Where Words Come From

Whatever language we may speak

it is from whence our words come

that maketh all the difference.

Whatever language we may speak

we must make sure we can protect ourselves --

the world is riddled with unkind blemishes

and confusion so hotly disturbed the mirage

of Evil ascends before our veiled Consciousness.

Your Ego may be your most articulate

psycho-spiritual organ, then.

The question posed herein is

have we trained our heart to speak as clearly?

Religious texts try to give us the language we need

to speak from this sacred land called Heart

but the language is, regrettably, outdated;

the message so necessary for us lost,

seemingly.  Indeed, the first scroll was escavated

from the Heart, itself --

even if the angels did descend

to deliver the message

they were faithful and accepting eyes

that saw those angels and awakened, hopeful hearts

that did not run from such uncommon phenomena.

I digress now, as I often do: 

Possessing the same letters as Earth

only with the "H" at the front rather than the end,

we might wonder where, in fact, we live

and what, in fact, sustains us

and if Earth and Heart are not the very same

in some literal or at least figurative vision of Life.

Perhaps the Earth speaketh through the Heart?

Argue against it.

Have the subjects and nuances of the Heart

proven too challenging to express?

Love is the Highest Order Thinking

and to see where it is needed and give it

through the defense mechanism behind which

we prefer to store it is painful learning

like giving birth to a whole new you.

But nothing as painful as destroying the Earth.

The fact is, our prejudices, our stereotypes,

those quips we slap so quickly onto the table

of conversation, those reactions that aren't our own

(that's different, yuck; where we come from we don't

do it that way; that's ridiculous, that's wrong).

We don't think that.  We don't think that because

before we said that, we did not think.

We applied neither Mind nor Heart in the matter

we did not reach for the Dream of Togetherness

we reached for the Soma of our Destruction,

that intoxicant spirit that stumbles our logic
down avenues of Falseness, singing,
  "this is silly", "I don't have the time",

"it is impossible", "you aren't worth it" -- all the lines

that draw us lazier than the shadows of our Higher Selves

such that we Will Not imitate what we know

in our Hearts, to be Right.

What we did and tend to do is purchase a cheap 

and automatic response that society has 

for some reason

deemed acceptable.

The Dream of Togetherness and Peace

simply isn't Profitable in certain circumstances.

And it wasn't You, it was "Them"

who want to promote the idea of

"You and Them"; who want to divide.

Adding irony to confusion,

"They" don't even exist.

Fear does.  Fear crops up

in the fertile unknown

between you and I like a weed

and pushes us apart with its roots

whilst sucking up the nutrients

of our common ground.

Whatever language you speak,

know from whence cometh thine words:

From thy Heart, from thy Ego

from thy ... ?

Not that one orgin is wrong or right

but there is a time and place for each --

indeed, often times a concert or choir

of internal voices is necessary to speak

a complete and true sincerity --

the point is, all of your intra-nations

should be equally educated

literate, and articulate.

If that is impossible.  We are just

too busy.  Okay.  The Heart, then,

should take priority for from there

all tributaries are eventually reached

and muscles awoken, 

all foreign and unknown brain cells

and connections illuminated

by the charity of our aligned rhythm

and we will find ourselves in all eyes

moods, states and faces.

And we will be fearless, again.

This is the beginning of Awakened Peace.

Until then, we will feel incomplete

and continue to purchase the cheap

and automatic responses of Ignorance

and Fear because, as it could be advertised,

it is so easy

we could do it in our sleep.

Dance like only little kids are watching
and you gotta make'em laugh ...
because, in fact, behind every pair of eyes
is a child waiting to laugh at you
or with you.

Express yourself, you silly-billy.

Return

If and when you feel yourself nervous or anxious,

and if these feelings are composed of thoughts of what needs to be done

in order to achieve a certain goal in life

and

if these feelings are stirred

by the compulsion to participate more

in the actualization of this achievement

or inadequacy,

take a moment to release this nervous, anxious energy into your energy field;

take a moment to acknowledge your energy field

and the fact that it's grandeur is not your inadequacy

but your reservoir for Being

and sometimes what needs to be actualized 

is Calm and Faith with Inaction

rather than Self and Progress with Action.

dilute your potent feelings in the microcosm of universe that surrounds your being and mass,

see them hanging there as not yours and not you,

thus can their energies be inverted (or converted) and

then used to your benefit

without disturbing your Calm.

The intelligence surrounding you

(your energy field and forces from which it is composed)

is more ancient than your own

and thus wiser,

at least in some ways (and with certain species of energy).

Think as much about what the universe can do for you

to help you achieve your goals

as you can do for yourself to achieve your goals.

Recall the hierarchy of your goals

and do not confuse this:

achieving the goal will not bring Peace

or anything other than a certain satisfaction.

Peace you possess now

and peace you should protect.

