My red guitar

My red guitar
 
Life is a bridge, said Jesus
(per the Sufi tradition).
 
Yes, in the shape of an arch and I’m
coming down the far side of it,
 
no longer able to view my starting point.
Build not a house upon it, advised Jesus.
 
Yes, yes, my Lord.  Though, I am leaving behind
my wonderful progeny, family and friends,
 
a half dozen out-of-print books
nobody much wanted to read, my red guitar,
 
a handful of Baba songs others yet sing,
a blog with a thousand-plus poems.
 
The blog might endure near to forever
or be taken down tomorrow.
 
I don’t know how such things work.
It doesn’t matter (per Jesus and Meher Baba).
 
Whatever God has ordained
is okay by me.  I’ll be gone soon enough
 
and He’ll be the One
Who has to deal with it all.
 
O child of God, nothing much matters
in this fever-pitch dream but waking up from it. 

(photo from a video by Debbie Finch, 2015)

Yardsticks

Yardsticks
 
The Romans crucified Jesus,
hoisting Him up for the crowd  
 
to witness His agony upon the cross.
Meher Baba crucified Himself  
 
through a lifetime of seclusive, silent sacrifice;
each Christ surrendering passionately
 
to a gift and request from God;
each Christ obeying a Presence within,
 
beyond imagination and conception.
We measure ourselves and our world
 
in strictly human terms and thus
our yardsticks become our prison bars,
 
trapping us in the dream from which
we can never quite awaken.
 
O child of God, who do you think you are?
The Truth is within You, but not within your self.   

     

Air upon the reed

Air upon the reed
 
Music is made by force,
controlled and constricted –
 
sticks upon the drumhead,
hammer against the strings,
 
air upon the reed or trumpeted through
the twisted brass; the fleshy larynx.
 
Impermanence is the price we pay
to dance to the music –
 
notes evanescing in mid air
to make room for the ever-returning silence.
   
There is a price for every piper.
It’s the ticket to the carnival.
 
No hellos, pilgrim, without goodbyes.
Sergeant Daily shouted to His men
 
(in a moment of divine clarity)
Do you want to live forever?
 
How about you, o child?
Do you want to live forever?     

    

God woke up

God woke up      

This obsessive quest for Truth –

it’s about a return to unperturbability:
 

the state of God before He woke up.

Ignorance is a danger, a vulnerability;   

like illusion, duplicity; like change.

Truth is sanctuary.  It’s the search for God.
 

It’s a deep remembrance, a coming to grips,  

then coming to a dead halt.
 

It’s about battling the current

to reach that one, unassailable rock –
 

to become God-like – in timeless serenity.

To be God before God woke up.

O child, persevere in this improbable quest,

well aware of your own bone-deep audacity.

My current estrangement

My current estrangement
 
News update:  I’m not yet God-realized.
The reason is not my unbalanced sanskaras,
 
nor the realm of Illusion into which I was born;
not my lifelong identification with a false self,
 
not Maya or karma nor the endless
interference of my mind.
 
No, I must conclude, the one reason
for my current estrangement from God is . . . God –
 
Who could mitigate instantly every impediment
if it were a part of His Whim to do so,
 
not being bound by any promise or timetable,
limited by any method or doctrine,
 
nor is He under the thumb of fate or chance.
While it might have begun on a Whim,
 
God is the only One responsible
for this predicament in which we all find ourselves.
 
O child of God, write your verse – contemplate,
          bemoan and surmise.  
It seems to be the best way for you to focus on God. 

  

       

Drawn to the One

Drawn to the One
 
Inscrutability is the lure –
but it’s much more than curiosity.
 
After a lifetime of studying myself and others
and our disconcerting predictability,
 
I seek to abandon once and for all
this bi-polar, two-faced, duplicitous realm.
 
I’m drawn to the One –
Its Origin and Creator.
 
I’m drawn to the Self-proclaimers –
the Messengers and Mystics;
 
to Meher who announced Himself as God.
While whoever-it-is-I-am hangs in the balance,
 
much more than idle curiosity entices me –
there is a desperation tied in the knot
 
at the end of my rope – as I shimmy down it now
to confront the One and only Truth there is to know.
 
O child of God, a hidden urgency emanates    
from the prosaic ramblings of your verse.    

Lost sheep

Lost sheep
 
How did I become this lost sheep
who has drifted from the flock?
 
