Between the pales

Between the pales                                                                                      

In Adam’s fall, we sinned all

goes the puritan primer

and with Adam’s stumble

fell we in with Lucifer

in our willful snub of God,

unable every moment since

to flex our knees, bend

our spines stiff with pride.

Adam having mistook a grain of barley

for a harvest crop of bread and inebriant

and with the bite of an apple learned

first hand the haunting of insatiable need.

O child of God, to reenter the garden, become 

wraith-like and lithe enough to slip between the pales.

The sole barrier

The sole barrier                                                                                        

Everything is allegorical, metaphorical,

true and not true at the same time

but if you spend too much on the seeming –

its enchantment and beauty,

the aptness of it, its sturm und drang,

its marvelous (self-created) synchronicity,

you’ll find yourself once again mired

in the enthralling labyrinths and blind alleys

of the mind, the maze, the path, the dream. 

And it’s a wondrous dream –

far beyond our ability to fathom it,

with little profit in trying –

save to reach the end of effort.

Just imagine (but not too desperately)

the truth behind it,

the truth of the One

Who conjured up all this seeming . . .

out of nothing.  For us, for Himself. 

O child of God, you remain (say the mystics)

the sole barrier between semblance and truth.

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.

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.

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.

Tilting the scales

Tilting the scales                                                                         

If you’re looking to me for answers,

I’ve run shy.

If you’re looking for questions

I can loan you some

you’ve never even considered.

Most people view them

as a lack of faith

but I see them as confirmation. 

Who would question while not believing

there are answers to be had?

They may be legitimate targets for admonition

but a display of apostasy, they are not. 

I feel unbalanced, though.

So many questions and so few answers

tilting the scales, skewing the data,

listing my somber progression

ominously to one side.  It tends to

make me go around in circles.

O child of God, when will you stop dealing

in words, intellect and superficial knowledge?

My silent partner

My silent partner                                                                                      

Mercy, my spiritual master; compassion,

my steady companion; immediate truth,

my bottom line; love, my silent partner

instructing me, amidst the roaring senses,

the worldly provocation and gyrations

to be aware of that small, still Presence

that counters every bluster,

every colorful, odious suggestion

indicating I am one hopelessly alone,

utterly lost traveler, without home or safe harbor. 

Love, my silent partner, to turn to in faith

and truth and find the way, comforted,

subtly led from this land of shadows

into the bright, perfect Light.

O child of God, listen with all your heart

to the wisdom of your silent partner.

Climb down

Climb down                                                                                               

Don’t worry, be happy

or to put it another way –

climb down from the crow’s nest,

its queasy, exaggerated susceptibility

to every roll and sway.

Secure yourself below

the water line, go for broke,

all or nothing, ready to drown.

The head is a precarious perch,

a tiny bucket of fear

with a false perspective.

Climb down

into the heart, fearless heart;

rest in the ship’s deep, hollow, oak-ribbed hold.

O child of God, worry is a lack –

of heart-sense and faith in God.

Love comes first

Love comes first               

Love overflowing;

love enough for everyone.

Jesus feeding the multitudes

loaves and fishes –  

love enough for everyone,

plenty left over, and still yet more.

You showed me such a love once.

You filled my basket.  Overflowing.

I should have spent the rest of my life

hovering near that love – undistracted,

plumbing its depths, bringing it to the surface,

ladling it out, breaking and sharing such a love

as You are, as You bring,

as You have given.

Love should come first –

to become a feeder, a slaker of thirst,

to become an aperture

through which Your light might shine.

O child of God, Meher keeps you

as near to the flame as you can stand.

The matter of Love

The matter of Love       

You replaced First Cause with Original Whim,

karma’s tripwire rendered moot

where only Love matters (saith the Lord)!

Birds made of sky, fish of ocean, songs of silence,

trees of clay like Adam the walking tree

or the walking Fish, the tree-bearing Jesus

stumbling up Calvary Who became

the Silent Master on the Hill,

revivifying every bird feather, tree leaf, song note,

fish scales luminous, iridescent, transparent

with the One and only sacred, vibrant

and ubiquitous matter of Love.

O child of God, your words are birds escaping

through an broken-barred window in the holiness.

The rose thorny lane

The rose thorny lane                                                                                

Stop and smell the roses, the pundits say

but shall we keep God waiting

down the rose thorny lane another day?

With death approaching from behind,

ever overtaking us among its dusty, fragrant shadows,

this path we’ve tread countless times -

and are we not yet sated

by its alluring splendor and bouquet?  

