I Think You Are An Angel

This is a personal poem and I shall not myself reveal who I wrote this about.

I will take this opportunity to say that someone has recently said she thought I was an angel. I looked at that seriously in my twenties. How arrogant is that!? If I am an angel then I have been stripped and flensed and blocked. I have no sense of it. I do have a sense of otherworldliness that somehow has a very different relationship with God. Where we take it for granted that you can't argue with God, in my inner space there is a kind of memory of a place where you certainly can argue with God and I did so. I claim there is a sense at least temporarily that I won. What I won was the right to proove it, whatever it was I was arguing about. That's what this life seems to be for me.

I am here to proove a point. I do not understand the argument and think I actually can't without seeing with very different eyes, but I know I am rightly placed for it, this point of contention. I also think I am here out of turn because of it, would not have been in this life if this argument had not occurred. My life is both easier in some ways and also more difficult in others because of that. My inner resources are different, but my sense of belonging is woeful. First I had to learn to survive somehow the transition to adulthood. That took til about 26. Then I had to smash a kind of arrogance. That took til about 35. Finally, I had to leave the crutch of alcoholism behind. For me that was easy but only because the discipline that it takes is easy. That took til 54, but really is still in progress in the way that I still constantly bring it up. It is far more normal for a guy like me to be a gutter drunk or dead.

The long history of angels as they appear in our cultures, they are the manifestations of the adoration of God. It would seem that while it makes sense to speak of our self centered and self willed freedom to choose and to act, it does not make sense to speak of angels this way. They are God centered in a complete (perfect?) way. Thus I am left with an observation. If I am an angel, I am a fallen one. Whoa. Does this mean something? Perhaps. If it does, then perhaps Lucifer is not such a bad guy. I am no Lucifer, but then maybe our understanding of Lucifer is twisted too. I believe I have God's support. So I think does Lucifer. Think about that. How can it not be so? We are told Lucifer is in rebellion but how can that be true without God's permission? That, for example, is one facet of the story of Job, that there is a running relationship between God and Lucifer, and in the end we are instructed that it is beyond human understanding. Hmmm.

I don't know about you, but I really hate being told things are beyond me. Yet there it is. There are things square in the middle of my life that are beyond me. Lack of power of all kinds, including the power of understanding is my dilemma. I cannot avoid it, must admit it. Even all the way back to that moment when I was reminded of who I am, the sacred moment that made it possible for me to survive my path into adulthood, I have to admit I do not understand what the fuck happened. So I am radically dependent. I am dependent on you and the others in my life, I am dependent upon God. All else is pretense. If I am to accept the truth of free will it has to keep this dependency in place or else I will lose purchase on any sort of wisdom. Horns of the dilemma. Free will is self evident both from inclination within and experience in the world. I am a radically dependent man correctly intent on holding up my end of the bargain. That is the proper use of the will. I cannot drop either end of this deal without also losing any authenticity that can be mine.

This may all be complete crap. Probably. I don't care that this is not factually true, whatever that means. Frances, my last lover is certain that this is a cute story I tell myself and it really doesn't affect anything I do in my life. She smiles at me indulgently. It is self indulgence. Maybe. I know it doesn't matter to you that I keep this story, tend it, get better at telling it. Something happened to me that changed everything. That much is certain.

I Think You Are An Angel

I think you are an angel
not one so holy and distant
but here in my heart now
with words and words
that don't belong to me
these words you let out into the world.
Let out like the Northern Lights
across the sky
they reach me here
where I was feeling so silent.
I step into the glow.
And somehow now I
see differently.

February 16, 2009 9:14 PM

The Squirrel Died

This is sort of a true story. Mostly. This cat in my poem was the last old cat that I brought here from my old life, where I lost my wife to illness and alcoholism and divorce, and finally death. The cat was part of a pair of sisters we bought at a pet store because they were too cute together and my wife and I feared they would be separated. Annie and me, we tended to do things like that.

It turned out that they never did dote on each other, these sister cats, had no apparent special need for each other at all, not like our boys.

We had done this before with two red tabbie striped males. One was more adventurous than the other and the one more shy obviously needed his brother. His brother tolerated him, was clearly fond of him. But he also took risks, and one day he didn't return home. His shy brother went a little crazy in grief, changed, became as these needy cats do more difficult to live with. I am sure he didn't remember his brother after a while, but some of his grief behavior stuck with him, became frozen and in this way he never got over losing his brother.

When my last old cat, the one in this poem, lost her sister who died of illness quite young, I didn't notice any overt grief behavior. But what happened to her, when I moved here, she objected big time to losing her old house. That's what turned her. She was a place cat. She had established herself there and she didn't really like it here. She let me know. Over time she adjusted to the garage but insisted that the house was to be her toilet. I could never let her in for long and I had to keep track. This broke my heart. I wanted her to be an indoor cat but that just didn't work at all.

The Squirrel Died

A squirrel came in
to die in a nest it made
in a bag at the back
under the shelf there
in my garage. I don't know
how long it lived there
before passing but
my cat also lives on pads
I lay down for her
in the garage. There
was no bad sign, not at all.
We are both glad though,
my old cat and me,
that I found it and the smell
is gone. That was bad.

February 16, 2009 2:07 PM

Hornswoggled

Hmmm. Yesterday I posted from the River Styx. In this poem I am up a tree, arguably trying to piss up a rope, a little green man to boot. This is of course the very next poem, written just a half hour later than the poem calling for someone to kill me now. So I guess I was in an odd mood in mid February.

I am reading the recent bio of John Lennon, that huge 800 page book. I ran into something wonderful that I never knew before. It changes my history. In Liverpool there is a street called Lime Street. There was a famous prostitute called Maggie May and she worked Lime Street. Uh oh. It turns out that Maggie figured in a popular English folk ballad.

I once fell for a lady named Katy. This was back in 1970. In 1970 I was fresh back from East Pakistan (Bangladesh). I was a student part time at San Jose State, later named Cal State U at San Jose, worked a little and sold dope to stay alive and keep myself in dope. I lived with my dealer, a smuggler and student, in a dope house south of the campus, on South 12th St. The Dooby Brothers lived up the street at the time. Oddly, there were two roommates with us who didn't do much dope, and a lady who lived upstairs in a separate apartment in the house who was clean too. It was just that way in those days, with people mingling and not worried about it.

Katy came into my life looking to buy some pot. She walked into my room, me never having met her before, I was in my underwear, boxers. I didn't care and apparently neither did she. She slayed me just like that. I was hers, if she wanted me. This is all a really complex story and of course it didn't work over the long haul. She was married and trying to leave her husband who was substantially younger than she was. They had intended to be a rock and roll band. That didn't work, and neither did their marriage, but he was really in love with her. I was a year younger than her too, but of course several years older than him. So when Rod Stewart came out with his hit Maggie May, I sang it to her along with the radio. "The sun in your face really shows your age, but that don't matter, to me you're everything." Amen. She got really angry. She did not take jokes like that very well.

Now Maggie May turns into a famous Liverpudlian prostitute. Wow. I had no idea. I guarantee you that Rod Stewart did though. Now I wonder how many people here in the states got that thing at the time. That was a really big song here. If it was as big in England, I am sure it was big in a different way because of the folk song.

This thing with Katy was a big thing for me, and in a curious way anchored the part where I was going to move to Oregon if I could. That's a whole other story. Maggie May is a big song for me because of Katy.

Hornswoggled

I'm trapped here again,
hornswoggled little green man,
hung by the hemp rope
treed and upended.
You claim I'm upright looking
at it with God's eyes
but blood rushing down
reddens my admitted bad eyes
and I still feel down.

February 15, 2009 11:36 AM

Using My Last Match

I have no idea what this was all about. I was under some pressure because my lay off had been going on for a while. But I have succeeded in placing myself in the position to handle lengthy time off. Since I had the heart event I have noticed my own mortality statements in a different way and wonder if I was noticing my approaching issue at some level, sensing what was to come in May.

If I am really at that place where I die, then hurry up and do it quickly.

I know my body instinctively struggles to stay alive. I have lived through enough stuff to know I don't have to pump up any false positive to convince myself to stay alive. However, I also know that staying alive is hardly the most important value in my box of values. I need to know I am of some use. I don't even want one day where I return to being a parasite. I have been there, done that. I need to know that some level of comfort is if not currently in my life, at least in my future. Quality of life rates high with me. I have seen too much. I know there really is a line there and that I have no right to judge another's decision about that, nor they me. Staying alive at any cost is for me simply insane and inhumane. The Hippocratic Oath cannot be applied in violation of humane values. The rub of course is figuring out the timing.

Using My Last Match

Hit me with a club,
why don't you, with a hammer.
Don't leave me standing,
not in this bad light.
Don't leave me to die alone
in the empty dark.
Take me down down down
throw me in the river Styx,
feed me to the fish.

I've used my last match.

February 16, 2009 9:58 AM

The Perfect Storm

I found this. It is so good that I am putting it here. This has certainly happened to me, more than once. However, I am still sure that the source is at least collaborative between me and some Other.

