spiritually inclined/

A pool of light, a flight of stars across a sky,
dawn seeps from night, curtains part or rise or fall— Day breaks!
And with our smiles, our hands, our minds upon this place—

LIFE IS!

 

Life—creating here,
it seems for us,
just us and art, I think.

And insofar as
viewpoints of dimension—
gardens now and now again,
just now of golden lights.

 

His light,
     A blossom and a humble bee—
     So proffers God
     That All may see.

Where gardens bloom
     And earthworms sing.
     God calls each named
     And seasons’ turn.

His light,
     A blossom and a humble bee—
     So proffers God
     That All shall see.

 

A pretty little thing I sing to myself.

Though love, by step, descends
through gates, along idyllic paths,
through grates and catacombs,
love ascends by love alone.

So it is that we create
and thereby are created.

 

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018

It was the early afternoon of Infinity when we met.
I had called into being the forever of time
to anticipate your arrival in finite rhythms—
Knowing they must be the whitest of lies.

The preparation, the perception, the recognition,
the intertwining and engagement of spaces,
their separations—all in the span of hello
and the impossibility of absolute goodbyes.

 

Published as “Afternoon” in: “Letter to the White Imbongi” 2013: “Poems for Relationships” 2017: “3201 e’s” 2018

My home is in a sky
where night as clear as day
and only for the stars and us
and where I’ve met the dawn

I dream
to touch this-that, the sky again
the sweep of stars into the distant
slope of night.

 

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018

unseen, sans wings
alone above an unknown wind

unsung, no throat swells
no tongue conveys, nor eyes contain

no flesh burns here
no doubt, no alibi

suns race silent far below
planets swing, comets chase

    qui vive? la liberté!
    qui vive? freedom!

 

Qui vive means, loosely, “Who goes there?” a sentry’s challenge. Sans means “without,” an old word stolen from the French centuries ago.

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018

Approaching Siddhartha where he sat a
boy examined him politely (this-that?)
Siddhartha spoke and there the unnamed boy
who sitting a while with him that day thought
and over the days ahead returned and
leaving only for food, drink and service
that Siddhartha would not be distracted
from his goal until upon returning
he saw him glowing in the morning light
and so began to dance with him beneath
the tree. A leaf was shed, was gathered then
and the boy, who while tucking it away,
Siddhartha asked if he would run for him
to village, crossroads, field, grove, wherever
Siddhartha wished to speak. And so he ran
and soon arriving, announcing thus his
coming, holding high the leaf he carried
and which had never died, living, always
green, until Lord Buddha left his body.

 

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018

And if I split myself and stand
At every corner of said universe
On any selfsame summer day
With any selfsame afternoon rain
Will this, though thought, slip
Where densities of interest fail
(Or by failures to perceive)

This leaf-boy-runner
Eight portions of beingness
The full and fill of prime creation

(Perhaps where life has paused
Or slowed enough to perceive
At any speed

The speed of perception
The true speed of light
The wavelengths of laughter
And of any thing)

While density shifts
Where inertia has failed

(The density of my interest
The shift of my affinity)

There is no doubt
Life wills velocity
It gives back light
It bends the universe
Assumes location
From which expands
All space
Not already filled
With the logic of otherness
And even there it bends— It wills

As (my breadth of vision)
A torrent
An avalanche
A fissure in nothingness
A co-creation of All
This theatre
Our audience
Of stelae
Beacons of lostness
In search of wavelengths
Of affinity
Where you might
Where I have
The curves beneath our frequencies
The pitch and roll of their design
Their width

(We have
Each other)

In all that vastness
An ordinary leaf
From this
For that
(I am)

The breathless
Runner

 

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018 as “And if I split myself”

The road is littered
with broken bowls and buddhas
flung in bits from cliffs

 

Published in: “souls arriving” 2006 as “#1”

Cool in the shade
still dancing
with Lord Buddha

 

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018

Om-mani birds
hold back the night
Om mani padme hum

Old nun bee Padme-hum
she waggles to the lotus song
Om mani padme hum

Om Metteyya
Om Maitreya
Om mani padme hum

 

There is a Buddhist mantra, a kind of meditative and spiritually meaningful chant: This quintessential utterance, Om mani padme hum, is considered to encapsulate all of the wisdom of Buddhism. Om is a sacred sound expressing holiness. Mani means jewel, Padme is the lotus flower, and Hum represents the spirit of enlightenment.

