wild ponies

Keep digging diligently the same deep row, poets preach,
Sooner or later, you’ll find water, maybe salt, even gold;
Perhaps miraculously, some rare 1st century roman coin
stubbornly stamped w the head of a caeser.
But I can’t find wise words like that underground, I’ve tried,
dug many a dark well & only got a backache.
Instead I playfully & childishly see my fearless herds of words, undisciplined cloud dream puzzle pieces, young wild ponies
dancing on the horizon, flicking flies, neighing at each other playfully
in some language I’ll never understand.
When I run to tether them they scatter;
were I to mount one, I’d be thrown breathless for my efforts.
Enticed by a handful of hay, their eyes roll back, teeth gnash,
& in the midst of snorting if I’m lucky I’ll escape w all ten toes & fingers.
Sometimes at dawn I capture them visually, unsaddled
standing peaceably beneath an apple tree, munching momentarily
in dusky reverie silhouetted before the pale
aurora of my semi consciousness.
The moment I awake & make a single sound, they stampede off,
& in the cozmic cloud of dreamdust, disappear.
So despite kind counsel & admirable advice,
I cannot dig for dreams like new potatoes buried down to dirt beneath –
I lack the discipline. I witness wild mustang & palomino ponies galloping & am reminded by the flashing yellow manes & ochre tails
that paint the sky I cannot hold, I cannot tame them, own them,
herd them & if I stooped to feed them on my knees! I’d for my pains
no doubt get binocular black eyes. & yet I’ll follow poets who
tend the gardens of their souls w daily disciplines & rituals
& harvest heavy hidden bounties from the soil. I too partake of all they’ve brought forth from the ground at groaning tables rich w succulent delights, & I can only bring the questionable value
of my constant jealous greedy appetite,
& trundle barrows back to royally repay the poet’s worth in compost,
& up-end barrows full of rich dark fertilizer,
to freshly with full fork addend the appreciated generous quality of earth
where roving wild pony herds / occasionally still happen by.

"Adrift" for the Birth of the Bab

Adrift

As a teacher of our finest youth
To tend the gardens of the mind
I labored long & many years
From children into worthy men I made – the rows I pruned,
The weeds I burned.
From ancient verse to memory I seared each word in each small mind
With fearsome work they learned to prove
The triumph of their mastery
Long chants of grave, judicious care
Rang through young voices in clear air & with perfect calligraphy
Each reflected what was learned – of me—
As strokes upon the surface of a still, ice-silvered lake.
For I admitted no mistake in training to obedience
& confidence from willfulness
young boys who seemed to thrive these tests
& made a pillar yet of me
increased my pride & arrogance—while submission I commanded
I storve to teach humility by pointing out each minor flaw
Sharpening wits as if upon a surgeon’s blade &
Venerating self-control.

While power’s gone or changes shape, yet live
The memories which time & place alone cannot forgive
Yet please forgive the mind of one old man from whom now
Most memory and power have fled
& who retains no word but mention in history, no name
& whose only slight & fleeting momentary fame
comes of the One he could not teach
one ocean-fish he could not catch;
whom, when His uncle brought Him in to me
His reach I could not grasp, but after struggle threw Him back.
My balance gone as if I’d slipped upon the deck of some small ship!
His bearing showed no trace frivolity toward me
O, that I well knew to make straight
& hard! With both punishments and reward
But this One pure & simple Child
With clear, wide gaze & clearer voice
Expressed all answers to the riddles I had not yet even asked
& worked so clean & fine! With such intent
my greatest scholars sat in awe of Him! Imagine!
A child whose years were scarcely five or six
If I do remembered now how foolishly I stared, jaw dropped
As if a fish well snagged myself upon His hook
While He discoursed the mysteries of the One All-Seeing God Himself
& chanted with a purer voice than ere I’d heard
& spoke all Truth as if it shone through Him from on High—but else,
what set this Citizen apart
while I had strained to reach the Mind,
He saw and effortlessly knew the Heart.
& through the fog that gathered on my frozen lake
I shrank now timid from my own lifelong imposter’s gaze
For all the water that had ever mirrored me
Was as nothing to a droplet of the Ocean of His Grace
Was as breath to the Ocean of the tears that He erased

