River
I know existence as men know it--
The holy shooting arrow of time;
I know, too,
A watch with no hands--
Its motionless silence divine
Flowing through mountain and city,
Province, parish and prairie,
Of every nation, race and creed,
I chortle with children--
Weep with mothers--
And lull the spent sojourner to sleep
Cypress and gnawing aphid,
Marigold and choking weed,
Human being and beguiling snake
Christened babe and murderous knave--
I give water to all--
And all are bound to my ways
Gazing at me,
I shift and change--
Eyes closed,
I am the chanting sage--
Sage of sublime stillness o’reseeing--
For I, the river,
Am the shape of all being
The holy shooting arrow of time;
I know, too,
A watch with no hands--
Its motionless silence divine
Flowing through mountain and city,
Province, parish and prairie,
Of every nation, race and creed,
I chortle with children--
Weep with mothers--
And lull the spent sojourner to sleep
Cypress and gnawing aphid,
Marigold and choking weed,
Human being and beguiling snake
Christened babe and murderous knave--
I give water to all--
And all are bound to my ways
Gazing at me,
I shift and change--
Eyes closed,
I am the chanting sage--
Sage of sublime stillness o’reseeing--
For I, the river,
Am the shape of all being
Doors
Choice is not wrapped in
Bright colored boxes at the supermarket
Your mother does not bring it to you
Easter Sunday wrapped in pink cellophane
Choice does not come in 33 flavors or
Taste like chocolate, caramel, maraschino Sundays
It does not come with all-wheel drive or
Have value in the stock market
Choice does not accentuate your body or
Make your skin as smooth as ice or
Have Prada fashion potential
There are many doors to the will, but
Far more that lead away from it
Every choice is a knob turned into
New rooms
Every turn is a prayer to the gods we seek; to
The gods we
Become
Choices are habits that lead us
Down
dead allies
Down
to the floors of elevator shafts
Broken legs and
Oxycontin addictions
Or
Choices are habits that lead us
Forward--
Each door opening another
Ad infinitum — Endless pathways
Innumerable thresholds
Laboring for
Compassion
Keys are earned — All is opened
The heart holds
Infinite universes in its
Atomic frame
Bright colored boxes at the supermarket
Your mother does not bring it to you
Easter Sunday wrapped in pink cellophane
Choice does not come in 33 flavors or
Taste like chocolate, caramel, maraschino Sundays
It does not come with all-wheel drive or
Have value in the stock market
Choice does not accentuate your body or
Make your skin as smooth as ice or
Have Prada fashion potential
There are many doors to the will, but
Far more that lead away from it
Every choice is a knob turned into
New rooms
Every turn is a prayer to the gods we seek; to
The gods we
Become
Choices are habits that lead us
Down
dead allies
Down
to the floors of elevator shafts
Broken legs and
Oxycontin addictions
Or
Choices are habits that lead us
Forward--
Each door opening another
Ad infinitum — Endless pathways
Innumerable thresholds
Laboring for
Compassion
Keys are earned — All is opened
The heart holds
Infinite universes in its
Atomic frame
Chariot
The opposite of ‘addiction’
is not ‘without addiction,’ but
presence
For freedom is lack of
association –
This moment in and of
itself
Detox from past and future tense
Cut ties to former and future selves,
There is nothing to push or pull or
alter the will’s course
Break down the circuitry of thought
Atomize language into
elementary letters
Turn hard barbed wire into
riverbeds of clay
Slippery slopes into
solid planes
Go to the place where
No word is formed
Just a single succinct sound
Meet me outside of
cause and effect
Where the horizon stretches beyond
mind’s eye
Where every breath opens the
space wider,
deeper
Than had ever been thought
possible
is not ‘without addiction,’ but
presence
For freedom is lack of
association –
This moment in and of
itself
Detox from past and future tense
Cut ties to former and future selves,
There is nothing to push or pull or
alter the will’s course
Break down the circuitry of thought
Atomize language into
elementary letters
Turn hard barbed wire into
riverbeds of clay
Slippery slopes into
solid planes
Go to the place where
No word is formed
Just a single succinct sound
Meet me outside of
cause and effect
Where the horizon stretches beyond
mind’s eye
Where every breath opens the
space wider,
deeper
Than had ever been thought
possible
Laughing
I climbed the mesa, thinking
I’d find the usual
love and beauty— but
found that day instead a
darker shade of knowing--
A hooded, guiding companion
to those sisters
I had sought
Reaching for solid stone I
found loose gravel, and nearly
slipping down the face of God
A voice I thought sinister--
A voice clear and wild as
the river flowing below—
The voice it
pulled the rock out from
my grasping,
laughing
hands of conviction, and said--
"You have forgotten what
Death is—
To see no answer
to those questions asked with every dusk--
To face down its gnarled, bloodless
visage--
Its velvet teeth tearing every
moment’s breath
You have forgotten Death, but
I am here to remind you--
Mans prolonging of the
Inevitable is laughable, and
If you think what you have been
gifted will last you always
If you have forgotten Death--
How could you pretend to know
Love and beauty?
