Love and dust

Love and dust                                                                                            
 
Such a lost cause, I must believe
You’ve taken me up, perhaps,
 
for another lifetime’s sake,
though I still entertain romantic thoughts,
 
even at this late date, of my flesh becoming
love and dust at Your feet.
 
A bloodless scarecrow, foreign in the field;
where a spine should be, a rough-timbered rood,
 
a weathered, rummaged exterior,
heart of straw, whose dream is to become
 
a torch visible for miles but unseen now
where I am braced in the autumn chill,
 
late-night, lonely vale; my essence
then wind-scattered, such as it is,
 
blending ash with dust, to cling lightly
to Your striding, clean, golden-threaded hem
 
as You make Your way home
from the fields of Your labor.
 
O child of God, may your romanticism
lure you into the arms of His Reality.

The End of Days

The End of Days                                                                                       
 
Some pitch this era as the End of Days.
Perhaps, we should rejoice then
 
for our impending liberation and Union.
God’s consciousness (of Himself)
 
is only able to come full flower 
with the end of human existence –
 
not one bubble left of the ignorance
that encases each drop soul;
 
our sole purpose fulfilled
by the culmination of the Original Whim.
 
The End of Days is forever day –
the end of nights breaking up
 
into illusory intervals of darkness
the One continuous Light.
 
O child of God, the end of the world
is the threshold of the Infinite-eternal.

Adapting the words of Shunryu Suzuki

Adapting the words of Shunryu Suzuki –                                                       
 
God is not something to find.
God is something you are.
 
The Way is not something to figure out.
The Way is something to express.
 
Let’s sit down here in the cypress shade.
In this quiet dust take up our instruments.
 
And we will ask no questions;
take no measurements
 
but learn to play and sing –
not to express ourselves but to express God.
 
O child of God, Meher said you are looking
for something you have never lost.

Only for love

Only for love                                                                                               

When your life’s journey is revealed 
as endurance unto death,
 
no goal to attain nor puzzle to solve,
no authority to exert; no means
 
of varying the process, then you come
to the right understanding –
 
you are forever at the mercy of God’s Whim
with no reason to exist
 
except as a transitional, sacrificial medium
for God’s holy awakening to Himself.
 
No choice for you, o lover,
but to keep on living, enduring,
 
until you are able to gladly,
lovingly die forever for God.
 
O child of God, the truth of yourself
requires you to live only for love.

 

Turned on the same lathe

Turned on the same lathe                                                                                    
 
Jesus died to show us how.
Died for God’s sake as well as ours. 
 
His sacrifice was to God’s awakening.
His death was the gift of example.
   
Our death and sacrifice is turned
on the same lathe and for the same purpose
 
(the Mystics and scriptures avow) –
so that God may be made manifest.
 
Jesus endured the cross to show us how
the death of ourselves as creatures
 
is our gift to God and a prelude
to our resurrection into eternality.
 
O child of God, Meher said,
we must live and die for God.

Deathbed

Deathbed                                                                                                 
 
Sort of poetry by then, her juxtapositions
sans sequences, contexts, continuums,
 
sans tenses, pertinence, conventional wisdom;
a dark, intuitive truth, poetically incoherent beauty
 
plumbing a deeper level if (loved) one
only knew how to listen,
 
but one never does;   
wrapped up in who she thought she was
 
and should have been,
tried earnestly to be or not to be;
 
exhausting after a while the listener,
telling her last minute truth
 
from the bed of a murmuring brook
and really what is there left to say or hear
 
after a lifetime of chatter and love,
dutiful endeavor, compulsive volatility?
 
That was her poetry, too, largely incoherent
to everyone around even herself
 
and yet, as I have suggested,
strangely brave, beautiful and worthy.
 
O child of God, how better to greet the mystery
than with humble bewilderment and incoherence?

Your infinite unknowing

Your infinite unknowing                                                                                     
 
Written with a crook’d finger, this poem
in the dust of the earth.  Perhaps, you’ll read it
 
before wind and rain, foot traffic
render it illegible (as if it never existed).
 