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."

- Haruki Murakami
Kafka On The Shore

Why You Should Write

I am currently reading Bright Shiny Morning, by James Frey. I am nearly done. What a gem. In the back of that book is an essay Jim entitled Music and Talking. He points out that he nearly always writes to loud music in the background. He points out that he always talks first what he writes and that if you talk you will see that language is only partially guided by grammar and mainly guided by context. Thus because he seriously writes as he speaks, he tends to write without many grammatical conventions, which do not show up in speech. He doesn't say, but he knows he should write. I know I should write.

Why You Should Write

The writing you do
reveals the design not yet
in God's world until
your hands and heart place
it precisely, a jewel.
That is what you do.

February 16, 2009 8:28 AM

Within Winter Lies The Truth

Today's words follow this time. I want this poem from last winter to sit with you a little while. I hope you won't move immediately into my prose.

Within Winter Lies The Truth

At the heart of it
like an old matchhead, glowing
under the crust, like
setting lava grows
dark with heat inside, within
winter lies the truth,
spring ready to rise,
life calling out to life, soon
it will feed again.

This is so right, true
that I can't argue, even
though it really hurts.

February 15, 2009 8:11 PM

Why would spring coming hurt? Because I have to let go of the old, make room for the new. Because I am attached. Because I have no choice and I don't like having no choice, go out of my way to keep the illusion alive that I do have a choice. Because I lack humility and humility is essential to my survival. Thus when I encounter something where humility is the answer I die a little inside and the loss hurts, always. Because life feeds on life and thus someone, some entity has to die that others live, a truth I deeply regret, as if it was my fault. Because I am so self centered that thinking something like that my fault makes sense and I know better. This shames me. Because I suspect that I object to life feeding on life because life might be feeding on me. That's just soooo wrong. That's why spring coming might hurt someone like me.

The Rising Orbs

People I know take orbs seriously, have gone to power points where they appear. They have night pictures of them, and of themselves and others among them. I have personally never seen them or been to those places. The places where orbs appear are not hard to get to if you know where to go. Not everyone can experience them.

I do know what it is like to call for someone to return. It doesn't matter what the reality is. The heart is another reality. I call for my deceased wife sometimes. I call for Mary and Frances. The others are so far back there before my wife. I don't call for them. I also call for the fantasy of some others whom I have never known as lovers. I called for Mary like that. One day she answered even though I never conceived she would. That is a lesson to me. Sometimes fantasies come true, and are even better in reality. That lasted two years and came to an inevitable end. That I knew it was going to be like that did not change a thing. That some others found a great deal in my loving Mary to criticize did not change a thing. It was a blessing and it changed my life way for the better.

Off topic...I am so completely pleased with this blogging experience. Sometimes the gifts are beyond measure. I look at the Feedjit widget and know there are many who never comment. I even know some friends around here where I live that go to my blog and never comment but tell me about it. Frances visits but will not comment. And you people who choose to interact are wonders of my heart. Today has been especially fine this way, with two poems in the comments. So this is just a heads up to those who may not go to the comment page, if you are coming here specifically for the poetry, you might want to check the comments. You never know when a poem might appear, sometimes a poetic dialogue. I have been known to write one in the comments of my own blog when the moment calls for it.

The Rising Orbs

The orbs always come
at this time of year
to nestle near the needles
at the base of trees
and rise at your name
called out in hope that calling
will bring you blessings
and blessings bring you
back to me, back to this place.

February 15, 2009 11:15 PM

Northern Lights

In replying to Joseph (Naming Constellations) today concerning Hafiz, I did a little research on the internet...what a tool. This time a little disappointing however. Indeed, now I don't know if I love Hafiz or Daniel Ladinsky. He is the latest and most accessible translator. I read a criticism of my source book on the internet that points out that the translation is so free that it is arguably not Hafiz' work. The critic is harsher than that. I have toned it down. That is the trouble with translation.

I have studied I Ching for nearly forty years. All my material is of course translated work. I have a dozen or more, including works by Thomas Cleary, which are later Chinese interpretations from the Buddhist school, the Confucian school, the later Taoist Alchemical school, and another spare hard hitting merchant's school. Cleary translated these commentaries. I consider myself a scholar, but I am hardly that if it is required that I understand the original Chinese text rather than understanding about it.

Now I must live with the idea that I have patterned myself after Daniel Ladinsky, thinking he was Hafiz. I am not sure I care. My voice is an honest voice. This is true with I Ching. It is also true in the poems I have written over the last year.

Northern Lights

I see you lying
on the snow to see the lights,
splashed across the sky
in the ice and stars
and later, at noon beside
you in the still air
are crystals, tiny,
bright as starshine in your hair,
in the bright white cold.

February 15, 2009 10:22 AM

Hafiz Speaks

I am going to let my buddy Hafiz speak tonight.

It happened again last night:

Love popped the cork on itself-
Splattered my brains across the sky.

I imagine now for ages
Something of Hafiz will appear

To fall like stars.

Isn't that cool??

And this one:

Last night God posted
On the tavern wall

A hard decree for all of love's inmates which read:

If your heart cannot find a joyful work
The jaws of this world will probably

Grab hold of your sweet ass.

I have more than one work. I recommend more than one.

An Ancient Spring

Here is a vision of the way it once was. I am drawn to pieces of this vision like I belong there, would belong here if it was more like this. I have a serious belonging problem. It is no accident that I am alcoholic.

Yet I am also aware of the advantages that civilization has brought to us. I am what I call a "hot house flower". What I mean by that is modern civilization has saved my life often enough for me to know that had I been born with this body in an earlier time I would never have made it out of infancy or early childhood. That has been carried forward as well. My skills are all civilized skills. In other words, not only am I still alive because of civilization, if it were taken away I would not survive either the transition, and if I somehow did, I could not make the transition myself to some form of more basic tribal society role, unless somehow I could be the shaman.

An Ancient Spring

The tribal drumbeat
matches, leads the dancing girls
while the shaman chants
at the edge of light
further from the fire than crones
go this night, well placed
to bridge the dark gaps
between the warming of spring
and the cold white shards
of winter to north
of this hopeful dancing clan
seeking a new life.

February 15, 2009 10:02 AM

Itchy Condition

I am just buried under work for the next little while, not sure how long. So I am sitting here earlier than usual, fairly dog bone tired. Apparently I was more energetic back in mid February. At that time I was still laid off, had a couple weeks to go.

Speaking of itching. I bought some stuff on line. One of the things I bought is a telescoping stainless steel back scratcher. Sometimes a well scratched back is better than sex.

Itchy Condition

I've kept this long search
going because I've felt so
strange standing still here.
I've made a good nest
and the wind breaks well around
the walls but I itch,
hanker after ways
I heard you went, others go.
I want a good scratch.

February 15, 2009 9:48 AM

The Garden

There is a place for shrines, for ritual, for practice, practice, practice in the spiritual life. This remains true even without God at the heart of things, thus Humanists tend to form these relationships with the heart too. Even Communists hold their parades in support of their yearnings.


Certainly I cannot live without my practice. At one point I held a particular location on the Willamette River to be my power point. It did not matter that I could no longer get there. Later, the Willamette National Cemetary became a power point. Sometimes I go there. Even if I don't, it is still there in precisely the same way for me.


The Garden

At the far, far end
of the gravelled path I placed
a shrine on the rim
of the gulf between
you and me, in the garden
I planted for you.
You remember it
I know, the gated roses
overhead as you
enter and the paths
that wind among the plantings.
I find myself there.

February 15, 2009 9:24 AM

In Thin Air

I sometimes feel just like this. For example, some years ago I was sent on assignment to a silicon wafer facility south of Salem. I was completely over my head. That's how that turned out. It still would have been okay had I been given a supervisor who actually knew his job. We were doing the process piping hook up design. They gave us a plumber as a supervisor rather than a design engineer. That meant I needed about ten years of experience as a designer in high tech in order to do the job. I had no support from above and that meant I had to operate at the higher level. I failed. The whole time I struggled and kept surviving, I felt exactly like this. I could feel the gravity but I didn't fall. The wedgie was uncomfortable.

Then something happened. I had a small part to play in it but the main thing was the business maneuvers that were going on. I was fired summarily and basically escorted off the job. They packed me up after I was gone. I was fired to protect a future contract that was in process. This had never happened to me before, hasn't happened since. The fingers holding me in thin air opened and I fell hard. I was ten years into working for the company that assigned me to the work, had been laid off and was back working on contract. I have never worked for them again, knew then I would not ever work for them again. This was my sobriety job, working for this company. It was the first job I got after I got sober and gave me stability in the first ten years of my sobriety.

The rest of that story is that I have been blessed by being released from that company, but it was a painful and embarassing separation. There is are many reasons to commend the separation. It might even be this could be called a divine intervention to get me out of there. If so, God sometimes plays pretty rough.

