Undoing Dimeter

This is being 

writing now. 

Somewhere in 

the world, a child 

is learning long 

division. Yes, 

it's summertime 

in Rio; heavy 

lies the Yang 

in Yellowknife. 

Thoughtless people 

are full of thoughts 

they never see 

but seeing thoughts 

for what they are 

is simply mindful. 

Would you like 

to play a game 

of paradox-

ical roulette? 

Silence is 

the ammunition.

Really Heart Matters

She was five years old when I told her that her world was breaking. Her mother and father were caught within an argument without an ending. 

So I was moving out. And she was crying like I'd never seen her cry before. The world her parents built for her is being broken by her parents.

It's twenty-eight years later and I know just what I'm not and what I am and even know that knowing is a matter of imagination. 

It doesn't matter, though. Of all the places in the world that I've been driven to, that's the only one I wish I never visited.

Because I know I broke my daughter's heart that day. Although in time, of course, she mended. 

For hearts are not a matter of this world and can't be really broken. That's why it hurts so much when breaking one.

The Sermon on Love v. Love

Some say that love holds us in our time of incarnation 

resulting in continued ignorance of what we really are. 

And strife, and its resultant disaffection of its suffering, 

releases us from holding onto this divisional illusion.

Of course, there's some that say love is what we are 

as universal consciousness and its presence in our lives 

is just our way of telling us there is no ‘us’ of separate 

entities but just the one.

This apparent disagreement on the nature of love 

may just be one of definition, say romantic love, 

which sides with our desires, and unconditional love 

which has no sides but shines like a jewel of light—

universally pervasive and without a single facet 

in its diamond-like appearance, manifesting 

from the great potentiality of what one really is…

The Sermon on the Wall

It's said that Bodhidharma sat 

before a wall for twenty years 

and so we sit before a wall for thirty, 

not knowing what the wall is pointing to. 

It's like a most significant metaphor 

heard by idiots signifying nothing 

but exactly what they think they heard. 

Thus most of our religions are created 

by the metaphorically-impaired, 

who wouldn't know a Fiat 

from a Pavarotti. Listen, 

Ahab knew exactly what 

that white whale was, pursuing it 

across the waves of consciousness 

until he was absorbed within its sea. 

It's how all great explorers come to know 

they are the great unknown.

Hiking the Whites

I’m looking at the days of hiking in the Whites. 

At first, the climb appears to be a chore; 

you fight for every step you take. 

Is that a pebble in my boot? 

I think my backpack isn’t packed precisely. 

Maybe I should stop to have a swig of Gatorade. 

Maybe I should turn around and try another day. 

But soon there comes a time when such 

a wall of thinking disappears, 

when you yourself have disappeared. 

I am the bear claw imprint on the ash tree. 

I am the deep ravine hardscrabble rock-slide. 

I am the Lapland Rosebay far above the tree line. 

All that now remains is just the closest cairn 

and that resplendent clarity of alpine fresh awareness.

Sermon on the Shit

Cain slew Abel 

now we're really in the shit. 

This primal myth is 

screaming out so loud 

that no one hears it anymore—

kind of like white noise 

but only redder, 

saying violence is 

our only birthright 

and to be divided 

into individuals 

inevitably is divisive. 

No shit Sherlock! 

Yet it's subtext says 

it's all holistic in existence 

but unborn in its incipient reality. 

Though no one gives a shit 

upon the whole—

we're all too busy choosing sides.

American e^(pi * i) + 1 = 0

Winter time and the living is inside. 

Foolish thinking—stops. 

Returning to i. 

The bad news is we die. 

The good news is that one is never born. 

We hold this truth to be Self-evident. 

Dividuals will be dividuals, 

and violence is their other name—

although we never answer to it.

A house divided is the world. 

There's nothing to fear 

when fear is viewed clear through. 

See through that wall! 

Ask not what you can do 

but ask just ‘who am i.’

The business of the world 

is dropping business. 

Peace, baby!

Insomnia Divina

No one ever knows the world as well 

as you do. Pine trees pine for nothing. 

In Arizona, everything is all about 

your altitude. Without the ocean though, 

what about the waves? It seems the moon 

shone full and midnight was alive 

with silver dreams about the morning 

in America when dreams were full. 

This light is all about the intermittent 

flashes far beyond the desert emptiness. 

Sometimes coyotes eat the starry night. 

Sometimes the night will talk your ear off. 

A Sermon on the Magical Event Horizon

Nothing is ever known. What we think we know is variations on a theme of light. It’s the hydrologic cycle at its subatomic core made manifest as if it’s matter. 

Matter doesn’t really matter though, although it is the stuff of dreams. And dreams are useful in their tendency to point to truth that light of day will never see. 

Beyond our sun is that black hole to which astronomers have said each sun appears to fundamentally become—and sages say from which it never disappeared. 

That said, one is that which. This is its spell. Abracadabra, hocus-pocus, shazam and presto-chango! But a wise magician keeps in mind one’s not at any point the trick. 

Meditating Words

It’s winter and the river is reflecting nothing. 

It’s not the words which say it wrong 

but our insistence on translating them. 

Have you ever noticed that it’s always cloudy 

when you’re living while it’s January? 

Begin this sentence with a noun instead. 

The antichrist is driving off the bridge again. 

Working in the relative, we rest within the absolute. 

In wintertime, telecommuting is like 

a slow waltz from amazingly nowhere. 

If you haven’t learned to shoot a word, 

you shouldn’t read or write them. 

Silence doesn’t kill but the cold will do. 

Quick Start Guide for the Heart of Poetry

To craft an authentic poem, 

first rest in silent inspiration. 

Let me quickly clarify: 

if intuition is defined 

as universal consciousness 

whispering to divided mind, 

then inspiration is reflection 

of awareness sagaciously 

informing that holistic being. 

