Alone (Schooltown Downtown)


ALONE (SCHOOLTOWN, DOWNTOWN)
Lying in bed with the sound of rain on a tin rooftop,
space heater churning blue flame and little heat,
the sour smell of night sweats on a paisley bathrobe,
Chopin nocturnes escorting Night into her bedchamber.
Dawn sleepily moves across the landscape, and with this
the day breaks upon the city, day breaks upon the already
melting snows. Blue sky and cardinals, green pines shrugging
the cracked ice off, and bend, bend, bend, creaking,
seems it’s me not the trees creaking, leaning towards
the kitchen and all the ways of waking that are waiting there.
Funny, the way the voice shakes in a hushed stage whisper
as it moves in pitch towards the bellow and shout,
towards the un-muffled, the hallelujah yeah that says
this is the moment: a place I’d like to stay.
Step outside on the warped pine front porch, well, well,
the eyes start to focus through espresso steam
and Camel smoke,
and it seems out here all the roads connect
on a downtown trek that’s ever and always leading somewhere,
and I look and look and look at the streak of wires
suspended and swaying beneath the weight of winter winds,
they too are going and they’re not coming here…
And for this minute the dawn tastes good, it tastes like life.
Yellow sun rests on the wet roofs and lawns, gleaming, awake.
A car door slams, a car shifts gears and slides to a stop,
a car rushes round the curve and hill, sounds a whole lot
like late for work and I’m glad I’m not, then a truck rumbles,
a train howls and grinds, screams through birdsong
and soft morning thought, and reawakens the knowing
that commerce has no home or heart, it just roars,
tears down wall and reconstructs, full throttle, full throated.
These are the sounds when the city wakes up, with sounds
like this, with iron gates crashing. Sleeping,
the beast is beautiful with it’s neon crown,
it’s candent towers, fuzzy halo and steady hum. And then,
the city wakes up with all the subtlety,
vulgarity and calm of Moloch rising after the feast.

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Content And Context Breaks Apart, Comes Together


CONTENT AND CONTEXT BREAKS APART, COMES TOGETHER

1 (the journey)
A better song, a deeper majesty, something about a place,
the temperature, a thing unrelinquished…
the open hand waving by the side of the road
where the line between corn and simplicity is really,
really thin, but you take the gesture as it is,
as it is, you wave back and drive on, on road, on stereo,
on still toward the place that’s humming in your throat,
somewhere here to the side of the hill…
somewhere here where it all comes together….

2 (the metaphor)
Falcon struggles and falls into the water, fins splash,
seconds later the water breaks, tiny waves,
the scream, a bit of justice. Watch, wait and cast,
thrashing, coax a rainbow in on a weakened tapered line
with a tied stone fly. Storm comes in off the flats
of Charleston Harbor, boat runs out of gas,
drop a favorite fly rod into the water. Let it go.
Ozone cracks across the bow, phosphorous glows on your
fingertips, gets a little choppy, get a little scared,
pause long enough to smell the mud on the water,
fermented, primordial, the earth blows across the water,
and when you pause long enough…
the breath of God moves across the face of the waters.

3 (storms rise, the past lets go)
Back home, Son House flails away on a National Steel Guitar
about a death letter come this morning to the door.
Do the same: Keep checking, keep checking the road,
do a little mock cross, Hey thanks, mailbox snaps shut,
no magazine, no visitors knock, no telephone ring.
Day dreaming, gazing out the bedroom window:
Cool breezes warm and the leaves turn over,
startled thrashers rise to the sudden thunder,
they know the look of a coming rain storm; and me,
contemplating blue curtains and wilted flowers,
I see the sense of being, but just can’t feel it.
There’s no need to name, the words are all used up,
prose locked in reflections, in the currents of my past,
still trying to break away, and then…yellow sky to green,
and then the world drops away, tornado hits the marshes,
the weather brings me home, and I know right now
that some things must change, yeah,
and there it is, a death letter standing at the door.
And this time around I refuse to answer.