The actualization of your goal is your pleasure, your privilege,

your busy-ness, your expression of what it is to Live.

The capacity, desire, and determination to do so --

unhesitatingly, no matter what -- are your Gifts.
Discard these and you will create the paradoxical beast,
sufferer of misalignment, the Destructive Self,
who claims and acts as if he prefers The End over Tomorrow, any day;

so long as the Death is slow and feels good

(excessive smoke, drink, anything; dangerous highs;
sympathetic, enabling affection for his
deep and intellectual laments, perceptive enough to know
he is wrong but so in love with his perceptive abilities
that being wrong is his beautiful rebel doppelganger savant,
the fairest and most sincere He knows or is willing to be,
a bona fide higher self;
the most romantic, noble death a good heart can have, actually.
A stubborn martyr. Shivering with courage
in the freezing shadows of doubt...)

and doesn't actually snuff him.

But I've digressed; indeed, I know this sad,
doomed archetype too well.

Peace is not what you get when you get There

it is what you carry and hold dear along the way,

(it is what keeps Here always Here
just like Now is always Now,
even if it was a little while ago
or will be way later, the fact remains:

Here must always be Here).

along with Love

and Faith

and Forgiveness.

When you arrive There (The Here from which all Heres hail)

rich and successful and accomplished

they will not ask for a check

autograph, diploma, badge
or anything like that.

They will ask to see your Peace

your Love and your Forgiveness
and expect that, along with your Heart,
each is in better condition than the day you got them.

"That was the meaning of your Life,
were those who told you different so convincing?
You can always go back try again.
Go on back, then.  There are fresh new bodies
you can chose from.  I'm afraid you won't remember anything
in any one of them, but eventually you'll just get it... "

Handing these over to the Saint at the Gate,

or using them to build a bridge

over the Great Abyss between

Here and There ... however you see it,
the point is

it is with these precious

and natural resources

that We return to Purity.

Nothing else.

Seeing Beyond Either/Or

If an Either/Or scenario causes you stress

it may be because the scenario is not Either Or,

rather, that you are seeing only in Black and White

and feel the limits of your vision.

The feeling and intuition that one's own vision

is limited, incomplete, less than one would expect

can be the true cause of the stress, anxiety, or discomfort felt.

To offer a basic example:

"Or", is most commonly used as if it were mutually exclusive

when, in fact, it is not.  That is,

the question, "would you like the apple or the orange?" includes the responses,

"both, please" and, "neither, thank you" in addition to 

"the apple, please" or, "the orange, please".

Oscillating between scenario A and scenario B is not bad.

Both must be examined and assessed for their merits and demerits.

However, to stop there -- to perceive only A and B, or to use a better metaphor,

0 and 1 -- is to fail to see the infinite space between A and B,

the infinite numbers which are themselves possibilities, between 0 and 1.

The intellectual response to the perception of unfavorably limited options

is to squint the mind's eye and seek subtlety, nuance.  Sometimes this requires populating

the space between the clearly visible with the content of one's imagination:

imagine scenarios, however absurd, and see what comes of them; 

hypothesize and consider the results of your hypothesis as thoroughly as you can;

cast a premise into the unknown and watch it blossom there into who knows what

as you shower it with the attention of your mind and the light of your purpose;

and so forth.  In short, recruit your creativity to bend the rules, make unconventional connections

which themselves serve as the parameters and building blocks of new and very possible scenarios that were not so evident at the incipience, when only A and B appeared as options

to the mind's eye.

Not all possibilities produced by your imagination and premises and hypotheses

will be feasible, realistic, desirable solutions.  They may not even be solutions.

But the practice of Seeing with the richness of your own Wealth of Knowledge

(intellect + intelligence in all its modalities)

is worthwhile.  It will evolve.  You will become better and better at it

and you will become a masters at it.  And it is a skill that you can apply

to just about field of inquiry, life scenario (internal, external, or otherwise).  

Indeed, seeing The Truth as a composite of:

1) the External Truth known as Reality

and Physical laws interconnecting her parts;

2) the Intra-Truth, known in the West as the Self

and the Spiritual laws connecting the Self;

3) the Inter-Truth, connecting the complexes of External Truth

and Internal-Truth via the deeds of, specifically, Human Beings,

which possess the energies of intent, purpose, and so forth

which, themselves, unite features of the Extra- and Intra- Truths

resulting in Culture and possessing a direction (a purpose as Heidegger might put it).

Seeing The Truth thus should console us.  It is not all ours.  It lives on its own and I do not believe it has any designs on destroying anything that does not seek to destroy it (being that it is, or can be interpreted as, a Life Form or a higher order than the Human Being, em si.)

