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.