Seven

I hear thunder,
see more lightning
than the sky can hold.

Some expected

a pre-programmed planetary shift
in consciousness from
fears to love,
delusions to knowledge,
illusions to unobstructed vision.

Others of less noble heart

had other plans.

On the seventh day prior

to the rumored stellar divide,
a dark green reptilian
slit of an eye
opens in the center
of a formerly human brain,
sees options narrow,
starts to panic,
sends scopolamined
implant-guided killers
into shopping malls and schools,
random domestic terrorist shock-troops
to instill the necessary degree of fear
to insure maximum compliance
when the heavily armed
Kevlar-coated federal employees
later secure the perimeter,
conducting house-to-house searches
in Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Phoenix,
Austin, New Orleans, Atlanta, Richmond
Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, New York,
Rome, Moloch and Hell,
confiscating guns and gold,
arresting anyone who shows
a moment’s hesitation
following the Emperor’s orders,
shooting anyone who resists
or tries to run.

At least,

the mystery of how they’d ever
find a way to keep paying
the soldiers was finally solved.

Veterans lead anti-war marches,
and old hippies start training hard
for hours in the desert
in full battle fatigues
executing maneuvers,
perfectly triangulated kill-zones
laid down from on high.

The Buddha says that

there are seven
wings of Awakening—
mindfulness, the analysis of qualities, persistence,
rapture, serenity, concentration, equanimity.

On these wings

no Earthly air force rides,
but radiant seagulls,
timeless recognition.

The geometry of awareness

may be shaped by cosmic cycles
in ways our kind will keep
failing to grasp for at least
another hundred thousand years.
 
We may hurtle with our closest star
through space to a rendezvous
with some hitherto
unknown punk brown dwarf
binary brother of the sun
returning from
long elliptical travels void-ward
now waiting to greet us at closest approach
after twenty five thousand years or so
playing the prodigal star
through empty temporal hollows,
wet gravity wells
quivering with fear and craving,
wormholes to the next
amniotic sac.

Even if true,

how could it matter?

It was no omnipotent God of compassion

who slaughtered 28 strangers today.

No random bastard

put a bullet through his own head
vaporizing the implant,
destroying connection
with the point of transmission.

None of this is real.

None of it.

This tape will self-destruct in

10, 9, 8,
seven…

Eight

On the eighth day, God created the week, and saw that it was very good. God saw the first day’s sun rise again, all beings become new again, and God blessed the history-less infinitude saying “See how time is undone, vanishes the instant it arises!”

– Regenesis, Ch.2,v.12-13

12-13-12

when the digits
in the pairs
are added becomes
3-4-3
add up to 10
whose digits sum
to one.

So the eighth day
before the 21^st
will become one,
as will we.

There is no more reason to believe
this numerological whimsy,
than end-times prophecy
based on ancient Mayan calculations
of long-term cyclic stellar precession
that even the Mayans
never believed signified
the world’s demise.

But quite a lot,
I suppose,
depends on what is meant
by “the world.”

Given this one—
ruled by psychopaths
with nuclear weapons—
part of me is shocked
every morning I wake up,
wonder how the hell
this could’ve happened,
why I’m not already well
on my way into the next
incarnation.

As a Buddhist,
I find this very difficult
to explain without reference
to divine intervention
(most definitely not
a standard Buddhist tenet);
nonetheless,
I’ve somehow
accidentally learned to live
with the cognitive dissonance,
embrace it even,
drink deeply
from the contradictions
until they become one,
as will we.

This Thursday the Thirteenth
is cold where I live,
and the stars are invisible
to we tourists blinded
behind rain-clouds and night.

They shine just the same,
and likely will still
on the 22^nd of December,
as will we.

I hear thunder.

Nine

Do not believe in something because it is reported. Do not believe in something because it has been practiced by generations or becomes a tradition or part of a culture. Do not believe in something because a scripture says it is so. Do not believe in something believing a god has inspired it. Do not believe in something a teacher tells you to. Do not believe in something because the authorities say it is so. Do not believe in hearsay, rumor, speculative opinion, public opinion, or mere acceptance of logic and inference alone. Help yourself—accept as completely true only that which is praised by the wise and which you test for yourself and know to be good for yourself and others.

 

—The Buddha, The Kalama Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 3.65, Sutta Pitaka, Pali Canon

As above, so below.
As within, so without.
It is a pyramidal hall of mirrors,
a reflection of threes
in every direction.

Believe nothing you see here;
none of it is real.

12-12-12—
add the pairs of digits
begetting 3-3-3,
the thrice-holy triple trinity
in summary communion
becoming 9,
the number of days left
in the numbered days of myth
until the longest night,
the least expected dawn.

On this day of paradox,
passing by its detritus
in these lengthening shadows,
witnessing the extrusion
of confused deluded illusion,
something from before
the first calendar was
ever carved in stone
rises from beyond
the useless boxes built
by aging oligarchs unmasked,
dethroned by fearlessness
rising in a single human mass,
surrounding the fortress,
making the arrests.

Today,
or perhaps tonight
in just the instant
before the veils come down
and the lights go out,
around the world
through every chest
will pass at least
a single strike
of pure peace.

Pass into it
and through it
to each other
when the door opens.

There will be
nine
ways to do that.

