Wax Poetickle

Before the Heart
Fell Open

Heart-felt Expressions
Of the Human Spirit
For Sharing Aloud

Dramatic Readings and Poems
Appropriate for Worship Services,
Interfaith Gatherings,
and Celebrations


Evan T. Pritchard

Copyright © 2003
Evan Pritchard All rights reserved.
Print edition available from Resonance Communications,
PO Box 1028 Woodstock NY 12498 (212)714-7151 $8 plus $2 postage





Before the Heart Fell Open

Heart-Felt Expressions of the Human Spirit for Sharing Aloud

Introduction
Before the Heart Fell Open
Where the Now Meets Forever
Winter Walk
Resonance
The Company I Keep
Charity
The Silver Feather
Shells
Daughter of the Earth
Living At Once
All Day at the Orchard
Teacups
Listen to the Silence
The Path of the Soul
Stillness
At This Hour
Fishing In a Storm of Spring
Logic’s Blade
A Thirst for Heaven
Hand Upon My Reins
No City Bird
Alpine Flowers
To Kill Van Kull
Seer Sucker Suit
Ragland Castle
Last Words From Yeats
Songbirds
As Spirit Moves Me
Past Life
Affirmation
More Time At Love
A Tern Awakens
You Led Me To Drink
The Catch
Every Man is a Universe
God’s Body
Voice of the Seagull
Just Say the Word
Extensions
Times Sq.
Gentle Dog
Sky Haiku
Key To Everything
There Is a Man In Heaven
Kvetch!
Ice Age
Cash is King
America in the Morning
The Sun Rose
Earth: Her Last Words
Protest
Bus Stop!
Beautitudes for the Earth
Riddles
Body Politic
From A Dream
The Blind Man’s Song
House of Being
My Loneliness
Different Rivers
Life
Turning Point
Falling Through The Cracks
In The Balance
The Day is For Dancing

Under Sugar Loaf

Self-Help Strategies in Verse
Relax, Don’t Be Lax
First Find Your Heart
Love Is Seeing We Are All in the Same Boat
Listen, Listen, Listen
Love People
If At First You Don’t Succeed
From Variety Arises Strength
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask For Help
There Are Two Wisdoms
A Balance In All Things
Its Not What You Do
If You Really Want to Amaze People, Tell the Truth
A Sense of Wonder
Nature Is The Greatest Guru
Living Beyond the Means of Your Wisdom
Love All, Trust Few
Ask and It Shall Be Given
Spirit Moves In An Instant, the Heart Moves In Time
One-Step Recovery from Uncontrolled Happiness
Better To Be Silent
Live In This Unique Moment
Everything Else Is Gravy
One Shred At A Time
The Best Things In Life Are Free
Don’t Try To Tie Everything Together
Follow Your Bliss
If You Can’t Dance To It, It Ain’t Music

You and I Are Like Water

Introduction

The following collection of dramatic readings have been arranged to be performed aloud at worship services, poetry readings, ecumenical and interfaith circles and celebrations, or secular gatherings and nature-based celebrations throughout the year. They are inspirational without being “preachy,” spiritual without being cultish, and emotionally heart-opening, hopefully without being overly embarrassing or mawkish. For the most part, they are poems that almost anyone, teenaged or adult, could read with considerable dramatic success, without feeling “dumb.”

Most importantly, when read aloud, these poems become a vehicle for people who may not know each other well, (or know each other too well) to share a feeling of common spirituality, growth, kinship, hope, love, vulnerability, and happiness, without crossing too many theological boundaries.

In addition, couples, friends, therapy and AA groups, church members and team members, by selecting one of these poems and reading to each other, can experience something “spiritual” together without having to conduct a “ritual” or “service.”. The poems tend to give expression to the reality we experience of being in the world while at the same time having aspirations to other worlds, greater compassion, a deeper sense of peace inside, or visions.

Some poems are purposefully mysterious, some are simple and clear. Different people are attracted to different means of expression, each following their own drum. Each person should choose to read a poem that in some way speaks for them. Some are quite short, others quite long. By reading some of these poems aloud, participants will be encouraged to compose and read their own verses of the soul as well, leading to a truly interesting day or evening for all!



Before The Heart Fell Open

Where was I
Before the heart fell open
That I couldn’t see
The workmanship in these old floors?
Where was I that I couldn’t see
The pattern that ivy makes in the sun
And the smell of mown grass?
The stars tonight are like sand on the beach
Each granule a moth
Burning with satisfaction
Of fiery fulfillment.
Why didn’t I see that before?

What was I doing that I didn’t have time
For the rituals of my childhood?
Walking and chanting and making up rhymes,
Improvising songs
Letting oratory bubble up from the deep universe of words
Delivered free to the unsuspecting starlings
And distant window lights?
What was I doing that I didn’t have time
For harvesting my sorrows for their juice,
Plowing my joy back under
To enrich the soil for tomorrow?
Who was I to pull out the twists and turns from my path
Like unexpected weeds and leave me
Walking a tightrope of efficiency?
Who did I think I was to picture myself
Into a machine of reason
And pull the plug on my dreams?
I knew so much until yesterday,
Now I wonder a great many things.
Who did I think I was
Before my heart fell open?
Like an eagle egg, a fossil rock, a sunflower seed,
A drop of wine,
I made love walk behind me leashed
and called it slow.
Now I set it free and wonder how I’ll catch up to it.
Before my heart fell open
I had everything and starved and strained
Now I have nothing and I am powerful
Now that my heart is open
It is too big for the box
And cant’ be returned.
It is too big to judge
Too big to hate,
Too big to hide
I thought I was nearly finished….
Well, I was,
But not the way I thought
But I’m nearly begun
Now that the heart has fallen open.




Where the Now Meets Forever

Here in the wilderness
Light fills my emptiness
Peace fills my heart
Like a bowl in a stream
Like a voice in a dream
It flows over me
Like a memory linked
To my childhood mind
I blink, and I find
I am over the top
Of the ferris wheel suddenly stopped
At the point where the now meets forever.

Here in my stillness
My song lifts my sadness
My joy lifts me up
Like the wind in the leaves
Like the scent from the trees
It sweeps me away
Like the sand in a stream
As it melts around my heels
And it steams and it wheels
And I’m seven again
With a life of my own
To begin
At the point where the now meets forever.
Winter Walk

Following the tracks through the snowbound woods
I arrive at a timeless place.
An exciting stillness grips me
And it peaces me
Altogether.

The snow wants time
To gather thoughtfully
So I stand a while and collect
The glinting glimpses
Of a hundred childhood winters
Converging on this moment
Sifting down like dust
From a heavenly stair.
The diamond cutter of Souls
Is up there sweeping his floor
With a brand new broom
And I am made clean.

It is only mid-November
But its Christmastime inside.
I feel close to myself right now
So simple
Like hydrogen and oxygen
I am
In free fall
Weightless here in the zero air
And I plummet toward the clouds.

It’s only mid-forest
But I’ve reached my destination
And must proceed
From here.


Resonance

Sometimes I wonder, “What is love?”
I find it everywhere, yet nowhere.
When life began
There were a throng of cells
Working well
With other cells
To make this world a whole.
And even in the cells
There were
Electrons needing one another,
Struggling to create a vehicle for Soul.

Then love became a feeling,
A stream of hopes and fears
Pouring like a river of intoxicating wine
Leading to a never-was-or-will-be
Never-never land.

Then Love was a concept, the lightning thought.
The welding torch that magnetized a thousand disparate facts
Into The Truth.
A great machine arose from this
On which I hung my laundry.. and reality.
“But what is it supposed to DO?” I asked.
What’s the use?
It moves but goes nowhere.

Then love was not a thought but an awareness.
Awareness of the self within the self.
The other within the other.
A Being-ness which conquered all
With its simplicity.
Beingness that’s not just owned but shared,
Compassion and self-interest
Merged and paired.

And now love lifts another veil of shadow;
Standing in a crowd
I sense the beauty of some great self,
A vibration in the heart of me,
An energy
Like a string plung,
A bell rung,
But a bell without a clapper.
I am wonder struck.
This is the music of the spheres,
Which in this form
Cannot be seen or heard, but IS.
And yet I know and perceive
It’s sweeping harmony,
Resonant like a symphony,
Like a crystal glass that we drink dry
And make to sing;
Or the Lama’s Dhorbu bell he rings
And tests and rings again;
That old teacher—experience, has my heart.
He wrings it dry
Then strikes my very being
And tests again the resonance in me.
It resonates in sympathy with all vibrating beings,
Sustaining their vibration,
It echoes back to me on waves of singing, ringing energy,
The simple bliss of truly being.

The Company I Keep

In the company I keep,
I need no cool façade
No compromising artifice
I just AM WHO I AM.

In the company I keep,
All is understood
Unlike those hoards of people
Who block my windows
With paper shutters.
Their opinions I don’t need.

In the company I keep
I have a circle of friends
Those who’ve passed
Through the world
Left their signature
Then transcended
The Earth Circus
Never to return.
Others many come and go
But this is the company I keep!





Charity

I spend my flask and flagon on the sand
The desert drinks my essences in vain
And nowhere is the promise of the leaf
To signal hidden flowers seeking rain.

I sling my water-bag across my arm
I shall not drain my life to share with death!
Dry death who has no blossom to return—
No foliage to transform milk to breath!

I see a traveler, bearded and serene,
Approaching me and speaking with his glance
And with each footstep, flowers bloom then fall,
Then says he,
“What is Life and Death if not a dance?”




The Silver Feather

The Silver seagull feather rises from the sand,
Its root somewhere in earth,
Its finger wet with sun
And points above just like the cold still lake’s white hand
That thrust out Arthur’s sword
With which fault was undone,
And yet that sword of life pulls down to death each man
Who tries to grasp its depth and power
Except one.

Shells

There’s a flower in the seed,
There is flight within the egg
There’s music in the reed
Before its played
Just as day begins as dark
There is heaven in our hearts,
Can you feel it,
Growing within
Like a babe who is waiting for the world to begin?
It fills its womb
Until its small cocoon
Must let free
The life it was molding
Holding
Colors unfolding into wings
Of a holy bird
Who sings as its only word,
“Love!”
Love’s rainbow feeds the dove
it is all she needs to know.

Daughter of the Earth
You are the daughter of the earth
You are a bright star in the heavens
You are the moon behind the veil
Emerging into wholeness!

Living At Once

There is art, there is music,
There is poetry and song,
There’s a dance to which every move we make
Somehow belongs,
But living at once
Is the finest creation,
To express a lifetime in a glance
Is beauty
Timeless beauty.
Gazing within does much more than kill time,
my eyes see through lies
And all life becomes mine.
But as time’s eyelids raise
To bare my lives
All at once I must also bear my death.

Piercing and deep glance of death
Teach me to see
Show me what it means to be,
Though wild illusions play,
The light would make night
Seem as day
give us sight
Or give us sleep
I pray.

Between the fingers of each hand
Is room enough to understand
That empty spaces need to be filled
Through love.
Just as the seed of life
Must be embraced by the land
To be born
Weary hands need to find a hand that is warm.


To see the vision of the whole
Unite the complimentary poles
But how can two be one except through love?
Even the Yin and Yang,
So motionless as they’re drawn
Can form the circle that holds the world
When they see they are one.


We can speak about our sadness
We can sing about our bliss
But as one leads to the other
What we’re learning is this…

Living at once is the best conversation.
To confirm a lifetime with a nod
Is truth,
Timeless truth.
Gazing in you
Does much more than fill time
your eyes meet my eyes
And your life becomes mine.
But as your eyelids raise to bare your joy
All at once I must also bear your pain.
Piercing and deep lance of pain,
Teach me to grow,
Show me what it is to know
The way our lives must sigh and bend
Like pine trees in the wind.
grant me this
Or grant me leave my friend.

Between your fingers I still see
The motion of eternity
The motion that brings you to me
Through love.
Just as the arm of Yin
Must reach out to the Yang to have form
Drifting spirits must find new worlds
To be born.

Each heart wants a home where it can rest
Where it can hide,
But the body that it lives in is a mortal one that dies,
So living at once is the best refuge.