In Thin Air

It's me in thin air
without the necessary
wings, relying solely on
you to hold me here.
Amazing. I don't
float, nor do I fly.
Hanging in your pinched fingers,
I will not look down.

Don't look down, that's what you said.

February 14, 2009 4:14 PM

I Will Not Leave

Here is a poem of promise and commitment.

I Will Not Leave

Then remember this
on the day you walk upstairs,
that once you did swim,
turned cartwheels, let me
catch you, you who smiled for me,
who let me clasp hands
with you as your soul
rose to the lighted dew dropped
sky, who told me dreams.

February 13, 2009 9:53 PM

Hidden Under Snow

This is a poem I wrote as winter began to let up its grip in Oregon. Portland is far enough north that we have real seasons, but far enough south that they don't keep hold that long. Because one of my friends is Australian, I keep thinking about that. It's night there when it's day here. It's summer there when it is winter here. I believe it is very good to keep that difference in mind. It can be one of the true salutary effects of our internet connections if these connections can give to us the true measure of the planet. I can exchange with my Australian friend, but not easily converse. She lives upside down and backwards, or I do.

I have another friend who has gone rather quiet. She lives in Tehran. Ouch.

Hidden Under Snow

Thank You for water
fresh from the spring at the head
of the running creek
hidden under snow
sparkling in the sun of love.
I've seen with Your eyes,
know I've seen through love,
through the angelic limpid
true soul of fierce joy.

February 13, 2009 8:59 PM

Someone's Got To

I couldn't make this up. I'll bet you couldn't either. It is just beyond me to ever conceive of this. I found it on Post Secret, so somebody did make it up, perhaps even commited this act. I loved the postcard so much I wrote it as a poem. This act against the Gideon Bible is surely one of the ultimates in underground resistance, the sort of thing hippies loved to do. It is nearly perfect in its peacefulness. I don't care that I stole the idea. Stealing the idea (but not the form) is technically legal. Stealing the idea also is an underground act. Everything I am builds on the fact that for six years I was a hippie in one or another form. In 1966 this die was cast. In 1973 I was forced by circumstance to go underground. I began training up in things like careers and marriages. Even so it took eight more years until I bought a house. My heart still delights in things hip.

Someone's Got To

I go on long trips,
stay in hotels with nothing
to do, but pull out
Gideon's Bible
and draw naked people where
I can find the space
for them. Then I list
the pages on the cover
page to help others.

February 13, 2009 4:16 PM

Shirking Work Again

Oh man. A friend of mine has asked me to stand as a witness as he marries the woman he has been with for several years. I have of course said yes. This Saturday at 2pm. I have taken on the other job as a bachelor friend of a soon to be married man. I am asking him every day if he really wants to do this. We both agree that is my job until Saturday. Heh.

So he told his partner (they live together now). She doesn't like it. Heh. We are both laughing about that. He says she'll be okay again in a week. I have decided to avoid her til Saturday if I can. I value my privates.

Shirking Work Again

Climbing brambles reach
the top of the white trellis
meant for my jasmine
because I have shirked my work
again for dallying with
the likes of your tunes,
the hunting hounds of Harrow,
or your wide green eyes.

February 13, 2009 3:50 PM

Needing Advice

You can't push the river. Some questions are answered by realizing we have to stop asking them. It is possible to ask a question that must be answered both ways or even cannot be answered at all. Language is a very large indeterminate but finite system. On any given day there is a finite number of words and a finite algorithm for uttering them in any coherent way. On any given day I am a finite expression of humanity (of the human system) utililizing a finite system to express whatever I choose. There are two directions which cause serious trouble. If I try to express the infinite I enter paradox. If I try to express myself too close to the subjective heart of my life, I again enter paradox. This trouble was demonstrated in that latter way by Kurt Godel who proved that any system with sufficient power would be subject to the paradox of self reference, that you could formulate expressions within the system that cannot be responded to in the system. In other words, it is possible to ask questions concerning existence that cannot be answered. Of course the trouble with the infinite is self evident mathematically.

Thus trying to capture God in language cannot be a human activity. If God is ever captured in language it must be the other way, that God hands the language down. Even so, there can never be a satisfactory proof of any of these statements at the level of mathematical rigor. This is only as concerns God's identity, or ours, that is, the self referent or the infinite.

Oh by the way, that you and I might have an infinite soul probably doesn't change this a whit. We are in general forced to press through the finite systems of body and language in order to utter anything.


Needing Advice

I've come here today,
climbed your mountain to reach
the outlook where you
perch like the eagle
you are, glad to find you home
rather than flying,
soaring too far out
to bother with my questions.
I hope you won't shift
your shape so soon like
last time, leave me to trudge back
down the mountain slope
so unsatisfied.
I ask about life, is it
Meaningful story
or not? Yes, you say.
Then you shift again, sprout wings,
fly away from me.

February 13, 2009 2:57 PM

I'm Not Doing This Right

Here's the thing. I have this reputation as a "safe" man. In AA there are a significant number of women who don't start out trusting women, or even if they do, they are like me and do the best honesty and truth telling across the sexes, telling mom or dad. Me, I am grateful that I can have the kind of honesty I do where I would never tell my mother these things. Her instincts were wrong for me already when I was seven. But as a child of a single mother in the late forties and early fifties, I was trained to speak straight across with women and it works for me today. The women spread through the grapevine that I am one who will not mess with them. However.

Who is going to gift me with the kind of physical intimacy that I have done without for so much of my life? When Ann got so sick. Before that when I was a drunk. For the first few years going through our divorce and after.

In 1999 there was an intervention. The next seven years gave me an active sex life, even at times a colorful one. I have been solo since.

I am not lonely. I have many friends because of how I live. I don't lie awake nights aching for companionship. I would sleep fine if I didn't have other reasons for waking up frequently in the night. I always go back to sleep. This is not about desperation even a little. In fact I often observe relationships around me and go home grateful for my solitude.

However, I straight up miss physical intimacy. In the middle of the day back last February I spoke up.

I'm Not Doing This Right

Man, she called me safe,
said I was a godsend to
women wounded as
she, so open, kind,
so clear sighted and so wise
and five others gave
agreement. Oh shit.
Fat, aging, kind, wise old eyes,
Who, I want to know
is going to lay me?

February 13, 2009 2:27 PM

Seeing Deep

I was in the middle of something back in the middle of February. Here's the next.

Seeing Deep

It is important,
you said, that I get balance,
this word with that word,
line with lines and now
I am afraid of
the process, would rather have
been unconscious still.

So why do I write
more lines anyway?
Now you just smile at my frown.

February 13, 2009 10:49 AM

You didn't like how I said it last time? How about this one? You did like how I said it last time? How about this one?

Indra's Net. Maya's Play. Om namah Shivaya. Sat chit ananda. Truth, love, bliss.

I Sadly Swim Away

Put the hammer down
and come teach me how to live,
I call out to you
and you tell me, watch.

I will find, you say, the way
in my chapped sore hands
and it will do no
good to attempt escape from
the sea we swim in.
You say work ripples
the surface, cannot be
pulled away from it,
that trying creates more.

Your answer is not what I
Seek. I sadly swim away,
Create more ripples.

February 13, 2009 9:20 AM

You Keep Trying To Teach Me

To see with God's eyes. I feel like I did that once, by pure grace. It was an intervention, even a triage on God's part. He had nothing left to do and since I was unprepared, it was necessarily crude, so not only a triage, a battlefield triage. I might have died. I came close. I had a scrambled mind and was living on the street after. Literally starving to death. He made no promise that I would survive.

Of course the essence of the vision was how completely thoroughly all right everything was, and also how completely thoroughly this whole thing is dynamically supported by the divine energy at all moments. One gap in that once and the whole thing becomes smoke and mirrors, just exactly right now stops. His energy is the spanning momentum of the indeterminate (very large but finite number) set of quantum gaps in the universe. Drop one. The whole thing dissappears. To see with God's eyes is to see original beauty and to know that without His eyes neither will that beauty be visible. So much more.

To know too, that this cannot be taken back to ordinary mind, ordinary eyes. Seeing with God's eyes won't fit the ordinary human shape, is much too large for that. To grieve that. To argue against it. To try to return at will (utter failure already known). To realize that what is next is a disciplined life, full of practice, not really to return to the lap of God so much as to pay for the incredible gift already given. Now that I know, I am compelled to pay. Such is my life.

Now, 43 years later, He is still calling me to practice, and I am still far from the top of the mountain. It's a helluva life.

You Keep Trying To Teach Me

Now you go one more
and tell me it's not finite,
nor infinite. What?
You say they are both,
the fin and the infin, both
are parts of the ite.
This just gets to me.
Then you say the ite is bliss
and the fin, infin
are just the two fronts
that merge and all is then bliss
and now my teeth hurt.