Vignette

There was something missing from my life, and as if a hole in my heart, chemicals rushed in like so many planets of solar-system-looking elements of our universe and, to my drowned sobriety, they tasted like the loneliness one packs way down deep in his bags before he goes to visit his ancestors so he can deliver it in one piece: a brew stronger that I expected; hoppy bitterness of a Belgian Ale yet dark and deep as the absence it fills.  This is my well of Longing.

Something is missing.  Laughter.  Yes, my second half, laughing, falling on me and on the table where I sit and write alone, wiping all these words away ... no, I take back the "other half" metaphor and put there "a whole and complete tavern lighting up Pope St. with a neon sign reading The Imperfect, which flashes an occasional apostrophe between the "I" and the "m" stumbling the logic a bit until the windows appear golden as the flecks found in happy eyes pouring out warmth."

Let's divide this drink, the sum of all the spells you could cast in one midnight, all the intent you could squeeze into the pin head puncturing flesh of a voodoo doll, the ink from the indelible word bedazzled by the seriousness of our feelings, drunk off the same the stuff, we step outside where it is dark to have a better view of our future, raising the height of any forest canopy within us like the hairs on our bodies, leaping like so many tongues speaking to the edges of me and you like an ocean might, in its own way, howl under a full moon, and lap up the sweat of a throbbing nape.

The Big Bang

About my aggression --
once a single, violent conflagration
desperate to illuminate
the Infinite Void
in which I thought myself trapped --
it has learned how to live
in such a place:

replacing frustration
and fury and all that energy
that'd been balled up into One --
that Singularity resisting
the fracture into Life --

that one fire that
would either consume All or Itself
is now Infinite Flames
tossed into the still, deceivingly quiet Abyss;
scattered, random,
chaos no less than ever before
only now,
navigable,
perfectly spaced
but not imprisoned.

Each star has a function,
each sees the other
and burns to the death

illuminating with all its might
and patience --

my cosmology,
celestial bodies working together
light is light is light
from Light
and Light from Energy,

the same Original Nature,
like nine hundred ninety nine billion
nine hundred ninety nine million
and so forth monks
sent to war, meditating on the front line
for Peace, reaching into the character Nemesis
to His Heart, which beats and bleeds for us All.

This Universe of ours
is nice.  A well-lit neighborhood,

a lovely place to meander
when you are ready
to forget what you thought was True

or, at least, realize that all truths
are as mortal as you --

Save Mystery,
she will outlast us all.

The Man Zero (preface)

The story of the man Zero is a short one, sad and tragic to some, darkly comedic to others.  It is a true story, but it is a story, nonetheless -- a record, if you will -- and this means that, for all the truths included in it, a far greater many were omitted so that the story could be told.  And so though it is true and complete, I pray you won't think me too philosophical when I add that it is, by the limiting nature of narrative forms, also untrue and incomplete.

It should also be part of this preface that no man after our protagonist ever dared match his achievement (if that is the appropriate word).  Ironically, every man before him dedicated his life, almost religiously, to attaining the benchmark of human spirit herein discussed.  It was supposed to be an impossible challenge, a legend, a myth, but man at full and vivacious form rarely believes in impossibilities.  Thus, all before him who believed in truth endeavored to find it, to know it, to be it.  But when the challenge was proven possible, the allure of its achievement evaporated and men began to estimate its value based on results.  As if fledgling scientists, laymen inquired and researched, asking, “How did the man Zero feel, how did he live, was he happier than I, richer?”  Certainly, measured by results, the man Zero was, if nothing else, a warning to his successors: find the truth and forget not why you ever pursued it.

Many desisted, preferring the clear and prepared paths to the deep unknown whose dark called to them like sirens, inviting them to greatness.

You probably have an idea of how his story goes, now.  Correctly, you have added up the evidence and concluded that this man's life was not so great since no one after him attempted to duplicate the historic feat.  You would be correct in the same way that the story is true and complete, for though he was far from rich, suffered an unjust proportion, and, over-all, did not lead a life preferable to any other, he did live in a way that invited the unseen into the common light, in a way that made it seem he was the cause and controller of the supernatural witnessed by his contemporaries. In short, he spoke with angels, performed miracles, diagnosed and offered remedies for societies’ ills. He made the blind see what is real-but-not-acknowledged and he showed them a way.

  

Here, I imagine, the non-believer folds the book and reaches for another that will reinforce what he already believes to be so.  Unfortunate; for here the true story begins.

Notes

1.a.
 The chain of events from which I've liberated myself was, indeed, rusted and tarnished; old as the concepts of which it was symbolic: slavery, oppression -- all that is the very antithesis of freedom, itself.

The reach of the chain was to the illusion of liberty, to the fruit for impatient men so hungry for the nutrition of Spirit and yet so fresh and new to the human flesh that, well, a man would know not where to look.  All he ever reached for was and is God and yet all he ever got was the drama of the Reaching Man.