Ten

Of all the prophecies
truly or falsely made,
few can rival
a Mayan calendar's terminal date
for lack of factual basis
on which to rest an expectation
of apocalyptic changes.

Yet they come.

Whose interests

are so mightily served
by the propagation
of this arbitrary date,
its consecration
with the credible immutability
of cosmic cycles?

“As unavoidable as gravity!”
booms a synthesized voice
from the soundless mile-wide
shimmering white metal disk
hovering motionless
just under the clouds.

I remember lights

in the sky at night—
star-brilliant flashing beams,
some red,
others green or blue.

I remember impossible maneuvers

by lightning-fast craft
of varying forms,
functions and designs,
none of which
involved wings.

I remember panic and confusion

in the streets,
thousands fleeing,
nowhere to hide.

I remember being calm.

Even then,

it wasn’t my first time.

It wasn’t yours

either.

Mission Unknown

It’s been many years
since I’ve had this sense
of being involved
in a conspiracy so deeply secret
that I,
and other key participants,
would know nothing about it
until the moment of action
arrives.

Again,
it lingers around the edges,
bumps against the hull
with every hypnogogic wave
until a readiness to hear
begins to form.

Even then,
the plan remains
a mystery.

Only the requisite skills
are revealed,
the training curriculum outlined,
expected completion dates
settled and clarified.

Then
the bumping at night
from under the sea
just past the cabin walls
subsides
as the long silent marathon
begins in earnest
topside.

We will be told
all we need to know
when we need to know it.

We will
be ready.

Noticings

Everything
has become a lesson.

The bold strokes
of passing clouds
are God’s hieroglyphs
tattooed in silver
on a sapphire sky—
the lyrics to a song
you never heard before,
never forgot.

Tears come
naturally as breath,
hearing it again
for the first time.

How good it feels
to curl your toes
with your legs crossed,
a child’s pleasure-seeking impulse
interrupting your lotus-quest
with laughter,
tempting egoic demons
to rise again
from the crypt,
loose the arrows
of guilt,
split the apple
and fall.

As vividly
as it appeared,
it was never
meant to be,
and so it wasn’t.

So much here depended
on a belief
in gravity.

I will not
belabor the point,
if there seems to be one.

Suffice it to say
I see you now;
I see all of you—
angels and archangels,
bodhisattvas and buddhas,
luminous beings and the great rays
of a light so bright
even endless emptiness
can’t contain it.

All of us
pray the mantra
in unison:
May we be happy,
free from suffering,
completely equanimous
and infinitely joyful.

 

What else
has ever been
worth praying for?

Desert Invocation

On the precipice
of the apocalypse,
the brink
of imperial collapse,
an inner compass
reasserts itself,
the North Star leads us
into wilderness
where the Milky Way
is unobscured
by the yellow glare
of city lights,
where the air traffic
is far more rarified,
at much higher altitude,
and sometimes,
it is whispered,
not altogether Earthly.

We need no candles
in this impossibly bright moonlight;
it is shining inside enough
for both of us.

A lunar candelabra sparkles
on the grapes we eat;
we sleep naked
in the same cot,
satiated with beauty and vastness.

There are still angels
in this place the same
as when ancient Americans
tried to paint their dancing forms
against these sacred stones.

It will take awhile
for them to trust us,
but they will come;
they never left.

Be still
and see how this
naturally present timeless awareness
contains everything
and remains empty
everywhere and forever luminous,
knowing and free.

When we leave the doors open
and call for them,
they come.

Unbottled Note

There wasn't any wind left
in the old sails.

We drifted aimlessly
through the abyss
on lazy green tides,
rode the backs
of invisible serpents
until the stars changed
and we couldn't even guess
where we were anymore.

After months
with the sails down,
a day finally came
when the sun rose
bearing a brash breeze
from the boiling orange east.

We were
on the ropes hoisting,
slicing through waves again
chasing the west,
abandoning ourselves
to the faith
there was land
out there somewhere.

Somehow it made sense
to keep following the sun.

Overheard at the End of the World

On this day
a shaggy dog tale
beyond all hope or fear,
weary of the wet weight
of a long cold desperate swim,
touches shoreline,
climbs to dry ground,
shakes the clinging remnants free
in a twisting torus exploding
sprayed diamonds flashing
starlight splashing surprised skin
evaporating on the wind
dissipated laughing wingless and airborne
until only the sound of flying remains,
stays with you all the way out to the waterfall
where the sharp wave of silence roars down
on the first moment of diving
in and through to where
only the light is still audible.

More Moments Like This, Please

Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.
– Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

It has all gone transparent,
and absolutely nothing has changed.

Sights still stream
through this body’s eyes,
just as they have for all the past
just shy of sixty years;
but I never used to notice most
of what is given by vision,
just the occasional fallen brown petal
from a once-golden cactus bloom
fleeting by twirling
on the surface.

Now the blazing river
is wholly recognized
roaring the reflection
of something like sunrise,
some ever-brighter empty
infinitely amicable density
of light.

An invulnerable fulfillment is glimpsed;
for a moment
all disappointments disappear.

