Change Of Heart, This One I Saw Coming

I got caught one time on acid, looking in a mirror. Bad idea. I was locked in for quite a while. At least that is how it seemed. It was not kind. I was not ready for the melting of boundaries while being exquisitely self conscious. I was not ready for the quality of judgment, for the honesty, for the finely detailed story. I was never that visual on acid, and the mirror was no different, my vision melted and turned into narrative while what remained of my vision twitched and jittered.

Change Of Heart

I really do not
Want to look in that mirror.
This scares me silly.
I feel revulsion
For what I might see in me.

I remember that,
How I felt before
I cracked open that one time
And a little bit
After til I picked
Myself back up off the floor.

It was so real.

January 21, 2009 10:13 AM

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I have mentioned this squirrel and this nut. Here is the poem that I wrote about that situation. The seedling rose in the spring of 2007. The nut was buried in Fall of 2006.

This One I Saw Coming

There's a small green shoot
Where that gray squirrel buried
His nut. He forgot.
Now it's spring. I watched
When he placed it, and now watch
This tree start to grow.
This beautiful sprout,
The walnut came from next door,
Is nestled beside
The old dogwood just
Now waking for the season.
Makes me sad, it does.

It's sad I have to pull it.

January 21, 2009 10:44 AM

Post Delay

Ran outta time. This will happen again tomorry :( I will probably be able to post tonight.

Who's Awake, Too High Up

I have the answer to everything. Contrary to Douglas Adams, it is not forty-two or whatever he said. But the trouble is, it is too perfectly general for any particular application. I could tell you what it is, but I am out of time.

Who's Awake?

I will cast my light
Hoping to cure the long dark.
I wonder who's awake?

Not who you'd think, I'm guessing,
Not the likes of them and us.

You said, "The master
Is harder to recognize
Than that ya' know, pal?"

January 20, 2009 2:26 PM

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

So when you wake up it isn't all peaches and cream, at least not just anytime. It is really good if you're prepared for it.

Too High Up

My head just came up
Out of this mist, peeking out
As if I was brave.

All puffed up with my damn self,
I thought I might belong here.

But there's snow around
And I'm sure not dressed for it,
My toes are freezing.

January 21, 2009 9:16 AM

Follow Love, I Was A Timber Faller

I do have a friend named Bill. He is a truck driver on medium long haul and we speak regularly by phone while he is on the road. I call, or he does during my afternoon drive home from work. We both have blue tooth. Here is one true blessing of cell phones. Now that I have unlimited anytime minutes for a modest price and he has put me as one of his designated people, neither of us risk running overtime. He never really said this. Must be some other friend named Bill.

Follow Love

My friend Bill, he said
I could leave the horizon
Alone, let the sky
Be spacious, the sun
Shine high, and pay attention
To how the grass bends.

He said the heart moves
To the sway of the green fern,
To the way one small seed
Falls into fertile
Soil, how squirrel scolds when I
Come too close to her.

He said, follow love.

January 20, 2009 1:09 PM

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

I have a friend named Julie. Her blog, The Buffaloe Pen is filled with amazing poetry. She tells stories. There is no one better at that. I thought I would try one.

I Was A Timber Faller

Me. My daddy. Yes.
His daddy too worked the woods.
We were all fallers.

To be out in the far woods,
No roads but the ones we made,
To stand upright, work so hard,
To feed our kids and women,
Righteous and true clean and good.
I am God Fearing, and now,
They've stopped me, kept me from that,
From all I really wanted.

I can't find real work.
They don't help. I don't want what
They have anyway.
My woman hates me now.
I drink far too much, too much,
My kids going wrong,
The worker says it'll
Come out right, but when? Oh God,
It was good, me too.

I was good back then.

January 20, 2009 12:53 PM

The Ski Tower, High Centered

I am a long time Lord Of The Rings fan. I tried to follow the elves to the lands in the west. To not know how the emigration of the elves turned out seems cruel to me. Of course, not even Tolkein was capable of telling a true elven story. Elves are NOT human. In order to be remotely like humans they have to step down, corral, back off, pin hole their presence. Otherwise they are at right angles to this plane, hard to even see. When they accepted Bilbo, it meant that a certain elven group would have to exercise that discipline to tend to him. It was what Aragorn's lover was prepared to fix in place so she could be with him, to essentially cripple her elven self for love. I can't write from the elven point of view either.

