Collected poems

Collected poems                                                                                               

How pathetic must sound my poems

to those in the fire!  How sad

my quavering approach to the precipice’s edge.

Words of love with no love there, just a discussion,

a hypothesis, no substance or fire.

Not whispering endearments but interrogations;

cold, analytic chatter.

Those in the fire long in sympathy

for my ultimate defeat –

collected poems, accumulated pages

torn and crushed, fed

into the eagerly awaiting flames.

O child of God, don’t let words withhold you

from becoming silent ash and dust.

To cull and glean

To cull and glean                                                                                               

Jesus performed miracles. 

Curious that word performed,

its theatrical connotation,

a mesmerized crowd attracted

and then love let loose to cull and glean

those with ears to hear;

to winnow out those drawn to power,

to avoidance of the necessity

of suffering and surrender.

Only one miracle, claimed my Lord –

to alter the human heart into submission,

the switch from power to love.

O child of God, put this realm behind you

by seeking the unparalleled majesty of love.

2 Paintings by Joe DiSabatino

Out of the Blue

Life-Is-But-A-Dream 

The Awakener

The Awakener                                                                                       

I know well by now Your method – sleep deprivation;

the slapping of cheeks, prodding of ribs,

shouting my name every time I close my eyes,

the inexorable grilling, the demanding of answers  

from the dim reaches of the past,

from the darkness out of which I have emerged, 

wanting the information, the information, the information –

commanding me to divulge Who I am and Who sent me.

O child of God, the ultimate infinite and eternal

requires more than soft gloves and sweetened tea.

The illusion of forward momentum

The illusion of forward momentum                                                                 

Understanding has no meaning, said my Lord. 

Perhaps, I misunderstood,

refusing to lie down quietly in the fallow field

or step in any direction

without an established reason,

while the ground shifts steadily under my feet

creating the illusion of forward momentum.

Love has meaning, said my Lord. 

What meaning has Love? 

Understanding has no meaning. 

But I don’t understand –

Obedience has more meaning. 

What meaning has obedience?

Understanding has no meaning.  

But I don’t understand –

Surrender has most meaning. 

What meaning has surrender?

Understanding has no meaning.

O child of God, understanding will not release you

from the terror that separates you from God.

My partaking

My partaking

They're singing songs of love
but not for me.  I'm outside the queue;

in the Tomb bowing; quavering;
down the hill I wander, a sightseer.

Awaiting my partaking, my partaking.
I don't get it.  A smidgen shy,

a hovering or the opposite -
too broad, perfunctory for love

to grasp, penetrate, permeate;
too awkward and ashamed

to breathe it all in and let it all out.
Nothing is going to shake me

down to my alien roots, from the daze
and back in the States, the usual

empty-handed clasp and regimen.
I don't get it, the way I was hoping

to find that magic penetration, participation
at Meherabad in the gathering and dispersal,

in the rosy, broken open Tomb
of the Holy Assimilator.

O child of God, spurn and love, impatience and longing,
are sometimes, in the great scheme, indistinguishable.

Streets without love

Streets without love                                                                                  

Hold to My damaan, Meher said;

for those times when there’s left

not a shred of anything else within reach;

a damaan of straw, one last hope to grasp

where He dare not refuse;

when you need to

unburden your chest of the weighty

function and duty of self;

when you can’t possibly weave your way

alone any farther through streets without love;

a damaan with which to dry tears,

clean slates, bind wounds;

to yield a small sheer rectangle –

the fluttering white flag of surrender.

O child of God, hold to His damaan

until you are ready to unhand everything.

Your kindly indulgence

Your kindly indulgence                                                                                    

At your suggestion, I've been calling on You –

entreaty, praise, repetition of Your name

all the while longing for a love

to seal my lips, steal my tongue,

leave me rifled and speechless

by the side of the road.

Every now and then, I require

a good rough and tumble.

Feel like I need a dressing down,

escorted from the building,

certain aspects, presumptions

reoriented or removed entirely.

O Lord, I await 

Your kindly indulgence.

O child of God, you ignore your Beloved

for long periods and then crave His attention.

The genuine few

The genuine few

Never having had the courage
to face my loneliness alone,

to hold steady, determine
and heed my one true voice,

o the heartaches I might have avoided,
the love I might have drawn

from the genuine few.  Impurity
is not perfection that never was

but the incomplete detail
serving the perfect whole.

Inner contradictions manifest
in outer circumstances

and no amount of shame
saves us one unnecessary heartache

nor draws one needlessly
lonely lover to our side.

O child of God, the height of courage
is to quietly bear all imperfections.

What gives?

What gives?                                                                                               

What gives to prompt this rare unclenching

in heart and head, nebulous soul of its fierce

and vigilant regard for the vulnerable self?

What clicks into place or jumps out of gear,

what wobbles in an untoward fashion

to override our chronic and ubiquitous fear

and allow magnanimity and mercy to emerge

from equanimity’s usual, hard-shelled nub? 

What gives, unravels and dismantles

a bit more of the structural integrity of the self,

bringing us all the nearer to collapse?

Everyone should ask, until the need for such

inquiries atrophies, our giving made at last innocent

and inherent  as the instinctual, self-protective

behavior it has replaced, as our conscious obedience

evolves incrementally into complete surrender.

O child of God, how you prattle about the path

you are being inexorably swept along.

Slice of life

Slice of life

Impossibly brief and thin the slice
in which moment to moment resides the self.

Existence being persistence -
nothing incontinuous exists,

the self completely wedged in, unable
to invade or inhabit either past or future -

(each sparked only in the vital present).
The self lives (so to speak) at all times

with the evidence of its non-existence,
the great truth our veils are meant to hide,

of which the self is ultimately and utterly terrified,
bluffing its way through each successive lifetime.

Existence exists and that Existence,
when we get religion, we call God.

Yet to think, speak or act with God in mind
is to gain the false perspective,

to lose God yet again in the labyrinths
of time, duality and our own self-fixated illusions.

O child of God, slice your life so thin
it becomes transparent and imperceptible.