4 (baptism)
She saw constellations. The sky was good.
Pink hearts…Hello moon, and the stars would swirl.
Sheet lightning in the East, bright, bright flash,
then the winds: Gale winds storming over rounded hills
pulling a hot shroud over hunt poised Orion,
and the clouds rolled over on their dark, full sides,
and the rains did fall; and she kneels by the river,
skips a piece of slate across the rippling Oconee…
Alone, she watches and feels, feels the stones flight,
feels the river and the rain, and says good bye,
good bye to all the loss in a night that found itself.
Uuummm May, volatile, seductive, all sparkle and kiss.
Wisteria heavy air clinging to her damp hair,
she shakes it back and sings shower songs, stops,
sings Ave Verum Corpus and knows that tonight
she felt the soul as though all things were beginning.



5 (encounter and awakening)
Wind slows down and an immaculate moment
now romances…everything. Hey, it’s the first of May,
wash my face in dew, here’s the cat-like light begging
to be scratched, and here I am with sunset eyes,
she and I in a mass of shadows just falling away.
Through a Baudelarian gothic hour into this night
I cross the hearts knife and open to this I, this she.

She blows kisses to the past and then to me.
River road stands warm, water gurgles “Summertime.”
And I forget the flatted third, chromatic slide chords,
I forget what it was that drug me down before.
OK, so I obsess on the past…Let it go. She is here.
Her midnight hair glows. I let go the broken loves. Try.
Now….it’s not just this, wish it was, wish it wasn’t…
Now…she glows…wish it wasn’t so Romantic….so more than her…
so hard to go on, but I do: Easy. Yeah? It’s not.
Silence and the blues are smooth, so is she, and we touch…Now.

TOUCH 2020


TOUCH REVISITED

Highlights in the high room,
a foyer by some, but just tall by me.
Single tracks stream through
silken dust galaxies;
they swirl into these rains,
new rains beyond, but just enough
out upon this new green meadow,
this into, this-as, this being there,
it is the spirit of Love, Beloved,
here leaving new dark corridors,
seamless tunnel rising, driving,
a long passage without sides
which we may reach into, yes,
yet feeling slow warmth,
only air.
it’s only air.

Contemplation #12-Self Importance Towers Devour and Bury…This


SELF IMPORTANCE TOWERS DEVOUR AND BURY…THIS

(a short piano, strings and timpani piece based on Kundalini Yoga breathing for release of negative energy, or release of anger, the sound is HAR HAR HAR (thank you, Mandeep Khalsa) which is similar to HUT or HUD, and yes to Chuck Jones and Disney cartoons on the funny side of life, and to bring love we must expel anger)

Hope you dig it. Forgive the visuals as I am awful with photos and videos where my passion from birth is for poetry, food, music and philosophy. In those I am in peace.

The series on Contemplation and Meditation is long and I have never really counted or categorized the music together which is not laziness as much as it is that I seem to write on these elements more than others if not nature and love.  I added a track and changed dynamics and various elements of sound yesterday, 4.12.19, so this is not the final version.

 

 

Breathe To This Now, Just to Breathe to Be


Breathe. To breathe.
. As the hours and night passed filled in thought and dressed with lucid dreams, I woke up and the first word, first thought was “Breathe”. I opened the page and was about to comment on ‘be here now and be love now’ which I do believe is my being now, but then I remembered my Zen teacher from long ago who kept telling me to breathe, to take all the shit In my mind, exhale-inhale and move into the now. This applies as well to my Kundalini thing where the first movements and sounds are of breath doing it’s lung thing and refreshing all that is “I” until the cosmic connection takes place and words disappear into the thing here, this thing now, this that is Breath that is to Breathe and be here now not be here now then breath but to breath move this life in and out of me. So yes, ‘breathe’, I wish I had written that one word just as my Zen Master taught and said he does not care if Gautama taps me on the shoulder that in the moment of exhale nothing must take away from what it is to be which is “Breathe” then be love now. Sometimes I wish to remember be here now which is to Breathe, simply breathe….

