once only steps poems by Colin Yardley
the eye tells us the world is flat
the mind argues it is at best problematical
to the heart it is infinite
trust the heart.
the mind argues it is at best problematical
to the heart it is infinite
trust the heart.
Ode to Illusions in General
spiritual life is not an oxymoron, but it is
a strange animal, usually
commencing with suspicion
that one is blocking one's own way.
in the words of the Sufi in the Star Wars t-shirt
'Spiritual life doesn't begin
until you stop taking things personally.'
No matter how flowery or cosmic
the Facebook graphics, the heart's
longing is not fulfilled by astral
allure of lavender hued elsewheres.
the real deal radical,direct,
provocatively present,
like that instant
the hood whisks
from the falcon's head,
the sudden vision of the actual
too full for comment
or distraction.
an entire world to explore
billions of years in the making
once only alive now
beneath spreading wings
above the dreaming falconer.
a strange animal, usually
commencing with suspicion
that one is blocking one's own way.
in the words of the Sufi in the Star Wars t-shirt
'Spiritual life doesn't begin
until you stop taking things personally.'
No matter how flowery or cosmic
the Facebook graphics, the heart's
longing is not fulfilled by astral
allure of lavender hued elsewheres.
the real deal radical,direct,
provocatively present,
like that instant
the hood whisks
from the falcon's head,
the sudden vision of the actual
too full for comment
or distraction.
an entire world to explore
billions of years in the making
once only alive now
beneath spreading wings
above the dreaming falconer.
Nearvana
It gets a bit wearying after a while --
all these earnest beings constantly
pronouncing what everything is!
Everything is emptiness...
emptiness is emptiness...
the opposite of emptiness
is the absence of emptiness...
I hear Blake's voice in the emerald meadow
"General knowledge is the knowledge that idiots possess!"
Which, itself, is a generalization, of course.
Poets, at least, honor minute particulars
and the ineluctable glories of the ten thousand things,
regardless of whether or not they be substantive or empty.
The generalities, no matter how wise, always seem
to bloat in the direction of bland conceptual dissipation,
providing neither seed nor fertilizer
for this once only primal given life.
all these earnest beings constantly
pronouncing what everything is!
Everything is emptiness...
emptiness is emptiness...
the opposite of emptiness
is the absence of emptiness...
I hear Blake's voice in the emerald meadow
"General knowledge is the knowledge that idiots possess!"
Which, itself, is a generalization, of course.
Poets, at least, honor minute particulars
and the ineluctable glories of the ten thousand things,
regardless of whether or not they be substantive or empty.
The generalities, no matter how wise, always seem
to bloat in the direction of bland conceptual dissipation,
providing neither seed nor fertilizer
for this once only primal given life.
Prey's Reply
This free range ego wants peace,
peace that's intensely alive
beatitude with attitude
the right to be feisty
filled with gratitude.
here and not here, compelled
fiercely to thrive.
if this, ALL THIS, be an apparition
gimme an apparition with a partition
where i can at least catch a snooze and relate
Not my will, not Thy will, but willess,
love alone swings the gateless gate.
no need for power,
pregnant the hour
dawns like break of day
when, open hands,
open hearts
let drop the robe of fate.
past and future exquisitely uninhabitable
we bet life on the brink of creation
spanning imagined eons
between formerly and next.
all god's children
self-annointed and self-orphaned
want peace
not the peace of religion's contrived voids
not solitary ego's faux peace of
avoidance of relationship,
not the death in life peace of avoiding the dance.
Are we up for it?
judgments and demands dropped,
Dare to embrace what is once only the case
This fire, this breath, this heart, this place.
peace that's intensely alive
beatitude with attitude
the right to be feisty
filled with gratitude.
here and not here, compelled
fiercely to thrive.
if this, ALL THIS, be an apparition
gimme an apparition with a partition
where i can at least catch a snooze and relate
Not my will, not Thy will, but willess,
love alone swings the gateless gate.
no need for power,
pregnant the hour
dawns like break of day
when, open hands,
open hearts
let drop the robe of fate.
past and future exquisitely uninhabitable
we bet life on the brink of creation
spanning imagined eons
between formerly and next.
all god's children
self-annointed and self-orphaned
want peace
not the peace of religion's contrived voids
not solitary ego's faux peace of
avoidance of relationship,
not the death in life peace of avoiding the dance.
Are we up for it?
judgments and demands dropped,
Dare to embrace what is once only the case
This fire, this breath, this heart, this place.
Roger takes stock
Are you afraid to die?
I am. Have been as long as
I can remember, using memory
that uses time to sow stitches
that can't be tied.
How about pain? Afraid of pain?
I am, specially the intense kind.
My worst fear that I build fear
brick by breath, parsing spent hopes from
residue strands in the sieve of recollection.
the mind attached to its own stories
is not good for itself.
yet there was a spring walk
in a green wood when beauty
freed the impeccable prayer
of flowers that live
a finger count of days.
bleeding hearts drooping,
bob and sway in pink ecstasy.
Hosannas rising through
the time keeper crush
of my human footfall.
Let your story be like
the legends birds leave
writing trackless across blue sky.
July 2015
I am. Have been as long as
I can remember, using memory
that uses time to sow stitches
that can't be tied.
How about pain? Afraid of pain?
I am, specially the intense kind.
My worst fear that I build fear
brick by breath, parsing spent hopes from
residue strands in the sieve of recollection.
the mind attached to its own stories
is not good for itself.
yet there was a spring walk
in a green wood when beauty
freed the impeccable prayer
of flowers that live
a finger count of days.
bleeding hearts drooping,
bob and sway in pink ecstasy.
Hosannas rising through
the time keeper crush
of my human footfall.
Let your story be like
the legends birds leave
writing trackless across blue sky.
July 2015
Tree in the Brain (after Wm. Blake)
Black & White voices call out from below
call and response bracket temporal flow.
Arise, I 'n I. Shake your beaded dreads
This is not really life we're living
trapped in our heads.
The poem like life
springs fresh from source
no space for rewrite,
no gap for remorse.
Voices pitted in frenzy in
dead earnest aberrant abound
here in the crowded tower
of concepts run to ground.
Evil the smoke, good the mirror;
binary camouflage mirage
forged from hope and fear.
Silence alone blesses each & all
sweet unborn truth enlivens.
Soft lights of dusk and dawn
assuage the endless
needlework bifurcations
mind devises to scale
impossible ramparts of truth
children and animals know.
Der Buddhismus
Things, including things that
refer to themselves as a "who,"
appear to be artifacts of being.
Being itself seems to be a verb.
If Samsara were a domain of suffering only we would all have become Buddhas a long, long time ago.
But Samsara is also fun and frolic; gonzo frenzy; mosh
barrel ecstasies with
out reasons or justificrucifications. Hard to tell Dharma Queens from Drama Queens in the Rama Scenes Karma Screens sift life after rotating life without once noticing the non-entity of death.
Jackson sd, 'The lesser yanas are a huge failure. No one has become enlightened practicing them.'
Our reflections and historical summations are too passive to assist in more than a story retold and -- swallow hard -- 'All truth retold is a lie.' -- J. Krishnamurti.
Understanding is as much a booby prize as experience, yet both are holy, lest we forget the sublimity of our origins.
* " " " "
matter, mater, mother,
measure, maya, math,
memoria and matrix
all refer to how this
consciousness theater
is created spontaneously,
moment to moment.
M&Ms, melt in your hemispheres, not in your hand.
law stand found
Lose it
the search begins.
The revelation in
finding it is that it
was never lost.
In between,
hide and seek
venture and adventure.
Drama
impermanently
supercedes Dharma
to the dread,
amusement
and high stakes
involvement
of all concerned
concentrated
conceptually
designated
zero sum effigies
of life eternal
and bliss sublime.
all traces of mind
outshone in the heart's
uncontrived gratitude,
where, at long and sweet,
first and last,
nothing to find or lose.
and miracle novelty
continues anyway
once, once only
whirled without end.
the search begins.
The revelation in
finding it is that it
was never lost.
In between,
hide and seek
venture and adventure.