The Ski Tower

Looks like Sauron's eye
Could appear any moment there
Staring down on skiers
Not suspecting anything
Like such awful disaster.

The ring bearer
Needs to find another way
Up the snowy slopes.

January 19, 2009 12:21 PM

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

I got of my high center. This is not unlike stepping out of my elven self for the sake of movement along the high Way. I don't remember writing in code like that. It is a good alternative to being hung up and this being the way I find motivation to get going.

High Centered

You told me to move.
You held the whip's long shadow
In your whipping hand.
Made my withers twitch
To see that lurking notion
Of motivation.
I got off my high center,
Took to the highway again.

January 19, 2009 1:16 PM

Chewing Sticks, Losing The Masterpiece

So I notice with these next two poems that I got self conscious about how many poems I was writing. Chewing Sticks seems to imply that dogs are poets too. Hmmm.

Chewing Sticks

If I had pastimes
Like your dog did chewing sticks
Maybe I would not
Collect useless junk,
Would not have drank half to death,
Would not write so much
Poetry.

January 19, 2009 11:38 PM

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

I have had some experience with the emotional ups and downs of mental illness, how the ups in some smaller sizes can lead to creativity but in greater shapes lead to getting lost inside them. And the downs...how depression can literally kill you. I don't suffer the ups and downs as I once did, haven't for years, maybe even decades.

I have journals from my early twenties. I don't remember feeling depressed when I wrote them, but I read them now and they are the work of a depressed young man. That is an interesting thing. I do not remember feeling depressed, and I did not recognize depression when I read my own writing as a young man, but now I do. So I resisted the diagnosis then, but do not now. How odd. How completely powerful denial and defensiveness can be. What a remarkable experience of how you simply can't get through to the mentally ill with certain simple truths. If I am ill, then you may never have a chance to communicate with me in a fully open style because I will reorient your words and presence to fit my space and never receive you as you are. I know I am not the only one.

Losing The Masterpiece

I stare blank, far off,
Thinking I should get going
Then can't think quite why.

I remember the fever
I had over yesterday.

If a masterpiece
Came today I would not rise
To the occasion.

January 19, 2009 12:04 PM

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

As I write this, I am listening to the coverage of our loss of Michael Jackson. Sometimes there really are unique men on the planet, different inside, differently raised, and different in experiences outside too. If I am certain of anything, I am certain that Michael Jackson lived a different life. He was celebrated as the King Of Pop. He was isolated as only a king can be. It was once the prevailing opinion that divinity is close within kings, that perhaps they themselves are divine. I will not argue.

Think's He's A Poet, I'm Dying

Two reality stories. I have been exhorted periodically to come back to reality. Those various people have a bone to pick with my way of treating the world and my place in it. There will always be "those people". I do not mind at this point. When I was a child, my parents would occasionally do this. I should be quick to point out they mainly gave me plenty of latitude and also guided me quite well in many ways. I was an excitable child and a bit obsessive in my interests. I also didn't take direction all that well. I have always been a bit different, sometimes a whole lot different. So "those people" still hover around. Because I actually interact with a reasonably large number of people in AA (people who would normally not mix) I have the opportunity to run into them and hear plainly from them in a variety of ways. I am right here because I am not all there :)

Thinks He's A Poet

I abandoned you.
It was me telling stories.
That's when it happened.
Otherwise, staying
Near my nest and still myself,
Still ordinary,
On small simple walks,
I'd not have cast my odd lot
To quest for dragons,
To seek the vale of secrets,
Or some wilder place.

Now look at this man.
Hunched over pecking the keys,
Thinks he's a poet.

January 19, 2009 10:30 AM

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

This next poem is not prophetic of my heart attack. It is prophetic of the fact that my mortality is close to my soul in general and on purpose. I have every intention of speaking with Death, letting Him ride on my left shoulder and whisper to me from time to time. I also occasionally ponder the possibilities of disability, walking around my house as if blind, and at work being interested in the changes when I wear my ear plugs. But primarily my practice is making friends with Death.

