MIRRORS OF CONCIOUSNESS
file # 2
A...
AFTER HOPES FALL
AFTER READING I CORINTHIANS 3:18
ALL CREATURES LOVE GOD IN CREATURES
AS A RICHNESS GATHERS
A SIMPLE CONCEPT OF ENLIGHTENMENT
AS IS THY NAME, O GOD
AT
THE LAST JUDGMENT
B...
BELOVED BOTTOM
BURNING LUMINOUS HOLES/
WHEN LOVE BURNS HOLES
IN
THE SOUL
C...
COMMENTS ON SAINT MARK'S JESUS
CONFIDENCE IS:
D...
DIVULGENCES
F...
FIGHTING CONSTRICTIONS
FINAL BAPTISM
FOR NELLY SACHS AND HER WORK OF PEACE
G...
GOD IS A
HOLY INFLUENCE
GOD IS NAKED
H...
HOW FULLNESS FLOWS INTO EMPTINESS
HOW STRANGE THAT THE GREATEST BEAUTY
SHOULD
WOUND US SO...
I...
IN MY PRIMAL WOUND WORDS FLOW
IN THE HAPPENING NOW
IN THE INFINITE PLENTITUDE
INUNDATION
I PRESSED MY HAND PRINT IN SOFT MUD
IT SEEMS LIFE-EVIDENT
L...
LIFE FEARFUL AND MISSING THE POINT
LIFEING
A NEW WEEK
M...
MAY THE BEST GOD WIN
O...
ON A DAY LIKE THIS
ON I JOHN 4:19
ONLY THE REAPED GROWS
OUT OF THE ACHE
P...
POETRY'S TONGUE
PRAYER ANSWERS
PURPOSES AND
ACUMINATION
R...
RELIGION
RELIGION'S FAILURE
S...
SOME STRANGE CIRCLES WE GO IN HEALING
SOUL-SOIL AND WORMS
T...
THERE ARE ELECTRIC ARCS
THERE IS A NEW CRUSADE
THAT WILL LINK US TO EVERY BEAUTIFUL SOUL
OF THE AGES
THE SILVER SHIVER OF FREEDOM
TO A SACRED CHOIR
IN HONOR OF THEIR BECOMING THE BEAUTY
THAT
COURSED THROUGH RACHMANINOFF
TOPICS AND COMMENTS
TRUE ART
U...
UNCLINGING AND LIGHTER THAN AIR/HE MOVES
IN
INCARNATION
W...
WE SHOULD CARRY THE SKY WITH US
WHAT IS DUE AND TRUE
WHO KNOWS THE POWER OF POETRY?
WORD
FORMS AND SPIRIT
WRITING ON THE BOOK OF LIFE
LAST POEM IN FILE: THERE ARE ELECTRIC ARCS
THE POEMS:
ALL CREATURES LOVE GOD IN CREATURES
We love the beauty
of all creatures,
whether beauty of body or soul.
It is beauty
and
its inwrought pleasure
that we love and seek
--if we are alive!
One soul loves the paintings
of Michaelangelo and Bottacelli;
another
loves the feel of leather
under his rump, and the wild look
in a good horse's eye.
Another soul sits for hours
entranced by flashes of beauty
seen in a soap opera:
They each feel mingled stirrings
of primal, spiritual passions
that are their rightful domain.
All creatures love God
reflected in creatures.
To love God nakedly
is to place your lips
over the small orifice
from which
white
waters
of northern glaciers
flow out
of ancient stone.
GOD IS A HOLY INFLUENCE
God is known
by
His influence:
the "in-flowing" of his transparencies,
the liquid spaciousness of the holy
affecting the character.
God
is seen in God's effects:
the influence of invisibility
is visible.
It is we who are designated to be
God's palpable expressions!
HOW STRANGE
THAT THE GREATEST BEAUTY
SHOULD WOUND US SO...
How strange
that the greatest beauty
should wound us so...
We fall into the rose
and thorns prick us,
we lie amongst fragrances
and bleed.
There are times
when the heart longs
to stop beating,
when the mind aches
to release every image
and
rest in the spaceless spaces
of the hidden, holy sea.