Drama
impermanently
supercedes Dharma
to the dread,
amusement
and high stakes
involvement
of all concerned
concentrated
conceptually
designated
zero sum effigies
of life eternal
and bliss sublime.
all traces of mind
outshone in the heart's
uncontrived gratitude,
where, at long and sweet,
first and last,
nothing to find or lose.
and miracle novelty
continues anyway
once, once only
whirled without end.
before this or that
We make our yesses and our nos
And so a dialectic goes.
In between the nos and yesses
we make calculated guesses
to build from these a golden mean
not one of us has ever seen.
We are the mean. We are the gold.
We are the tale before it's told.
As the still, quiet one has taught,
no cubit added by taking thought.
And so a dialectic goes.
In between the nos and yesses
we make calculated guesses
to build from these a golden mean
not one of us has ever seen.
We are the mean. We are the gold.
We are the tale before it's told.
As the still, quiet one has taught,
no cubit added by taking thought.
scene from afar
Consciousness is far more than thoughts about things.
density is a measure
of informational complexity
space
of informational equanimity
distance
of informational intensity
darkness
of informational quantity (or the lack thereof).
Thoughts about things are informational abstractions
gilding the emptiness of appearances with
uninformed uniformities of conditioning,
habit and more empty thoughts about emptiness
which, like a negative number
multiplied by a negative number,
produces all this barnstorming positive
solidity and resistance to change.
give it up for the god who burns down his own house
All our cleverness,
memory fueled expertises,
street smarts, hard earned savvies,
learned appropriated responses,
defenses, pre-emptions
calculated problematic advantages
vanish like this vortex whirl pool
called 'self', spinning spiral noir
in the Beingness Ocean, creating
theatrics, fables and fabliaux
till at last despite resistances
heroic and pointless
absorbed into the sea
in a 13.8 billion year eye blink
having never gone anywhere
but in name and form alone.
Poet, Robin Blaser, distinguishes between "thought about the instant" (conceptual) and "thought as the act of the instant" (characterizing genuine poetry). It is a provincial prejudice of the reasoning mind hooked on generalities and abstractions that thought can be only conceptual. "Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought." -- Martin Heidegger
|
|
ancient of daze
a little old man in blue dungarees
and weather beaten sensible coat
walks with a cane and a slight limp.
He might be anywhere in the universe
until he appears there by the fence
walking away from fullness.
if there is a god we should call her Once
because even in repetition nothing
is ever exactly the same.
Even in this unfathomably
persistent dream of life
what can be forgotten &
what can be remembered --
two sides of a spinning
coin the ageless old man
pulls from a child's ear.
i hear his cane tapping as he walks by
like a metronome tick-tap counting
the doubters & materialists buried in the Necropolis
mute martyrs to this false cause
this resistance to the Oncing that is only
here and now, outpacing thought,
presence without limit,
so pure it sees light.
and weather beaten sensible coat
walks with a cane and a slight limp.
He might be anywhere in the universe
until he appears there by the fence
walking away from fullness.
if there is a god we should call her Once
because even in repetition nothing
is ever exactly the same.
Even in this unfathomably
persistent dream of life
what can be forgotten &
what can be remembered --
two sides of a spinning
coin the ageless old man
pulls from a child's ear.
i hear his cane tapping as he walks by
like a metronome tick-tap counting
the doubters & materialists buried in the Necropolis
mute martyrs to this false cause
this resistance to the Oncing that is only
here and now, outpacing thought,
presence without limit,
so pure it sees light.
no stick, no carrot, no priest
How breath feels when it is attended to,
honored as sine and sign wave,
of each signature life.
Feeling the loneliness of an old woman on the bus
and saying something, anything,
smiling, being friendly, because your heart,
like hers, is so in need.
The benediction of morning sun
on your face in bed beside me.
We don't need to believe in anything
in order to be kind and free.
No stick, no carrot, no priest,
No threat of boring heaven
or unbearable hell.
We need only what we are given --
each other and the dance of our meeting
in the labyrinth of shadows and gold
made troubling & terrible by nothing other
than dreary defenses & lack of love.
Like flowers relentless every spring
we can open and die and come back again,
happy without reason to appear
in the glory of the ordinary
our true faces becoming more
and more clear in the light that needs no proof.
Everything whizzes by even the stuff that appears to stand still like ancient monuments or a grudge held by a cheerless heart. Hard to grasp that the whizzing Itself is God We seem to know this, calling best events 'happenings' one time only occurrences, when, in truth, we know nothing else. It's all first time, happening now as this ungraspable, unfathomable, unthinkable thing we, erring, call the present moment; missing what the whizzing means. Massive the engines of our suffering wrestling the moment into future-past molds that never avail in the end and never in the beginning, leaving this stretch mark in the flank of God we call history. |
|
Birth Right (inspired by Teresa Angela Mary C)
Crocus near my grandmother's wall,
Thank you for the teaching
about surrender
this early spring day.
It is not when you die,
But when you open.
Butterfly Sadhana
Have you ever felt how elusive this moment is?
How very, very strange indeed
that it cannot be measured,
only lived in.
The present moment has no duration
yet where else will you plot your next move,
meet your living breath,
touch your beloved's heart?
Past and Future have duration
in memory and anticipation,
but no presence,
nowhere to breathe.
We settle for duration, from Latin 'durare'
which means 'to harden'.
like our durable, hardened theories,
cement butterfly nets with which we
would bring down the butterfly of breath
the mariposa of birth, the dark moth of death.
Nets that make our hands bleed with effort
to corral the breathless wonder
of small winged creatures who live but a day.
How very, very strange indeed
that it cannot be measured,
only lived in.
The present moment has no duration
yet where else will you plot your next move,
meet your living breath,
touch your beloved's heart?
Past and Future have duration
in memory and anticipation,
but no presence,
nowhere to breathe.
We settle for duration, from Latin 'durare'
which means 'to harden'.
like our durable, hardened theories,
cement butterfly nets with which we
would bring down the butterfly of breath
the mariposa of birth, the dark moth of death.
Nets that make our hands bleed with effort
to corral the breathless wonder
of small winged creatures who live but a day.
River Run
When we pass from this world, I suspect,
it will be like clouds
evaporated by the sun of truth.
History means nothing
without rerunning memories
cherishing legacies
investing in futures
remaking the same mistakes.
I must remember
when I rise in the morning
to write this all down
after the blessed interval,
the death-like oblivion
that refreshes, renews and
reinvigorates.
as though at the heart of sleep
a dark sun draws home human dew
to fall again each calendar morning
swelling the banks of this river
no map can trace.
Iron Bob's existential question
How many previous lives does it take
to build a case for clemency?
to build a case for clemency?
rustle
Every day has a presiding angel whom no one can see. It is not possible to see that which is looking out from this moment. You know, angels, lords, devas, spirits, elves, you and me. The company of active viewers, forever nameless and formless, whereas
everything visible is residue,
a poem bound by words
a painting confined to a frame
a slat of open doorway
a mere finger width wide
that permits a pencil of sunlight
to score with summer wonder
the empty music sheet of a floor
worn to a concertina patina
by centuries of lilting infant feet
lapsed gaits of old age
strange nights when the brush
of a wing lifts dust.
everything visible is residue,
a poem bound by words
a painting confined to a frame
a slat of open doorway
a mere finger width wide
that permits a pencil of sunlight
to score with summer wonder
the empty music sheet of a floor
worn to a concertina patina
by centuries of lilting infant feet
lapsed gaits of old age
strange nights when the brush
of a wing lifts dust.
Stomping at the Savoy
Duality is like some guy walking up and saying
I've got good news and bad news
See through duality and what
a con it is, the guy
ups the ante & the anti:
I've got the worst news you ever heard
and the best news.
There is no news.
That's the worst thing.
Everything is always new.
that's the best thing.
There are Hieronymus animals everywhere.
It's hard to find the way home
Slime bucket swamp trolls
sap strength & will
reptilian hatred coils
relentless tug down and out.
Slowly a healthy respect builds
for self made traps.
'If you truly want to awaken
nothing will stand in your way.
If you don't truly want to awaken
you will stand in your way.' -- Gurdjieff
Home hovers remote, a place you
can almost get to but for
lost tickets, misplaced keys,
the bus just gone, the Escher staircase,
doorways that open
deeper into the maze.
Might as well awaken
when the chaos, the dread,
the angst reach a max,
discovering in letting go
silence more alive than thought:
Buddha smiles, angel wings
trammels bind, fortune slings,
life rambles on like all that jazz
unimpeded as it always has.