What you read will become a part
of the vast illusion of your knowledge;
 
something you need to hear, though it’s not quite true.
If you pass it by unread, it will become
 
a vital component of your infinite unknowing –
of your karma and just who in illusion you are.
 
I keep writing these poems as if I know what to say;
they’ve become a lockstep part of my gait,
 
my own illusory knowledge,
but I feel I’m being pulled slowly to a halt,
 
my small, urgent utterings a non-voice
joining the great silence of Meher.
 
O child of God, everything you say
is inherently false, yet it’s all part of God’s game.

The wages of sin

The wages of sin                                                                                        
 
There is no creature not destined
for the supreme goal, said my Lord.
 
What then of the wages of sin –
if each sequential death leads merely
 
to yet another roll of the dice, a foothold
and a hand up (until we wear out death itself)?
 
The wages of sin is apparently
and always has been death-in-life –
 
an aeons-length estrangement
from the Living Water until we develop
 
enough thirst and world-weariness
to prompt and enable renunciation.
 
Sin (and its wages) being the nothingness
we trade in for the Everything.
 
O child of God, the wages of sin are a necessary
imbursement toward the Self’s eventual revelation.

A life of pretense

A life of pretense                                                                                       
 
I have begun a life of pretense,
knowing now that I do not know,
 
can never know anything outside myself,
walking the tightrope of another kind of truth,
 
the One where there is nothing to hold onto.
Emerging from one dream only to find the elephant
 
as a whole is as false as its severed parts. 
A crucial life of pretense – any surmised
 
firsthand knowledge a deeper plunge into darkness,
a separation from the Essence.
 
Any whiff of certainty a sort of enemy
but not the real enemy
 
there being no real enemy.
O how words fail the poor poet!
 
O child of God, Meher was silent –
not for Himself but for his lovers.

A thoughtless prayer

A thoughtless prayer                                                                                 
 
Every prayer reaches God (we are told)
but rarely is God moved by mere thought
 
and words to descend upon a lover
and make a meeting place within the heart.     
 
Yet, a thoughtless prayer might be proffered,
not in a closet but perhaps in a blind spot,
 
where the mind’s enticements simply echo
emptily – deep in the heart-cave
 
where there’s no outside reception,
a soft spot in the stone, within a cloud
 
of unknowing, where the one-pointed
silence of non-existence reigns
 
and there, may a soul pray without words
for a descent, an interfusion (by His grace),
 
a cry to God that arrives where no thought
can reach, only love, only love, only love.
 
O child of God, the most effective prayer
is inexpressible longing.

Still you dance

Still you dance                                                                                           
 
I live like a lover of God,
having emulated those who came before –
 
sat with the mandali, read the teachings,
studied the lives of saints, the advents of the Christ.
 
I say the reverent, right things,
practice the approved methods, yet, still,
 
I withhold myself from Truth;
seeking always outwardly, outwardly –
 
to others, to others – to show me how to live,
unwilling to hear the Truth of my own soul,
 
told in God’s voice; afraid of His intentions;
afraid to be found wanting, then lost
 
as any human soul ever has been,
estranged from the Source, abandoned
 
to this bleak and terrifying world,
beyond His authority; insufficient to His Will.
 
O child of God, boxed into a corner,
still you dance around the truth.

Near and ever

Near and ever   

                                                                                          

Call to Me (whispered my Beloved)
in your bravest, unencumbered moments
 
with the same intensity
as your deepest misery,
 
devoid of artifice or deceit,
as when you unabashedly clamor
 
in your pain for solace, mercy, rescue.
It is your coming to Me that counts –
 
that heart-throat quality of intimacy,
honesty and need to which I respond.
 
And in that balance, that loyalty,
that silence, you will find Me
 
near and ever with you
as I have always been.
 
O child of God, be it from fear or love,
He responds to your every heartfelt attempt.

 

There is a crushing

There is a crushing                                                                                              
 
How do I escape suffering, Lord, 
fear, ignorance and death?  
 
And He answers me, though I am reluctant to hear. 
There’s a crushing and a transfiguration.
 