Why do I believe in a scenario
that can’t be put into words
 
and then consider its ineffability
to be proof of it’s Truth?
 
My mind wants to solve a mystery;
my heart wants to fade away.
 
I yearn for an end to this yearning,
not by satiation but by cessation.
 
End my self-consciousness, Lord,
by ending my self – leaving only consciousness.
 
O child of God, to ask for nothing
is to surrender to the Source of everything. 

No room for me

No room for me
 
Most of Your children pray
for deliverance and eternality;     
 
they ask for favors.  I seek the favor
of being quenched like a candle.
 
They imagine a heaven of fulfilled desires.
I can’t imagine a heaven wherein I exist
 
blissfully strolling its golden streets.
Please make, o Lord, irrefutable to my heart
 
what You have always declared
to be true – that You alone exist. 
 
No room for me anywhere
within Your infinite existence.
 
O child, you offer yourself to God –
but Meher said, God is where you are not.    

 

A Whimsical question

A Whimsical question
 
It all began (per Meher)
when God asked Himself 
 
(as there was no one else to query),
a Whimsical question and apparently
 
is still receiving an answer to Who am I? –
God, perhaps, getting a good look and feel
 
for Himself, Who in His dormant Oneness
had no such Witness to view His majesty.
 
And o what a multiplicity issued, 
and still yet issues, from that One response! 
 
Now, each of us, to transcend
the illusory answer of this faux duality –
 
are instructed to ask the same, original,
not-so-whimsical query of our own –
 
Who am I?  Until the answer arrives
irrefutably in the form of Divine Union.
 
O child of God, the journey of the drop soul
begins and ends with the same question.  

 

Prepare to exit

Prepare to exit
 
Die before you die, suggests the Sufis,
but who is it that dies and who remains?
 
I’m already a dead man, walking
the length of that long green mile.
 
My executioner accompanies me, stride for stride.
It’s about time to kiss the world goodbye.
 
She’s been beautiful, seductive and fickle –
and way more trouble than she’s worth.
 
I’ve cut her out of my will.
I’ve let go of everything but my self.
 
What does it take to abandon one’s self? 
Courage?  Deep despair? Or is it all Grace? 
 
The Sufis say death is not a door
to nothingness but to everything.
 
I pray daily for the karmic attainment
to intuit and obey their esoteric directives.
 
O child of God, prepare to exit this hurtling
ball of wax to make room for new blood.     

Getting the joke

Getting the joke
 
Each of us must leave
the soft, familiar darkness,
 
suffer the bloody push and squeeze, to enter
the noise, the motion, the color and light.
 
God makes us one way,
then insists we end up another.
 
Amidst my suffering
and all-pervasive vulnerability,
 
I’m left with little faith in divine benevolence,
whomsoever I choose to blame.
 
Floods, landslides, eruptions, tsunamis;
human violence, treachery and malice . . . .
 
I cling instead to my own unwieldy devices
to calculate a path through the world.
 
It’s my ignorance, God insists,  
that keeps me from getting the joke
 
and my suffering that makes the punchline
with its ultimate payoff worthwhile.
 
O child, play the hand God deals you.
It’s the only game in town.       

                   

Rest your weary bones

Rest your weary bones
 
Read this poem carefully,
though most of it is nonsense. 
 
Words are a trifle, anyway – flotsam in the stream.
The author, I am told, is a fictional character
 
who tends to use images that carry no weight.
It’s best to let him take it where he will,
 
if you should be kind enough
to grant him an audience.  
 
Born on the open sea, he wishes now
for a spot of sure-footing, 
 
no larger, mind you, than the size of a casket,
where the scenery changes only with the seasons.
 
O child of God, the Buddhists speak of no abiding self.
You search only for a place to rest your weary bones. 

A lifelong oddity

A lifelong oddity
 
Friends and relations explore the realm –
beaches, mountains; parks and trails;
 
venture onto foreign lands.  I remain
ensconced in my house, in my small town,
 
in my good old body while it’s still around.
They speed away on wheels and rails
 
to explore the abundance.  I explore the lack; 
my eyes turned backwards inside my head.
 
They enjoy.  I ponder what value  
joy has in this ephemerality.  
 
My friends and relations encourage me
to join in the fun; to be more like them.
 
I don’t know enough to explain it.
The best I can say is
 
I’m trying to hold myself still as possible
while the doctor removes the bullet.
 