February 12, 2009 4:25 PM

The Triangle

This is a true story, but as a true story it is not about another woman. Or it was about many women but not about amorous liasons, instead about friendship and trust, intimacies of the heart. In AA I have had and take that opportunity to befriend women. I went home to my wife. In the early days, people figured it out. I was going home to my wife. Women found me trustworthy and as a result I wound up with as much female intimacy as I wanted, and this included a chaste form of intimate hugging and touching, an occasional familial kiss. I went home to my wife. That was a whole other story. Our marriage had become distant due to my drinking and it wasn't coming back so well.

(I should say as an aside, three times over eight years there were women who just stepped in closer and once I was very close to accepting the offer. I stopped, but not without creating hard feelings in the lady. She thought she had me. She got me to come home with her but couldn't get me in the bedroom. That ended it. Ouch. This was a couple years after the moment this poem is about.)

On my sixth AA sobriety anniversary, hoping to get my wife to join in on this joy in my life that was AA, I convinced her to come to my celebration meeting. Other people would do that, have their spouses come to the meeting. It usually was a fine thing. It would work out wonderfully I thought, a family thing, a solidarity thing, a healing thing. That's what I thought would happen. My wife was a Social Worker, and a good one. She had pushed me into sobriety. I was making it work, had become a successful sober story. It all pointed to a wonderful time of celebration. She came with me. We sat together. I acknowledged her. It all seemed to be going well. The usual things were said. People, several of them of course my women friends, said good things about me and how I was valuable in the group and to them personally. All of this.

After the meeting, on the way home, I asked her what she thought. This poem is basically what she said. I was crushed. There was nothing to do, no way for me to fix it.

The Triangle

I saw her but damn
I just hate meeting her now,
your mistress, that's what
you told me coldly
upon returning from town.
I could say nothing.

February 12, 2009 10:43 AM

More Practice

Music is one of the lodestones of my life. Had it been the only one I certainly would have ended in a very different life. I tried to leave music behind at one point. I quite genuinely believed music had nothing more for me. I wandered off into other efforts to lift myself out of here, into some other life. I had a partner. I had work. I also had a marriage and a career. Eventually, my wife believed enough in what I did that she suggested there was a way to turn my work into the completion of my degree. She was right. I sat at home night after night writing and planning and researching, following the directions that the university gave me to turn my life work into college credit. I created a document of nearly 300 pages and asked for 28 credits. I needed 24 to graduate. I did graduate. It took me 2 years, the first year to settle into what I was really trying to do and the last year to do it.

It turned out that the whole thrust of my work was over at the point that I turned it into upper division college credit by producing a post graduate level practicum. I didn’t know it was over then, but I know it now. Then I thought my work might resume around some corner I couldn’t see. Now I am pretty sure I am happy that it didn’t flower into a new life. My work to that point, in 1981 when I graduated has ebbed away. In the mid nineties music came back into my life, poised for a major intensification in 2001 when I entered my five year relationship with Frances.

In the last decade poetry has emerged as another lodestone. I didn’t have a clue that was going to happen. I have no idea if it will last. Poetry is a practice. Music is a practice. These practices are actually my work. I make my living in Engineering and I do this so I can work. I ask daily to be well placed in all of these areas. I feel blessed.

A third lodestone is my participation in AA. It too is a practice. If I don’t have sobriety I have nothing. I need to remain connected, need to serve, need to keep reverence before the Power that keeps me sober. I need to remember where I come from.

The quaternity is completed by my prayer practice. This consists of chanting and mostly solitary prayer.

More Practice

You said it is how
the world is made, that the slow
sad songs are easy
to play, while the bright
glad songs just take more practice
and are more mature.
You said I like sad
because I am afraid joy
will break me open.

What do you know of me
to say such things?

February 12, 2009 9:37 AM

Doing The Mending

This one in gratitude for Liz, who loves the image of the stones. I fly with the angels some of the time, command the power. Walk upright in the land, a prince among men. Other days I'm the toad.

Doing The Mending

This is what life is,
this collection of small stones,
this river running,
this heart speaking truth
in stories and then in need
resuming the wash,
the dishes, cleaning
after dogs, cats, kids and more,
mending, always that,
the mending.

February 12, 2009 9:19 AM

Past The Moon

I want to write you healed and found as if I could write thus and by writing make it so. I also want to write you healed and found because you are not and are lost and perhaps in need of a poem from one who loves you. I want you lifted on angelic wings. This I want if you wish to rise. I see this incantation as a statement of power, as if I had this power. I insist.

I am an arrogant man.

Past The Moon

I want to write you
healed and found, lifted higher
than you thought you would
go this very night.

I want your vision to clear
so you remember
who you really are,
no, not then but beyond that
history you told
to the history
you don't speak of now because
it goes past the moon.

February 12, 2009 9:20 AM

A Typical Lesson

No matter where you go, if you run into a spiritual master you will receive the instruction in some way to let go. This is interesting. It is surprisingly difficult. Most everything that is really good to let go of feels a little like letting go of the branch not knowing how far you will fall. Letting go feels like falling backwards, trusting that someone will catch you.

Or another picture, I was a diver in my young days. I learned the half and full gainer. These dives are especially difficult for two reasons. The first is this fall backwards thing. In this dive you give up your vision at a critical moment as you thrust yourself backwards. When you are flat on your back out over the water, the trust is in momentum and energy to do what they do and keep you going in your flip. The second is trusting in another part of the momentum, that of your approach. As you leave the board you are flipping back toward the board. If you don't have forward momentum, you will hit the board. Hmmm. I learned a whole bunch about doing my job and letting go as I learned these dives.

I wish it was that easy emotionally and spiritually. Heh.

A Typical Lesson

This is really tough.
You say I'm in a foolish
Argument. I say
I exist. That's wrong.
I say then I don't. You say
I'm still wrong headed.
Why should I trust this?
You say I don't have to do
Anything. That's when
I go ballistic
But I won't let go my hold.

Then you say let go.

February 11, 2009 3:40 PM

The King's Mistake

The heart of the royalty system has always been the idea of rule backed by God. Because of the divine right to rule, it is a really large thing to depose a king. Of course how that works out in practice is that a small group of lords with lineages and claims of lineage also feel that divinity favors them, and an even smaller group of lords usually exists that has very little to do with God anyway. So the clarity of divine right becomes muddled in most reigns. Yet that is not different in terms of ideal and outcome than any other political system. None of our political systems actually approach the ideals that the politicians utter and insist the citizens live by. We so routinely encounter corruption in our politics that many of us assume it to be the rule rather than the exception. It sometimes seems so.

There is something to be said for the divine right idea. It is clear that some men favor this idea. The question for these men is not whether or not there is a divinely backed ruler but how to identify him or her. If it is clear that the king has lost his way, then it becomes possible that God has withdrawn and the king's growing error is the signal of that withdrawal.

And what of me, of small men like me who nonetheless actually own property or space like kings own kingdoms? Make no mistake. Holdings of things of value and especially real estate can only happen when these things are directly removed from the king's possessions. We call certificates of ownership titles. We call royal holdings titles too. There were papers describing royal holdings, making them clear. What of the citizenry in republican democracies, who have "divine" rights? That is what we claim, that the Constitution delineates rights that are sacred in this way, and thus we have all been promoted to royal status in this sense. We are all titled. What of us? Can we make errors that sever our divine rights? Of course.

The King's Mistake

I am king, enthroned
enrobed, enacted, royal
in my ways but lost,
in error, dismay.
There is tension in the chords
of the band playing
on my stage, yearning
in the echoes of my heart
for the healing of
the severed silver
thread that was mine, whole before
I cut it in two.

February 11, 2009 10:38 AM

The Wild Geese On The Lake

I was in a marriage relationship for over twenty years. That was not necessarily good news but it was a life commitment. I took that vow seriously. I saw a photo of a mating pair of swans. That's what led to this poem.

The Wild Geese On The Lake
(the drake overheard to speak frankly with his mate)

Today I am not sure
I would choose you but I'm still
here crossing with you.
That choice is old news.
It's what we do, girl, live out
old choices, loyal
to them and to each
other, call it love, sure it's
God's will to be here.

February 11, 2009 10:14 AM

You Said, I Said

I am not the peaceful man that I should be. There is an inner disturbance that prevents certain things in my life even though I know I should be able to do them. I can see and understand. I can even give examples. Here is one.

I make my living as a machine designer. This is a deeply complex suite of tasks that involve relationships with other specialists, knowledge of specific tools and items, at least a smattering of engineering, knowledge of ergonomics, past practices, certain complicated codes, and after all that then specific knowledge of what the machine in question does and how it fits in the process in which it is placed. I have to apply logic, algebra (did you know this word is arabic??) and geometry all the time. You would think then that I would know lots about how to support my house and car, how to build things in my life. You would be completely wrong. I am a little better now, but not much. I hire nearly everything. If I didn't know righty tighty, lefty loosey, then I would very quickly have trouble trusting a frozen bolt or nut. I would not know which is right. I am severely mechanically challenged. I have a poor relationship with objects.

And what my inside experience of that is, it is disturbance. I am hung between horns of several dilemmas. Here is one.

You Said, I Said

You said I should be
objective, withdraw myself
from the things I see.
You said to follow
and become the things I see,
then go far beyond.