But heaven is full
of beloved faces,
and every soul there
wants to run
and kiss us
back
into our
passionate love
of God's rose,
its
holy fragrance
and
thorns.
IT SEEMS LIFE-EVIDENT
It seems
life-evident
that where we are most vulnerable
there we are meant to be
most ecstatic:
Love alone laying her
transparent hand
over the quivering green bud of us,
kissing our core with wind.
And so love-warmed life thrusts upward,
naked, tender, open,
in the midst of
its hard,
gray whorl of sharp, dead sticks
and leaves.
PRAYER ANSWERS
From our Lord's freedom
and to His freedom,
all good things flow.
To let go!
is to flow into His freedom.
as our freedom;
His goodness...
as our only actual good.
Goodness will flow
through us and unto us
in specific things
picked by God
to uniquely be
part of
us
in Him.
So, let's let go!
and fall and flow
into freedom!
AS IS THY NAME, O GOD
The
young brightness of a Man
who stands in a shadow of light
amidst a Sun we cannot see,
star-centered
in the midst of the world,
calls
for our soul-seed hearts
to crack open
to the light of Him.
He moves through coral-colored
conical shells
as
beauty moves.
He moves through the swirl of foam
on deep turquoise pools--
as beauty moves.
He moves through abalone's
iridescent beauty,
pearl-beauty,
iris pollen beauty,
grass stalked beauty,
gazelle graced beauty--
as beauty moves.
His children of
glory
drink beauty:
silver glory in the belly,
blue beauty in the brain,
gold light like dawn
in the heart of beauty.
The young Man
calls forth His name:
the glory-sprung sprig,
vine of purple blood,
shimmering horn,
radiant
cloud of rain...
*
As is thy name, O Lord,
so shall be thy praise.
AFTER HOPES FALL
Often,
God
drops our hopes
within our heart
as molten wax drops,
as scalding wax drops,
exploding on the skin.
It is then
that
candle-light
sometimes seeps
within.
ONLY THE REAPED GROWS
Some bird
dropped a burning seed of grain
into the dense green tangle
of my heart.
Heaven's shock flourishes.
Some farmer cleared the weeds.
Heaven's shock flourishes.
Some
cloud spilled its tears.
Heaven's shock flourishes.
Some worm softened earth.
Heaven's shock flourishes.
Some reaper waits in shade.
Heaven's shock flourishes.
Only the reaped grows.
DIVULGENCES
We are the householder
and the house,
and the house's
treasure
is us, (and the Other).
Each must divulge
secret substances,
the hidden hoard,
whether gem,
or
rotting rind,
china dish finery
or plastic picnic platter,
rare books,
or action videos:
We are all action videos,
all rare books to be read
by another's eyes;
we are all questions
to be asked
by the Answer.
ON A DAY LIKE THIS
On a day like this
someone has blown summer
into town.
I believe cherry trees
are white-clouding the earth
somewhere...
And angels
are singing and sighing
unheard enchantments
with love-sick birds
in blue air today,
awakening
minds
back into that ancient
wildness
known for centuries
to bloom
in breasts.
FINAL
BAPTISM
Fire comes
from perfect beauty
to melt the marred down
into beauty.
Fire is beauty,
like a flared Rose.
To either love or resist the Rose:
is to melt in Rose Flame.
---
THE SILVER SHIVER OF FREEDOM
Beyond the green and gold
infusion
of the flowers
moves the invisible force
of freedom:
this silver shiver
of silent unmoving
flow
is
the double folding
of my being
in a two-worlded world.
It is the crashing collapse
of barriers:
the seeing of star light
in flower glow;
the weaving of sun-fire
with reticent moonlight
spilling through the eyes.
It is the hunger
of
a green bud
arching up
out of a dead whorl
of petals and leaves.
It is suffocating death
dying open
into
a boundless
breath of being.
OUT OF THE ACHE
What do the words of a madman signify?
if not what should be rightly praised,
or
that which prompts the anguished cry
when worn neglect is rudely raised
by passions written in a book
with words invoked through dim themes
born by a woman's passing
look...
or a poet's passionate dreams
which lit a candle in his head
and gave to mouths the word's he's said.