Prospector’s Diamond Lightning Path

“What is a hundred or a thousand years to Them, or tens of thousands? When They come, time’s purpose is fulfilled. What never was passes to nothingness when They have come. What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing…”
– A Course in Miracles, Text, Ch.26, IX, 4,v.1-4

“On an island of gold, there are no ordinary rocks to find.”
– Ancient Vajrayana Buddhist saying

He sweeps the ground
with a golden wand,
waits for it to sing
of what is seen
through Earth’s blanket,
buried by transparent detritus
from more recent and forgetful eons.

Everything hidden
is being uncovered.
There will soon be no secrets,
and no end to mystery.

Sitting alone later
on his torn worn naugahyde throne
on a balcony overlooking the garden
growing under dancing rainbow strands
of Vajrasattva prayer flags
flashing translucent backlit
by a bright blue endless empty
stretch of sky,
he wonders why:
who sits overlooking
whose rainbow garden backlit by
what bright blue empty sky?

The temple bell rings us
into rocking up and down
on the rhythmic waves of sound
sent singing in remembrance
of the present,
a shower of sunlight
slick as wind
against our skin.

This constant baptism
of compassionate awareness
swallows the stars
in a greater,
more ancient
and unchanging light.

A procession of shamans
kneels every twenty-one paces,
shovels the cool moist soil
with prayerful hands,
plants sage between pine trees.

An American Dzogchenpa
sips pomegranate juice
from a gilded skull-cup,
gives thanks to fearful wraiths,
hungry ghosts and angry demons
gathered restless, mournful,
famished and lethal,
blows the human thighbone trumpet
swallows them in thunder
collapsing them into his arms
embracing them willingly,
feels them dissolve against his chest
like sand-castles in waves
sees them vanish
like a mirage upon arriving
where they never were.

Clouds part
before a cool breeze slips
welcome waking over
rainbow garden skin.

A bright blue endless
empty flash of lightning
penetrates everyone’s aloneness,
and it is done.

Metapolitical Round-Robin in I-Minor

My sadness about my country
is the same as
my sadness about our species
is the same as
my sadness about myself:
We invent fictions about our nation,
what it means to be human,
who we are.

Something within me conjures
from the infinitude of possibilities
an imaginary “self,”
then identifies with its own apparition
who propagates a personal narrative,
fabricating sub-characters into series of
friends, enemies and strangers
to populate a world contrived
to mask its fears
and perpetuate the plot.

This goes on and on for eons,
but goes nowhere.
It swallows the physical continuum
in a far more spacious vastness,
and it has no size.
Everything in it is always changing,
but there is never any thing in it.

Let go of these precious gems.
They do not need your assistance to sparkle,
nor you theirs to shine.
It is all self-arising
from title page to epilogue,
even our readiness for seeing
through the dreaming
into the unspeakable presence,
the incandescence of being,
the wish-fulfilling jewel.

My joy about my country
is the same as
my joy about our species
is the same as
my joy about myself:
We undo fictions about our nation,
what it means to be human,
who we really are.

Something with me recognizes
awareness itself.
The tale spontaneously
concludes.

Wishing Us Well

We face a setting sun,
wait for the oligarchs
to wake.
A black helicopter
prowls the sky growling,
on the hunt,
hungry for taxpayers
to feed on;
but there is nothing
left to steal.

This year
we cried on the 4th of July,
winced at the fireworks,
their painfully ironic tribute
to the long-departed lady.

Weeks later,
her raised torch flames
brighter now
under creeping twilight.
On every continent,
in every nation
by the thousands,
by the hundreds of thousands,
by the millions
come December
we are rising
from the matrix
of delusions,
walking through prison bars,
free and fearless forever.

The moon soon
drags the stars
through our hair.
It’s getting cold
outside;
lets keep each other
warm inside,
remember
dawn is coming.

Stay happy,
sleep well,
dream instructively,
ready yourself
for morning.

True Story

Thoughts arise,
appear, persist,
disappear and cease
in the same moment
without a trace,
leaving this luminous awareness
unchanged.

We pretend
for awhile
to tell ourselves stories
where we're the main character
in a world populated
by enemies,
strangers and friends.

We construct
from our experiences
the supporting evidence
for that world's reality;
our experiences reflect
our beliefs about who,
or what we really are.

Then we wake up
remembering we've never slept.

Lives arise,
appear, persist,
disappear and cease
in the same moment
without a trace,
leaving this luminous awareness
unchanged.

Tracks of the Garuda

“The nature of the bird is illuminated by the ancient Bon myth that relates how, at the beginning of time, the… [Garuda] manifested spontaneously out of the cosmic egg as a fully mature being. The Garuda can transfer itself instantaneously from one place to another.” – The Flight of the Garuda, Keith Downman, 2003, p.52

“The exact size of the Garuda is uncertain, but its wings are said to have a span of many miles. This may be a poetic exaggeration, but it is also said that when a Garuda’s wings flap, they create hurricane-like winds that darken the sky and blow down houses.” – Wikipedia, “Garuda”


The end of the world
is no more real
than its beginning.

When I asked
“Who wrote these words?”
the stars came out at noon,
without effort or intent,
the sky so filled with brilliant points
it was like rain and
you could taste the silver
just by stretching out your tongue.

Fingers unclench the page,
drop the script,
exit centerstage,
keep walking until the air
is clean enough to breathe again.

In the west,
over the hills just after sunset,
those wisps of clouds,
prismatic the moment before,
subdue to silver blue.

