Letter to John

Part III
1. Poems

WISEACRE / WISDOM TICKET

At the limit of the query in the real,
every certainty fails. The dispersal of all energy
prevails        as one sparse detached resolution
deriving the antithesis of death
from the ruination of all persistent illusions.
Only the quest to love and one’s insufficiency to love
sustains        once images of God
no longer avail the heart surrendered
fatally to the talisman-stripped openness
it must embark.        And the stations of the self,
remember: they quit the self: not a single
shred of self-evidence is left once
the zero is indwelt, zero that is plenum as well:
the confect of its beam within the dazzling darkness
the night which spells the culmination of the faith
the pristine corporal sensoration of
a consciousness        mandala-immense
rippling waves of Suchness with a sea-infocused core
O this rife, ripe, intangible common sense!

And yet still        I cannot erase        quickly enough
these impressions I am dreamily impelling
from my non-sight          this ignorant
allegiance to the bottomed-out
nakedness I kept on
confessing for the truth        because I may confuse it to confess:
because within my diamond cut of faulty gratitude
only the vast agency of
dynamic spaciousness insists
the non-recursive playfulness of cancelled signs
the lullabying quiver of the phantom
dissipated for all sentients by the simplest thud:
for that is where the ease of sky
probes every wanderer’s right under the sun
to let it roll       without horizon lines       into the quick.

See now I am like Icarus        whose flames desert
a theologian divested of his tomes
a negligible worker whose lumbering intent
descends       stumbling from the precipice
nowhere to reach nowhere to
rest content in the unfathomable wealth
pure presence manifests         questionless—
but who could reach the depth I splash from then?
when it is but the surface pressure of
an all-eroding safety       content to soak the trees.

The past I cannot foresay        the present
relinquishes me long before I learn my speech
my fidelity therefore must lodge
somewhere in the salt floe of the vagabond
Jesus, but he without a chance
of being understood        who pitilessly
tears in two the temple veils
until body alone ascends of future glory
which can no longer be reserved for anything but
his gory heart:         future that inexorably
demands of the liberated conscience it be enough
since there is nothing left to live by but         lost love.

—May 30th, 2023

*

WINDUP DOLL
In Praise of Futility, after Shankara

1
Every action creates an equal
and opposite reaction, like blinking. The train
reaches its final destination and returns
parted-out to the yard. Due dates,
die dates, everywhere, from morning plans to
life plans— the human plan, too?

Beneath Anubis and an old wooden panel
the coffin of Amen-Ra chantress Henettawy
lulls; Europe had no fear to dig her up. And though
we buried Mom and Dad the way
everyone, these days, is buried, who can say
if in a millennia or two they’ll unbury them too
and hoist their metal eternity-shuttles
into another dim-lit, alien hall?

Perhaps again an anonymous amateur like myself
will ponder aloud the paradox of
motion— when all it can do is cancel.
When after the waking-hour push of his travel,
when after his stuff is organized into spots,
when after his letters are mailed,
when after the giddyup and gander there comes
the lull again, with Anubis standing watch, unblinking.

What are we doing here, banging
our heads against a black-hole mirror?
We are finishing our roll until
the wheels burn out, or the die fall,
and the read-out on the final face is final, we
know our fate. But this will never
take place. Mountains climbed remain,
whether toes blister or not;
and the flag we drove in, to mind our stake,
will wave until the wind
tears it apart— or it’s hung upon the wall in a museum
for strangers to comprehend it even less.

2
Beginninglessness: that is how scripture
(which alone could tell us) describes
the Reality of the Real. Whatever else changes,
that modifies, that limits— it has a life
no doubt, a life borrowed from beyond time;
but borrowed time must repay the debt in full,
so that only will the Imperishable remain.

That beginningless beyond of change
crumples up the draft
and the waste-basket I dump it into.
Every rove of eyes is the collapse of a phantom.
You set up the dominoes, and they tumble;
but the elements all retract.

The table. The world. The ineviserable sky.

Whatever has begun is a sign for the unhearing,
a lesson to the dreamer about the dream:
that yes there is a heaven,
yes there is an earth, and forever they will both
dissolve in the splendor of Godself,
that Beauty which is nothing, look: Nothing all.

*

SECOND BIRTH

Crisp neon light inside the womb
Explodes in a visage of Never-There.
It is I, the danger of life and its slave.

No weapons do I bandy or repair.
Degrees of ascension do not matter to me.