You have
No
Respect
And
You
Will
Fall—"
It took the time to restore my
breathing, the softness of palms
outreached to the sky, and the
phantom of that thorny, hooked
Crown of Galilee to see the voice was not
malevolence, but the thunderous voice of
Wisdom, heaving across the sky,
and--
That day I bowed my head in
silence and
Worshipped.
I’d find the usual
love and beauty— but
found that day instead a
darker shade of knowing--
A hooded, guiding companion
to those sisters
I had sought
Reaching for solid stone I
found loose gravel, and nearly
slipping down the face of God
A voice I thought sinister--
A voice clear and wild as
the river flowing below—
The voice it
pulled the rock out from
my grasping,
laughing
hands of conviction, and said--
"You have forgotten what
Death is—
To see no answer
to those questions asked with every dusk--
To face down its gnarled, bloodless
visage--
Its velvet teeth tearing every
moment’s breath
You have forgotten Death, but
I am here to remind you--
Mans prolonging of the
Inevitable is laughable, and
If you think what you have been
gifted will last you always
If you have forgotten Death--
How could you pretend to know
Love and beauty?
You have
No
Respect
And
You
Will
Fall—"
It took the time to restore my
breathing, the softness of palms
outreached to the sky, and the
phantom of that thorny, hooked
Crown of Galilee to see the voice was not
malevolence, but the thunderous voice of
Wisdom, heaving across the sky,
and--
That day I bowed my head in
silence and
Worshipped.
Irises
Painting by Van Gogh
I saw truth hanging on a wall--
God exposed in many shades,
And flawless flowing lines
Each time the image is seen,
It is seen for the first time
The creator’s eye had lay in the soil,
By divining intuition
Hand and mind--
Synchronized with nature’s joy--
A passion in fruition
Essence, at times, moves the machine--
With entrusted self
To centerless being
Come vague recollections
Of ineffable dreams
And the steady, dynamic flow of the absolute.
Here hangs the momentary death of a man--
A death of self for higher beauty
Vivid, static
Picture in motion
Waving,
Swirling,
Twisting,
And curling--
Ocean of emotion
Overflowing o’er false bound’ry
This flower is no object,
But an animate,
Breathing,
Body
Imaged language of marrowed bone,
Play of light and shaded tone,
Time dries in the painter’s vision
Nature’s essence--
Newly birthed with naked power--
Defies all supposed division
The creator’s ghost
Sleeps
In eternal flower--
Beauty urges mind out of mind
Nature bends to the mind,
Even as it shapes the viewer
(In-
hale,
Ex-
hale)
Each gaze--
Is a suture
Of gathered visions
Exhaled out--
As prismatic futures
Death is not death
But transformation--
Transcending--
The immaculate law
Immovable;
Unbending
Man,
Invisible in life--
Now all see thee
God exposed in many shades,
And flawless flowing lines
Each time the image is seen,
It is seen for the first time
The creator’s eye had lay in the soil,
By divining intuition
Hand and mind--
Synchronized with nature’s joy--
A passion in fruition
Essence, at times, moves the machine--
With entrusted self
To centerless being
Come vague recollections
Of ineffable dreams
And the steady, dynamic flow of the absolute.