Praise the Creator not creation;

enjoy and savor its showy riches

from the safe and lofty lap

of His holy, immaculate perspective.

Fly to His arms, then wander up the lane

hand in hand, with all the time in the world.

O child of God, remind yourself of Mehera’s labor

in the gently scented gardens of Meherazad.

Impartiality

Impartiality                                                                                    

He preferred His juice lukewarm;

a glass of water, even an occasional

soda pop – room temperature.

And windows tightly shut

in the most sweltering weather.  O lovers!

This should make us weep hot tears –

these small preferences,

for the delicately broken

human being who held them

and Who in the large,

went about the business of service,

sacrifice and surrender, without a thought

to self or pleasure, comfort or ease,

placing Himself under His own weighty thumb,

meeting His own austere requirements –

the Epitome of servitude and mastery.

One with karma, without waver,

equivocation, preference or doubt.

O child of God, true humility is found

in the impartiality of the great Godman.

Appomattox

Appomattox                                                                                          

I die daily, said Paul. 

Dynamic is the process,

suggested Eruch, surrender chosen freely,

repeatedly at every critical juncture.

Yes, but surely eventually strung

like an endless rosary beyond

the clutches of time and self.

A seamless union, a tightly clasped fetter;

acquiescence trussed up

and delivered entire.

I want to surrender like Lee at Appomattox, 

stripped of rank and authority,

at the mercy of forces I have long opposed,

my world in dissolution and ruin, broken sword,

blood and smoke, silence, cessation,

the last battle, last death over,

a reuniting, the cleansing wind above

unfurling our common flag.

O child of God, you want this war to be done;

to rest in the arms of peace.

Even to ask

Even to ask                                                                                             

Prayer is the start of detente,

a tête-à-tête, a turning away

from the cheap, the shoddy;

away from the opportunist, the scoundrel within,

drawing nearer to the purity of the Source.

But, comes the day, o petitioner, 

when any request or suggestion

is a grave faux pas,

an attempted undermining,

a sundering of faith. 

Even to ask for virtue or liberation;

even to ask for the sake of others. 

Even to ask . . . is a violation

of the most delicate, flyweight, 

prayerful and paper-thin arrangements

between illusion and Truth,

lover and God;

separating the rare truly faithful 

from the scheming, frightened,

manipulative crowd.

O child of God, your intended destination?

You can’t get there from here.

A two-cent remark

A two-cent remark                                                                                   

Have faith in nothing of this world, said the old man,

except the efficacy of having faith in nothing.

When were you ever invited by God

to make a choice, conjecture,

display a preference, submit a two-cent remark

regarding His most holy and only apparent gift?

Out of ignorance comes our assumptions,

self-assurances, our unauthorized permissions

(in spite of ceaseless clues to the contrary),

to change any of the whole inviolate order

of things laid bare by our Creator

from the beginning of time,

for our own limited, fleeting comfort,

convenience, elucidation and desire. 

O child of God, from whence comes

the notion the world is yours to change?

Various apples

Various apples                                                                                        

We desire in our human love

only the best for the various

apples of our eyes,

our clutched-to-the-breast beloveds.

Our love’s great failing –

the truth that we know not exactly

what is best and what constitutes

further entanglement on a field

so sad and vast as time and creation;

what is pure and what is tainted

from hearts sorely cleaved and teeming;

sorely cleaved and teeming.

Love Divine, on the contrary, said my Lord,

is not originated but bestowed (divinely);

wants nothing, has no center, no motive,

no standpoint, no hub, beginning in the light

of non-existence and never venturing

into the shadowy realms of the illusory self.

O child of God, wish your loved ones the best.

You are so very far removed from Love Divine.

Love itself

Love Itself    

Everyone is a Baba lover.

Most don’t know the phrase

or use the name.  Those who do,

even the ones who consider Him

mad or a fraud, self-indulgent, evil,

love Him and serve Him

in their own limited and inimitable way –

can’t we imagine this? 

Can’t we grant Him this much?

Everyone loves God, don’t they? 

Even those who’ve given up

or never knew or profess not to believe.

What else can love be (and from whence)?

What other object can love be for

in hearts that long, the force

that propels all life, all humanity

towards beauty, mercy, perfection, bliss?

Towards an ultimate quenching of loneliness?

What else can that love be for . . . but for God? 

The ineliminable and ubiquitous God and for Love Itself.

O child of God, everyone is a Baba lover,

each in his own limited and inimitable way.

On love's behalf

On love’s behalf                                                                                     

The Godman lives on love’s behalf

and thereby couples the disparities

of flesh and spirit, truth and self.

