Suspects at large

Suspects at large                                                                                         

Once upon the path, the purity of my motives

seemed of paramount importance, self

strictly monitored and swiftly brought to heel.

These days I see plainly my notions

of a motive afford me too much power

because I have no true center – 

beneath this mutable persona

there is only You and has been You all along.

It’s Your game within me and without.

I have no purity, no sincerity; no lack of such.

I have nothing on which to hang my hat.

And You, having only a Whim

have no lack, no cause or motive

to do what You do nor to be Who You are.

O child of God, there are no suspects

at large on which to pin a motive.

Your welcome mat

Your welcome mat

I beat my fists against Your door
until they were bruised and swollen.

I threw myself at it
until I collapsed on Your welcome mat.

Sometime in the night, You carried me inside.
Coddled me a bit before tossing me back out.

If exhaustion and desperation were sure methods
I would use them at every opportunity,

but often they bring not a sound,
not a flicker of light from Your dark house.

Other times, when I least expect it,
I find myself at Your table with wine and bread;

the path to Your house strewn with petals
from a thousand discarded garlands.

Some say I hold the key to Your door.
If so, I give it back to You, Lord.

I want to stand helpless before it,
appealing only to Your mercy.

I want Love to open that door.
I want that door to open upon a child, a lover,
          a humble slave.

O child of God, your Beloved determines the rules
          of the game.
Let your opening gambit be to stand before His door
          and knock.

                            (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Good clean fun

Good clean fun                                                                                        

You get to a point every now and then

where fun is just another waste of time –

and you don’t know how much

you have left (not near enough),

the house odds so utterly against you

only a miracle (call it grace)

could put you ahead of the game, get you

escorted out slightly woozy, flush with cash

and still you would be light years from home.

Good clean fun being one of the few

egalitarian pleasures given to us

on this planet, those who walk away from it

are deemed to have something inside

gone terribly awry. Or maybe

they just have other business to attend to,

a distant trumpet, dimly familiar, calling them back

to where in truth they might belong,

far from everything they ever once thought fun.

O child of God, you are an eternal being (per Meher).

How could you ever run out of time?

Back to the Garden

Back to the Garden

These are the heart tears, tinged with blood;
my Beloved knows every hidden grief.

I try to be strong for You
but we both know how crippled I am.

Won't You carry me for a ways?
That I might bury my face in Your throat.

That I might be held, body and soul, nearer to You.
O Beloved, stay within my sight - Your pink coat,
            sheer sadra, flowing hair.

Keep glancing over Your shoulder to make sure 
I am there - in earshot of Your handclap.

My heart, Lord, is Yours to range freely, until the day
the whole realm of my being lies under Your chappels.

O child of God, the heart is a mountainous country;
             beautiful valleys to cross.
Your Beloved walks it with you; back to the garden
              from which you came.
                               
                                 (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Nom-de-plume

Nom-de-plume                                                                     

I am the ribbon in the typewriter

(near as to anything else), the lead in the pencil,

ink in the pen, scattered pixels on the screen.

You write these poems.  You ask the questions,

provide the answers, make comments and observations.

The boundary between us then is vague,

shallow and negligible, only apparent

as I write it down, sit and wonder

where I’m being led, what will be asked

and said in a verse ironically tagged

with the nom-de-plume of my ignorance.  O Beloved! 

How You shake me up!  Rattle my bones!

O child of God, to write these poems is a breathless dip

into the depthless pool of His mystery.

Letting go the wheel

Letting go the wheel                                                                      

The crew seems to have staged a mutiny –

nothing much now requires my scrutiny,

my ship bound for I know not where.

I can’t rouse myself enough to care

so long as I have You in my sights

like the sky of stars above the harbor lights.

O Captain, time to yield my command.

Steer the course, steady my hand.

By Your timetable we’re now begone

as we sail into the limitless beyond

which seems familiar more and more

the farther we move away from shore.

O child of God, if only you could know and feel

the reinless freedom of letting go the wheel.

Jiminy Cricket

Jiminy Cricket                                                                        

Did you know Jiminy Cricket
is a euphemism for Jesus Christ?
  

We tend to make God and the Godman

convenient for ourselves – inconsequential,

lest faith becomes too burdensome,
getting in the way of our will and desire.

(Unless, of course, we hit a rough patch

and require His comfort and fortitude).

We make Him small enough to fit in our pocket,

ride upon our shoulders; imagine Him loyal, 

wise, the truth He utters (in a comical chirping voice)

a mere suggestion to take or leave

as through the titillating world we wend and weave,

nodding our sculpted wooden heads,

bearing our cumbersome, accumulated lies,
hoping to someday become real, untainted, true and alive!

And to one day find that diffident fellow
who we once were before we lost our way.

