The fate that awaits you

The fate that awaits you
 
Once you see the truth,
there’s no turning back.
 
You might hover a while
near the old haunts,
 
going through the motions,
acting out your appointed role
 
before you confront yourself
and the truth that there is no sweetness left,
 
not because the well is dry
but because the truth is different
 
and deeper than you ever could have imagined
and it compels you now to faithfully allow
 
a change in direction, a change in yourself,
to remain obediently true to the fate that awaits you.
 
O child of God, the real search begins when first you sense
the depths of yourself and the inevitability of the goal. 

(drawing by Rich Panico)

   
 

The scriptures of the heart

The scriptures of the heart
 
Standing on the carousel,
having ditched my golden steed,
 
looking outward at the spinning world,
(as usual) expounding to the crowd. 
 
My incoherence met with glazed eyes, quizzical brows.
Every written word I once practiced
 
and preached as gospel, I now profess
to be beyond my ken, beyond my authority to espouse.  
 
Each time-worn ritual, sacred icon striking me now
as rudimentary, external and conceptual;
 
the preparatory substitute for a genuine, 
interior communion and fealty.  Maybe it’s humility
 
that has stolen my tongue or perhaps, futility,
as round and round I go, amidst the glaring lights,
 
the distant shouts and clamor of the midway –  
the hawkers, the carnies and the rubes.
 
O child of God, turn your back on this gaudy world
and endeavor to read the scriptures of the heart.

The Reality of which we are made

The Reality of which we are made
 
God alone is real (said my Lord).
Which means . . . we are not.
 
Wrinkles in the holy fabric are we;
waves upon the sea; clouds upon the ether.
 
We are the wind-shape of the dunes,
a burl in the bark; a hitch in the stream;
 
a speck of dust on the mirrored glass. 
How holy!  How precious and precise are we!  

Like the Reality
of which we are made.
 
O child of God, what is the worth of that
          which comes and goes?
Only its connection to the Everlasting.

The usual suspects

The usual suspects
 
My youth corrupted by the usual suspects;
the sprouting of tainted seeds already there.
 
I long ago stepped out into the weather,
trudged from past to present,
 
from fear to faith, from who I am
to Whom God has made and is yet making,
 
kenning with more clarity the transformation
and crediting more precisely from Whom it comes.
 
What does it matter if the poet
can’t find the proper descriptions
 
rummaging through his time-worn journals?
Truth is not found on ink-stained paper.
 
This poetry is assembled
one image at a time
 
as the light above blinks on and off;
faithfully transcribed until my pen runs out of ink.
 
O child of God, what a hodgepodge
of images from an age-encumbered mind.  

Getting wise

Getting wise 

People are getting wise to me now. 
Something a charlatan always dreads.  
 
My isolation and eccentricity and the reasons for it,
more evident, even to myself.  It doesn’t matter, does it? 
 
Nothing matters (said my Lord) but love for God. 
Nothing matters but that which I scantily possess,
 
too little to hoard, none to share and no way to obtain.
So I bow helplessly, (not quite hopelessly) before my Lord,
 
renouncing with throat and tongue, (if not mind and heart)
the very things I sought out of fear when I began this quest,
 
substituting now acquiescence for effort;
faith for hope; fealty for love.
 
O child of God, pledge your life to the one true Friend
not as an investment but as His irrefutable due.

The remote promise

The remote promise                                                                                    

It doesn’t take much to become dust.

I mean, it’s not like you start out a hero.

You have not to yield anything of real value.

Not a sacrifice really but the overseeing of a collapse.

It takes obstinacy, mind you, an obsessive vigilance;

persistence through constant failure;

a disheartening familiarity

with your own depthless inadequacy;

faith in the remote promise of a distant victory

constructed upon utter defeat.      

But what else is there to do when your Beloved

rouses in you the first inchoate stirrings of humility?

When He speaks of love and you discover your poverty,

your heart aloof and non-comprehending?  

What else to do with the shame from a lifetime

of duplicity, mistrust and a dearth of pity?

What else to do when your effort might bring

a brief smile, a nod of the head from your Lord

while you both wait for the one miracle

He promised He has come to perform?

O child of God, what else on God’s green earth

has more value than the dust gathered at Meher’s feet?