A lifetime of service and repair,

the epitome of mercy, the Godman

appears on love’s behalf

and as is His habit, never looks back,

never looks up from His task.

Arrives, survives and departs on love’s behalf,

relying upon the resounding chords

of love’s lilting, everlasting, ultimate

presence and essence to carry the day,

to preserve and persevere, to convey

His holy mission and message

to every hungry cell and soul, every being 

in God’s vast and illusory repertoire.

O child of God, liberation involves the lover,

also, living at last only on love’s behalf.

Paper dolls

Paper dolls                                                                                                        

Our lives are spent cutting out paper dolls –

the piecemeal extracted from the whole.

Our hearts set, gazes fixed

upon various relative, handsome,

scissored and brightly-colored figures

we prop up and manage;

with whom we play act for our own exculpation,

amusement and gratification

while discarding the ravaged sheets

from which they are cut, the origin     

and background, field and root,

never to humbly let things lie

unhanded and dormant in their contextual truth

but take up our scissors, our scissors,

again and again, to wreak havoc

upon this paper-thin, flimsy, fluttering world.

O child of God, how improbable and illusory

is the human predicament and personality.

An emphatic breach

An emphatic breach                                                                                 

In the pouring rain, the old man said,

I do not get wet and one day,

not as theory or concept

but, in a clear, emphatic breach,

I answered, of course, of course.

Somewhere from a dry, rustling field

where he stood and spoke,

the words reached me

over thirty years but more –

over centuries and continents,

oceans and dynasties –

a crack of the door,

the stones of the temple

and the lush gardens behind the walls;

the crumbling old myths.

The earth shook, dislodged a stone,

the shift of an ancient foundation

upon which everything I am

and seem to be, everything

I know and seem to know, rests.

O child of God, the flowers of the garden

unfold strictly according to God’s schedule.

His child

His child                                                                                                     

Go into a closet to pray, advised Jesus.

O if I could lock myself in a closet

and not come out again! 

A narrow, soundproof cell,

too dark to use my eyes, nothing in reach

to afford or encourage escape,

everything at last falling away –

cleverness, confidence, obstinacy,

even faith and the last rays of hope.

Cornered and abandoned,

stripped of the extraneous,

down to the raw truth of myself,

nowhere to turn to but my Maker.

No one to be but His child.

There and then, might I be able

to articulate a closing prayer –

one that asks for nothing and receives

whatever it is, (whatever it is!) God has to give.

O child of God, it’s your worldly involvement 

that keeps you from going home.

That still clear center

That clear still center                                                                                

If I had my way, I’d never come back

to another lifetime of sin and ignorance,

causing pain and harm to myself and others.

But that’s no virtue –

not wanting to cause suffering.  

It’s just another desire – the root of suffering,

the barrier to surrender and non-return. 

In the realm of illusion

where might pure virtue be found?

Purity has nothing to do with perfection.

It has to do, apparently, with getting off the wheel

onto that clear still center even as

the rest of the world shakes and gyres,

rattles and quakes, wavers around you.

If I had my way, I’d never come back

but then – it’s never been about me having my way.

O child of God, round and round and round you go,

too drunk to find your way off the dance floor.

                            

The madman of Chu

The madman of Chu                                                                                  

No one seems to know, said Kieh Yu

(the madman of Chu),

how useful it is to be useless.

But You have given some

in this intimate age a hint of that knowledge,

leaving them vertiginous, empty and ruined.

Reducing others to a flood of tears –  

mooning over You for weeks

while the world rattles on without them.

Still others allowed a refuge

carved out inwardly, letting the waves break

soundlessly upon the deserted shore.

And there were those sanctified ones

who served You madly,

their every effort made useless

by the surrender of self, 

their every dedicated outcome

determined solely by Your will and reign.

O child of God, pray your every poem one day

becomes a useless, holy endeavor.

Sixty-nine years (a birthday poem)

Sixty-nine years (a birthday poem)

Sixty-nine years and I’m no wiser.

I’ve learned nothing along the way.

Scenes have passed.  Some illusions

have been worn through (maybe)

but none concerning the truth. 

Sixty-nine years and I’ve grown no older. 

Have not changed a whit

from the day I was born. 

Immutable and eternal, nothing

has touched me and nothing ever will. 

Truth doesn’t come from experience

nor accumulation of knowledge.

There are no lessons to learn. 

No growth or maturation to attain. 

This much I’ve learned but this much

has nothing to do with the truth that is me.

O child of God, when will you awaken?

Meher said He did not come to teach. 