I read the languages in the scars, the rest
I cannot see. Legends of wanderers
Who lost their dreams on temple grounds
I cannot hear. I was the least
Of each seeker. Do not remember me.

(Labor no more, mother-made dream.
Only at the very end of the road
Will you see Him.)

*

WHAT DOES NOT BECOME OF THIS
For Diane

What does not become of this
spontaneous love
coursing through the mundane way
they order cakes & coffee—
the way I sip, invisibly, mine?

This instant, it is nothing,
a citation of eternity;
no one could guess
the source text or track down the author;
and it doesn’t take a footnote to know
the page remains silent
a simmering sky blankness fare of Why
coinciding with bookshelf after
bookshelf of (consciously?)
wisdom & ideas—
no limit to the proliferation
when only What occurs!

(Every morsel of that space is your grandfather.
Every patient look redeems distaste.
Look into the unending pain of
Being born. Train the mind upon the breach,
And death will never reach.)

For the magical display resides not in.
Not in brain, nor magnetism, nor atmosphere.
It is not behind the wall or inside the wall.
It is the other side in the same side of the One.
There is no sense in choosing.

(It was Mill Valley, surrounded by
glass & wildflowers, she was resplendent
ordering croissant, cookie, what else,
giggling at Botox, aging, I was so glad

And now I am glad too aging at Columbia
with Creeley’s For Love and Ramanuja’s
guarantee: that the infinite God does receive our love,
as I am on my way to leave the Jesuits,
after Mass, after Confession,
after Roerich, after Arati, and back—

An instant too, that’s nothing, or will be;
another quotation
of the sun that tells me
there is no sense to align
It is aligned, it is all aligned
with nothing left to choose in the proliferating Why
because
What does not become of this
spontaneous love?
What does not become of this
so glad

—June 8, Columbia Ave, NYC

*

ANALOGIA ENTIS

Addicted to this gripless bone
I scrubbed each ossified fable till it woke
Screaming the dust
White as cloud
Innocent porcelain of her flesh
So aggressively stuck on
Spirit’s woe
Whose kill switch authors dare not boast
Of undeceit
When she herself so quietly
Withdraws. It is so quickly they
The herders entrap
Sucking on the bright word candy exhaust pipe
Their own needling reason accosts
With less alibis
Than regret. O precious Urger,
Forget it!
The ugly Bait the trans-
Mogrified Angel-covering!—
It’s got no mythemes left in its vagabond sinews
No more than I am free
Of the bloated global semiconductor named thought—
No symbolical
Or diabolical trick left to not expose
In this randy rampage out to where games end—
No look at it
All of it is
Scolded into cowering from the line
The “signifying nothing”-most stage
Furious
Because of the nearest
(Feel my brush)
Reminiscence of skeletons deathless awaiting
The dumb squat hole
Of blank hope
With a humbly bloody murder in its wake
Smiling
Undertow so fecund she prevails.

*

FACE TO FACE

Porous eyes wait pale at the ledge
For the flood of your unforgettable kiss.
Years, the dryness of gazes, poses
Hunched over or straining up.
Mountainous pain, with vertigo blushes.
Laid out. A dizzy sky. Hard summits.
Then night. No dream shelter: night.
A glass, dropped down a narrow well.
Lips so close, I can hear them almost.
Eyes, trembling, drenched in dread.

*

CLOACA OF THE HIDDEN GARDEN
A Gnostic Hymn

Killer roughage orbits
In dizzying kindergarten spasms
The total war of this body
I eat and shit out

Dullness rage-complexioned
Chunky clouds of sputa and dead skin
Cosmic prisons
Of sinless scintilla

The innocent center expunges
Too the prime visioner
Of an escapee of battles being-cored

He is eternity’s slave
Gone where the eye goes tender and erased
He is the end of what ends

*

DEVOTEE

1
Devotee I split between desire’s continuance
and consent to float away into His love
future-timeless
I sparkle I pall he holds me he scolds me
motions me up to the guillotine
it’s my crown my aura
my glorified
body I’d inhabit if I could
if I could go on right up to heaven
would be simple just let go of
what I want what I think what I mean

2
Devotee I seek between Pure Him
and routine substitute of book sect vision
talisman satsang adoration
nature baptism sex rapture sunset quietude
the journals the poems
searching searching searching
but not for Him
for He does not wait
He is found everywhere
do or do not do or do what else