Here hangs the momentary death of a man--
A death of self for higher beauty
Vivid, static
Picture in motion
Waving,
Swirling,
Twisting,
And curling--
Ocean of emotion
Overflowing o’er false bound’ry
This flower is no object,
But an animate,
Breathing,
Body
Imaged language of marrowed bone,
Play of light and shaded tone,
Time dries in the painter’s vision
Nature’s essence--
Newly birthed with naked power--
Defies all supposed division
The creator’s ghost
Sleeps
In eternal flower--
Beauty urges mind out of mind
Nature bends to the mind,
Even as it shapes the viewer
(In-
hale,
Ex-
hale)
Each gaze--
Is a suture
Of gathered visions
Exhaled out--
As prismatic futures
Death is not death
But transformation--
Transcending--
The immaculate law
Immovable;
Unbending
Man,
Invisible in life--
Now all see thee
I breathe the humming long forgotten--
I breathe the humming long forgotten--
All the places I have been
Inward, poems of the body lie dormant,
Awaiting the gaze of you or me,
They ask release into awareness--
I reach for them--
Nesting in the belly
Are found insecurities trembling--
I wrap them tight and pully them up,
Up into light upending,
Revealing the best parts of me
Reaching down,
Down into the deep,
Old wounds swell, roll and unfold
Traumas, upheave, clash; crash--
An ocean in a drop of pain
It wells up and out,
With every breath,
I calm the skies, the sea, the rain
The dawn of night is peaking
Where ocean and sky do meet
An awakening is yawning
I find my place is here--
Where I see myself, complete
I sit and await another
Who sees the great reaches of me
Love!
I know you have seen It too--
We have met before
Somewhere along the winding road--
Down some back alley
Forty years before my birth
You gave me an abortion
And forgot my name
Ninety years ago,
You and I snuck booze
Into the opera house downtown
And got arrested
For indecent displays of affection
And before that,
We fell in love on some street corner in Leipzig
I, with my uncertain smile;
You with your freckled eyes and newfound faith
Our journeys have walked the same stones for ages
It has slept there long,
Awaiting my gaze,
Awaiting your touch,
Waiting for us to reach inward and pluck it--
To taste the sweet distillation of being;
To know all that lay in the deep
I gasp as you pull again from me my origins;
As you pluck petals from my lips,
And the countless stars from my eyes
I see them mirrored in your own--
I see that lawlessness of space and time
I have seen all of your secrets,
For they are also mine
Now we shout them into the vast night
…..
We know the way forward,
For we have always known the dangers of love and mortality
And some faith was lost along the way
But the risks were never so much to bare
That we stopped for fear of living
Can I grasp it,
Light as vapor
Even as it falls
In hands unmended
And words unspoken?
It seems we’ve stood at these crossroads,
In perpetuum;
At the same point in time,
Always waving goodbye
There is nothing else I can do,
But love your boundless existence
All the places I have been
Inward, poems of the body lie dormant,
Awaiting the gaze of you or me,
They ask release into awareness--
I reach for them--
Nesting in the belly
Are found insecurities trembling--
I wrap them tight and pully them up,
Up into light upending,
Revealing the best parts of me
Reaching down,
Down into the deep,
Old wounds swell, roll and unfold
Traumas, upheave, clash; crash--
An ocean in a drop of pain
It wells up and out,
With every breath,
I calm the skies, the sea, the rain
The dawn of night is peaking
Where ocean and sky do meet
An awakening is yawning
I find my place is here--
Where I see myself, complete
I sit and await another
Who sees the great reaches of me
Love!
I know you have seen It too--
We have met before
Somewhere along the winding road--
Down some back alley
Forty years before my birth
You gave me an abortion
And forgot my name
Ninety years ago,
You and I snuck booze
Into the opera house downtown
And got arrested
For indecent displays of affection
And before that,
We fell in love on some street corner in Leipzig
I, with my uncertain smile;
You with your freckled eyes and newfound faith
Our journeys have walked the same stones for ages
It has slept there long,
Awaiting my gaze,
Awaiting your touch,
Waiting for us to reach inward and pluck it--
To taste the sweet distillation of being;
To know all that lay in the deep
I gasp as you pull again from me my origins;
As you pluck petals from my lips,
And the countless stars from my eyes
I see them mirrored in your own--
I see that lawlessness of space and time
I have seen all of your secrets,
For they are also mine
Now we shout them into the vast night
…..
