live in rhythm, live

in wilderness, nakedly wide awake.

WATER'S FLOW





BLUE EYE



The waves of the blue lake leapt up away,

then bowed low and shallow, hallowing

the children and myself who walk in sand.

We whistled happy to see gulls above,

huge gulls before white clouds, before

blue sky. The gulls momentarily looked

at our lips, then bored, watched waves splash and

for a fish's eye. The lake, like one huge eye,

looked at the gulls as if some wave had splashed

far up and taken wings. In a gull's eye

reflected our faces smaller than a drop.





WATER



Riding the crest of inspiration flashes

from waves. When I drink light, my body grows

transparent. Soon all seen through me will glow.

And soon I'll see through my self.

                                                       Water inside

splashes against the walls of my hot skin,

leaking sweat; and water outside of me

glistens over the surface of my eyes.



The water forms the flowing crevices

in willow bark. I follow these deep grains

up to the willow's tip, into the sky,

where white haze is the water's highest reach.



This highest vision, I have worshiped; and

also the highest, believed, points up to what

I'd worship. Also the lowest, my piss

that glistens on the dirt beside the willow.

I say this spitting. And say, I'd worship spit.



The water's path is mapped by following

my leaking path, the willows drinking path.

Water's path in inspiration flashes.



AS A WAVE



As a volcanic tidal wave rushing

toward land, toward death, I almost rise and fly.



Then I am flung, I splash, though not against,

but into the soft sand as into my

own mother. Now, her body, spread beneath the sun,

lays cooled. Before, deep in the dark, she bubbled.



Or is that really her up there, beyond

that cloud, or is it jet exhaust. Whatever,

I'll follow, dissipating into sky.





GO NOWHERE



I go nowhere walking, tripping, falling,

while the ocean waves don't reach the beach,

never reach, because they are already there.

Roaring, crashing the waves curl and flower.

Then calmly die with a momentary shimmer.

My bare toes bury in the cool wet sand,

each grain welcoming the shape of every cell.



IN THE STREAM



In the stream, rhythms of cold waves splashed against

my chest, and in the stream harmonic waves

wrapped light around, and penetrated in,

tanning my skin.

When looked at closely, sparkles;

when listened to closely, each wave speaks a unique

hypnotic language; when felt intimately,

a chill distracts from all other senses.

And when most intimately known, a silent

invisibility cannot be touched.

And more and more the stream completely dries.





IF TIME IS A RIVER



If time is a river, why am I still here

sitting on a branch, bending over

watching it mirror open sky, as if

the river didn't exist without a wind?

Where is time without a wave? In space?



Sitting on a branch, a cracked old leaf, scraping

the bark, toying with each crevice, I'm bored.



Every river cuts deeper and cuts wider.

Every leaf falls. Every moment's here.



I danced alone to subtle music, waves

that rippled in the blood, my blood and your's,

whoever, whenever, wherever you may be.

Any rhythm can be heard in flowing blood.



Dancing to a river lapping a log,

to a tension in a muscle, to a creak

in a joint, to skin brushing over skin.





THE SUBTLEST DROP



When oceans enter drops, those oceans change

for those with subtle eyes, with subtle taste.

When all gods enter mind, those gods alter.

How gods behave depends on who we think

we are. Think! All gives itself to us.

But a drop won't and the mind won't resolve.

All time within the splashing moment dries.







FALLING ASLEEP



While falling into sleep, I chant whatever

words string themselves together. Listening

to heart beats, visualizing ocean waves

or waves on small Yahara river flowing

across the lawns in front of our house.

These pulsings lull me and inspire me

and quickly spirits of dream take on clear form,

as clear a form as chanted words. And when

I sleep, I rest in silence, down in clear

deep water, under pressure, ignorant.





TO LET



To let it go, let all of it release

in freedom, free from my controlling will-

fullness, desire, call it desire, to let

desire go on it's way, like letting wind

blow fiercely during the night storm, not wanting

a calm cool night. I wake and, with wide eyes,

watch ever widening horizon flash,

and feel rain soaking into my warm,

relaxed and thirsty skin. I let it fall,

all holding back and watch it wash down to

the river, and from there flow to the lake

and then to greater rivers called the Rock,

the Mississippi, then to the Gulf.





LET IT FLY



Let it fly without halting, hesitating.

Let it be natural, without artifice,

without someone letting be, have being, becoming.

Let it, without an "I" declaring "it".



Snow melts, softening the atmosphere,

layering in grays the distant hills.



Let it fly in our eyes, our luminosity

that pliantly shrinks and expands,

extinguishes and ignites,

exercises and relaxes, etcetera and a nothing.

Let watery snow shine, infiltrating fully.

Let individual snow flakes shine uniquely

with force, and alter universes like the wings

of the butterfly whose flapping guided

the winds that brought this snow, this snow

that causes our desire to go outside

and grip and ball, then toss snow up to sky,

the sky that lets it fly, that lets it fly.





RELAXING



Growing warmer, more river algae grows.

That I can say anything that anyone

can say, flows easily, slimmed by

the summer heat. I'm as unique as that

wave way down stream, unseen, about to happen.

Here and now, what does such talking mean?

The flowing into there and then means we

will flow and join our flowing easily

to what we do not know. We don't know

the mystery that's more profound than self

conceit, than self concentric ripples that

repeat what we feel so certain of.

The slimy truth in summer, so relaxing!



Relaxing boundaries between anything,

relaxing judgments that some thoughts are better

than what is totally black to consciousness,

or that some words have more inherent value

than the paper's clean blank whiteness that surrounds,

or that the black and white is better

than the color of glowing algae or bright neon

painted bits of floating trash is good.



After infinite