This is not morbid. It is realistic. I am now far more than half way to my end, seventeen years matches my Mom, and 20 my Father. It is also a spiritual practice. Because this is part of my character, I am not very impressed at my prophetic remarks concerning my small heart attack. This is especially true of this poem. My heart attack was a minor complaint, raising mortality as a distant warning and probably wouldn't have amounted to much for a while if I could have ignored the pain or it went away somehow. I am living with another vein now that is constricted but it is not serious. We hope that pharma takes care of it.

I'm Dying

I have not much left.
I watch this breath ease on out,
Think maybe the last.
Exhale to the end,
A small catch there, then nothing
For a while, then in.
I inhale once more.

Amazing focus, feeling
All my parts and joints
But too far away
From the way I used to be,
Breath eases on out,

Think maybe the last.

January 19, 2009 10:55 AM

His Pure Tones, Why I Follow You

Two streams of practice. In my life music is a practice. That is a step beyond the technical. It is also a step beyond the claims that music speaks an emotional language. Music speaks a spiritual language, or it can, and it always does for any who are open in spiritual ways to music. His Pure Tones is a poem about this musical practice.

His Pure Tones

Oiled skin, sweated sheen-
It's the effort of the strikes
He makes repeatedly, drum
Then gong, drum then gong,
Steady, precise hits. Both sound
Long low notes that shake
The heart, crack the bones
Of thought.

I am stretched apart
In the open air
Of his sacred work,
Of his blessed gift, his pure
Tones: they sever me.

January 18, 2009 11:44 AM

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By the way, I am not sure how to manage the blog in this regard...there is a tabulature command that I don't know. In my word processor, the "I am stretched apart" line should be tabbed in to signal it is actually part of the "Of thought" line even though it begins the second verse.

The second stream of practice is almost as old in my life. The Way is the English euphemism for Tao. I have never been in deep Taoist practice, neither in the martial arts nor in the institutional practices. But I have been devoted to the philosophy, especially as it manifests in I Ching. This practice began in 1969. It went somewhere. John Blofeld once wrote about this practice that at some point a devotee would leave it behind as an active practice, having received permission in some way to do so. I seem to have reached this point. I have indeed grown old on the Way.

Why I Follow You

Remember the Way.
It curves round the old straight path
Left from other times,
Other places, needs.

You've grown old upon the Way,
As have I who love
Your shining eyes,
Your pure song, your graceful walk,
Why I follow you.

We'll soon reach the willows
Weaving in the warm wise wind.

January 18, 2009 2:52 PM

Inversion, A Rose Opens

I say I am here as a Witness. I don't mean this as if I am some special creature given a unique task. I am sure Witnesses are a dime a dozen and in some real sense there is no one who is not a Witness. And yet in the story I tell myself, I am in a lifelong argument with God about some aspect of this life, a focus, as if I have come here sure I will win this argument if I give it due diligence. What amuses me, I am more sure of the plot than I am of the substance. I am not that sure what exactly I am looking for. When I am at my least mature then I claim I want to declare a world without suffering, that it is suffering that is the sticking point and that it is suffering that should depart this life. But that is purely adolescent and ever since I have learned the heavy forgiveness lessons I know that is not really it. But I remain toe to toe and eye to eye with the Creator. Yes, indeed.

Here is a Witness story.

Inversion

Dropping down from here,
From this single star,
I have come to see your life
The way it really
Is, not the way they
Say you are in the stories.
It's a steep descent,
A quantum shifting
Down for up, charmed for strange, you
For me in this ploy.

I am upside down,
Not ready - such timeless light.

January 18, 2009 9:51 AM

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

A Rose Opens reads fine to me as a love poem to a human lover, or a psalm to God. This is often true. I know I am not the only one who believes that love is always divine. Why wouldn't God have gray eyes, or blue, or brown, hazel, even black? Why wouldn't God have eyes? In a book called The Shack, a best seller in these parts because the story takes place in Oregon, the author envisions the tripartite Christian God as a black woman (God), a young beautiful woman (the Comforter), and the man Jesus. Female two to one...that's about right. That's a Trinity I can get behind. There are many such alternatives. The Chinese say, Heaven, Earth, Man. That too is about right. Hindus have masculine Trinities and feminine ones. Buddhas have multiplied as well.

But when I write, it is of me and you most often. Me and the three of you is cumbersome and crowded.

A Rose Opens

In your sight a rose
Opens at my feet, white, white,
A fragrant vision
Of grace. I've found your
Gray eyes. I have crossed my life
On long starry paths
Of fate, of destined
Solitude to reach this place
Where you welcome me.