I've got good news and bad news
See through duality and what
a con it is, the guy
ups the ante & the anti:
I've got the worst news you ever heard
and the best news.
There is no news.
That's the worst thing.
Everything is always new.
that's the best thing.
There are Hieronymus animals everywhere.
It's hard to find the way home
Slime bucket swamp trolls
sap strength & will
reptilian hatred coils
relentless tug down and out.
Slowly a healthy respect builds
for self made traps.
'If you truly want to awaken
nothing will stand in your way.
If you don't truly want to awaken
you will stand in your way.' -- Gurdjieff
Home hovers remote, a place you
can almost get to but for
lost tickets, misplaced keys,
the bus just gone, the Escher staircase,
doorways that open
deeper into the maze.
Might as well awaken
when the chaos, the dread,
the angst reach a max,
discovering in letting go
silence more alive than thought:
Buddha smiles, angel wings
trammels bind, fortune slings,
life rambles on like all that jazz
unimpeded as it always has.
board room bull ring
Things appear unto awareness only because
they are empty of inherent existence.
If a thing actually existed independent of the whole,
reality would be as cruel as reductionist materialists
make it out to be, for all things disappear in time.
Reductionist materialists disappear much faster than most
and in larger numbers, through wars and other catastrophes
that they never seem to connect with their world view
but rather to the view of the wacko fundamentalists
their necessary ideological opponents
who reduce God to a material coarser than their blunt skulls
and sharp swords.
hugely disappointing in the great transition
to discover no one judging or punishing us for it:
We create our own suffering
judging and punishing till paradigms
blink from the land of the dead
and crows drop out of the sky.
they are empty of inherent existence.
If a thing actually existed independent of the whole,
reality would be as cruel as reductionist materialists
make it out to be, for all things disappear in time.
Reductionist materialists disappear much faster than most
and in larger numbers, through wars and other catastrophes
that they never seem to connect with their world view
but rather to the view of the wacko fundamentalists
their necessary ideological opponents
who reduce God to a material coarser than their blunt skulls
and sharp swords.
hugely disappointing in the great transition
to discover no one judging or punishing us for it:
We create our own suffering
judging and punishing till paradigms
blink from the land of the dead
and crows drop out of the sky.
Given (inspired by the writings of PeterWilberg. See: http://www.thenewyoga.org/heidegger_indian_thought.htm)
Not noticing the flaming too clear obvious,
that all things, including bodies and minds
have their beginning and end in
that bristling stillness Melville called,
'a mighty mildness of swiftness in repose'
we roll with the punches of the
middling swarm, bobbing, going under,
reappearing as wisps of imagined
reincarnate krill of all trades.
It takes a long time to see the negative space
that makes tom cats, trees and thoughts
stand forth so clearly that clarity her maiden self
lets down a tress of emptiness.
Eyes fixed on the horizon within which
all troubled, mediocre, brilliant,
eminently forgettable thoughts arise,
the ability to think at all wafting
from where the sun of mind rises and sets.
We live entirely by grace in gravity's well,
Not grace as a gift we either
deserve or do not, nor as
blessing, earned or otherwise,
dispensed from on high replete
with or without karmic repercussions.
Closer than that
Upstream of that
whipping the carpet out
from under defeat --
To breathe is grace
To see is grace
To be at all.
We're not thanking anyone for anything.
To be able to thank is more than enough.
(Heidegger) "... all presence would have its source in grace, in the sense of
the pure delight of the beckoning stillness."
that all things, including bodies and minds
have their beginning and end in
that bristling stillness Melville called,
'a mighty mildness of swiftness in repose'
we roll with the punches of the
middling swarm, bobbing, going under,
reappearing as wisps of imagined
reincarnate krill of all trades.
It takes a long time to see the negative space
that makes tom cats, trees and thoughts
stand forth so clearly that clarity her maiden self
lets down a tress of emptiness.
Eyes fixed on the horizon within which
all troubled, mediocre, brilliant,
eminently forgettable thoughts arise,
the ability to think at all wafting
from where the sun of mind rises and sets.
We live entirely by grace in gravity's well,
Not grace as a gift we either
deserve or do not, nor as
blessing, earned or otherwise,
dispensed from on high replete
with or without karmic repercussions.
Closer than that
Upstream of that
whipping the carpet out
from under defeat --
To breathe is grace
To see is grace
To be at all.
We're not thanking anyone for anything.
To be able to thank is more than enough.
(Heidegger) "... all presence would have its source in grace, in the sense of
the pure delight of the beckoning stillness."
What If smoothie
Oh heavenly day, what if matter
be simply spirit animating limitations
self imposed in a catch 22
that keeps heaven and earth apart
even when the blender
spins liquify full speed.
be simply spirit animating limitations
self imposed in a catch 22
that keeps heaven and earth apart
even when the blender
spins liquify full speed.
"To an empty belly, dickall philosophy means." -- Yoda
Idealists, wake up.
There will never be a consensus
totally in your favor.
If there were, it would be the death
of everything you fought for.
This goes for atheistic idealists, cynical
idealists, spiritual idealists,
comfy home maker idealists and
the anarchic idealists taking
down the gate that protects
the community of greed idealists
from the terrible truth that engulfs us all;
the one I deal, you deal, we daily deal
unaware of consequences to a degree
that renders consensus complicit
in the concepts that nail dissolving edicts
to invisible walls.
Lost in Costa Rica
I dreamt wrapped tight
in personal history
In the old house you and I have lived in
for many years, we look, like children
out the back window of what used
to be our meditation room, but is now
rented out. The neighborhood
changed in ways
brash and offensive.
Taking you to bed I whisper
in your ear how sorry I am
How sorry I have become
in our dream house
at the corner of
Death and Ambition,
next door, a bull
dozer digs up the backyard
in the middle of the night.
Awakening in the warm predawn
3500 miles south, still
wrapped, desire taking the shape
of this body.
Out the window, howler monkeys
growl another day onto the Path.
Another clear day
socked in
with light.
in personal history
In the old house you and I have lived in
for many years, we look, like children
out the back window of what used
to be our meditation room, but is now
rented out. The neighborhood
changed in ways
brash and offensive.
Taking you to bed I whisper
in your ear how sorry I am
How sorry I have become
in our dream house
at the corner of
Death and Ambition,
next door, a bull
dozer digs up the backyard
in the middle of the night.
Awakening in the warm predawn
3500 miles south, still
wrapped, desire taking the shape
of this body.
Out the window, howler monkeys
growl another day onto the Path.
Another clear day
socked in
with light.
Strictly From our POV
Every morning a sun is born
Every evening it dies.
The sun's POV is very different
something like what Ramana
calls the Self.
Always ablaze, not a single
shadow able
to come close.
Every evening it dies.
The sun's POV is very different
something like what Ramana
calls the Self.
Always ablaze, not a single
shadow able
to come close.
Phil Lanyon: Photo
The Player with no REW or FFWD
Do you really expect any
character in the film,
even one of the really bright ones,
to suddenly look out into the theater
and go, 'OMG! we're being
projected by some sort of light!'
By the time anything appears
including each precious thought, feeling, hunch,
it is already a recording,
with everything accounted for
save the real watcher
save the real maker
save the real mover
save the real shaker.
er, reel, not real.
the sky of mind
Our sense of sight tells us the earth is flat.
That's why our ancestors believed it was.
Our sense of touch tells us that we are solid meat.
That's why we believe we are bodies only.
Our mind sense tells us consciousness is inside the body.
That's why we believe we are doomed.
Limiting beliefs contouring what we call the real.
Sense modulated.
Hardening of the attitudes.
Unsound.
Unsound.
As the world is round.
That's why our ancestors believed it was.
Our sense of touch tells us that we are solid meat.
That's why we believe we are bodies only.
Our mind sense tells us consciousness is inside the body.
That's why we believe we are doomed.
Limiting beliefs contouring what we call the real.
Sense modulated.
Hardening of the attitudes.
Unsound.
Unsound.
As the world is round.
Sweet Nothing Vesper
Thoroughly split, self from all
other, an observable someone among
observable someones, all bearing
unexamined burdens of lonely personhood,
it seems like death, that silence from which
we sprang an eye blink of apparent birth ago.