We know the way forward,
For we have always known the dangers of love and mortality
And some faith was lost along the way
But the risks were never so much to bare
That we stopped for fear of living
Can I grasp it,
Light as vapor
Even as it falls
In hands unmended
And words unspoken?
It seems we’ve stood at these crossroads,
In perpetuum;
At the same point in time,
Always waving goodbye
There is nothing else I can do,
But love your boundless existence
The Tower
We tried to climb the height of God, but
lost that sacred language along the way to
rocket ships and factories,
plastic wrap and gene editing,
algorithms and machinery,
mushroom clouds and refineries
How much higher can we climb when
each person has their own language to
describe reality, mortality, morality?
How much longer until God
topples babbling towers back down to that
Holy green lap at its feet, and says,
“Now you will remember Me”
lost that sacred language along the way to
rocket ships and factories,
plastic wrap and gene editing,
algorithms and machinery,
mushroom clouds and refineries
How much higher can we climb when
each person has their own language to
describe reality, mortality, morality?
How much longer until God
topples babbling towers back down to that
Holy green lap at its feet, and says,
“Now you will remember Me”
Silence
I have seen silence
As I stared into starless night
The sky and the sea surrendered
In seamless absence of light
The fragile skyline
Swallowed up in stillness,
Fathomless, uninterrupted space;
Subdued time, languidly lulling
I feared its immovable gaze
We had exchanged glances before--
In chapels beneath stained glass windows,
Down burgeoning ancestral halls,
In an abandoned ragdoll of a child grown,
In my deified love’s withdrawal—
Over countless flowerless graves,
By the decomposing carcass of a raven
In the limp body of a stillborn babe;
In the center of the eye of God
Silence is a boundless center
That bores into the deserted man--
Into the vulnerable,
The searching,
The doubting,
The hurting--
It asks its sole question--
The question,
That is also the answer
Life is born impregnated with silence
Sown into every atom and cell
It weaves sinuous cracks into the porcelain skin
Of aging mothers and daughters alike
The sea will someday swallow you up
As it has your past incarnations
You have died countless times
And will die many more
All things move outward and collapse,
And expand again
Heaving,
Breathing,
Life
Life is one half
Of the immaculate whole;
Silence,
The permanence
Of all impermanence.
To deny, death
Is to deny existence
Be still--
Listen to the silence.
As I stared into starless night
The sky and the sea surrendered
In seamless absence of light
The fragile skyline
Swallowed up in stillness,
Fathomless, uninterrupted space;
Subdued time, languidly lulling
I feared its immovable gaze
We had exchanged glances before--
In chapels beneath stained glass windows,
Down burgeoning ancestral halls,
In an abandoned ragdoll of a child grown,
In my deified love’s withdrawal—
Over countless flowerless graves,
By the decomposing carcass of a raven
In the limp body of a stillborn babe;
In the center of the eye of God
Silence is a boundless center
That bores into the deserted man--
Into the vulnerable,
The searching,
The doubting,
The hurting--
It asks its sole question--
The question,
That is also the answer
Life is born impregnated with silence
Sown into every atom and cell
It weaves sinuous cracks into the porcelain skin
Of aging mothers and daughters alike
The sea will someday swallow you up
As it has your past incarnations
You have died countless times
And will die many more
All things move outward and collapse,
And expand again
Heaving,
Breathing,
Life
Life is one half
Of the immaculate whole;
Silence,
The permanence
Of all impermanence.
To deny, death
Is to deny existence
Be still--
Listen to the silence.