Living at once is the highest of virtues,
To embrace a lifetime with a kiss is loving
Perfect love.
Life builds one span,
Bridging all rivers with last breath,
your hands wring my hands
And they wed me to death.
But if love sings our lives
In one whole phrase
Life must end within a single word.
Silent and powerful word
Teach me to sigh
Show me what it means to die
So that my life would blaze again
With beauty without end
Oh, give me light or give me sleep,
Amen.


All Day At the Orchard

All day at the orchard, when Sun laughs and dances
The fiddler plays for the praise of the children
They know that they like him, they think that they know him
This stranger who offers a game for the summer
He lets them all play with his strings and his bow
But for now are his arrows concealed with a quiver.

And when the moon grates ‘cross the seaward sky
To reap the star’s grain into its porcelain bowl
She spirits off both ocean tides and men
Not seen again ‘til dawn lends back to waking shores
The light of day, men’s speech, the sounding waves.

All night on the ocean, the man sat in trances
The Riddlers made him a play, at his willing
He knows that he saw them; he thinks that he knows them
These strangers whose altar’s a stage for the dreamer
They’d show him his play if he’d bring out his boat
But for now are his oars all congealed with a tether.

Teacups in the Rain
Like teacups in the rain
I set words out on the white ground
To collect the moisture in the night.
I awake to drink of that
Which yesterday’s lofty clouds
Had concealed.

Listen To the Silence
Listen to the echoes of Silence
Singing in the still September night,
“I alone exist, I alone exist!’
Night birds touch the waxing moon
And whisper to it with their wings in flight,
“I alone exist, I alone exist!”
Light of blue shines through
The darkest hues of night
From deepest space within,
“I alone exist, I alone exist!”
Within each bush a cricket answers
To the answer each is given, softly,
“I alone exist, I alone exist.”
In softly flickering stars, a Supreme Being glistens
And a song is there
For each to share
But a dying world
Is bent with care
And cannot sing a song so fair
And few if any
Listen to the echoes of silence
Singing in the still September
Nightbirds touch the waxing moon
And whisper to it with their wings in
Flight of blue shines through the darkest
Hues of night from deepest space
Within each bush a cricket answers
To the answer each is given, softly,
“I alone exist!”

The Path Of The Soul

Listening to music which cannot be heard,
This is the sound of Soul.
Seeing colors which cannot be seen,
This is the light of Soul.
Knowing things which have no sense,
This is the understanding of Soul.
Visiting the inaccessible place
This is traveling in Soul.
Calling and calling for that being which has no name,
This is the mantra of the Soul,
Coming to the end of all roads,
This is the beginning
On the Path of the Soul.

Stillness
He who is truly active seems to be at rest
She who is truly restful seems to be active
He who seeks oneness with the All seeks stillness
She who has found stillness
Seeks expression.
Those who have found expression are never still
One must surrender to stillness in order to conquer motion.



At This Hour

At this eventful hour of the day
The snail has found the jail key to her shell
The beetle bug is measuring the tree
The butterfly emerges from her womb
The lotus shows the petal to the bee
The dragonfly is dancing on the lake
The ladybug is yearning to be free
But the mantis meek is mindful of them all
And contemplating one thin blade of grass
He learns to see!

Fishing In a Storm of Spring

Bless this wind and rain
Bless this storm and frost
For it is, at once,
Both prize and cost.
One more time the gull,
And once again the fish,
Separate their ways
Because the ocean breaks their wish.

Passions please the sense
When the earth is still
Water clear makes near the catch,
“Attachment” wends its will.
Then the wind-whipped waves
Will snap the wishing line
But love resists the distance
Defies time!

Logic’s Blade

Fearsome power of solution
Intellect and worldly reason
Life’s own life-dissolving potion
Doubt from which belief is risen
Minds once pulled with blind aggression
Serpents’ tails from where they’d frozen
Leaving souls with no transition
Making dying’s venom brazen
Causing time’s disintegration.

Confused, confined and blinded mind of man
Still dreaming of the steaming, stagnant past
When infant footsteps crept out of the sand
To sculpt by hand a pyramid
That mirrored him like glass
To glimpse the paths and patterns spirits planned
Just once before he leapt into
The maelstromic madness
Of the Matter, Mind, and Mass.


Then he became a hunter, stalking his bewilderness,
He killed for skill and stained his blade with intuition’s blood
He waited through the moon-slight night
For lambs of light to rest
Then sheltered by the shadows,
Slaughtered innocence
Disguising it and hiding it
With shrouded lies, religious words, and mud.

Fierce and piercing power, how your destined hour
Flowers into dawn
You followed logic’s blade until it took you
to the forest’s fiery core
and soon the sword that saved you
and the blade that you once gave so much to own
will fade, so you’ll be free enough
to try the Needle’s Eye
The Tenth Door.

A Thirst For Heaven
I scaled the walls of heaven in a night,
Gained access to the chambers of the Lord
My quest for power had brought me to the edge
Of all my dreams, and like a rogue I posed
A gambit with the ancient, timeless sage
And he deferred, but bid me sheath my sword
That fate alone would be the test of might.

I sling my wager down, I check my hand,
To see if it’s still strong, as must it be
For, everything I own, on this one round,
Everything I am in this one test,
I now must risk that he would lose to me
Possession of his ancient silver land.

Without a count I take a breath and slide
My winnings to the center of the light
Mere tokens, but they represent the soul
Of all I have experienced in life
Its worth, its breadth, its past and future goals
Tho what I thought as power has no might.

My wager casts no shadow on the felt
Its just a lump of clay, a stack of bones
But that is all I own and must persuade
My lord and adversary, who through years
Of service is now rich and tired of trade
To risk the abdication of his throne
As he once wrested it from someone else.
The faces on my cards are single-eyed
They look away and gaze over the edge
Like echoes from my past, they shrink with time
The peril of my blood now boils down
This once impressive royalty of mine
“You’re on your own!” they say and turn their heads
But they’ll be scattered exiles if I die.

I gaze up to the man who holds the ace
The wheels of chance all spin at his command
The winners of the world all owe to him
A cut of all the spoils in their chests
And yet I’m hedging, hoping I can win
The very source of power, the precious Land!
His piercing stare is raised! We’re face to face!
“I want the land!” I say, “I must return
to where I was born that I’d be born again!”
He answers, “Friend, you take me for a fool,
I know you have no lineage to claim
You were a slave where now you wish to rule!
A servant leads a victory and then
He wants a kingship—when will mortals learn?”

And yet he nods and reaches for his sack
And brings to light an ancient parchment scroll
The very deed I’d longed for all the years
I’d spent in nameless dungeons ‘neath the earth
Attached to slabs of rock by chains of fear.
And from his uncurled fingers now it rolls
And knocks against my gold, my insolent stack.
“You think I have no ace? I call your bluff!
And I have many more of them besides
So lay your meager knaves down on the boards
Like heads upon the block for undue cause
Or steal away and trouble me no more
Oh! What you try to do is suicide
So fold! Unless this warning’s not enough!”

I gaze upon six faces, one is stern.
I think back gravely to my captive past
And forward to my loss, perhaps my death
But either sleep is equal in my eyes
Two roads that cross between two points of rest
On every other road a shadow’s cast
I slap five faces down and I hold firm!

He pauses for a moment, then he speaks
The words betray a softness in their steel
“You’ve said you are a native of the land
If this be so, you surely can retell
Of things that were before you ‘came a man
That Time, misplaced, when youth was something real
For peasants….and for Lords; I bid you speak!”

“Oh how can I describe just what it was
To walk upon its plains of golden light?
To taste its silver water as a youth
And rest upon its fields of jeweled grass?
TO find upon each blade a word for truth
And lose that drop ‘neath wordless seas of night
The endless field of stars like diamond dust!”
“The summer sky outshines a thousand suns
The atoms in the air, like burning snow
Come falling on the hills like showers of spring
I still can smell the fragrance of those fields
And hear the flute-like thrushes as they sing
As if it were but several days ago
Its been a thousand years if its been one!”
“I hear the ocean roaring in me still
the gnash of waves upon its mighty shore
with cliffs that grip the sea like fists of rock
about the scruff to tame it like a lion!
And yet the test of truth cannot be Talk.
These words can whet the appetite; no more!
I feel that you and I both miss those hills!

Alas its true. And yet you’ve shown through Art
Through metaphor and word of stars and tide
That you’re indeed a countryman of mine
Your longing made me love the land anew!”
Now in a gesture merciful and kind
He puts his perfect hand of play aside:
Draws from the deck a card; The Seven Hearts.

“Your hand is not yet worthy of the game…”
he says to me with dark and shining eyes.
“But you have been adventuresome and bold
enough to take up my eternal challenge!
Here! I give this gift to you. It’s gold.
It will protect you throughout all your lives.”
I take from him the card, so worn and plain.

He rises from the table saying, “Come!”
“Let us go traveling, you and I
Across the splendoured land we know by heart
I’ll show you sights that man has never seen
And take you to its secret unknown parts
And in the deepest cave we’ll find the sky
And in the darkest void we’ll find the Sun!”

Hand Upon My Reins

Hand upon my reins, with sentry face,
Keeper of my flame, I wildly race
Towards every watering trough
And shallow moat
To quell the holy cough that fires the throat
And yet no drink that’s brewed by Gods or men
Nor place of rest nor food will douse the pain
And though you are a soul of mission mind
And ride upon a plan and have no time
For my diverted routes and futile stalls
And sniffing with each ass that brays and calls
And constant disengaging, spare your wrath
And walk on foot with me this bridle path.


No City Bird

I am no “city bird”
Don’t place me near the window
Don’t leave unlocked the cage door
But leave the windows drawn and dark
Or you will have tempted my freedom.

Don’t think that I don’t love you
The fact is that I’m here
Only for my keeper
Because you wish me to stay
I’ll stay where I know I’ll be needed.


I sing for you, I dance on pink feet
Cock my head and allow you to touch me
Allow you to love me
Allow you to bird-feed me
I’m well paid…but no city bird.

I have dreams of a wonderful green place
Symphony sounds beneath borderless blue
And I don’t know where I get all these pictures
My room is white, the drapes dark, the floor wood.
I can see forests beyond tall gray buildings
They may be miles away, how would I know?
I sit here and flap my colors in service
Never once leaving my office of tin.
I have a great time,
If I look down, I’m reading
The paper…and there is a mirror that I can impress
But I am not some city bird.

And even the citiest bird can remember
What it was like to once have been free
When you say, “I love you” I parrot “I love you”
but I can surprise you
And some day I’ll wiggle out through shiny bars
Slip through the window and struggle through everything
Placed in my path
And finally, upon reaching the wild land’s boundary
I will explode and will blossom in sunlight
Becoming the largest,
The wildest,
The awesomest eagle to ever take flight.

Alpine Flowers

Like Alpine flowers
In precarious balance
With the forces of nature
And the foot of man,
A number of artisans creep from the granite
Survive in the city ‘til August is gone.

In sparks of beauty
Sparsely scattered
In the summer city
Appear such dreamers
In walk-up apartments like mountaintop gardens
The delicate blossoms of culture are spawned.

Like Alpine flowers
We cling together
In small white beds
In shadowed corners
We kiss one another and speak of our blessings
God blesses our hearts at least:
If not our fates.

Like Alpine flowers
In precarious balance
We hand our colors
To hide the stones.
It takes seasons of growth for one wall to be covered
With one careless hand it is quickly misplaced.

And when winter follows
With its bleak gray hands
Will we sleep, or vanish?
Will we become stones?

To Kill Van Kull

I wander out to find me
By the wharf-warped waves
The solidarity of seagulls
And the sound of myself.
The passions and possessions
that have moored my mind
now seem to pass like hollow barges
on the Kill Van Kull
with the underlying virtues
of those thoughts exposed
like the fire-gutted autos
by the edge of town.

I can laugh, I can lament
But I have no past
Strong enough to hold my interest
In a few brief tears.