Yet we return to it every night in deep sleep
and here we are; not the noisy mind thing
that comes and goes like a one trick dream with
recurring debts and iffy plans, but the one
here before birth, here in deep sleep,
never elsewhere when dancing body
and drifting mind mortally uncoil as easily,
as monumentally,
as they came.
the void of appearances a.k.a. abstract mind is not good for itself
it seems that i cannot look
anywhere without thinking
so that everywhere i look
unlocked doors block the view
so how can this be my prison
ego asks, angrily adding.
take a hike with your spiritual
mumbo jumbo about
freedom and no self.
mind made each door
mind made impulses try each latch
interior the spaces and states
unto that threshold
where zenith and nadir are one
no openings of any kind
walls a mile high, englobed
in a void where things appear
and disappear as though
they lack all substance,
this alone qualifying them as
obstacles of daily experience.
once in a great while
the wind rattles an
unplanned window somewhere.
mind redoubles its efforts
to keep the wider world
helplessly turned out to love
at bay.
metaphysical poem in search of a point
I had to lose everything
Before I became fearless
but as soon as I gained
a few things back
the fear returned.
Who would design
something that works like this anyways?
raving the way
Direct experience is a miracle that
belief systems turn into dogmatic mush.
The conceptual always about
-- never the thing itself.
Language the axe that split Zeus's forehead open,
out of which springs Athena,
skilled in practical reason and war strategy.
Structures of relational syntax, bedrock of equations
grammatical and mathematical,
keep us treading imagined water
fearful of drowning in the Sea of Being.
Mirrorage (homage to Henri Corbin and Robert Duncan)
A mirror is an image of a higher plane
Keeping nothing for itself it shows all that
comes its way.
Hold out your hands to it, your right touches your right
Your left your left.
It attracts like to like as does resonance
resounding through all higher recognition.
It is only in this physical plane that opposites attract.
The mirror transcends this polarity effortlessly
It doesn’t actually reverse anything
Or if it does, it does so in the way of nonduality where
form can appear only because it is empty
Which speaks of a higher plane still
Where a drop of dew held up to the sun’s light
transforms into a healing balm
that drops clear through your palm (Corbin)
into a cup devoted to thought
that is like clear water held in a flower. (Duncan)
the ends of the earth in a room
You have to start somewhere when
you fall off the edge of the world.
It's almost possible to convey this in words,
if only words offered up more than
a taste of what they stand for.
Locked in words we signify, signal and
sign for a bill of fair we have not
eaten in truth.
But that's okay, this is all
seeming anyway, not a sign
of something final to make
up for all this gain and loss
that we suffer and celebrate
cap in hand on the quicksilver
street corner of presence
collapsed by thought.
harvest time in the Kali Yuga
In a seasoned wood house
people who study poetry live
and share expenses.
Poetry futures have dipped
too low below the non-
event horizon for
dilemma's horns to
prod into prominence
what matters about matters that matter most
in insoluble matters at hand.
People at war see things
clearly or not at all
they have no time for the
soul destroying distractions
that swallow up the rest of us
as life's tethered ends and seductive means.
Yet, there is no denying what denial denies.
In everyone's bucket list
swims a poet, a lover,
a keeper of breath's flame,
eternally young at heart
and mad to be free.
Adriatic Sea, Corfu to Kotor, Sept 9, 2013
Blake, Heraclitus & Charles Standing in Tree Pose
'Opposition is true friendship'
Living in each other's death, dying in each other's life, all things appear
because they are empty enough to appear, sacred forevermore, more
ephemeral than perpetual youth's fountain mirage.
Opposites distract as much as they attract.
Is implore to explore as implode to explode?
explore said to be originally a hunters' term meaning "set up a loud cry," from ex- "out" plus plorare "to cry."
the babe comes into the world with a cry, to explore.
I implore you, do not let me die.
EXPLODE echoing back to...
1530s, "to reject with scorn," from Latin explodere "drive out or off by clapping, hiss off, hoot off," originally theatrical, "to drive an actor off the stage by making noise."
every century exploring and developing bigger
and better detonating devices with which
to drive actors from the stage
and IMPLODE
"a bursting inward," 1829
All this ploding and ploring,
-- hunter's cry a decoy call --
yearning and burning,
searching outward with a cry
and inward as we die
in the extant where life feeds on life.
Are we getting this right?
Olson's voice explosive, imploring, echoing
'the loneliness whence all our cries arise'.
Written on the Backs of Words after Blake and Blaser
Funny thing about poems like those William and Robin created,
how little they were about using language and how much about
being used by language for purposes that hearts, eyes and breath
reenact, not about, but as, intelligence .
how little they were about using language and how much about
being used by language for purposes that hearts, eyes and breath
reenact, not about, but as, intelligence .
Open to the Loss Greed Brings
It was mediocre at first
until I dropped it
then it became a work of art
It had to touch the earth first
causing the waters to rush
fast down stripped mountains
into a river too turbulent for life.
Around the high house locked & gated
winds mad as a murder of crows
whip arbutus and cedar
relentless light and dark everywhere
like hail on a ditched windshield.
water & wind at war on bare stone
Where is the fire? Where is the fire?
What has become of our heart's desire?
This is the time of torrent and terror
Come, Kali, hatchet, smash the false lyre.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
until I dropped it
then it became a work of art
It had to touch the earth first
causing the waters to rush
fast down stripped mountains
into a river too turbulent for life.
Around the high house locked & gated
winds mad as a murder of crows
whip arbutus and cedar
relentless light and dark everywhere
like hail on a ditched windshield.
water & wind at war on bare stone
Where is the fire? Where is the fire?
What has become of our heart's desire?
This is the time of torrent and terror
Come, Kali, hatchet, smash the false lyre.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Alice, after her many ups and downs
You never told me life would be like this
woven of tears and smiles,
processions and secessions flipping
together like two halves of a deck of cards
as though the fall from grace has
something sleight to do with the way
gravity etches December frost
above a steaming sink.
* * *
limits of opacity
Hindrance is hard
Judgments are hard
Betrayals are hard
Greed is hard
Lies are hard
Hatred is hard
Self-righteousness is hard
these the quantum bricks with which the
too solid world of flesh is built, the jagged one
atheists and materialists take to be the only real
without once inspecting the
mental forges from which they flow,
cool and congeal, brick by brick
erecting the home of the brave, land of the free
drones of corporate hegemony
in bone yard bastions of liberty.
Non-Heraclitean Fragments
tapping the boardwalk of light
with his white cane
of logical proof
rightly entered into, chest proud, chin humble
precessional intelligence surrenders
undone by a breath
freely bequeathing
uncontrived respect and devotion
precessional intelligence surrenders
undone by a breath
freely bequeathing
uncontrived respect and devotion
the importance of being earnest
the impotence of being harnessed
the impertinence of being honest
language, our
negentropic opus
mitigating 2nd Law
dissolution
what Cooperman called
'the luminescence of decay'
As the Aeropagite sd.
'There are two kinds of
darkness and one is caused
by an excess of light.'
no one knows it seems vital
differences between entry loss and exit gain
Still, life in Fibonacci spirals
inches along avoiding
the false extremes
our abstract thought concocts
measuring, not adoring
sea's roar in the shell
FUNDAMENTALANIA
the bigger the fools
the stricter the rules
the bigger the fools
the stricter the rules
I refuse to start a poem
with a declarative sentence
as though I know
what I'm talking about
solidities and relative presences
seen only by awareness
never by one another
how curious that in light of
the timeless presence
at the turning point of
each breath, we seem to think
there is safety in returning to
inconsequential distractions.
Two roads diverge in a yellow wood
and meet again near a bottomless well
where travelers yet to slake their thirst
share rerun fables of heaven and hell
and meet again near a bottomless well
where travelers yet to slake their thirst
share rerun fables of heaven and hell
Phil Lanyon photo
Fish, fables and photons slip away, slip away
through nets of contrived longing slip away
through nets of contrived longing slip away
raucous and deadly autumn crows
in cedar rich with seeded cones
remind us to be serious for a moment
in cedar rich with seeded cones
remind us to be serious for a moment
awareness is infinitely quicker than intention
for it has nothing to gain
for it has nothing to gain
is it awareness that allows the horrors of human history
to pass unimpeded as a child's bare foot through grass
or is there something else at work?
ancient one, familiar, dark
there, in the shadow of the tree of life.
to pass unimpeded as a child's bare foot through grass
or is there something else at work?
ancient one, familiar, dark
there, in the shadow of the tree of life.
