In the thick

In the thick                                                                                                 

The nearer you get to God,

the more you take Him for granted.

God becomes a necessary routine –

soap to skin, food to belly,

the hours allotted for sleep.

Daily we remember God –

to give Him His due

until one day we are shown

He’s due everything, every moment.

Then, life becomes a prayer.

You take it for granted God is there

because it’s His life, His due

and where else would God be

but deep in the thick of His own Self?

O child of God, make Him the center

until He becomes the everything.

Cross yourself

Cross yourself                                                                                      

Cross yourself – routinely

(in whatever form customary) –

puja, zikr, mea culpa; yarmulke,

psalter, kusti, damru, suf.

Don’t look for trouble; let it find you – 

keep it between the shoulders,

o good neighbor. You’ll find dear enough,

familiar faces around the corner,

down the street, in need of heartiness

and a gentle hand.  Cross yourself –

quietly, discreetly; apply deeper wisdom,

a farther vision, visceral caution. 

Keep your balance to help

balance the world around you.

Cross yourself, o traitorous one,

and you may find after so long a time

crossing yourself befriends the Friend –

befriends the One, befriends your true Self.

O child of God, give only advice gingerly

gleaned from the words of the Master.

Now Available -- SPOKEN FOR - a new book of poems from Brian Darnell

Spoken For  - over 200 poems never before in print

Available at AMAZON (click to enlarge)

                                          Link to Amazon.com           Sheriar Books

The scent of a peach

The scent of a peach                                                                            

A ripe peach is on a wooden table.

Rather than reach for it, I write poetry

on its virtue, beauty and succulence;

safer, more enduring than the true peach

in this unreliable realm –

(I find it’s never there when I reach for it).

I’m back again in my bare cell, empty-handed.

This poetry is not much like a peach –

not within a country mile;

a very rough approximation

yet it’s imbued with the scent of a peach

with which I must content myself.

A ripe peach on a wooden table

and I have thrown my life away

in pursuit of it and its presumed reward;

swallowed every tale; followed the wildest rumors;

written down my confessions for all to see.

I have trusted You, my Lord,

in complete ignorance for the truth

of the long-trumpeted, promised perfect peach.

O child of God, keep your faith confidential

and pray for Meher not to let you down.

A grass hut

A grass hut                                                                                                       

God has no boundaries.

Make Him the hub (said my Lord)

and He will someday also

become the periphery. 

Walk with Him this immediate realm,

at some point you’ll enter the other –

you’ll lose your own boundaries.

God tolerates (apparently) for the sake of illusion,

our claims of authority, the iron pins

by which we stake out our properties.

Only on rare occasions does He trespass –

a revelation, a vision, an inexplicable synchronicity.

But God has no boundaries.  That is the sobering truth,

the great fear to which we all must attend –

utter vulnerability and ultimate non-existence.

Like an elephant entering a grass hut

(if He has a mind to) – no locks, barricades; no walls,

no appeals to our sovereignty will keep or contain Him

as He invades and supplants,

obliterates the structures of our beings.

O child of God, Meher did often avow –

we are not we but One.

The nature of stars

The nature of stars                                                                             

A sky full of stars and the magi looking

eastward to an extraordinary flare

moving contrary to fixed patterns,

to all known predictions,

contrary to the nature of stars.

They follow it pell-mell –

blazing sun, freezing nights –

in a burdensome gallop,

destination unknown.  It doesn’t matter –

they are chasing the cosmic,

leaving behind the earth.

And the great mysteries of heaven

come down to greet them, those wise men,

to intermingle and lay on hands,

no longer ashen remnants,

distant trackers and observers

but burning, existential participants

in the ancient, great fires of creation.

O child of God, chase after truth;

let nothing stand in your way.  

The heart of wisdom

The heart of wisdom                                                                                

A popular version I browsed in the bookstore

of the Tao Te Ching, urging everyone and telling how

in tranquil, flowing poetry to become sages.

Don’t know if I could or would want to become a sage.

Better to be wise than foolish but, sage or fool, both

essentially ignorant – like learning to favor a bruised foot

or determining the easiest route through traffic home.

The heart of wisdom is to discover ourselves,

the fallacies of our basic assumptions,

carve a niche from which we might calmly

view the world, not for the sake of comfort,

not for any advantage; not to seek a dependence

upon wisdom in lieu of grace and surrender.

The Old Man put down the Nameless pen to paper

best he could.  Reading his now gilded words

standing in the self-help aisle of Barnes & Noble.

O child of God, foolish to judge what belongs

where, why and to whom concerning the Way.

                         

An ocean away

An ocean away                                                                                        

I’ve been to India many times.

I’ve never quite felt at ease there.

It’s the oppressive, ubiquitous unfamiliarity –

ever a stranger in a foreign milieu,

an ocean away from home.  These days,

holed up in my hometown, homestead,

habitat, my own planet and (gross) plane,

I’m also ever slightly ill-at-ease,

every familiar thing now drenched

in a foreign light, heard in a disquieting way,

smelt and tasted seasoned with dust and ash.

Ill-at-ease in my own skin, my head and heart.

I’ve listened to You and told myself

so many times I’ve come to believe it

beyond any intentional, intellectual concept,

down to my very bones –

this world is not my home.

This world is not my home. 

O child of God, don't rest until you

get back to where you started.

(photo by Debbie Finch)

                     

A new banner

A new banner                                                                                         

I hoist the flag – salute my sovereignty,

my authority, establish my boundaries,

determine which way the wind blows.

Tattered, under sun and weather,

it’s blanched over the years into white,

the colors I cling to less and less relevant,

the governing body for which it stands

having picked up and moved to another shore.

This daily ritual is a mere adherence

to the only allegiance I’ve ever known,

containing in its discrepancies a freedom

only dreamed of, read about in books.

It’s a ceremony I’m only true to

because there’s nothing else to do

until my liberator arrives and we haul down

the flag together; reverently fold, put it away forever.

I’ll gather my things and follow Him

under a new banner into the great unknown. 

O child of God, Meher says the journey  

is from the bottom red stripe to the top pale blue.