The crust of armor

The crust of armor                                                                                             

After laying down the sword

the self must unhand its shield,

climb from its crust of armor naked and doomed.

Surrender comes not only when the soldier

finds his cause hopelessly lost

but also unworthy, his rebellion needless,

his allegiances distorted, his submission righteous,

his adversary, in truth, his liberator.

And when the armor is abandoned

(per the mystics) the self proves to be

the armor itself – superfluous, illusory,

enclosing an ancient and ineffectual ghost.

O child of God, surrender is impossible without

the solace and beguilement of the Saviour.

The end of my eternity

The end of my eternity

Since my Beloved told me I am an eternal being,
much of the old urgency has fallen away.
 
Since I stopped believing in myself,
ceased rattling my karmic chains,
 
played my hunch on the law of must,
time matters little to me now.
 
Wherever it is I’m bound, God will get around to it,
my arrival as precisely orchestrated as the flight of stars.
 
How could it be otherwise under His exacting command?
If I’ve misjudged my position there will be
 
an abundance of time to correct the error.
What’s a few more centuries plastered on
 
to the end of my eternity?
Or an additional allotment
 
of illusory binding and suffering
before my fated release into the infinite sea of bliss?
 
O child of God, time is naught when the heart
becomes fixed upon the eternal now.

 (drawing by Rich Panico)

The old P.C.

The old P.C.
 
You invited me to walk with You
up the hill to the Tomb.
 
I’ve spent the last thirty years
trying to lace up my shoes.
 
It’s difficult when you’re drunk
on the world’s wine
 
and the ground keeps
shifting under your feet.
 
I’ve lost my bearings again
beneath an endless blue sky
 
as the hot winds rattle the wilted neems.
The cool stone images
 
of the Samadhi’s interior beckon me,
but I am heat-weary and sleepy
 
for my next nap and the sunlight
is dazzling beyond the shaded eaves.
 
O child of God, how infinitely patient is the Master,
waiting you out on the veranda of the old P.C.  

(Painting by Mark Hodges)

     

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.

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.

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.

At cycle's end

At cycle’s end                                                                                                  

You even put it into prayer –
the plea for God to help us
 
hold fast to Your damaan
when, as You predicted,
 
things got rough at cycle’s end
and how easy it would be  
 
to lose our grip in the upheaval
of a world turned right side up.
 
And God has provided us, in silent aid and answer,
with no one and nothing else to cling to but You.
 
O child, God has backed you into a corner
so you might face Him at last.

A horse-hooved knowledge

Horse-hooved 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-hooved 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.

 

There is a crushing

 There is a crushing                                                                                              

“How do I escape suffering, Lord”,
 And He gave me an answer (though I am reluctant to hear). 

 

It seems there is a crushing and a transfiguration. 
Grain becomes bread; grapes become wine,

then upon our tongues and in our throats, 
we partake of 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 process,

 

in the necessity and the outcome; 
Faith in love, in the Maker and the Father.
 
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
but solace, strength and conviction.

This odd pitch of clay

This odd pitch of clay (birthday poem)                                                            

I’m carrying a torch for You.
I have used it to explore and experience
 
Your creatures and creation
and to search (ironically) for the Light
 
I once mistook for my own –
the Light that is You.
 
This odd pitch of clay will nevermore return. 
It is God Who will take another body.
 
There’s only God.  And as I labor now
to keep aloft, alight, this torch in my last days,
 
I find that I’m carrying it for You, carrying
a shimmering, splintered portion of You
 
back toward the foundry of creation –
toward that inevitable reunion
 
of You with Yourself –
the origin of fire and light.
 
O child of God, you are but a brief spark
from the forge and hammer of the Creator.

That clear still 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.

Become the sought

Become the sought                                                                                               

Fool that I am, I have searched for You all these years –

the One Who is everywhere and in everything.

I’m not sure of what I’m seeking

but You’ve given it a name:  Meher Baba.  

I suppose I’m nearer the goal after all this time.

I’ve no way to gauge the distance.

You didn’t come to teach

and I’ve learned nothing of consequence.

Either I am You or Your creature

or somehow both and I’ll end up with You

some lifetime or another – or not.

You might never be mine

but just the same I belong to You.

I may be a fool but I’m Your fool,

hoping to die

with Your name on my lips.

O child of God, Meher said stop seeking

and become the sought.