What do the words of a madman signify
to those who pause here to be read
by all that finds them moving there
within poetic phrases said?
Perhaps God alone can ever know
what words may bend, or burn, or blow
or mold or make or melt in part
to form a deathless human heart.
TO A SACRED CHOIR
IN HONOR OF THEIR BECOMING THE BEAUTY
THAT COURSED THROUGH RACHMANINOFF
That white beauty of voices
weaving their harmonies
of sound like supple slips
of summer straw weave a crown.
Open throats, like young spring birds:
eyes open, hearts open...
The people are open!
And
music streams through
like snow-water pure
torrents.
THERE IS A NEW CRUSADE
THAT WILL LINK US TO EVERY BEAUTIFUL SOUL
OF
THE AGES
Christ came to baptize
the Universe into God
and God into the Universe
by the outflowing powers of pure,
creative love.
Christ has not failed us.
We have failed Christ!
How many souls hungry for mercy
have been torn from God
by a self-righteous,
fear inducing, institutionalized perversion
of the radical compassions
and life-liberating forgiveness
of the Son of God?
It is right to scorn
the bastardization of reality!
For the sake of every sensitive soul
who
has ever suffered for want of kindness
at the hands of prudish, judgmental,
prideful piety
we must rail against
religious perversions!
We must not forget the suffering
of wounded lambs no one would heal...
but in their name
fight to be free
in
Christ's transformative graces
that our own world might
be blessed full of God
as holy light laughs to be clothed upon
with
trees, rocks, bears, cows, birds,
men and women, boys and girls,
who are passionate in peace
being full of earth and sky.
God knows! when a Christ-born,
Spirit-flowing freedom
becomes our compassionate crusade,
a million beautiful,
love-healed souls
will
smile upon us
from heaven,
urging us on.
WHO KNOWS THE POWER OF POETRY?
Who knows the power of poetry?
Poetry is the language
of the power of the deep heart.
And what is the power of the deep heart?
Is not the human heart linked to the motions
of sun and moon;
to the fiery
unfoldment of every bud;
to the dark essence of tree blood in a branch;
to the limitless ocean of the holy?
If God so willed,
could He not through one human heart
stop all movements of the stars,
make rivers flow back from the sea
to the hills,
shrink a tree to its seed,
pour light into the brain of a blind man,
resurrect the dead with a word?
*
Who knows the power of the deep heart?
Its language is poetry.
Hey! Who knows the power of poetry?
ON
I JOHN 4:19
I love the Love
that loves me
into loving
the Love
that loves
me.
IN THE INFINITE PLENTITUDE
In the infinite plentitude
of the divine being
we must overflow
the
boundaries
of the finite
expressions of God.
Let us call
this overflow
our winsome
gladness,
the lushest fruit
of grace.
POETRY'S TONGUE
Poetry is the native tongue
and
natural expression
of spirit-born, soul-born
age-lasting things:
whether trodding through the mind
on thick, slow legs
or slipping through fissures
like wind.
WORD FORMS AND SPIRIT
About this life of Spirit:
it is all through
faith
and words.
Words take many forms:
both mental music,
deeds and things.
TRUE
ART
That which is birthed
through the core of us
by the holy breath,
labors in images
to form the time and space
in which we dwell.
AT THE LAST JUDGMENT
If at the last judgment
God should make sparrows
and
chikadees
the judges of mankind,
what do you suppose
these feathery tribes would say?
Would they judge us
for extramarital sexuality:
for loosing our pearls,
and making rose blossoms moist?
Would they judge us
for being a Republican or a
Democrat,
for failing to attend Mass regularly,
or for scrimping on our tithes?
Or would they sing their grief
that we
failed to sing,
that our imaginations were too distorted
or dulled
to soar through life's mysteries;
that we were not sensitive enough
to set out bird seed in winter,
or to pour our love
of the winged metaphor of them
into a lyrical language of God's praise?
RELIGION
We adore the imageless God
through the images we make.