Eventually it becomes clear, though, that the only purity in existence has no specific form, it is the indivisible (of which he is necessarily a part, knowingly or not).  He is never without it and so it is never out of reach nor does he need to reach, at all.  The state of being without IT (the Tao, one might call it, the Connection, the Liasson, or whatever) is, in truth, a state of Confusion, the cure for which is patience and meditation  -- inaction.

1.b.
During inaction, one permits the Universe to act, to do what it does, to precipitate what it will from the threatening clouds of obscurity and fertilize the soul with the Touch of Nature's enlightening, quenching response.

2.a.
Now is a living entity
Now is an organic system
Now is both finite and infinite
Now is space, time, material and consciousness.
Now is a consciousness unto itself -- nous.

Tailor

The body is small for your soul,

and if you stretch your brain anymore

you'll drop like rain

weightless ...

no, that's not it ...

A soul is trying to wear a body.

It feels naked and so walks embarrassed and foolish.

But this is appropriate attire here,

no, that isn't how to begin ...

A Soul wanted an outfit for a walk,

the fables of Heaven inspired Him so

that for aeons He labored to weave a cloth

large enough to contain His infinite self

and, after enough time, He figured it out good enough.

He would have to ...

well, you must know.  You are reading this after all.

You have seen all He has made,

how it moves, blossoms, drops, leaps from the water

and all that.  He is that much, such that He is 

also this, we, it, I, she, they, and so forth (in fact,
"He" is just a grammatical convention, a new proper noun
or pronoun might help everyone on Earth out, but for now) --

no subject is He not, no object, no force, no wind,

no order seen nor chaos thereabouts, no star,

nor half cup, no place is too full or vacuous to say

"well, He can't be there".  He can and he is.

Respectfully, stop the foolish skepticism
and blind faithlessness;
it praises the none of the following:
intellect; creativity; wholeness of reality nor its individual parts;
Self and non-self (yours or mine or anyone's);
and just about anything you can,
and everything you cannot, think of.

Any further descriptions ceases to be a poem

and becomes esoteric existential philosophy

and the stuff of boring religious scholars

or the stuff of drug induced highs and coffee shop

conversations between people who feel it

as severely as that mid-life crisis; those deathbed visions;

that sexual awakening that can have you searching so madly

through your own self you, in the end, are torn to bits;

that broke heart so broken it was hard to tell the difference

between which bits where heart and which bits were

that ancient stardust from which He first began to fashion

His suit, to connect his first fabrics ...

You know, He probably dreamed of walking down that winter street

in that city where you went or the beach -- wherever you were when you

had your first suicidal thought, each the place of your deepest, most

desperate aching.  There was the suture, His needling passing through

solid Nothingness, creating the first puncture in T1,
a wormhole in T2 and your very own love-beaten anguished heart in T3,
each of which so many light-years away from each other
it would be hard to argue that they are not, in some way, simultaneous events
if only light weren't so pedestrian crossing such vastness.

That was Him on his first day of seaming,
those were his momentary doubts echoing in you:

"I'll never finish this, I'll never make it," 

and yet there you are

walking Him and his first pain down that street on that beach, wherever,

owning it, claiming it, wanting to feel as He felt and He

wanting to take that walk you are taking.  You were a destination of His.
So humanized by the depth of your pain

that you forget it may not be yours, you even think the moon and the music

were mocking you, that is how lost in your own heart and self you are.

That is precisely what He wanted, the tailor of whom I speak.

We are adornments.
The life that passes before His eyes
when he finally rested, having realized his dream,
having slipped into the dream, too,
as neither substance nor force, nor visible light itself,
but a consciousness through which he is recalled,
searched for, denied, vainly named and rebuilt.

Your suffering made Him.  His, you.  Same with love.

Let us live more. 

That is what He and I always say to each other

these days.  These sacred, very real days.

Far From the Truth

Pride is the sensation upon touching, for the first time,
the surface of the object of your affection:
the flag; the victory; the once impossible End; Love.

That being true, or not, it doesn't matter because
a poet will say just about anything
to score more of that Life
that Love high that dreamy
Peace pill poppy Ohm ride
one more one more
c'mon, just one more  ...

Upon learning that even the drop of water
and the thread of fabric are as deep
and ontologically miraculous and full
as the sea or the tissues of thine very own flesh,
brains, bones ...

well, one is likely to suspect
the findings of science as being
a testament of a specific expression,
a particular and practical variety of observation,
through which is told a story of the world
and existence so beyond the senses
that only the mind can reach and touch
this scripture in Braille

and the honest heart will warm
with awe and humility,

and somewhere a head will bow
and the Lord will hear
"amen".

Amateur

Yes, I am an amateur;

A professional executes
a business practice
and acts to fulfill this function
which drives toward one undeniably useful end:
money.

While this is true and fine by me and many,
the amateur will argue, at least within himself,
that this influential, distinguishing variable
renders what could be art, simply product.

