Happiness / Unhappiness (Osho quote)

There are no outside causes for happiness or unhappiness; they are just excuses. By and by, one comes to realise that it is something inside you that goes on changing, and that it has nothing to do with outside circumstances. It is something inside you, a wheel inside you, that goes on moving.
Just watch it... and it is very beautiful, because in being aware of it, something has been attained. Now you understand that you are free from outside excuses, because nothing has happened on the outside and yet your mood has changed within a few minutes from happiness to unhappiness.

This means that happiness and unhappiness are your moods and don't depend on the outside. This is one of the most basic things to be realised, because then much can be done. So the first thing to do is to realise that moods are not dependent on outside circumstances. The second thing to understand is that they depend on your unawareness. So just watch and become aware. If happiness is there, just watch it and don't become identified with it. When unhappiness is there, again just watch.

It is just like morning and evening. In the morning you watch and enjoy the rising sun. When the sun sets and darkness descends, that too you watch and enjoy.

Don't use these words 'happiness' and 'unhappiness', because they carry judgements. Simply watch without judging... this mood 'A', and this mood 'B', mm? do you follow? 'A' mood has gone, now 'B' mood is here, and you are simply a watcher. Suddenly you will realise that when you call happiness 'A', it is not so happy, and when you call unhappiness 'B', it is not so unhappy. Just by calling the moods A and B, a distance is created.

When you say 'happiness', much is implied in the word. You are saying you want to cling to it, that you don't want it to go. When you say 'unhappy', you are not just using a word; much is implied in it. You are saying that you don't want it, that it should not be there. All these things are said unconsciously.

Just be a watcher... as if you are sitting on top of the hill, and in the valley clouds and sunrises and sunsets come... sometimes it is day and sometimes night, mm? Just be a watcher on the hill far away.
Osho, from the book "Above All Don't Wobble"


The deep stillness within each one of us remains unmoved by outer circumstances of cause & effect, good & bad, right & wrong. Just watch & surrender to the issness of this moment, in whatever it brings. This is the timeless art of Zazen. To remain unmoved by all things at your circumference while your awareness resides within, the silent & still pool of consciousness.

Isaac Shapiro

A MEETING IN THE HEART WITH ISAAC SHAPIRO


Isaac Shapiro is traveling around the world with Satsang for seven years now. Satsang means: meeting in truth. Isaac is inspired by the Indian sage Papaji (1910-1997):"You are the unchanging awareness in which all activity takes place." Dick Sinnige interviews Isaac Shapiro and visits his Satsang.

See who you are

On a sunny day I step into Supernova in Amsterdam. A short massive man carries an amplifier and a cassette-deck. 'Can you help me?', he asks. We carry these and other things to their place and we plug in some cords. Then he takes a look at his watch: "Oh, it is time for Satsang." He climbs the chair on the podium. I laugh, because I think he is making a joke. He remains seated. Ah, so this is Isaac Shapiro. He puts a microphone on his revers, gives me a smile and closes his eyes. Isaac has a friendly relaxed face with a short beard. After seven, eight minutes he makes an Aum-sound, followed by the invocation: "May there be peace and love among all beings in the universe. Namaskar, welcome to Satsang."Three years later I see Isaac in the Amsterdam Vondelkerk. Easily he looks around and says: "Feel free to ask questions." Somebody puts up her hand and gets a wireless microphone:

Do you meditate and what do you feel about meditation?

There are many things that people call meditation. Ultimately, when you are doing some activity to get somewhere, it means that you are missing what is already here. Truth is already here. The only moment you can know truth is now. So come to this instant. Simply be who you are. This is 24 hours. You cannot be who you are only for half an hour.

How do I combine this with my work?

One of the biggest misknowledges or errors there is, is that we keep thinking in terms of I. We say: 'I see.' 'I breathe.' 'I am doing something.' Right now, your hand just scratched your eyebrow. Did you think: 'I am gonna scratch my eyebrow now.', or did your hand just scratch it?"

It just happened.

It just happens. You say: 'I am seeing.' Try and find this 'I' that is seeing. Or: 'I am breathing.' Really breathing is happening, seeing is happening. Who is this 'I'? We don't see that this 'I', that we think is working, is just made up.

"Who is doing my work then?"

This is a very good question. The same that is seeing. Take a moment and really find this. Who is seeing? Who is thinking? You tell me who this 'I' is. Don't waste another second. Every trouble is based on 'I'. We say: 'I have this trouble.' What is this 'I'? You say: 'I breathe.' Who is breathing? When you say 'I', what do you mean?

When you give it words: it is everything and nothing. So who is working?

Everything and nothing. Everything and nothing, yes. You let this work.

