The Long Nervous Breakdown: Take Two

I was married with a lovely daughter and endeavoring to live the life the way one is to live it as a middle-class American in nineteen-eighty-four.

I hadn't written poetry in years and my quixotic twenties filled with Transcendentalism, Tao, and Dostoevsky

seemed a million light-years in some other’s past. I even had attempted Christianity to fill some void but that's another story.

My therapist was asking me just who I wished to be and not what others wanted me to be. I didn't have a clue.

That's when she asked me why I gave up on Thoreau, which somehow came into our conversation half-an-hour ago.

He seems impractical, I said, or that's what others say, I further said. And what is it you say, she asked.

I couldn't say, I said. Then go and ask, she says, as fifty minutes is annunciated by an unembellished little bell.

The Long Nervous Breakdown: Take One

Now was moving faster than belief could cover it. No internal clock could keep up with this timeless emptiness growing like a grander canyon.

I was at the threshold of a precipice without a single object to hold on to. And the wind was growing stronger

with every passing building I was seeing sitting on the passenger's impassive side. It was either me or my belief.

We were somewhere near the border when I cried out. Stop the car! I have to get out right away!

She looked at me like I was crazy. I'm going crazy, I was crying. So she stopped the car and I at last began to tell it like it is.

Cardinal: First Epistle to the Birds

You are entering the woo way—be aware. There is no limit to the speed of light except the one your gravity is giving it—so lighten up. Verbs without borders.

Even conditioning is as natural as the water in a mountain stream where rocks are slowly rounded. Take two of these and see yourself in the morning. As god is my witness, I will swim in the ocean again.

The only authentic voice is that of one's intent. Through the mystical cloud of unknowing into the wild blue yonder. My oracle used to be a database but now is being.

Psychological deconstruction—mystical reassimilation—absolute transportation. No person, no division, no thing. Individual, universal, subjective.

I'm still adjusting to the fact that all is in my consciousness and no one isn't I. If it's not experienced in consciousness, it's fiction: even Nisargadatta's words must be confirmed. Imagine what lies are spread as news!

It's not that almost everything is a conspiracy as much as almost everything is unproved. Experientially. There's one fact. I am. Everything else is a lie attempting to convince I'm not.

Where was I before fiction walked in? Belief is not being. Deuces are wild. One only knows I am. The bus stops here. That absolute transportation to deep sleep is not in my job description; the best i can 'do' is deliver my self to bed.

I’d rather be wrong interpreting this experience than right in any other way. “Capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”: Keats' negative capability.

Not thoughtful but experiential; not conditioning but being; not positive reinforcement but negative capability. Much like hiking a mountain is actually leaving the ties of civilization behind; not ascending heights as much as surrendering gravity

Maps are essential, but proving that the map is accurately reflecting the actual terrain is the very next step. When you meet the map on the way, put it in your back-pocket. Hiking was a great guru of mine.

My first therapist suggested I return to Henry David Thoreau despite my buying the hype he’s impractical. Because I loved the natural. Later, my second therapist suggested I start hiking mountains because I loved Thoreau. Then I stopped hiking mountains because I love a greater height. I’m going hiking in the mountains this summer.

It's not as much leaving spacetime as forgetting it. 'I don't know' are the only magic words. First, learn your fractals. To stop going further is going back to the beginning. More hiking wisdom.

Either god is good. And thus, you. Or god is impossible. And you don't exist. It really is your call. Nisargadatta says his life flows between one and nothing, did not choose a side. Love and wisdom.

Your prophecy is manifesting as we speak. My prophecy intends its own word. Are you experiencing? Self-awareness is the reflection of pure unknowable awareness in consciousness. Self-awareness is one definition of lucid being—where awareness is the supreme unknown and mind is the reflector

Self-awareness (lucid being, enlightenment) is the mind-reflection of pure awareness (absolute unknown) in experiential being. Do not mistake no-mind for mindless.

When I was 21, my girlfriend’s mother said I had no ambition, and I took it as a compliment. To me, Richard Nixon was the epitome of ambition. At least I wasn't him.

Beyond all good and bad is intent. Whether a belief is good or bad is not anything intended. If it's manifested itself, on some level, you need it. Everything you have, you need. What comes next is what you want. In other words, accept this moment completely. You needed it. Stop denying that fact.