And the amateur,
whatever his level of training or skill,
will be sickened by such a motivation.
Thereafter, if he is presented with "opportunity"
he will either scold it or accept it.
In other terms, he will either live off his art
or he will not.

An amateur executes a spiritual practice
and acts to fulfill this function.
He is terribly afraid of influences, such as money,
that might control his productivity
and thereby corrupt his integrity.
He opts, in some rare cases,
to be an amateur because by doing so
he has a higher chance of being great;
in the long run, of course.

In the end, each -- the amateur and the professional --
has produced of himself
a specific breed of human character --
an ambassador of a truth
and principles that constitute him;
an example for all his companions and potential onlookers;
a father to children; a husband to a wife,
a brother and son and friend; a lover;
a being situated between all yesterdays
and all tomorrows;

a creator of things which ultimately express his reasons
for living and for creating.

He seeks to transact with each and everyone who experiences his art,
whatever form it is.

Amateur sounds good to me.
And accurate, until now.

What poem might I write
if I am to become professional?

Would I even write a poem at all?

The Mirror

Beloved Christ, Bodhisattva, Tao, 
open thy lane such that I see it,
and my heart such that I dare to walk it.

Buddha, whisper your name
to the meditating urban monks
so they might guide me
to my very own sanctuary of peace
somewhere between my shoes
and my new khaki baseball cap;

may Jesus' love be in every
sip of water,
maybe I always taste
his miracle there.
May Jesus' love fill me
with awe as my eyes consume
the Truth of one crumb of bread,

may I understand and desire this sustenance,
this wealth, this species of riches
above all else

and may these mundane miracles
render each and every pound of my flesh
worth the same in said crumbs

may the rivers of the world be
a vein to every temple, wrist,
pulsating part, Gaia.

May Mohammed show me
the one and only light
whose beauty is not such at noon
as it is at dawn
nor dusk nor any two hours,
and yet remains of a Single Light.

Whether His Loveliness is veiled
by the angle of the day's hour
or nude as a dazzling gem
in the crown of any day I perceive as being holy,
even if I should lewdly see
a blonde on the blue beaches of Heaven,

or the fury which not even Hell hath
racing with a cloud of hair behind her,
electrified and coming to extinguish
the molten core of the Earth

by the touch of Zeus or
the dance of a shaman
cupping his hands above a thirsty forest,

the arch of Light is raised,
bowed spectrum in light
which makes all beauty sweet
and equally so,
all shades of man,
mind, heart and soul
equally born of and triumphant in
the tempest.

The Rainbow at the end of the storm,
everything but black and white.

There is no diminishing the Light of Life
lest ye turn toward the darkness
unprepared to admire it
or without the torch of Love within you
or the intent of Lords and prophets
to reach where no Light is perceived
and salvage souls there scattered
and lost in the Infinite
which has been too easily confused for Nothingness.

Let me find you, brother,
and you find me --
I lost in your light,
perceiving my confusion
calling it your darkness
and you lost in my light
mis-taking in the same manner
but convinced of the truth of what you spy
for we both possess darkness,
it is true.

No coincidence we find each other in the Darkness, then.
You find the worst of me, and I the worst of you.

Ay, if you could see me praise, celebrate and adore by day
and brave and battle the demons and wolves by night --
tame them into allies, even! -- you would be proud to call me "brother".

I, as you, am a victorious form of Life
and I, too, would and have hated, hunted, and slain --
the lion, the wolf, the wild beast all around and within
are today the dinosaurs of my essence,
they are my roots.  A past I study and learn
not to repeat.

But I have seen the tiger
lick my obnoxious children;
the lion leap to greet
kind and trained explorers;
the monkey, too, has
paused to think before he acts
and the smiling orangutang has signed,
"I love you", from within his cage.

None of which are tricks
or deceptions,
though currently exceptions --
these proofs have me thinking

might we sworn enemies
anull our hate and be exemplary, too?

I offer this:

If you would watch me closely
as I served you,
I would serve you.

And when my back shines
like a mirror under the sun
from minutes, hours, years of
tending to your animals, cultivating your gardens
and doing as your will bids,
as I toil there whistling a tune of liberty
focused on my task
and the beauty and reason in it,
that will be the moment you can shoot or slice me dead
cold, heavy, falling through eternity

should you still desire to do so.

Sadness, Myth, Foolishness, etc.