(All of a sudden somebody shouts. Because of the high energy all kinds of things can pop up: the popcorn-effect. A little later someone is laughing. The microphone is passed on to the next questioner:)

Is the ego our false indentity?"

Nobody has ever seen an ego. It is just an idea that is made up. If you simply keep quiet, it does not exist. The whole invitation here is to see what is real. So bring your mind to that which is eternal. To that which is out of time. To that in which time appears, in which everything appears. Then something shows its face. Something is recognized. It is your own self.

Now I see that. But what if I do not see it?

When that is there, see who you are.
When that is not there, see who you are.

Silent bliss

During the week Isaac answers questions. But in the weekend there are also times when you can sit on his chair. In front of a group of about 250 people. It strikes me that many of those who go to sit there are really flowering. More naked than naked and most beautiful. A little nervous, I wait for my chance to jump in front. After a while the chair remains empty. It lasts longer than a short while.
In front of me I see a welcoming path in between the people that are sitting on the floor. I stand up and walk my way to the podium. I nestle myself into the chair. Immediately I am overcome by a clear white light that enlightens me from within. It makes my skin tremble with bliss. A very deep relaxation. Though I cannot explain it I can allow it very easily, because it feels so safe. It is an overflowing ecstasy, even more familiair than my own face in the mirror.The people around me look like a magnificent bouquet. Floating in light. It is as if I have arrived in the origin itself. Somehow it makes me smaller than anything can ever be. At the same time I feel omnipresent and the others are no one else but me. I am nothing and I experience everything. Amidst of the bouquet Isaac Shapiro is seated. As a rock of silence.

"Is this always here?", he asks me: "Or does this come and go?"

It remains quiet. My eyes close themselves. I look totally within. There is no more inside or outside. All shapes are made of light and the light is shapeless. The alchemy of love."This is always here", I say without thinking.

"Watch out.", Isaac warns: "Because there is a hall full of witnesses here that is hearing you."

Everybody laughs. But I can only confirm this timeless bliss: "It is like a magnificent drunkness."

"Yes.", Isaac laughs: "And the beauty is: the bar is always open!"

It is strange. Just a chair, just a bunch of people. Could this be some kind of hypnosis? To be in the focus of attention of these people? But it is an attention that knows no dogma. It is free of laws and thoughts. The silence of the light. This is what I am living for. It warms my heart and opens my soul: welcome home! Then I get up from this electric chair to make space for the next one.

You don't need to do anything

I visit Isaac, who grew up in South-Africa, for an interview in the Amsterdam Kijkduinstraat. He resides here with his wife Kali and their son Arun. We have cookies and tea.Isaac, when did you get involved so deeply with this awareness?"When I was nineteen I had an experience of unconditional love. Ever since I examined the working of my mind and the posibility of freedom for myself and for everybody. A friend of mine told me about Papaji. I went to Lucknow in India to meet him. I saw the people around him lightning up like a christmas-tree. Without any visible causation."Your Satsang also goes quite deep."Yes, people tell me this. And I can see actually when it happens to someone. The mystery of it to me is that I am not doing anything. When Papaji told me: 'Go and be available for Satsang.', he never told me what to do. Never. He just said: 'You found the diamond. Go now!' Oops!I am simply keeping quiet in the truth of my own being. And then somehow people recognize this in themselves. And when it happens there is such a beauty in this persons eyes. The whole face relaxes. A lot of times there is laughter and tears, all happening at once. The tears are flowing, but these are not unhappy tears. Something is touched. And this is beauty. The river comes from the ocean and when it returns it becomes ocean itself. This person is just reporting: 'I am free. This is what I have always been yearning for.'"In the beginning of Satsang you say Namaskar. What does it mean?"They speak this in India. Namaskar means: I greet that in you which is the same in me."The divine?"My teachers teacher: Ramana, said the only way to really speak about this was in silence. Basically he just sat absorbed in bliss in the silence of his own being. Not speaking to anyone. When people came around him, all of a sudden they started to feel ecstatic and blissfull. And their mind did not function. His silence was so profound that all their troubles would disappear. Even though he did not speak and did not do anything. Simply be being. Because of the profound effect he had on people, people would realize through him. Through a glance or through a touch they would recognize their own self. When you do meet somebody that is free of all of this, you see the possibility that you can live like this too."So you don't have to do anything. That makes it very simple."It is very simple. Too simple for most people. Because it goes against our conditioning. We keep thinking that we can do something that will make us happy. This idea that we can do something makes us unhappy in the first place. One of the things that happen when people recognize who they are, is this tremendous burst of love for everyone and everything. People have been looking everywhere to find this love. They discover the source of love in their own heart, in their own self. Who knows what will happen in our society when something out of love, beauty comes? I am interested to see what happens."Our society is full of corruption and suppression. It seems pretty hard to break through."We have seen a few times in our history that things have been a certain way and then some discovery happens. And without even meaning to it changes everything. Like for example when the use of fire or the wheel was discovered. Just a simple discovery and everything turns around. This discovering of something just makes this other thing outdated."