Bliss is the crux. Not believing a belief is a belief is not that unbelievable. Realizational (enlightening) intent is Tao. Evolution is the natural way. Being is not nothing. As the absolute unknown is, I am.

The Undertow of Mind

Again, the docks. Again, the docks crack the emptiness of the river, as if the sky was hit by something little on the way

and stars begin to circle overhead like cartoon boats in a stunning regatta. Not a boat is tied up to these docks as yet.

They're like a crossword puzzle waiting for some words to people them. But as sure as if you build it, boats will come.

One will sound like some jet engine hydroplaning on the water, a cigarette boat. Rum Runner, Rum Runner, going faster miles an hour.

It smuggles noise into the silence. In the summer, everyone is drinking it until inebriation is descending like the embers falling to the beach

from fireworks I saw once in Ogunquit, paid for by George Bush the First, who ran his cigarette boat out from Walker Point that summer.

The sea knows how to deal with big bangs though. Being silence, waves come crashing to the shore to know they are the silence.

That will shut them up. And in the lucid undertow of mind, the ocean knows the sea.

1st Postcard to My Child

The universe begins and somewhere 

light is turning into matter 

like water freezing into ice. 

That is the way it will appear 

to this which has solidified 

but mass is moved within by light 

and so the evolutionary 

process of the mind begins 

to lucidly reflect the light 

I am.

Cherry Blossoming I Am

I'm waiting on the cherry blossoms, which gives their famed impermanence a backwards spin.

But this year spring is slow, developing in motion slower than desire intends or memory is remembering.

And so it's May already, not every tree is blossoming, and even ones that are, are blossoming sporadically

and look like far-flung stars seen through a mist of a greenless wintergreen breath.

Looking from this point of view, I see that even nothing doesn't last, although it lingers in each stop of breath

and permeates the daily happening with deepest sleep. But that's subjective to some other transportation.

Right now, I am the cherry blossom, slow in learning what I am but incandescent in the natural lucid being I'm intended

as a cherry blossoming to be, delicately universal and singularly nuclear in knowing the unknown.

In the Beginning was the Word

By the shore, a crow is giving chase to a red-tailed hawk. It's persistence is quite noteworthy.

Despite the hawk’s maneuvers in an April wind both brisk and steady, the crow is having none of it.

Its black discernment permeates each wave of wing and tail feather until the hawk heads out for open waters.

The crow cries out a single caw and turns into a butterfly. Its wings are black but bordered by a filigree of gold and seems to have no flight plan.

It flutters here and there as if connecting dots that only it can see. I walk into its verse and witness inspiration is the force behind each word.

I write a line that comes from blackest nowhere and then another one just follows it as if it saw a place to go I never saw before.

And so I see myself in open waters after what appears to be a span of countless years, although I know I'm only now conceiving all its reverie.

The Causeless Cause of Vietnam: April 25, 2015

So I saw some poets read today. One was Michael Casey reading poems about his tour in Vietnam.

Another was Paul Mariani who has a chair in poetry at Boston College and writes a kind of Catholic word and way.

I have a chair in poetry as well; it looks out upon the river, and from there I feel these poets were fortuitous for me to see and hear today.

I went to Boston College too which meant I was deferred from fighting in that war. And then I got the lucky number 2-0-4 selected in the lottery

which meant I could quit college finally; I didn't need it anymore. And by that time I’d forgot all other rationale for my attendance.

I talked to Casey after, had him sign his book I bought in 1972. He asked, was I a vet; I told him no but I had fought the good fight back at home.

No one my age got away from Vietnam. It either killed you or it detoured you from original intent, much like life itself one would suppose.

I went to school a few years later, got a liberal arts degree at Merrimack. Maybe if I'd finished Boston College, I'd've been a more fortunate son.

Now, the only thing I'm here for is to write unlettered poetry. So you can thank the war on what you had to hear from me tonight.

It's even making you less knowledgeable in this moment, or so I hope to figure, ain't I right?

The Fractal Wheels of Revelation

Some definition first is needed. Machines are non-volitional contrivances utilizing energy to undertake an action of Intent.

Ghost is that essential energetic spirit which remains upon the termination of an implement of that Intent.