CONFIDENCE IS:
or
ONLY WORMS SPLIT THEMSELVES
Confidence
is a peaceful
courage and knowing.
Arrogance
is projecting
our self-worth
into the imagined
praise of us
by others.
By splitting
ourselves
in order
to praise ourselves
we lose the moment
and miracle
of life
centered in the circle
of God's wholeness
through which
all love and beauty
flows.
From
the naked center
comes God's
unceasing praise
of His free
child.
TOPICS AND COMMENTS
WORSHIP
brightens our minds
with God.
LIFE
is a transcendent call
of incarnation.
DEATH
is a naked release
into unobscured light.
A SIMPLE CONCEPT OF ENLIGHTENMENT
All energies that flow out from God
seek to return to
their source.
God is the love our essential soul desires,
the joy we crave to celebrate.
God is the beauty
we were created to express,
the harmony
which is our lasting peace.
And God is the meaning,
the purpose of being,
the blessing
we hope to be upon our deeds.
Enlightenment is to know this;
sin is to imagine it otherwise.
HOW FULLNESS FLOWS INTO EMPTINESS
God is a joyful, sentient, laughing God.
Have you ever tasted
a rich textured human soul
blossoming in a subtle radiance
of Spirit?
That
one is an image of God,
the soul-weaver
of infinite varieties of souls.
The rose-breath influences of God
breathe through the doors
of our imaginative faith
in words.
Spirit words are like shining,
black seeds.
Simple acceptance is the water
that softens them;
imagination the light that opens them.
Voila! God flows through in Technicolor.
There is a joyful, sentient, laughing God.
Have you ever imagined, loved,
or tasted Him?
INUNDATION
God's fullness
loves to flow
into Creation's emptiness.
Dwelling in spacious,
emptiness
we take it for the norm.
Not so!
There
is a living,
radiant surge
flowing up, down,
around.
Be open...
Be inundated!
GOD IS NAKED
God is naked,
pure existence
who is naked,
pure
existence:
all light and shining,
and glimmering Himself
upon Himself as light
pouring through light
to
penetrate light
into light--
until all light reflects
light upon light
in the shimmering dance
of
an unbroken mirror
of a sea.
And all this radiance
and reflecting
is boundless
joy and laughter
which overflows
as pure goodness
of perfect loving,
creating free creatures
for the purpose
of
ecstatically knowing
and wondrously loving
this boiling, birthing,
holy, beautiful being.
WHAT IS DUE AND TRUE
I am no Swedenborg,
or Sadu Sundar Sing,
caught up into Paradise...
and seeing!
I am a poet flying blind
by the light of faith.
But not the faith
of mere mental assent
concerning denominational dogma
or a scholar's scrutinizing...
for sometimes when I write
I feel
the pleasure of God
shining into my being--
and that
is a tasty,
imaginative,
and visible thing!
AS A RICHNESS GATHERS
When God floods His temple
and spills out His temple
a richness gathers
like oil in a hollow place.
Then the soul grows clear
and the body
agile.
Then
a little child laughs
from twilight
straight
through
the long
night
until
dawn.
AFTER READING I CORINTHIANS 3:18
Religious tradition
prunes and warps
mystical truth
into something other,
some gray shadow
of the sun.
This gray substance
is then spoon-fed
like cold porridge
to children
who aren't hungry.
IN MY PRIMAL WOUND WORDS FLOW
I am taking these words
to descend into the wild
loneliness of my heart:
The primal human ache,
the prodigal's medicine.
I was born lonely,
alienated from the hovering heavens,
blinded by my senses
and a blank, infant's mind.
I was born longing
for somewhere else,
some other one,
some distant time,
cast
on the outside
of a cherished world,
and forgotten.
I was born lonely in the dark
to be rebirthed wild
in this beauty
I'm awaking
to remember.
PURPOSES AND ACUMINATION
Why are we here in this world?
Is it to know the ache of it,
the swelling billow of smoke
in an enclosed box?
Or is it to love the unbeautiful,
to know the limitations
and be forged
into
humility:
to taste light
in sweat,
or to smell heaven
in cold bacon
and beer?