O child of God, you are a lifelong oddity,
no longer pretending to be otherwise.   

White light

White light
 
These days, I tend to give people
the silent treatment
 
which is just as well,
since I can’t seem
 
to get a word in edgewise.
People ask for my opinion,
 
usually in order to give me theirs.
Then we sit around
 
and pat each other on the back,
or they give me the cold shoulder.
 
I hold my tongue
because I have no answers
 
(and neither do they).
So I offer them silence 
 
hoping it might be contagious.
I have it on good authority
 
that silence contains all the Truth we need,
the way white light contains all the colors.
 
O child of God, true silence is what you have left
after the long-sought end to neti, neti.   

                      

Junior partner

Junior partner
 
Years of being a junior partner
and I’ve yet to learn how
 
to be about my Father’s business;
to engage in that most holy of occupations –
 
abiding in the eternal now. 
Instead, I neglect my duties;
 
study the countdown clock,
while my thoughts roam
 
like a lost kite among the random winds
of memory and imagination.  
 
And once the work day’s done,
I leave it all at the office.
 
How much of my Father’s business
do I squander daily, weekly, yearly
 
in the habitual avoidance and neglect
of my God-given chores?
 
O child of God, everything has been taken into account,
including your inability to stay on task.      

              

Old fetishes

Old fetishes
 
The world (per Lao Tzu) is gained by daily loss,
loss upon loss until at last comes rest.
 
Neti, neti sounds a bit daunting in practice
but properly applied, it offers the great reward
 
of seeing through and past old fetishes,
abandoning hope after hope after hope,
 
as the thick tangle of each binding
becomes suddenly transparent
 
and then shatters into nothingness.
While little Truth is gained, multiple illusions
 
are detected and then discarded
and it feels like progress, gradual but certain –
 
an unburdening, one step in ten thousand  
nearer to emptiness, stillness and silence.
 
O child of God, subdue your tongue
but allow your pen to freely flow.    

              

My terra firma

My terra firma
 
My ship is churning in circles,
round and round, round and round.
 
The stars have shifted from their ancient
arrangements and I’m lost again.
 
Gusts of wind carry an old sea shanty,
the chorus chanting homeward bound.
 
Yes, my Lord, many times
I have turned my back on You
 
to venture out upon this watery realm
but You are my terra firma
 
to which I’ve always returned 
for stillness, solidity and refuge
 
in this vast and lonely,
storm-riddled expanse.
 
O child of God, the world is round and self-contained. 
You always end up where you first began.                    
 
(painting by Mark Hodges)

Wordless poetry

Wordless poetry
 
Shall I recite a wordless poem?
Just to give my jaw a break.
 
Composed of heart mumbles,
murmurs, cadences and rhythms.
 
The world begs for salvation
but all we ever get is eloquence,
 
pomposity – towering shelves of books,
volumes and volumes of explanations.
 
No wonder my Lord was silent.
After reading the fine print,
 
I’ve learned that Truth doesn’t enter
the heart through the eyes or ears. 
  
It is not explained by the mouth,
nor realized in the brain.
 
So let us idle our useless tongues
and pray for a poem composed
 
of the Master’s Silent Word, the one
we have been ever longing to hear.
 
O child of God, words are never more
than inert descriptions of the evanescent Truth.  

      

A drop in the bucket

A drop in the bucket
 
I’m being asked for my identification – Who me?
I’m a bit player in some grandiose production,
 
a walking heartache, passing through
a shit storm on my way to Beulah Land.
 
My thoughts are a broken record;
my intended destination that distant blue range. 
 
My poetry is turning into a diary
and who wants to indulge in that confusion?
 
Who I am is a drop in the bucket. 
A drop in the ocean, shifting with the tides. 
 
A drop of perplexity
and, by faith, of divinity.
 
O child of God, you are being prompted,
in your latter years, to trek through the wilds.   

The Storyteller

The Storyteller
 
This poem is momentous . . .
and momentary – like each of our lives.
 
Just a series of breaths . . . and yet, and yet.
Just words . . . and yet, and yet.
 
O Issa! Your dewdrop is all there is!
Ephemeral, yet eternally ephemeral.
 
Baba said, You and I are one –
separate as Beloved and lover;
 
one as His Whim unfolding every moment.
In the beginning was the Word
 
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God . . .
 
and the Word is God. 
The Storyteller is the Story.
 
O child of God, you are a cast member
and also the only one in the audience.