 

 

I wish I had the money to be ad free on my site because the ads ruin my words

 

Rilke Poems in French, here it is Poem #53


Je ne peux pas m’engager ‘a accepter ses idées frivoles. Jamais, jamais, je ne l’obéissance pas un meneur, cela ne mène a rien.
Rereading Rilke’s poems in French. It was a masterful exercise in testing his knowledge of the poem and if he could communicate th senses of things felt in French as well as in his native German. The same stands for us, the readers. We must allow that Rilke was just wanting right simply of things felt. But the desire to analyze is always there so it does take an effort not to fall for the pretentious inclination to work a hermeneutic on them, but he tell us not to waste our time, just let the poem be.
This is about the poem itself. Forget any worldly relations because that will muddy the clarity Rilke was looking to place into his writings, not about Alma Mahler or the pre Raphaelites, this is the poem, the 59 poems, then the prose poems in French. No outside world. No gossip of who and what as this is Rilke seeking refuge in his last writings, near last writings. The Duino and Orpheus works drained him, and the publicity wore him out. Works in French is refuge.
I think he went beyond, beyond into an even more mystical and touched by the Heavenly Host as he sought God throughout the ways of language, in how we think and compose, how we think in a second or third language.
The beauty and spirituality is at times wavering between worlds of 2, 3 and 4th dimension.
Exhausted after the peak of excellence which pretty much drained him in Sonnets to Orpheus (my favorite of his collections) and the Duino Elegies (really neck and neck with Sonnets to Orpheus, but man, to write with such elevation and cloud touching as he did with his German sonnets he needed to do something in small ways of experience and things felt, so he used the French language to write of small things of the senses and almost by accident, of the mystical. 53, for me is one of those which begins as a lovely experience among rose bushes, which I relate to in many ways as I have always planted several different roses and Lillies around and in the path to the stairway entrance to my home. At one time I had 14 different kinds of rose and it was an ongoing marvel wonder and precious thanks to the Lord for such small beauties and inspirations.
Roses and lilies engage me physically and spiritually. So, I guess it is natural in terms of how I relate to a poem that I chose 53 to challenge our balance of being pretentious and being in awe. I am both. I seek to be held in awe of Gods gift of this earth which we so readily seek to destroy, and then for some we offer up our roses to the angels to decide. Yes, the wisdom of experience in things felt as sensory and No mind do elevate the soul.
If one is confused by the questions then no answer will ever offer consolation and the other will continue to live in a fantasy of made up imagery and conflicted slander and gossip rather than just looking upon the question and finding this is where stands the soul of the “I” or of the “other”.
It is so hard to be held transfixed by the most elemental of things. Now, the use of the “I” in my description of this pleasure in the text and in the relative meaning is not limited to me, but to all pronouns: I, me, you, yours, ours, theirs, they, them, us, he, she, You, They, Us, Me, Mine, I. All may be used and the meaning of the question and beauty of the answer reveals that it is in the question we find the true self. “but when will we find ways to be equal to the rose?”
The Greek poet Sappho asked a similar question in one of the fragments found of her poetry and it began:
“after so much giving I am exhausted.
where, my love, where are the roses for me?”
We, the reader, find so often that the poet, the writing, the poem itself asks where is there something in return for all I have given, and the poet must accept that what is of the poetic heart is not as it is for regular people except in time of reflection brought on by tragic or heroic events. For the Artist this question simply is a part of the lamented life where we wish the isolated life of the Arts were at times giving us a more social life just to be able to talk with others, to love others and to be free to enjoy conversations without boundaries. Yeah, the critical examination almost removes the delicacy of the poems intention in the first place:
“…
mais comment arriverait-on
a egaler une rose?”
“But when will we find ways to be equal to the rose?” and if we keep up this pretension of roses and tenderness will we then corrupt the angelic touch upon this moment? Right. There are those things written which just are as they exist in the poem, a moment felt and the fear of its being divided up and crushed under the pressure of cynics pen and paper.
Rilke poem Francais, #53
“On arrange et on compose
les mots de tant de focus,
mais comment arriverait-on
a egaler une rose?
Si on supporte l’étrange
prétention de ce jeu,
c’est que, parfois, un ange
le derange un peu.”
In English:
“We arrange and we compose
words in so many ways,
but when will we find ways
to be equal to the rose?
If we keep up the strange
pretension of this game,
it’s because at times an angel
deranges it a little.”