The Garuda glides
above the darkening horizon;
tailfeathers relax,
fan out in final slow salute
to the shining sliding away.

Venus blows bright diamonds
through a hole in the dark dome,
this sacred shameless exhibitionist
rips through black velvet
floating naked on haloes,
keeps me pinned to the ground
on knees breathing hard and easy
while she peels my awareness,
exposing me to the emptiness.

I bleed joy from the pores
as Aphrodite is my witness.

The cool clear sky is still,
cleanses the lungs,
tempts the heart-mind open
until it’s trembling under the moon,
a rare midnight bloom
bathing petals in rainbow-froth,
the exuberant void coiling
into interpenetrating dreams
dissolving the instant they arise—
the glittering adornment of being,
never absent,
never there.

I have no idea who
or what
wrote any of this.

What happens with words
in the wide-open world
of what is?

The first instant
is the only one;
not one sequel follows this.

We who sleep
see nothing real—
only the moving projections
of our own delusions,
maidens and monsters
in the dark.

The “I” I was
persists a little longer
in doing what he always did.

At first,
he doesn’t even seem to notice
I am no longer there.

Then,
he smells the first faint whiff of peace,
sees the forms fear fashioned fade
from his fists,
finally lets go of littleness,
disappears with a laugh
in the vast incandescent
empty primordial compassion.

A mockingbird combs the air;
a lush cascade of audible dewdrops
baptizes my inhalation,
is gone before the out-breath.

Sparrows are singing to each other
about sunlight and water and
feeding the kids breakfast
before school.

The bustle in the branches decrescendos
into decreasingly frequent whistles
of avian gratitude as everyone
slowly hops and shuffles further
in towards the trunk,
to the darker shadows in the branches
where an altar beats and burns
in the heart of the wood
while feathered parishioners
on back-bent knees
gather in secret deep in the trees.

Did it ever happen,
or was it merely momentary misperceptions
strung together on a necklace,
a strand of sweet notes
for the Queen of Silence to wear?

In the west,
over the hills just after sunset,
those wisps of clouds,
prismatic the moment before,
subdue to silver blue.

The Garuda’s tailfeathers relax,
fan out in final slow salute
to the shining sliding away,
to tunnel-vision pretensions of finitude,
failure and glory,
drama, danger and desire,
the glittering emptiness,
this fantastical magic space-time show,
spun from nothingness,
the sweet rainbow cotton candy of dreams
is gone as soon as it
touches your tongue.

Nothing could please your mouth more
but this one last chance to kiss,
this unspent silver on your lips
where Venus left it while you slept.

The middle of the world
is no more real
than its periphery.

In the west,
over the hills just after sunset,
the Garuda spreads his wings,
embraces darkness
as it slides through lifting every feather
like the mother of flight,
the father of light
grooming him
for wandering wakeful and forever
through a wider well-lit groundless land.

We witness the long-awaited waking,
hear his call thunder-slam the ground,
echo back through the bottoms of our feet
from bedrock a mile or more beneath,
see his slow arching flight,
the invisible track carved through midnight
by unfailing primal sight,
with eyes open sea-deep,
wings wide-offered to an effortless grace
lifting him weightless through the hours,
circling higher against the stars
until he disappears
and we’re not sure what
we saw anymore.

The inside of the world
is no more real
than its outside.

Whispered Crescendo

Listen
to this wild whisper
tingling through the hairs
on the backs of your arms
like a spring breeze
through a wheatfield
in waves.

Feel each pass
of the sky’s hand
through the roots
of the stalks,
each hair as it bends,
bows to the wind,
dancing improvisationally
in shivering welcome
of this sigh against the skin.

God exhales
the first moment of salvation
when enlightenment dawns
and the darkness
of our long sightless night
breaks open
evaporating ignorance
with a wild whisper
crackling through the hairs
on the backs of our arms
like lightning through thunderclouds,
the rolling boiling flashes,
avalanches
of white-hot weightless magma booming
through a starless wet and moonless midnight
like voices from the end of time
where it all begins.

Wind Chimes

A breeze
from the northwest
slides in gently,
unpredictable gusts
crescendo and fade
at random rates,
improvisational dances
with cone-laden pine branches
serve no purpose,
no art
save surprise.

My eyes
float wide open,
sharp, clear,
uncluttered by concepts,
delight in full bloom,
well past curiosity
somewhere fascination
quivers between
obsession and release,
desire and union,
drawn down deep
into the present
like a titanium moth
to a white laser.

Stay perfectly cool
through the dense photon burn
like you were born there,
because you were.

All of this
the wind told me
while you fed the dogs.

I believe none of it;
it is as true
as faces in the clouds,
or the rabbit on the moon.

The wind is a liar,
or a storyteller,
depending on your mood.

Either way,
she blows past,
is gone.

Leftovers

The sun sets
through translucent prayer-flags
gently stirring in the light
breeze that comes from
somewhere far away when
the sun first pushed this
soft wind my way,
this tender hand across
my cheeks like
a lover’s caress to
drive me silent under
this avalanche of joy that
pins me to emptiness like
a hooked fish,
a squirming doomed ego
fighting the torrent of wind,
the fiery, empty, unbreathable air,
raging to the last spark of consciousness
against the dying of the light when
unexpectedly it ignites anew,
takes off the sunglasses and
supernovas out from the center of
everywhere all at once.

