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.