Garden of Eden

There is a story in which paradise became outdated, because a certain Eva picked an apple."I heard another interpretation of this thing. We were hunter-gatherers for millions of years. We lived in small bands of people. Like a troop of monkeys. They move and everything is there that they need. They eat the grasses, they eat the leaves. The insects, everything is there for them. They really live in a Garden of Eden, a garden of plenty. We were living like this. Then we found agriculture. So this was eating of the Tree of Knowledge. Once we found agriculture, we had to earn our living by the sweat of our brow. Farming is hard work.But we also were not dependent so much anymore on what we could find and what we could not find. Sometimes the animals have a hard time when there is a drought or something like this. When you are a hunter-gatherer, you are hunting and gathering and other things are hunting and gathering you. So we moved from this to farming communities. And then the next thing was: Kaïn killed Abel. The farmers killed the hunter-gatherers. Because we were in competition for the ground.People that stay in one place can build walls and defend themselves. They have more food. They can grow more than they need. They have time to make weapons. And they live with more people together. So the small bands were wiped out. Today, there are very few hunter-gatherers left. Here and there in the rainforests maybe. A few Aboriginals. In every society the hunter-gatherers have been wiped out.This finding of agriculture also coïncides, some scientists and historians believe, with the ability that we have to think about thinking. A monkey can think: 'If I stick a stick in this ant-hill, then I get ants.' Animals can think, but they cannot think about thinking."What about dolphins?"Dolphins might have this ability too. We do not know their internal world. So as we moved into cities, there were few different pressures. More memory was needed to be able to function as a society. This ability to speak and have language also developed our thinking and our memory. These developments made us stronger than an elephant, because we could shoot it. We were conquering nature. We were replacing the value that the gods had for us. Before we would pray to the gods for this thing. Now we were taking control. We were not depending on the gods anymore.This thinking about thinking became very valued. And now we are all the children of it. This is this I-thought. It produces a sense of separation and fear. And when you think about thinking you can also lie. You can think one thing and say something else. It has brought us split-mind: Me and something else. Me and my thinking. Me and my emotions. Or: subject-object. This brings a sense of separation. In the separation there is fear. Naturally this produces intense suffering. By itself this suffering produces a wanting to come out of the suffering."

The diamond

Right now there are many people who are interested in awareness itself."We are the first wave of this wanting to wake up. Still a very small percentage. If you look in historical perspective: Buddha is only 2.500 years ago. Our whole history of this enlightenment is only maybe 10.000 years. A fingersnap in time. Today you can speak this and you could not speak this twenty years ago. Nobody was ready for it. Somehow we are drawn to truth. It is pulling itself to itself."It is a beautiful history, and yet also a nightmare."Yes, when the dream is unpleasant, we call it a nightmare. And when the nightmare gets tough, we wake up."So the nightmare is running in the right direction."When we wake up we see: 'It is just a dream.' Behind the dream you are. You are that in which the dream appears. You cannot understand this with your thinking. This has to be a direct experience. For an instant we have to put this whole mechanism of interpreting everything aside; our filtre-system. For an instant you don't do anything here. Be quiet. No effort."We remain silent for some time. It is not only the ears that are listening. It is not only the eyes that see. The room is pervaded with light. Amazing, that this is all so very natural and simple. Isaac smiles and nods, inviting me for the next question.What is the relationship between awareness and our senses?"Scientists have discovered now that if you flash a light up, it takes a third of a second before we actually see it. So everything that we see or sense with our five senses is actually in the past. And also this whole business of decision making. By the time we are conscious of having made a decision the decision is already been made.My actual interest is the direct experience of who you are. Usually we are very aware of the object and our relationship to the object. We never look to see: 'Who is aware of this?' Who is aware of this whole process of sensing?"' I'.Who is this 'I' that is looking? What is your own experience? This feeling of 'I' does not exist in deep sleep. Then you are not aware of anything. There is no time, no space. No sense of 'I' even. And then the question is: 'Who is aware of this?' Something - and this is not the personal 'I' - is aware that this whole process of personalizing is not present. So normally this is what catches our attention, this whole process of personalizing everything. And making a relationship."So everything is just happening?"Everything is just happening. Spontaneously and naturally. Of itself, by itself. According to some thing that we cannot say what it is."What is this?"Nobody can say what it is. People give it a name: God, Atman, universal consciousness or Brahman. We try and personalize it. We come up with some concept to try and grasp it. You see, if you have a hole in a piece of wood and you ask someone to describe the hole, they say: 'It is a wooden hole.' But clearly it is not a wooden hole that you see.And even space appears in awareness. Because to have any space there has to be awareness of the space. And this awareness is here now. In the East they explain it like this: When you have gold, this gold can be made into many ornaments: rings, earrings, collars and things like this. But the gold remains gold. Something is the same in everything. When we do not try to catch this with our thinking, the direct experience arises in our heart. For me it was the most important discovery: the diamond.It is closer than anything., I see and say."This is the truth. Your own heart speaking to itself. It is deeper than intimacy. Intimacy still assumes the other. This is one."It is like making love."It is an inner kiss. In the heart, in your own heart. This is the true Tantra. This is the internal loving itself. Your own heart loving itself. Everywhere. In everything. At every moment. This moment is really beautiful."

