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LUVDRUNK POETRY (FILE 3) OPENED 6/13/97 PAGE 2 OF 2 |
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ANOTHER QUESTION AND ANSWER Q: How far can we go along the path of self surrender? A: Into the limitlessness of God. THREE CHRISTIAN MEN 1. THE 3RD CENTURY A.D. Three Christian men sat together, chattering like sparrows in an apple tree: one was old, the other young, the third was free. Their speech was sober-- but their minds giddy as a hen-- they drank in the sunshine and spit out the wind. A mountain’s stone-flank soared above them, like a temple--granite walled! a simple flower, like a diadem, enchanted them with awe. * 2. THE 20TH CENTURY Three Christian men sat in a pew, silent as gargoyles on a roof: one was old, the other young, the third aloof. What was there to talk of, except golf at the coffee hour, they would have had a little OJ but it was sour. The fellowship hall was pretty nice, with programs posted on the wall, and a picture of Jesus walking on water that no one saw. WHAT WOULD WE FIND? What shall we find in pre-institutional, pre-ascetic Christianity?: A wedding feast of reality in the pure unfoldment of Way; Life as free-flowing Spirit which is the core of Christ; and sumptuous rivers of absolute creative, imaginative powers expressed as revolutionary compassion, turning a religious/political world upside down, threatening the existence of all the Maker had not made, all that the alienated ego of mankind built to sustain its own aberrant existence. And what would happen if we returned with a full and free heart to this primal essence of reality? Aboomba. Joy! Justice! Breakthrough! The radiance of God in everyone's eyes; openness, trust, celebration; life in a riot of loving growth in the everywhere wild soul of Christ. POEMS WRITE ME I don't write poems, poems write me, knocking on my heart door with their wordy little hands. Opening, I find them all free and fluid, begging for brilliance in my mind, (light I mean), wanting nothing, except to be known. And loving them, they write me, and kill me, and scatter themselves like seeds through the wastes of my heart. Now, I am a garden... and the hoe and watering can are held by the Poet with miniature moons in His fingertips, a golden sun in each of Her opened palms. A MIRROR OF GOD When the eyes of the heart open the whole face becomes a mirror of God. If our hearts should become pure miracles would happen to us unceasingly... though no one else would notice. THERE'S A TENDER RIVER There's a tender river flowing into soul becoming soul, coloring it; flowing through the body, being body, being the song in human form, God's body, you. THERE IS LIFE TO RECOVER There is a wisdom that sometimes breaks the bounds of fundamental morality, that shatters family soul to make a new maker. There is life to recover, captives to loose, energies to regain. This is the wildness of God! There is a predictable God who is tamed and owned. But the Living Master moves: birthing dreams, crushing dreams, fulfilling dreams to kill the dreamer into his dream: incarnating a breath effortlessly breathed eternally. * The Soul is utterly realized through countless unconventionalities. I SAY, YES! YES! Blow the wind through me Drive me like a wedge into the dark! I say, Yes! Yes! Your invisible blows of love, shattering the strong stone, splitting tough roots, bleeding the love through, blasting open water spouts. I HAVE A MASTER IN HEAVEN I have a Master in heaven. His name is Eshoo. I have a heart for kingdoms and he is the Great King. But on earth I longed for visible teachers to fill my senses with songs and words. I found three teachers: the trees, stones, and rivers. The trees teach me rootedness in earth and sensitivities to sky; the stones, simple constancy; and the river: forgiveness, play, and deep moods of freedom. My teachers were made by my Master. to impel my movement in His Way. EXERCISES IN AWARENESS I. Thought is a voice without sound as imagination is sight without eyes. Think about it. Say to yourself in thought alone, "Mary had a little lamb..." Now, again, slowly... Did you hear the words? Were they not a form of silence that spoke? Who was the speaker. Who the listener? Can you answer? Who answers? Now imagine a lion. Can you see it? Where? Who sees inside? Right now a million nerve impulses are bombarding your brain and the mystical thing creates this sound of thought for you, the translucent listener, the silent watcher, the other one you do not know. There is a back door in the soul that can open to a hidden Sun. There is a Golden Voice waiting to speak our new names in light. There is bird song burbling from another world which can swallow us up in ecstasy. I have heard a song of light that sings open two worlds! This is the breath of it: listen!... WHY I SING Have you noticed how beautiful people become when they sing love and happiness? Or have you heard that tremor that naturally comes to a voice when the soul starts speaking, putting to word the wordless? I sing because I love the Love that loves Love-- to be in it, to flood full with it loving... To turn in it; to spin like a goose on a spit in it; to cook hot in love 'till heart-juices drip out my mouth, through my eyes... That's why I do it the singing way, because it's the way of light, speaking in colorful juices, the radiance who introduced Himself to me when I wasn't looking for anything more that some serious, solid dark embodied in swelling, soft things... but stuck in flat things! in the gray was I, in the curt and cold, like some poet's voices I've heard recently around these wearisome post-modern parts. ALL THINGS MERELY IN TIME All things merely in time are mindless motions... impersonal impartialities. Sweeping a child away in its