No wonder struggle
continues with such counter
driven strategies.
There will always be
tension present in my love
in a world like this.

February 11, 2009 9:53 AM

Neck And Neck

This is a memory.

Neck And Neck

When I got sober,
just a couple months of dry,
getting on the ground,
I was still looking for work.
Our ginger cat,
we called him Godot
or we called him The Best Cat
In The World, he died
over a few days
of kidney failure. One day
I held him. Springtime
in the sun. He smiled.
Grief and joy raced neck and neck.
Then I put him down.

February 10, 2009 4:54 PM
********

How this worked, I was laid off in November, received the ultimatum in the last days of December, struggled against the idea but capitulated by the end of January and went to treatment. February, 1983, I was in treatment. I got out in March. I looked for work in March and April, went on an interview in early May and went to work for the company the next ten years.

At the same time, Godot began to fail with all the typical signs of kidney failure in cats. By the beginning of May he was sinking into coma, hardly rousing at all but for a few moments a day. Finally he stopped everything. On that last day, I sat with him in the sun, knowing it was time, but also knowing he liked it just fine in my lap in the sun. Phew, tough to write still after all these years. I looked around at the spring, at the life, the beauty and a joy rose in my heart right along with the grief that was breaking my heart. I was so proud to be there, to be present, to be able to do what had to be done.

The next morning I took him to my vet, who by this time and so many cats was a friend, and I stood beside the best cat in the world as we put him down. That tore my heart wide open of course. I drove home after and straight to an AA meeting where I found I could not speak, though I tried, the grief was so large.

That was a Thursday. It was the next day, a Friday that I was invited to join that company where I started working in my new sobriety and then kept that job for ten years. I felt really grateful that I had finished with Godot first.

It was the first time in my life that I learned I could have such disparate emotions as big grief and fierce joy in my heart simultaneously, simply amazing.

Telling Mom About Going Into Publishing

Some people I know decided to go into publishing and said they were leaving the blogs behind. I wrote this thinking about the changes that life makes when you make big decisions.

Telling Mom About Going Into Publishing

and then I said let’s
do this thing and she said yes
and then we got Jan
and this is just so
good I can’t hardly stand it.
I’m grinnin from ear to earth.
Mom says, honey, I
hope you know whatcher doin.

February 10, 2009 4:14 PM

Holding You

I had a harsh morning and a relentless afternoon, then I went to a meeting and found out that there were many people struggling harder than I am with these issues of mine. I came home and realized that the next poem simply wasn't one I would post, so I skipped it and came to this one.

Tonight I miss my cat, and with that the tiny little hooks that lead to all the other lost cats, the wife, the mom, the dad, the many friends, all gone now. Thank God I know what to do. I have done it, am doing it. As my friend Vivian says, Relentless Forward Movement. That came from her extreme marathon running husband. He's gone now too, a heart event that occurred at the end of a mountain marathon. He finished, and finished well, but then he died, too far from the medics who could have saved him had they been able to get there. Relentless Forward Movement.

I am in between a rock and a hard place. Nothing new. Same old. Yet this time is new if the stuff in it isn't and I will go on. Of course I will. I am not alone. Nor are you.

Holding You

Spidersilk, silver
and stronger than beautiful
holds you as I spun
for you before this
life in another, knew you
then, knew you would need
it now, my princess.

February 10, 2009 2:48 PM

Appearances

When I first heard someone use this image I lost it. I think it is just about perfect. I have spent twenty years getting beat with the lash of my choice between saving my ass and saving my face. It is so often true that I can't save both at the same time that I know I can cut a corner by making it a universal principle. If I say you can't EVER save your ass and your face at the same time, I will not be always right but I will score at least in the high B range. Of course if I was an effing saint, I would always pay exquisite attention and note the exceptions. Then I would only make errors when they were called for.

(Bridge)
Errors are after all and in fact sometimes called for. I was taught years ago that Navaho rug weavers will weave quite complex patterns but there will be at least one deliberate subtle error in the pattern.
(EndBridge)

Pythagoras knew long ago that the real world will always fall short of perfection. This shows up in the perfect tuning cycle of fifths which goes sharp as you go. This fact has forced us to tune musical instruments to a special tuning called tempered tuning. If you want to play in all keys you have to tune slightly flat. We get used to this but sometimes it will stand out in one or another instrument. You can tune perfectly if all you want to do is play in a single one of the twelve keys. That will force certain other keys on your instrument to sound awful. Back before our modern tuning there was another kind of tempered tuning in use and it caused certain keys to sound different from others, brighter or darker. That meant that people composing music would choose their keys for the piece based on the timbre of the key. Sometimes orchestras will tune to the old style in order to play these pieces. Tuning slightly flat is an excellent example of a required deliberate error.

Appearances

I look so cool, so
unruffled, drifting along
with the gentle flow.
I am one with things
oh yeah, unless you see red
in my eye and look
under the surface
at the furious movement
of little duck feet.

February 10, 2009 10:01 AM

What is really cool, I wrote this as is my practice in Word Pad before I went online tonight. That's when I ran into Woman In a Window's comment on yesterday's post. That was too spooky. Go there. Read it. Remember I wrote this without knowing she had visited.

Enlightenment

What goes around comes around again. Can't stay down too long without putting false energy into it. Can't elevate too long precisely the same. Can't be wise or foolish too long without artifice as well. That is just the way it is.

My first spirit source was handed me by a red head elf who also gave me my first LSD. He told me I would have a lifelong connection to Taoist vision. He was right, but how that developed had little to do with his vision of it. What he knew was that he was going to get me high on LSD quite soon and that Taoist vision and LSD changes to consciousness are intimately related. What he didn't know was all important to all this for my life. Still this red headed elf pointed me to the ancient chinese and it was not a bum steer.

That is how it works. The truest message often is presented in the oddest package, so much so that the first and most important of the spirit messages is to PAY ATTENTION! Be alert not only straight ahead, but off to the sides. Peripheral vision may save your soul.


Enlightenment

You keep reminding
me to look around at stuff
and me, I go in
looking for my soul
as if I could really see
the shape of you there.
I think arriving
is the end of the journey.
You say no, small one,
It's only the start.

February 10, 2009 9:18 AM

Feeling Normal

Sometimes I find wings to fly, sometimes I don't. I am alcoholic in what we call recovery. It means I don't drink. It also means more than that. What it doesn't mean is sainthood. There are simple disciplines that are essential to staying free of drink. Honesty is one of them. Here is an honest poem.

Feeling Normal

It's sunny today.
I'm more used to dismal days
and the cloud cover
that hides the sunshine.
I have this urge to kick up
so much dust that gloom
returns and obscures
the clarity in the air,
ignite volcanoes,
create the winter
of my discontent anew
just to feel normal.

February 9, 2009 1:40 PM

Maybe I Should Stop This

I am really, really stubborn. This is not good. :)

Maybe I Should Stop This

I said, give me signs.

You said you did, gave me sores
on my dreams of hope,
smallpox on my heart,
the grinding walk, stone on stone
and me between them,
lost and losing more.

You said suffering shows me
that I don't know shit,
that I don't think straight,
that I still persist, insist
that I have my way.

February 9, 2009 11:07 AM

It's a joke, okay?
Sort of.

Messages

I would love (this is my conceit) to know a little more about what the future holds. I am convinced there are messages all over the place about that, in all sorts of esoteric languages I don't know. I keep looking askance, trying to see if anyone around me knows better than me. I think all the ones who know are staying out of sight somehow. This reminds me of the Taoist view on this, which is that real masters never look like masters. Most often they don't just not look like masters, but really seem to be screw ups of some kind or another. They look like no one until they suddenly shine.

I confess I wish I was one of those guys, but I really don't have it in me to do the work. I hate it that I can't save the world.

Messages

It all reads like code
and codebreaking isn't strong
in my kit of tools.

That's why I'm foolish
to be here, on this torn sod
with codified signs
telling me something
though I can't read what they say,
not even the gist.

February 9, 2009 10:52 AM

With My Long Rodent Teeth

There is always something. There is. It's enough to tire me out. Some mornings it hardly seems worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.

Grumpy Now

You told me to walk
on water, said that happens
when I find center,
lift my feathered wings,
hold my beak just so and slim
down for God's sake, please.

That's when I got grumpy. Hmphf!

February 9, 2009 9:47 AM

Leonard Cohen Light

I am almost embarassed to be this naked. I might hesitate to say these poems aloud before an audience. I might be afraid they would see how true they are for me. I break down nearly every time I read Suzanne or listen to the song.

Suzanne - Leonard Cohen

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that shes half crazy
But thats why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from china
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

And jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From salvation army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

*********************************


Leonard Cohen Light

Leonard said you paint
with light the way Suzanne took
me down. Oh God, I
have drowned in the glide
of the waves, the seafoam she
sent me, swirling to
my core as the light
in her eyes pierced me. I
long for life like this.
February 9, 2009 8:45 AM

Syncopated Truth

I'm a derelict
of my own making, a hoot
of the departing
owl in that fable
you told me of an aging
rocker in retort.