This changes everything and
I was prepared for none of it.

When the sun rises,
it seems an impossible miracle but
in the next moment it’s
everything else that’s
transparently phantasmagoric,
a vivid yet impossible illusion.

I bask in the sun at
midnight satiated beyond belief by
some cosmic lover who
chooses to remain nameless.

Space and time are
consumed at dawn in
the same way waking feasts on
the remnants of dreams until
they are no more.

Butterfly Effect

Even the ground
is sky now.

The Earth’s weight
on the soles of these feet
is breathtakingly light,
the reassuring caress
of a quiet lover’s hand
on a cold night
when the wind howls,
windows shake,
coyotes mob the moon
and soldiers march
in synchronized obedience
to their doom
and ours.

Say it will not
be so,
it will not.

Even the sky
is ground now.

The blue clarity
on the backs of these eyes
is startlingly bright,
the shock of endlessness
reflected in a real lover’s mind
on a warm day
when the clouds are gone,
clothes superfluous,
cats grace the couch
and dogs dance
in random jubilance
for their love
and ours.

Say it will
be so,
it will.

Even the horizon
is gone now.

It's Funny

It’s funny how the world gets
all wound-up,
how contagious paranoia is,
who might stand to gain from it,
and whether or not they
think you’re getting in their
way, ironically, since they’re
so far from having a way they
wouldn’t know one if they
were standing on it,
but this won’t stop them
from putting you
in the crosshairs
if they think you’ve
become inconvenient.

He drops this morbid train of thought
when he notices it’s not
enhancing his courage.

He’s thankful the line is short.

After paying the ticket-taker,
he glances over his shoulder and
sees they’re still tailing him.

He picks up his pace.

His mind is racing
as he takes in the fairgrounds
with an efficient panoramic glance,
picks up the pace a little more,
starts to monitor his pulse and respiration rate
with the finely-tuned instinctual proprioception
of the highly-trained counter-intelligence officer that he is,
at least in this lifetime,
however shortly that might end.

The last few soaringly spiritual and
militantly ecumenical strains of
“Long Live the Second American Revolution” are
still ringing in his head as he peaks out
his adrenaline levels diving into
the garishly adorned “Uncle Maya’s Funhouse Hall of
Mirrors.”

Mirrors
of mirrors confuse at first
in the rush to get up
the spine of the place
to the heart of it.

He listens alone
in the quiet inmost chamber
lit by low green light;
but there are no footsteps following,
no flashlights swaying down the hallway
heralding hot breath from cold hearts
just doing their jobs,
bearing Berettas with silencers,
earning a living
following orders.

It’s funny how the world gets
all wound-up,
how contagious paranoia is,
who stands to gain from it,
and whether or not they finally
figured out the game is up,
the cover’s blown,
and the run is on.

When he wakes up
it’s morning and he’s a state away
in Nevada when he realizes he’s got
just the clothes on his back
and no I.D. that won’t get him
“indefinitely detained.”

He feels suddenly
inexplicably
completely
free.

Look Here

There is a gap between
each fleeting pair of moments
(the one just past,
and next to come)
through which shines
a birthless sentience,
an incandescent deathless love
casting soular flares
through the open window of this
same spacious sea of consciousness,
this one boundless and groundless
present being.

Buddha became enlightened
under a bodhi tree
watching Venus rising
in the east.

Jesus was born in a manger
under a bright star
with Venus overhead
in the mid-east.

Tonight I am sitting
on my back porch
watching Venus set
in the west.

You are already sleeping,
at least in this dream I’m having;
at least for now.

But look here!

There is a gap between
these moments shining.

Face to Face

The clouds grow thin enough to see through,
then the landscape disappears,
evaporated when backlit by the ten
billion illuminated names of God
sparkling in all directions as far as eye can see
into the distance all the way out to the vanishing point
where the big-bang eruption of energy churns endlessly,
beginninglessly the infinitely baroque adornment
of utterly unbroken emptiness
which is this whole vast stretch of space,
this incandescent centerless skinless sphere of knowing
that is never separate from us, never other,
unborn and undying ever-present Being.

The singing dancing music of our earlier utopian visions
echoes quietly among the ruins
here where the sand is already blowing through broken windows,
piling up in growing dunes
against cracked and peeling baseboards.

Coyotes forage for leftovers in the dark deserted city streets.

Weakened cats are low-lying fruit,
broken furry dripping pomegranates between
grateful grinning canine jaws
on the run, on the loping yipping run
under the full moon back to the wild river
naked and howling until we’re all hot and wet
between the reeds along the bank panting on our backs
watching the clouds rise from our breath
thin enough to see the stars through,
white with lunar silver,
laughing at the meaningless impermanent display
until the mindscape disappears,
evaporates when backlit by the single shining face of Being.

Impromptu Formal Thanksgiving Prayer, 2011

We do not practice gratitude
for any other reason than
its power to remind us
of what’s real.

When we ask ourselves
what are we really thankful for,
when we follow where this wondering
leads the heart,
we land at last in simple silence,
where this moment’s birthless deathless presence
evaporates the world in incandescence—
where the answer’s plainly seen,
the questions long forgotten.

Without this spacious instant
of awareness,
nothing else can ever matter,
ever be.