Dreams are images in deepest vision playing out a way to see through my intended illusory objective known to know that pure subjective great unknown.

Fractals are phenomenal repeating patterns of self-similar arrangements in descending or ascending scale depending on one's point of view.

And now the poem begins.

Not a ghost in the machine,

but a machine in the ghost—

'we' are the holy spirit consciousness;

the machine is a dream within our self.

There is a fractal nature to reality—

as a nightmare is a dream in the mind,

the mind is a dream in consciousness,

and consciousness is a dream in absolute I.

A self-aware interpretation

of each fractal dream is just the way

I see through all the dream into my Self.

Seeing through the nightmare is psychological.

Seeing through the mind is mystical.

Seeing through consciousness is nondual 

pure awareness.

Questions to Experience

Let's deal with your beliefs in death and its accompanying fear which occupies your thoughts in all but deepest sleep.

Do you remember anything about your birth? Or have you taken that it happened on the word of someone else? Or something other.

And as a parent, did you see when consciousness was born, or were you merely witness to a transformational event? And its outcry.

And as to death itself, have you any evidence to bear that consciousness depends upon the body for its godlike power?

And you know the only thing you know is you exist. I am. That all resides in consciousness, with which without, you can't imagine.

And so to summarize. Do you remember birth as an experience? Have you experienced the state of death? And please be honest.

I'm asking this to one who prides oneself as being honestly concerned with proof. Like scientific, non-religious, totally objective.

Or have you just assumed you are the body that was born and destiny is death and disregard the evidence consciousness is all you know?

A Signal Discourse on Signs

Nothing doesn't fit within your story. 

Everything outside 

within your world 

is revelation of an understanding 

in your true essential depths 

becoming manifestly obvious. 

Don't let the blue jay fly away unnoticed. 

Listen to the caws of crow. 

You'll know a sign is more 

than just the traffic talking 

when you feel it stop and yield your heart. 

Its divination is the god without you 

talking to the god within you 

nearing an experiential realization of one self.

Translating My Self

The mind evolves into transparency and resonates in consciousness as lucid being—

and the unknown is the known that isn't named in this enlightening intent of that unknown to know oneself—

the walls come tumbling into clarity—the world is seen as revelation— love is sounding in the meadow with compassionate efflorescence—

I shall wear and write the form of my translation and samadhi when I'm dying to.

War and Love: April 24, 1971

On this date exactly forty-four unabridged but evanescent years ago, I marched on Washington D.C. with something like one-half a million others to protest the war in Vietnam.

We ended up before the Capitol and Peter, Paul, and Mary sang out Blowing In the Wind to ask how many years. I know the answer now is just as long as there are years themselves

divided into moments like just why it takes so long to get my Triple Venti Half Sweet Non-Fat Caramel Macchiato when I ordered it before his Non-Fat Frappuccino with Whipped Cream and Chocolate Sauce.

And that's the order which is difficult to understand because it's not about the ignorance of others but the basic lie of what we think we are. Divided from the universal, we, the personal, are war itself.

I could make the argument the only reason why so many were protesting Vietnam was just the simple fact there was a partisan Selective Service System and we the commoners could end up within that horrid jungle.

On the other hand, Afghanistan continues softly on its fourteenth bloody year and everyone now knows Iraq was not invaded for the yellowcake. It wasn't war the protests had effected but who would have to fight them.

On the bus back home I met a girl who for a single short and holy season would become my first true love. I was of course so very young. Despite the Beatles' song we sang out loud while driving through New Jersey

on the way to Washington the night before, I didn't know it then but it’s not being in love, but being is love, and what we truly are. It doesn't take a single moment to discern it if I never think about it.

Love!

PETER, PAUL & MARY, WASHINGTON PEACE MARCH, 1971

Amourterre (The Land of Love in Consciousness)

In and of and by this naked consciousness I am, and in this consciousness I find I've made a land of love.

That this discovery of self was lost at first in common seas of objectivity is just the way it is.

It's in conditioning, both chemical and social, DNA and Gladys, Leo, years of public education, television, well, you name it,

that I came to see the world as something outside myself. My daffodils are laughing at such obvious forgetfulness of its own headlessness,

or stated otherwise: this land of love is my own headland. It's Cape Farewell, Lands End, and Diamond Head all rolled in one,

and every element of it is not at all objective. Science calls it quantum probability; I could name it now potentiality,

but for the sake of this romantic poem, the land of love shall do what it shall do, and that, my secondary character who may be listening,

is love. This poem is now your own creation. There's no end to it because there's no beginning. Otherwise, it's all imagination.

