No room for why

No room for why                                                                                       

My monastic cell, narrow as a gate.

No room for why;

discouragement or zeal;

joy or despair; comparisons,

emotions; conviction or doubt;

stripped of everything but one,

last dot of self from which to witness;

offer silent praise and prayer. 

To be so tiny, my cell

must open to the sky;

have no walls; the whole

round planet for its floor

and contain in its every unfolding moment

the complete history of existence.

Narrow is my monastic cell; only long,

deep and wide enough for God.

O child of God, the scripture says

enter into a closet to pray.

In the silent holy void

In the silent holy void                                                                              

Like mewing cats outside the fishmonger’s

door, lovers say Your name

knowing not how else to get to the nourishment,

warmth, fresh milk and bloody entrails.

Everything comes true in the end.

No need for disputation – two blind men

arguing over the color of the sky.

There’s profound wisdom in knowing

how profoundly ignorant I am;

truth coming near, I must depart

to let it manifest, light the world

except for the dark shape which is me

in the silent holy void where words fade,

lose their power to persuade or be persuaded.

To say how lovely it all is,

is to say too much.

O child of God, seal your lips about

those things of which you know so little.

Lifeblood

Lifeblood                                                                                                   

One day the Friend will just up and walk away.

You’ll have no choice but to follow –

by then He’ll be your lifeblood.  You’ll be taken by surprise.

He’s indulged you so long; so many lifetimes,

determining one day – enough is enough;

time to unravel the swaddling clothes. 

You’ve led Him, your loyal companion,

into and through the darkest, shabbiest places;

the petty, the mean, the absurd, the perverse,

while He’s kept a steady eye on you,

offering a Word now and then amidst

your constant bluster and self-justification.

One day the Friend will just up and wander away,

you having reached a certain ripeness

and you’ll  be forced to leave the familiar,

your loved ones and companions

who will not understand nor accompany

you and the Friend into the desert

beneath God’s great, scattered handful of stars

to begin the long, solitary except for Him

trek home, His way, by His authority,

the sovereignty of His inviolable divine plan.

O child of God, He has told you from the very first:

I am your one true Friend.

Not a leaf's tremble

Not a leaf's tremble

Gaze at an object, one eye open,
the other closed, then switch eyes.

A similar, less than an eye wink,
shift in perspective involving

not a sound nor fragrance,
not a leaf's tremble nor a change of mind

will alter potentially above,
the heavens; the earth below,

yielding a proximate realm
where one's self might be lost;

something palpable to cling to;
odorless to trail, stationary to follow,

wordless to read, thoughtless
to learn and become wise.

A way to choose, abandoning choice,
discernment, autonomy and desire.

O child of God, a way also of just sitting
or engaging in a duel to the death.

The key

The key                                                                                                     

Once you train your will upon freedom,

only the key to the lock has value,

all other objects equally worthless,

crushed and scattered underfoot.

Ignore the ill-fitting, misshapen and static,

props of the inherent slight-of-hand

which do not internally align, similarities

meaningless and obfuscating; the entire range

from noble endeavors to fetid desires –

mere blind alleys, wastes of time.

Freedom whittled down to one tiny,

exactly notched, sharp-pointed instrument.

Once you train your will upon freedom,

only the key to the lock has value.

O child of God, the play of illusion

beguiles you everywhere you turn.

The breaking of the tape

The breaking of the tape                                                                         

When I cross the line,

I’ll rest from my exertions,

find shelter from the harsh weather –

so they tell me.  I would fly like the wind

but I’m pulling like the others,

a crudely built, two-wheeled cart –

accumulations that tell the story of my journey.

Pausing repeatedly to sort out the merchandise;

to remind myself of who I am. 

Abandon this cart and I would soon

cross the line into a territory

uninhabitable, unimaginable.

Rather than that, I cling for now to my only

home-on-wheels though it veers and bogs,

falsely identifies me,

egregiously hampers my way

toward the breaking of the tape, the rest,

the refuge, the unknown realm and reward.

O child of God, there’s nowhere to go; nowhere

to get to; nowhere to run; nowhere to hide.