Now begin to write, or rather, 

write what one is being told. 

When all appears complete, 

perform an end inspection 

and remove whatever time slipped in. 

Revelations in the Surf

On Plum Island, on its uninhabited beach 

at the Parker River Wildlife Refuge, 

I walk an abiding way along the shore 

while gazing at substantial waves arising 

from an outwardly serene Atlantic Ocean. 

They form a never-ending line of succession 

as ray upon ray ignite in flame and seafoam. 

I stop where weather-beaten sands had shifted 

fashioning a sandy cape from where I watch 

the waves both to my left and there before me. 

Witnessing the row of waves in profile, 

I feel as one arising with them, 

seeing myself as curl in an evolutionary crest 

as that enlightening crash dissolves 

the wave of all the universe—

we then return to sea. 

Footnotes to an Ad Hoc Prayer

The way of silence is personal devotion to an absolute 

but the way of light is surrendering to the absolute’s intent. 

Enlightening intent to know itself comes into being. 

Universal being is evolving in complexities of mind. 

Deconstructing mind is seeing through its own complexities—

to be the silent seeing intent on seeing itself. 

Nothing in this process is unnecessary. 

Everything is moving at the speed of that enlightenment. 

Relatively speaking, the meaning of life is to know I Am That, 

although absolutely speaking, there is no meaning—

but the absolute is never absolutely speaking.

Ad Hoc Prayer

in a way of speaking, 

the meaning of life is 

helping god know itself—

by seeing through 

one’s conceptual illusions 

as, by, of a person 

and simply be…

thus seeing sees 

it is seeing 

itself, 

god, 

that

in the name of 

pure awareness, 

enlightening intent, 

universal being, 

and deconstructing mind—

I Am That

Winter Follies

They were standing on the viewing platform 

with their focal acquisitions, long 

zoom cameras, spotting scopes, and carbon fiber 

tripods, looking for another bird 

to acquisition for their memories, while 

consulting with each other on the technical 

specs of their recently-acquired equipment, 

divulging stories of the special sightings 

they remembered like a snowy owl 

consuming innards of a meadow vole 

as twenty birders grabbed exclusive pictures. 

Their chatter was annoying me as I 

looked out upon a spacious empty winter 

marshland. What about my own attempt 

to acquisition all that precious silence?

The Big Wave

Universal consciousness 

is like the sea and body-mind 

is like a wave and pure awareness 

is the sun reflecting in 

these waters after its intent 

to know itself unfolded into 

being as the sea evolving 

into wave upon wave upon wave 

until a single one of most 

particular complexity 

like Hokusai’s 'Great Wave' could see 

the sea and its reflection of 

itself, that precipice of sun, 

the one with no beginning and no end…

Samāpatti Rocket Mechanism of Myself

Sitting silently while looking out the window, 

it came to me the trees were just extensions of my body 

and in time this intuition had extended to the stars, 

including ones one only sees through Hubble’s eye. 

Resting silent as this universe, 

I looked within and saw an energetic fire 

and knew this inspiration filling me 

and trees and all the universe is what I really am. 

Existent, suddenly I saw I wasn’t in that space—

my divination says I am that space 

and all this matter of an energetic knowingness 

is actually within my silent seeing. 

Now a flash of revelation shows 

that even silent seeing space is just reflecting 

my unknowable and infinite awareness.

The Waking Giant

I rest my feet 

upon the coffee table 

and superclusters 

untold years away 

support their weight. 

I scratch behind 

the ears of Pluto 

and Andromeda 

wags its tail. 

I place my arm 

around a maple tree 

whispering 

she’s a lovely 

friend and universe. 

Awakening, 

I rubbed my eyes 

this morning; stars 

emerged to clear 

an age of sleeping.

This Sermon on This Life

Right now, I’m here alive. 

And when I die, 

this life will never know I’m dead. 

So why, as this vitality, 

should I concern myself with dying? 

The leaf will fall; 

the woods don’t mourn the summer 

while the trees prepare for spring. 

Am I the leaf, 

and if I am, 

I process light to know the light. 

Am I the tree, 

and if I am, 

I process light to know the light…

The Sermon on This Land That’s Your Land

I had always wanted to drive cross-country. Maybe it was Chris who forty years ago first put desire in my eyes to see this land as she discussed her trips back and forth from San Diego. Instead I studied all about its history and literature looking for the sights as others saw them.

Six years ago, my daughter was about to move to California, and being recently unemployed, I decided I should drive her there, and then I’d slowly circle myself home, visiting the natural wonders of America. And so it happened.

I wrote a poem while sitting on a great sequoia; took so many pictures in Yosemite they left me black and white; looked out upon Lake Tahoe’s mountain dark reflections; drove the lonesome road straight through the desert of Nevada; walked through sandstone Arches after crying at the marriage of the ground and sky in Canyonlands; looked out from Anasazi windows in the sacred vaults of Mesa Verde; never took a photo of an inexplicable white buffalo in Zuni; worshipped with the silent Acoma apparitions in Sky City; just missed a slow coyote on I-40 in New Mexico; touched the surface of the largest mass of turquoise ever while exploring Santa Fe; listened to the blessed myths of Taos Pueblo; found my way to Cripple Creek and finally the summit of Pike’s Peak from where I scouted over cornfields of Nebraska crossing Mississippi waters towards the east back home.

It was experience I cherish to this day. But still, it was the mere experience of a superficial world, infinite in its variety and wondrous in its manifest appearances, but nothing without the consciousness in which it’s seen.

This wordless Being is the only wonder of the universe. More to the point, it is the god in which that universe appears. It’s here and now, and everywhere I go, it is. Even nowhere. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus qui abundantia. This land is your land.