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
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
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
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.
The
fallacy of two
There
are two sides to every story.
Per
Lao Tzu, the One
giving
rise to the two, the three
and
then the ten thousand.
On
a hot summer’s day, the drive-in’s
wide
screen is high and empty; pure white.
Sundown
will bring
multitudinous
images,
color,
movement and sound
projected
from One creative source.
Reality
is One – momentary and eternal,
projected
through the lens of the Now.
Illusion
is the passing show – ephemeral,
enigmatic
and ever-changing.
O
child of God, Truth is One. One is
Truth.
Illusion is created
by the fallacy of two.
A
returning
Time
to go home, I pray; time to go
where
there is no time and, perhaps,
no
imaginable sort of home.
This
dream of creation
is
fraying at the edges, bursting at the seams.
Even
the Perfect Ones Who we faithfully entreat
for
comfort and aid are not free
from
human fates and frailties –
the
sorrow, illness, pain and death of this realm,
each
One dutifully bound to return, per schedule,
to
where it all begins . . . ends and begins again.
Round
and round, up and down –
a
returning, always a returning,
to
what must be (we surmise) a perfect stillness,
an
unassailable serenity, an eternal slumber
in
a realm where time dares not enter.
O
child of God, you have no choice
but to trust the
benevolence of your Creator.
A
hillbilly song
I’m
performing my usual juggling act –
one
red apple, a bowling pin and a chainsaw
while
walking a tightrope far above
the
three rings, the caged beasts
and
the roaring crowd and I wonder –
will
anyone request a hillbilly song?
Mightn’t
it help some fallen soul?
Provide
perhaps a ray of hope?
Baba
said to become helpless and hopeless
but
I don’t think He meant it thisaway.
I
live in a little trailer behind the big top
and
all I can do is sweep out
its
daily accumulations as I spy them
through
these age-beclouded eyes.
O
child of God, someone in the crowd
is requesting Angel
Band and Sweet Beulah Land.
God
in human form
The
Avatar has come and gone
and
how thrilling is His advent
and
the promise that He never leaves!
As
we trudge ever onward
in
this here-and-now New Life
with
no Saviour to our rescue,
there
being (per Meher) no one to save,
only
deeply-sleeping dreamers
yet
to be awakened. Our daily companion
is
now, instead, our Elder Brother
Who
is God in human form
with
emphasis on His helplessness,
sharing
in every step our vulnerability,
our
grief and joy, triumphs and mortal travails.
O
child, the New Life is your awareness
of God’s presence in
every ordinary moment.
The
thoughtful mind
Take
no thought for the morrow,
advised
Saint Matthew,
the
apostle’s counsel being to dwell
only
in this one fearless moment.
The
past – merely the wisp of a dream
within
a dream within a dream
and
tomorrow but a great imagining.
Only
the now approaches
any
sort of truth or utility, emerging
hot
and fresh from God’s creation,
where
the thoughtful mind,
(made
of scraps and whimsies),
operates
only as a hovering,
haunting,
ineffectual ghost.
O
child of God, where shall you find refuge?
Even the eternal now (per
Meher) is an illusion.
Let
Him whirl you
Oh!
my vertiginous mind –
on
slippery footing yet soldiering on
through
this odd, upheaving world.
I
try to anchor my thoughts
around
an image of my Beloved
but
there are so many angles to Him.
He’s
always changing.
And
He has declared that His physical form
is
merely a coat donned for His work.
So
my mind continues to spin, in order to
sync
up with the world, leaving me
tipsy,
perplexed and slightly nauseous.
O
child of God, embrace your Beloved
and let Him whirl you
lightly across the floor.
My
warning bell
I’m
folded up again; trying to settle
my
roving mind . . . but it proves unruly,
intolerant
of such a betrayal.
My
companion from the first –
as
best I remember – my strategist,
instigator,
my warning bell,
my
mentor and tormentor,
my
fellow conspirator.
Hard
to abandon so constant a companion
and
face the Void alone. But maybe
I
have mistaken the mind’s
persistent
intrusions and admonitions
for my very self, for who I am, drowning out
the silent companionship of
my one true Friend
in
their ongoing and ages-old battle
for
my attention, my allegiance, my love.
O
child of God, if the Friend is one companion
and your mind is another,
where and who are you?
My
two coppers
My
words ring hollow if they have not
the
hope and heart I intended
when
I first strung them together.
They
are my lepta, the two coppers
I
drop into the coffer; the best I can offer.
My
pockets are empty of all else;
a
trifle yes, but through God’s grace,
a
blessing, perhaps, somewhere to someone
and
a worthy offering to my Lord –
a
richness that has blessed already
this
impoverished poet who first received
and
then shared them with the world.
O
child of God, offering your poems to the Beloved
is the return of your
gift to the Giver.
Bear
your cross
There
is an ethereal beauty
in
the quiet carrying of a burden
(all
burdens being God-given).