With One small voice
One ringing bell
That answered Beauty, Truth, Pain, Suffering & Hell
as the flute answers the cannon’s bloody throat
with but one quiet, persevering, patient Note—
that finally caused me to drive Him from the room
where I no longer held capacity to teach
& understood that I lacked even ghost’s authority
I was adrift! But in that place
That dry & endless beach where our souls met
I wandered helplessly & was set free
I saw the Sky & heard the simple jewel songs that angels sing
Felt pearls of truth & wisdom that each surging wave would bring
& shower us with Heaven’s most enduring, brilliant &
surpassing Love, and from that day
I never found the power to teach the same but wordlessly
I listened each hour thence—for that same Voice of perfect purity again

if but in vain.

"Ignorance is Bliss"

Ignorance is bliss
Some of this true and some BS.
& it’s yr job not mine to figure it out.
The average American gets a cup of salt every week
w/o ever touching a salt shaker.
Ignorance is bliss.
Around the world dictators flourish w/ weapons of fear
until ppl rise up politically & learn to destroy their own neighbors
Ignorance is bliss
You can kill more ppl with the mistaken idea of human perfection
than w a thousand perfectly normal sins
Ignorance is bliss
If I had a tattoo for every tragedy, my body would be
a perfect geometric paisley tapestry
Ignorance is bliss
There are nearly 7 billion ppl on this planet and guess what?
We all pretty much got here the same way
Ignorance is bliss
Between our mothers thighs & screams she sighs & dreams
Ignorance is bliss
Our parents did the hokey pokey way back when
Ignorance is bliss
Down under, winter is nearly over
Ignorance is bliss
Whales are becoming tricoastal to survive
Ignorance is bliss
There are 3 tropical storms in the gulf right now, lining up to take the coast
Ignorance is bliss
The Nina the Pinta & the Santa Maria
Ignorance is bliss
Coffee is actually good 4 U & red wine 2 who knew?
Ignorance is bliss
But bread and cheese now that’ll kill U
Ignorance is bliss
In this country there are more ppl now in prison than public school
Ignorance is bliss
You can spread TB, HPV & TLC
Through a kiss
But ignorance baby!
Ignorance is bliss.

बेफ़्रिएन्दिन्ग थे त्सुनामी

Befriending the Tsunami


Befriend the torn tsunami scarline of your own post surgical face.
Know the sliding gravel piles jaggedly conceding defeat to gravity
Surrender to sandy erosion new hillsides of felled timber, balding grasslands
Find familiar soon this blemished surface, fetal sinkhole chasms
littered with the memories of richly rotting corpses,
carcasses photographed so perfectly from space now tiny homeless rodents
the shapes of spirits now ash-scattered, that can never be collected
like the fog of broken clouds that change in constant quantum flow.
Fear not the broken boulders cracking surfaces of streets
Swirling black oil down where fish kill stinks below in rotting stacks
Where children’s spines like human jigsaws make their newly crisp & brittle origami
where cumulative cholera pools waistdeep covered by a veil of swarming gnats,
garbage that has gathered higher than a mountaintop in rancid drifts.
Fear not the blind tornado earthquake of the oceanic damage of your earthly face.
Beneath the sculptured surface mud & bone & excrement
above the fertile fecal soil where new eruptions threaten constantly
Where rumblings like a dark digestion of a system undermined,
your consciousness remains beneath the black & poisoned sky.
your dreamtime wanders lapping edges of the dark & toxic sea.
Realize that consciousness alone is rare
& often called a kind of grace.