3
Devotee I vacillate between His Pure Witness
and my reflected consciousness
this my life my love my job my dream
precious seed to be
scorched
the idiot Undier so confused I am the idiom
lever of a discoverer-identity who
must move must search
must worship worship worship
when I find the Self no one will else that’s it

*

THE INSOLUBLE PRICE OF HIS HEART

nothing left to show for all this
though that don’t mean I’m invisible
just that God
he’s up to his funny business again

all excited leaps the soul
some new prospect of investment insight love
and it carries her
all the way to him or so she thought
until the forms flop
go empty
she’s back left with going questioning
she’s all flustered
lover with no picture of her beloved
left only without him the real him
who’s distanter than ever in his closeness
who is death stripping off
all the supports of her life
robs the body robs the icon robs the letter

yes I know it’s just his play
I know it’s just his way his jealous heart
he wants no substitute for him and so he turns
all this world into a loss
lost like my life will be and also is

(only my moments in him
wet at his lips sucking his mouth
will I remember
when his member I devoured in ecstasy
naked and lost consciousness in a lake of his juice)

o devotee if you hear me
forgive your rules and rites and wrongs
forget everything you do see heard
it’s nothing
nothing at all you’ll see one day I’m sure
when lust for him outweighs
romancing his courtiers discerning paths
chalking up statuses saved damned sacrilegious proper
forget powers
the wigged-out auras of your priests
ban the accustomed down the labels ideas meanings
burn the blustery books too if you can stand it
fie on all the substitutes
let them perish in the pangs of this untamable love
true love that needs his body not yours
I’m saying die now die to all this now you have to
he’s killing you
he’s killing everything
he wants you and there is no other way

*

VIDYA MAYA

how easy it was to know you
when to know anything was to know you

an encompassment from within
an eruption from without
your bliss ran every gamut of reception up and down
musing fusing
clowning astounding
there’s a record can’t forget it it is faith

nothing’s lost how could it be
nothing’s gone where would it go
you are perfect memory of yourself and that’s enough
for me and every other
memory of you

no need to count no need to think
the gentle way you rock us fits no words
but we can sing of you
dayless
we can leap into the canyon of your love
wide as Brahma’s search for the bottom of the universe
narrow as a sticker on the path
ouch and yeah
we’re diving in remember us
we’re falling catch us up

o gentle one before the gods arose
this may be the last letter I’ll ever send
for I’m coming to you
nothing will end
I am coming to the knowledge of your everything
it’s a dream that’s not a dream isn’t that rare

*

THE ONLY PRIZE
For Henrik

The only prize on earth is to know Him
In heart the only wealth, in world the only world.
All else man seeks is but a form
A temporary motion
A finite fulguration of His bliss.

Behind the silky flesh and sweet appearances
Behind desire’s draw and sensual nearness
Behind thoughts of other and of self
(In them and where they end)
There is only His calm countenance,
His charming tenderness, waiting
For the purified touch of Christ’s mind in you.

What man searches for across the globe
What he strangles for and kills
What he craves in blindness, not knowing Him,
It is always for a mirror of the Lord—
For the Lord who is already in his heart.

He loves wife, house, child, nation,
He loves the work of his hand, his memory,
He loves the shape of the temple, of grand nature—
But all because he loves the Lord’s reflections
Glittering in hints from every item he adores.
Lord who is felt realest when, letting it all go/God,
Man realizes he is himself the Lord’s mirror.

For there is no other object of love possible.
There is no other vision man can have.
One day he will see this, that God alone is—
He who has become in all this universe,
He who is principle and motive of creation’s play,
He who is closer than time and space,
Who is lovelier than any body or image or experience.

He, the Lord, the only thing we search for,
He too is the searching and the searcher!—
Oh lovebound one, the riddle is a riddle no longer!
He is not hidden, He does not need figures—
In the heart in your heart He is there.

*

FINAL COUNTDOWN

Paved in stale ruts
the genies flexed their crumply biceps for the parade-
goers winking out pink
eye-sockets
and paper-pushed chairs. That day
everyone was sick,
and the rain
like arrowheads shred their vestments from above
so they hacked nakedly
lungs, limbs,
they cursed the paramedics rushing in
it was a pandemonium of tambourines as the govner
humping horseback
decreed
that year’s De Sales’ Day Queen
will have to be murdered for her grace —
and the genies screamed in terror as the crowd
dwindled so too did
their muscles
but fled
back to their bottles they realized
the town
the whole wishlist
nothing not even nothing were they there

 

2. Dzogchen Piths

The recipe says blend, so I
Admit my sins quietly and let it rest.