In this poem the first two words, “Om mani,” are used for the name of a sacred bird. The last two words of the mantra, “Padme hum,” are taken to name a monastic bee.

And waggle, a curious word to use here, is the actual technical term used in describing the dance of the bee upon returning to the hive to communicate the path to the source of pollen; Spiritually, the road to enlightenment.

Metteyya and Maitreya have the same meaning, essentially “friend” in two languages (Metteyya in Pali, the ancient language spoken by Lord Buddha, and Maitreya in Sanskrit). They refer to the prophesy that an enlightened being will come to complete the work begun by Lord Buddha.

I dreamed an opened book of prayer
On a table by a window
Pages turning by a window’s ledge at night
There, God in darkness, knowing, seeing
And where a thief had hidden, kneeling
As pages flutter with the curtain in the night

Pages lifting, lifting, turning
While God looking, quiet, waiting
For His thief in contemplation
Of the faith he had not kept
There, in the shadows of the curtain
At the turning, soon the lifting, of the night

 

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018

Before The Beginning God said
“Let there he Height!”
And it was everywhere.

And then, upon the evening of the eighth day
God said “Everyone’s a critic—
This cannot end well.”

 

Two poets danced in a blossom wood
One with petals and the other with God
Where are, one asked, the flowers of yore?

Two poets turned in a stormy wood
One felt wind and the other, God
Whence, one asked, do these wild winds roar?

Two poets leaned in a wintry wood
One through snow and the other with God
What more, one asked, must we endure?

Two poets came upon a midnight wood
One turned back and the other toward God
Both paths, God said, lead to my door.

.  

Published in Ancient Paths Literary Magazine, June 19, 2020.

If in some other life
we sat in endless space
(perhaps you came alone)
leaning in, could it have been
an orange grove?

If in another life
we listened (in this
or that other grove) and wept
and overflowed with hope—
Then it was real.

 

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018

Below the smoking cliffs
We wait and parting ways

To live a while between the fires
You, there

And I
And Who had come

Already tall against the night
Eight threads

Eight shining cords
Of livingness

Are we not eight
But one? Just so

 

Shoulders rolling, rising
as icebergs from their glacier calf to sea—
as men, we fend the rimless wilds

With force, flung, withheld,
intelligence, ancestral songs of origin,
of prophesy, returning avatars

Overhead
white seabirds
wheeling

 

I guess you’re on your own with this poem. I can tell you where it begins. The scene is set in ancient times, and as near as I remember— a northern, coastal region following the spring equinox. A few of us had embarked upon a quest to find The One. “The One” was not what we called such a Being but it serves to communicate and a given name does not matter for the purpose of this note. Most of Earth have heard it anyway in one incarnation or another.

Calf: The offspring of various large mammals, such as cows (cattle), elephants and whales. Also (as it is used here), a piece of an iceberg or a glacier that breaks away or the action of this happening.

Fend: (figurative) To defend or attack with skill, make one’s way.

Avatar: The manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form.

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018

These are the thoughts of the Locust thrum—

From the ripple, the thought is the Rock is God
From the Rock, the Earth
From the Earth, Sun-Moon
From They the thought is the Milky Spiral
The spiral known as the Eye of God
And from the Eye all space is His
Gift of glorious and of noble heights
And from the Eye all space is Hers

These are the thoughts of the Locust thrum—

Praise them then— the Locust mind, the flights of Stone
All Earths, their Suns and every Moon
Praise Galaxies
Praise Space— Her heights!

And these are the thoughts of the Locust thrum
These are the thoughts of the Locust

Imbongi, in South African tradition, is the name/title of a poet. I imagine a great imbongi with poet friends who relay information from afar—In particular, this letter about thoughts that the writer supposes have come from a distant cloud of locusts.

Can you feel it?
BUT CAN YOU FEEL IT?
I do.