floods, a river plunges through time. And that sun cooks the brains of a man lost in a wilderness of hot stones. But in the soul, when the heart falls open into life and life courses through, all things become ruminations, indications and intimations of counter-universes of love and the whole thing explodes open into poetry. And the heart holds life fluid as fluid life splays the soul set deep in a percolating fabric which undulates open in times beyond time. IMAGES FROM A DREAM Because of war I chose my weapons of war: I rode a white horse with a horse in its saddle and talked to the women who grew from their heads; I kissed one, as the hair of her mane fell into my mouth. I visited my children when they were young, and spoke with their mother but to no resolve: yet my children loved me and that was the healing. I said "Yes, yes, yes!" to Jesus amidst a crowd of beautiful people: and joy surged through me as a glorious presence. Then suddenly I was home and the war ended. BIRTHING THE GRIEF OF BLESSING I don't know when it was, the first time it touched me... Was it in those sea voices, astir in silent pools, or in the fringed throats of anemones when I was a barefoot child? Or was it the first time I discovered the power of women over young boys? I remember it in a desert sky, that was white as milk with stars, pouring through a silence that made my heart pound a loud, mystical beat in my head, and there again with the great sharks I saw swimming where I often swam. It was there, without a face or hands, beckoning me, a child dumb with grief from being born into a miraculous, cruel world, --cast blind upon concrete, sliding into the music of foam-- urging me to desire nothing, to know nothing, be nothing, have nothing, that might allure me away from the voice: this hidden fire in my belly, this mind-breeze, this seizure, this fate of lushness streaming through nothing, this monstrous curse of blessing. * I'm going back now to the startling wind in a bush, to birds in straw tents, to the gray squirrel's tail, to a severe blade of grass, to a woman's milky thighs, to soft rivers of the moon, to a gold splash of sun, to enter that which enters me. REALITIES PROJECTED AND KNOWN There are imaginative projections, and beyond these projections a silent, silver center, and beyond the silence of the silver center a golden world full of voices and song. THESE THINGS TURN MY HEART BACK Salt, bread, honey, brown eggs, an old wind in young trees, sea foam, barnacled stones, the silky movement of kelp in the tides: all things call us towards a place where secret doors open unto day's colors and the fragrances of night. Life becomes like kisses there: soft, passionate, warm and wet, loving us. My feet seek the white sands of Argentina, the rock islands of Chile; my ears: sheep hoofs on stones, lamb's cries, the sharp comment of the hawk; my eyes: sheets of sunlight seeping down to dark roots-- loosing the green-- and you, running barefoot amidst gray hills. These things turn my heart back to where I am, watching light-filled waters spilling between dark stones, feeling the fissures love cleaved out of which wild, white spray spumes towards the skies. UPON THE DEEP PASSION I would die into the deep passion of all sufficient intelligence— busy as a ceaseless ant, quieter then a nun's whispers— from which all artistry of form and fire issues in a continual dance. * I need seven days of naked solitude; seven days of sky; seven days to clear my mind of the jangle of senses; seven days for the doors of light to open seven days to clothe the wind with words upon seven pages; upon God's seven breaths; upon the circuit of being; so that she who reads may know her human heart... and die into deep passion. FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT FEAR (Only God fully lives Life) For those who do not fear their death we become like plum trees: the surge of Life that God only lives, swelling our blooms, until blossoms fall white, like rain, in mystery and grace, warm in sweet grasses— while armored seeds that never died darkly dissolve with weak cries amidst rotting leaves. LET US LAUGH THE LOVE TOGETHER I have to laugh and make a defense for love and love's pleasures of spirit and body in this world. This is about joy! Is fear, or guilt, or rigid duty a better defense against selfish abuses of freedom then love's own intoxications? And what can make us wiser then pleasure’s pure creative flow? Let us sing together affirmations of the beauty of love's light rising in our hearts and eyes. Let us laugh together and dance in grace with celebrations of love's lightness of being as it brims up in a free flow through the center of our hearts. IN EVERY ACT OF GOODNESS In every act of goodness God is here and we are home. I WANT TO SEE MY MASTER I want to see my Master as the holy book says I should see Him-- and to hear His voice behind me as the prophet dreamt it could be. Sometimes I think He is merely a cultural fantasy, and then I curse His name: the one I love... But my heart remembers being awakened by His voice one deep evening in a solitary room while monks prayed— and I cannot stand with my argument. Sometimes I imagine He is here, looking quietly upon me, thinking thoughts I cannot fathom in harmony with the inscrutable wisdom of His love. But this is only imagination and longing. Yet, wasn't it through these two doors that the prophet once walked onto a sea of fire? And wasn't it through these two doors that the desert birthed great wheels of eyes? SPRING SPEAKS, MELTING INTO SUMMER I imagine all things: form to delight in and the void for rest. My pleasure is boundless in all that I make. We are like each other: I too find ecstasy as I am released in another's body. You are my form, I, your spacious freedom. We expand each