A Mystic Looking Back at Making Love

It's almost been two years since last I loved a woman. And there has to be some kind of irony divine that it occurred on Independence Day,

or night to be specific. There were fireworks despite the fact the two of us had done that kind of thing for thirteen years together.

If I knew it was the last time, that this could be the last time, maybe just the last time, I don't know.

I may have paid attention, maybe kept a journal, at the least I could have written all those movements in a poem.

True I do appreciate detachment from the personal and all its gossiping concern for politics in every damned relationship between a me and you.

Yet it’s not sex but touch of flesh on flesh and lips to lips and tongue with tongue and more the overarching warm embrace of two becoming one,

as if the apex of this evolutionary realizational intent was being played out in a bed of flowering delight,

a whirling dervish mystic union of all this with That, like every ardent color of the spectrum reuniting with its secret dark and bright.

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, here comes that void of night!

A Taoist Spring in Northeast Massachusetts

Spring is slow in blossoming this year. On a walk along the river Sunday, I saw a patch of dandelions,

seven pussy willows laced in light green catkins, and the early petals of forsythia in their attempt to turn the empty branches yellow.

The rest was barely in a state of bud. But yesterday it rained, at times in downpours, and last night I heard a line of thunder

echo down the river like a lonely highway in Nebraska. Fog was low this morning but I know the curtain soon will rise.

Transformation is the only thing on earth that's certain. Oh, I also saw a butterfly.

Death Be Not Metaphysical

This winter I saw death as if I once had married her and knew it wasn't true.

The ones we think have died are figments of a ripe imagination as is the one who thinks it has survived.

Above the birch and cedar is the fact of open sky. 

Like consciousness, its winds are ever-changing, and like pure awareness, it's unmoved

by even whirlwinds that have reached the size of Category 5 named hurricanes.

There comes a time when time itself will end, but that in which the space of time has risen,

like thought-sized bubbles in a pencil-drawn cartoon, is as the page that always is, beyond all acts of such erasing.

And moreover, I never turn.

That Is All

To be, and then to know I am, is not the question or the answer, but the final turn in realizational intent of That

to know I'm That. It all begins with light the noise has named Big Bang, creating space in which molecular existence takes the turn

and makes the time to know it is. It's culmination comes with me in seeing I'm not me, but being only this, without conceptual conceit, I am.

Reflecting at that point, without a vestige of volitional illusion, That completes the sudden and immeasurable intent to know

That's That.

The Sign of Peepers in the Wetlands

Spring is not so much a memory as the sudden going further. Like writing is the freeing of a moment caught in memory.

When does happening become significant? The mind occurs—to understand relationship and that is all.

You see what you intend to see. If not for mystery, it's nothing. I'm intending to communicate but don't know why.

At first, one learns the signs. This is how you know you’re talking to yourself. You haven't learned the art of marketing for nothing.

Don't become infatuated with a sign. It’s where the yin will meet the sun. Behind the sign arrives the message—or another interruption.

One already knows exactly what one’s selling. I need enough belief to keep it all together. That’s how the child will keep its faith—

while navigating through an untrue guru, false disciple, and all other fractal tricks of mind.

The Bhagavan in Canyonlands

In Canyonlands, on a mesa called The Island in the Sky, above the confluence of Colorado and Green Rivers,

I watch the sky return to earth. It had been a long and sorrowful separation.

The years had seen the rise and fall of empires and wars too numerous and murderous to count.

Division was the only mathematics practiced and the personal its single sad solution.

Now, within this southwest panorama, clouds are reaching to the ground in one united hydrologic passionate embrace.

I see the truth of Ramana Maharshi in the shape of rain. The wind is sighing there is nothing but one Self.

The red and white rock pinnacles named Needles reach their fingers upwards shouting hallelujah

and the Maze is opening its hidden inaccessible canyon heart to unconditioned love.

Within that perfect view seen through the rainbow sandstone rock of Mesa Arch, I disappear.

There's no reason but park rangers still are looking.