Morality in the Neo Fascist Anti-Constitution American Dictatorship


AS WE BECOME SUBJECT TO NEO FASCIST AMERICA WITH ENTIRELY NEW RULES OF ANTI-ETHICS AND ANTI-CONSTITUTION AND ANTI-GOD, ANTI-MORALITY, CAN I BE A MAN OF FAITH AND CONTEMPLATION, OF HOPE AND LOVE, AND STILL BE AN AMERICAN?

This is one of those things I will delete or hide from timeline in this day or next. After enough writing and thought I ought to reach a satisfactory point of exploring this in a lighter and even deeper content of my soul. If I do maybe I can speak more wisely on the subject, but as things go this is a form of revolutionary thought and action. Point at me and tell your children do not be like him.

Any pronoun can be used, be it I, me, you, her, him, she, he, it, us, them, one or ours, is perfectly applicable to what I write. This Is not just about “I” or “me”. This is an important point as key in an introduction: any pronoun can be used and I use the “I” as a means of expression that makes it more easily understood.

I do wish some kind of comment, but expect none. If there is one who is in search, who finds the life the saints both East and West. Who considers the lectures of the 5th and 11th Buddhas, and importantly the songs of Milarepa as well as the books of the Law, of the Prophets and the Apostles, then you are one with whom I am search of commerce, commerce being a wealth of mind, the exchange of words and life, of actions and meditation which looks and asks ‘how can I become a better person?’

Many times I have sinned against my soul by impatience. I meditate and sing to God as I exercise and lean towards gathering energy and wisdom of the cosmos as a way of helping with my tendency towards impatience when faced with corruption and injustice. Yes, I am flawed. I asked “what is patience?” Then I ask “what is the culmination of events which leads me to be impatient?” What goes beyond our desires and becomes a phantom, a being without shadow or definition? How can I go beyond the many folding veils of deceit and lie in order to feel safe in country and safe in mind?

Must I defy the words of Christ and of the Prophets and give into the current great Lie? Must I give up my beliefs, my ongoing understanding of how to unite Catholicism and Mahayana Buddhism in such a manner that the way of Peace, of Love, of Hope, Of Fatih, Of Compassion is corrupted by hate and misunderstanding?

Must I go against all that I believe and strive to communicate as this great Hope and Faith in the Godhead is daily faced with an American government which commands we go against Fatih and peace, and place hatred and violence in its place? Must I LIE to be a follower of the Trump doctrine of hate and violence, must I beat up journalists and reporters, must I condone slave labor and sex trafficking in order to get along with nations that do?
Must I be silent and just go along?

Thomas Merton, for whom I believe is in Gods grace and died being brought to Him as part of the heavenly host, was martyred by bad electricity while meeting with Buddhist leaders to discuss the ways of likeness, of how the philosophy of life to over come desires and free ourselves of suffering, who was anxious to demonstrate through action and writing that the Mahayana and Catholic Christian, Scripture, are more alike than they are unlike. The salvation does come through the sacrifice and the blood and water of the Crucified Son of God, and we do reach towards the commands of action and faith. I can read and meditate on God and the supernatural nature of Christ to the end of my days without becoming closer to God because of my isolation. I can meditate and think through the 8 Fold Path and the way as taught in the Sermon on the Mount which we know as being the deliverance of the Beatitudes to the world. This was revolutionary. It remains to be revolutionary.

If I am to live I Imitation of Christ I must keep changing how and what I do and think. I am always pulled back into the path either by reading the essays of our Popes and Saints, and blessed writers such as Scott Hahn and Thomas a Kempis. The Agony in the Garden is eloquently explored and detailed by Cardinal Ratzinger in such language that you can feel his hand guided by Archangel Gabriel and his love by Archangel Raphael in his magnificent and lush with holiness and grace book “Behold The Pierced One”. You cannot read this book without being changed.