(by Dick Sinnige)

The Gift of Wanting (video)

A very long Satsang video of Adyashanti.
This is an amazing thing to watch, if you can open yourself to it.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4627531807428026519&q=adyashanti&hl=en

Self Inquiry ---John Sherman blog

I want to use this space to discuss with you the simple, perfect self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi.
Posted By John Sherman On September 16, 2006 @ 9:00 pm In Self-inquiry

We will start from nowhere, knowing nothing but that we are here, as human beings, and that there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with life as a human: it seems that it should be better, easier, sweeter than it is.

I want to persuade you to try Ramana’s self-inquiry for yourself because I am certain that if you do, it will naturally energize your interior life and will, in the end, bring to an end the delusion of personal suffering in which we somehow come to see our lives as broken promises; the sensations of life that come and go in our bodies as objects of fear and lust and loathing; our minds as fearful dark jungles of confusion, our friends and neighbors and family as enemies; and the sweet, sweet world itself as a hostile encampment.

To begin self-inquiry does not require you to abandon anything you are doing now or trying not to do now, neither does self-inquiry require you to decide for or against any spiritual practice, for the self-inquiry of Ramana is not spiritual practice at all in the sense that we normally think of spiritual practice. Self-inquiry is unaffected by any of it; self-inquiry bypasses all mental and spiritual activity whatsoever, and does its work silently.

So what is self-inquiry anyway? What’s the point? Isn’t it seeking to understand myself, transform myself, transcend myself, get in sync with my true self and so forth? Isn’t pretty much any spiritual practice that seeks unity self-inquiry? Isn’t ‘who am I?’ for beginners?
Well, no, actually, none of that.

Self-inquiry, atma vichara in Sanskrit, has been around for a long, long time — 2,500 years or more. In the old days, self-inquiry was a sacred set of practices, meditations, and austerities intended to liberate the boundless, eternal True Self from the snare of samsaric delusion in which it – True Self – is trapped by conditioned mind. All ordinary thought and feeling and desire had to be forcibly extinguished if there was to be even the slightest hope of breaking through the fog of conditioning, subconscious impulses (vasanas), and karmic consequence that kept us forever outside, denied entrance to the shining reality of our True Self. This viewpoint — that there is a True Self that needs to be liberated, a True Self that I need to become, a True Self for the realization of which I need to transcend ego and ordinary life — is still hugely prevalent in modern spiritual circles and in my view does great damage to all who fall for it.

The self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi is none of that, either. Ramana’s self-inquiry is much less, much simpler than any of that. For Ramana, there is no “True Self” from which you are separated; there is only you, just as you are.
For Ramana, there is an obvious and universal need for self-inquiry that arises naturally from the realization that the sole cause of all human suffering is a false belief about what we are. Or, to put it another way, the cause of all my suffering is a false belief about what I am.

Just consider this for a moment. Even if you have heard it before; even if you’re completely familiar with it and completely agree or completely disagree with it, just stop for one moment and consider it freshly at face value. There is no possibility of receiving what Ramana has to offer without first fully understanding that this profound and powerful insight is the ground from which it arises, and on which it rests.

And if it is true that the cause of all my suffering is a false belief about what I am, then nothing matters other than to know the truth of what I am. And knowing the truth must rid me of any false idea about what I am. Nothing else can do that. Seeking the truth of my nature is self-inquiry.
So how hard can that be? I am, after all, always here. I am, after all, always completely available to myself. Certainly, it requires no special spiritual development to see this. Certainly I can, whenever I wish to do so, look at myself. I can taste, just for a moment, what it feels like to be. And looking directly at myself, tasting the feeling of myself is all there is to Ramana’s self-inquiry.

Here’s the promise: if you will, whenever you can, whenever it occurs to you to do so, stop for just one moment and direct your conscious attention toward the naked, unmediated experience of being that is all there is to you, suffering will immediately begin to diminish and the thick, hot smoke of falseness, confusion, doubt and fear that fills the mind will begin to clear. And, in Ramana’s words, all will come out right in the end.