Becoming
Before the cold light and wailing--
There is nothing in or out
Time does not pass
A moving stillness
Inverse,
And blind
It is the loudest silence
You know,
But will never hear
Hunger--
Nourish, dispel,
Accept, replicate,
Multiply, grow
All in the dark room becomes me
(Becomes her)
One becomes two,
Two become many
Formless becomes form
A fragmentation--
Both truth and illusion--
This is becoming
Weightless--
All dark and warm
No questions
Only being
Grow,
Change--
In union
When she moves--
I move
Inseparable influence of existence
No distinction--
No greater bond
Sound!
A winter in blossom
Thump,
Thump,
Thump
Together--
Separate
Felt from above--
Felt inside--
The sound of life
Music--
Sometimes so loud,
Reflex kicks
Other times--
Soft voices
Liquid, sweet honey
Warm gush and flow--
Emotion
But then--
B i r t h
Rupture,
Disintegration,
Par ting
The cold,
The light;
The wailing
Surgical steel and latex hands
Time begins unwinding like twine
One becomes two
A fragmentation both truth and illusion--
B r e a t h
Mother,
We see each other’s faces
For the first time
Each reflected back
And forward in time
You hold me
We cry out--
The sound of life--
New matter
Shapes the room with its cries--
The world with its reverberation
Mother--
I know you
There is nothing in or out
Time does not pass
A moving stillness
Inverse,
And blind
It is the loudest silence
You know,
But will never hear
Hunger--
Nourish, dispel,
Accept, replicate,
Multiply, grow
All in the dark room becomes me
(Becomes her)
One becomes two,
Two become many
Formless becomes form
A fragmentation--
Both truth and illusion--
This is becoming
Weightless--
All dark and warm
No questions
Only being
Grow,
Change--
In union
When she moves--
I move
Inseparable influence of existence
No distinction--
No greater bond
Sound!
A winter in blossom
Thump,
Thump,
Thump
Together--
Separate
Felt from above--
Felt inside--
The sound of life
Music--
Sometimes so loud,
Reflex kicks
Other times--
Soft voices
Liquid, sweet honey
Warm gush and flow--
Emotion
But then--
B i r t h
Rupture,
Disintegration,
Par ting
The cold,
The light;
The wailing
Surgical steel and latex hands
Time begins unwinding like twine
One becomes two
A fragmentation both truth and illusion--
B r e a t h
Mother,
We see each other’s faces
For the first time
Each reflected back
And forward in time
You hold me
We cry out--
The sound of life--
New matter
Shapes the room with its cries--
The world with its reverberation
Mother--
I know you
Drawing by Kaleigh Stock
Differentiation
Pulled from the womb,
SCREAMING
Shivering girl,
crouching
I see her there still
In dark mind’s caverns
The abnormal, lectured,
Sinner
A floating indistinction
(why are you even here?)
Rejected by religion
Always suffering a path into existence
(Just tell me what you want to hear)
(Open your mouth
So we can sew it shut)
(It just isn’t in me)
(She must be crazy)
Differentiation
(Mother/Daughter
Daughter/Mother)
Is not easy
(Why can’t she just be more assuming?)
A part of mother
Seems to have died--
With baby’s birth
I knew you in a past life
We broke into a million splinters
(splintered perfection)
(If only I could be like/by/in you)
(If only our pieces fit back together)
(oh, but what a settle)
Lacking completion,
Contract into ego
Cut off the arms of affection
Demand the world
To feel whole again
Just want to climb back
Into the Mother
Dark, warm space where nothing is lacking
All is (un)known
Now
(so much older),
Holding your bony, breathless ribs against mind
(Against mine)
You feel like my amputated limb
When life separates
(when death separates)
It ripples our reflections
We are different
(we are the same)
The suffering that is yours
That is mine
That is yours
That is nailed up on the cross
(Life is love is loss)
I see the world best
In this space in between
Life and death
Nothing is gained
(Nothing is lost)
SCREAMING
Shivering girl,
crouching
I see her there still
In dark mind’s caverns
The abnormal, lectured,
Sinner
A floating indistinction
(why are you even here?)
Rejected by religion
Always suffering a path into existence
(Just tell me what you want to hear)
(Open your mouth
So we can sew it shut)
(It just isn’t in me)
(She must be crazy)
Differentiation
(Mother/Daughter
Daughter/Mother)
Is not easy
(Why can’t she just be more assuming?)
