To love

To love   

To love God in the most practical way,

Meher Baba said, is to love our fellow beings.

I nod always, mumble under my breath –

yes, because everyone is You.

But, one day, You whispered in return –

because, lover, ... to love ... is to love God.

The sculptor grinds the chisel to a perfect bevel.

The sawyer sharpens the blade’s teeth.

The cutting torch, the welder adjusts

to the precise admixture 

of acetylene and oxygen.

Now the flame can cut steel.

It is the purity of love that shapes and sharpens

the chisel, the blade, the flame,  

allowing for the cutting through,

the paring down, the severing.

O child of God, to love is to teach

the heart how.  To love is to love God.

                        (Unpublished)

The hunger

 The hunger                                                                                              

After the poem, comes an emptiness,

a missed opportunity, a haunting plea --

what have you done for me lately?

Emptiness, the Source of poetry;

the ache for God

the empowerment of every word.

Consult your dictionary – sources

and derivatives, metaphors and similes,

colloquialisms and dialects –

all spellbinding and apropos.  I can’t keep writing 

forever and what would it mean?

Redemption is not contained in words.

This poem – another brief

and partial realization –

to write it down is to lose it –

unreal when put into rhyme

but, that’s the job I’ve been given

to save my soul.  And this seems like the end

of the poem, so what to do now?

The hunger’s still there.

O child of God, be grateful for that hunger.

It will one day lead you to God.

 

                       

Early post-advent

Early post-advent                                                                         

I pray for this poem (which I intend) to be a prayer

trampled in a field of fresh snow,

making sense only when viewed from a great height;

not merely a shadow of life and death

but the difference between

solace and grief, hope and despair.

I pray for your poems, too, o lovers of God;

your prayers, too – ink, oils or clay,

eye, throat, shoulders, thighs. 

May you reach that purity

of breath, blood and bone  

beyond sound and form;

may your blood run its tireless course

from the moon’s blotched surface 

to the rich earth beneath the snow

and your bones, your bones -- may they turn up

in the spring in green fields,

bleached evidence of fallen soldiers

in these mad and turbulent,

early post-advent years of Meher Baba.

O child of God, say your poetry and your prayers

with precisely the same fervor and devotion.

The meeting of needs

The meeting of needs          

Two lovers may blur the boundaries,

albeit fleetingly; bleeding into each other

a stilling poise – a sensual hint

of the Oneness we seek in our loneliness 

while two selves, naked and loveless,   

occasion a rasping away

at fraught desire – glimpses through

the threadbare garments

we gather around ourselves – no more frantic

a moment nor despairing a truth.

Apartment houses, condominiums,

gated communities; villages, boroughs,

slums and barrios around the world

stuffed full of people

holed up alone in their rooms.

It’s the point of God within us

we must unclothe, acquiescing,

not to the other, but to the need

in the bones of our structure

for which there is no earthly, human meeting.

O child of God, how might loneliness

ever be quenched within the realm of duality?

                          (Unpublished)

                                                 Drawing by Rich Panico

Fly to Him

Fly to Him                                                                                       

For those who are Mine, my Beloved said,

I put all their stars and planets

in my cup of tea and drink them up!

Every path and pattern, signpost, scriptures,

bridges, leaves of tea,

the dust at our feet and flung across

the heavens stirred and upended,

sweetened and aligned

by His Presence on earth, 

His steady, knowing hand.

Every need, entreaty and prayer

must fly to Him, must fly to Him,

the Source and Center of our quest –

for the essence and strength of His method,

the core of our salvation

depends upon total dependence.

He stirs in His cup our planets

and stars to sweeten His chai,

to spin us tighter still into the web

of His work and our ultimate salvation.

O child of God, drink from the Godman’s cup

and taste the rarely-tapped mead of heaven.

       

The drunken man

The drunken man                                                                         

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

the woman asked the drunken man

(who had stumbled and stomped upon her toe). 

“Yes,” he replied, “every moment

of every hour of every day.”         

How to tell serum from pathogen,

elixir from applejack?  A shot of whiskey

might prove a bracing tonic for one

but, it’s like gasoline on the fire of a raging drunk.

A madman might be slapped and brought

to his senses or, sent off on a violent spree.

The Prayer says, Repent  . . . for our constant failures,

but does the evidence add –  then proceed unashamed?

Repent and see the essence of yourself above the artifice?

Drowning in shame, what do our inherent

and ever-recurring failures and repentances matter?

What drove the children from the garden? –

their transgressions  or their disgrace

even now enmeshing, riddling with culpability,

the daily machinations of their progeny? 

O child of God, keep your head above water

by endlessly repeating the name of your Beloved.

  

Free download of ghamela yoga CD (2004)

Click on image of GHAMELA YOGA CD below-right for free download

Thin-skinned heart

Thin-skinned heart                                                                       

You say, Don’t try to understand Me. 

Good advice, since You don’t  

quite make sense, that is to say,

nothing seems to fit and You,

of course, are everything

but, every so often You send me off

on an analytical jag, knowing

I’ll come back around because

my thoughts always lead me in circles.

It’s about time, this time;

inevitability and purpose, distance

and proximity and the ubiquitous

reality of non-significance while never leaving,

mind You, the confines of my thick skull,

never venturing near the love-strapped,

thin-skinned heart I bear inside

until I am, at last, back on Your stoop,

knocking on Your door and being let in

graciously, mercifully, as I fall in timeless,

eternal repetition, at the unfathomable,

beyond imagination and conception, illusion

of Your body and Your holy, human feet.

O child of God, one significant allurement of faith

is the lack of any coherent alternative.

Betting on prayer

Betting on prayer      

I grew up impoverished.
After many years, I noticed

innumerable jewels  
lay scattered at my feet.

Yet, I remained poor because,
I refused to take off my boxing gloves

long enough to scoop them up.  
So years later –

with great effort and daring –    
I took off the gloves. 

Yet, I remain poor because,
most of the jewels proved to be paste.

Now my naked heart and hands
are folded in prayer, which may, also,

be mostly paste -- we shall see –
but, what great treasure

has a poor man to lose anyway
betting on prayer?

O child of God, veils within and without
obscure the treasure of infinite worth.

                     

                                                Drawing by Rich Panico