In truth, this investigation, this self-inquiry, is not a path or a method to Realization, it IS Realization, and every moment spent with your attention resting in the experience of being is spent in full, conscious realization of Reality.
And, if you will continue with this practice and make it a part of your life, all falseness will finally vanish and what has always been here — peace and ease and love without condition — will stand fully, permanently revealed, once and for all.

Here then is the beginning and end Ramana Maharshi’s teaching of self-inquiry:

There is no problem anywhere to be found other than a false belief about what you are.
The only solution to this problem is to know consciously the truth of what you are, and that truth cannot fail to bring to an end all experience of misery in your life, and projection of that misery on others.

There is no need to understand what you falsely believe yourself to be, nor is it possible to do so.
This false belief is entirely unconscious, and it cannot be seen.

This is not a matter of this rather than that, a matter of believing that I am Consciousness say, rather than ego, but a matter of limitation. In truth, we are — you are — I am — everything that is. I am the ground, and I am the totality of spontaneously arising phenomena which comes and goes within me. There is nothing apart from me. The falseness lies entirely in the fearful move to limit, to carve out a defensible position within the limitless reality and name it me.

There is nothing at all you can do — no practice you can undertake, or discontinue or perfect — that will in any way help you rid yourself of this false belief, apart from directly seeing for yourself the truth, in this moment, again and again.

All that you know, all that you can know is that you are here. All the rest is story and conjecture. Self-inquiry, which is the effort to see the truth of what you are now, is therefore nothing other than the turning of attention deliberately, consciously to that simple, single knowing of your hereness for no purpose other than to see it directly for yourself.

There is no understanding, no teaching and no teacher that can give you or show you what you are. You must do this for yourself. The most a teacher can give you is encouragement and practical direction from experience.

The self-inquiry of Ramana is unbelievably simple, and being so simple, it will take some time and careful effort actually to receive its essential transmission. We have all the time in the world to consider all this as carefully as needed. I would love to hear from you.

Soon, I’ll write some about my personal history and experience with Ramana’s method and about how the discovery of changeless reality forever changed my life.

Satsang with Adyashanti

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELTiD7L_nU8

Tired

I am stranded in this bare and silent place --
a pilot whose plane has ditched among dry dunes.
My arm is broken and I think that some damage
is internal and bleeding freely, invisible to me.

I turn to face the sun as it sets and I wonder:
Can I walk away from this queer collision with the earth?
I have asked for so little on this strange planet ---
I could die tonight and never look back.

I am tired.

It is a twisted thing that human souls

It is a twisted thing that human souls
take breath into this place of hollow hopes,
bright illusions that draw us into their thrall ---
where flickering gems will catch a seeker's eye;
lure him helpless into the gears of a wide deception.
He struggles in innocence, wanting simply this ---
what all hearts want and are wired to desire.

wayne (photo)

Little Room

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

---Henry David Thoreau

I will endure this now because my dread looms large, the cost is too dear.
I will pour this bright nectar, ounce after golden ounce, down a grimy drain until it's gone.
Until then, I will turn around in this little room of my days and nights,
and just wait, wait and just wait and wait. Because maybe someone will lose a key:
I will pick it up on the street one morning and find that it fits exactly
into the lock of the door of the little room where I have made my peace that is
not exactly peace and certainly not the dance I would dance if I could dance.

I notice there is a key in the pocket of my heart. All along, it has been there.
This key has a voice I do not want to hear. It speaks to me of a pain that has become familiar, a hurt that I know
I can endure, if I must. It does not
cease speaking, this key. The other pain is sharp, and quick, it says, it is sharp and terrible and it lays waste to all that has held you in this half light.

It is too hard. I will drop it down the drain along with the nectar
that damned nectar that warms like soft sunshine on a baby's face. And that will be that.
And that will be that.

Raining in Nantahala

It is raining tonight in the woods of Nantahala.
Water from the black sky is rinsing the woods clean.
The rain sounds like some tomorrow wishing to be
born differently: a day unlike all the others.

White moths flicker in this deluge, oblivious to the wet,
their small minds intent on the light only, that light
that whispers to them, that draws them to my cabin:
a whiteness that lures them from the pitch dark forest.

I am listening from the cabin, dry and hoping that the rain will go on
all night. There is so much to be undone that a brief and feeble storm
will not get the sweeping done. There is so much darkness ---
I fear that there will not be enough rain to cleanse it all.

Dissolving Clouds

I have been dissolving clouds today,
just picking them out of the blue,
my will a feather that strokes them
softly into oblivion, gently out of sky.

