Category: Writing

I

I
If i can stop saying it
Stand quietly, without uttering it
But I still am
Where else is it coming from
Within, without, everywhere?
I don’t know, but that elsewhere
Has a pulse
Throbbing like a thumb
That got too close to a 20 ounce framing hammer
Except overjoyed instead of blood-blistered

The merciful fog of the San Francisco Bay
Has wrapped itself
Like the Ice Queen’s underpants
Around our unprecedented heatwave
Dampening its incendiary influence

Something is always on the verge of catching fire In California
Myself included
On Tuesday the day started with dusk
And stayed that way until dusk
No one could figure out when to get out of bed

Is everything upside down
Or has anything ever been right side up
I feel a gyroscope inside
Always righting itself
Spinning the wobbling tune
That what really is
Always is
éviter les contrefaçons

Selfless Portrait

I was locally grown
Humanely, sustainably raised 
In a very small town
Among small farms along the Pioneer Valley 
Where the Connecticut River wanders
Wearing out-of-state plates
Through Massachusetts


Our home sat streetwise not much above the lower than sea level sogginess of Lawrence Swamp.  I remember standing in the front yard, waving to cars that passed, almost never. There was a pond behind us where my older brother and I floated on rafts, makeshift out of whatever few throwaway objects were left around in years not too far past war time austerity, jousting with neighbors in the bog, small soldiers playing games of war learned from a society recently, and frequently, compelled to battle.


Our dad, who flew Wildcats off small aircraft carriers in the South Pacific, during the war that came after ‘The War That Would End All Wars’, nailed number 10 cans between boards to devise for my brother and me, an upgraded raft.  It looked beautiful, and sank a little, like the rest of our puddle crafts. Some years later the pond died, choked by plant life, reabsorbed into the fields. 


As a kid I was a victim of identity theft
Swinging from the monkey bars 
Chinning on the pullup bar
Hanging from a thread 
Finding out who i was
From who they said i was 
Who I came to think I was
Nowadays you’re supposed to reinvent yourself 
I didn’t invent myself 
How would i go about doing it again 


I was eight when we moved down from the Pioneer Valley to the mouth of the Connecticut River, where it blends into the Atlantic through the cocktail shaker of the Long Island Sound. In all, the River flowed past me and through me for my first 23 years.  


Her hydraulic majesty exerted a subtle pressure beyond her banks, 
into the microscopic turbulence of my body and soul.  
The serenities of North Cove gulls, 
The deafening ecstasies of the frogs in Cedar Swamp, 
if you listened closely,
could ignite revelations 
about the energy of life; where it comes from, 
whether people could possibly be personally responsible for it. 


In high school we tried to understand the river with those methods of research available to pastoral hooligans: shake-weed and Rhode Island beer, occasionally a highly polluted hit of acid where Christmas lights ignited and undulated in the deciduous trees of a springtime graduation party.  
I read Hermann Hesse, chopped wood and built fires in a blackened colonial fireplace, instinctually seeking to strip the veneer of words off a surpassingly peaceful silence. 


Years later, back upriver in the Pioneer Valley, in long shadows cast by a soft buttered autumn sunset over Hadley fields, my brother and I felt mushrooms telling their story to a college boy and a college graduate, a story extracted from prehistoric sunlight into a plant that never expected itself to open eyes or hearts.  Maybe psychedelic in plants evolved alongside hubris in humans, as a balancing spring in the terrestrial pinball lever. 
__________________________

In my early twenties I started to experience a certain ecstasy in quietude
It pulsed
Finely but intensely
Shimmering through me
Dissolving the pain of my daily efforts


I had no teacher or spiritual community
Just this anonymous
Rejuvenating song


In retrospect there might have been signs
Of what was to come
The peace of quiet
Had begun to delicately subvert 
My aspirations for anything else
In favor of this uninvited, unearned blessing


Not much later
I was ambushed and hurled into grace
Thrown into the game without a helmet
The boundaries far outside 
Of where I had felt joy arising
I didn’t recognize its face from the mug shots in churches and temples


The thoughts i had learned to watch come and go
Had gone
Left the building
Taking my dimensions, my location 
With them