An ocean ship is tugging
by a short steel chain
to be embarking from its tiny
Staten Island slip.
There are continents of confidence
there are full store rooms
there’s a full Manhattan skyline
from the towering bow
from the Mizzen mast
where the seagulls perch
And its too far down
to the piling below
to see a lonely city-dweller
at the road’s dead
end.

Seer Sucker Suit

I’m a wild deer in a seer-sucker suit
Inside my Oxfords, cloven hooves
I am an untamed beast from the wild wood
Numbered, known, but unnamed
Phrenologists foresee big things for my head
They feel the anonymous mane of youth must part
And each morning the bathroom mirror reveals
What the hairbrush soon after conceals
By art.

Ragland Castle

Defiance in height
Pride in stone
And now the same sun
Under which it once shone
Has crossed again
The challenging stair
Looks past moss to find something
Of what once was there
To exchange for a moment
Two distant spring days
Late in the morning
When sun finds its way
Into old windows
Of a watchtower falling
With age on a footpath
Atop a grey walling.
Sun watches the hillsides
In striking of fancy
For attackers approaching
Or brave armies banding.
But even the sun
Which again returned out
To play, with its imagination
Burned out
Is swallowed by time
And the shadowy hill
And softly gives way
Unto everything real.

Last Words From Yeats
On a distant mountain I am closer to the sky
I am resting in the shredded sheets of clouds risen high
Above the careless hand, beyond the wandering eye.

Part of me is here for now, my thoughts refract from everyplace
Part of me is coldly still, some scattered over space
Most of me is yet to be, and so I have no face.

I see more clearly, far below, the Earth is still the same
So I assume, reflectingly, the Earth will never change
Questioning a funeral march for someone with my name.

Songbirds

The deep-throated songbirds of night
Have left me for fear of the coming dawn
The sounds of the mammals of day
Have yet to reach my listening ear
If you ask why this silence
I will only say
Now is that awkward moment
When the striding sun
And the lingering moon
Turn to catch each other’s eye,
And, before exchanging places,
Stare!


As Spirit Moves Me
(In Celebration of Art)

The Spirit moves me forever over the face of many waters
Moves without thought, just knowing, just being
Mind and body must move with it, flow with it,
Put me into action
—just call me Art.
When we move together
As the Prime Mover moves us to move,
Living is at once, and pure;
When the mind is frozen, frozen hard,
The body will soon follow.
Break the old molds, start over fresh!
Seed pods fall apart…
Why do we fear death?

Creation is happening now!
We are part of that chain of creation
Hand to hand to hand
God to the worlds of light
Worlds of light to worlds of matter
Worlds of matter to physical man
Physical man to his work.
I seek the light through worldly means, through you
And seek God through that light.
Painting, singing, dancing, playing, all have a hand in Creation.


Past Life
Where have I been?
A Russian peasant
Under the yoke of the Tzar?
Working the land,
The subdued, sad spirit
Drinking the harsh distillation
of melancholy winter
Just shy of spiritual intoxication,
Neither sober nor flying,
Just altered a bit,
Standing apart.
Is this my inspiration?


Where have I looked for God
In lives past? In a Hindu Temple?
My mind still strives to outgrow
The elements of nature
A bird breaks above the trees,
And in that first instant,
Realizes,
Having nothing to touch
We touch everything.
Was I a Peruvian Condor?
Wings rising toward the unseen galaxy.
Soon fading behind a cloud
Exploding into rainfall
One drop of which
Finds its way to an empty nest.
My mind writes to itself
That way sometimes, even now,
Leaving messages from space
on my nested pillow.

Where have I come from?
A solitary Chinese hermit in the mountains
Contemplating silence?
An Amerindian, before the time of time
Practicing the technology of his faith
On a North American hillside?
I have neither to worship, the silence, or the solitude,
The un-trampled green grass of virgin hills
They are immortal things,
Yet I see them nowhere.
My sacred shrines have all been sacked!
The saviors of my faith ran
From the Centurions of our time,
Who marched across our holy land
with bulldozers
They left the Believers in Nature to weep and wail
with no declaration of a second coming.

In such an age as this,
I become a virgin hillside
I become green un-trampled grass
And I exist no longer.
I know now that we are nowhere;
How do we get back home?

Affirmation

One must be a teacher and a student!
If I were shown rainbows of energy
I would embrace them all.

So many rainbows
Paths of light crossing
And re-crossing
To form a crossroads of white effulgent light.
I would be a prophet of that lightness
Standing at that cross-roads!

For those whose eyes are troubled
I will find a thousand ways to open them
A color of sound that will
Speak to dead curiosity and wonder,
And bring it back to life!

I shall see in full color,
I shall paint from life!
I shall transform the faint and muddy
Into the spectrum
Which I haven’t seen
In a long time looking.

I shall love,
And it shall be returned,
Some day,
Probably unexpectedly,
Like so manylost packages!

I will embrace with my spirit as many as will fit!
My ocean waves will wash up on brightly colored beaches
Wiping the feet of all who stand on that beach,
Even if some run, helter-skelter, for dry land, in fear!

My ocean will allow waves of light to wash
The eyes of the world at sunrise
I must teach all that which I learn
So that I may then learn to teach.


A Tern Awakens

Sleep
A tern in the shoreside sandy reeds
Dreams his visions
Nestled in the shaded warm sand.
Half-covered by winds,
with sand that becomes lighter
And lighter until it is the briny air
Skating over ocean waves
The tern circles almost once, then dives
For the jewel of the sun on a fish’s fin
As it escapes a far-away angler’s web
A flashing beak breaks the surface
Behind a growing wave
And with a splash of sand
The seagull awakes in mid-afternoon.


More Time At Love

Surround my every familiar secret
With eternal moonlight
My haunted naked reason
Touched by a thousand wild joys.
Life me deep,
Explore soft long pleasures
Embrace a dance within
Whisper me forever.

Universe me your smile
Like delicious music
Flower over my heart
The liquid of you.
Laugh away
this night-dark world
In sweet morning love
Taste the petal-pink sun
Let it soak you
Make you ache like baby cry
Hungering as always
For more time
at love.


You Led Me To Drink

Peaceful pure water you led me to drink
I showed you a river
That flowed from a marshland
I showed you a ditch
That ran high in its glory
I showed you a forest
Still dripping with rain.
I showed you a path
That was cut off by mirrors
That went through a field
Which was covered with grain.

But when we arrived,
It was I who was thirsty
You fed and refreshed me
And made me content
If you’d not been there
To show it all to,
The grain never’d moved for me
The mirrors all dull for me
The branches all dry for me
The rivers all mud for me
And it wouldn’t have made
Any difference to me
Except there was you
To show it all to.


The Catch

Illumination is like a fish
It will not let you hold it still
Some have juggled with it successfully
But its slippery scales will elude you
If you hold tight to it.
A cold fish, like a hot potato,
Is to be bounced and balanced
Between agile hands
Grip the skin and you get burned
The fish plops back in the water.

It flips for vitality, not for spite
It enjoys captivity, and likes to be caught
But anglers often lack proper equipment
So once you have caught it, you’ll catch it again
Keeping it! That is where the skill comes in!

Every Man Is a Universe Within Himself

What of this concept with my name?
Percussion of thought which is the same
As the series of waves of infinite motion
Circling out from where the ocean
Was spread by the force of one small sphere
Which left these waves and disappeared
Waves dimensionless in size
That bounce back from beyond the skies
Echoes from the cliffs of shores
Lost by winds which return no more
Like ships at sea in cruel weather
Sent away and lost forever
Lost in space, time, lost in thought
And all the goals that they have sought
Can no longer be pursued
And so their purpose is renewed
Pulled in as they were at first
To the unknown center of the universe
To find the whole, one and the same
And call someone without a name.

God’s Body

When I was younger, I remember
Walking in the woods alone
Looking for omens and answers
To my vision quests and questions.

Watching from atop a log
Seeing the holiness of the whole unspoiled world
Rise up in front of me;
The way shapes rise up out of tree bark
The way birds arise from branches
When you stare long enough.
Onto something.. following the scent.
Entranced by the journey
Nosing out an inner trail
Deeper into the burrow of the past
Saw a time when this was all there was,
These trees, these stones, this energy.
And there at the end of a lightning bolt
That struck up the amino acid dance
Of a language brain
The words crackled in my mind:
”The Earth is God’s Body!”

I wondered childishly, laughing,
Are the trees His hair?
The seas, deep dark eyes?
Is the South Pole some long white apron
And the wind its breath?
And are volcanoes His Ears?
(especially when angry)
No answer—
but what are our bodies?
How do they fit in?
Are they divine or profane?
Again no answer—
But over the years,
I have begun to think of our bodies as fingers.
Maybe if we learn to bend a little
We can work together
And grasp the miracle
That is happening all around us!


The Voice of the Seagull
Mine is the voice of the Seagull of Soul
Which calls to you through your own crying
Mine is the life of the seagull
Which all people live once they lose fear of dying.
Mine are the debits
Mine is the balance
Of one who has weighed and exchanged the whole world
For a moment of flying
And mine is the voice of the Seagull of Soul
Who calls to you through your crying.

Mine is the song of the seafarin’ man
Who was drowned in the ocean of being
The bittersweet note that buoyed up in his throat
As he sank, is now heard in my
Screeching and screeing.
To some it is joyful
To some it is sorrow
Depending how clear we can hear what we’re seeing
But mine is the song of the seafarin’ man
Who drowned in the ocean of being.

Mine is the tale of the seagoing ships
Whose tables may turn with the tide
The ends they will meet is a secret
The seabottom knows but will never confide
Some will find riches
Some will find rocks
Although I may crash in my ships
On a barrier of gold in my pride
Mine is the tale of the seagoing ships
Whose tables may turn with the tide.

Mine is the love of the land sea and sky
And the creatures that fight me for these
Mine is the love of the scorch of the sun
And the sand and the salty-tongued breeze.
We oppose one another
Yet under the surface
We’re interconnected like the tides
Of the seven great seas.
And mine is the love of the sand, sea, and sky
And the creatures who fight me for these.

Mine is the duty and freedom of flight!
A freedom that more could be sharing
One flies above fear and the earth disappears
Though the pull of the wind can be tearing.
It is the beauty,
It is the right
Inherent in all creatures born with two wings
And a breast ruffed with daring.
Mine is the duty and freedom of flight
A freedom that more could be sharing.

No seagull is spotless, but we have a wisdom
That’s caught (but not taught) while we’re preying
Such a fish has a value one cannot refute
As it goes in a school without saying.
We came to work,
We came to learn
But often we do our best work when we’re playing
No seagull is spotless, but we do have a wisdom
That’s caught (but not taught) while we’re preying.

Mine is the voice of the Seagull of Soul
Which calls to you through your own crying
Mine is the life of the seagulle
Which all people live once they lose fear of dying.
Mine are the debits
Mine is the balance
Of one who has weighed and exchanged
The whole world
For a moment of flying.
Mine is the voice of the Seagull of Soul
Which calls to you through your crying.

Just Say The Word
Just say the word
Oh let me hear your voice
And by its echo know
How far away we are
Or how close.
Just say the word
And let me be your choice
To be your servant
Or to be your heart’s own star
Or be both.
Just say the word
That I should wait no more
To know if I am one
That you have watched and waited for
Or have scorned.
Just say the word
And take my ringless hand
Initiate me to a love that leads a man
To be reborn.
Just say the word
And I will lend my tongue
And lend my strength to you
Till all is said and done
Just say the word.
I give my word
To give to you my flame
That I might light thy world
And share thy name
And share this sacred fire.
Just say the word
And I will give thee mine
That I will sing for you
Of a heavenly bliss devine
If you desire!
Just say the word
And I will lend my tongue
And lend my strength to you
Till all is said and done
Just say the word.

Extensions
I am an exponent of your mind
The shadow of your sorrow is cast upon me
When your sunny smile is hidden by the clouds
I see the same darkness as you do.
And I will try to see for you
That clouds will blow away
If it helps you, it helps me.

As I am magnification of your sight
I also extend likewise from your hand
To places where you cannot reach.
If there are thoughts of things
That you cannot achieve
I will put them into action, and touch.
To describe a feeling I will put into motion
What matters to you
For that is what matters to me.