The silence of which You spoke

The silence of which You spoke                                                            

It began on a Whim, You say –

Creation merely God’s game.

I try to reconcile this with what You also said –

no one suffers in vain.  True freedom

(again You say) is the raison d'être

including, presumably, freedom from suffering;

freedom from the whims of God. 

There is nothing to add from this

one tiny mouth looking up into the night sky. 

Perhaps, this is the silence of which You spoke,

coming to the end of hope,

reasonableness, accommodation;

where love begins, but how, o Lord?

Where do I turn from here?

The earth is round; I am unable to step over its edge

and plummet into Your timeless, infinite point of view.

O child of God, blow out your candle

to experience the true essence of the night.

God's brush

God’s brush                                                                                              

Dinosaur bones found today in Texas

proof of time from earth’s dawning;

physical evidence like the morning’s

egg-stained dishes and a half cup of cold coffee,

historical data corroborating

our perceptions and assumptions –

the past not only once existed

but time is ever flowing into it;

not a contiguous, static flickering 

in the same illogical, illusive now.

Do the bones prove our temporality

or is it just another flourish from God’s brush?

Another facet of His ever-present, insoluble,

impossibly intricate and arcane, illusory design?

O child of God, is time endless or an infinitesimal

slice of the wink of an eye? 

Soon left to the page

Soon left to the page                                                                               

A poem indecipherable, a chore to read

though chock-full of evocative images

ever on the brink of making sense,

hints of eloquence shot randomly through.

If the reader has little faith – the poet

viewed as foolish, inexpert, unduly obscure

with nothing important to convey –

the poem is soon left to the page

a thick, tiresome, insoluble mystery.  

If, however, the reader somehow gets a whiff,

is moved to trust, delves deeper,

takes the random eloquence

as further hint and promise of a hidden treasure,

sensing the passion with which the author

originally took up the pen

then the poem may also be taken up,

endured, persevered – solved and resolved,

experienced, cherished and incorporated

to the ultimate triumph of poet and reader,

one step further towards the two becoming One.

O child of God, the poet is distinguishable by how

he says what everyone already knows. 

Garden-variety meditation

Garden-variety meditation                                                                      

                                                                  

This serpentine interior monologue –

I break it or allow it to break,

each daisy-chain phrase plucked delicately apart

into pleasant, disconnected incoherence;

letting it run ahead, out of earshot, while I

slip back through that well-oiled gate

where no such whisperings

could ever tempt a soul into anything

contrary to God’s benevolent oneness.

Let them die mercilessly on the vine then,

those sticky, persistent, overripe seductions

and pray for the garden to become

a realm of pure observation; a quiet, paled,

semi-permanent, edenic place of dwelling.

O child of God, like pearls, string together

those artfully concocted manonash moments.

The tomb I haunt

The tomb I haunt

I choose, in this duplicitous realm
having no choice, this or that,

vacillating between polarities
when there is really only one -

a last grave stab at annihilation
or continue this charade indefinitely.

All else is the slapdash arranging
of chairs on the upending deck.

I queue up in the darshan line,
enter the tomb-shrine

where I would soon forfeit myself, my life
but always am I roughly hauled to my feet

unaccepted; turned away;
escorted back down that lonely, holy hill.

My Lord exists eternally.
The tomb I haunt is my own.

O child of God, no choice but one choice;
it's time of arrival is beyond your grasp.

I am not myself

I am not myself                                                                                         

I’ve taken up the tightrope these last few years,

having so little to lose, life and time precious

but the cheapness of my indulgences

showing through, while that high,

tense wire is the only path to the other side.

To grieve, to judge, to mind, to intervene

is to indulge in Illusion.  When the mind fasts,

every sentiment and desire, every concept

is a tempting morsel of entrenchment,

intransience, disobedience –

bread for the mouth, wine for the throat.

High above the abyss, inching my way

towards whatever beckons from the other side,

I forego as best I might self-perpetuation,

the one exception being to pause continually

and remind myself I am not alone; not myself but Self. 

O child of God, if you were to bear alone salvation

nothing would be possible under its crush.