"सोलाचे ऑफ़ थे एएस"

“Solace of the Eyes” a song for tahirih, first woman martyr of our Faith
(1817-52)
It was to be a morning hanging. Under house arrest
you bathed & stayed awake in prayer.
You chose your final raiment, your own wedding dress
with a single trusted servant
& like a bride, rode sidesaddle to your coming death
But your executioner drunk already hurled stones,
stoned you, stone by jagged stone by senseless stone
in mumbling staggering parody of all you were & threw your body
down a midnight well. The crescent moon your solitary silent witness.
The sleeping sun failed to appear.

Your guilty crimes: you wrote your meter & your verse
in Farsi language, persian poetry little known then in the West
But in the East, so subtly potent to express
the painted passion & the subtle fury of the strength you felt within your breast.
In English few have known the raga of your rhythm,
the metered meaning of your rhyme. In America in your time
other women unbeknownst were raising up their voices
one by one, courageously as you
& had gathered in their first conflagrating conference that very week
but never knew
across the world a woman of your beauty or your poetry unfurled
behind the veil, a pure one, consolation, a “solace of the eyes”--
whose lines had cried for women everywhere
& chanted out in faith for higher love & justice
& understanding & life’s sacred holy purity
whose final written words decried her death decree
but still did not once plead for amnesty.

Tahirih! Tahirih! The knot they chose to murder you
would not provide a speedy end or give you mercy
would fail to simply twig-like snap the neck so delicate
it drove weak men to honor savagery
but instead designed to torture you
with slow humiliating suffering-- a knot to
squeeze each breath from deep within
to watch its victim kick & gasp for breath & beg for death--
to face open-eyed if veiled & hooded once again.
It would not be. For all that was taken in that wrenching travesty
restored, assured you once again immortality, the heart to face
the specter death without a fear, except that spirit
Be crushed too & taken down
& that, to rob from thee thy Soul, the essence of thy gifted breath,
pure Tahirih, was not a thing that men--
no matter of the greatest or of smallest count—
in all the worlds of God! could ever do
& but ensured that every moaning longing captivatingly revealed
would now for man’s own future history
be seen & known around the world,
unquestionably true.

We tramp the trail in early march
Tendrils of damp branches leaf out overhead
or want to try but earth so slowly thawing underneath
where worms crawl navigating ocean puddle lakes
& stormy skies charcoal curling waves rush overhead
reflect each other on this cold wet sunday afternoon
as drops fall seemingly at every pace
& splash our stretching legs from spongy ground we tread
& count the drops & try to classify
what qualifies as gust or gale or number of raindrops to a shower.
We laugh to keep the rhythm of our march to move
Ahead & stir each other to some wave of dark gray irony.
How spring seems now looming ahead to us, more like the restful
graveyard bed than birthing cradle of any kind
of planted flower in this halflight trudge.
We muse the marches of our younger years & how we’d
hike for days & nights to reach some fantasyed destination place.
& now we’re happy to just see the lights of home flickering ahead
& feel our breath & hear the motor of our beating hearts
& smell the aromatic chicken roasting from the kitchen porch
& count our pulses reassuringly, & glance forgivingly at one another,
Smile briefly, then unwrap, & just come in, &
softly settle slowly down again.

कोम्परेड तो यू माय डार्लिंग, हफेज़ & रूमी वेरे ब्लिंद दृन्कें गोअठेर्ड्स

Compared to you, my Darling, Hafez & Rumi were A Pair of Blind, Drunken Goatherds

looking for the perfect valentine
i searched everywhere
googling the internet w/ a trillion eyes
looking for that single just-right message, perfect for you
alas!  couldn't be done. instead, in my endless
vain efforts, trying to accumulate & sort these frantic stacks of words,
my constant grasping to contain even one
tiny ideal moment to express that sweet
essence, your incredible Being,
snap the trap on the image photographically tasteful & iconic--
why, i've already barred the window, shut the open wide & barred one
where that knowing old owl flew freely through
at night & again at dawn,
that white winged whirring wild owl who
wisely lived in  silence softly in the wooded park
in daytime, teasing us with camophlage
amid the textures of trees in glinting sunlight,
only flashing by in unexpected flight at dark,
wings whooshing while dove-cooing--that silent, half-forgotten
one whose spirit
always made  us all look
upward, half-giddy--
searching--