I am amplification to your hearing
And I’d give all I know to hear from you!
If I could heal the ailments of your heart
With the compassion of my heart alone I would
For I’m a compounding of your interest
Because I can’t help but to be
Because I want to be
Because my love’s constructed just that way.




TIMESSQ.

Next
Stop
Times
Square
Change
There for
I – R-
T trains,
B – M –
T and
I – N –
D.

Change
There for the
Number
One and the
Three, that’s the
Uptown
Local and the
Downtown Ex-
Press!

Change for the
Uptown two and
Three trains at the
Middle of the
Platform in the
Opposite di-
rection that’s the
far side of the
station called the
Seventh AVE ex-
Press. Which must
never be mis-
taken for the
Broadway
Local, cause they
Split at ninety
Sixth street and the
Seventh Ave. turns into
Lennox Ave. line and the
Two goes up to the Bo-
Tanical Gardne and
Straight up through Harlem, I
Wouldn’t advise it, you
Must realize that it’s
Just the Seventh Avenue and
Not the number seven which is
Called the Flushing Line because it
Takes you into Queens and is
Really just a shuttle til it
Gets to Grand Central and then
Takes you to Shea Stadium if you
Wanna go see the Mets. (If you
Wanna go see them blow it) or if you
Wanna go to Queens Boulevard you can
Catch the number seven on the
Downstairs level.
Upstairs, over and down
…two flights, if you
want to take the tunnel to the
Independent Ride. That’s the
Eighth Avenue A, E. Double A
Trains and the Port Authority.
Catch the double C and see the
Upper West Side!

…Upstairs for the
S.S. Shuttle going
To Grand Central leaving
Track Number Four on the
Opposite wall which will
Link you to the trains on the
East side line namely
IRT trains numbers
Four and Five and the
Pelham Bay, which takes you
Up in to the Bronx (and then back
Down into the Village if you’re
Not too careful. Change
There, Times Square for the
N Train, the Double R and
QB lines. One
Stop to connect with the
B, D, and F and the
JFK Train to the
Plane, and the PATH but be
Careful of the N cause it de-
Pends where you intend, cause it
Meets at Canal with the
Double R, M and
J trains, also with the
QB, B, D and the
F. Next
Stop, Times Square, change
HERE for the IRT,
JFK, BMT,
Pelham Bay, IND,
CCA, One, Two, Three,
Double S, QB, B
Four, Five, Six, Double A,
D, F, M, N, and the
J !!! This
Stop, TIMES SQUARE, Times
Square, Change
HERE!!!

Gentle Dog

Why does this gentle dog
Walk alone after nightfall
Forsaking the howling adventure of his wolf pack
More silent than the moon
Spreading its arms over the lovers dancing below
Never asking to be freed from the sky.

What shy hound is it who plods in solitude
On paths worn to two sides by pairs of tracks
Who waits not under the tree for fruit to fall
With seeds sown of seawater at the turn of time.
And does not stop,
Except to hear the speaking of mother earth
to her sons and her daughters.
He listens with concern to the teacher of the few words
That only the mute can hear
This stranger learns his restless peace at an early age
And when he fights, the sword of truth is his,
But those who live by the sword….
His hearing is swallowed up like water
By the sound of his thirsty fellows
Passing through the upended bush
As they chase their own reckless dreams.
He takes a false step
Toward the spring meadow
When his eye is caught by the rising moon
It lifts up his head, stills his foot
And with its strength
His heart is soothed.

As he continues
A blade is risen somewhere
For those poor dogs who cannot outrun their angels
Their souls, their convictions
And those who live by the sword….

Sky Haiku

Emptiness of Space
In you, the Great Blue Heron
Has room to stretch wings.

Smokey summer moon
Thin like a new candle’s flame
Burning midnight oil.

Dusk. The mountain blurs
Then melts away. Lightning brews
Teardrops on the breeze.

Blossom, you are vain!
You wait till I notice you
Then plunge to the ground.

Would you have the sun
Shining all the time?
What about the owls?

Where’s heaven?
It’s in the last place
That you look!





My Soul Body Floats
My soul body floats on waves of light
As they rush to the God-filled sea
And while I stroll on the sand
With my cap in hand
A capped bottle rolls to me.
I stop in my tracks and I tap the glass
With the sole of my sand-filled shoe
I give it a spin
And the brine within,
Like the sea, starts to form waves too.
I use my foot like a shepherd’s crook
And I guide it back to the tide
And as it travels free
I can clearly see
That the sea is seeping inside.
There is an ocean without, and an ocean within
And a clear glass shell between
And its ballast grows, until it finally goes
Deep within where it can’t be seen.
With its vacuum purged, it becomes submerged
It is one with the endless tide
But through all time, it will be defined
By its shine, which will not have died.
The old bottle rests under the waves of night
As they rush back out to the sea
And I stop and say, as I go my way,
That bottle holds something of me.

The Key To Everything
There was a time in ancient lore when all the world was one
There was no word “impossible,” no deed could not be done
And all the races lived as one big family inside
A house they called the world, a house with windows opened wide.

Among the many mansions of the heavens there was not
A room so full of light and freedom as this garden spot
Until one day a kind of restless boredom seized the land
And some were driven to destroy
And some to understand.

And then the windows of the world were closed on them and blocked
And every door in all the many mansions grew a lock
For every lock that held the world in place a key was made
And every key was feared by men, for like a two-edged blade
It served them, turning clockwise, it would open rooms for them
But turning counter-clockwise, take their freedom back again.

And it is said that somewhere in the house a master key
Is hidden for the sake of each whose time comes to be free.

There Is a Man In Heaven

There is a man in heaven after all!
His loving kindness knows no earthly peer.
He laughs with us and weeps for every tear
Like the God described to us when we were small.
There is a man in heaven after all!

Many tend to think of him as King
And so he is, for he has
Any land he wishes to acquire.
He can grant forgiveness or condemn us
If we wish, or teach us anything,
So, many tend to think of him as King.

He has a throne that he takes out of storage
For those who must insist on full effect
Complete with ceremony, beard and crown.
But mostly he is Father of Souls
And like most fathers, the foremost authority
On any subject you care to describe,
But also loving!
He speaks with a calm that’s sweetness to the heart.
He has all day long to spend with you
And yet no time at all, for he’s the King
Of kingdoms beyond time and space and matter.
And you will dream of him some day
And wonder what has happened to you.

Get on the phone to Heaven,
Ask to speak to the Father of Souls
Once you make the connection
Maybe you will hear his voice
For there is a man in heaven after all.
But is this being up in heaven God?
Not the God described to us when we were small!
Not the all-supreme being,
Like you were told about when young
Like Santa Claus
It’s just your father.

Known to the Hopi as Sotunang
In Tibet he’s Kuntuzang-po
The Algonkians call him Grandfather-at-the-fire
The Sikhs call him Sat Nam,
The Celts named him Caeli,
And you can call him Shiva too.
Many myths and stories around the world
Acknowledge a father in the sky,
But we know God is something else as well,
Something greater,
Something further out there…

This Lord of Souls
Leads all seekers to Heaven
So stand close to the source,
Or as close as you can stand
And then you’ll really understand
Why this man who’s up in heaven is not God
And why he never could be God
For he…..
(and here’s the big surprise)
is only……
(are you ready for this?)
you!



Kvetch!
with apologies to Alan Ginsberg

First Whitman gave his mighty “Youp!”
To urge us towards the shimmering light of freedom,
To face the dark of human suffering
And yet through that broken brandy glass
See eternity.

Then Tennyson cried: “Break, break, break
On thy cold grey stones, oh sea!”
A note to landlocked humans
As to how they ought to be,
Especially when pressed and processed
By monolithic cities, laws and ideologies.

Then “Rage, rage, rage”
Against the dying of the light!”
so Dylan Thomas penned,
Written not with politics in mind
But to battle bitter fate
When near life’s end;
Can the force that through the green fuse
Drove his poetic power
Now rise up to save us in our fateful hour?

Then we were taught to “HOWL!”
By Ginsberg and his generation’s wild men
“Howl, howl, howl,”
with all the wild power locked within
to rage against the invisible machine
to beat our chests and drum and scream
and howl like beasts to win back human dignity
perchance to dream!

Then Lennon picked up the Beat a little bit
And sang “Cry baby cry!
His anti-lullaby
“Make your mother country sigh!”
And some were called “crybabies” then
Who took up guitar or pen
Looked into the future
And figured out where it all was going, and when
And asked the Big Three questions:
”Who am I?”
“Why am I here?”
and “Where am I going in this hand-basket?”
Perhaps the howling, raging Lennon knew back then
How secret coalitions were bent on our impoverishment as men
And thought to make a musical complaint
And now we look back
And wonder what and how he knew
And who was Chapman really?
And who buried Paul?

Now I say, and not just to be witty—
“Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch,
against thy cold grey stones, O City!”
Brake, brake, brake
Against the hard right turn of corporate might
Rage! Kvetch! Against the rising
Of the Machiavellian Right!
Kvetch, baby, kvetch, into that dark ethical night
Save your “Youps!” of celebration
For another time and another verse
Right now its time to howl and whine, and rage…
And kvetch, kvetch, kvetch
Against the dying of the light
Do not go gentle
Into that hard right!


Ice Age

In the age of ice
There were no men
Creatures of dark
Hid all their lives
And mindless beasts
That reproduced
Taught their children
To survive.






Cash Is King

Remember when we had democracy?
Remember when we put an end to monarchy?
Well you can forget about your democracy because….
Uh huh, Cash is King!
You may have thought there was a Revolution
In ‘76, then a Constitution,
Well that was just a temporary solution
‘cause Cash is king.
We still have a lot of bombs burstin’ in air,
But where they burst now, we don’t care
Its just a new form of “Laissez-faire” which means
“Cash is King!”
Yes cash is king and it was not elected,
By divine right it was selected
Your little vote was not detected
By our big machine…..cash is king!
Remember when civilian presidents
Won us all over with common sense?
Well now there’s a new form of intelligence…..it’s called….
Cash is King!
We shoulda seen it comin’ long ago
The way that Standard Oil stole the show?
We cut that Hydra’s head off, but…whaddayaknow?
We turn around and cash is King!
Yon Cash has got a hungry look
Lookin’ at you an’ wondrin’ how you’ll cook
With a dab of Arab oil that he took
From Kazahkstan—cash is King!

Remember when we thought that Global-I-zation
Meant brothers coming together as one nation?
Something sure needed further meditation, and that is…
Cash is King!
They say it isn’t over til the fat girl sings
But in fact it isn’t over til the register rings
Now it rings for thee, and for the crowning of kings
Cha-ching! Cash is King!
The tricks that were played upon the Lenapee
And the Sioux and the Ojibway and the Cherokee
Now they’re “doin’ it” to you and me
Because….Cash is King!
Well we’ve squandered everything the Investor gave us
We’ve now been spent, nothing can save us
And if there are alien bankers who are tryin’ to enslave us
They’re laughing, “Cash is King!”
If we don’t stop doing things this way
Sooner or later there will come a day
Where instead of voting, we’ll just pay
In the voting booth, cash is king.
Yes, cash is King, I said Cash is king
You have to admit that it has a ring
Heads will roll if you say anything except
Cash is King!

America In The Morning

America in the morning,
Were you there?
To smell the air,
To breathe on rested land
Or to stand and observe.
If I awoke before the sun
Had first rimmed the horizon
If I’d opened my eyes again
To see the earth alone
Thriving nicely on her own,
I don’t remember.
For what purpose I awoke
A cause that was willed, a goal unfulfilled
I’ll never know, I fell back so deep
It was just an illusion when I shook off sleep
I have this feeling and I’m sure I was there.
It was all there this morning, did you see?
I can give it no expression, I just have faint impressions
Of silence and moonlight, that joyed at the sight of
America in the Morning
Were you there to smell the air
To breathe on rested land, or to stand and observe?
There was a lot more to see before the day
Of traffic jams and crowded streets
The dragging of a million feet
The day of cities like human dumps
That pile people like the metal junk
That came with the sun.