Original face

Original face                                                                                            

My original face – how I existed

before my detachment somehow

from the immaculate whole. 

Original face before I came to

some artificial conclusions in the eternal flow;

before I elected, if that’s what I did,

to go it alone; embellish, avoid, request

and oppose the sovereign, reigning rules.

God created Creation and I turned

obliquely aside somehow, for whatever

whim or reason and continue to justify myself

from behind the subsequent mask. 

O child of God, the illusion of self apparently

begets the multifarious illusions of existence.

Bamboo and rope

Bamboo and rope                                                                                   

You were silent without motive

but so many fine repercussions,

one being a palpable demonstration

of love as emanation

independent of articulation;

subtle in its strength; a shared universal,

indwelling presence and recognition.

Words are for the makeshift

bamboo and rope bridging of distances

while silent love reveals the illusion of distance,

an evolving response, a steady permeation

holding together the hope of the world.

O child of God, bite your tongue

even as you write this poem down.

The garden long abandoned

The garden long abandoned                                                                           

Adam and Eve embraced in God’s eternal moment.

Then somehow their serpentine selves

whispered into the uncritical, unaccustomed 

ears of each, duplicity and desire 

and the garden they left for the wilds – 

their preference being a sad facsimile of autonomy

over their fresh-faced obedience to the unfolding,

indiscriminate revelations of their Creator. 

The garden remains for us today to discover,

the eternal moment ever accessible, apparently;

invited to roam the verdant grounds of submission

within its whitened, sharp-pointed pales.

O child of God, the garden long abandoned

draws you irresistibly down the path toward home.

The river's flux

The river’s flux                                                                                          

We build our life as a settlement on the rocks

praying to be not uprooted and swept away.

Later, it’s more like a drenching in the river’s flux,

attached to our various buoyant debris

until comes the prompting to hold onto nothing

but the river running through our fingers,

abandoning the vestigial illusions of our sedentariness.

Ultimately letting go the idea entirely

of river life as we get a whiff    

of the beyond-conception, shoreless sea.

O child of God, your bread has been cast  

with little time left for its returning. 

Who in the world I am

Who in the world I am                                                                            

The veneer is peeling away,

the finish worn bare,

the glue stiffened into ineffectuality –

I’m coming apart at the seams.

Existence is running everywhere ahead

of my disheartened imagination,  

never for the life of me accepting the idea

of a truth forever beyond my grasp;

an ignorance that not only belongs to me

but which is inescapably who in the world I am.

O child of God, pray that such an imposed humility

might somehow lead to a deeper encounter.

Stage struck

Stage struck                                                                                             

We lifelong bear the terrible onus

of guilt and regret rather than let go

the egocentric notion of autonomy.

Enamored of the gallant figure we portray

to ourselves, living out the pleasure and triumph

of our fictional performances, we dutifully suffer

our roles also in their inevitable tragedies,

unwilling to entertain the notion of true vulnerability,

concede any of our imagined power

to the drama’s author and director.

Not when we have the starring role

and our stage name is at the top of the marquee.

O child of God, step off the footlight edge

and tumble into oblivion.

Your only chance

Your only chance                                                                                     

We crave choice having not asked

for birth or death; choosing not the realm

into which we are tossed

and must so inelegantly depart.

Left out of the big choices

we covet the petty ones,

gather them to our breasts,

refuse to share power

real or imagined and rankle

under the yoke of necessity.

Only self chooses, if choices are made,

choosing itself over and over

while all the genuine Masters

point to renunciation and surrender.

O child of God, your only chance at freedom

is the unremitting commitment to become a slave.

Apple-cheeked son

Apple-cheeked son                                                                                  

Perfect is the poem until the book is cracked,

meaning, structure and value imposed from without;

shut even for a moment and it returns

to its original apple-bright perfection –

unassailable unity, aptness and utility, 

where it has no value; doesn’t mean a thing. 

But seized and probed, quoted and exploited,

read assiduously between the lines,

its meaningless perfection is (only) seemingly

destroyed by the critical reader’s

inherent self-serving needs and fantasies,

leaving the poem then to wither like fruit

carelessly  tossed aside in the pristine, original

garden state of non-attachment.