The same but in different manner of composition and direct speech is found in the pamphlet by beloved and so meaningful to me, Saint Padre Pio of incorruptible body 62 years after his return to the house of the Heaven, “Agony In The Garden”. It is maybe 10 pages but in meaning is as long as my life. I read each in time connected and keep going back to read passages when I am afraid and lost.

In “Does It Matter”, a book on our relation to materiality by Alan Watts his five page chapter “Planting Seeds and Gathering Fruit” The quality of change and of surrendering to a divine Will is the fertile seed becoming fruiting tree and sustaining life even when the winds of humanity and mutability to the earth is greater than we can take, then we must give in, we must plead mercy, that we are so small, we are but a speck in the tail of a comet yet we must learn and find wisdom to pass on to others so that our mistakes do not become their mistakes, and that the good and holy we have learned becomes a part of the lives of others who are wanderers and searchers towards becoming better in soul, mind and actions. If we are not striving we are not bringing to fruition the teachings of those greater than ever we could hope to be, so we take the teachings and are always in a state of becoming.

At times it hurts, it hurts deeply as I kneel before the Eucharist and am immobilized. It has felt as if St. Augustine is holding me down in place until I understand why and how my sins brought me to this place. I am held until I am given the slightest understand such that I may write and speak in a manner that best embraces the Light and the Truth of Being. I am always being towards. I wish I could be otherwise. My desires are at times mightier than my will, but I do not always, in fact rarely, act on desires that are in opposition to the great Teacher and Teachers of mind, morality, ethics and God, the Godhead, the collective consciousness of the world. When I see evil take over our nation as if gobbled up by Mammon and the words of our government are crumbs dropped by sloppiness of the evil one, of the army of Mara, the Whispers of Lucifer. I speak of this in the manner of a country blues guy from the 30s and 40s.

I wish I was eloquent enough to communicate the teachings and how we may apply ourselves in this early 21st century. I am such an easy target because I think so much on the page and wish for someone wiser or as curious and in love with God and the teachings of our great teachers East and West. So I write essays hoping for communication or that I may reach a conclusion in which I find myself in the way of the Holy. It is so easy to look at me and my life and call me a disgrace and shameful. I understand this will to power by denigrating me to a lowest caste in the American caste system. It is so easy to make fun of me because I speak openly of my experience and crazy actions. I say if it makes you feel better about yourself then please do so. Please repeat, please chant the darkest moments of my life as if a spell to lower me down for an easy kill and to make yourself feel better by being so powerful as to crush a man when he at his lowest point. Well done. But do not add self reflection to ones action, do not seek self actualization because by crushing one who is a searcher, who wishes only the love of God, and to be devoted to becoming a better man, then do not look into the mirror for you will se only the face of the devil, the face of evil.

Can I be an American and a man of Peace and Faith?

What Is This Land?


What is This Our Land Becomes
What is this where I have tumbled
What is this where I have been denied
What is this my life and labor
This thing that was my heart and love
What is this where waters flowed
And now rubber tubes clog and litter
What is this I looked upon and adored
Only to find it eaten and destroyed
What is this my work left behind me
So undone unfinished desired and waiting
What is this I tried so hard and found
Dead in the leaves of the gutters above
What is this knowledge denied and rotting
That for thousands of years was designed for now
I held my hand to feel the rough edges
Gone now are my knife calluses soft
And cumbersome where once they raged
What is this when I walk alone unafraid
And still in search for a challenge
Who are you in my garden today
You who would rise up to snatch my life away
What is this I believed for so long
My love of faith spat upon by of course the faithful
Where are you when I speak of my love
Who am I when desire and the sexual
Are fed to the dogs waiting outside the door
And so I know what this is when life rests
And says no more so I accept who I am
See this flesh wilting from my bones
There is little else to smell but rose and jasmine tea
The smell of cigarettes makes me want to vomit
I cannot stand the stench of tobacco and addiction
Long freed from needs of drunkenness and the wild
I was still looked upon as if sparks would
Fly from my fingers and all around bursts in flame
What is this I have called my family who scowls
When I know just how they see me
Wishing I was no longer a man better dust
And a marker with just my name
A thing to be forgotten left lame and rotting

