Supple stream
lower than pond drainage can
flow onto the terrace
The acres withered, the barns
serried and empty. Harvest is past
and we are not saved.
A spring erupts
from within the
brecciated folds
of hill, cleansing of
leaves and roots,
pushing boulders aside.
Water from within the earth
yields benevolence unto the
seeds that yearn, and shudder
open, to drink light from the sky.
Finally, beyond the clasp
of turning fire-roasted pork
over open coals, smell of a
living being’s unwilling
self-donation disclosing
to him the reality that
non-aggression is a package left lonely
in the cellar by most, he scents one night
in the garden before the pond a hint of perfume
from the grove next to the cemetery
that nudges his awareness to the next
plateau. The silhouette of three figures in the scatter-flash
of a passing car’s headlights serves notice that, when the
car is gone and a lightning-strobe accompanies the wind-gust
off Carter’s Mountain to show only one figure remaining,
that all surfaces are one, or none, and so
is he. He does not light
a cigarette.
The timing is good
to pull together the
underguarded artists
and seers and musicians
and splash paint and
notes and words unto
a skyfull of Most High
while the machines smash
and devastate the ruins
in distant cities, and make
war on other machines - not
a living plankton or paramecium
in sight -
to tie it together and
elevate it smoldering
to awaken - in our consciousness -
the LORD’s solidarity
with the fragile and
the not-have’s.
Living roots punch
through levels of
industry and skyscraper
sized Trees of Life
shoulder aside the belching
smokestacks and furnaces.
Leopards dance, and
vine-cathedrals tower
in sextuple canopy. The music
I seek is creeping up
on us behind that rock.
More events:
the greening of hysteria
buried under strata of
empirical fact
the singularity of
your once affection for
the Leaning Tower of Pisa
and wrangler histories
in thrill-thrall plazas -
open porticos to the
sun.
So we dance
to songs we improvise
on harmonica and amplified
ukele, hoping to bless
each surprise that spills
forth from
the shuddering, root-tangled
wall of numen
that encloses the universe
behind the woodshed.
The rabbi wonders
tossing in his bed
if it is possible that
the depredations, the horrors
that have savaged his people
in the last century are because
a flaw in the Name written
on a scroll somewhere in the operating
system, the very Name of the Most
High, has crept in and split
the fabric of being. Some Demiurge
or Archangel, some malevolent entity
or foolish intoxication-seeking youth stole
into being’s fulcrum and raised the
bridge. God’s name was smudged.
The world came unglued. All because
of a scorch-mark on the Name
in a scroll amid the reeling
shutters and blinking lights,
the galaxy-sized microprocessors
within the Tree of Knowledge.
And this corrupt, collapsing world
is on that scroll reverently but purposely
set aside into the storeroom in a synagogue
of Hyper-Being, pending proper burial.
Like some ideas, and institutions.
Opening up the center
with pliers, fly-boy papered
ceiling, candles scorch holes
in doom, Jimmy Page
levitates robed with
tele in hand up the hall
while we watch speechless,
amazed and our digits
get busy on the fretboard
carving cuneiform into clay.
Blossoms fall togetheron onto
sky-scorched slope, blessing it
with colors it didn’t know
before.
A cherry tree reaches
over the cliff and sometimes
the wind catches the blossoms
and seems them to places
they’ve never been seen.
An ocean story rebounds
through pillars the houses
were built on by long-gone
foresighted engineers. Kelp
twists like ivy around the
pilings and seagulls breed and defecate
on the concrete, raising a
glorious din.
Wrapped in glue,
a truth for sparrows
caught by spiders
too small to consume
them; rivers of blood
run off the bridge
into the flood
r&d procured
with a little help
from a wen
on the arse of industry,
el capitan maestro
del ceiling.
People are crying out
for help from God
but what are you doing
to help them in your sensible shoes
and bulging pockets,
fine-minded with thoughts ready
to dance, but not to hurt
and thus, not to reach out
because the leaning branch
breaks.
Why not bend first?
So I’m realizing, in the middle of a drive through a beautiful July evening, that I need to fall in love with poetry again. Not that the stuff I’ve been writing the last few years is void of it, but there’s been too much procedural about it. To deeply atune to the muse is where I must wend. That entails going back to my point of origin. Or does it? How about starting from the here and now? This spot, yes, this existence, this burning bush of punctiliar immediate awareness, this throbbing intimacy within-the-door-of-otherness. The gate of dreams opens and closes for stray or focused muses, it’s true. The being-here-nowness of the present gated sustenance. To open that gate? Intention, focus. Devotion. Love.
Starfire nebular wells of dark sweet chocolate interstellar metaphysical nowness! Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day that love stands on its head, for sheer joy of being. From within what’s always been it shares a warm wealth of self - the cords run well together, and together should stay.
So stay! And pray.
Down-wind, dinner dropped from the stars; I think Coltrane
was playing but we mistook the mantraic chant at the resolution of
A Love Supreme for something Mozart might have dreamed.
And Salieri was without nightmares in this scheme - the plastic
m48 Patton poised by a child’s hand at the top of the stairs to
shell Lego buildings below has nothing in it of real battle,
only a twice-removed shudder through the gamma ray-stroked ethersphere.
But the nourishment that plowed into our planet at 2 kilometers
per second and buried itself in the turf and mulch the other side
of Afton mountain is yet undiscovered, just harmonizes silently on,
while the semi’s roar to and fro on a highway that is beginning to
look like a figment of its own imagination, what with the strip malls
and diners collectivating on either side of the well-worn runnels
the myriads commute whithersoever together on. I wonder if this
is just a blip, or will it endure?
Coltrane keeps playing. The meteor continues to thrum
melodies onto the stalactictes and stalgmites under
the mountains semis drive over every day. The Creator wonders
why He ever built this place, but the denizens are fascinating
if strange. He loves them. When he looks into their eyes, He sees
something like himself looking back, and something else.
The else is why.
Have you ever felt that
this incarnation just isn’t going anywhere?
Have you ever had the feeling that
you can’t remember why you
incarnated this time in the first
place?
There’s a cure. Implicit trust
in the Powers That Be. Buy War
Bonds. Give until you puke and
bleed. Always trust Microsoft.
The light flashes out.