You know,
I'm finally getting used
to it here.
I'm actually starting
to like this place...
LIFEING A NEW WEEK
Why not
Sunday.
Moonday,
Hillday,
Birdday
Beastday,
Fishday,
Skyday?
Let's Life it!
I PRESSED MY HAND PRINT IN SOFT MUD
I pressed my handprint into soft mud.
Through it a blade of grass sprung.
Through it a corn stalk grew.
Upon it gray blossoms drifted.
And then... dark snow.
FOR NELLY SACHS AND HER WORK OF PEACE
There is a grotto of magical trees
where Amen is spoken by the leaves
as birds turn
into angels
and back into birds.
It is in your neck of the woods.
To find it you must only
sew one dead rose
and two
spring-green buds
unto a prayer shawl,
and put a child's silk-soft curl
behind your ear
as you pray.
IN THE HAPPENING NOW
God and we meet
only in the lazer point
instant.
Being flows into being NOW,
and no other time
for there is
no other time,
only abstract concepts
about it
which are happening
NOW.
I. UNCLINGING AND LIGHTER THAN AIR
She undresses
until only the wind
is her robe;
then moves like a soft breeze
in the eyes of God.
A
crown is placed upon her
by warrior's gnarled hands.
She smiles
and rolls the crown
to her lover's feet,
cherishing the lightness
of her blue hat of sky.
A white robe is placed upon her
by beautiful woman.
She laughs
and drops the robe
at
her lover's feet
loving the lightness
of her robe of wind.
He meets her with the blessings
of every good thing,
placing a crown of
green thorns
upon her with a kiss.
Rose buds bloom amongst the thorns.
It is His wedding wreath of roses.
It is lighter than air.
II. HE MOVES IN INCARNATION
He moves from the sky,
tumbling like downdrafts
of snow-burnt air,
to cloth himself with green robes
of
aspen leaves.
The wind whistles through Him
and He shivers with tree ecstasy.
He journeys through realms
of gray stones
to
share with them old, dark silences,
listening to their slow thoughts.
He feels the sullenness
of a Grisly fishing mid-stream
and writes her a whimsical poem of cubs.
Sunshine shouts His song to the city--
but the concrete is dumb,
being too young to know how to sing.
On the seventh floor,
in
some numbered room,
a woman is bathing the forehead
of an old dying man
and whispering love
into fearful eyes.
He comes,
whistling silence
through her being
to slowly tear back veils
and discover His own beauty
as he dies.
WE SHOULD CARRY THE SKY WITH US
We should carry the sky with us;
we should carry the rivers with us
always...
And this is possible,
you know,
to close your eyes
and feel water flowing from your belly;
to sense wind and clouds
moving through your chest,
through your face
when you sit to talk
with the miracle of a person,
or when you merely smile
and say nothing
so as not
to be thought of
as a fool.
SOME STRANGE CIRCLES WE GO IN HEALING
There is a soulless
hunk of a man who wades
in shallow lakes
looking for lost dumbbells
and sunken Cadillacs;
there is a shapely woman
whose eyes shine
like tinsel stars
on a
plastic Christmas tree:
These two have conspired
to murder love,
to break down every garden wall
that shields roses.
The
Lord of fountains arose.
The Lord of fragrances arose
and showed me His heart
which is the way
of my heart.
Some
day I too might
drive a Cadillac
and let water run out of its windows.
Someday I'll fill
that car's back seat with flowers.
LIFE FEARFUL AND MISSING THE POINT
I wonder what He thinks about it,
what we have done with the image,
what we have made of Him?:
The man God made God...
We ripped his side open,
poured all his blood out
his face, and his back,
down
his arms,
off his toes.
Then the light came,
breaking Him open,
crisping things up,
sizzling His flesh,
laser-like hot bolts of it:
God making the body God.
We made God a man--
encreeded Him, tamed Him,
diminished
Him--
the celibate man,
the frail sentimental
flower.
He's never recovered His howl,
nor thunder,
nor simmering delight
over David's sumptuous harem.
God made man God,
blew the ribbed walls down,
flung
the skulled roof off,
exploded His body
all over galaxies.
