The Trees came to me with the knowledge
And straightened my back,
Made ropes of my muscles,
Twisted from cipó, hemp,
Woven bamboo,
The threads of webs in my sinews.
When the strong wind blows
Cower not indoors or low ground
But up on high,
Spread your branches,
They told me,
You are the leaf
The roots
The bark
The solid fiber spine,
Where psychic serpents,
Simians, and birds of all eras
Of all time,
Still call home.
You are the forest,
My child,
The world is your home.
Have you grown tired
of human being?
Did you vomit
when forced to face it,
the world, as you saw it?
Did you agree to a lie?
Did this cause a change?
Did you mind rearrange?
Did nature take her course
through you,
through your wounds?
Did you sing
“sail me away,
do it soon”?
Did you feel
“there is just nothing
I can do”?
Was outer space
within you, too?
Why don't you and me
swim through
Why don't we
love better?
Did the whole sun burn within you?
I can't take the lead
we must go there dancing
we must go hand-in-hand
and I will drag you there
and you will carry me then
we will fall and die
so many times
before we get there
but when we do
oh, my love,
when we do
we will see!
and we will explode
into a nebulae of gold,
Somewhere distant
beyond the stars
don't you cry,
don't you worry,
we're all hungry,
we're all starved,
we're all slaves,
we'll all perish,
this is the way,
though it hurts
we still sing,
we'll find a way,
it's what we do,
those who believe
can do anything.
Episodic grandeur
the “I” can not only perceive
but withstand and
thus claim testimony
to truths we would rather not believe.
Indeed, a mania it might be;
at the beginning, indeed.
Without a master to show one
how to turn mania into
something one can use to peek into
the self, the places others
would rather not look,
then mania is less than a stone,
impossibly a seed.
She told me baby
take it slow
so I took off my socks
put down my beer
and went
naked outside
because I had been saying
that Nature is alive and real
and calling us to save her, man!
but I got too excited about it.
I danced in that warm tropical rain.
My mother had secretly warned her
about what she called my manias
but which both my wife and I
considered to be more like
spiritual experiences and
sometimes divinations. That
is a chasm that reaches deep into history
and continues to fracture
modern western society.
These very digressions in logic
were signs of clinical crazy.
Nonetheless,
I danced in the rain and
It was as if her veins were made of
rusted roads,
there was dust
that blew through
there was mud
without shoes
and when you're literally
dancing in the rain you're shivering
at the beginning of it
and then you adjust
and take a deep breath
and, Christ, that feeling is
more than just the body
it's like you are the chill that goes
all the way into that dark
and the air is like something thick
and invisible
palpably pregnant with, quite literally,
all possibilities.
And we can by seeing them
and moving them
make them real.
And so I danced in the rain.
Sometimes it all shifts and feels as if
it is organic in ways
that are metric, tantric, serpentine scales
unfolding always, everywhere like fast flowers,
mathematically abstractable molecules
of logical modules of the mind, man.
And that is the rain at night, in the summer,
when it is warm it is better,
in my opinion, for dancing in the rain,
but the weather always seems
to have a feeling of it's own
if you go
into the yard and forget where you are
and remember you're never not here
you might hear that rain
sing,
you might
hear a bird within
and the two might dance
like a breeze pushing forth
the more vague components
of the moment
and then violá:
you have gone and come back again
you have been all and there you are,
dancing, like a fool or a shaman,
who is to say,
dancing like either one
in the rain.
And if if you didn't see it, one can imagine,
and just by still-imagining,
imagining without action,
one feels as if one travels,
so just imagine when
dancing in the rain
and the whole beautiful myth
being real for a spell.
If that is not freedom,
innocent, harmless freedom,
then I don't know what is.
when the rain melts and bleeds
and sings and signals
the lines of shifts in the winds
of time for minute
the cat is in the box
and in the next
we are the ones
scratching at the walls
we ourselves built.
New days are only
a glance away
from your head position.
Turn both ears
toward your chest
and listen.
Take your wallet
our of your pocket
when you sit
and when your hips
are straight
pay all of your attention.
There will be an attraction
to a form where your spine
is aligned and feeling ideal
not provoked like some serpent
but prepared for life's ordeals
and prepared to build,
from what sometimes seems nothing at all,
a life worth living
worth avoiding the dangers
and pitfalls.
One wonders because he
recognizes the truth, so
one wonders how far
does he, in fact, wander
from the truth
and thus
his wondering is
for forgiveness.
And this is when
the face of Jesus shapes
in the clouds on
one's way running to stay healthy
alone in a street
so perfect the moment
for the Lord to sneak me
a peak of his boutique of
unique possibilities
for those who believe