There is a sadness in peacefulness, but just a touch of it, like a gravity holding down bliss, keeping it in your heart.  I don't know why it is sadness and not some other feeling that hold this bliss, this joy such that it is within, or at least within reach.  But sadness is how it feels to me.  Maybe it it because I can feel the End -- near or far I know not; but that it is there, somewhere, my logic, until now, remains convinced.  This fragile construct of flesh and bone, mind and whatever else -- maybe it will never be destroyed in some sense, in the sense that it will only transform or trans-something such that it can find unity with another species of Being, a higher one, I would like to think, a greater one.  Maybe God or the Universe or even some such Being as no man has ever spied.  Whatever the case, this gentle sadness permitting my soles on these soils, my mass endurable by my own structure and force, is because I have since fallen in Love with all of this Life and Living and Madness and from this love has grown the myth of Eternal Togetherness and from belief in this, I, in the dreamy breeze of Hope, open my fictitious wings and so I must be a fool, and ever more foolish still for knowing I am a fool and being even proud of it and feeling, oddly enough all the more human for it.

I wrote this last night at work while just sitting there thinking about the peacefulness I was feeling and what the feeling of peace seemed to be made up of.  And then this morning I watched a video that a friend of mine posted. It was a TED talk by a guy named Sam Harris who talked about morality and getting scientific about the matter so as to sort of eradicate the world of its harmful myths.  As his bio reads, he is against religion in general because it invites excuses for undesirable human conduct.  While I agree with his to a degree, I can't help but be a romantic and think that myth is essential to the human experience.  The little entry I jotted down last night seems related to the whole idea.

Observation: Happy João Conditions

A happy João is a João who manages to make enough time for himself to cook fresh food, do some writing, exercise, and philosophize with Georgia, the canine expression of the universe, about effective pedogogical methodologies, the ancient art of animal husbandry and the possible connections between the two. I insist that animals can learn how to reason creatively, she insists on crying until I give her some petting-action or distract her with human food and I don't know if this means we agree to disagree or have struck an intellectual accord. But I know this much: so long as there is gas in the stove and a fresh filter in the water thingamajigger, so long as the rent is paid, food and cleaning supplies remain affordable and music remains makable, friends stay close and family within the reach by phone skype or deep meditation, I might begin to consider myself one of the richest men on planet Earth and forcably argue the position with about anyone. But not yet.

something about being alive

It is my honor, privilege and pleasure to walk among the most beautiful and fine
alignments of stardusts and dreamweaves that are Life's Forms, not Plato's,
which all aliens, if they be wise connoisseurs, should come to see:

the human and the tree, flower, snake and bee, one two and three, dance rhythms
our streets ...

there is simply not enough time to see, at least they would claim
that life is wrapped in the box Eternity to be opened, taken, and thrown away
eventually by our mortal decay and reckless folly partial to the perfumes of sin
lustfully slipping in to Rubik's own solution,
a bar called Blue Side on 42nd street
where you will laugh and fall on that slippery loose Love
leaning on a beam you just smashed into the soil
preparing a perimeter for a mistake you will never regret
not knowing that you, yourself, were more a dream
in unborn eyes, a flame in the eternal skies
upon which some quickly coming super-natural soul gazed,
having heard so much of sentient Life, Earth's immeasurably rare benevolence,
and how freaking cool it is to Fear Death
and not be 100 percent sure about anything
except that it will happen and you will pay
Caesar & Co for the all Karmic and Commercial goods and attractions
which, it should be added, result in an amnesia
leaving most scratching at the question in their brains,
"what is the purpose of all of this, anyway?"

It is a common question we prefer to ask than answer.

Here is another, almost never spoken thus:

by aging into a time and mind frame wouldn't we cease to be “we” if thawed out
when the Next Now comes a'rising?

Disbelief in the Self and its Endless Depths
render the divine messengers and prophets dust like everything else
as if said dust was not formed and placed with a care implying intentionality.
As if you yourself are not a prophet, nor is he or she,
nor can anyone be, not anymore.  That's just craziness!
Ay, compadre, I admire the polish of your doubts
and still wouldn't trade them for a single stone of my strewn cairns.

They beget distrust among, between and
then beat the drums of discordant hearts accumulating stress in the shoulders
as the weight of the absoluteness of His truth increases in proportion to the strength
of modern multi-cultural arguments against absoluteness in general;
verily: relativity and plurality of truths, or, if you prefer, the velocity of the Light is constant and the same no matter who or where you are, and, equally important, its white is potentially prismatic, especially at sunrise and sunset, which is as lovely from where I sit as from anywhere.

Whatever book you read, 'tis more a testimony than an argument, can't it be true?  That all behold and bother to testify seems a lovely little skeleton key, presently useless, it seems.  I wonder if there is a book shut away somewhere it might open.

Don't get so bummed learning that you are majority empty space, vacuum.
Don't come a'wantin to cut anyone down or dead on account of the emptiness you might feel, friend;
that emptiness is the space in which powers and forces fly and the wings of your angels,
by whatever name, soar with as much right and love as any others.

Heaven is built of seen and unseen deeds by real live beings.

Surely, the scent of blood will remind anyone of us of how animal we are
and the calm in dead eyes will arouse some intoxicant cocktail
of sympathy and thus goodness, rejoice and thus evil, filling that emptiness
with human feelings when what are needed are divine ones.