The Sun Rose

The sun rose in the East
And with it came fire
And with the fire came great flaming lives
Who died their flaming deaths
And became darkness.
The sun set in the west
And with it went the morning
And with the morning, down went the East
That died a great flaming death
And became West.
(1970)


Earth: Her Last Words

Trapped in the well-oiled clutches
of the hymn-singing vulture’s right claw
The Exhumed Tiger laughs through his teeth
at the corpse of a Chevron’d Shakti
Dangling from his jaw
Jaws that wait for blood, black as oil,
black in the moon’s haze
Jaws that wait for us all,
Like the hole in the throat of a corporate Lilith
Waiting for me to fall.

Sprawled in the shadows of Plato’s slippery green cave,
Taxed—a cold and hollow Shell,
I am the heart of the Earth-Moon Goddess,
You once failed to save.
My Mobile moonlight thoughts
Run a Marathon to you
to show you where I’m held.
I rack my brains,
But my body is imprisoned, here in the vicinity of hell.
My light now pierces the tangled Net
of a cobwebbed Window left unblocked,
But the usurers closed the deal for my soul,
And the final price is locked.

You were among the ones who left me here
as the rituals were done
They went home and have forgotten me,
now I’ve forgotten everyone
And where are those who say they care for me,
the ones who cry
A final drop of wine
for the one who’s left to die?

There are no more echoing hymns for me, save rainwater
Dripping down,
Rain to Fill up sad reflecting pools,
Which I wishfully mistake sometimes
For the prayers of a few Amicable fools.
I could almost die in peace,
knowing there was one of them
It doesn’t matter if they all have left
It’s just that you’re among them.
It’s just that you’re not with me here,
To gather icy streams of rain
To wake me, refusing to think
That we can never speak again
I am mother to you all,
I am she who gave you birth
When I die so shall you all,
my name is buried in the Ash-lands of the earth
You turn your back on me,
And now I know the hour of your last breath
It is the last word of your eulogy for me
the final kiss of death.

Protest

Bright is the source
Dark the reflection
Darker still light in the eyes of men
Mirrors are empty
Photographs flat
Newspapers silent
TV sets motionless
Paintings are lifeless
Books are all speechless
Green paper worthless
Only love is alive.
And I have once more been deceived
By death’s pale imagery.

Bus Stop!

There was this bus stop by our house
And the bus stopped in it every fifteen minutes
And it shuttled all the people to the other part of town
And the man in front’d look at you and grunted
If you didn’t put your money in and sit right down.
We paid our money and we sat rat down.
We sat we waited as we all meditated
On the groaning that the motor made when it was shiftin’ gears
And I watched them rockin’ but they were not talkin’
They were finding their reflections in the rear view mears (mirrors).
I only saw the floorboards in the mears.
The bus driver told us that he di’nt wanna scold us
But the sign had said NO SMOKING and we all had to comply
So we opened up the winders and it blew out all the cinders
And he said that was illegal too but couldn’t tell us why.
And we drove on in silence and we dint ask “why?”
The window’s ‘er lowered and we moved straight fo’rd
And de injuns roared with author’ty
But I wished t’unboard, so I pult on the cord
And it all but horror’d the major’ty.
Well I knew they’d say there is just one way
And it does not pay to run astray from us
I said, “I cannot stay and if it takes all day
I’d sooner walk alla way before I take a bus!”

Beautitudes For the Earth

Blessed is the man who takes care of the Earth;
He is like the good shepherd.

Fortunate are those that love the Earth;
Their lover will always be constant.

Lucky the man who confides in the Earth;
It will never betray him.

Wise is the man who can listen to life;
He will be filled with great knowledge.

Happy the man who can feel the pulse of the planet;
His ears will be filled with God’s singing.

Joyful the man who can move with the wind;
His body a harp for Aeolian events
That play on his life with unseen fingers;
To him, all life is a dance.

Blessed the man who can step quietly and unseen
Through the wilderness,
Without breaking a blade of grass,
To him the secrets of heaven shall be
As loud as birds shouting to greet the dawn.


The birds in the field, the wren in her nest,
They are unaware of their grace
And know only God.
For what they receive,
They feel no need for gratitude,
Until they have shared man’s cages.
And when they have shared his cage
Received his rage,
Or seen the starles darkness of his plaster skies,
And lost their sense of Home,
They are filled with longings for God
And gratitude for what was lost;
The lost grace that once filled them.

Tears for the fish who are hooked and not eaten,
Tears for the bird on the golden swing,
Tears for the beast on the leash or harness,
They were enlisted by force as were we.
For the chickens in factories,
And the steelworkers too
Seagulls with oil spilled slick on their wings,
Seals in the arctic, sailors lost at sea,
For dolphins in nets
The innocent prisoners, soldiers in wartime
Whales in Japan,
And commercial musicians and artists and writers
Who twist God’s gift for a dime;
Love to them in their sorrow.

You who claim God as your henchman or friend—
Don’t you sometimes wonder at
Your compassionless ways—
Cold to all but parishioners and clients?
Compassion is the strand that pulls the net together.
Compassion the grease in the wheel,
Compassion is the secret doorway
It is the keystone in the arch above the door
That holds the clashing stones apart—
The stone that makes the doorway possible
Between the warring walls
That divide the in from out.
Without that part, the tower falls on the selfish
Builder of walls.
There is no secret door,
Nor path to God without compassion.
You cannot have the one without the other.
If you have no compassion it’s not because
You suffered too much
But suffered too little.
Even the Jnana, the Vairag,
The Impersonal Beings,
Have this caring—
Even the poorest Sannyasins
Have this precious jewel.
There is no path to God without compassion.

If you must catch a fish, catch it
With a great compassion.
If you must eat flesh, dine with gratitude.
Take care of the earth around you.
You don’t have to sail on a tuna boat at sea.
You don’t have to fly to Japan or walk to Alaska
But listen to the grass growing near your home,
It is telling you something.
For lucky is the man
Who takes care of his home,
Loves the earth, listens to her singing,
And confides in her…..

Until she dies at unseen hands.
And then he is the unluckiest of all,
For no man can comfort him.
Blessed too, is such sadness!




Riddles

Alone a tree stands in the middle of a field
With the sky to itself, but no fruit will it yield
The scarecrow hangs there and looks for a brain
But not enough questions come with the rain.

A fence divides what it cannot see
Believes in what it was meant to be
The scarecrow guards a field of grain
And not enough questions come with the rain.


Body Politic

Send me your tired, your poor, she would speak
To be maid to wash my white marble feet
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me
To dig all my ditches without decency.
And to those whom I will soon blindly deplore
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
I would promise a shelter, offer a home
But my book is unread and my light is un-shone!
Now beneath her white feet the multitudes stand
Who were once promised a helping hand
By the ones whose sons she would use as tools
And harness them up to be driven like mules
“But you already have your mules” is the cry
She has now grown too tall, and doesn’t reply.
“A beast does not work because it has no gold,
it’s because it is witless, and painless, and cold!”
They are angry and helpless when it is seen how
The ass tells the farmer to carry the plow.

From a Dream

We look through keyholes in the doors
Which lead to rooms which have no floors
And let our wishes go astray
Like Peter letting his fish away.



The Blind Man’s Song

Come to me, you who can still see the sky
And touch an young man blind with age
A man who had once closed his eyes
And was too weak to open them.
Pity me for my infliction took my sight
When I didn’t care
I’m caring now,
But my concern won’t shake the night
That now forever follows me.
Speak to me of blossoms and the flowers of spring
Speak to me of anything
That might awaken
Dark and lifeless remnants of my memory.
Bring to me, from the world of my forgotten past
The sounds and smells of things that live
And change and grow
That I at last
Might learn what their small secret is.
Come to me, you who can still see the sky
And touch a young man blind with age
A man who had once closed his eyes
And was too weak to open them.
Carry me away from this dry and airless room
And leave me all alone upon
A mountainside
Where I will either learn to see
Or learn to die.

The House of Being

What is this muddled mass of me?
Is it the boat or the sea?
Directed by lines of chalk
Exact, but still no place to walk.
And in the halls, the posted signs
Define everything but my mind
Made for my profit, at my expense,
The handprints almost make more sense.
Do I pace on unwalked floors
Or have these steps been traced before?
By one in this same hapless daze
And wandered lost in a hopeless maze
Climbing up the winding stairs
Steps missing for lack of care
Passing windows no sun’s yet lit
And doors in which no key quite fits.
Each closed room is like a word
Of a song that I’ve never heard
With secret meanings yet untold
Each too big for me to hold.
So after stumbling like the blind
To your highest floor to find
That after that last turn or bend
One small mirror at the end.

My Loneliness

I was told of my loneliness when I was small,
With borrowed mind
But my mind has changed hands several times since then
Time reveals more alternatives than the growing mind knows at birth
And at my waking hour I saw I was mistaken
Futile, mass loneliness is not my own
I don’t have to feel loneliness sadly
I think, therefore I exist between hellos.


Different Rivers

Different rivers flow throughout
Hidden by tall grass, tall trees
Crawling ‘round cathedral mountains
Down upon their knees.
Looking for some larger one
Using not their eyes
But using faith to find a stream
Which will reflect the skies.
They travel many endless miles
Discussing mildly
The rivers they are bound for
To slip in silently.




Life

My thoughts fought Time
Like a mindless rhyme
There were rhythms which couldn’t be followed
And shallow words took over the theater of the absurd
On page nine of the human drama.
I was the sick who relied on fitness
And the soul surviving witness
To a crime to time,
The fall of freedom
Noticed by myself, no one else.
The tide has turned
The court’s adjourned
And the hanging supreme court judges
Grant no forgiveness
The jury now chooses
The universe loses
And the light of reason
Thrown into jail
Where it fails.
But the unpunished criminal has no where to turn
Just to burn in uncertainty
Unforgiven, unaccused, unjudged, uncondemned,
He mends his strife
As he ends his
Life.



Turning Point

O how the trees bend low
Fingertip branches touch
This most silent turning point
of this long river
Coiling out from behind
Its freshly built shelter of leaves
Hewn of spring forest
And of the distance
from which I return.
The leaves throw their translucent light
Onto the quivering surface
As it glides away
over molded sand
Sculptured sand that superimposes itself
Under moving pictures
Of branch and leaf
Fading away like smoke
Under scattered patches
of sunshine.
But the lace-shadowed river
Is only noticed downstream
Falling, white, over rocks
That stand in the way of flow
And water sings a song of surprise
As it trips and falls.


Falling Through The Cracks

The time that he and I were hiking—It was near Mt. Peter,
Near his mother’s house—
That’s the last time I saw him
As a child.
He had always been so agile on rocks
But then it happened
He fell through the cracks
Dropped like a stone
Down a crevace that had opened up
In the New York State legal system.

I grabbed his hand and held on
It was hard to get a grip
A couple of fingers at most.
I held on for four seconds;
We called them “September, October, November,
December,” and then he was gone.
Down, down he went
A thousand miles down
To a place known in mythology as
“Florida,
The Land of Flowers.”
He was brave and didn’t cry
As he looked into my eyes
Those last four seconds of the game;
One long touchdown pass
Over the shoulder catch
He ran
Touchdown!
Roll on the ground!
And it was all over.
A thousand fantasy victories
Then one lifelong loss to reverse the outcome
Of the game.
The fans wept in the stands
Sad to see the title changing hands
Our dream team
Our ten year dynasty broken up at last.

We’d just been talking….
I’d seen a sign, “For Sale.”
“Was that on your lawn?” I asked,
or on your neighbor’s lawn?”
I was surprised when he said, “Mine,” and made a sour face.
“Oh, and where are you going to,
Randall my son?
England, Wales?” I joked.
“Florida…didn’t anybody tell you?”
“It might be soon.”
That’s when the ground gave way
That’s when the music in my head
No longer played
That’s when the earth stopped turning
That’s the interception I’ll remember
The rest of my career.