The truth of illusion

The truth of illusion                                                                                     

Moths circle the lamp, hover

and hurtle, attracted to the flame

but, also driven from the midst

of their dark surroundings.

You reach God

when you come to the end of yourself.

You get wise.  It’s the truth of illusion

that shatters, that jades;

the truth of illusion that bores, sates,

disheartens, disenchants.

You rush toward God when God

outshines His surroundings.

When the dark has gobbled you up –

bones and blood.

You rush and flail

and hurl yourself toward the light

when you see there’s nothing

in the darkness worth living for.

O child of God, turn from illusion

toward the way, the truth, the light.

God's gift

God’s gift                                                                                               

Enjoy this moment God has made

knowing full well

you have no right to joy –

not having earned it,

not owning it nor having created it.

It’s a momentary gift you can never possess,

slipping invariably through your fingers.

Endure the suffering moments, too, God gives,

knowing you do not own suffering

and have not earned it.  Knowing it too shall pass.

We pray for joy while the teachings

emphasize the efficacy of suffering.

But God gives neither joy nor pain; God’s gift is life –

the undivided experience and awareness of it –

the ecstasy and horror, beauty and bitterness,

pride and grief, the gentility and brutality of it all.

O child of God, to accept the gift of God,

accept the total, eternal ownership of the Giver.

Orb of the heart

Orb of the heart                                                                                        

When the center of the sky was earth,

the movements of planets and stars

seemed erratic; calculations difficult and complex.

The sun took over and flights clicked

more easily into predictable patterns.

And when the center of the sky

became a distant, conjectured,

long-ago point of origin, the earth,

stars and planets began to interact

in calculable and precise ways,

parts of an infinite, well-oiled machine.

As long as that blue, stone cold

orb of the heart is taken to be

the center of the universe,

every outward movement,

every body spinning beyond it

will be judged as erratic and arbitrary,

inexplicable and incalculable.

O child of God, the truth makes things

o-so-much-more simple and clear.

Just another route

Just another route     

                                                                                          

You and I are on a first name basis.

I’ve grown up with this intimacy –

praying as a child each night

for You to take and keep my soul,

allaying with Your name

my fear of death and harm.

Yesterday, I heard part of a speech

by a famous crusading atheist.

He’s made God the center of his life.

No one gets around You.

Everything is a part of Your work.

Every sin, every blasphemy, every ignorance

as well as every revelation and act of compassion

brings us closer to You. 

God, by the way, is the only One

with the infinite breadth of knowledge

required to know for certain

whether or not God exists.

O child of God, running from the Everything

is just another route into His arms.

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.

Chortle

Chortle                                                                                                 

Somewhere between a chuckle and a snort –

this word invented by Lewis Carroll.

No one quite sure of the wordsmith’s

original intended meaning and pronunciation.

(He let the word speak for itself),

it’s precise nomenclature

in the common vernacular

summarily up for grabs.

Creation began

with the invention of a Word

(perhaps, an immortal chortle)

entering into the vernacular

and no one’s quite sure now

of its original meaning and intent . . .

as endlessly in a cacophony of fear and desire

we assert, opine, question and debate,

while the Wordsmith looks on,

lips pursed behind an upraised finger

in ambiguous silence,

letting the Word speak for Itself.

O child of God, Meher said, ‘Life is a jest’ –

surely worthy of a chuckle and a snort.

Horse-hoofed knowledge

Horse-hoofed knowledge

A lifetime of wandering here and there

among the trees looking for the forest.

A plastic sequin on a cheap gown –

such it is that snags the mind –

spangles not only worthless but pernicious

for they divert us from the real and the true.

At ocean’s shore the galloping horse stumbles,

unable to enter deeply where it can neither

stand nor swim or float; rear or whinny –

do anything other than drown

in wild, flaring confusion.  We cling

to the shore and the horse that got us there. 

Numerous lifetimes it takes to know

we do not know, can never know

anything of the ocean, anything of where

the horse is a foreign, ineffectual creature;

anything but the dust-ridden,

horse-hoofed knowledge

that keeps us ever on the scent, ever

following one false trail after another.

O child of God, the mind reigns in duality

but can never leave itself to reach beyond.

The unfolding answer

The unfolding answer                                                                           

A man of deep faith, just as a man

without faith, asks nothing of God.

Life itself to such a man 

is the unfolding answer to all prayers.

Pain, fright is there – but not anxiety;

loss but not grief;

failure without disappointment;

solitude without loneliness;

death (we are told) without termination.