Grain becomes bread; grapes become wine;
then upon our tongues and in our throats,
 
we take the body and blood of Christ.  
There’s no rescue
 
(praise God for that, He tells me),
only endurance and culmination;
 
the end of hope and then, an awakening;
only a trust in the necessity and the outcome;
 
in the worth of the pearl.  Faith in love,
in the Maker and Father, in the process.
 
All shall be well (He revealed to one lover, centuries ago).
All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.
 
O child of God, request not rescue and escape
but solace, strength and conviction instead.

In the parlor

In the parlor   

          

These poems I once considered
as knocks upon Your door.
 
Now I see them in a different light –
it’s You Who are outside my house,
 
this poetry mere intimations from You
of where I stand:  in the parlor –
 
isolated, harbored, locked away,
not out of ignorance but by habit and fear. 
 
I’ve built myself a sturdy house
on this whirling, careering planet
 
with a weakness for its safety and comfort,
my presumed authority within its impregnable walls.
 
Now the blessings of this poetry are revealed
to be all the greater – patient, loving entreaties
 
for Your child to abandon his earthly abode
and fly into his Father’s open arms.
 
O child of God, rise from your cowering
to answer His persistent knocks.

Last ditch effort

Last ditch effort                                                                                         
 
The future dims, the past contracts,
the (ever) present gets roomier, as I elbow out
 
the inessentials – the excitements,
as well as loneliness, boredom and angst,
 
to make room for remembrance and contemplation;
less time but more space, more silence within
 
the contours of each moment.
The self shrunk into the shape of its cell,
 
not much out there really to sink its teeth into,
a duller palate and palette,
 
pared down to only that which might aid
in my (God-willing) wholehearted,
 
last ditch effort to find not the truth so much
as freedom from the false; shouting my Beloved’s name,
 
my empty cup rattling the timeless,
temporal bones of my cage.
 
O child of God, obedience becomes remembrance
in a quixotic attempt at one-pointed devotion. 

Our shielding cloaks

Our shielding cloaks                                                                                  
 
The North Wind spied a traveler (as per Aesop)
on the path below and challenged the Sun –
 
which one could remove the man’s cloak?
The Wind raged bitterly but the man
 
clutched his garments all the tighter.
When the Sun’s rays warmed him 
 
the cloak was quickly shed. 
We seek to remove the mantles
 
of our arrogance and hostility
(when they shame us)
 
with rebuke and self-scorn
but that cold bitterness will never
 
rid us of our weaknesses – 
we cling all the more.
 
What’s required is the warmth
and light of divine love,
 
caressing us so tenderly, healing so entirely,
we effortlessly shed, in its bountifulness,
 
our shielding cloaks, down to our bare-boned,
humbled, brave and grateful selves.
 
O child of God, what is lacking within you
is the magnanimity of divine love.

(painting by Charlie Gard'ner)

Afraid of the dark

Afraid of the dark                                                                                               
 
Become as a child, said my Father –
(trusting my small, lost hand in His).
 
But as a child, my inner life was
far more brightly illumined than the outer
 
and I was afraid of the dark.  Trust of my Father,
or any other, I soon abandoned to rely solely
 
upon my own devices, probing the unknown
(when I had to) with intellect and imagination,
 
constant evaluation, each step measured
against my small, comfortable interior world.
 
Now I am invited by my Father into a realm
without boundaries, benchmarks, mileposts, 
 
where all my personal probes and safeguards fail
and once more I am a child paralyzed
 
with fear and bewilderment, warily
studying my Father’s outstretched hand.
 
O child of God, it’s not the unknown He offers,
merely the veiled and unremembered.

The small self passing

The small self passing                                                                                     
 
There’s a narrow walking down through woods road
to a river and whatever is met on that walking down
 
is left forever behind.  At the river, the road keeps going, 
always new and never returning. It’s only illusion,
 
so the sutras and discourses explain, illusion
that makes us believe in the small self passing,
 
who owns the body that walks the road;
only the provisional construct and thoroughgoing habit
 
gathered over lifetimes, sustained by ignorance and fear
and the divine plan and o, my fellow pilgrims!
 
