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.