A northern forest
full of critters in the band
who double up on
parts, fatten the tune
while I syncopate on drums
I beat with my hands.

February 8, 2009 1:17 PM

I just got back from jury duty, a two day case of hit and run with injury, guilty. Things have been a little sideways that way. Thanks all for your comments.

Saving Myself

Ghost Dansing has set this poem up precisely so I am bringing today's comment forward.

Ghost Dansing wrote

"i like when you write about your poetry because it helps me understand how wrong you are about your poetry :)"

How can I add to that?

Saving Myself

Sometimes my brain's like
a flock when the eagle shows,
and I scatter out
of formation to
save myself from being caught
in truth's twin talons.

What else can I do?

February 8, 2009 12:51 PM


The eagle is thinning the flock out pretty good :(

Night and Day

Night and day, you are the one,
only you beneath the moon and under the sun,
whether near to me or far
It's no matter darling where you are
I think of you, night and day.

Keely Smith I believe. Certainly Sinatra.

Day and night, night and day, why is it so
that this longing for you follows wherever I go?
In the roaring traffic's boom,
in the silence of my lonely room
I think of you, day and night.

Night and day, under the hide of me
there's an, Oh!, such a hungry yearning
burning inside of me,
and this torment won't be through
until you let me spend my life
making love to you
night and day.

There's an intro section I didn't copy. Isn't this great writing? Go listen to it somewhere. It's a smashing song.

I used to sing this among many other Sinatra tunes to practice singing in my junior and senior years of high school. This was already older music by then, my dad's music. I would find a closet or some other enclosure somewhere separate from others and belt them out, or stay home from school and do the same in the empty house. That was best because we had Sinatra on old reel to reel tape and I could sing with him. I knew the vocal staging of Sinatra perfectly. I didn't have the voice for it really. Too bad. But what is good, it's why big band jazz rhythm is a part of my soul.

By the way, this reminiscence has very little to do with the poem :) There is just enough that I came by the mind freak tonight honestly.


Sleepwalker

I accept you. You're
the one who walks with magic
through the walls of time,
through the halls beyond
the dry daytime ways we walk,
and there you seldom
have true company.

I also know you here, sitting
draped across the knot
you fashion, your life
as a daytime creature, raw,
bleeding a little
when not caught in joy,
in the grand play of your heart.

I know you, jewel
from the loving flame,
with just a small spot or two -
creature of your dream.

February 8, 2009 12:07 PM

I Know My Worth

I know you don't pick
me like I'm all important,
not to you I'm not,
not to anyone.
I know you give me more than
I'd ever deserve,
Not that I am less
But that there are so many:
you've so much to give.

Then I think again,
Know I am a sprouting seed
To you, yes I am.

February 8, 2009 11:27 AM

*******************************

Somehow I have no extra words...

Please Soften Me

I am the hard earth
packed down by the passing time,
the tread of many
heavy feet, baked by
incessant sun through the days
of my exposure.

I hope your rain comes
to soften me, to seep in,
to loosen my joints,
to wet my dry veins,
to get my heart's blood to move
as it should once more.

February 8, 2009 10:13 AM

The Way He Did It, To Know Your Place

Hafiz is my hero. The story goes that he was so in love with God that he had no choice but to write. He asked his master, who assigned him at least a poem a day. There are thousands of poems attributed to him but not all of them survive. There are a goodly number in Persian (of which the modern version is called Farsi) and a number of people have translated him into English. Among the latest is Daniel Ladinsky, who has done a smashing job in my opinion. Emerson revered Hafiz. So did Goethe. Hafiz is a pen name for Shams-ud-din Muhummad. Hafiz means "memorizer" and is given to those who memorize the whole of the Quran. That is no small feat, the Quran is a big, dense book. He was a Sufi mystic, himself a master late in life after years of study with a master. Here is one from Hafiz as translated by Ladinsky, lines shaped by me,

Like a pair
of mismatched newlyweds,
I keep turning to God saying,

"Kiss me".

***

The Way He Did It

So my man Hafiz
went to taverns all the time
to get Heavenly.

Drunk on holy wine
lifts a man into the stream
of light behind holes
in the dark blue night,
the glad shine, god's eyes, bright true
blaze and then millions
of drunken angels
line up to kiss the holy
man who dares to fly.

February 7, 2009 8:58 PM

********************************

There is a reason, in my opinion, that the highest ideal in Mahayana Buddhism is the work of Bodhisattva, which will not be over until all sentient beings achieve complete and final awakening. C.S.Lewis agreed from a Christian perspective and wrote stories to illustrate our odd position in the cosmos.

It is really difficult to rise here. That seems to be built in. The Christians claim that Christ coming has broken it, making faith, forgiveness and love the root source of born again success, but only if you believe on Him. After more than two thousand years it is evident that this may be a true way but is not easy. It is not easier in the east where the normal course of struggle is aeons long, even though it is always claimed that awakening is right next door, even more intimate than that. Between one breath and the next, just turn a little. There you are.

We are all a stubborn bunch and we come by it inevitably as we live supported by this planet and all her inhabitants. Mr. Lewis said we are insane, have been quarantined from the rest of the universe, souls coming from everywhere out there as to a hospital of sorts to keep us from the rest. Out there we would only cause distress, being insane and unable to help ourselves. This is why true awakening cannot be but an individual thing here. As we gather, we manifest this insanity and we cannot rise above it in aggregate.

To Know Your Place

You would think by now
we would get over ourselves,
figure this life thing out,
know that the home world
has an orbit in near space
around this small sun
out the stellar arm
of an ordinary shaped
spiral galaxy,
not near the center
where we could not live at all,
not noticed by them,
the truly wise ones
because it's just not our time,
not our chance or turn.

February 7, 2009 9:18 PM

Drinking New Wine, I Think Differently

I doubt this next poem expresses wisdom. It certainly offers passion. It also in its way is a metaphor for what happened to me. I assert that something like this saved my life, that I was offered spiritual drink and I took it at a critical moment. I knew I was dying. I did not know anything about spirit. I mean that quite directly and literally. I knew about church, nothing about spirit. Church without spirit is a dead thing. So I drank. I drank spiritual wine. Eventually years later, at the end before I got sober, I drank white wine from boxes, two or three a week. That's 10-15 liters a week.

What happened after drinking new wine in 1966, I began a lifelong unabashed quest for wisdom, sure that this yearning was God's gift to me, and it happened literally overnight. Sophia is my lover.

Drinking New Wine

I would take and drink new wine
even from the farthest goatskin bag,
to raise it above me and let the stream
of life spout out into free air, to mix
and mist a bit, flash in the sun
of my hope, the heat of my wild
and mutated life.

February 6, 2009 10:01 PM

*********************************

I truly do want to know how the four footeds and the winged people think. I have lived intimately with cats most of my adult life and much of my childhood too. I know they think, and sometimes what they think. Given sufficient motivation, some of them will plot too. Now I am watching birds. I am convinced that if you figure what interests them and also factor in the way their sensory systems work, you will begin to see sensible behavior out of them too, the logic of biology. Far deeper and older than our upstart rationality which creates disaster as often (more often perhaps) as success.

I Think Differently

I am pretty sure
I wouldn't want to roost there
on top of that pole
which goes to show me
I just don't think like eagles
or ospreys or storks.

This disappoints me.

February 7, 2009 8:38 PM

What Our Life Is, Double Vision

Relationships. Does anyone know how to do them? I know that when you have easy people that it is far more possible to have good relationships. My last relationship was easy. It still ended. This next poem is about having storms in relationships.

What Our Life Is

I get a little
more tired each time we do this
but that's how it is
and I love you so
much that I don't really mind.
That's what our life is,
this storm that's right sized
even though it takes a bit
more that's not replaced.
Someday one of us
will not be here, the other
will grieve then for sure.

February 6, 2009 9:24 PM

******************************

I really love romance. I am a sucker for it. Given half a chance I start one up. I am happiest believing in love's power. It is no question true that magic is more likely to work when I am deeply in love. I have also known deeply how steep the cost. I am still a sucker for it.

Double Vision

All it takes is everything.
No half measures in the mix.
When my lover says take me now,
there is nothing left to do

but to continue walking up
the ladder to the ledge,
to see the view, to breathe in,
then make the approach.

Behold the result, an excellent
swan dive into the deep end.
But this is the way of memories.

In the world now I'm just the guy
in the back room punching buttons.

February 6, 2009 9:43 PM

The Street Tribe, The Way Out

It is of course possible that among all the street tribes there are some people who are capable of and enter into shamanic spaces. Some of these without the support of elders may actually achieve elevation. I do not believe many. And some of these may actually lift other street people so that they begin to express themselves consciously by making and accepting spiritual marks. The keynote there is "consciously".

On the other hand, unconscious expressions of spirit abound. That is more or less surefire proof for whatever it is that Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. And he is right in this: if you do not bring this expression of spirit to conscious integration, then any expression of spirit is driven by inner forces and does not require any understanding. That integration he called individuation, and more spiritually minded people call it "awakening".