What a relief it would be, would it not?
a joyous, destined liberation
 
to walk that road all the way down
to the never-ending, never-returning river
 
where everything met is passed through
and left forever neatly, cleanly behind.
 
O child of God, remove thyself,
said Hafiz, for thou art the veil.

By His grace

By His grace                                                                                              
 
Imagine moving through this realm
with the love of Christ in you.
 
Fear and sorrow never to gain a foothold.
Malice nor evil to overtake.  No misgivings –
 
just a preternatural joy, the peace
which passes all understanding, tempered,
 
if any at all, by a loving kindness of such proportions
that all boundaries dissolve into the ether.
 
Surrender is when God changes you into Him.
You and the Christ in you
 
moving then through the world,
the world being yet again overcome.
 
O child of God, write what is in your heart.
Anything is possible by His grace.

Every Adam

Every Adam                                                                                                       
 
For a barley grain (goes the story),
Adam sold his birthright and yet
 
Meher said nothing was lost or gained
in the transaction.  No fall from grace.
 
Nothing changed but Adam’s perspective –
of God, himself and his world,
 
God being always God; truth being ever true. 
Adam being God’s irrefutable heir,
 
suddenly flushed from the starting gate
by whim and necessity to be given another
 
farther-down-the-road perspective.  
Until Adam at last, through error,
 
estrangement and limitation, through contrast
and comparison, loss, grief and impotence,
 
is fully able to grasp the import
and measure of His Godhood.
 
O child of God, every Adam lacks only
the particulars of his relationship with his Maker.

 

True-blue friend

True-blue friend                                                                                       
 
I’m your One true-blue friend, said my Lord,
ever heartily engaged in orchestrating
 
your absolute, irrevocable demise.  Trust me.
I know what I’m doing undermining
 
your every aspiration; rattling your certitude,
exasperating every comfortable position,
 
challenging every concept you embrace.
You will never know the truth, My friend,
 
until you utterly despair of ever knowing the truth.
Don’t worry. I will not be swayed from My task
 
of personally pulling down the pillars
of your every carefully constructed temple.
 
O child of God, surrender is not
ultimate attainment but ultimate faith.

Sweet cajoling

Sweet cajoling                                                                                            
 
It’s never been much of a mystery, this poetry;
short on ambiguity, esotericism, obfuscation.
 
Very little sentimentality or frivolity.
Heavy-handed as a poet; heavy-handed as a seeker,
 
let me now cease my loud, unseemly protestations
and merely lean against Your door;
 
let my heart do the pleading, its subtle rhythm,
humble ardor catching Your ears. 
 
The world is at my back,
having lost its coherence. 
 
Its music no longer enchants,
no longer intrigues, no longer frightens,
 
as my pressing heart and ear listen and thirst
for the perennial beauty of Your ancient silence.
 
O child of God, whisper your sweet cajoling. 
He is nearer than your own breath.

Your handiwork

Your handiwork                                                                                        
 
Sew me up, my open wounds,
if it be Your will; staunch the flow,
 
so others, not repulsed, might come near enough
to view Your handiwork and marvel –
 
see me emptied out; You shiningly
apparent through my threadbare coat.
 
Now that You’ve changed me inwardly,
darkness to light; bitterness to balm,
 
let it manifest outwardly, if it be Your will,
yet only to glorify You.  Let them witness
 
my candle dwindling, the flame You lit
yielding to the one light of Your elemental sun.
 
O child of God, bow at His feet
never to rise again.

The dorje of time

The dorje of time                                                                                               
 
A mandala by the holy monks intricately created –
a colored sand circle to enjoy briefly and admire,
 
a tool for devotion, the learning of truth,
beauty and impermanence, to be after a time,
 
(with a dorje) ritually destroyed, ceremoniously offered
back to the ever-running river.  O Lord!
 
You created the Mandali – a beautiful circle
made of clay, intricately crafted, who became dust
 
at Your feet and for a time left afterwards
to be briefly enjoyed and admired, to be learned from –
 
true devotion, the impermanence of illusion
and the cling-to permanence of Your silent, profound truth.
 
O child of God, the living, vital beauty of the Mandali
has been reverently erased by the dorje of time and fate.