January 18, 2009 10:46 AM

Absence, The Quiet Unmarked Path

A man I love gave a talk one time and he pointed out that when my distress is mainly mental, or when it is physical at least the mental component can be dealt with by focussing the time frame. He said that there is really nothing wrong right now. He said whenever there is distress it is either coming from the future or the past and if I narrow my time frame to right now my pain will be already over or not yet here. In other words it is nearly always true that there is nothing wrong right now.

I had a heart attack. I used this right now thing. Except for the hours of that bloody nose, which was really just irritating, there was nothing wrong right now. The pain was never more than manageable. The drugs did not distress me overmuch right now. Even the shit for brains nurses (the two on shift during the bloody nose) were mostly not there and that was fine with me. I did not fret through any of it.

Absence

Today, I'm absent.
I do not sit in this seat.
I deny presence.
I have no purpose
For being gone, but gone I am.
I would be here now
If I was but, no,
I am not here, not waiting
And not writing this.

January 18, 2009 9:08 AM

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

Here's a dream, a place I would like to be, behavior I would like for my own. There is a poem called Footprints that is a complaint and God's answer. Perhaps the footprints I write of here are something like that. Waiting for divine footprints.

The Quiet Unmarked Path

Here's a true silence
Drifting down like fine snowflakes
Collecting around
My tree, cooling me
As I perch on this lowest
Limb trying to see
The lines of all things.

Among things I hope I see,
Footprints may appear,
May lead me further
On this quiet unmarked path.
In the drifting snow.

January 18, 2009 9:23 AM

Whatever, Regret

Here's a little slice of life. You don't believe in dragons these days? How about very small ones?

Whatever

There was this dragon
I knew once who said the girls
Are the truth of it.
Being a guy I went
Off to puzzle that, to find
The truth, and it's what
The dragon said, girls
Are the truth of it. Guys have
Shit for brains often.

But then it turned out
Not all girls are true to life,
Not all dragons too,
And some guys have heart
And know what to do with it.
That's just what it is.

January 17, 2009 10:18 PM

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

I remember this from when I was in it.

Regret

I am too heavy.
I try to lift feet, or arms,
Even blinking hurts.
I am too heavy.
Turtle slow or molasses,
I can't move today.
I remember you,
But also the hole in me
You left departing.

January 18, 2009 10:57 AM

You Explain Fate, Lost Truth

I just keep getting into these odd relationship predicaments...

You Explain Fate

Love's black butterflies
As seen through my eyes, they fly
In a dark tangle
Around your sweet face
As you try to explain fate
To me, and I sit
On my own thin ice
As I try to understand
What you just now said.

January 17, 2009 11:06 PM

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

It seems a while ago that I first posted about my house gremlins. Here they are again. About that phone. I lost my cel phone in only the way that I can. Gremlins, damn it! I knew it wasn't lost, not really. I often have my ringer turned off, or did in those days. So even though I still have a land line, I could not call the phone I knew was in the house. When something gets that thoroughly lost I often get uncertain, think maybe it is really lost, but also I need my phone. So I bought one. Not more than a week later, right beside the head of my bed on my side, in plain sight, there is my original phone. Damn gremlins. I can't understand how I could have missed that phone lying there for a week. The only solution, it wasn't there. No one my size lives in or visits this house. My cat takes no notice of phones for any reason. So I only stretched the time a little to make myself look less like a phone addict.

Lost Truth

So the old wallet
Is stuffed so full of paper
That I can't find it,
The truth I put there
Yesterday for just this time,
Just this perfect place.

But damn. There it is.
The truth is lost like my phone
Was for a long month
(I claim it's gremlins)
While I needed to make calls
And had to buy one.

January 17, 2009 2:26 PM

The Ring Of Light, Walking On Clouds

Jan 17 was an eight poem day. I was exhausted by the end of it. I don't know if I will publish all eight because ocasionally I have what I consider a clunker. I have a "not posted" folder. Perhaps some day (probably not) I will go in there and try to salvage them.

This third poem of the day was incantatory. The vision in it is true magic. The real thing.

The Ring Of Light

There's a ring of light
I found, placed on my finger
As a charm that calls
You from your labor
In the fields of confusion.