The Street Tribe

Street tribe people mark
themselves and many other
things with nonsense, lost
in time, yearning for
the truth of their distant kin
who did the same with
meaning and open
hearts for God and Mother Earth,
for Moon, stars, for love.

February 6, 2009 3:10 PM

**********************************

What follows is the story of my whole life. I have not one time been successful at deciding my fate and then going after it. I have tried, like deciding I would go to West Point and then doing it, but really my whole life has been run by meaningful accidents (the hand of God) that happen as I try to go my chosen way.

And then there have been other obvious choices in my life, seen by mothers and teachers and those kinds of people noticing my talents, and there was no way I could drive myself in those directions. I could not do it. One example of this, Mom thought I should be a head librarian or an actuary. Both of these jobs ultimately lead to six figure incomes (when, for example, the library is Philadelphia or New York).

I would act like I chose to refuse because I wanted to be seen as choosing, but that was a lie and I knew it at the time. It is a long term effect of all these experiences that I am sure that destiny is a viable concept, viable for me and for people like me. I have followed my destiny, but not really by choice, instead by acceptance.

The Way Out

I wanted to be.
I yearned for the good and wise.
You said, not enough.
That crushed me. Something
inside me rebelled, struggled,
sought escape from this
aching joint you left
me to deal with from here on,
then you showed me what
it was I could do,
said, here's a different way,
do that, and I have.

February 6, 2009 4:07 PM

Deeper Than The Rest, Rain Gently Falls

There are three kinds of lice that infest humans. Head lice, clothing lice, and pubic lice. Pubic lice are very closely related to gorilla lice. We probably caught them in the days we used gorilla nests for our own. I hate to think how else we might catch them. This was early in human history. Head lice we share with chimpanzees from back a few million years. The body lice that live in our clothes migrated from head lice about 70,000 years ago. That's probably about the time we really started wearing clothes for real rather than casual. How's that for history? I got it from The Book Of Animal Ignorance.

Deeper Than The Rest

If I were a louse
I'd want to be a wood louse,
with abilities
beyond the louse norm
so I could use my legs, sway
to the music laid
with my eggs into
the rot of things and burrow
deeper than the rest.

February 5, 2009 3:26 PM

*********************************

My instincts screw me up a lot. I am singular by instinct and the center of everything pretty much. It's a secret, you know. I would never tell you that it all revolves around me. That would be dangerous for you to know. You can't imagine how insulting it is to find out that you actually think it all revolves around you. How wrong you are!

Rain Gently Falls

You love me, I know.
I feel it so intensely
I must be the one,
the only one you
love for all eternity.

Then I notice clouds,
your love is clouds,
clouds in all known directions,
and rain gently falls,
falls everywhere.
You do not discriminate
and you love them too.

I admit this troubles
the limits of my being
with low jealousy.

February 6, 2009 10:45 AM

The Point Of It, What I Want

I feel reading these again after this length of time that Feb 5 was an intense day. I caught a particular wave. The first poem was looking at it as it loomed well above my comfort zone. The second poem was looking at the swell of it passing beyond my reach.

"Lord look at me here, rooted like a tree here. I got the sit down, can't cry, Oh Lord, I'm gonna die blues."

Because there is nothing to do at that point but sing or dance or write or make love.

The Point Of It

The passage could have
been easier in smaller
turns, not so abrupt,
nor so risky terms,
but you had me on purpose,
moving me right out
beyond the loss point
no matter the price I paid,
it had come to that.

February 5, 2009 2:29 PM

*********************************

Yes it has come to that. It has come to that point where there is nothing left to do but make peace with my life just as it is. I have tried to steer and every time I steer into a train wreck of some kind. So I have let go and let the mystery have me. The oddest things happen but I survive and as my self inflicted wounds heal, I even thrive. So don't be telling me I have to take charge of my own life. That is fucking insane for the likes of me. I just walk this path. Road building is not for me. It never has been. All my music, all of this, all the best of me is syncopation, accompaniment, response, harmony. I know this is true.

What I Want

On this point at least
we agree. I've never been
nor wanted to be
perfect, a hard job.
But oh my God, I want shine.
I want butterfly's
wings, iridescence,
the high flying riff in A
on that guy's guitar,
the scent your body
has after we have showered,
the words I might write,
as I have before,
in the afternoon today.
I want more of that.

February 5, 2009 3:15 PM

The End Of The Affair, Alien Dreams

I have told this story before. This is as straight up as I can tell it.

The End Of The Affair

I promised I would.
I said take me and do it
like that, tear my heart
right out if you must
because it matters to me
that you have your truth,
knowing that it would
not be me she chose. After
two years she sent me

away.

February 4, 2009 8:43 PM

**************************

When I was ten I started to dream I was from some other world. I mean that literally. I wake from most dreams knowing that they are not about any place that I recognize from my life, this even when I recognize people. Most often I don't even know the people. I felt so alienated at ten that I couldn't make sense of belonging here. I have been searching ever since for ways to make sense of my situation. When I was 21 God intervened. Because of that the story I pursue dramatically changed. The search has not. I feel blessed that such a thing happened, feel that without it I would have failed utterly. This poem recalls an attitude that is real even if the story is not.

Alien Dreams

I am heart wrapped, stoned
by the presence of more lies
than truth, I admit.
Buried in sandstone
stories of the way it ought
to be if this was
the home world you said
I'm from, and I agree I'm
not from here, by God.

February 5, 2009 2:08 PM

Point Of View, You Have Broken Me

These two poems are written about the same state of being. The title of the first poem is really the title of the entire post. These poems were written last winter.

Current: I had to go to the doctor, losing two days this week. I have been referred to Kaiser's sleep clinic to check out the possibilities of sleep apnea. I doubt that diagnosis. However, I hope they find something that works for me because I can't afford to cater to this loss of energy. I think it my trouble is the consequence of a moderately heavy ingestion of chemicals, what they call side effects. We also discovered what I expected, that I am not responding to the blood pressure meds and that means there is more to learn about that too. Another referral. Boring. What is interesting is, sleep disorder is subsumed under pulmonary, meaning about lungs. Blood pressure is subsumed under nephrology. Hunh. Kidney disease. Blood pressure if difficult is about kidney function. Hmmm.

Point Of View

I'm a lunatic,
know it from how many call
me that, used to hurt
me, now no longer
bleed out from such a wounded
lowly condition.

Instead I gather
roots and herbs, make my designs,
and dance around fires
painted and naked.
The world changes. The crows come
and caw approval.

February 4, 2009 9:57 AM

************************************

This following poem is a fundamentally Christian vision, not only in the primary image but in the sentiment. It is not the only Christian vision. It is not even, I believe, the predominant vision offered in the mainstream churches these days. It is a vision nonetheless of traditional depth and is based on both the idea of original sin and on it's solution.

You Have Broken Me

Oh God, Your hammer's
hit the nail into my wrist
with sharp stinging blows.
You say I fall prey
to self love this long held way,
that I seek to tell
everyone's truth
as I can name it, as if
my passion's larger
than life, larger than
You, it turns out harsh just that
way, nailing me down.

I think I know best.
I do. I think I know best.
You have broken me.

February 4, 2009 10:18 AM

This Is Not Right, Your New Magic

Much of magic is sourced in the manipulation of attention. I actually believe in this way there is no difference between life and magic. Some of magic is the control of powers. In this way too there is no difference between life and magic.

This Is Not Right

I got distracted
just for the one spare moment
and when I turned back
it had all been changed.

I do not know how that all
happened, like a knife.

I don't know how to
get it back the way it was.
Why am I the same?

February 3, 2009 8:29 PM

******************************

Some difficulties arise in associating with a magician. Here is one.

Your New Magic

I looked at myself
in your mirror. Some kind of
weird bird looked at me.
This backs me up some,
like I come to your new house
only to discover
I have changed my shape
to do it or worse, you have
done it with your new
magic.

February 4, 2009 8:56 AM

Coyote, Reminder

Everything changes, I guess. I had a rhythm and I made a vow. It appears that a phase of my life has finished, and that its finish is sourced in energy or its lack. I was driven by forces as I often am. I will surf along the tops of the waves and learn the gracious moves if I can so that I appear in control of things but really I am waiting for the surf to subside and then will wait for something else to come. In the meantime I will discover what remains.

Just about this time last year I began writing rapidly with drive behind it. I now have just over 900 poems written in 365 days. I don't know why it started and now that the cycle is over I don't know why it has ended. It is obvious that I cannot now hold myself to the two poem a day ideal. I don't need to know the why of it, I need to celebrate the gift of it.

I just spent a weekend more like the ones I spent more than a year ago. For no particular reason at all I had no computer time on Saturday, and the minimal required time today. As a behavior new to my life, I took two naps Saturday and one today. I accept. I believe these changes are necessary. When the new phase comes in some future moment, whatever it is, then I will do that. In the meantime, I am still writing poetry but more like one a day and since I had the whole weekend off this weekend I guess it may turn out more like a few a week, maybe none eventually.