O child of God, you are also the long lost

apple-cheeked son of Adam and Eve.

The land of Nod

The land of Nod                                                                                       

When the umbilical cord is cut --

our original attachment, not just to mother

but also Father, to any other --

the wound is so deep and great,

rarely does it heal over a lifetime.

Wandering the land of Nod

in hope of a poultice,

a concoction of ultimate remedy.

Over the aeons, we have gotten plastered

by every voodoo cure, herb and root,

mustard seed and devil’s club;

chased the old wives’ tales

around every bend and corner

and come up empty and hurting,

none the wiser and further

impaired deeper in the core

where it all begins and never leaves,

where the world’s cataplasm cannot reach.

So the dog chases its tail, the tale of human history,

unable it seems, to turn and face the truth

of our permanently attached oneness

and our hidden-in-plain-view non-existence.

O child of God, you and I are not we but One

means the notion of you must be abandoned.

Portrait

Portrait                                                                                                     

A charcoal portrait which represents me

as much as apparently anything else,

all down on paper in black and white;

stationary lines arc and wriggle,

twist and flow, crafting brows,

hairlines and facial features.

I’m the empty space, I suppose,

sketchy, binary, insinuated;

formed and shaped

by shades of black and gray.

The black is my ignorance – 

overwhelming; peripheral; defining.

The white is my emptiness

at center stage, the light’s facsimile.

I become visible where there is nothing,

allowing the backdrop to seep through.

Having mislocated myself, I cleave desperately

to the ignorance that appears to define me.

O child of God, why not lose yourself

in the vast benevolence of God?

(drawing by Rich Panico)

Of Thy peace

Of Thy peace                                                                                           

Make me an instrument of Thy peace,

o Lord, Saint Francis requested.

I often feel like an instrument.  Not of peace, 

but chaos, incongruity, surreality, 

like a delicate, precision instrument

wrongly calibrated from the start;

a faulty circuit, perhaps, a cracked cog;

a sprung spring, a warped wheel

throwing me chronically awry;

failing to read and measure correctly

the world around me; out of balance,

forever teetering, up and down, up and down.

Hard to be happy with constant failures;

hard not to worry, to be peaceful

with the invariably failed readings

of my inadequate, roughly self-adjusting equipment.

O child of God, if it was easy, what a lazy,

complacent scoundrel you would be!

I came across Christ

I came across Christ                                                                                

I came across Christ stripped of scriptural restraints;

uplifted in outstretched, agonized triumph.

I came across Christ as He double-crossed

the stone sepulcher; came across death,

across Truth in a walkabout that led to Jesus in India,

thousands of years from the sophistry,

the accumulated errors, the calcified ruins.  

I came across Christ, the palpable flesh and blood

hanged from a cross of the Carpenter’s own making,

His silent returning, His timely, masterful, merciful

descent, the ethereal made extant in the milieu

of our latest, chronic human lunacy and despair.

O child of God, follow the ancient thread that runs

from Zoroaster’s kushti to the sadra of Meher.

It's your bird

It’s your bird                                                                                              

A sailor somewhere taught the bird to curse.

Now there is nothing to be done,

profanity and earthiness

an integral stain on its vocabulary.

It can’t be unlearned

though it knows not a single definition.

No changing of feathers now;

no silencing cover up

or wringing it’s pretty green neck.

It’s your bird.  You can’t disown it.

But unhitch its tether; stop feeding it. 

The best you can, live with it

until the day it undertakes

through an open window

its flight long forgotten and among the heights

renounces its acquired, artificial ability to speak.

O child of God, neither parrot nor songbird

bears even the slightest resemblance to truth.

Boat the oars

Boat the oars                                                                                           

Boat the oars and bewildered lie

in your gently creaking casket;

view the flowering stars

without clarity or curiosity.

Shatter your sword. Give up

your one shot at redemption.

Abjure the bindings of every proposal. 

Store no provisions. 

Abandon all fantasies of rescue,

mercy; pardon and reward.