You seek a house free
Of darkness, descent,
Burial beneath the sand.

But more sand arrives
As you look, begins
To bury you as you age
And your burden too.

There's a ring of light.
I will place it in your hand.
Light will circle you.

January 17, 2009 9:57 AM

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

What would we write about if relationships were easy?

Walking On Clouds

I look from above
To the clouds that cover you,
Keep you from my sight.

The clouds seem to say
I could float, even walk there
In mid-sky out past
The place you still live,
Home that I left, leaving you.

The sun's rays reach me
In horizontal
Lines that slice me right to left
Like you asking me.

January 17, 2009 2:06 PM

I think this might actually be a poem about being someone leaving me, what I hope that experience would be like for them :P Looking at it that way troubles me, a little.

Suck It Up, Reaching Out

This first poem really stands alone. I will mention this though. I stole from AA on this one. In AA we say, "If you keep one foot in yesterday, and one foot in tomorrow, you end up pissing all over today."

Suck It up

You said, "Suck it up!"
And I hate your tone of voice
But I just noticed
How I flop and spread
Like melting lard all over
Yesterday and look,
I greedily grab
Hold of tomorrow as if
It belongs to me.

January 17, 2009 9:33 AM

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

I have said I follow the Bodhisattva ideal. I listen for facets of what that might be. I trust that when it is time for me to understand a new piece of the tradition, then I will meet a teacher. This image of compassion appeared and I wrote this poem about it. This day was one day that I thanked God for my unemployment, that I could have this encounter with Bodhisattva.

Reaching Out

Michael told me this.
He said I could take on me
A future burden
In my present one
And lessen the weight others
Carry when I place
That weight square on me.

I can reach out just like this
With my heart through time,
Through the weave of space,
Find your future cross and lift
The heavier end
Nestled in the weight,
Held with stronger love found here
In my graceful hands.

January 17, 2009 8:28 AM

My understanding, a future burden carried now is considerably lighter today than it will be. My understanding, I choosing to carry this lighter burden am considerably more capable of taking the weight because I am not distressed. Wow. I do not practice this. I am not ready.

Winter Squirrel, Musician's Lament

Here come two reality poems. There was such a squirrel. We did have a stare down. He thinks he won. I think I did. :)

A Winter Squirrel

You're staring again
As if I'm to blame, as if
I stole your whiskers
While you were sleeping,
Somehow in secret took them
Off you. "I'm naked
And you're a damn turd,"
Your stare says to me. But look,
Your whiskers are there,
Your gold undercoat's
Intact, and you look so fine
Sitting on winter's branch.

January 16, 2009 10:04 AM

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This is a real lament. I had a breakthrough musically in the 90's. That breakthrough permitted me to return to music after putting it down in 1971 or so. Part of that departure from music was the block I could not get through. I had come hard up against some boundary that would not budge. I have of course thought about that and do have some understanding, too complex to go into. At the same time, there were other areas in my life that did not have such a wall. So I went there. I actually thought that the open door might lead to a huge doable lifestyle. I found a partner. I thought our partnership had momentum in it that would gather a crowd and lead to what we called a "Pythagorean Academy". It actually didn't go anywhere, but I did turn the work we did into the completion of my college degree in philosophy/psychology. I wrote a book to prove I had earned outside of school yet another 28 credits of at least upper division level if not post grad. After that was done, sobriety immersed me in AA culture and that service work carried me as it still does.

But in the 90's a couple things happened. I found my rhythm. I discovered that I could anticipate many musical forms and basically keep and even embellish the beat. Now I have Congas that I have played with pro musicians, but I am not really a Conga player. Then a woman came to my house, visiting my roommate. She sat at my cheap keyboard that I was using to explore whether I wanted to start playing. What she did blew my mind. She was a singer. She could not play. It was obvious that she could not play. What she could do was put rhythm and form into what she did on that keyboard and it so closely resembled music that I had an epiphany. I had music at the theory level and I knew what the notes are, white and black. I started noodling and realized quickly that I was MUCH better than she was. Obvious. At a certain narrow range of skills, I had been a master on the guitar. I started improvising in Eb on the keyboard, a remarkable key, and very difficult on the guitar except for downtuning. Now after nearly 20 years, I make music that might actually please others. Of course I am totally blown away still, amazed, overjoyed that the block was lifted.