I went to my Jewish guru
And laid my offering at his feet,
And sat with him and asked for his good council
And advice
He told me how these large and powerful wheels of ice
Had turned against me just this year
And all was lost.
Actually, he said, “You’re screwed,”
Or something along that line.
And I was crushed
A firefly splashed across the windshield
Of a 727 bound for Florida.

Like an anxious father
In a maternity ward of ten years past
I stood helpless with my mom and dad
Gazing forward
Through the airport window glass at dawn
“Which one is him?”
“Which stork is he on?”
As his golden plane taxied to the east,
And disappeared into the heart of the sun—
The huge red ball of fire burning on the horizon.
Then I knew the Creator would take care of him.
He’s safe in God’s hands.
It’s part of some plan
And I am just a tired pony
He is now too big to ride.
I understand about the plans but cry inside
I weep for all the fathers yet to die
Who lost their sons to war, to love,
To age, to rage, to death,
But most of all I cry and ask for vision
For dads who lose their sons
To someone else’s business decision.

(In 1997, New York State passed a law allowing divorced spouses with custody to leave the state for reasons of financial gain.)

In the Balance

Know then that heaven exists on this earth
Somewhere between excess and scarcity
Between fatness and thin,
Between too hot and too cold
Too big and too small
Perfection rests as always
In Libra’s tired hands.
Some are loved without need
Others need without love
The inspired artist longing for an audience
The artistic audience longing for an inspired song
I open myself to secret desires which aren’t to be fulfilled
While I’m filled with secrets which desire can no longer open
Some eyes are whole and are placed in the center of emptiness
While some eyes are empty shadows
Yet are placed in the center of the whole
Surrounded by abundance.
Utopia is seen only in fragments
Perfection rationed out in medicine spoons
Among the joy-starved populations of the world.

The Day is For Dancing

The day is for dancing your separate step
For flying above all the guilt-cluttered floors
And clearing away thick confusions of time
Whose ticker-tape tangles from nights long before.
Break all the threads now that lassoed you down
For they unwind behind you in time, into more
I’ve seen the weight gather and cling to my thoughts
Gripped, ‘til they’re stopped from the burden they bore.
But this day I’m weightless, and flying and free
I’ve found the mind’s off switch,
And stopped fighting its war.



Under Sugar Loaf
New Years’ Eve
(dedicated to Dylan Thomas, “Luke Skywalker,”
and all the shopkeepers of Sugar Loaf, New York)

It was a quiet New Years’ Eve,
the end of a hungry year for the artists of Sugar Loaf, New York
And the beginning of another.
The quaint and ancient craft shops under the shadow of Sugar Loaf mountain
had made it through one more struggled, checkbook juggled season.
These painted props which had now survived 240 years,
Waiting for a mercantile Messiah to bring success
Or at least one more year in business,
Passed us on the road like timeless ghosts of New Years past.
Eight o’clock.

We passed the soup pot spot
And strains of jazz poured out the windows
Of the Painted Rose Café,
Where the Duke and Duchess serve their celebrated soups and pies.
We drove off the road as people do in Sugar Loaf to park,
And stepped out on the black ice,
The rainy turf of old King’s Highway,
The old Indian Trail,
And the road George Washington rode
From Newburgh to New Jersey long ago,
Though why we’ll never know,
And walking in the lamp-lit night,
Were drawn in by the tender lights
Of Painted Rose’s porch.

The Duke we saw sedentary at the table,
Listening to the early guests go on
About the price of homes in Warwick,
And how a man and family had been driven to the wilderness of Matamoras
By the tax assessing devils out of Goshen, the County Seat,
That horrid tribe.

We knocked three knocks, and were warmly welcomed.
The Duchess Joyce waved from the pantry in the back,
Gil’s cistern success stories simmering on the staggered stove.
Mirrors set in hand hewn frames and whimsy leaned laughing
Down from well washed walls,
The well-cracked, well-washed walls,
And shelves and smells of coffee beans in jars
And antique weights and scales of tin
Reminded one the progress was just a by-pass,
Like highway thirteen which now runs right ‘round Sugar Loaf,
And here one ventures to forget,
And find perhaps a moment out of time
Where one could ring in Nineteen-Ninety-Three
Or Eighteen Ninety Three, if one preferred.

New Years’ Eve.

Ribbons on the chairs
and black and white and tintype on the mantle
Gave the place an air of history,
And one by one, a shopworn crew of jewelmakers,
Joymakers, soupmakers, toymakers, dreammakers,
Gathered by candlelight to sip the soup
And run down Crystal Run, those Saracens down at the shopping mall, again,
And bring in one more new year under Sugar Loaf.

Nine o’clock.

Greg and Vicky from Wood Design talked shop
And how to fix a leak.
Venison was served a la Cherokee style
And many wondrous things as well.
We all ate chips by the fist,
And five year old Luke Skywalker
Wanted to dance and dance the night away,
The spirit of Lombardo lived again in him,
And then the bejeweled, bewitching Gypsy Queen of Under Sugar Loaf
Herself stepped in, the Lady fay, Rozelisa,
Her Mars-red hair betwixt some painted, pointed Chinese chopsticks.
She joined in New Year cheer and hoped with us for better luck in 93.
A bit tired, but looking still like illustrations from the children’s books
In the Magic Touch book shop children’s nooks,
Perhaps by Marilyn Heyer or maybe Pyle.
The Priestess of the Meadow sat a spell.

Then cups of Cappuccino clinked,
And even without the right ingredients on hand
The result was still outstanding.
The wicked weather was discussed by the local wiccan wizards,
But hardly solved.
What wizardry sent these wishes for a paltry weekend
and poor catches,
Upon we village folk, weekend fishermen,
Trying to subsist on scavengers.
The rowdy rains of ‘92 washed out all but the hardiest of crew.

Ten o’clock.

Luke Skywalker was good as gold, still wide awake.
“Hold me upsidedown!” Luke laughed.
“You see, my paper crown does not fall off!”
and indeed it did not!
Two young friends came by to see what “goes”
On New Years’ Eve
At the Painted Rose,
And two old friends left,
On their first date,
Averaging eighty-eight between them.
They stole into the night to be alone.
The woman’s daughter thought of following them home,
To make sure they fooled around,
But chose to stay.

The famous painted car pulls up
All wild with daffodils and wild flowers
on a field of Kelly Green,
The words Sugar Loaf emblazoned across the poseyed paint job
and out popped pink haired punk haired Maggie
and Jeannie the Jeweler,
both full of Magpie magic and mischief
and they hounded round the rustic radio
and talked of people past and present
popular and un.

Sadly, not a sight was seen of Rudy
Clown resounding Rudy,
Unicycle hopping, traffic-stopping
Moved-to-Middletown Zootsuit Rudy.
Who had heard a word from rascal Rudy?
Not a soul.

“Probably at a party tonight…New Years’ Eve and all…”
Eleven o’clock.

“Take pride in being Sugar Loafers,” someone said,
and someone answered darkly,
”Pride begets jealousy, at least in the real world.”
”But this is not the real world, we’ll do as we please,
this is Sugar Loaf,” said she, our Gypsy Queen.

“This Cappuccino woke me up,
I’m ready to go till Midnight now,”
I said.
“Oh, yours was de-caff silly, how could you be…” the Duchess replied.
“You should still be sleepy!”

Ray the Potter passed through to pay respects to ’92,
Sranding in the doorway with a manful melancholy,
His demeanor dramatic,
His long and wafting wistful scarf esconsed around his shoulders
Like the green laurels of a Greek God.
Ray cupped his Cappuccino
as if skying for a glimpse of future craft shows,
To read the auguries of a Sugar Loafer’s fate,
But his look was dark as Cappuccino looks.
His wife Terry was dressed for the party—
But not this one, not this Bohemian Rhapsody,
And yet her blue silk ball gown was pure Puccini,
Made her look like Musetta herself.

We all had passed through fire this summer
Like Ray’s earthenware, and stone-wear
And were worse for the road-wear, everywhere.
His eyes unglazed like black bisque.

But optimism is the chief export from Sugar Loaf
No cynicism permitted along these ancient walks
Along old Roamers’ Alley
Where dreamers roam to hearts’ content,
To enjoy a sentiment and talk to Joan and June and Jill
And the children that play along that blue “J” way.

Paul the Painters’, painting up a storm,
Environmentally safe oil spills across his blooming gessoed land
Still stands, and Joan’s Cones, still melt the hardest heart
With soft or hard ice cream in hand,
And hope still springs eternal like hot dog stands in spring.
Jarvis Boone’s still cuts a rugged profile
As does Into Leather, Weeds and Reeds, Sarah’s and the rest.


Grandma Pat’s famed Hall of Dolls still there,
Where you can see almost any doll that ever wet,
Or waaah’d, or stared forever glassy-eyed.
Walt’s Antique store made it through,
As did Livingston’s, I presume, and many others.
If FDR were ever here, he’d have said instead:
“There is nothing to look forward to but optimism itself.”

Magic here is afoot along the Kings’ Highway.
North and south of the old Barnsider,
You can almost hear the sound of jinns and fairies as they work,
Helping crafters craft.
Even New Years’ Eve, magic is the main attraction.

The tranquil tantalizing taper shop lays dark and dormant now
As midnight comes,
But the heaven scent of hand dipped candles wafts by like a ghost
Of Christmas Clearance past.
It’s New Years’ Eve.

“Oh, we’re going to a church in the woods we know,
to ring the New Year in!” the Duchess exclaimed,
as if jumping from a dream.
“It’s quarter til!”
“Oh no! Let’s go! You can follow our car,
it’s the old Volvo!”

A fine Chinese fire drill ensued
As mass confusion whirled us on our way.
Some preferred to pass the midnight hour in other places.
The Painted Rose Café was shut and locked
And clocks were checked. “It’s almost midnight, better go!”
We wound around the mountain side,
And we took Luke Skywalker in our car,
And played Jim Copp Tales tapes to keep awake our sleepy minds,
Fable Forest, it was fun. (Available through Magic Touch,
Or else by none!)

We pulled into the snowy sexton’s yard,
The chapel glowed like a greeting card or ad for Maple Sugar,
And we knocked and knocked, the door was locked!
Who would arrive for New Years’ Eve so close to twelve?
We came in around seven till,
and a flush-faced folkster mid-refrain, sang—
Undistracted by us—of hope and healing.
We formed a communion circle and a real loaf of bread was passed
And broken for thee, for Sugar Loaf and thee,
And real smiles shared and flutes flared,
Songs sung, and hymns hummed, and then it was time!

The pastor said, “I’m thinking of a number between two and ten!”
Then some guessed two, others ten, and others six and seven,
But all were wrong.
“Did anyone guess five?” the pastor asked,
and the young lad Luke Skywalker,
who happened to be five himself
and an expert on the subject five,
stood up and eagerly waved his hand and said, “I did!
I picked five!” and several other people raised their hands.

The pastor said, pointing to Luke,
Whose paper crown had still not fallen off,
“You young lady there,
you can ring the New Year in!”
Well, Luke looked behind him for the lucky lass,
But he stood alone.
He pointed to himself, beseeching, like the Sword and Stone.
“Me?” he said….
“I’m a boy!!”

He entered into the empty aisle.
We led him to the rope that hung from the chapel ceiling,
And with the help of his fellow friar fivers,
pulled the cord as far as he could pull,
And when he pulled back up, he held on, tight as Tarzan.
It lofted him into the air.
He giggled, gripping for the rope,
And rode another raucous ride into the air,
And yet another and another,
Until the air was all awry with the awesome sounds of bells,
Bonging, banging, battling, big brass belfry bells
Above the blessed revelers.
Happy New Year! They cheered,
and then the boy dropped from out of the air
Like the glittering ball in far away Times Square,
And it was 1993 Under Sugar Loaf!
Happy New Year!

