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.