______arbitrary fragment dividing line _________________
Too many uninterrupted fragments create an illusion of continuity that is alternately boring, entertaining and exhausting. Some people call this cultural conditioning.
Spandakarikas
Bush bent in Bengal
Eyes sheer ivory spectral
Hot hips sway gold bangle
Rush thicket in cane
Midnite in Morgred
Wanton she push-wed
Dawn belly full ram red
All fortune she claim
Brain casement, case clear now
Hay sow bred
land fallow
In steerage she carry
All souls limn the wheel
Ching!
Scarlet her toe nails
Bell’d feet
Chang!
the dust sprite
Blue ribbons blue rivers
Her waist bands
mirror star light.
She give gooey substance
She mock up Desire
From womby profusion
All lovers unwitting
Draw Her conclusion
She leap embrace meaning
She actus make form sing
Serpent water wend seaward
Time Runes her silt song
Distant voices
Announce Her
Om Ma Kalikaya Kalimaya Namah
Mind Made for Play’s Sake
Heart Play beyond Game Stake
Samsara Cinerama
How long must we long?
Our falling away is pointless
Our losses only conceivable
Our actual status an affront
To the pettiness
of our aspirations.
Every heart longs
to serve at Her table
three legged tabula rasa of fable.
For the last line, see the three legged table in The Magician card of the Marseilles deck of the Tarot. The Creator of Form, The Magician stands before the table upon which the work of creation is carried out. The fourth leg of that table, adepts say, is always hidden. Imagine, then, that the Creator is a Magician, a trickster, an illusionist of sorts, who creates things both false and true. Ch'an Master, Huang Po, offers a glimpse behind the curtains...
"From the beginning
Not a single thing is."
Eyes sheer ivory spectral
Hot hips sway gold bangle
Rush thicket in cane
Midnite in Morgred
Wanton she push-wed
Dawn belly full ram red
All fortune she claim
Brain casement, case clear now
Hay sow bred
land fallow
In steerage she carry
All souls limn the wheel
Ching!
Scarlet her toe nails
Bell’d feet
Chang!
the dust sprite
Blue ribbons blue rivers
Her waist bands
mirror star light.
She give gooey substance
She mock up Desire
From womby profusion
All lovers unwitting
Draw Her conclusion
She leap embrace meaning
She actus make form sing
Serpent water wend seaward
Time Runes her silt song
Distant voices
Announce Her
Om Ma Kalikaya Kalimaya Namah
Mind Made for Play’s Sake
Heart Play beyond Game Stake
Samsara Cinerama
How long must we long?
Our falling away is pointless
Our losses only conceivable
Our actual status an affront
To the pettiness
of our aspirations.
Every heart longs
to serve at Her table
three legged tabula rasa of fable.
For the last line, see the three legged table in The Magician card of the Marseilles deck of the Tarot. The Creator of Form, The Magician stands before the table upon which the work of creation is carried out. The fourth leg of that table, adepts say, is always hidden. Imagine, then, that the Creator is a Magician, a trickster, an illusionist of sorts, who creates things both false and true. Ch'an Master, Huang Po, offers a glimpse behind the curtains...
"From the beginning
Not a single thing is."
DISCONTINUED FROM ABOVE....
what unseen umbilical
sustains ignorance?
Is it grace?
Is it mercy?
a respite from the Fires of Eternity
that burn too hot for karma
which ignorance alone makes real for a spell?
or are we so addicted to drama
that dharma relents, allowing
suffering to shape the seeker's syllabus
and soap opera newscasts toll our sweet bell?
what unseen umbilical
sustains ignorance?
Is it grace?
Is it mercy?
a respite from the Fires of Eternity
that burn too hot for karma
which ignorance alone makes real for a spell?
or are we so addicted to drama
that dharma relents, allowing
suffering to shape the seeker's syllabus
and soap opera newscasts toll our sweet bell?
doctrine of reincarceration
Many of us believe
we were someone special in a previous life
unaware, apparently, that the one
making such a claim is empty
of independent existence NOW
few notice the difference
between being and becoming
or that
unlike consciousness
awareness requires
no support
meaning by awareness
pure attention
without qualities
NOT a thing
in this lifetime or any other
Offering this
as a concept
is futile,
displaying
as all concepts do,
empty hem
of warp
empty seam
of woof.
tensions that keep us mortal and afraid demand
that inner brass rings be kept in short supply
as soon as there is another, fear arises. the bell rings.
they call the fight sessions 'rounds' as if they know all
about the wheel of life and death
in explicate duration taking
each other's measure
fighting like hell till the final bell, then
reaching for a dove, a lover's embrace,
a just decision.
i must have been asleep
when i bought this ticket
for Charon's ferry
chains of iron & chains of gold
stories bought & stories sold
never of naught can the sum be tolled
till borne the cross of the crossing
when i bought this ticket
for Charon's ferry
chains of iron & chains of gold
stories bought & stories sold
never of naught can the sum be tolled
till borne the cross of the crossing
____ t a s m a i s h r i g u r a v e n a m a h a ____
Thinking about coheres opacity, what we call matter.
'The outside world is the unconscious,' sd Jung.
The internal narrative commentary -- thought
about -- turns real life into stringy personal stories
as alive as a rock rolling down a hill
weary old Sisyphus chasing after
i wish i could be a Buddhist
but i do not have the rudest
idea how to find
the where of that
nowhere
the son of man hath
to lay his head
but i do not have the rudest
idea how to find
the where of that
nowhere
the son of man hath
to lay his head
POST-MODERN URBAN FEROCIOUSLY CAPITALIZING WORLD
Poor old Crowley would turn over in his crave
if he could see how "everything is allowed."
has become "everything is aloud."
Poor old Crowley would turn over in his crave
if he could see how "everything is allowed."
has become "everything is aloud."
knowing sucks as a way to savor the taste of an apple
but it sure is dandy for comparing a Granny Smith to what she is not.
Rumi Nation
a spiritual aspirant from the age of nine, she has always been prolonging.
the longing Rumi sings of night within day
tasting of apple, fennel and light
but it sure is dandy for comparing a Granny Smith to what she is not.
Rumi Nation
a spiritual aspirant from the age of nine, she has always been prolonging.
the longing Rumi sings of night within day
tasting of apple, fennel and light
i made friends with pleasure until
she started acting like
a booking agent for pain
in any great comic duo, there is always the straight man and the wise guy
in Buddhism called Samsara and Nirvana
the archai are unfathomable
going back the way they do
clear past carbon-14
to that ancient lost memory
of her hand upon your cheek
going back the way they do
clear past carbon-14
to that ancient lost memory
of her hand upon your cheek
if I had a Cartesian hammer
I'd hammer God into matter
hammer madder than a hatter
all over this gland, he sd, meaning his brain
livid for control, hammer everything
in sight including insight
into objects sense and science
might reach and comprehend
but
from the poverty of my autonomy
it is Caritas not Descartes
my soul doth long for
cobbling together fragments of dream
and social media intimacy
in a world flattened by reason.
I'd hammer God into matter
hammer madder than a hatter
all over this gland, he sd, meaning his brain
livid for control, hammer everything
in sight including insight
into objects sense and science
might reach and comprehend
but
from the poverty of my autonomy
it is Caritas not Descartes
my soul doth long for
cobbling together fragments of dream
and social media intimacy
in a world flattened by reason.
no matter how many times
we chop Her up into calendar segments
or reduce Her generosities to the size of our lies
She keeps looking out through all of our eyes
differences make good
objects for meditation
like the difference between
the part of you that notices
the part that reacts
to being
noticed
objects for meditation
like the difference between
the part of you that notices
the part that reacts
to being
noticed
row row row your boat
gently down the stream
merrily, verily, hairily, scarily
clocks run out of steam
gently down the stream
merrily, verily, hairily, scarily
clocks run out of steam
Third I tap from the Adept
It's important to understand, said the teacher
that there are at least two kinds of Presence
and only one is the Presence that neither comes
nor goes.