We soon shrunk back
from that hot, swelling life
into
damp caves
and cold pious cells
to beg for mercy
and mutter our penitent prayers.
It didn't take long
to
be missing the point!
RELIGION'S FAILURE
If a person should offer you peace
and blameless ecstasy
wouldn't you love them utterly?
But Christ
has not been represented
this way.
If a person should love you in such a way
that your once pain-dimmed eyes
grew
bright
with that quality of light
found in cold mountain steams,
wouldn't you turn your soul
to that One
as the yellow-fringed sunflower
turns its black face
to follow the sun?
But Christ
has not been represented
this way.
Have
you ever seen the stern eyes of Christ
staring from the walls
of Saint Sophia,
or glaring from icons
painted by monks who hated their bodies?
How can the one
who was birthed by Love
that Love might awaken love
in Love
have stern eyes?
How can the one
who suffered the world's hell
for Heaven's effusive joy that immersed Him
have stern eyes?
How can the one who now lives
in fountains of divine
ecstasy
have stern eyes?
BELOVED BOTTOM
God's silver stream flows
over a mud black bottom:
it is a slow river
flowing for wild sanity
and everness.
Beloved mud,
beloved sheen
and
shine.
The river smells
of candle wax
and frankincense,
horses
and women.
Those
who drink there
laugh.
Drink enough
and you'll get drunk
and fall in,
muddying things.
Beloved bottom
falling in the top,
beloved slow stream
clearing
the waters.
I.
BURNING LUMINOUS HOLES
When passionate words pour
out of spiritual vision
it is like
liquid flame
spattering out
of a sea of flame...
burning luminous holes
in the cloaks of souls.
II.
WHEN
LOVE BURNS HOLES IN THE SOUL
When love burns
holes in the soul
water flows through,
silver fish flow through,
boats
serenely sailing
in distant moonlight
pass through.
MAY THE BEST GOD WIN
We see life
through what we are!
The prophets saw a righteous God
who was angry with human carnality
and selfish blindness,
for the prophets were righteous men
who were angry with human carnality
and selfish blindness.
Others have said
that God doesn't exist
because
they don't exist.
Jesus began by seeing God
as the compassionate Savior
of Israel,
but finished His course
with a radiant vision
of oceans of divine compassions
inundating everything.
He grew from compassions
to
greater compassions
and saw God abounding that way.
And God shall be called
the God of all flesh:
flame in the heart,
rivers
of freedom,
healer, brightness in the eyes,
bubbling creative brew,
merciful joy for all to drink.
May the purest concept of divinity
win!
FIGHTING CONSTRICTIONS
How often I let poverty
close the open spaces over my head.
Some skinny man comes walking along
with his cold-eyed dog
and draws a black curtain around me.
I think that is the way things are:
but they are not so!
There is as much space within me
as there is life in dreams.
The sky is as high as hopes can rise.
Who
said there is no time
to let the inside grow succulent and fluid
to flow out?
Who can't make the time
to work and dream!
WRITING ON THE BOOK OF LIFE
Why hasn't the Bible been taught
in a way that fills us with whale song,
that causes osprey to catch huge fish
between our ears?
When Jesus ascended mountains to pray,
stars fell into his eyes all night,
and when the sun arose within Him,
yellow words burned
as morning dove poured their praises
through His voice.
And as he walked country roads
(loving
every person flowing into Him),
opening oysters spilled pearls
out of His heart
as the net of His mind floated over
cloud-shadowed
shoals gathering fish.
And when he stood upon a hill to teach,
Galilean wheat pushed silently
through the ground of His heart
unto
the sun
and singing birds settled
into the green branches
of His brain.
Where did these words: didactic exegesis,
or eschatological come from?
And how shall we enter life
unto the God of Life
unless we love life
into us?
THERE ARE ELECTRIC ARCS
There are electric arcs
that angels ride
from mind to heart
and
heart to mind
for they are the weavers
of wholeness.
There are tapestries
of branches
green in the sun,
deep in the mind,
silver twigs
shining, entwining
in naked space--
five dimensional
lace.