*
A desire owned is a desire let go
When action doesn’t need to play a part;
Fantasies dissolve under the acid
Of attention and compassion for the whole.

*
The Self is our unprepared knowledge:
We can only let it encroach slowly
In balance with the little self who
Stabilizes by recognizing the subtle change.
The oscillation is a letting-be of beloved and Love.

*
I’ll think about her every day without excuse;
Surely the day comes soon when I won’t but once!
A fluttering heart is its own truth;
So too when its wings depart from all for God.
My wish is for my thoughts to go away
But they shelter a secret door to Him, I know.
Someday, the real wish will unfurl
And with it every thought of her will be His praise.

*
The same turd deteriorates on the same curb
Day after day and one day it will be gone.
This is not a profound thought about the world.

*
Leaping to catch emotion’s wind with words:
A sure way to get blown off course.
Antipathy is confusion, fervor is confusion.
Dwell in non-doing and all doing is clear.

*
No grip to gain, no obstacle to budge,
The warmth of the vajraheart is spontaneously whole,
Unforced, unattained, unretainable, unlost,
Never too close, never too far, all-pervasive.
Its center is beyond spatial coordinates,
Its edges give room to every place.
Not moving from the ease of the dream-like mobile,
Inaugurated and fallen, wanted and unwanted thoughts
Effortlessly released are as equal to me.

*
Divulged or undivulged, secrets circulate
In the pristine omniaccess of mind to all thought-forms.
To hide them, strategize away, defend against ‘revelations’—
Fake fly swatters whipping in a fake wind!
And so much effort for the slimy messy thwack!
Only illusions can be protected from the empty expanse
And the source of illusion is this protectiveness.
EHMA HO! The secrets never existed, friend.
There is no keeper of the everywhere-selfsame bliss.

*
Exultation is no guide, bald gauging is not truth.
The levelers are crooked, the pedestal-builders stupid.
Gravity acts on all, there is no favored adjustment.
Light goes and bounces, it cares not where.
And you would locate your soul at the center?
Bounce instead! Go act on all, trash the scales!
Turn round inside the unveiled veil and see:
‘All or nothing’ is the very figment of the world.

*
Irritation is the sign that death is not real.
A rotten song will not last long—
Unless perhaps you try to smash the radio!
(That it must put itself back together, is karma.)
So do not abuse, do not pamper, the abiding field.
It takes no turning of the dial, no new antennae.
Ears open or closed, in cacophony or quiet,
There is only one song playing—not life or death—
And need not decide if it’s the very best; just listen.

*
Temptation is an air horn with no power to blow.
If you don’t wave around the empty canister
Or press the useless button expecting sense pleasure,
There’s no way it will ever know it honked!
The memory of sound’s absence—surely is not a sound!

*
Careful the “pan” handlers and big hybrid words!
They say God is all this, then more than it all.
They stick Him “beyond” and the rest of it “in”.
Well, wherever “it” is, must be Elsewhere than it!
But to credit, they pertinently demonstrate
The reversible nature of all theomental positions
And the silliness of using space-time to place That.
Who could not love them? They always get the change they invent…
Just as we do, who dissolve
Within our own breakages of language,
Instantaneously real and instantaneously derealized
For the Expanse is not so picky where It’s stored!
Inside the Beyond we’re beyond-in, surprise is the rule!

*
Analysis of the past drops away from me,
Looks ahead evaporate before they form.
Devotees call this trust in the Lord,
Knowers freedom from rebirth,
But I? Am just a lowly no-countryman smiling,
Skylight on the roof of a looney bin.
My creaturelihood, placid, ecstatic,
Doesn’t tell time anymore and couldn’t care to.
It’s the present I stand for!—and it’s missing,
So without bothering to ask why, I answer simply,
“Go on, go ahead, I don’t mind.”

*
The emptiness of thoughts images forms:
That’s the last threshold of insight you’ll cross,
When conventions of the scientific mind
Come to rest in an awareness of their relativity
(Being established only in relation to our prospective self)
And behind the vast web of laws and equations
Will inappear the Net-less Mesh, substance
Of its own pregnant reflection—the Eternal Bird
Whose flesh is your soul already taken flight.

*
Simulated-stimulated piety O God
It’s swung me back and forth like a beating rod.
Black eyes, from gazing the majestic wealth.
Welts on my heart, from all the guilt.
O psychotechnic terror, do I have any other friends?
With you at least, I know: no wrong is right,
And everything I think you are is wrong.