What else could we ever
be most grateful for,
other than this moment,
and this one,
and this?

What else could
ever break our heart,
overwhelm our capacity
to absorb without tears
the shock of piercing beauty,
the jagged edge of pain
actual and latent
in this moment,
and this one,
and this?

What else could we
be grateful for,
other than this complete
awareness of awareness,
an ever-changeless boundless sky
vividly appearing to us now
as an ever-changing dance
of consciousness,
your diamond lightning Being’s
elaborate adornment swaying
in this steady gentle summer breeze,
sparkling in the sunlight
whose origins we don’t recall,
whose destiny remains
completely unfathomable
in this moment,
and this one,
and this?

What else could be required
to drop us to knees in awe,
irresistibly aching
to thank something or someone for
the inexplicable magic
of this moment,
and this one,
and this?

We do not practice gratitude
for any other reason than
its power to remind us
of what’s real.

May all sentient beings be happy,
free from suffering,
serene and joyful.

May all sentient beings
be free.

What Nature Does With Pain

The best stuff always starts
with a grain of truth,

be it the tiniest blood-drop
of a dinosaur's life
carbonized and compressed
until nothing's left
but blazing eternity;

or be it a thumb-sized dingleberry
from the bottom of the cat tray
that inadvertently strays
on your jaunty stroll
to the recycling bin,
slips and slides rolling
into the storm drain,
a turdish U-boat shrinking
desiccated by salten soaking
for weeks at sea
until a single
irritating remnant
slithers down some clam's
proto-esophageal tube
slipping like a sharp
and bitter spike between
slime and shell.

The faceless animals
all agreed it was hell.

Where the pain begins
the pearl grows fat.

Watershed

The water line to the washer blew,
the basement flooded.

The Awakened One’s altar
remained dry,
became an ark I carried
upstairs to the study
where it studied me,
knitted my disorientations
into forty days and nights of dreaming
in a single sleep while waiting
for new land to appear.

Everything that was
is gone.

All the old plans
are dust and gratitude,
tears and laughter;
and even those pass away
the moment they arrive.

Sub-horizon’s incandescence
hollows out the former darkness,
chips away at every shadow
until all the trees glow green again.

Breath blooms unblocked,
unburdened by brand-name carcinogens,
broad as the first morning wind
through this virgin valley
untouched by any past,
unpenetrated by expectations.

There is nothing here.

No one’s watching,
and something brighter than the sun
is rising from
a sleep that never was.

Big Sky Gazing

Big sky opens wide,
white blue and bright,
shines through debris
from a former
much darker
now vaporized world.

The mist of once impassable mountains,
dust of once dank dungeons,
gasified once great
armored fortress walls
wearing barbed wire,
turrets and searchlights—
all as utterly gone now
as Christ’s own blood-soaked
crown of thorns.

This burnt offering rises
in that column of smoke
from far beyond a lost horizon
barely remembered
let alone seen
this far from shore.

A single ray of sunlight
slams through clouds,
fractures into rainbows.

Stained glass and wine
rains down on us all,
evaporates what rags and remnants
still may cling to skin
from earlier ages when
everyone was still
blind and sleeping.

We raise goblets,
hold them high
in noble silence
a whole still minute
of invulnerable peace
passing understanding
before we lower
brimming sacred chalices
to lips and drink.

This is my blood
that pulses in your veins,
your body purified
in my open lungs.

Breathing in,
we know we are being breathed in;
breathing out,
we know we are being breathed out.

Big sky opens wide,
white violet bright
blazes through
endless blue
in a much more transparent
ever-present incandescent world.

Buddha's Elegant Antique Christmas Carole

There were shepherds
living in the fields nearby,
tending their flocks at night.
A Messenger of Being
appeared to them,
and the glory of Being
shone around them,
and they were terrified.
But the Messenger said to them,
“Do not be afraid.”

At midnight’s bleeding edge
just over the horizon
at the back of the skull,
first shimmers scamper
bright, engulfing
and brief.
The world is all
emptiness at play,
and something silent,
deep and wide as God’s own sea
lights up.

Wet green blades of grass,
iridescent under the dark blue glow
of morning rain-clouds,
grow fat,
turgidly exuberant
on the thick veins of moisture
flooding roots.
A thousand emerald Excaliburs
rise from the Earth
exhale offerings of oxygen
in ever-deepening sighs.
Winter is on us.
Cold soil
sprouts a verdant overcoat,
curls up well-fed
on little hypnogogic peppermints,
pockets of visions
begin to puddle here and there
until she sleeps again,
tills her womb
with the first dreams of spring
almost three months off still.

Christmas slides more deeply
under the skin this year;
everyone feels something
vast draw near.
Kings, Queens,
Presidents, Prime Ministers,
Premiers and all the other
hireling agents of the Oligarchs
on every continent
startle in unison,
sphincters reflexively
tightening an instant,
sensing something coming,
something omniscient, immortal,
free, inexorable.

The Avatar approaches.
Everyone feels
the light in their bones brighten,
sees
their karma erupt from the mud
like a lotus in time-lapse,
in space-collapse
phosphorescing lavender petals
in every direction
until all of us
see through it all.
When the masks,
and the masks behind masks,
come off,
and nothing false is left to see,
this place
is a soliloquy of light
in a cathedral of mirrors
wide enough
to hold the stars.