This is nothing new for me, to spend a year or two intensely involved and then move on. Sometimes I return. Sometimes I do not. Each time I behave as if this is timeless, will go on forever. It never does, though some things do return again and again, like music and like poetry has. Even if I completely stopped writing poetry today (and I won't) I still have something like 200 days of postings to come.

That's a lot of time for something else to happen.

But even gods are left behind.

Coyote

I was a god once,
maybe not so graceful then
but definitely
clever, maybe not
so compassionate my heart
but definitely
needed. Now you chase
me, shoot me, feed me only
by some accident
and I'm wandering
in search of someone who will
dance the old dances.

February 3, 2009 8:08 PM

*************************************

It is said of alcoholics and other dysfunctional people that they do not have relationships, they take hostages. I hope I am better than that. I am now living as alone as I ever have. Even my old girl cat is gone.

She was once this amazing kitten, so amazing that I took a photo. It was really good. Ann sent it off to the calendar people. They agreed. She was born early in 91 and so in spring she was perfectly posed, a young part Siamese kitten who looked like a raccoon kit, laying draped along our weathered wood fence, surrounded by the greenery and flowers.

First Ann sent it to the Page a Day folk for inclusion in their main page a day calendar. They rejected her I think because she was a mix breed Siamese. That calendar tends to feature purebreds a little more. Then Ann saw the kittens wall calendar and we resent. In 1997 she became January 31 and a cover girl, along with several other kittens, thus appearing twice in the calendar. She could not have cared less. I was so proud, I eventually had the whole thing framed. She was not only a calendar girl, but a cover girl. But now she has gone into the mystery.

Reminder

I will not hold you
trapped in dreams I have, not those
dreams of perfection
that I like to dream.
Instead I will take the moon's
rays and weave of them
a bracelet, remind
you of your freedom, of hope,
of your destiny.

February 3, 2009 8:46 PM

Modern Art, Grumpy People

The first time I got a full case of dismay was back in my hippie days. It got real clear that the movement that was in so many ways trying to rise above the commercial objectives of that time was being what we called co-opted. Hippies were well known for such ideas as *free love*. Imagine some shit for brains naming a condoms brand Free Love. That's the basic idea. I just made that up, and I doubt the brand would flourish, but it might well survive. Of course that is what happened, along with other pressures. Business as usual actually took away something essential and now hippies are widely felt to be a joke. There are certain places especially on the west coast where hippies in more or less pristine form still exist, but mainly in obscure locations. We don't have much room for hippies in the mainstream.

Back in the day I claimed for myself a submergence. I went into the mainstream behind the idea of going into deep cover. Of course in some ways that is a joke I make, but there is a kernal of truth. One basic example, when I got my first drafter trainee position, I felt I had to interview and start my new job wearing a wig to cover my long hair. That didn't last long. Instead I cut my hair. There were some longhairs working but not many. I needed the job. Ann was going to grad school. We had rented a slum house, though the neighborhood wasn't bad and the house was basically sound. I sacrificed by going even further under cover. That shorter hair thing took root with me. Now I periodically cut my hair short, about 1.5" or so and let it grow out, over and over to 3-4" long. I get 3 haircuts a year max. Long hair is actually dangerous in my profession.

Modern Art

The shape of chaos
invites me to fall forward
flat against my nose
trying to understand why
it needs any frame
but the smart guys will
frame it and sell it
and some shithead will buy it
and that's all there is to that.

They tell me I have
a really bad attitude.

February 3, 2009 9:10 AM

*******************************

Here's a grumpy attitude, by God! I don't think I will say much about this, except to say there is a weird distant connection between both poems.

Grumpy People

Be grateful, they say
as if in saying grateful
I can be grateful.
There must be room for grumpy
people on the holy path.
The sludge of this thing
has it's place, sewage gives life
even though it stinks.

February 3, 2009 11:27 AM

Clandestine Love, What Is Compassion

This is a simple poem of truth. This fact of her arrival is what stands behind my choice and the price I paid for it when I entered Clandestine Love. Knowing, Oh shit! This is really going to hurt!, knowing that as sure as anything I have ever known, also I knew this: my world was remade.

Clandestine Love

I do remember.
The moments of waiting for you
To come, the green shape
Of your chariot,
The stamp of the hooves, the snorts
And wild equine eyes
As you tied up out
Front. Then you came in my door.
My world was remade.

February 2, 2009 7:48 PM

********************************

Please do not mistake tenderness for pity. Also do not mistake a compassionate man for a weak one, nor for one who will back down when hard decisions are called for. However, please know that mercy carries far more weight than justice in the tangled weave of delusional self will that bends and twists the outcomes in most of our lives. Thus do not mistake a merciful man.

What Is Compassion

The wise man
taught me words for it,
said when you reach the far stars,
see with God's bright eyes,
the world's need rises
and you are tender but still
far away and free
and you can reach down,
touch in tenderness without
getting caught in traps,
and you are filled up
with the force of tenderness
like juice in apples.

February 3, 2009 9:00 AM

Everything's Jake

Nothing wrong that a whole bunch of extra hours in the day wouldn't fix. Love you guys.

A Change Of Plans

This weekend I received a phone call from Betsy, my deceased wife's sister, one of three. When my wife, Ann was in desperate trouble, Betsy came out from Ohio, hoping that in coming and taking Ann back to Ohio with her, she might be saving Ann's life. It didn't work. Ann died in less than a year. That was in 2001, a month after 9/11. Betsy and I really like each other and have stayed connected through the years. She had news for me. Mary, Ann's elder sister has passed. Mary's death also, like Ann's, was an alcoholic death driven by mental illness. Now mother and both oldest sisters have died in the same general way. Alcoholism in this case is batting four for three. That is because within two months of his wife's death, Ann and Mary's dad died of a heart attack. I wound up writing a poem today about scattering Ann's ashes which I am going to post, jumping the queue. The poem records an event that took place in 2002.

Ann wanted her ashes scattered in Lake Erie and Betsy did that. Betsy held a portion of her ashes back for me and I still have a small stash that I may scatter sometime. I scattered Ann up at Willamette National Cemetary with her aunt and uncle buried there, behind our old house where we lived for more than ten years, under the dogwood tree here at this house, and I took her to Newport, Oregon, where we started out after grad school. It was her first job in Social Work, working for the State of Oregon. It was my first job as a designer after I had trained as a drafter for two years with a firm in Portland. We got married there in Newport. I dumped most of Ann's ashes (the small portion given to me) in a shallow depression I dug in the sand at the tideline, letting the surge take her where it would.

Mary had a harder time getting along with anyone as her illness progressed. Ann and Mary did not do well, especially at the last when Ann was so sick and now Mary has died a similar death.

By the way, there is more alcoholism present in this story. Ann's aunt was the victim of a drunk driving accident. Her husband was driving and they were hit by a drunk driver. They were hit broadside which spun the car around, and Ann's aunt was thrown from the passenger seat and died of her injuries at the scene. The couple in the back seat were also killed in the impact. Ann's uncle, who was driving, had the right of way, and the drunk ran a stop sign. Her uncle walked away without a scratch and so did that drunk. Ann's uncle has since passed, living over a decade without his wife. That is part of why I felt it right to put some of Ann's ashes at their gravestone. Now I can periodically visit them all. I do. I consider that place a power point in my life. None of the family are near. One year there were flowers from an unknown source on that grave. It might've been the kids. It also might've been the drunk, who we were told settled in the Portland area. The thing about the flowers, there didn't seem to be enough of them, nor of the right kind to have been from the kids.

I am pensive just now.

The Long Green Glass

With my friends I took
as you gave me your ashes
to Newport, the beach
we would walk early
in our years together, when
we had no money
nor did we know what

would come. I dug a tideline
hole for you, there placed
your dream as it poured
from the long green glass a thin
ashy stream as we
who knew you witnessed
the tide come for you and take
away from us all

old false empty hope.

August 3, 2009 12:59 PM

Another One Of Those Questions, Why Do I Do This

Yes, indeed, how many are there?

Another One Of Those Questions

How many are there
living in the sweet calm lake
of love contented
to be so long paired
that the wedding is only
the pictures, the old
announcement, the ring
still worn if not lost somehow?

February 2, 2009 1:57 PM

******************************************

There are the big things in my life. Even at this point, I really don't know what to make of them. I know the illusions I followed. I know what I wanted but that was never possible. Three times I tried. Instead I have the life of the possible. That is all right with me. I am all right.

Why Do I Do This

You tell me to check
so I look in all the back
rooms, in the boxes
I stashed there, looking
for motives, hidden behind
the obvious ones.

Out of the corner
of my eye something scurries
along the wall, dives
into that small hole
and refuses to come out,
not even for you.

That is, you say, the main motive.

February 2, 2009 2:42 PM

Intermission

I have needed this time for resting. I will post tomorrow. I love you guys.