The cramped square footage
Of my self sensation
Could not hold
Having apparently been scheduled for demolition
There was tremendous energy everywhere
But no body for it to happen in
Nobody for it to happen to


When thinking came back online
I found myself in a catastrophe
I thought I might breakdown 
Or die 
I tried running
Did my best to hide
After a few months staying away in my room
Hoping not to stumble on another viewing of endlessness
I understood
There was gonna be no unfeeling what I’d felt


I went to see an Indian guru
Then a Taoist master
And a Sufi Pir 
They all had their initiations
The Sufi gave some sacred syllables 
The Guru gave some Shaktipat
The Taoist master gave an energy transmission through the sacrum
Come on people, give me a break!
I’m trying to get away from this shivering, shuddering cyclonic power plant 
That I stumbled on in an unfamiliar wilderness
Not get more electrocuted
Please don’t give me your energy bailout!


But I learned the intricate Taoist system of cultivation
And began to feel some control
Till i was able to start facing quiet again
Without being so afraid


Then I met an old master
Of no particular denomination
Formerly a vaudeville singer
And Wonder Bread truck driver
Who hollered the dharma 
With fearless humor and exquisite friendship


I got a straight job, married a radiant woman
Who labored in pain to bear our three beautiful daughters
Life screwed roots into the soles of my feet
I learned to be a carpenter
And a software engineer
Whatever it took to make new rooms in our house
For the growing family
And a paycheck 
For the many bills to devour


All the while, the undocumented energy grew
Stroking my spinal cord and bone marrow
Like they were strings on a cello


Once I woke up at my desk
Being churned helplessly in a wave of unbearable pleasure
I saw my heart from outer space
My body breathing out and in
Like some captured creature
I couldn’t tell where I start
And where i end
A feeling of love expanding
With unlimited trajectory


I got up to shake it off
And went back to work
In the corporate office space daydream
Bewildered 


Sometimes I’d wake up at night
To find my body replaced by a rip tide of paroxysmal joy
Overpowering me 
Deafening my thoughts


By this time I no longer felt the need
To hide or escape
And came to welcome 
Straddling the worlds
Of intoxicating inspiration
And roughshod routine


Lately, all I know is
If I simply stand still for a moment
Vibrations encompass my standard-issue body
Climbing my tendons and bones 
Dissolving my skull in resonance
Making everything sing 


Outside in last night’s heatwave
The friction of my blood 
Flowing from arteries into capillaries and veins 
Harmonized with the crickets 
Who were scratching out their rhythms in monotones
The fig tree scraping together its leafy genitalia
And sounds I haven’t even heard yet
Like earthworms manufacturing the soil beneath my feet
Trunks and roots thickening
Joined the symphony
____________________________

Reality must be billions of years old
But doesn’t look a day over zero
A second sooner or later than right now
Glistening with brand newness


So much goes on
Underneath the Big Top of this circus
A clown trying to sweep the spotlight out of the ring
A short range cosmonaut shot from a cannon 
A sideshow lady getting sawn apart


Cells reproducing in the audience
Without conflict
Planets spinning and revolving overhead
Without colliding
The colossal joy ride of the cosmos
Inside and out


Am I a receptacle of the unimaginably limitless
Packaged in a container that was designed to fit
Through a standard door jamb?


My soul was shaken out of a deep sleep
And woke up a trapeze artist 
Working without a net
_______________________________


Retrospective counsel 
To my twenty something self
Rudely awakened 
Smell the roses 
But give attention to the noses 
On those stair treads
Or you might catch one with your big toe
And tumble or be wrenched into this grace
Becoming unable to locate the center of your small town
Among the lights and noises
The smell of engine oil 
And burning brake pads
Of a universe expanding 
At a hundred and eighty three thousand miles per hour


There aren’t seatbelts strong enough
For this adventure 
Far lesser rides were banned from amusement parks
Long ago
_____________________________

Now my skull has a broken window
Through which the Big Dipper is ladling shine
Borrowed from sunlight by a bald moon
At historically low interest rates