Perched on the tip of the bow,

a man of faith is serenely poised

to receive, to pass along

only what he’s given; responsible

for nothing but vigilance and acquiescence.

He gets the big picture, the ocean view,

recognizes the nuances, though as yet,

is unable to grasp the details.

Less than a hair’s breadth (the Masters say),

separates heaven from earth –

it requires an unhanding,

an atrophy of judgment,

a relinquishment of presumption.

O child of God, life itself to a man of faith

is the unfolding answer to all prayers.

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.

Once the spigot runs dry

Once the spigot runs dry                                                                                     

Nary an island of truth, apparently,

in this vast sea of illusion

to set a solid foot upon.

Deep in my cups, I drown

in my ignorance and isolation,

cling to sentimentalities, spout

my judgments and objections  . . .

but once the spigot runs dry, I sober up,

fold up my deficiencies, release

every prejudice I hold like paper lanterns

onto the flowing currents 

and settle best I might under the stars

into a quiet receptivity

(which has nothing at all

to do with knowledge or perception)

of a truth so encompassing, so indisputable,

its every tongueless expression and persuasion

leaves no room for any possibility of refutation.

O child of God, the one sweet spot of truth

in the whole universe is stowed away inside your chest.

Toward a graveyard silence

Toward a graveyard silence                                                   

Even in a choir these days you can always tell

which throat is mine – it’s the one

shot through with an arrow

(like the piercing of a heart)

thick with blood, sounding less and less true,

moving toward a graveyard silence.

I’m tired of singing, of telling, advocating,

arguing.  Only my mind still wants to argue.

My hands are done with finger-pointing;

my heart weary of rebuttals.

(To disagree is so . . . disagreeable!)

My eyes want only to read –

read the hearts of others and find them free

of any blame or error on my account.

O child of God, how peaceful it is when your heart

goes for a long, brave ride and your mind takes a backseat.

The heart's tender

The heart’s tender                                                                                  

Not for the fainthearted, said my Lord – love,

borne of strength and true understanding.

Acts of compassion absent of submission

and faith are tainted by fear,

anger and sanctimony; the false assumption

of duty and authority.  The way of love is not

to become tenderhearted 

but to become the heart’s tender –

where God is met and looked after,

keeping down the head;

not to be pulled aside, bogged down,

intimidated by the sentiments

and enticements (good and evil) of the world.

Keeping one’s self to one’s Self –

the only authentic relationship, leading to

the birth of peace and the truth of action.

O child of God, the best you can do

for the world is turn inward.

Child of God

Child of God                                                                                            

An identity and a relationship;

a way of addressing myself

in the last couplet; not so bold

as inserting my name

into the body of the poem.

It was chosen for me,

its truth revealed a thousand poems later – 

this settled upon child of God

being who I really am – all I really am

and who I must of my own accord

solely become, eschewing all other

false, ephemeral and relative identities –

poet, author, mortal man;

father, grandfather, brother, son;

husband, lover, citizen, friend . . .

pared down to this one identity,

this one naked fundamental –

my relationship with my Creator.

O child of God, pray for the dissolution
of all identities and relationships.

The rags of sham

The rags of sham                                                                                    

Fake news – a term long ago coined by my Lord.

Articles chosen from a newspaper (say, perhaps,

the Times of India) read aloud  

by a mandali member and Meher Baba

would comment on them.  Bogus news, He called it.

A routine way to dissolve anger, fear and discord

in the purity of His blessed assurance. 

Our news today comes from the world’s elite –

the experts, anchors, pundits, pollsters, professors;

the New York Times, the Washington Post,

Fox News, NPR, the Networks, the wire services.

Still it is the same rags of sham –

fake news – for the very same reasons

declared so then by Meher Baba:

Because of the utter gross ignorance, the bias

and incapacity, the fundamental misconceptions

of the worldly people who gather,

read, write, distribute and advocate it.

O child of God, the only all-knowing source of truth

is your Real Self.  All else is bogus news.

A bee in my bonnet

A bee in my bonnet                                                                        

Ever since I heard of that honey-laden hive,

I’ve had a bee in my bonnet,

a brain-itch that can’t be scratched.

A nagging thought that I must have

forgotten something vital – misplaced a key,

unable to remember where I left it.

Thus, have I been for my life’s better part

unable to pay the world my full attention –

reluctant to make its necessary choices.

I don’t believe in choices anymore.

I believe in karma and compulsion –  

to obey or ignore their urgencies.

The Avatar of the age has come

to guide, instill and accentuate

yet another compulsion – the blood-deep

burning need to know who I really am.

O child of God, follow that bee

back to the honey in the rock.