O child of God, every memorable story is one

of the soul’s search for the Father.

The path

The path                                                                       

The path offers no choice;

can’t be altered nor left behind –

more ourselves than our pulsing hearts,

the spines down our backs

or the mind’s endless torrents

of justifications and desires. 

We can’t ease warily down it

nor chart our way around it;

can’t rest mid-journey.

No wrong turns or blind alleys,

we’re pushed along pell-mell,

compelled and constrained,

never a wasted moment

the whole unimaginably protracted stretch.

No straying from our destinies, pilgrims,

or ourselves, the divine Companion,

the ever-presence of our Maker

in the only game there is.

O child of God, you cite the particulars

yet everything is One.

The sum of my parts

The sum of my parts                                                                         

I am not a white man

Alabama blue collar (retired)

father grandfather brother son.

I am You.  I am You.

I am not a Vedantist Christian Sufi

Buddhist lover of Meher Baba.

Not a novelist poet seeker songwriter.

I am You.  I am You.

Not a sinner beseecher intellectual eremite

introvert; not social political communal. 

Not myself nor the sum of my parts.

I am You.  I am You.

I have yet to realize the truth of Who I am

but my faith is in Your presence and Word –

We are not we but one.  I am not the living lie. 

I am the truth.  I am You.  I am You.

So now my prayer and daily duty is to ever

turn away, turn away from that which I am not

toward the truth of my Self, the truth of Us.

I am You.  I am You.

O child of God, in duality you have choice.

In Reality there is only the infinite One.

A tongueless bell

A tongueless bell                                                                                  

From these poems one might guess

I’m getting a bit desperate

but my Beloved skirts and shields me

from desperation while allowing

(apparently) my compulsions to momentously

flower and die; desires to wither by His grace

into a vapid, gray, tin ear sort of indetermination,

empty to me now as a tongueless bell. 

My interest no longer vested, turning

my holdings over to loved ones

to make their way through the maze

each according to their own karma.

Just bank-sitting now, paralyzed by indifference

except toward the One who quickens my pulse,

sharpens my ears, whets my thirst.  The one

in all the world who rings true.  Rings true.

O child of God, the path of renunciation, through His grace,

has been rendered smoother than you could ever have imagined.

The only one in the room

The only one in the room                                                                                     

In Your presence (and in their memory)

often they would say

You were the only one in the room.

Even Eruch (or some other) interpreting

your gestures or reading the board

became a disembodied voice

as they beheld You –

the essence of Love and Truth,

the only one in the room.

These latter days when we

are alone together so often,

let it be my meditation

to dwell upon You

until You are once more

the only one in the room,

leaving this illusory life,

myself and all the insistent,

suffering world behind.

O child of God, within and without, Meher said,

present and past, existent or imagined, God alone is real.

By candelight

By candlelight                                                        

By candlelight I search my self’s

nooks and crannies for the source of darkness.

How deep is myself?  It has no end

so long as I’m looking for it,

upheld in the ever deepening maw

by invisible threads always a bit beyond

the tip of my outstretched sword.

Down through the mountain gap,

I’ve entered now the redemptive ocean

but my walking stick keeps me afloat

and I’m kept on the inside dust-dry

by my impermeable skin.

I’ve tried silence and cessation as well,

huddled with myself in the expectant dark,

at His infinite mercy but it’s no good –

just another phony calculation,

inadequate as every other attempt

to lure the grace that admits no compulsion.

           

O child of God, that which would deliver you

you have no idea how to do.

In God we trust

In God we trust                                                                                         

The sea-knowledge of the onetime fisherman

drained his faith and sank Peter short

of reaching Jesus as he walked the pitching sea;

kept the others frightened aboard,

entreating their Savior, yet trusting instead

a makeshift construct to keep them afloat.

But it was Jesus who lifted Peter from the brine,

subdued the storm and brought the ship to shore.

In God we trust . . . there’s no one else –

save our treacherous selves.

Everything is true and congruent to the whole

except our separateness.  The one false thing

(never to be trusted) – our erroneous faith

in ourselves and who we take ourselves to be.

O child of God, the construct of the false self

is the source of an ocean of suffering.

Piscean

Piscean                                                                      

Here’s another poem

about the wind-swept sea –

its froth and spray, churn and tumble,

bitter dash upon the shore.

Another poem diving only

deep as I can hold my breath,

gather my fears, buck my buoyancy –

everything below that left unfathomed.

One day, per my Lord, I’ll become Piscean,

crafted and structured to bear the weight

and pressure of the depths.

When that happens, ages hence,

I’ll be known for my wide-eyed

oceanic silence, my lack of output –

no fingers to hold a pen or type a letter. 

No fleshy mechanism to form a word.

O child of God, when you come to know,

surely you’ll have nothing to say.