proletaria

politics philosophy phenomena

Poems for Warriors

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Ps 147:3

LUNA

Pen to paper

Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha

Musings and books from a grunty overthinker

Eclipsed Words

Aspire To Inspire

Sircharlesthepoet

Poetry by Charles Joseph

susansflowers

garden ponderings

𝓡. 𝓐. 𝓓𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓵𝓪𝓼

𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖 𝚋𝚒𝚐! 𝙻𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚋𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛!

Flutter of Dreams

Dreaming in Music and Writing by Mel Gutiér

RhYmOpeDia

Immature poet imitate...but the mature one steal from the depth of the heart

hotfox63

IN MEMORY EVERYTHING SEEMS TO HAPPEN TO MUSIC -Tennessee Williams

My Cynical Heart

Welcome to my world.

Discobar Bizar

Welkom op de blog van Discobar Bizar. Druk gerust wat op de andere knoppen ook, of lees het aangrijpende verhaal van Harry nu je hier bent. Welcome to the Discobar Bizar blog, feel free to push some of the other buttons, or to read the gripping story of Harry whilst you are here!

the poet's billow

a resource for moving poetry

MY TROUBLED MIND

confessions are self-serving

proletaria

politics philosophy phenomena

Poems for Warriors

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Ps 147:3

LUNA

Pen to paper

Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha

Musings and books from a grunty overthinker

Eclipsed Words

Aspire To Inspire

Sircharlesthepoet

Poetry by Charles Joseph

susansflowers

garden ponderings

𝓡. 𝓐. 𝓓𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓵𝓪𝓼

𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖 𝚋𝚒𝚐! 𝙻𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚋𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛!

Flutter of Dreams

Dreaming in Music and Writing by Mel Gutiér

RhYmOpeDia

Immature poet imitate...but the mature one steal from the depth of the heart

hotfox63

IN MEMORY EVERYTHING SEEMS TO HAPPEN TO MUSIC -Tennessee Williams

My Cynical Heart

Welcome to my world.

Discobar Bizar

Welkom op de blog van Discobar Bizar. Druk gerust wat op de andere knoppen ook, of lees het aangrijpende verhaal van Harry nu je hier bent. Welcome to the Discobar Bizar blog, feel free to push some of the other buttons, or to read the gripping story of Harry whilst you are here!

the poet's billow

a resource for moving poetry

MY TROUBLED MIND

confessions are self-serving

proletaria

politics philosophy phenomena

Poems for Warriors

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Ps 147:3

LUNA

Pen to paper

Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha

Musings and books from a grunty overthinker

Eclipsed Words

Aspire To Inspire

Sircharlesthepoet

Poetry by Charles Joseph

susansflowers

garden ponderings

𝓡. 𝓐. 𝓓𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓵𝓪𝓼

𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖 𝚋𝚒𝚐! 𝙻𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚋𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛!

Flutter of Dreams

Dreaming in Music and Writing by Mel Gutiér

RhYmOpeDia

Immature poet imitate...but the mature one steal from the depth of the heart

hotfox63

IN MEMORY EVERYTHING SEEMS TO HAPPEN TO MUSIC -Tennessee Williams

My Cynical Heart

Welcome to my world.

Discobar Bizar

Welkom op de blog van Discobar Bizar. Druk gerust wat op de andere knoppen ook, of lees het aangrijpende verhaal van Harry nu je hier bent. Welcome to the Discobar Bizar blog, feel free to push some of the other buttons, or to read the gripping story of Harry whilst you are here!

the poet's billow

a resource for moving poetry

MY TROUBLED MIND

confessions are self-serving

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