Even the scribe sighs as he dreams of eternal words above
his very own name,

thus he reclaims not, he protests so quietly as the whispering slices of his pen, carving, as he imagines, in Time, a deep tattoo on the breast of a Victory Goddess, not a wound, never a wound ...

but no two men perceive the very same, nor believe from the same heart,
though origin's shared.

Space-time is a trick of the eye, even the eye of the mind, so meditate on your Peace
my brother, my sister, Mother Earth holds you gently against Her and Her gentleness is a manner of
speaking so grow not so accustomed as to be numb to Her touch, deaf to Her ballad of love and faith and you can do it so here we go,

her language is so greater than our own
but even the simple mechanics of our carnal ears
can pick up on her acoustic falling waters, water on high, sun torn sky wearing a bolt of
lightning like a badge of my childhood courage

watching her through the window bathe the trees, yawn with such pleasure as to own
chew and render sublime the object of my attention, arousing my affection for both Life
and Dream, pardoning my foolishness like a dog who knows only forgiveness, return,

and shameless unconditional love.

Morning Meditations

Man is multi-dimensional:
Breakfast:
Belly Food
Brain Food
Soul Food

Nourish All Selves.

Word Play (Island):
My I (s) Land, I's Land,
island, surroundings
all exist in and of themselves
each also possesses a Nature.

I assume that the Nature of each
is in fact One Nature;
forgive my boldness, Skeptic.

True Story:
I wrote a poem yesterday traveling
in more than one place at once,
if you'll believe it --
forgive my fictions;
and if you know better don't call them lies
or untrue.  There is a difference between the three.

The Poem:

You will grow
to the heights
of your depths

and there will be Nothingness:

which is, incidentally, the only home
for your Infinite Being.

In other words, you can't stuff Infinity
into something else unless there is aboslutely
nothing there.

Learn to be the Light and the Shadow;
and the expanse inbetween is for you to grow
into a child with Love of All.

Know where you walk:
In the darkness, be Light of appropriate brightness,
in the Light, be the imitating, observant shadow
and study those lights around you.

Meditations on Education

Study the acquisition of Peace
as often as the acquisition of money
for Peace is the Truer path to Power.

Study the Physics and Architecture of Love
and house the whole of Humanity
in an edifice that will outlast
any man-made wonder of the world.

Infinity's Best Disguise

This is as much an argument as it is a poem. It is an argument against the Empiricists (if I may call them this. I don't know how they self-identify or even accept being categorized) who claim that due to humans' size in relation to the Whole Universe we are too insignificant for God to bother with us. This poem responds specifically to Tim Minchin's nine-minute poem, "Storm", and ideas presented by Brazilian philosopher Mario Sergio Cortella.

Infinity's best disguise
is a finite thing.

It is hidden on a beach
in a single grain
and on that grain
some thing much smaller
perhaps living. A bacteria or
fungus or something.

And the beach is lit
by a glowing thing
whose name has changed
with the ages,
Amen.

And the beach is
made of stars
scattered throughout
the Universe, and they
stick to the feet and ankles
of those who like to sit
and listen to the waves
or run in the ionized breath
of the sea.

I started with a metaphor, of course.
We are those living things
so insignificant because we are so small
and therefore much closer to Nothing
than to the Divine, isn't that right?

In the Great Scientific Portrait,
in the Context of Infinite Space-time,
it is so ignorant and backwards to assert
that God would bother with us
or even that there is a God
or whatever He is called.

Isn't that what the statistics say?

But wouldn't the language of Numbers
fail when attempting to speak of
what cannot be quantified? Of what is,
by defnition, unquantifiable?

We are arrogant dreamers
to think we might actually have a significant place
or a Father to listen to our prayers, or a Mother
who holds us close to her bossom to feed,
who carried us to these cosmic shores
and knew we would grow to be good.

If we were important to the Universe
we would be bigger, is that it?
We would be more, is that it?

I wonder about the thinkers who say this.
Where do they keep their secrets?
How would they protect their most precious things?
and, furthermore, what about said precious things
makes them precious at all?

Perhaps their Numbers can put a value
on Life or Love or their children. 
I would like to see that number.
Or maybe neither Life nor Love
really exist if numbers can't add them up.
Or maybe they're just chemicals
just like God is just ideas.

Infinity's best disguise,
is a finite thing.
Humble, and small,
it would have to be a fool
to think,

I
I am special, somehow.
I am loved and the Universe knows me,
watches me, wants me. I am the Universe
gazing upon itself, or,
I am the Universe's secret (and perhaps only)
admirer, and I think She knows it.

Goodnight

Whatever you do,
do not stroke my hair
lean near my ear
and whisper your affection for me
while I lay dying;
do not wait until I am gone
to acknowledge I was here.