Extra Innings of the Gods
A Baseball Fan’s Observations on the Presidential Election of 2000
(an excerpt)

This is the crossroads of history, the Hopi Prophets say,
and “These are the times that try men’s souls!”
which is what Abe Lincoln cried,
gazing at the field at Gettysburg,
after everybody who was anybody died,
and “a fool’s born every minute,” someone else observed
and “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over!”
Yogi Berra sighed while gazing out onto a different field
Forbes Field, as Mazeroski rounded bases in his joy....
Yes we’re speaking to you from beautiful Crossroads Field
at the cornerstone of History and Main
in downtown West Palm Beach
baseball fans, and not an empty seat to be found...
we are all at the crossroads now, my friends
with this election that won’t end.
The Athenians and Trojans both are tied
Romeo and Juliet both died,
Is this election not the rock of Sisyphus
teetering on the mountaintop, the fulcrum of the world
the earth, our cross of gold, is in the balance?
Let it fall upon us like the mountains of Bablylon, and all is lost
all is lost, O Sisyphus! O Absolom!
Is this weird election not the crossroads
prophecized by the Hopi
elders long ago?
and Florida the Devil’s playground?
Where all the cars are hot, where all the dice are loaded
and all the cards are marked “defective”
and all the fates are sealed like secret ballots
known to none but God and Jeb Bush?

“It could go either way” the Hopi prophets say,
and so we watch and wait to see
which way the earth will turn today
will it suddenly go counterclockwise? Or go straight?
Will love reveal its power, or will hate?
A Subway Series of the Gods,
a roller-coaster classic lasting seven games
the last one going on twenty innings, with no relief in sight
two tired starting pitchers still standing on the hill,
still hurling bull with all their might
both bedeviled by their fate, their infernal stalemate
both stymied by the curse of the zeros,
both of them would be heroes,
spitting legal jargon on the ball,
their souls both sweating, damned by contracts signed
in blood
lying upon the sand
of West Palm Beach,
victory just out of reach.
Like having to vote for either Plato or Aristotle
different strokes for different votes,
the Academy versus the Lyceum!
Who is right? What is the good?
Both inclined to want their way,
but such is the path of power;
The fight of the century, the pitcher’s duel of death!

In this corner, the Texas Tax Blaster, the Aristotle of Austin,
The Big W, with a 3 point oh ERA and 31 state victories
and in this corner the Plato of Possibility,
Big Al, the Wooden Wonder,
with only 18 state victories, 3 point one ERA…..
but what a deceptive move!
The sad-faced son of the Socrates of the South
Big Bill Clinton, who smoked the cigar
of political suicide and blew blue smoke
into the face of the tobacco industry,
and now must pay the price,
as the sins of the father, real and imagined
are reaped upon the next generation tenfold.

And so we see
In Florida, justice is not blind,
but knows the color of money just fine,
and now we know--we were deceived, and now we grieve.
The spin doctors that stumped on character turn out to be
equal heirs to the throne of corruption and hypocrisy,
Does anybody think
that if it were a level playing field down there
that if all of “Shoeless” Jesse Jackson’s Blacksox batters
were allowed to play
if all the lines were not contrived to be too long
in Democratic precincts,
so that Al’s fans weren’t turned away at the ticket windows,
with 19,000 quote unquote “defective” votes
in one Democratic county,
do you think in your heart of hearts
that if a fair election were recast in Florida today
with fair and impartial umpires
that the outcome of the game would be the same?
What was the lesson of Watergate?
So now to save our souls and save the world as well
from the black road the Hopi warned us about,
we must not give up the fight. The people know what’s right,
but now it won’t be easy.
The pressure of the crucible of fire
reveals the true identities of both these men
now up for hire
and now we see with truer eyes what we’re voting for.
The law of the land protects each man
and every woman, not to the right to rig another’s vote
so that if falls down through the trap door in the floor
of the Electoral College
but a right to vote their own conscience
to the best of their knowledge,
regardless of the blow that it delivers
to the shivered timbers of the status quo.

I should have known this would happen
They scheduled those debates on dates
that pitted them against our Mets and Yanks
Gee thanks, that’s great!
Pitted them against the team from Queens’ strongest man, Al Leiter.
Yes, the better team may have won that night,
but maybe not, at least not in a fair fight
For Al, the OTHER Al, Al Leiter
slipped that third swift strike on past Posada
then and there, to clear the air and end the inning
to complete a valiant nine against the Yanks,
and go on into extra frames, and maybe winning,
but the umpire Bill McClennan,
said “BALL” and no one said a word
or lifted up a voice in protest
Al never got another strike, and so he walked Posada,
and the game was gone, the series done,
the season of our contentment
in New York yada yada...was over.

It was a warning sign from God.
“Don’t let it end this way,” I sadly said, and yet it did.
Yes the other Al, Al Gore, won only 18 out of 50 states
17, 18, 19, depending on who you ask.
“You can’t expect to win ballgames with those kind of stats...”
any announcer would say
and yet Al came to play,
he was the Ace upon the mound,
the popular choice of baseball fans across the land
No MVP, no Cy Young, no Gold Glove
just a handshake from the pitching coach,
“At least you tried,” and onto showers
and restless haunted sleep,
perchance to dream, perchance to die.

But this is different, this is no night baseball game
this is no time to fall asleep before your old TV
the earth is in the balance, says the Veep,
and though the spin doctors are going insane
this is a time for justice.
And the next time Al Leiter goes to Florida for spring training
will he meet the other Al still down there
looking for his called third strike in the dirt
of Florida politics?
Or will he have gone to the shower stalls of history?
Maybe if we raise our voices
we can summon winged Victory.
And when the first spring day arrives back in New York City
and Leiter opens up the season
will America be safe for democracy once again?
Or will it be too late to turn the tide?
Turn back the clock, undo the mistake?
Will we all have taken too far a stroll
down the wrong turn at the end of Crossroads shopping mall
to find our way back to the information desk of life
to receive our instructions?
The day Al Leiter won my admiration
by the way he lost the series
was the day I wrote my first fan letter.
It made me feel better,
for justice is not always served, unless we serve it,
unless we love, serve, and remember it all our days.
And by the way, the day that Al Gore won my admiration
by the way that he refused to lose the stacked election
was the day that I became a baseball activist.
Self-Help Strategies in Verse
(the following poems are adapted from
Secrets of Wholehearted Thinking)

Relax, Don’t BE Lax.

Have a whole heart as well as a clear mind.
Be peaceful yet productive.
Be spontaneous yet responsible.
Be simple yet smart.
How?
Relax and focus.
It is a universal truth.
It has been discovered
By yogis,monks, baseball players,
Olympic athletes, typists,
Eye therapists, writing teachers, musicians,
Mountain climbers, psychiatrists,
And now by you.
Focusing and relaxing are independent of each other
But when you put them together
Amazing things happen.
You can experience the satisfaction of living
In the full spectrum of your beingness
When you don’t have to close your hear
to see clearly.



First Find Your Heart

First find your heart, then your direction
Find your direction, then find your circle.
Find your circle, then find your sphere.
Life is a never ending road without beginning
Every time you stop all thought and go within
And find your heart,
You’re making a new beginning.
Make each moment the first moment of creation,
Whenever you dwell in the heart of love.
Go back to the source
And improve the aim of your life’s arrow.

Love Is Seeing We Are All in the Same Boat

Love is many things.
Its hard not to love someone
In the same boat as you.
Especially if they know how to row.
The interesting part comes when they can’t row
Or if you can’t row and they know it!
Then you have to talk to each other
Before drifting out to sea.
Talking to someone you love
Is an amazing thing.
Some will be amazed
To find out what a small world it is,
That two people could be so alike.
Others will be amazed to find out how big the world is
How no one is just like you,
no matter how much you’d like them to be.
Have you ever stopped rowing for a moment
And realized
That everyone in your family is in the same boat?
Everyone in your city is in the same boat?
Everyone in your company is in the same boat?
Everyone in the world is in the same boat?
If you can fill that boat with love,
You have the secret to wholehearted thinking!

Listen, Listen, Listen

Sit still
for a few moments
Let the noise clattering around your head
Rrrroll to a stop.
Listen to the sound of silence.
Ask a question of the universe
Not a trivia question either
Something worth knowing,
Something from the deepest shadows of your heart.
Then go for a walk around the block,
Slowly,
Thoroughly.
Walk on every pebble with thoughtfulness.
Keep your mind free
For any illuminations
That might come to you
Triggered by a bird, a cloud,
A memory, a voice.
This is the beginning of deep listening,
And there’s no telling
Where it will lead!


Love People

Love people
And even your blunders will be beautiful.
Harbor secret anger
And your most generous efforts
Develop some strange twist.
Actions are commitment.
Without commitment there is no transformation.
Two kinds of actions:
The action of the student—
The explorer,
Seeking blindly for the truth in the darkness,
The action of the teacher—
The leader, way-shower, vehicle,
Manifesting a vision from within.
We all have moments of both
So know the difference.
Don’t lead without vision
And don’t hide in the darkness
When you have something to say.
If you only love
Your explorations will be fruitful.
Love will lead you into the light when you are without vision.
Love will transform your confusion into wisdom.

Choose service to others
And love will make even your mistakes
Fruitful through some strange twist.
Love will use you for healing
Even when you are sick.
Love will lead and serve you
And even your blunders will be beautiful.

If At First You Don’t Succeed,
Try TWO Hands Clapping!

What is the sound of one hand clapping?
A lot like the sound of one world spinning.
Understand duality
Then find the center.
The one who has made the journey
From one-sidedness
To two-sidedness,
To no-sidedness
Can balance life’s opposites
And get the work done
Without leaving the calm center.
When you see beyond duality,
There are no longer two sides to the coin,
Just one coin.
But you need to have seen both sides first.

From Variety Arises Strength
From Complexity Comes Confusion

The difference between variety and complexity isunderstanding.
When life is humming like a beehive
There is abundance and variety.
When things go wrong,
People get together and work out solutions.
When people get anxious
And don’t take time to understand
Things get fixed wrong.
When things are fixed wrong
Complexities multiply.
When complexities multiply,
Things break down and can’t be fixed
And then variety starts to disappear.
When a system reaches
This kind of complexity
People get confused.
When people get confused,
Instead of seeing the diversity
Of life’s wonderful cornucopia
They see only complexity
And start cutting themselves off
From the whole—
The history of New York City
In a nutshell.


Don’t Be Afraid to Ask For Help
But Don’t Let Them Take Over

There is one gatekeeper in our head
Who wants to let everyone inside.
And there is another gatekeeper in our head
Who wants to keep everyone out.
The first says, “How nice of you to come!”
The other says, “Who the hell are you?

These two get along
Because they need each other
Like husband and wife.
One is needed to lift the latch
Because the other can’t find the handle.
In good times, these two make a great team.
During a crisis, they can get into a fight.
A person comes to the gate of the mind
The first one says, “Please come quickly,
We need help!” and grabs their arm,
While the other says,
“Off limits! Disaster area! No one allowed in!”
And starts shoving in the opposite direction.
This can be confusing for the innocent passerby.
Heal yourself, heal the damage to the subconscious
Then try interacting with others
If healing works,
We won’t be afraid to ask others for help
But we won’t let others take over either.


There Are Two Wisdoms

There are two wisdoms,
The wisdom of planning ahead
And the wisdom of not planning ahead.
Plan wisely.

There is the wisdom of men, and that of animals.
There is the wisdom of sport
And the wisdom of play.
There is the Cosmos wisdom of the adept
And the Chaos wisdom of the fool.
One builds defenses against the darkness,
The other is open to a surprise attack
From the arms of a loving universe.
Both are wise
In their own way.

There are two kinds of wisdom
But only one kind of sage.
The wise man has room in his life
For both empire-making and mistake-making.
Empire-making lets a man test his strength
But closes the world around him
Mistake-making if properly practiced
Opens his world up to possibilities
While showing him the depth of his weakness.
It makes his heart grow
Even with the world seems to shrink.

The secret is to make only new mistakes
Never old ones.
Never fall headlong into the same river twice
But once can be delightful on a hot day.
If work is going according to plan
That’s good.
If life is going according to plan
You’re not trying.

A Balance In All Things

Each of us carries a sack of pearls over one shoulder,
And a sack of poop over the other.
Whether we are ship masters or galley slaves
We have these two sacks.
There is no one living who is also perfect
And no one living who is without a gift.
Because of these opposites,
We need to be careful where we walk
The person ahead of us might have a hole in their bag
Just as we might have holes in our own.
So walk each road with care
As if it were covered with treasures,
And also as if it were covered with poop.
Balance is the secret to success in such a mixed bag
As this world is!