A part of mother
Seems to have died--
With baby’s birth
I knew you in a past life
We broke into a million splinters
(splintered perfection)
(If only I could be like/by/in you)
(If only our pieces fit back together)
(oh, but what a settle)
Lacking completion,
Contract into ego
Cut off the arms of affection
Demand the world
To feel whole again
Just want to climb back
Into the Mother
Dark, warm space where nothing is lacking
All is (un)known
Now
(so much older),
Holding your bony, breathless ribs against mind
(Against mine)
You feel like my amputated limb
When life separates
(when death separates)
It ripples our reflections
We are different
(we are the same)
The suffering that is yours
That is mine
That is yours
That is nailed up on the cross
(Life is love is loss)
I see the world best
In this space in between
Life and death
Nothing is gained
(Nothing is lost)
Pulse
Before the beginning,
An ineffable emptiness tracing existence
A word unspoken
Pregnant nothing
A motherless child born
Firelight spark and flame, hum
Pulse splintering silence
Time unwinds and folds in on itself
Singular center, all encompassing, growing
Light, dark disunion
Heaving, breathing
Expanding and collapsing
The man alone,
Receptive,
Hands cupped open
Recalls the forgotten known
Clouds dissipate over illuminated mountain peak
No frame of reference
Naked,
Alone,
Expanding, collapsing
Receiving, breathing
Nature reveals itself
The whole is in the atom
The mind contains the whole
Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form
From it,
We were torn
We dream ourselves into existence
Through relation and desire
Strip away the not-self,
There is nothing to enquire
Receiving, breathing
All lay in the heart
Selfhood is no selfhood
Undefined, unlimited
A flower feels no time pass
A mountain knows no direction
Mind mirrors sky
Something birthed and dying far away,
But inside
An inverse of being
Light and dark at the same time
Together, totality
An ineffable emptiness tracing existence
An ineffable emptiness tracing existence
A word unspoken
Pregnant nothing
A motherless child born
Firelight spark and flame, hum
Pulse splintering silence
Time unwinds and folds in on itself
Singular center, all encompassing, growing
Light, dark disunion
Heaving, breathing
Expanding and collapsing
The man alone,
Receptive,
Hands cupped open
Recalls the forgotten known
Clouds dissipate over illuminated mountain peak
No frame of reference
Naked,
Alone,
Expanding, collapsing
Receiving, breathing
Nature reveals itself
The whole is in the atom
The mind contains the whole
Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form
From it,
We were torn
We dream ourselves into existence
Through relation and desire
Strip away the not-self,
There is nothing to enquire
Receiving, breathing
All lay in the heart
Selfhood is no selfhood
Undefined, unlimited
A flower feels no time pass
A mountain knows no direction
Mind mirrors sky
Something birthed and dying far away,
But inside
An inverse of being
Light and dark at the same time
Together, totality
An ineffable emptiness tracing existence
Understanding
Open wounds,
Lacerated
By foreign hands--
Offer perspective
One way of seeing
Unfolds--
Divides
Into two.
That needed
Is carried;
That unneeded--
Forsaken
Then,
Perhaps--
Insight,
Understanding
Change
There can be redemption in pain,
And gratitude
For a light shone
On those things hidden in the dark
In vulnerability,
The windowed eyes open--
Illusions die away
This is the path
To understanding
This is the path
To the Self
Lacerated
By foreign hands--
Offer perspective
One way of seeing
Unfolds--
Divides
Into two.
That needed
Is carried;
That unneeded--
Forsaken
Then,
Perhaps--
Insight,
Understanding
Change
There can be redemption in pain,
And gratitude
For a light shone
On those things hidden in the dark
In vulnerability,
The windowed eyes open--
Illusions die away
This is the path
To understanding
This is the path
To the Self
Tides
Let go of thought
For there will come more
It comes and it goes
Like the tide at the shore
It’s when it recedes
We find what’s below
Eternal truth lie latent
Silence waits to be known
For there will come more
It comes and it goes
Like the tide at the shore
It’s when it recedes
We find what’s below
Eternal truth lie latent
Silence waits to be known