In
the submission of every Christ
bearing
His cross up Calvary’s hill,
in
the outstretched arms, crown of thorns,
the
driven spikes, there manifests
over
time an unearthly majesty, dignity
and
ultimate ecstasy, a holy acquittal
from
shame, culpability, exile and fear.
O
child of God, to meekly bear your cross
is to surrender to
your eternal liberation.
For
what it is worth
No
time like the present, they say.
In
fact, per the Mystics,
there
is no time but the present.
The
Eternal Now likened
to
a still frame in the aperture of a projector,
preceded
and followed by
a
continual series of still frames
that
produce the Illusion
of
motion, space and change,
while
answering God’s
whimsical
query, Who am I?
The
answer is thus provided
through
an illusory witness and experiencer
who
escapes (only apparently)
the
timeless inertia and omnipresence of God’s Original
(per
Meher) unconscious state of absolute Oneness.
O
child of God, after so many years, still you seek
to explicate the
Mystery rather than embrace it.
A
plumb dead stop
Call
me Ishmael these days. Cleaving uneasily
to
a coffin lid upon these high, rolling seas.
A
mighty joke, said Meher, is life.
Share
it with me, Lord.
I
could use a good laugh.
These
stage lights have been on for ages
and
I’m yearning now for a darkness
as
I move toward another drowning
which
seems little more than a change of clothes.
Meanwhile,
I plead for annihilation,
but
all I ever get is death.
This
spinning planet appeared first to be fun,
but
then the motion sickness set in.
A
long dose of nothingness, just about now,
would
seem to be what the doctor ordered –
the
pendulum coming to a plumb dead stop.
O
child, you can always depend upon God,
but not to exempt you
from your destiny.
Zero-sum
game
I’m
a born again Christian –
born
again and again and again,
body
to body and moment to moment
so
that no one is ever at home.
Brahma,
Vishnu, Shiva have hold of me
as
my essence flits and flickers
through
the momentary transitions
of
creation, preservation and destruction.
My
body is subject to the physical laws
but
(per Meher) I’m ever as young
as
the moment at hand and ever beyond
the
reach of Life-in-Illusion’s zero-sum game.
O
child of God, you are not the body nor the mind,
not this or that. You
are (per Meher) Truth eternal.
Little
white lies
This
cold, familiar world seems so hardy,
but
don’t you believe it –
it’s
but a fragile, shimmering dream,
liable
to disappear at any moment.
To
grasp the gist of this poem,
read
between the lines
after
the words have petered out.
Their
white bleakness is the message,
the
emptiness that frames our lives,
the
comfort we take in the familiar
as
we chatter casually among ourselves
from
our various foxholes.
Take
care, o child, take care. Let not the world
entangle you in the
web of its little white lies.
My
childhood summers
Another
day marked off on the calendar
as
if it really does have a name and number,
my
life counting down now
in
months and days rather than years.
Death
has always been an abstract to me,
an
absence rather than a occurrence
and
these days I summon up
my
childhood summers
when
time was measured
only
in daylight or darkness
and
I reconstruct as best I can
that
guileless childhood abandon,
moving
untouched through time,
unobservant
of its inexorable passing.
O
child of God, Brian Darnell shall one day die.
You, on the other
hand, will live forever.
Bring
forth the ardor
I
recite a love poem for my Lord –
more
of a plea for love
than
a profession of it –
a
love I hope to one day possess.
He
knows of it already,
before
this thick-tongued,
faint-of-heart
suitor can deliver it.
The
words I choose – in fact, any words at all –
are
not an agency of truth
but
of a wish and a hope and a pledge
to
allow Him as best I might
to
enter every hidden recess of my being,
to
bring forth the ardor dormant there, the depths
of
which I have never had the courage to plumb.
O
child of God, the love you crave (per Meher)
comes from within,
awaiting only its retrieval.
(painting by Mark Hodges)
Waiting
for me
How
patient You are! Waiting for me to
discover
and
uncover my fallacies and misconceptions,
my
inconsistencies and hypocrisies
without
belaboring the point
that
understanding has no meaning.
Waiting
for me to shed my infatuations –
with
myself and others. Ah, indeed!
How
hardy is my foolishness!
And
my mind a galloping steed!
All
these years of Your serenading
and
I have yet to become a rose –
to
flourish and adorn, to acquiesce and allow.
O
child of God, if only you were as enamored of Love
as you are of your persistent,
disputatious inquiries.
The
melody of a flute
Last
night I lay in bed
listening
to my heartbeat.
I
heard the sound of one hand clapping.
Above
my roof, a roll of thunder.
Or
was it my stomach rumbling?
Do
I want to live in the body God gave me,
or
continue to roam
the
phantasmagoric realm of my mind?
My
Lord’s hand upon the pen,
my
every poem emerges
from
His Word and His silence,
a
psalm of praise
from
me to Him
and
from Him to me.
O
child of God, obsessively you wander the wilds,
pursuing the windswept
melody of a flute.