The Changing—

Lights flickering on
And on and on…

Everywhere!

Can you taste it too?
And smell it?
Are you smiling
All-of-a-sudden
For the pleasure
Just the pleasure?

Sing!
Believe!
Be!

THE DARK IS OVER!
THE DARK IS OVER!
THE DARK IS OVER!

 

Come!
Create with me!

(Create Create Create!)
You see—We are already friends

Remind me then of my abilities
Increase our creation of futures (full)

(We pretend we do not know
That “when” is just a little lie we play with)

Remind me to rise at will
And to intend decision

I brim with joy at your separateness
Your joy with mine. With others too, full joy

Remind me of the play and of the game
(The little lies of lose and had)

The glory and the vision
Of “What if”

Reacquaint me with cognition
Remind me to re-cognite

The instant already-ness of being
(For BE we are decision)

What will we decide that we have already
What will we decide

Come!
Create with me!

 

Depths of green—from canopy to forest floor
In streams of raucous livingness
And there, and whereabout, a sanctuary
Falls in heaps, in stone walls run aground.

And with, nearby, afar, by ins and outs
Through every place (perceived)
Wherever listened for—vibration.

A single voice in Pali—a single voice
Leaping, leading, dancing, sweeping.

Hello.

 

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018

From beneath the bottom of the bottomless abyss, below even that, to the firm cliff’s edge above where light shines without shadow, so the Basic Books soar above the darkness, the lostness and the nightmares of yore.

From beneath the bottom of the bottomless abyss, below even that, to the firm cliff’s edge above where light shines without shadow.  Further, to the waving flags at the peaks of the highest mountain tops and the voices of those who have climbed cheering and calling from above, so rise the Lectures with their Basic Books.

From beneath the bottom of the bottomless abyss, below even that, to the firm cliff’s edge above where light shines without shadow.  Further, to the waving flags at the peaks of Highest Mountain and the voices of those who have climbed cheering and calling from above. Still further and unbelievably beyond, where infinity begins to stretch into constellations of your own creation, where hyperbole will remain forever an understatement, so ascends a New and Golden Age—The words, the voice and the visions of Ron.

 

Ron is L. Ron Hubbard.. The Basic Books and Lectures are a part of L. Ron Hubbard’s record of research and discovery in Scientology.

I have fallen while the stars of endless
endless sucking skies have sucked me down.

Here, I have lain broken on the burning lawns of Hell—
fingers, arms, soul stretched to the point of no return
to catch a wind that sings and does not sigh
with the souls of a million million soulless men. 

I have slept and dreamt of rising.
Dreamt the cool nakedness of space
beyond the shell of light that sucks me down.

And I have spent my fists with the soulless men
against the blackened skies of Earth, with the blazing
incandescent trails of souls arriving—
falling no farther.

To dream this night of rising
and the cool nakedness of space
once more.

 

Published in “souls arriving,” 2007: in “Between Music and Dance,” 2013: “Letter to the White Imbongi,” 2013. “3201 e’s,” 2018.

 

The road that lies below lies deep and still.
No moon to light the snow.  The sky is clear.
Alone, heads back and arm in arm— We’re here!
In disbelief— We hardly breathe— But here!

So spill the lights of Heaven into sight—
Illumined, rising, falling, shifting grace.
Upon the starry sweep of Christmas night,
In ribbon-folds of light and dark it sways

Above the shepherd pine and hemlock choir.
There—  This night!  The sky!  The lights!
The stars!  The fire!
Above!  Across!  Dear God—

.

I recall having seen the northern lights only twice in this lifetime.  The last was while driving east on an early winter evening.  I turned my head to look north where the mountains above Vancouver are lit along the ski run down Grouse.  There, and above darker more distant silhouettes, the northern lights hung in unexpected splendor.

Published in Ancient Paths Literary Magazine, December 26, 2020.