The other one is not even detectable as it
grounds incessant change, leaving residues
of past and expectations of future:
the one a wake spread out behind
a record of iterations that mingle
calamity and revelation in a ball of yarns
the other an impulse in the soul that yearns never
to be done with this unsought train ride through the blue.
Naming it misses it.
Missing it, stories with endings arise without end.
Jesus died for our cynicisms
paintings frame their subjects
the way con artists frame a mark.
poets take refuge in metaphors
against lights that outshine form.
rats scurry from sinking ships
only when their monetary ponzi
scam begins to collapse.
these are the ways of the
shadow burners, forging
Ouroboros skills
below the furnaces of Lu.
the way con artists frame a mark.
poets take refuge in metaphors
against lights that outshine form.
rats scurry from sinking ships
only when their monetary ponzi
scam begins to collapse.
these are the ways of the
shadow burners, forging
Ouroboros skills
below the furnaces of Lu.
An anecdote that informs the above poem: Once at an exhibition of his work, Picasso overheard two women examining one of his paintings. "I think this one's a fake," said the woman to her friend. Picasso leaned between them and said, "Madam, they're all fakes."
EXISTENCE
nothing to write OM about
when you put being and non-being
directly in the same
frame, the same moment, they
cancel each other out, the way of
equal and opposite audio sine
waves when aligned.
the result is
conceptual non-being
neutralized in the realization of its
prior union with
equally conceptual being.
'they live in each other's death
and die in each other's life' (Heraclitus)
as each other's opposite
they are conceptual only.
Neither IS.
prior to both IS
indescribable origin
unfathomable birthplace of
the emptiness of appearance
sole support of objectivisation altogether
including pseudo-subject little me
fiercely typing away to unfind himself
before imaginary death
accomplishes just this anyway.
the me i think i am
is everything i see
"no!" me cries, "realize!
'tis I alone that BE."
unaware of the unborn I
that sees without
I's or eyes.
always open
the gateless gate
which ever inward lies.
meanwhile,
we live in a time where many
spend an hour or more a day
making up their faces
never entertaining the possibility
of being unmasked
by that which makes face
and mirror visible at all.
Gift Rapt
interplay of gravity
and ascension
something has to give
'the given' some call it
this
utterly insubstantial
endless
variety of appearances
no one controls
others call this the gift of life
denying the existence
of a giver,
at home with
conceptual mind as a device
for keeping the real
divided from itself
(in appearance only).
the gift that keeps on taking.
the pull of the apparent
Never underestimate Mula Maya
unless you are already free
of what she means by
NOTICE THIS ONLY, SUCKER
a bird chirps out the window
the orange light on the LED TV tells you
you must do something in order to make
the entire world of television appear.
go away. you have no prior claim.
who do you think you are anyway?
a bullet left the chamber in a venue
of irredeemable density some time ago.
whether or not it has struck its mark
rendering meat immobile there and then
has no bearing whatsoever on
this effortless ongoing renewal
of moments lived
under the radar of splendor.
Part 2: inability to reflect on the obvious
I was annihilated last night.
Gone. No idea how long. Could have been
minutes. Could have been three million years.
No way of knowing. No knowing of anything.
No time in unconsciousness. How can I be
non-existent yet come back in the blink of an eye?
An entire world already here.
No time in deep sleep. No time fully awake.
Leaving no room for nothing
to be other than nothing.
It's only when we understand that nothing
does not exist (that's what makes it nothing)
that all fear of nonexistence vanishes in the
recognition that existence itself is as empty
as it gets.
All this sounds stupefyingly abstract until
you meet yourself at no distance
bodily, heartily, energetically, artfully.
unless you are already free
of what she means by
NOTICE THIS ONLY, SUCKER
a bird chirps out the window
the orange light on the LED TV tells you
you must do something in order to make
the entire world of television appear.
go away. you have no prior claim.
who do you think you are anyway?
a bullet left the chamber in a venue
of irredeemable density some time ago.
whether or not it has struck its mark
rendering meat immobile there and then
has no bearing whatsoever on
this effortless ongoing renewal
of moments lived
under the radar of splendor.
Part 2: inability to reflect on the obvious
I was annihilated last night.
Gone. No idea how long. Could have been
minutes. Could have been three million years.
No way of knowing. No knowing of anything.
No time in unconsciousness. How can I be
non-existent yet come back in the blink of an eye?
An entire world already here.
No time in deep sleep. No time fully awake.
Leaving no room for nothing
to be other than nothing.
It's only when we understand that nothing
does not exist (that's what makes it nothing)
that all fear of nonexistence vanishes in the
recognition that existence itself is as empty
as it gets.
All this sounds stupefyingly abstract until
you meet yourself at no distance
bodily, heartily, energetically, artfully.
song of the seldom heard mystic lover
Reason and effort help us master the outer.
Love and letting go the inner.
The outer sacred, vast drop in the inner ocean.
Love and letting go the inner.
The outer sacred, vast drop in the inner ocean.
Willy Nihilly
‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’ –- Aleister Crowley
‘As soon as there is another, fear arises.’ –- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
The paradox of free will
Is that I can apply it to everything
except awakening to
the truth of no self.
There’s a good, solid
invisible reason why that word
keeps popping up in all the
Sacred texts
Surrender.
As soon as Will arises
The chains are on:
Force against Resistance
without which Will
has no meaning and Soul
no wallflower excuse but to join
imagination's spontaneous dance
through fires that heal as they burn.
'Surrender,' sd. Kali's daughter, Teresa,
too wild for parkland,
'is not giving up.
It is opening up.'
7.5 billion centers of the universe on this planet alone
Only the absolute watches
aware of nothing
yet making sight possible;
profoundly beyond accounting
untouched by the wear down,
the tear down fixed & fixated,
positional, conditional, relative
contrarian evolutionary simmer
of marinating balsamic ego.
To catch even a glimpse is to be
undone beyond life and death,
cold Horseman eye cast and recast
in the role of Wing’d Victory’s consummate
artistic irony, missing limbs
but not wings.
Remember our soul sister Isis
Remembered dismembered Osiris
for what possible heartbreaking purpose
other than recollection, reconstitution
attachment posing as the love
that aggregates appearance.
Bellowing in the Wind
I watched me and Bob Dylan grow old
but I always watched from the present.
If you really pay attention to what's going on
you notice that the present never goes anywhere.
Everything happens within it.
'Movement is artificial,' Tiemersma notes.
It is only because the present is always here
and we are always looking from it, that
it is even possible to notice change.
Otherwise we'd be swept along at
the same pace as change, noticing
precisely nothing or the eternal sameness
of relative static position that some
imagine death to be.
'Eternity is in love with the productions of time,' sang Blake
and, sans hubris, Buddha Dan replied, 'Blake almost had it right.
Eternity IS the productions of time.'
'I'm not there,' added Dylan, pointing at a petrified log
miraculously floating down the river into which none may step twice.
The present is not a moment in time.
Time is countless moments in the present.
Not in time at all, the present is
momentous.
'The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure.
To live it you have to explode.'
-- Robert Zimmerman
This, said Adeleine, holding up
a ball of endless space, is the universe.
It can be seen only against a backdrop
of disagreeing points of view.
stratagems, some of the diamonds in Indra's net
He notices his breath in his belly at no distance and he is gone
gone, gone beyond, all the way to coming home
Fred Estairing a diamond-back snaking eternal
Staircase, long and winding road, blue and rose lit
Buddha's gold and vermilion mind fields
flickering final doubts like some damn fool, heart aflame
roast roast roasting on Kali's spit.
Krishna, arms akimbo, too beautiful for speech,
flute to lips, shepherds beauty beyond belief,
beckoning with unjaundiced eye the whole world,
all the pain its little aching arms might contain,
Blessing dispensed without choice to everyone's surprise.
Ours the great good joy to open beyond fear, beyond hope.
the relief, that mind can be laid down;
original presence have or not have knowing,
it matters not a whit nor wit;
it's the image, not the magus, that fills the mind dug pit.
the window pane on which frost writes
nova codes of ferning, like some
fierce anticipatory
cryptography of yearning
Gazing Aft While Making Up the Future
Come on in.
It’s wide open.
The scarred, scratched,
recycled limit of the sky.
