MYSTIC
From Empty No-Mind All-One
From silence, music;
From stillness, creation;
From Empty No-mind All-One,
Every baby's heartcry,
Every ringing singbell song,
Skyclouds, snowpeaks,
Quakewave aspenwinds
Planetmoons and stars —
Even this rose-petaled wordkiss
Complete and whole, rounded, full,
From that diamond silence gleaming inside
Love's boundless, soundless, sweetly scented center
Where
The
Light
Is
I don't know much about God,
But I do know
She's black, with blue eyes,
Speaks Hebrew, and loves French pastry.
When she turns around,
He's a red-headed, brown-eyed Swede who
Speaks Tibetan with a Peruvian accent.
When he looks to the left,
She's Asian-yellow, 5'9" tall,
And her Icelandic chit-chat sounds like Italian.
When she looks to the right,
He's a green-eyed Indian Sikh who
Writes Spanish, and sells real estate in Brooklyn.
When he backflips,
She's a gentle orangoutang from Borneo,
With hazel eyes, flowers in her hair,
Thunderclouds and warm rainshowers in her hands.
When she swings on vines,
He's an Arctic polar bear, with blue sky in his eyes,
And all the world's oceans whispering in his ears.
When he playfully slides down a snow-slope,
She's a two-year-old little girl,
With blonde and red and black hair,
Who counts to three in 500 languages,
And cries and laughs in one language that
Mothers all over the world understand.
So what's to know?
Here, have a strawberry dipped in powdered sugar.
God is also delicious!
Unities
I don't look at
The crescent moon tilted
Over Blue Mountain Ridge
I am the moon and the tilting
The seeing inside sight
The dark ridgeline and pale white light
I don't watch this
Candleflame gently wavering
As I sit quietly breathing
I am bluefire inside the spear
The formless silence inside sitting
Invisible life within the breath
Nor do I listen to
This singing mountain stream
As Winter slips silently into Spring
I am the choirs within these tumbling waters
Still-point Eternity nested in the heart of Time
Bristled frost
Now warm sunlight
Forever cherry blossoms blooming
Alpha/Omega/O(ne)
HEARTBEAT ZENSONG
Honey spirals warm in teacup;
"Yes," her smiling shy eyes whisper;
Featherbed's pale blue sheets;
Hair sweet as autumn apples;
Breast-touch silken-soft,
Nipples rise in throbbing light;
A red-orange harvest moon.
Slow rain, wet-black earth;
Yellow maple, oak leaves glowing gold;
Raindrops click-tick poncho ears;
Evening moist-air cool on cheeks;
Woodsmoke curling snowdust pines.
Wander-wondering
The youngman years,
Lost behind my questing sight:
Who knows these things?
Can I know the knower, too?
Or
Am I but a vain and harried void,
Sentient, noisy, transient, meaningless?
Paying attention,
Gathering substance,
Calling it Self —
I drank the wine,
Smoked the grass,
Kissed the girls,
Played guitar,
Read the books,
Scribbled words,
Collected friends,
Signed the deals,
Made a name,
Escaped the fear —
For all of that,
The more I knew,
The less.
And so I gnashed
And wept,
And sighed,
And finally shrugged,
And shed those leaves —
Music,
Words,
Pictures,
Friends,
Faces,
Places,
Triumphs,
Sorrows,
Medals,
Names,
All the rest —
The-might-have-beens,
Worst and best;
The could-have-beens,
Hopes and dreams;
The should-have-beens,
Regrets.
Except for true love
(Not a thing possessed,
A state of being, lived)
I stripped the past away,
And stand here
Naked as a baby in the cradle.
I turned but once to ask,
"What was all that about?"
Now I see,
Without a nanosecond's mindgap:
A cup of tea, spiraling honey,
Smiling shy eyes whispering "Yes,"
Autumn evening's quiet black-earth rain,
Yellow maple, golden oak leaves,
Woodsmoke, snowdust,
Featherbeds
And
Breast-touch love,
Apple-sweet and gentle,
Bathed awash
In the throbbing glow
Of a red-orange harvest moon.
Blue Mountain Cabin
Our Blue Mountain cabin
Perches atop stilts on the canyon wall,
A cross-beamed wooden palace
Where stream-music sings
Morning, day, evening, night,
Attuning me with Han-shan,
Po Chui, Wang Wei, Li Po, Ikkyu. . .
How far to travel, simply to
Reach this herenow center
Where beloved solitude
Gives rise to spreading wings,
Spiraling dreamsongs. . .
Polarities United
I sit outdoors
In morning sun
Reading Jung, Campbell,
Rudhyar, Osho, Wilber —
From the kitchen,
"Lee, come butter the toast!"
I smile, arise,
Serene.
The Big Question
When the skeletons
Start dancing,
What to do?
I dance, too,
And write
Another poem!
Owlish Wisdom
I hot-tubbed in California,
Zazenned in Kyoto,
Climbed pyramids in
Cairo, Mexico, Yucatan,
But I still don't fit,
Don't know where the It is,
And constantly get lost in
This ridiculously tangled forest.
Think I'll just relax,
Won't even try to mold
Illusory self to other
Ways, shapes or means,
Simply Owl-yowl it up,
Big-eyed-watchful or
Feather-puffed dozing,
Gently winking
When the rains come.
Where The White Swans Fly
Sing compassion’s song for he who cries, "No way out,"
Who celebrates despair's inertia,
Justifying insatiable desire by claiming
Separate mind-self, momentary life, and doomed.
The way out is in, the way up is through,
Who knows the center knows all, is all.
Who sings spirit electric beyond the body-brain
Becomes light, love, laughter, shining truth.