A trick I learned from gnarled old wizards
having no practical application
in the realm of regular life, unless
you consider essential this letting go
of something no longer needed.

Releasing a cloud makes azure
openings where fresh cumulus can come
newly made babies at the world’s nipple,
newly made snowflakes in your face.
I have no idea what I am doing, or why.

Quasimodo's Dream

"Why was I not made of stone, like thee?" ---The Hunchback of Notre Dame


Before I awoke with a smile
on my silly Quasimodo mouth,
I had a dream about Esmeralda.

The gypsy girl was eating barbecue
with her fingers all red and delicious
with her body all soft and delightful.

This is our cathedral but it isn’t Notre Dame.
There are no raucous bells here on the mountain,
only a squirrel slowly eating seeds in the silent dusk.

There is such peace here, far away from the angry village,
peace and impossible passion like a soundtrack, played
softly behind Esmeralda’s playful, dancing eyes.

Before I awoke with a smile
on my silly Quasimodo mouth,
I had a dream about Esmeralda.

Remembering Hands

A heartsick evening not far from now
you, and I know I will remember hands:
fingers that fondled instead nearby things
because the warm wonder of these fingers
could never be touched, because they were inches
and also somehow long miles away:
a man much too full of drinking you and full
of himself and far too empty, all at once
and a sacrament of smoke dissolving into a starless sky:
neon everywhere eating planets from the night
in that asphalt appetite a humming city has
to swallow everything primal and green.

Taking a Prisoner

Until all my careless clues
trigger a police fax of the photo
from my driver’s license
and a copy of this poem from the web ---
I could keep her tied and hydrated,
feeding all her favorites, spooning
soft foods into her snarling lips:
banana compote, strawberries and cream.
So romantic it would be ---
just the two of us.
I would feed her every dream
except her dream of standing
on her own unbound feet and walking away ---
unlike those Chinese women whose insteps
were uselessly twisted by their masculine masters;
they so admired the beauty of a captive female.

A more conventional marriage could, long ago,
have satisfied this hunger for human closeness.
I could have imprisoned one of my stunning butterflies,
her bright blue wings legally pinned into a lovely
concrete block home near the good schools ---
until the fight had forever gone out of her.
I could have given her another tiny butterfly
to attend: emerged from the same jade chrysalis as this,
our wedded bliss. A beautiful little fluttering creature,
born into captivity, will never know the taste of the open sky.

While standing in a freezing mountain stream,
with the sun beginning to sink yellow
into the water rushing around my knees,
I muscle a shivering rainbow trout from the rapids.
Her silver side is painted neon pink and lavender.
I hold her terror tightly between my rough hands.
She looks at me like the doom I seem to be,
her mouth moving soundlessly in some silver
language I have never learned, but comprehend.
This is a being too gorgeous to kill.
Before her spirit drains between my fingers,
I give her back to the river.
I give my longing itself back to the rushing river.

Sweet Knees

Your sweet knees

are confusing to the bees

they fly thirsty, bypassing flowers
petals offering themselves openly
heavy with nectar, gone untasted,
simply because
you wore that skirt today,
that soft fabric that floats
in the air that parts for you
that bares your lovely
legs to the breeze.
Your sweet knees
are confusing to the bees.

Scalpel

There is a place in this heart
near the left ventricle, I believe ---
where a scar begins
to form, time and time again
to seal over the first swift incision
to heal the place where the bright blade
of your eyes made a clean, surgical slice
cutting quick into quiet chambers I could not see,
without warning, and so soft I never felt the edge
until next morning, when it ached like hell itself.

Please visit me again, and soon
with something beautiful and sharp
concealed in that wicked gentle smile
like a scalpel up your sleeve ---
it can be done in just a moment
the drowsy guards will never notice.

Cut me again so it cannot heal.
Please, just cut me again.

Down's Syndrome at the Jazz Concert

The mongoloids are here; their yellow bus
is waiting at the curb.
They are pale chaff, against
a field of healthy tans.
They are naturals
to the elements of burlesque:
the pratfall, the double take, the drool.

No one in this crowd will laugh at the elements
in this unstudied form. We are still young
enough to incur God's wrath...young enough to conceive
these children, these forever children, for ourselves.

These old toddlers are able to move
with more than ordinary freedom
among all the other faces here,
faces not as open as their own.

A genetic glitch has given them a family...
a kinship that defies all bloodlines: the same face
here and there...watching the band, watching
each other. Most of them are standing
up front, taking trumpets full into their faces;
the brass is telling them something they
can understand.

This kind of thing makes them want to move
to burn off the energy into something that shines
like sunlight splashing off trumpets...
It always makes them hard to manage
on the long bus ride back out of the sun.