Invite your own demise without really knowing

what it might be like nor how to go about it,

solely as the next obedient, sequential phase,

your last wisp of a motive being

the release, as best you can,

completely, of fallacy and fear.

O child of God, hope for hopelessness.

Attempt utter passivity.

Jal's conviction

Jal’s conviction                                                                                       

Brother Jal requested early proof

You were Who You say You are.

Into his palm a hot coal dropped,

Jal’s conviction established

when in Your presence he felt no pain.

But we note the seared flesh,

the permanent damage, his agony

recurrent  in Your every absence.

That consequence, threat, cost keeps us

firmly in the twilight, limbo state of faith,  

paying Your status lip service, glibly eschewing

the proof, the frightening, possible damage

and anguish of taking into hand

the terrible truth of Who You and God really are.

O child of God, until truth is for its own sake sought,

the heart and mind will ever shy away.

Lovely winged words

Lovely winged words                                                                               

I’m no angel and this ain’t heaven.

Every human endeavor

beginning on this rough stretch –

the ocean’s edge of ignorance

where nothing grows; soon swept away

to what surely looks like dissolution and calamity. 

These poems of ignorance

scratched into the surface between tides

repeat the only message – all I have to say 

to my one potential overhead rescuer:  HELP!

Angels, perhaps, have their choice

of lovely winged words, singing

God’s praises; floating about heaven

but I’m no angel and this ain’t heaven.

O child of God, even your impudent, raucous cries,

the angels say, reach God as tunes of humility.

Knowing Him not

Knowing Him not                                                                                               

His crucifixion portends our own; His perfection,

the beams to which we are nailed –

the intuitive judgment we are unable

to wash our hands of, the cup of gall

brimful perfect in the holy grail.

For ages we have pretended we are not living

at cross-purposes, justifying our denials

and in the half-light knowing Him not. 

We glide along horizontal for a spell

upon this great convexity

until a crisis uprights us and we are scorned,

racked, nailed, pierced and tortured

by the obvious, unobfuscated truth

of Jesus, human perfection, purity and love.

O child of God, your Lord said:  I was this one,

I was that one and now I am Meher Baba.

Dipped in the baptistery

Dipped in the baptistery                                                                          

Dipped in the baptistery

or the slow pulling river,

a new creature born in Christ this day,

every day – a dropped hint, a rough image.

To the death required of every new birth,

the mind by its nature remains impervious.

The door to Life eternal is nailed shut

but it can be glimpsed through the keyhole.

What it takes, apparently, to enter,

is every mental construct,

scheme and worry to be left behind –

becoming pure spirit, finer than smoke,

a cipher, zephyr, light as light

while yet in the flesh,

to sift and strain freely through the open,

keyless aperture into Truth and Immortality.

O child of God, you are not the man you were

nor the man you are yet to become.

Stick horse

Stick horse                                                                                                         

I’m bound hands and feet.

Resistance binds me all the more.

Someone shared a photo,

holding it before my eyes –

me as a child on a stick horse galloping

like a pony under the great gray trees.

I wept so hard I thought

I might die but I didn’t.

Imagine somewhere, I am told, other than here;

somehow other than this trussed up existence.

I wonder what good it does, seeing

that I can’t move an eyelash

back towards innocence

nor forward towards liberation.

O child of God, it’s a long journey.

Some days are better than others.

Original grain

Original grain                                                                                           

I want to not know

any other way to be.

Cut my alternatives

down to zero, the original grain

good for me, good for me;

truth will out and out of that truth

a worn out humbleness, holiness revealed;

holy however imperfect, impure, impaired.

Dream if you must

of unbridled potential.

I want to not know

any other way to be,

rubbed down to the nub, the original grain

and go with that, go with that, go with that.

O child of God, Meher said God is found

where you are not.

Play dead

Play dead                                                                                                 

I’ve received the handoff, apparently,

deep in my own territory,

lumbering towards daylight

but they’re after me.

It’s all a mistake!

I don’t want to be here

but there it is

deep in my belly.

A shaky glimpse

of that impossibly distant goal;

lurching forward

until I’m roughly brought down,

one shrill, sharp whistle

blowing the play dead.