But...

Musician's Lament

After years, practice,
Patience in following you,
After quietude
And searching for place,
All this done blindly, content
With work on myself
On other deep needs
And the shallower concerns,
After all this time,
Now that I am old
And in my obscurity,
Now I get to play!

January 16, 2009 11:21 AM

A Clear Song, Listen To The Wind

I want to thank my regular commentors for a tremendous compliment on yesterday's post. Please know y'all are appreciated. And loved. You know who you are.

I don't think these next poems were about me. I know where the first poem came from, in response to a website I frequent and reply to (or as Rachel said, steal from - I am so comfortable with thinking about it like that :). I think the second poem was a development of the first. So it is not that I felt like this when I wrote them, nor is it that I feel like this now. However, my brothers, my sisters, I have definitely felt like this before. I do know what depression is, what loneliness is, what the terrible fear of weakness is when I am isolate and small. I can easily access that memory, just as I can my own overwhelming grief and bewilderment. So I can and do write poetry from the larger truths of my life, the places I have been, and not only where I am right now, or right then, last January. I have not been turbulent for a while now, pretty much since 2001.

On the other hand, it remains true that I was unknowingly struggling with blockage in an artery and a vein in my heart. So I muse that perhaps I knew on some level. I know I was busy making peace with a variety of weaknesses that seem to be receding now that the artery is fixed. The cardiologist informed me last week that there is a vein with a 60% blockage. It is too small for a stent. Also, at 60% they don't do anything typically, hoping the statin drug will be sufficient to deal with it over time. I presume that if it gets nasty and it is too small for a stent, then it's bypass time.

A Clear Song

Sometimes life gets like
It's below zero outside.

I heard a guy say
One time that when it's
This cold, there's no solitude,
Instead it's lonely,
So damned cold lonely
Even though the song is clear
Sung in this cold air.

January 16, 2009 10:28 AM

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

There is no more to say....

Listen To The Wind

You said then, "Listen
To the wind at your window,
Tell me that isn't
The sound of my loss."

I know that wind too, whistling
Through the hole in me.
I was locked out then,
Bewildered, bereft, blinded
By my fate, by faith
Violated so
As they took from me my heart's
Delight, my young life.

January 16, 2009 12:20 PM

Measuring Up, The Color Thief

I have mentioned before that I cannot be certain that my way is any better than a heartfelt fantasy. I am on a path, I believe. I often encounter really concrete doubt that it comes to anything. I step past. Sometimes I ask. That's what this poem is about.

Measuring Up

I stand on the edge
Looking back, hoping I was
The good man I think
I was, and perhaps
Had moments of real grace...

I play games with me
That say so, hoping
If I say so then it's so.

I turn and ask you
Am I really real?

You reply as usual:
Enigmatic smile.

January 15, 2009 8:28 PM

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

Here comes another enigmatic poem. The last one turned out to be about some of you people who come here. Perhaps this one will be too.

Years ago now, I decided to check and see if anything had changed inside. I pray regularly to have God remove the defects in my character which may stand in the way of my usefulness. One of those defects, I am a thief. That's what I decided to check. Not having stolen anything for a very long time, decades, would I have grown a conscience somehow? I stole a pair of sunglasses from a store to see. I slept just fine. Nope. I'm still a thief. I haven't stolen anything since, probably at least eight years. But I could. I'm good. And it doesn't bother me.

This poem though, it's something different.

The Color Thief

White, red, black, color
Missing from me and I may balk
At what I must do
To maintain colors
In my cloudy heart.
You have
Stolen blue and cream.

January 16, 2009 7:50 AM

Remembering Avalon, Extravagant Promise

There is a curious story about Merlin, that he lived backward, that he was wise in part because he remembered the future. I have always liked the idea that somebody did that. I have a special fondness for Arthur and Merlin. The best idea I ever heard, Arthur's legend was based on a king who had a Roman education though he was not a Roman, and that Avalon was the last outpost of the vanished Roman civilization in England, but was completely isolated as Rome could no longer hold England. What Arthur did was try to establish the principles of the old Roman Republic, long gone by then. There were Roman ruins in England for a long time before they were all basically buried under successive civilizations. Of course when you add in Merlin and that part of the legend, then you have quite a Celtic influence.