I would speak of that which cannot be worded,
Signal Spirit's flashing speed,
Instant revelation, that effulgent silence
Emanating celestial music Divine.
He who celebrates the prison, sings only bondage,
Laughter hollow, heart an ashen cinder,
Mind a riverflow of egoistic fears and needs —
Desperate craving cannot escape death's quick claw.
I would sing freedom's heartsong, joy's deliverance,
Twin melodies, love and understanding, elegant as
The white swans of Lake Manasarovar arising on the wing
Beauteous and serene, radiant as five hundred suns.
Soaring Song
(For Everybody in the 50 + Club.)
A sliver of fear
Chilly-weirdly zingle-winged me
Upty-down me spine,
A-setting me afraid.
Gooshy-wooshy bumptied outside-in,
Me's body inside-out a-frightly cold,
Naked, on the way to bedly,
I skipped and hopped as
Quick as quickly couldly.
And passed a mirror,
Stopped,
Seeing myself for
The first time since —
And, why, I marvelled,
Would chilly-weirds be
Dingle-winging one like me?
Look here — 50 +,
And yet the fleshly goodlies ripple nicely still,
Shoulders solid, muscles gleeping weetly-smiles,
Trim hips, thighs and calves;
Between the legs
The fine one's finely, yes —
Then fear, more fear:
When will it fade?
A suddenly wrinkly prunelike vision —
Ouch!. . .Oh! . . .and Kleeple-squeech! —
Instantly back to now and flexing once
The wheetly-tweeples left me,
Dashing under covers.
Age is not the fear, I thought —
I'm modestly blessed and pleased —
But there it is,
Lurking in the shadows,
Darkly gleaming fearsome furry,
Rustling, snuffling, pacing, stoofly gloaming,
Softly, yes,
But louder and more oftly,
Insisting it be noticed,
Forcing the feelie-weely bingle-jings
To kleemble up me spine and down again,
Making me feel and taste and touch him,
Everything but see and understand him.
Fuzzy, hazy, misty, cloudy, smoky,
Ambiguous, nebulous, mysterious, enigmatic,
Slippery, shifty, bobbily, snobbily
And otherwise generally and specifically
Unfocused,
This gleeple-weepy fear
Keeps on keepin' on,
Suggesting all manner of
Withering,
Shivering,
Smithering,
Quivering,
Moneyless,
Honeyless
Bobble-i-zations —
Skeery in the first degree!
— Fantasies amokly steepling
Uninterruptus,
One after two after threedle-doo,
Cleeple-zinging all me staggered wit,
Stripling youth and money, hope,
And wiggley-laughing,
Dippily-daughing
Harshly and smarshly
Bingle-banging
Courage and creativity
To silly-sadly tweeples.
Well, boo-hoo and chaos, too!
Who do we screw to
Out this bangle-clanging mazoid?
Escape, where are thy names?
TV, cocaine, roaring engines, work?
How sweet the numb of alcohol;
Sweeter still, the vampy outlaw kiss;
Both at once, of course,
The sweetest sweepling's thrill of all.
Escape and ease the pain —
A sip, a toke, a snort, a shot, a touch —
Transgressions in the night —
All so fine to ease the moment's terrors.
But then a wakling's moment,
A clear mind but for a single instant,
And lo and alack and
Leap ye heartily into the trees,
Me fairly feathered friends,
That streeply fear returns again —
This time, quiver quick,
With sharper teeth
And blood in its eyes.
'Scape's not 'scape at all —
It's bondage.
Well, hoopy-do and hearty too!
I see, I say, I saw, I said,
So, the journey leads not out and away,
But in,
Where Creation's fountains
Spout in swaying fans and arcs,
And further still,
Toward the center,
Where intergalactic cosmic winds
Sail and swoosh themselves
Among the spiraled galaxies
Into the most profoundly blissful silence
You have ever never heard.
And that's when I came to see
And understand,
A fearful gleeple's gloomy
Only when we sneeple from it.
Go the other way,
That's in,
And we're out again,
Dreeple-painting wordsongs
In the air,
Just like these
And laughing summer breezes.
Blue Moon
Glitters white on
Blue Mountain Creek
January fades into
May, August, December
Now the new millennium
When I, too, shall shine
As Blue Moonlight upon
These everflowing waters
Life/Time
Lifetime
Breath comes in. . .
A brief drama
Perhaps
the
Fragrance
of
Liberation
Breath goes out. . .
Sing-Sing Sing-a-Ling
(To be read aloud as fast as possible)
Jing-jing jinga-ling
Jingaling-bing
Wanna sing, wanna sing,
Wanna sing-a-ling
Sing-sing sing-a-long
SING-a-long song
Singin-a-long, singin-a-long,
Singin-a-ling WING-song
Talk-it-to-me, Walk-it-to-me,
Take-it-to-me—
Take-it-UP Make-it-UP
Shake-it-UP
SINGIN'-a-ling,
BINGIN'-a-long
Wanna WING-sing
Talk-it-to-me, tell-it-to-me
Take-it-up 'n' make-it-up
Take-it-a-long-song
Make-it-a-long-song
Jingin-along, jing-wingin-along
Jingin-along SING-song
Jingin-along, jingin-a-long-song,
Wanna sing, wanna-sing-ling
Jingin-a-ling SING-sing
SINGIN-a-ling, singin-a-ling-jing,
Singin-a-ling JING-jing,
Wingin'-along, singin-along
Make-it-a-long-song, sing-song
Wanna-sing, wanna-sing, wanna sing-wing
Singin-a-wing, singin-a-wing
Sing-sing-sing-sing
Singin-a-wing-sing song!