O child of God, existence, Meher Baba said,

is a game God began on a whim.

Rainy day

Rainy day                                                                                        

To never die, our selves desire.

Yet, mortality is illusion, per the Masters,

as are all such objects –

inherently erroneous.

Our one true deficiency

being the blot and blur

of our desiring self.

Its erasure is all we lack

in the trek from nowhere to nowhere.

Our timeless, motionless passage

an entertainment, a false relief

from God’s idle, eternal limbo –

a brief distraction

during a rainy day, shut-in afternoon.

O child of God, whimsicality and pretense

run the gamut of all existence.

Something better besides

Something better besides                                                                       

To seek the truth

is to covet what God knows.

To seek nothing

is to honor His secret.

To seek nothing is the ultimate faith.

A dearth of trust is truth-seeking,

the self-seeking of reward.

To seek nothing is to abandon

the paradigm of loss and gain,

truth being only what is now.

Nothing else to be known; unstorable,

untranslatable into knowledge.

Grasp at truth?  Or hold out simply

your God-issued begging bowl?

O child of God, truth is greater than illusion

but there’s still something better besides.

Asheville Music Sahavas - Brian Darnell sings his song Save me

God's fabled Illusion

God’s fabled Illusion                                                                              

Believing all this – that this is all there is –

invites indulgence, mischief

pushing up from a sweet but false core.

Having no outer authority nor awaiting reward,

no purpose other than to plow and plod

this earth of delight and sorrows ever

outside the fettered gate, gathering what fruit

we may and wild flowers to adorn our graves.

Believing not in this fabled Illusion

as being God’s game, is to invest in human illusion

with all its impotence and futility.

To believe in God’s Illusion

is to have faith in the preeminence

of Something more than all there is.

O child of God, the veils of this realm

flutter loosely among the twisted limbs of faith.

What daredevils learn

What daredevils learn                                                                             

No sense in fearing

what can’t be controlled.

Each purposeful, fearful moment

arising from our pseudo-autonomy,

our obsessive self-protection.

Fear is the essence of self.

Its absence is love.

Everything but the self is love!

Lose your fearful self and become fear’s absence.

Become love; become that Everything.

O child of God, shed the false; become the true.

Shed the self; become Love Itself.

Brian Darnell at the Asheville Music Sahavas - 8-14-15

It takes a death

It takes a death                                                                                        

It takes a death, often

to bring us down to earth,

to the dove’s heart a blow,

an arrow bestirring the dust,

a crucifixion of some sort,

whether on rough timbers

or the rotting beams of old bones;

grave dust laden and silhouetting

our common little crucifixes built humbly

upon the rickety bridges of nothingness.

But also revealing the genuinely endearing

human qualities of valor and gallantry –

for how else may God be brave but through us? 

Clearing the air long enough to glimpse: 

Everyone is continuously reaching for God,

for love, for the above ground truth of who we are.

O child of God, there’s nothing to seek;

nothing to find but the hidden One.

You gave me it

You gave me it

I owe You my life.
Not because You saved it -

You gave me it.  You gave me it,
without reason, that whimsical

original moment You got rolling
the whole ball of wax.

You gave me it the time
of my labored entrance,

emergence of my personal Illusion -
the world, self and space.

You gave me it, at last,
a purposeless task,

my empty hands time-heavy, to sculpt
Your likeness in the rough, raw clay.

O child of God, you were given this life
you hold now so perversely for ransom.

Walking shoes

Walking shoes                                                                                          

One day I’ll put on my walking shoes.

Maybe the house will burn down

or I’ll be tossed out into the street;

maybe it’ll be wanderlust, cabin fever.

I’ll become a pilgrim then – a lengthy,

arduous journey becoming my life

and what will be left of me?  Nothing more

towards the end than my walking shoes,

one foot wearily in front of the other,

bearing my soul towards the threshold

where sanctity dictates, of course,

the removal of these smelly, heavy, broken,

worn and dusty, sweat-stained,

mud-caked appurtenances,

my spirit laved and unshod to freely enter

the holy immaculate house of God.

O child of God, Moses was plainly told –

no man sees My face and lives.