dreaming 2012

Dear sarah jessica parker, i love you too & obamas too i would love to join all 3 of you for dinner but i have already been donating money i don't have. i dreamed about the o'bamas last nite. we were getting our pictures taken w barack. i took two good ones of my friends w him but i asked michelle to take one with him and me. i dont know why i didn't want her to be in the picture. they had 2 giant bears with them, so then i wanted pix w me, obama & the bears. they were nice about it, but then i went inside & locked the door. the bears snarled & tried to get in baring their long fangs & claws. twas then i realized they were secret service bears.

broken hearts

this is a valentine poem
for everyone who did not get a valentine
there are more people who get this valentine
than were buried in haiti, carried away by tsunamis
or pointlessly murdered by weapons of mass destruction
put together. everybody knows
the meaning of a broken heart.
ah, broken hearts.
the journey of life is to face the insane hurt
of the black hole left by one who leaves
with or without a smile or pointless explanation
for something that really cant be understood.
breathe, broken hearted one, for through this breath
the whole story of God will flow through to you.
breathe, for through this dark tunnel
the wind of Spirit will surely surge again
and bring you back revivified to life.
breathe, for when you surrender to this pain
the joy of love like the perfect wave will surely rise again
and just as you have learned to neither expect nor await it,
the magic of love will certainly return to you
shining through tears and sorrow, sparking wet in the sun,
more beautiful more perfect more precious
than you can even remember or allow the dark mind of fear
to let you now in these dark moments, believe,
but from one who knows take this promise deep to heart
believe, like blind stevie, like suffering marley, like john & yoko imagining
& all the rest, the music lives & will live on forever, she will
fly home, returning in a new voice, new face new fractal form, new spirit,
heart, mind--Believe.
Believe. BELIEVE.

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.