Greed that knows no bounds
sets boundaries everywhere,
trespass punishable by pity
plausibly withheld from the poor;
stock put in avoidance of the actual,
arrogance licks the puckered index of doom
Desire for transcendence misplaced,
carnal need authors the epoch's iterations
resistant automaticities intact.
Vicious circles alone plot
grid maps of the public dance
only the rich, in private, attend.
The contrivances of those
who can't look you in the eye
divvying up the vanishing pie
caught between stolen pleasures
and implacable pains that
make of wealth a feast of crumbs.
This cannot happen but in displaced presence
where solutions are dissolutions
that grind down life's innocent surge,
incurring the wrath of no gods save
those we in our self-righteous stupidity
heap upon ourselves,
till an end that comes
sooner always than acceptance
sooner always than recognition.
Warlike successful brethren,
the blood wine you press
turns bitter as you drink.
hegemony no hedge against the
terror of death or the bliss of surrender.
The lust that harrows your soul
phosphorescence in a dying sea
lighting trails of what has been but never is,
your fading wake.
off the forward bow
The ego is like an iceberg
in the Ocean of Being,
fortunate egos drifting
toward the equator,
swept by a wind
called the breath;
attention staying with it
every which direction,
steady, warm, brilliant
like a tropic sun.
in the Ocean of Being,
fortunate egos drifting
toward the equator,
swept by a wind
called the breath;
attention staying with it
every which direction,
steady, warm, brilliant
like a tropic sun.
beware the language of love
Be oh so careful with the language of love.
If you think you can take a little dip
you will surface in an ocean
where a giant blue god lies dreaming.
Every breath, a universe blossoms
from his transgalactic navel, like a lotus wafting
in no direction home
save where you tread.
If you think you can wield the language of love,
like a machete, a wedge, a keyboard or any other
clever device that clears a path worth walking,
love will shut down all recurring dead end routes
to those familiar over priced apartments
in the city of death.
If you think the language of love has anything
to do with being right, following rules or making
the necessary split second decision, imagine
an openness so kind that it already and forever
doesn't give a ratsass how you do with regard
to anything that reeks of failure or success.
* * *
where nothing gets measured or judged
"It's hard to judge nothing." -- Ganoosh ji
I was doing okay in the land of the living dead
until Rumi broke my heart. How wild woven
that serendipity, some guy texting from the
13th century wrecks my tiny fallen world
making all these girlish, impossible, romantic
head over heels overtures that fly in the face
of everything I assume to be true and
know to be unliveable about a future
that does not include such song.
Beware taking up the thin scarlet scarf
that slips from the Beloved's shoulders.
When that curtain drops, all knowing stops,
trembling and on fire at last, you will barely dare
lift your eyes to Her gaze, to the woman,
to green Nature, to all the blossoming
untameable birthings you have sought
to stifle, control and suppress with your penetrating
intransigent mind, only to find, She is the One
in whose black plum eyes the blue god lies
and in whose breast beats your own
troubled and yearning heart.
Be oh so careful with the language of love.
If you think you can take a little dip
you will surface in an ocean
where a giant blue god lies dreaming.
Every breath, a universe blossoms
from his transgalactic navel, like a lotus wafting
in no direction home
save where you tread.
If you think you can wield the language of love,
like a machete, a wedge, a keyboard or any other
clever device that clears a path worth walking,
love will shut down all recurring dead end routes
to those familiar over priced apartments
in the city of death.
If you think the language of love has anything
to do with being right, following rules or making
the necessary split second decision, imagine
an openness so kind that it already and forever
doesn't give a ratsass how you do with regard
to anything that reeks of failure or success.
* * *
where nothing gets measured or judged
"It's hard to judge nothing." -- Ganoosh ji
I was doing okay in the land of the living dead
until Rumi broke my heart. How wild woven
that serendipity, some guy texting from the
13th century wrecks my tiny fallen world
making all these girlish, impossible, romantic
head over heels overtures that fly in the face
of everything I assume to be true and
know to be unliveable about a future
that does not include such song.
Beware taking up the thin scarlet scarf
that slips from the Beloved's shoulders.
When that curtain drops, all knowing stops,
trembling and on fire at last, you will barely dare
lift your eyes to Her gaze, to the woman,
to green Nature, to all the blossoming
untameable birthings you have sought
to stifle, control and suppress with your penetrating
intransigent mind, only to find, She is the One
in whose black plum eyes the blue god lies
and in whose breast beats your own
troubled and yearning heart.
gold and pyrites
the discipline required
to let things be as they are
has nothing to do with
resigning oneself to the way they are.
One is about acceptance, equanimity,
compassion and love -- about
not minding what happens;
The other about not caring.
The former requires great
sensitivity and awareness.
The latter can be pulled off brilliantly
drunk and distorted
burning in billows of black smoke,
raising a glass to unfinished business
as though it's all that's keeping us here.
to let things be as they are
has nothing to do with
resigning oneself to the way they are.
One is about acceptance, equanimity,
compassion and love -- about
not minding what happens;
The other about not caring.
The former requires great
sensitivity and awareness.
The latter can be pulled off brilliantly
drunk and distorted
burning in billows of black smoke,
raising a glass to unfinished business
as though it's all that's keeping us here.
quantum of joy
on double slit screens of all sizes
in magazines, newspapers, posters,
on tiny handheld luminosities
Eve's bitten apple displays --
They smile like that for money
in the fashion aisles in the
clothing stores for expectant mothers,
unconscious complementarities
of the ashen bottle collector,
the vacant eyed commuter,
the Second Amendment boys
arming for dinner out,
the haggard Xanax mother coping
through days that are all dusk.
But see, my child, how every once in a
while a genuine smile revives your heart,
grace filled reminder of the
ordinary holiness behind every
damaged and damaging move we make.
That's the smile that summons the wave
that holds the particle stars that make our day.
in magazines, newspapers, posters,
on tiny handheld luminosities
Eve's bitten apple displays --
They smile like that for money
in the fashion aisles in the
clothing stores for expectant mothers,
unconscious complementarities
of the ashen bottle collector,
the vacant eyed commuter,
the Second Amendment boys
arming for dinner out,
the haggard Xanax mother coping
through days that are all dusk.
But see, my child, how every once in a
while a genuine smile revives your heart,
grace filled reminder of the
ordinary holiness behind every
damaged and damaging move we make.
That's the smile that summons the wave
that holds the particle stars that make our day.
Lawrence's unwatched tip
Most poets if they are true to their word
spend their lives trying to catch up
to the meaning of what they are writing.
a brief collection of not haiku
It's not my fault.
I trip over twigs of Desire
that keep getting
higher and higher.
Trying to fail
never produces any results
until you stop trying.
Whoever said suffering builds character
Seems unaware of the other meanings of the word.
Exotic panic --
not wanting to wake up
for fear of losing one's
dream companions.
truth is an eraser
that never gets smaller
no matter how many
lies it rubs out.
I trip over twigs of Desire
that keep getting
higher and higher.
Trying to fail
never produces any results
until you stop trying.
Whoever said suffering builds character
Seems unaware of the other meanings of the word.
Exotic panic --
not wanting to wake up
for fear of losing one's
dream companions.
truth is an eraser
that never gets smaller
no matter how many
lies it rubs out.
Dancing in Rumi's Meadow
"Life and death are not opposites. Birth and death are the opposites.
Life is eternal." -- Eckhart Tolle
What do you want to be
when you grow up and die?
Many of us carry on as though
we're never going to expire,
due mostly, it seems, to repression,
suppression, denial, fun distractions,
compulsive avoidance of the
inevitable laid down
the moment we first
appeared unto ourselves
out of a before that may as well
have been before the big bang
from, you know, your point of view.
Some few accept death as part
of the package deal of appearance.
They know they were never born
in the first place and so cannot die.
Yet, let the record show, you
pretty much have to be done
with every last thing pertaining to
who you think you are and
what you want
before that preposterous notion
becomes as truly obvious
as it always is.
Consciousness comes and goes --
curtain rise, curtain fall
every day and night in all.
Yet, the jnani alone knows
it only appears to do so.
They flirt with this insight,
current theoretical physicists,
following math a million times
more arcane than DaVinci Coding
to conclude that things appear only
because they are inherently empty,
as the Buddha saw.