Very long ago,
on Grandfather’s lap
you heard him tell you
how old they are,
and how astronomers had
figured it all out.
He said
“You can look it up your self!
It’s a proven fact.”
You’d always believed him before;
but when he says
how old the stars are,
you know he must be
teasing you.
You’ve known forever
the stars are always there.
Whatever we see
in the least of us,
we see in God’s child.

There is a prayer
crackling through the air,
a petition for union
scrawled in the shared mind-scape
by the once-awakened, once-born,
once-risen, once-returning
One.
Come quickly Maitreya!
I see you in
every open eye,
through each mirage,
risen immaculate,
infinite, radiant,
present, alive and wakeful,
looking back at me,
seeing everything.
Your glory is endless.
When I look at you,
the bright white sun of Being
pours through your pores,
and you let it,
and it comes,
it all comes clear.

Here,
let me dust it off,
use this elegant
antique English word
just one more time;
it is almost
adequate.
You are
glorious
to me.

“Do not be afraid.
I bring you good news
of the great joy
that will be for all people.
Today in your town
a Savior is born.”

Thanksgiving Incantation, 2010

Our gratitude is the simple recognition
of what is right before us
and what it offers us right now,
from here in the center
of this moment.

Someone asked for a prophecy,
a word of truth,
and I said
I still see Christmas angels
coming in waves,
overwhelming the forces of hell
in the darkest hour.

Each of us
in our own Gethsemane
drops to knees,
falls into the lotus
at the center of the pond,
the jewel on the altar,
the incandescent offering
of God.

At the heart of our aloneness,
we find each other.

It is here that peace begins,
here from which all power flows,
here the home where
all things are seen as one again,
and all made wholly new again
in this endless and unflickering love
that does not ever
compromise with fear.

Look here
into each other’s eyes now,
one being after another
until you return to the first.

May all sentient beings be happy
and have the causes of happiness.
May all sentient beings be free from suffering
and the causes of suffering.
May all sentient beings never be separated
from the happiness that is free from suffering.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity,
free from attachment and detachment.

Our gratitude
is the simple recognition
of what is right before us
and what it offers us right now,
from here in the center
of this moment.

Let us see the single skin
of all we witness now,
and with all our senses, feelings,
thoughts and intuitions,
may we witness fully
the singularity of being,
this union of the witnesses
with what is witnessed
in the flash of birthless deathless love
from which creation flows
from God right through the center
of every one of us
entirely unresisted by illusion,
unclouded by ignorance.

May love flame steady as the first star
in a long dark night,
and burn until there is
no more room for light.

Hearing

Big sky slides high overhead
racing weightless glowing glaciers
paint dancing aerial spectacles,
improvisational abstract renderings
in white, gray and endless bright blue,
a seductive living Rorschach test
into whose pliant arms are laid
all our most secret self-narratives,
all of the nightmares,
all of the dreams.

There is no end
to tales mumbled by mist;
but whispered just beneath the skin,
under the white noise sparking
from these condensation continents
scratching against the wind,
deeper than all of that,
the oldest story beats
at the heart of it all.

A clear day
is coming.

Confession

Nothing is easier to walk away from
than what isn’t even here.

Be human with me
while we still can.

Tell me what kind of dreams
you’d most like to have;
I’ll show you mine.

Nothing is easier to bump right into
than what’s always been here.

I don’t remember what train
I came in on,
who I was going to see,
what I wanted to say
or needed to do,
how long I was going to stay,
or what any of this was for.

But I remember you.

After Working Outdoors

This garden skyward greens and blooms
man-tended watered weeded free
to breathe both sun and rain
liberated by Edenic desires
to nourish and be fed in turn
by each emergent form,
every radiant rainbow flora
launched spontaneous light-ward
in their trusting leap,
a simple opening to what is,
the common purpose of each living thing
that opens petals wide to let the daylight in.

About Last Night

When you sparkle so close
the edges of your beams
pierce my skin painlessly,
slip unresisted through each cell,
penetrate with surgical precision
the places I pretend are secret.

From here,
there is
nowhere else to go.

Changing Weather

When things first got
thin enough for most to notice
more translucency than usual,
some thought it might be
an unexpected quantum consequence
of space-time expansion.

I’m in the garden
when the rain starts,
the rooster crows,
another answers
from half a mile away.

The life begun
on this mountain height
incubates divinity—
sentient heroic free wings.

We watch the hologram dissolve,
fade to rainbows and bright white
when each bead of Indra’s diamond matrix
wakes from dreams fabricated
in imaginary cauldrons,
rises from sleep sparking mind-light
from behind the facets,
from the center of each gem,
from the middle of them all.

Everyone is satisfied,
falls quiet listening
for God’s breath
on the back of their heads.

Resplendent and stoic streamings
penetrate insanity,
set the dragons to flight;
the past is done.

Infinite clarity
reflected and added to
from every direction at once.

There is a minute of silence,
then the rain stops,
the day begins.

Radiant angelic beings
populate infinity
with the children of light,
the tribe of one.

Insha'Allah, if’n the Crick Don’t Rise:

Prayer of the Heart for the Victims of 9/11 both Living and Dead

Someday
we will all
unplug our televisions
and shut down our computers
at the same time.