   - {happy valentines day}

अ लुच्क्य वोमन

A lucky woman [with apologies to pamela redmond satran]

A lucky woman can earn enough money of her own –
neither inherited nor won in the lottery nor stolen from a previous spouse –
so her husband is sure she stays because she wants to, & not
because she needs to. And if she is lucky, she doesn’t earn enough
to suspect her husband of sticking around because he’s lazy, & found
a comfortable lifestyle niche.

if she is lucky in her life, a woman will have
an employer of such integrity & a lover so unforgettable that forever after
she considers thoughtfully every stitch she’ll choose to wear in any situation
for her own sake & the person she knows she is. If she did not have the perfect
boyfriend or the incomparable boss, she is lucky to have observed this &
learned on her own. If she's lucky, a woman lives out her youthful fancies
while she is still young & moves on, outliving them. If she is lucky, she will have enough left of her mind to remember it all—the beauty & the pain—when she is old
& the wisdom to not tell what is best left to rest.

If she is lucky, her mother will leave her a lace dress that they both could wear,
& her father, a set of tools they both could have used.
If she is lucky, she can build herself a beautiful piece of furniture
both her parents would have admired. & if she did not have those parents,
she is lucky not to obsess over it. If she is lucky, a woman collects
dishes to serve extraordinary foods for all kinds of people, from waterford crystal,
bone china, indigenous ceramics, diverse and unique, & goodwill serving spoons
with a heart thrilled to offer them. If she is lucky, A woman always has enough
to feed her children without selling her own bones.
If she is lucky, a woman will have all
the beautiful stemware she wants whether received as gifts, secondhand,
or purchased at personal sacrifice & luckier still
if she doesn’t mind not having them.
If she is lucky, a woman will have recipes from generations & family & countries round the world & happy memories of all the times she prepared them
for guests who felt lucky to enjoy them. A lucky woman’s inheritance
was never destroyed in a firefight, a pogram, a pillaging or an ugly divorce.
A lucky woman knows herself & loves others freely,
Knows it is better to love what you have than to get what you want.
Doesn’t pretend to know her own destiny or that of anyone else.
A lucky woman knows in her bones that to love
Means losing herself
To something that is greater than everything.
A lucky woman has the guts & means to quit a job,
Leave an abuser,
Speak truth to power & wisdom to a friend in trouble whether or not
A bond proves fragile
or unbreakable
A lucky woman knows when to try harder
& when to walk away, sometimes forever.
A lucky woman knows she’ll never change
The length of her legs, the size of her feet, or the history of her family
--including all her own mistakes.
A lucky woman knows it is still ok to cry alone but outgrows the need for sympathy,
remembers always that moments of joy will always punctuate even the hardest times
good humor can kill the sourest poison, & that at the end of the day,
all the whispering drunks
were right after all: it’s never too late
to have a happy childhood.

A lucky woman knows that love's the only thing
Worth everything, unpoisons the well, decontaminates the bed,
renews the garden, & has learned to distinguish the yearning
from the giving. She knows the only human failure bottom line
is after all the failure to love, despite the gains & losses.
A lucky woman knows how to live alone... & how to share.
A lucky woman knows whom she can trust,
whom she shouldn't, and that taking it personally is sheer egotism.
A lucky woman knows where to go -- a brokenhearted best friend's kitchen table
a lonely inn in the woods, a streetside bistro in a busy neighborhood,
or behind the counter serving Salvation Army Thanksgiving dinner
to homeless sick folks
when her own soul needs soothing.

A woman knows she can never really learn the limits of her own capacity
But keeps trying to grow it bigger by making happiness for those around her
Remembering how lucky one is just to be
An ordinary woman, day by day, month by month,
Year by year...