The One unto Whom appearance occurs
neither alive nor dead,
beyond,
dancing in Rumi's meadow
where the cast of the net
of opposites does not reach.
Our outward directed minds
take impressions and wear them
like ID badges. We walk around
like tin horn generals weighed
down by medals that sum up
the meaning and purpose of our lives
and mean nothing; having no idea
we are already surrendered to
the One unto Whom anything
whatsoever occurs, ever.
No experience, no perception, no
taking notice of anything
possible in even the slightest degree
without that which intersects
interminable empty wave functions
as this crazy little thing called life.
No 'I and You' Rasta Knows, it's 'I 'n I'
What's the very best thing
we have going for us?
Money? Power? Community? Technology?
No, much more fundamental than all that.
Awareness. We're aware.
Aware of what?
Doesn't matter. Just aware.
Everything's possible
everything's potential
from Planck constant plausible
to pseudo-inferential.
Awareness prior to consciousness
notices alike clear and unclear,
awake and whacked out,
pure and impure, craven
and demure.
Ultimately, noticing is unaffected, while
paradoxically, not disconnected --
ever finer distinctions made,
no separation to invade
and claim real this here,
unreal that over there.
Awareness is the only answer
when posing ridiculous and
profoundly necessary questions:
'Where is place?'
'What is size?'
'For whom are identities alibis?' '
we have going for us?
Money? Power? Community? Technology?
No, much more fundamental than all that.
Awareness. We're aware.
Aware of what?
Doesn't matter. Just aware.
Everything's possible
everything's potential
from Planck constant plausible
to pseudo-inferential.
Awareness prior to consciousness
notices alike clear and unclear,
awake and whacked out,
pure and impure, craven
and demure.
Ultimately, noticing is unaffected, while
paradoxically, not disconnected --
ever finer distinctions made,
no separation to invade
and claim real this here,
unreal that over there.
Awareness is the only answer
when posing ridiculous and
profoundly necessary questions:
'Where is place?'
'What is size?'
'For whom are identities alibis?' '
Reentering the Meadow
Here's a man walking
unforeseen into his future
not armed with foresight
not defended against odds
not sure of each step.
He once had religion,
once had a cause, a flag,
a bucket list of desires
and imagined certainties
now everything has been
stripped away.
losses he thought he could not endure
have come and gone as swiftly
as what he once thought
he needed to be happy.
here at the edge
of his unrehearsable life,
spring blooms in eternal shameless radiance,
sunlit April air in the lungs,
the invitation a roar in his veins.
unforeseen into his future
not armed with foresight
not defended against odds
not sure of each step.
He once had religion,
once had a cause, a flag,
a bucket list of desires
and imagined certainties
now everything has been
stripped away.
losses he thought he could not endure
have come and gone as swiftly
as what he once thought
he needed to be happy.
here at the edge
of his unrehearsable life,
spring blooms in eternal shameless radiance,
sunlit April air in the lungs,
the invitation a roar in his veins.
Elmo’s Physics
Things that appear far away
Do so only because I do not feel close to them.
Things that appear hard are affective-cognitive designations
Of what is not soft.
There is no space outside of awareness of space
And awareness of space is neither big nor small.
Big and small differentiations appear due to
affective-cognitive designations of size-mography.
These designations are not made by the conscious mind, or,
only tangentially so, in a minor way.
Chiefly, they occur due to spontaneous emergence of vast
Unconscious content, the ‘out there’ analog of which is dark
Matter and dark energy that make up almost all of what’s actually
Deemed (i.e., conceptually designated) to be ‘Out there.’
None of this is relevant to awareness, or, all of it is in the sense that
Without awareness, none of it exists. Atheists, cynics, materialists
All railing about how God and the whole realm of invisible beings
Do not exist, when it is so patently obvious that without awareness
Atheists don’t exist and yet, no atheist, no matter how bright, has ever been
Able to locate this awareness that enables him to deny the existence of what
Cannot be located. Ignorance of our unconsciousness is the step-sister of our
Certainty that we know how it all is.
Do so only because I do not feel close to them.
Things that appear hard are affective-cognitive designations
Of what is not soft.
There is no space outside of awareness of space
And awareness of space is neither big nor small.
Big and small differentiations appear due to
affective-cognitive designations of size-mography.
These designations are not made by the conscious mind, or,
only tangentially so, in a minor way.
Chiefly, they occur due to spontaneous emergence of vast
Unconscious content, the ‘out there’ analog of which is dark
Matter and dark energy that make up almost all of what’s actually
Deemed (i.e., conceptually designated) to be ‘Out there.’
None of this is relevant to awareness, or, all of it is in the sense that
Without awareness, none of it exists. Atheists, cynics, materialists
All railing about how God and the whole realm of invisible beings
Do not exist, when it is so patently obvious that without awareness
Atheists don’t exist and yet, no atheist, no matter how bright, has ever been
Able to locate this awareness that enables him to deny the existence of what
Cannot be located. Ignorance of our unconsciousness is the step-sister of our
Certainty that we know how it all is.
that other rag & bone shop
In our attempts to shore up the trenches and fences we've built
around the small smoke filled clearing of what we know, we lay on
linguistic lumber that mistakes definition for revelation.
Beware of anyone who says what anything is.
Of course this hardly applies to the pragmatic practical
this is a hammer
this is a five dollar mouth harp
but when it comes to the likes of
This is truth
This is Liberation
This is what the self/no-self/illusion/maya/nirvana/rigpa/noumenon IS...
don't be hornswoggled.
Limiting anything to a definition based on relational syntax
turns that thing, concept, insight into what Corbin calls
'the dead body of an angel.'
So much earnest, robust, feverish
spiritual teaching drowned out
by the mechanical drone of "is-ness" .
This is what meditation is.
This is what awakening is.
This is the truth of being is.
This is what nonduality is.
Angel corpses everywhere
worse than Custer
worse than the Alamo.
Where is Keatsian negative capability when we really need it?
And oh how we need it.
Everything speaks polyglot, layers, dimensions, qualities of
meaning far beyond the clumsy reach of 'this is what that is.'
Images unfold, share and connect
living streams of significances that
explanations and descriptions cannot begin to unpack.
Poets, artists, shamans, dreamers and dancers, story tellers
and lovers all know this.
A bird's small head glancing in your general direction
sets off theophanies too rich to wrestle into the
narrow cage of conceptual designation,
the one in which we take so much pride.
crowing in our distress
destroying the beauty of things
by demanding they do as they're named.
around the small smoke filled clearing of what we know, we lay on
linguistic lumber that mistakes definition for revelation.
Beware of anyone who says what anything is.
Of course this hardly applies to the pragmatic practical
this is a hammer
this is a five dollar mouth harp
but when it comes to the likes of
This is truth
This is Liberation
This is what the self/no-self/illusion/maya/nirvana/rigpa/noumenon IS...
don't be hornswoggled.
Limiting anything to a definition based on relational syntax
turns that thing, concept, insight into what Corbin calls
'the dead body of an angel.'
So much earnest, robust, feverish
spiritual teaching drowned out
by the mechanical drone of "is-ness" .
This is what meditation is.
This is what awakening is.
This is the truth of being is.
This is what nonduality is.
Angel corpses everywhere
worse than Custer
worse than the Alamo.
Where is Keatsian negative capability when we really need it?
And oh how we need it.
Everything speaks polyglot, layers, dimensions, qualities of
meaning far beyond the clumsy reach of 'this is what that is.'
Images unfold, share and connect
living streams of significances that
explanations and descriptions cannot begin to unpack.
Poets, artists, shamans, dreamers and dancers, story tellers
and lovers all know this.
A bird's small head glancing in your general direction
sets off theophanies too rich to wrestle into the
narrow cage of conceptual designation,
the one in which we take so much pride.
crowing in our distress
destroying the beauty of things
by demanding they do as they're named.
it is not necessary for the
mirage to disappear
once you know
it is a mirage.
All material on this website, with the obvious exception of quotations, copyright Colin Yardley (c) Yardley Communications 2016.
If I am infringing copyright with photos used from web image providers, please notify me at cwyardley@gmail.com and I will immediately remove the photos in question. If it's okay for the photo to remain, just tell me whom to credit. It is often difficult to tell where a photo originates on the web.