The mathematics of the shattered soul:
False theorems born of arithmetic (adj.) chance
Associations purged of higher goals
Dreams of psych (and pharma) courtesans

Whilst mystery lies in algebraic shoals
False purposed ranks of prophets blindly dance
And madmen peddle poisons from their towers
Thus Man is kept in ignorance of Man

 

Published “Between Music and Dance” 2013: “3201 e’s” 2018

Stumbling, tumbling, jumbling space
Riffles and ripples in ecstatic grace
Yet barely persists
To mark where we’ve been

(We leaping!
We laughing
We lunging unseen!)

And roosters behind us
Galactacious spray
That glistens and glitters
The whole Milky Way!

 

Roosters means the action of forming a rooster-tail like the spray of water behind a speed boat. Galactacious is a made up word from Galaxy.

Published in: “souls arriving” 2006: “Between Music and Dance,” 2013, “Letter to the White Imbongi” 2013.

My skull lies split in splintered bits,
My brains, upon the rocks.
I rise on warring winds
To War

In battle over battlements
Where saints and saviors trod.
I rise whole, a king no more,
Nor more, nor less, than gods.

 

Published in “Between Music and Dance” 2013: “3201 e’s” 2018

I have not come, he says,
to defend God
but to offend sinners.

Looks straight at me—
I am his everyone.

 

Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018 as “Everybody’s Man”

I am the fulcrum, the base and the lever.
I am the space and the form and the game.

I am the maker, the vessel, the dreamer,
the teller, the namer—though naming, un-named.

I am the vision, the vista, the seer.
I am the lintel, the door and the frame.

I am the lock, the key and the knocker,
the handle, the pause and the knocker again.

I am the palm and the fist and the shoulder.
I am the sole and the road and the stride.

I am the still—all that echo, and echoes.
I am freedom——my counsel——my guide.

 

Published in: “souls arriving,” 2007: “Between Music and Dance,” 2013.

 

I rise from my body
My fall à l’envers
Through cold brilliant sunlight
And thinness of air

Past floating ions
Into almost bare space
And I shift my gaze back
And I wish for your face

I’ll one day return
With the wind in my hair
Some bright afternoon
And all devil-may-care

With that kiss I’m left owing
Until it is paid
With our love I left holding
When I fell away

 

Á l’envers is French for upside down or wrong way to. It is pronounced a bit like “ah lon vair”. The s is silent.

Whatever else this Earth has been
Wherefrom we step, torchlights streaming
Into the dark and storm of night

We are Cause
We are Decision
We are Scientologists

Postulate:
We are Creators, Builders, Keepers
Of Ideal Orgs—Sanctuaries of Hope
And Light and Beauty
Wisdom and Prophecy

Here, Order, as intended
And Purpose, lead the way

Postulate:
Ideal Orgs abound and with them
The ringing of the Bells of Freedom
Mark the passings of the night
Calling in the dawn and each new day
Of this New and Golden Age

Advancing futures
Cleared beings
Groups, cities
States, continents 
And hemispheres

This Earth—

Wherefrom we welcome
All shoulders to the wheel—
New strength with ours
Pan-determined, undeterred

And the wheel turns
And with the wheel the universe turns
And the universe bends its knee

For we are Cause
We are Decision
We are Scientologists

Postulate:
Eight shining cords
Eight streaming cords of livingness
Aligning to one Common Purpose

And THAT is the Postulate

 

.

.

It is not that the dead are dead, however having seen the lie in it, we live. If not for the dying of the dead, I don’t know, you may have missed the death in it. We live. We are not the dead, that is to say, having seen the lie instead, there it is. We live. It is not that the dead are not dead nor that the dead are not dying. We live. We have not died, that is to say, the dead do not know and have not seen the lie that is or is not there. We live. And having seen and played both sides of it, that is to say the lie of it, we have never died and never will. We live.

Hello, Ron!
We’re here!
We’ve come to join you!

We’ve held your lines
Upheld your dream for All—
And now our hope, our dream—
The goal of Total Freedom!

And in your quest beyond the sky
Beyond the stars that trim the night
We’ve come—All for All

To thank you
To help
To join you on the Road to Total Freedom!

Hello, Ron!
Here we are!

 

Ron is L. Ron Hubbard, Founder of the Scientology Religion.
Published in: “souls arriving,” 2007.