Where would I be? -- Brian Darnell

Lighting a candle

Lighting a candle                                                                                     

I saw the Friend shining in your eyes.

Beheld by His kindness,

my heart and body remembered

the holy companionship

my mind had worn out and misplaced.

I heard my silent Master in your throat –

voice and laughter – stepping daintily,

for a few moments outside time’s flow.

I felt the touch of the Friend

in the softness of your eyes;

His unwavering good spirits

in the cup of your smile.

Anew, I experienced

the awe and reverence

I had frittered away over the years –

(down to the last scraps and tittles) –

recouped by the posture and demeanor

of your body humbly kneeling before His chair.

Lighting a candle with a candle

in the heart of this late autumn evening.

O child of God, your Beloved comes to you

in countless and ingenious, multifarious ways.

Your side of the river

Your side of the river                                                                     

You back me up against the river

and I have to herd my sensibilities

toward Your still waters, make my way back

to the heartland, the fertile soil and furrowed ground.  

I know that other territory well – across the river,

that dark wild which can feel like truth;

the black depths of the exhausted quarries.

You drive me to the river and leave me there,

to find my own way back. 

Up against Your silence,

my interrogations come to naught,

the compromises all on my side

Your orthodoxy and improbabilities

without pretext left unexplained

and yet I cling to You ever more tightly

and praise You for my half-filled cup

on this extraordinary path I reluctantly,

at times, traverse on Your side of the river.

O child of God, conviction is a gift of the Master.

Faith, in the interim, is an offering of the lover.

                                                Drawing by Rich Panico

Sweet on the tongue

Sweet on the tongue

They gave You a name,
nectar in our mouths --

they called You Mercy.
Other names would have sufficed --

Purity ... Valor ... Fidelity --
but not quite hit the mark.

Mercy is what we're begging for
with Your name on our lips.

O Meher -- Compassionate One,
sweet on the tongue,

the sacred Rose around which
a multitude of nightingales --

Your name in their throats --
gathers and sings, hoping to catch Your ear.

O child of God, the Beloved has a thousand names.
Call Him by the one that drips like sugar 
          from your lips and tongue.

                      (from A Jewel in the Dust)

To have not the heart

To have not the heart      
                                                             

The Godman came to give the Word

yet, firmly sealed His mouth to all entreaties.

If you can slice open, with the very fine

blade of surrender, your heart to that,

if you can speak to it affirmatively

with the dry wit of a dust grain

or add to that great silence,

the enduring silence of a stone, then

perhaps awaiting you, o lover, (so the Master says)

is the promised Word and the promised Ear.

The Godman came (again) to give hope

and to crush hope, to give the law

and to sow the seeds of chaos,

to mend and reconcile, rend and separate,

to empower and eviscerate, instruct and confuse,

to act as one with karma, to reveal the path

and to remove it from our daily thoughts.

O child of God, choose between yourself and God.

Simple as that.  Better yet, have not the heart,

nor the strength, to lift a finger of protest or desire. 

O child of God, to possibly know your Father

is to abandon all hope of understanding. 

Brian sings Chasing the Thief at Sheriar Bookstore November 2011 (edited by Debra Finch)

The absence of metaphor

The absence of metaphor

Poets love words because
they can push them around

(in an affectionate way), gather and hoard,
winnow and cull, shape them as they will,

split them into several, simultaneous meanings.
A stone in the hands of a mason

is merely a stone, to be employed
or rejected.  In a poet's hands

a stone ... might be a human heart,
a biting grief, a planet, a tomb.

Poets have a hard time with God.
With God, a stone has no meaning.

With God, a stone is simply THAT,
as God is THAT, as each moment is THAT,

as a lifetime, an age, an aeon is THAT.
It's the absence of metaphor, of signification,

the absence of meaning combined
with the utter, inviolable truth of everything with God

that leaves the poets ultimately inert and mute ...
that halts their poetry at the threshold of the divine.

O child of God, Meher Baba awaits 
with the Word which has no meaning.

                      

I've taken down the axe

I've taken down the axe

Forty-four years of silence.
That ought to tell you something!

You'll run out of words 
one day, You assure me.  

Then, we can have a conversation.
You left a fire in the hearth 

before You abandoned me.  Now 
I'm ice-and-snow-bound, up to the eaves.

I've taken down the axe, dismantling
the furniture to keep the fire roaring.

Next comes the floorboards,
the joists and rafters, studs and laths.

Lord, let me be steady in my faith!
There is a method to this forgoing,   

this solitude and immurement.
If not . . . it matters little what I do --

all is for naught -- my life and future
cold, bleak and barren as the yonder landscape.

O child of God, let the Beloved find you
steadfast and acquiescent among the ruins.

                         

Desire nothing

Desire nothing                                                                                

Desire nothing, said my Lord. 

But my house is built on desire –

a way station of ceaseless comings and goings;

of compacts, treaties, agreements and arrangements.

Perhaps, o wanderer, you’ve left your house

and now haunt the tombs of saints,

study the scriptures, indulge in the sweet   

intoxication of prayer;  perhaps,

you’ve renounced worldly indulgences

to take up spiritual indulgences.  Perhaps,

you covet love now, liberation, peace, paradise,

the imagined glory of your own eventual Godhood. 

Desire nothing, said my Lord.  But my house is a ruin

on the side of the highway travelers tramp through

on their way to presumed important appointments,

thrilling adventures and soul-serving endeavors.

They often invite me along.  Even my

entrenchment and intransigency is desire.

O child of God, hold your tongue.  Desire nothing

because, nothing is withheld.

Spoken for

Spoken for

Love, You say, asks no questions.
My heart's not yet speechless

but, my mind's onto the truth
that all questions lose their validity

this side of the veil.  To ask is to break
the silent bond.  It's not about believing

or, not believing, but about love . . .
or, not loving and the longing

that's always there
and the despair that inhabits

every laugh and stride and smile,
every social nuance, as we bide our time,

do what we must, granting solace,
here and there, to ourselves and the world

far from the Avatar and the key.
Though, we are lost, we are in His hands,

and that is all the difference . . .
and that is all the difference.

O child of God, why keep speaking?
You are already spoken for.

                    

random photos

                                                  Betty Darnell

                                                      Debbie and Lily

                                        Center New Year's 2010

                                        Charlie (the veiled mast) Gard'ner

                                        Keilayn and Brian at Center

                                        Athens group with LePages

                                        Boat house -- photo by Greg Butler

                                        Robin, Clea, Bill, David, Rebecca, Brian

                   The Darnell Boys Band -- Patrick, Elijah, Gus, Austin, Caleb