Remembering Avalon

The mage stood gazing
At the kingdom's lands beneath
The amazing sky
Of evening's sun
Thinking of Arthur, now gone
And himself younger
Than he was back then.

The farther hills called to him
And he felt by foot
The pack beside him.
Merlin spoke to the late air,
"I loved them all, all."

January 15, 2009 2:31 PM

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

Rachel will remember this one. I wrote it on her site.

Extravagant Promise

If the breakup means
I must move down one more bed
Then I hope winter
Will stay forever.

I watch the sun, eyes wary,
Watch you too, looking
For signs that you've moved
Toward the closet, satchel
And your hiking shoes,
Ready to pray, plead
My case, promise you I will
Even clean the cat.

January 15, 2009 10:08 AM

Please Don't, Grass

This is a haunting poem. I do not know what it is really about. I bow before the power. I don't know who wrote this. It wasn't me.

Please Don't

When I cut myself
It was with your stainless knife
I pulled out. It passed
Me by, the caress
Signalling the coming pain
And the red red blood.

Flowing down after,
Looking for you, calling out,
I try to say it.

Please, I say, don't.

January 15, 2009 10:28 AM

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

Any plant in the wrong place is a weed. Any weed in the right place contributes. Any person in the wrong place is irritating to someone. Any irritating person in the right place is often successful. Timing and placement are often more important than effort. I just finished reading The Drunkard's Walk and found out that the role of chance is no secret to statisticians. Chance is more important than choice most times, except if you are willing to choose and choose and choose again, defying failure until you don't.

Grass

There's grass in the moss,
The Irish Moss I love for sure,
The intense green sharp-
It's almost yellow.
But this grass is sticking out.
So many thin blades,
A darker truer slick green,
Dingy against moss
Though it looks lovely
In the neighbor's fine green lawn-
But here it's a weed.

January 15, 2009 12:14 PM

Symposium, A Precarious Position

I am doing the best I can. Years ago, in 1967, actually, I vowed to be wise. In poetic terms, I pledged to Sophia or Athena. I promised to be a messenger, to be Hermes, if permitted. It seemed in those days that drugs were involved. Trips to Asia were involved too. Investigating the Eastern forms of spirit were involved without question. That is because the instinctive language of the time had that flavor. I was nothing if not a child of the 60's. I was a little older, but I had lagged behind throughout my childhood. I not only was emotionally younger than my years, I looked younger than my years, and still do.

As I have traversed my life, my mission, as it were has never fundamentally changed, but my understanding has. I no longer place wisdom at the acme. It is instead foundational. Witness is the process and compassion in the deepest sense is the solution. In some real sense, radical forgiveness is the action within witness that gives rise to compassion.

The eschatology of this process, in the words of my old friend Phil (who is at least briefly back in my work life by serendipity), we either all go to heaven or we don't. In other words, where my vow was to Sophia, it is now to Bodhisattva.

The poem Symposium is historical and points to way back then. It is still true in its way, because it is foundational.

Symposium

I throw all of me,
Not just my head, nor my feet,
Not my heart alone,
But my house and throne
And indeed the soul of home
And the thralls as well
Into this cauldron
On the fire I tend for you
Letting all else go,

All for wisdom's sake.

January 15, 2009 7:23 AM

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

Maybe in A Precarious Position I mean hanging out over a river just like it says. Maybe as well, this is a metaphor for taking any risk that is sort of like that, which would include not knowing if I rely on something too weak to take my reliance.

My first thought is full circle back to the beginning. I was conscious at that time that I was taking a tremendous leap in faith. The leap was that I was not tricked or mentally ill but had met closely with Truth in some way beyond my understanding. I had to trust this in a radical move and then accept the responsibility for not only the choice but the consequences. I knew there was no way back. There was nowhere to go back to. There was only measuring up or not. But it could be a trick of some kind, a hoax, and then I would pay for that too if I ever found out. Or I could be mentally ill precisely in the center of it, which could mean terrible loss if I embraced this juggernaut. I was in terror over the risk I was taking some of the time. And shortly for related reasons, I was deeply tested by what I had to do. Precarious times indeed.

A Precarious Position

If I were hung out
Over the river like that
I would be praying.
My feet dangling just
Above the wet line when I
Keep my toes up tight
And wondering when
This too thin branch will begin
To crack and let go.

January 15, 2009 9:15 AM