We’ll turn out all the lights
before going outside
to see if we can still find
the Milky Way.

There’s always enough light
for everyone,
if no one
hides their own shining.

Someday
we will all go quiet
at the same time
under a bright diamond
midnight sky
just like tonight’s.

In Yahweh’s sacred presence,
by Allah the merciful and just,
in submission to
the Compassionate One,
the God Who is Love,
in the sight of
all that is holy and just
and wholly true,
in the name of Moses,
Jesus and Mohammed
(peace be upon them all),
may justice reign,
forgiveness bloom,
vision reveal
one mind shared,
the same Being we extend,
this single healing light
that neither time nor space obstructs.

Light-Seeking Missives

Airborne ambient piezoelectric
backyard mindfulness bells
rising falling
crescendo fade.

The impossibly winged buzz
of hummingbirds approaching
receding rising diving
straight down
blazing tiny kamikazes
pull out at the last
possible moment
like that time when I was
decades younger and more foolish
with my girlfriend
when her parents were
unexpectedly away
for the weekend,
but I’m not
going to talk about that
here,
so you can relax.

Suffice it to say that
love appears in many forms,
goes beyond them all,
falls into a single
confluence of histories,
cascades over the same one
waterfall of grace that feeds
each man woman and child.

A leaf of clover
breaks through dark tar
at road’s end,
cracks it
from below.

In an instant,
it’s bright for the first time
on a single stretch of new green,
blue-sky nude and warm,
baptized by a breeze.

Coronation

I waited for you
for a long time
out on that bright wave’s
ice-sharp curl
against the wind
until clouds bloomed orange
in the west
and the shoreline
disappeared.

This net of dewdrops
cast for you
requires no matching evening gown,
no shape-shifting pumpkin opulence
drawn by white steeds wrung
from the stem-cells
of house mice.

With these crown jewels,
these bubbles of light,
hands full
and wet with love
I baptize thee
in Being’s
holy presence,
wait no more for you,
nor you for me.

We stand for a long time
out where the waves disappear
in the middle of the sea
under the stars at midnight
until the carriage comes.

Inter-Species Dialogue

The dogs are tired of me
pretending to be
human.

They want to feel that same
happy star-shine they
got sprayed with
while I sat out
here last night
all let-go languid
in the light
that bathed them in
warm breaths
through the grasses
waving still
radiant still
beyond colors
transparent and laughing
like elves taking
secret showers
under the waterfall
at midnight
when no one will see
just how beautiful
their wings are
under the moon.

Our merely human minds
would melt.

We would follow them anywhere
if we glimpsed it
for an instant.

We would leave everything
else behind;
everything.

The dogs have decided
they’re coming with me;
so we go for a long
slow walk in the dark
to where the river starts.

I tell them
I am tired of them
pretending to be
dogs.

Waking Up

This morning
staggers out of bed,
finds a seat
under a dead tree
on the back porch,
waits for God
to talk to him again.

So exquisitely hypnotic—
this rising sun,
that rooster crowing,
this enmeshment with a
brighter more convincing dream
until it seems
quite real
for every purpose
under heaven.

When
senses eyes hearts ears
skin mind mouth nose
witness open wide enough
we see
a truer purpose
shining here
so bright we watch
the ground disappear.

Sparrows arc through the air
below me sunlight shining
through wings
from the closest western star.

I wonder what they
really are.

They look more like angels
than any birds I’ve
ever seen.

I wonder what this
really means.

Of all the bubbling dreams,
there’s not a single one but seems
to be,
and all the while you’re here
with me—
every one of you,
awake
or yet to rise.

Bad Company

It’s been a few years
since the fear left,
but I’m still a slave
to types of craving
from time to time.

They never quite
take over my life
anymore,
but old friends come knocking
at the front door
at odd hours
of the day and night.

Sometimes
I still let myself answer
just to make sure
it’s really them,
that they’re still available
anytime I need.

You Won’t Want to Hear This, Until You Do

What you’re afraid of
doesn’t exist.
You’re angry because
you attend to what’s not here.
You’re depressed about
something you’ve imagined.

You aren’t anything like
the person you think you are.
You never had a birthday,
can’t experience death.
You’re invulnerable, infinitely free, omnipotent.
You’re harmless, compassionate, at peace.

This tiny speck of seeming
whirling madness that you see
through your apparently
physical eyes,
this swirl of sentient thoughts you think
through your ostensibly
human brain
all flow from misperceptions,
fleeting fantasies
long since passed away.

These are only images
you thought you saw
in a rearview mirror
while driving through
some solitary dreamscape
in a past that never was.

Let it go.
The sun is rising.

On Beginnings

Do not begin the day
with scattered scrapped
shards of dreams shattered
on the cluttered shores
of dawn’s demands,
each quivering sliver
still bleeding with desires
for private phantoms,
secret ghosts
and strictly personal illusions.

None of this is real;
this is your dream
you’re dreaming—
the whole charade
as far back as you recall,
every event,
each experience,
every seeming choice
and conscious act,
and even every thought
you ever thought
to think.

All of it—
this is your dream
you’re dreaming.

Therefore
begin the day again
by letting go of dreams
and nightmares both.

See how wide open
the sky is,
how unobstructed
the view,
how bright
the waking mind,
how clear
the Great Perfection
in every direction.