other... but only in Love for Love-- for the beauty of it, for the joy! Open your eyes this instant! You will see me in the empty blue skies, in the blank space of stars, in the white sheets of snow, or rising, all warm and silvery in a lover's eyes. Open your heart this instant! and you will feel me in a child's spirit, or as a cloud of light hovering over the sick bed of one who prays; or illuminating the room of the open-hearted ones as they die from earth's rough forms into heaven's delicately beautiful ones. WHEN THE HEART GATES OPEN When the heart gates open and all the walls of fear fall then we fall into God as effortlessly as God falls into us. This is the awakening to know that the soul has always been in God as God is in the soul. A TERRIFIED CHILD RUNS A terrified child runs from the tenderness that would lift the mask from its face. But, gentle hands carry a soothing flame to burn the soul open. THE TRUTH THAT DESTROYS TRUTH There is truth and there is the Great Truth. It is true that people have possessions. The Great Truth is that no one owns anything-- never have, never will-- especially their own soul which is the essence of freedom. In the light of Great Truth why all this delirium of possessiveness? Why do we ruthlessly compete instead of nurture the Love? There is a round door that we must all slip through at the closure of our tenure. It is called The Truth that destroys truth and it leads into the Great Truth-- even for those who adamantly resist it. EACH OF US IS AFRAID Each of us has a mind of flame that tenderly burns when kindled by the spark of love, and a silk purse in the heart that clasps sky and holds old sounds of earth being slowly tilled, and fragrances of wet horses, lavender and sage. Each of us hides the ancient child we love, the one whom we have lost in the shadow of our grief. Each of us is deathly afraid of Christ our Lord and would kill Him in the one who becomes too free: for to be reminded is to be called to face the painful essence of our grief to its resolution: and that takes courage and passion and the willingness to be wrong in this change. TOTALITY All that matters is the Spirit the Spirit, the Spirit, the Spirit pouring through all things, in all experiences, the naked breath, the blue, spacious current... the Spirit. Centered in the heart: the Spirit. Pouring through the brain: the Spirit. Opening the senses: the Spirit. Spilling out the love: the Spirit. Welcoming the whole soul home: the Spirit, Spirit, Spirit. WHEN THE HEART DROPS INTO THE SPIRIT When the heart drops into Spirit to be lost in the silver sea unknown to the mind; to drink fluid light; to spin free in God; then the whole being must acquiesce to the heart, bow to it as it blows. Then the journey towards destiny clears, the life trues-up as resolve firms, while stars and trees, fish and birds, fight for the soul to fulfill its God-dreamt dream of freedom. HIDDEN TREASURES In the Spirit hidden treasures are reserved for each who asks. The heart alone can receive treasures hidden in the Spirit's fields. When the heart falls into the fields to admit its bounty everyone around hears the sound of the Soul of God singing-- everyone wakes up a little. HEALING THE OLD ACHE My children, best friends in memories—until one golden girl I did not know spoke with untoward eloquence against her mother and turned to me to sing of fatherhood. And love moved through so deeply it felt like God. THREE POEMS ON SPIRITUAL FREEDOM Dancing in dirt the secret flame laughs as sky rushes into stone. I. AIR Why are we here? To love the true Love. When loving with the soul we vanish into sky. Only seeing remains, and the deep listener who doesn’t speak. Our feet barely brush the ground. Everyday our body grows younger, fresh with light. How natural it is to be rooted upside down in sky. II. EARTH Why are we here? To love the true Love. When the heart is freed from the grief of all things it embraces everything. Breath passes through, the wind is light and earth radiant. Soul buries itself in color, soaks up fragrance, dances with worms and beetles, sings with crickets at night. Because nothing can enmesh it, the soul passes into everything, tastes it all, loves it all, imbues all, releases all. III. WAKING UP WE ASK Waking up we ask for what we most truly want. The answer comes as pure answer for the desire and its fulfillment are one. No desire, no fulfillment— only a free movement in the Infinite. Dance child for it is dawn and all things come. Dance child for it is night; even the fearful cry is full of beauty as long as crickets sing. Dance child where two worlds meet for you are of the One and always Nothing. HOUSE BEYOND THE SUN (A meditation on a Navaho song) Far to the east beyond the sun, there is a house. A beautiful house. The God of light made it out of His dreams. It is His house and my house. Beautiful house. It is covered with white flowers, and fields of sunflowers surround it, keeping watch. Their black eyes see God and are delighted. Their black eyes watch for me to step through the sun. In this house, everything is soft with the light of peace. The garden is full of food: fat tomatoes and beans that climb high. There are many streams laughing everywhere. Boats sail up and down on clear rivers. Fish are leaping. Beautiful house. There are fields of corn. There are fields of wheat. There are many birds singing in young trees. Ancient people come and visit our house. They drink silver tea made from the light of the moon. They laugh at remembrances. They talk to the deer. They talk with birds. They see God’s face and are delighted. They are watching for me to come to my house, to step through the sun. Beautiful house far to the east made by God out of His dreams. |
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