Do not hug my corpse
like you never want me to go
or kiss me
as if your very kisses
might wake me to life again ...

don't do it later, don't do it then,
do it now --

again and again.
Then, when we are gone we have no regrets:

Passion was ours!
That eternal fire of myth,
we were there, dancing, weren't we, love?

Yes.  No love went to waste.
There is nothing that remains that might sour.

No tears -- not for me!

I was much too blessed,
much too free, much to loved
that my life should inspire pity,
where ever you surmise I am.

If you cry it is not for my loss of life
but for your own loss of love.

Cry far away from my grave,
someplace quiet.

I would like to take a walk, anyway,
transform into a breeze or some meaningful light --
an apparition if your sanity can bare it --
and see you see me

maybe then you will know,
for eternity I have and always will kiss you goodnight.

The Days

Eskimos are said to have

dozens of words for snow they perceive.

The type of snow depends on the temperature,

the humidity, the day, among other things.

I will come back to this
but let me digress here:

Thinking about Home today.

I have had apartments and houses,

been in cities and mountain villages

and islands and a deathbed, too.

Had to think about Life and what 

in the world I am doing wanting more as I lay

there scared, crying, reading to pass the time,

chatting with the pony-tailed male nurse

who loved Bukowsky, had big Roman eyes
that blinked with the calm I imagine
professional angels possess.  
I wish I remembered his name.

After I was out I read that

gratitude's tears are more beautiful;

crystaline under the microscope:

the guy who'd written the article

had asked the monks and the scientists

and the Eskimos.

He didn't ask me but I would have confirmed it.

When you are dying, you definitely want to be filled

with gratitude.  And being that you never know

when that will be, you might as well keep yourself

filled up good and plenty.

I'm running, I'm going, I'm moving.

I'm curious about you, Life -- and Death,
I know you're there, but I am not so curious anymore --

and I 

just can't believe in only one religion,

one right way to Love other than

completely and, ideally, with absolutely

no violence.  Impossible as it seems
given the human narrative till now.

I got no home,

no roots, but I've got leaves;

no nest, but wings and a brain

like a whale with her mouth open

from the Arctic toward the equator 

and back just to feed well and mate

in better conditions.  Since the beginning

of time the beasts of air and water travel

with a purpose.

New worlds (and by "worlds" I mean

cultures and peoples): one beautiful in this way

the other in that.  All with an Exit sign

over a door somewhere

that, somedays, you glance at

and want to sneak out of.

Being without a home, in this way, is

strange and sad and exciting

depending on the day.

And each feeling can produce it's own

variety of tears if they get intense enough,

if you let those chemicals fill you full,

paint your view, major or minor

the notes in the song of whatever language surrounds; 

but, of course,

it depends on the mood, the context

of my feelings, the day.

Water has a tetrahedral molecular configuration that resonates with the fabric of the vacuum geometry and is thermodynamically inversed: it is the only element that expands when cooled and contracts when heated.

http://resonance.is/

I will not fear

I will not fear.
Fear, I will you no more.
I carry you in no part of me,
you live with Santa Claus
or Vampires and the Wicked Witch
as far as I am concerned.
So, goodbye.

I will not fear
the knock at the door
of my heart asking me
to give,
asking me if I have ever witnessed
Jahova on Earth.
I will not say no and close that door
when the dirty guy with missing teeth
and hands rough as paws comes
and asks for some food
or money.  I ask his name
and see that gloss over his eyes
is a window pane.

I will not fear the charity in my heart
nor the consequences of being charitable.

I will not fear your fear
nor leave you alone with your fear

I will not fear my affection for you
nor your need, or desperation, or imperfection.

And I will not fear my own imperfections.

I will not fear, anymore,
losing it all and having nothing
for I will have given it all,
and go as I came.

If

If it all comes down to nothing --

an infinite void

where, far away, aliens

send out signals

that a great big silent black hole

swallows up

so they never get to us
and we feel alone
and special, at once;

If it all comes down to nothing

and there is no God

we can weigh
and know the race
and height of

then we are wrong

or need to turn the scales

upside down
and be satisfied with simply
believing.

But if there is ever no God

we can feel the vibrations of

such that it seems

when we need

when we want

we can hear Him

then all has gone to hell

and we need to be saved,

if it all comes down to nothing.

If it all comes down to nothing

shouldn't we rise

and reach or listen for something --

even (or especially) if it seems that doing so

defies some law of logic

or empircal inquiry?

Maybe, if it all comes down to nothing,

some should never look down

and others will question

if the fall is not, in fact, only

a matter of perception,

that maybe it is, instead, flying.

If it all comes down to nothing,

fly anyway, child,

and let no fear ever age you

nor the darkness fail

to be anything but

a deep and blank canvass

and you with a
fistful of crayons
and tears in your eyes
from the speed of Truth

there is no "almost" about it:

you are already There.