Filtering it through the charred oak barrels of my tan tien
Aging and distilling it into the supreme intoxicant
Arcing into the balls of my feet
Transmitting megawatts through my trembling legs
And my shivering spine 
Heaven loving earth
Earth loving heaven


Standing, silent I’m 
A six foot-one tuning fork
Drenched in vibration


Or a filament
Plugged into starlight and stone
Humming with their charge
__________________________

Life belongs to the dancer
Who stumbles and tries it again
Learning to fly
Before the music ends 


I’ve driven this track counterclockwise
Turning left for decades
Eventually my transmission will seize up
Engine fail
Gas tank catch fire
No matter how moderately or piously I live 
Which i haven’t 
And probably won’t soon 


Someday my life energy will sneak away
Like the sleekest of cat burglars
Reverting obediently to mystery 
Releasing my exhausted frame 
Into the merciful custody of nature’s garden
Will there be a final feeling 
How long will it last?

Guest Writer – TK

I have just landed on the transnubular  superhighway of your creation.

Presently, I am running in circles on the universal O-Ring,  gaining speed

and losing ground simultaneously on the edge of your blue supercollider.

I could live forever on nitrogen laced e-cigarettes and the fumes off the canvas,

your world is so bold I feel like combing my hair with a chain-saw and bleeding out,

add a little vermilion to the composition to heighten the already abundant texture,

mountains of cinnabar, valleys of azure, plains ribboned with ridges of siena and ochre.

Oh, I could live in your swirling world, a wild diver with fins and gills, a snorkeler

for hidden treasure, probing wrinkles on the ancient sea bottom with unabashed glee.

Today I say to you my friend thanks for the invite into your highly articulated cosmos!

No Authorities

Untinted awareness is the animator of my cartoon life. I don’t know where my thoughts come from or who is thinking them. The plants know enough to reach toward the life-giving sun while people hide inside the pale, stale fluorescence of offices, making plans which will mostly evaporate or capsize.

Dolly and Dalai

I have a story, incessantly traversing my thoughts, about before; the most slipshod shred of journalism ever constructed on thin ice. I want to unsubscribe from the national hand-wringing contest, swap out misery for mystery. It’s time to stop outsourcing joy and rediscover it in our own unlicensed, unauthorized selves; the beginnings of which are untraceable, the power, unimaginable.

Unstoned

“no left turn unstoned”… that’s how Kesey and the Pranksters inverted the old platitude “no stone left unturned”.  Of course they were talking about drugs.  But in another way it’s true I think.  We’re born stoned.  By a certain anti-bliss chemistry administered through a secondary channel of ordinary consciousness, we acquire the requisite sobriety to take life seriously.  Hold down a dull job in a pointless profession, resist emptiness, struggle in one way or another to survive.  All the while, unbeknownst to us, megawatts of finely vibrating bliss are shimmering through our beings. A Taoist master taught me how to cultivate the energy of awakening; but it could be described differently:  The energy is there, waiting to be discovered, waiting for us to turn away from the delivery system that drips the anti-bliss chemistry.

Life is Already Better Than We See

There is no vision or project that is going to make life better
Life is already better than we see
The more I want to see, the more I have to give up hope for the projects
What is in my head has been borrowed through imitation, often called education and conversation
There isn’t anything in it with a shelf life of weeks or years, much less life itself
It’s not even mine, I can’t improve it with self development
If something develops, it’s an accident that will be cleaned up by the tide
I am by turns happy, anxious and sad; it’s a massive falsehood to say I control any of it
There is an island which I want to call me, gently eroding with the waves
Something is afraid of it’s utter dissolution in the sea of everything
Already I know I’m not my feet, my legs, my mid-section, my head
Am I there in the middle of my torso where the heart never sleeps, maybe not even
There is a strange overwhelming power that courses through me
I am caring less, with every breath, about everything else than that

Two Roads Into My Wilderness

There are two roads into my wilderness: one by words, the other by a channel of electricity that follows my breath. When I follow the first road, I am worried and exhausted. When I remember to take the second one, I am relieved and filled with silent joy. I’m not holy and I’m not wise, but I’m not a complete knucklehead and I sometimes remember to avoid what hurts in favor of what heals.

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