She Does Not Need

God does not need your praise;
it is a currency She cannot spend.

God does not need your obedience;
it rings hollow in the halls of Heaven.

God does not need your suffering
unless it shocks your eyes to open.

God does not need your chastity;
did She not bless you with that body?

God does not need your resistance
She would rather you open your heart.

God has no use for your sanctimonious
solemn vows, your righteous indignation.

God throws wide the gates when you laugh out loud
and She knocks them down when you dance.

Voltage

“Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.” Walt Whitman

When I am drawn to any room with you
My neural chimes ring at your fingertips.
This closeness forms an unseen field
where synapses stand on end
like steel shavings near a magnet.

We have come together for a silently charged lunch
and a teaspoon turns in a cup to indicate us.
It pivots through warm tea like a compass needle
to meet the axis of our new emotional north.

Whitman only burned with a subtle flame ---
You have set fire to every forest in my mind.
Galvani only guessed at human voltage
when first he sent a primal spark
twitching through the severed leg of a frog.
But I am positive
that the gentle brown arc in your eyes
can span a room
to speed the smooth muscle in my heart.

Subterranean

Every time I allow myself to fall
free of all the reasons this particular
latched garden must not bloom,
into those sullen brown eyes of hers,
I find myself chest deep in a pristine river.

This uncharted river has gone
subterranean over the years.
On the genteel surface above
she has danced to every melody
but her own buried ballad:
that song that still
rises around her like a mist
some early mornings
before the machinery of duty
engages its oily grey gears.

Fishing from a small boat (a poem for my dad)

My father balanced in the stern...
I was high in the bow
where I couldn't
hear the tarpon tearing
at the little thread
over the blue
brim of his cap.

My dad sounded over the
motor like bubbles
breaking when he told me: "It's too early
to be here. Son, I'm afraid
the oyster beds are barely

below the surface and our boat

feels too thin for this
black water."

_________________________________________________
Note: Tomorrow is Father's Day... I wrote this poem over two decades ago, about a fishing trip with my dad that happened two decades before it was written. Dad is 80 years old now. We have not been fishing together since. My father has never seen this poem, because, well... he simply wouldn't like it and he would not see the point. I am having dinner with him tonight.

Uncomfortable

A "found poem" is made up of phrases, extracted and modified, from some other source.

Here is a found poem I created, constructed of lines taken from the film Waking Life, by Richard Linklater.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

It has to come out of the moment.

It's just a moment,
which is holy.

You know…
like this
moment
is holy.

We walk around
like there's some
holy moments

and there are all these
other moments...
that are not holy,

Ah, this moment. holy.
Like "holy, holy, holy" moment by moment.
But who can live that way?

Because if I were to look at you
if I were to let you be holy for me--
I don't know…
I would
stop talking.

I'd be open.
I'd look in your eyes
and I'd laugh or cry...
and I'd feel all this stuff and that's not polite.
It would make you
uncomfortable.

Requiem for Whitman

My cosmos is not so tightly jammed
with swirling Van Gogh skies over my head
and not so blasted with big stars
screaming brightly over schizophrenic fields.
My planet is not so teeming as yours
with divine humans for whom I ache
regardless of gender details.
My heart races only for women that way.
I am awakened, only rarely, by the odd
miracle that opens me for an instant.

We have entered a new puritan age, old Walt,
and you would wilt and perish here.
We would ship you to Guantanamo
with a black number on your orange back.
We would feed you meds to twist you around
to face a little flickering screen and sit content.
You would grow sullen; your huge soul
compacted for the gated lifestyle, or die.

I would walk in your shoes, old Walt,
but I am a little leery of the open road
and its song, that nowadays sounds like diesel trucks
and screeching mustangs.
I would inhale the perfume of sweat
and love it as you do, but these days
we have all learned that humans stink
and there is illness lurking in every deep breath.
I long to unbolt the rusty door of my heart
and allow the ravens to flap out and fly free.

I am dreaming of your thick inky fingers that grasp
every steaming loaf of fresh bread
while gulping down huge mouthfuls of red wine,
fondling flesh and singing your crazy songs.
Poets are replaced by blind consumers
who collect gadgets and eat dead stuff from colorful boxes.
We sleep, we dream, and in our dreams, we find you.
There you sit, softly stroking our cheeks
and asking us to awaken and take your hand.

Dearest Walt, you are a white bearded monster,
a great wild smorgasbord of pulsing blood,
straining to burst the thin grape skin of a holy sage.
Walt, you strange old goat who roamed
the taverns calling out for anyone to drink you;
booming out an invitation to every mortal to embrace
your big body and become divine with you.
You are always bombed on the frozen now...
the amazing yes of being.