It’s Not What You Do

It’s not what you do, but how you do it
It’s not what you say,
It’s how you mean it
It’s not what you know,
But how you see it.
It’s not what you feel
But how you feel it.
It’s not what you are ,
But how you be it.
Any words can be spoken in anger or kindness
Any knowledge can be used to create or destroy.
Any feeling can be part of a healing
Or a suicide.
Any action can be beneficial or harmful
It all depends on timing and intent.
It’s not what you are but who.
For everything there is a season
And a time for every purpose under heaven,
But now is always the season
To be yourself.

If You Really Want to Amaze People
Tell the Truth
Why wait till you have a nervous breakdown
Before you start to tell it like it is?
Call ‘em as you see ‘em
And let other people go crazy instead.

Only when we have nothing left to lose
Do we lose our attachments to appearances,
And then gain the treasure of vulnerability.
Comedians and drunks
Are hugely funny
Because they tell it from the heart
Without the flowers.

How can you speak the truth
About the Human Condition
To those who are responsible for it
And expect them to come to your next meeting?
The honest man is the one who has learned
To live without friends,
But in the end
No one has more trusted friends
Than he.

A Sense of Wonder
A sense of wonder
excuses much ignorance.
Ignorance can be ignored
But a sense of wonder is wonderful.
Wonder is where the open heart and open mind
Become united in a blissful conjugation.
An open mind without an open heart
Leads us down a hundred dead ends
And life becomes complex and wearying.
With both heart and mind open
You can go anywhere
And do anything.
A sense of wonder is a gift,
A birthright from the universe
The key to the kingdom
Which little children have.
If you run out of this kind of wealth
Go borrow a sense of wonder
From your neighborhood four-year-old.
It will do wonders for your senses.

Nature Is The Greatest Guru
When It Comes to Simplicity

If you want to help people
First get as far away from them as possible.
If you need help in opening the heart,
Go to the woods.
If you need healing and comfort
Go to the woods.
If you want to open the inner eye
If you are looking for new ideas
If you are looking for wisdom teachings
Go to the woods.
Respect the earth and all life on it—
Whatever made you
Made It!
Nature is the mold into which you were poured.
Nature is the thing that doesn’t change when we change
Nature is universal principles in action.
Nature is not a hypothesis, it is proof.
Man is not the measure of all things
Merely the measurer.
Humankind is not the inheritor of the earth,
Merely the executioner of the Will.
We are part mortal and part divine
But then, so is a slug.
You are what nature thinks you are
Not the other way around.

Living Beyond the Means of Your Wisdom

Wisdom means knowing when to begin something
When to stop and when to backtrack.
It means knowing when to go straight
When to turn, and when to dance a jig in the road;
When to shout, when to talk
And when to just observe;
When to risk, when to wait, and when to hide in the sand;
When to play, when to pass, and when to cheat at cards.
These things are acquired only by a mixture of experience and intuition.
You can’t buy wisdom,
Even in the New Age!
Wisdom is power;
Not a power to create or destroy,
But only to sustain.
Still it is a great power,
With it you can avoid complications.
Run wildly into uncharted experiences beyond the charts of your wisdom
And things will get complicated.
It is wise, then, to be wise.
Once you have infinite wisdom
You can go anywhere with grace and ease
And carry your simple-hearted life with you
Wherever you go.

Love All, Trust Few

People are afraid to love
Because they’re afraid to trust.
Separate the two
Then you can love everyone
Because you certainly cannot trust everyone.

People who confuse love with trust
Have miserable relationships
Because the other person has to be perfect
And no one is.
A balanced attitude leads to balanced love.

Ask And It Shall Be Given
But It Matters How You Ask

It doesn’t really matter how good or bad you think you are
This is your universe.
If you can clear your mind
Enough to know what you want
You can bring it to you.
The first law of asking is that you have to need it.
The second law of asking is that you have to want it and mean it
The third law of asking is that it must be good for the whole
The fourth law of asking is that you must leave it open ended
As to how the answer will come.
Leave the universe room to bow out gracefully.
The fifth law of asking is to seek the truth.
Don’t say, “I want to know the truth
As long as it’s this one.”
Drop fears and attachments
And be ready for the truth.
The sixth law of asking is that you throw yourself
Wholly into it.
Be willing to change your life
If necessary, for the truth.
Offer your heart as trade for what you seek.
Make yourself the sacrifice.
The seventh law of asking is to be humble.
You can never be sure if what you heard is what God really said!

Spirit Moves In An Instant, the Heart Moves In Time

The heart changes slowly like phases of the moon
The soul is always there unchanging like the sun
Hiding behind the clouds, and then suddenly appearing.
Slow down your life and the heart grows strong.
Expand your horizons and the soul grows bright.
The heart creeps forwards step by step
Like a baby
Wave by wave like the tide
But the soul moves swift as lightning
Or an ocean storm,
And acts with self-assuredness.
How do you balance the strong heart and the bright soul?
Move in heart time, but without limits.
Embrace all of life every instant,
But do it from where you stand

One-Step Recovery From Uncontrolled Happiness

Depression is not discontent;
Good fortune is not joy.
We decide to be discontented
Just as we decide to be joyful.
We can choose discontent even amid splendor,
If it keeps us striving for excellence.
We can choose joy in the middle of squalor
If it keeps us on our toes.
But joy should edge out sorrow
By 60-40.
So accentuate the positive.
Unhappiness is not always voluntary
Good fortune is not always voluntary either.
But when they hit, we can balance them out somehow
And keep our life moving forward,
That’s my one-step recovery program
From uncontrolled happiness.




Better to Be Silent

The great speakers, the great teachers
Are open to silence
And from that small opening
Great wisdom is given birth.
If you claim the right to silence
You will be granted thunder.
If you insist on the right to darkness
You will be able to hurl lightning bolts.
When a wise teacher is thrown a deep question
He sinks below the surface
To fish out the deep answer.
If the querent isn’t patient enough
He’s not ready for the answer.
Sometimes, the answer may take a minute,
A day, or a year.
What’s the difference?
A glib answer is forgotten and floats away in a moment,
But a deep answer stands like a marker
For years of future travelers.
And what if the answer doesn’t come?
Then the teacher becomes the student
And life becomes the teacher
Until the answer is found.
That is the expression
of the known universe.



Live in This Unique Moment

Live in this unique moment,
Be in this particular place
Only then will you make sense of the past
And foresee the future.
If you want to be strong enough
To reach up to the stars
Become grounded where you stand.
You will know reality by its flaws
So take notice of imperfections—they alone are unique.
We are always imagining the future and reliving the past
Trying to expand our sphere of power
Thinking about anywhere
But where we happen to be.
Slow down the mind and see where you are.
Slow down the mind some more and be where you are.
Live in this small moment.
As soon as you reach single-pointed beingness
You are everywhere.
The present contains echoes of the past.
The present moment
Contains the rumblings of the future.
See it clearly and you will foresee the future.
To see it clearly means to see its plainness
Its smallness
Its ordinariness.
To see it clearly is to see the greatness
Where it might lead you.
Greatness is in the details.

Everything Else is Gravy

Its Just Enough To Be, and To Love
Everything Else is Gravy
If you don’t have love
Nothing is enough.
You will eat and eat
And still be starving.
If you are bursting with love
You are full even on an empty stomach
And everything else that comes to you
Is gravy.
If you choose love
No one can stop you from loving.
If you choose to be
No one can stop you from being;
Even death can’t erase the soul.
Remember, you will always have enough
If you choose to,
And never enough if you choose not to.

When is it wise to choose just love?
When you don’t have a choice.
When is it wise to ask for more?
When the opportunity arises.
Let you money-quest arise out of live
And beingness
Not fear and emptiness.
We are living in a world
Based on nonbeing and non-loving
Pieces of silver,
And it tends to rub off.
People fight over promotions
Like fish fighting over a worm on a golden hook,
And no one is the winner.
Everyone who eats is somehow connected to that struggle.
Remember, while you’re struggling
You’re fighting over the issue of gravy,
More versus less, gravy for yourself
Or gravy for others,
Gravy today, or gravy tomorrow.
It’s a game you’ll play better
If you don’t take it all so personally.
It’s just gravy.

Cast Your Fate to the Wind
One Shred At A Time

Life is an adventure,
Right?
So go for it!
Feel the power of the creative life stream
Coursing through your veins!
Taking you to new horizons!
New mountain peaks of realization!
Bold feats of daring and heroism!
I’ll watch!


Make Sure Your Support System
Is Holding Up Something

Make sure every bridge has a road on top.
Make sure making a living
has something to do with getting a life.
Unlike bliss,
Administration without an object is worthless.
Try to keep the good of the whole in mind
In everything you do.
Otherwise, your money won’t talk any more
Rubles without a cause.
Many are the times we have to back up
And simplify, prune back the bushes,
Just so the flowers can get some sun.

The Best Things In Life Are Free
(But Never Cheap!)

Children are free,
But ask the person who owns one if they’re cheap.
The snake gave Eve a free apple,
And look what happened.
On the other hand,
The first commandment was free
And Moses said, “I’ll take ten!”
God freely gives us the bounty of the earth
But we have to get down on our knees sometimes
And plant good seeds!

Don’t Try to Tie Everything Together

Reality is not a monster
Whose heart you must drive
A silver stake of rationality through.
Reality is a lot like you.
It would like a little respect
And some elbow room to move around.
The universe is a living thing
And can change its mind
From time to time
So stop back seat driving.
Experience and participation
That is the language of the Gods.
Listen with your whole being
To what your life is saying.
The universe came up with you
So it must be pretty smart.
Don’t try to tie everything together
And nail it down.
It takes away all the fun.

Follow Your Bliss

Follow your bliss
You never know where you’ll end up.
It’s never too late to start looking for bliss.
We are like blades of grass underneath a stone.
We seek the light or die trying.
We try to bend this way, then that way,
Until we are touched by a ray of sunshine.
We are soft and flexible,
And very simple in nature
Just like the lowly grasses,
Yet by constant perseverance,
We can split a concrete slab in two.

If You Can’t Dance to It, It Ain’t Music

You can predict the course of planets,
But not people.
Ecstatic, and impulsive behavior
Distinguishes us from rocks,
Computers, and tax collectors.
When the divine, creative spark enters
There is no telling what will happen.
Each interaction with the divine
Brings an element of surprise.
When we break out of our little self constructed boxes
We find the missing pieces of the puzzle
The moment of “aha” that moves us forward.
The divine is not just in our minds
It’s in everything else as well.
When the wind from the mind
Meets the wind from the divine
These two fronts can really create a storm,
Flash floods, thunder, lightning,
These let you know:
Reality is taking place!
And its beyond your control!
Surprise is a dead give-away
That we are not alone in the universe.
If you’ve gotten with the program
And you’re still not sure
Why there’s a program,
Maybe you need to face up to some soft realities.
Maybe its time to enjoy the dance more
And take a few risks.
Theories about life are fine
But if you can’t dance to it,
It ain’t music.

You And I Are Like Water
(adapted from Native New Yorkers)

You and I are like water
The pines are rooted in our forests
The stones are rooted in our mountains
The corn is rooted in our soil
But you and I
Are like water.
We have no earthly roots
And must keep running!
Wherever you go,
Remember me! Remember me!


You and I are like water
Our lives like tiny streams
Running downhill
No one knows where we end up!
Tell me!
What’s the difference
Between you and me…
and the water?
Nothing!

They say that we must leave
That we must leave,
Leave this sacred land.
Like a shower of rain
We are turned from these mountains
By changing winds
And can’t return
You and I are from different rivers
But inside we are the same
Our hearts split like wood
We cut our hair in morning!
We walk a humble path,
But this is the hardest day of all!
Where will we go?
You and I have no home!
Wherever you go
Remember me!
Remember me!




All poems copyright c 2003
By Evan Pritchard




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