Lizard Aware

If I were secretly human, I would strive to meld, invisibly
into any habitat where I found my little lizard self,
I would nibble on wilted greens with the geckos in my tank.

If I awoke as a sapient skink, I would still listen and I’d laugh
at all the slimy, saurian jokes. I would easily speak
in the clichés common to a culture of lizards.
I would shift my scales to mimic the colors of silicone and steel.

If I had shed the tactics of reptilian roles, I would keep that
a secret, and pile the prettiest pebbles in my corner…guard them
tooth and claw; I would scuttle across the floor of my circumstances,
frantic for the feast of struggling fly, or a bloody, squirming worm.

Deep Creek

River running frantic where we cross the rock shelf
Serene stone slabs amid white water rushing
September sun dropping slowly behind a stand of spruce
Sliver of white moon rising in a mist of chill rain
Stopping midway, we sit on a flat slab of stone, listening
Black water gurgle and splash, tumbling down the gorge
Black granite, wet and slick with moss along the water's edge
Taking your hand and climbing up the gray stone
Walking up the steep bank among myrtle and beech leaves

Your sudden laugh bounces between rock gorge walls
Startled squirrel chattering unseen in the dark green above us
Gray lichen carpeting a fallen hemlock with vegetable fur
Brown boots sinking into mud, finding footholds between roots
Reaching a logging road, grassy ruts just visible in the twilight
The road is vague and hazy in the cold drizzle of rain
Rhythmic squish as we walk, wet socks inside soaked boots
Turning uphill into the red clay road toward home
Yellow porch light a beacon through the branches of dark trees
Wind blustering high above in swaying spruce boughs

Up wooden steps, stomping our soles on dry pine planks
Unlacing boots, stripping drenched socks away
Stepping inside the cedar cabin, a warm fire still in the hearth
Wringing water, peeling out of wet denim and flannel
Standing and shivering, bodies painted by fluttering firelight
Rubbing your cold feet between my hands, kissing toes
Smiling mouth merges into smiling mouth
Hands along hips and fingers through damp hair
Black night and a storm gusting hard against the windows.

October’s End

Somehow it just seems right
To see you again at October's end.
Halloween is a time the world celebrates
horrors...This is horrible:
to disguise our faces --- to scream in the dark
to see the streets filled
with fanged demons --- ourselves fanged demons.

Tell me about the beauty of
bright, new candy.
Show me your brown bag full of
sweet things from other dark doorways.
Tell me how you've been
haunted by more colorful masks.

Step into my parlor now.
My carved pumpkin grins ridiculous:
a perfect likeness of me.
I cut this grim expression out
Of a soft, thick vegetable skull.
I know that hot burning behind his eyes.
It is mine.

Marshmallow

Chips of raw ice tease the coals
and make them behave themselves;
no fingers of flame can grow
to spoil our even cooking.
Your Georgia girl drawl smolders.

You are sunned khaki in your
cream socks and custard shoulders.
This slow burning fills us both.
The charcoal smoke covers us;
we are drunk with it and run.

A bag of smooth marshmallows ---
We rip our wonder open
and thrust the crooked wires through
soft, powdered flesh and you turn;
twist the skewer in the wound.

You point it at the moon,
say it looks like another
marshmallow, comes down like glue;
viscous like molasses running down
the hot spit into our palms,

melting down along your arms ---
along your blonde arms my arms
touch the stuff around your bones.
Your tongue reaches for the moon.

Something in me can taste you:
it stirs and turns in my stomach.
It moves under all our words;
deeper down than that, it purrs.

Waiting for the Rapture

During Wednesday night prayer meetings
I waited for the preacher to get hot.
I waited until I wouldn't be noticed
and then I'd slip away
out the door, holding my breath
out into the cool and sinful world
hoping my father couldn't hear
that heavy door closing behind me.

I found a ladder behind the church;
I could climb to the roof of the house of God
my mind's eye still aflame
with snapshots of Hell.
I could sit in the shingles up there
among the billion eyes of an angry god, blinking.
I waited for the fierce worship
raging under me to end.

I waited for some of the stars
to morph into trumpets and blaze
calling every body but me
to drop every thing and go --
to drop their car keys and skin conditions,
to rise through the roof where I sat.

I waited to see Sister Popkin
flailing her fat legs
swimming up toward Orion.
I waited to see Sister Bertha
dropping her blue vinyl purse
from the Van Allen Belt
and I waited to see the sky
slamming shut behind them all.

The Language of Mango

I learned the language of mango
and filed it within my cells,
so I would have a way to praise
the green skinned fruit when it appeared;
so I would have a way to embrace
the tearing down of its yellow meat.

I designed this mundane dust to cover my nerves
like Novocain to modulate the pleasure,
that intolerable energy flying through my bones;
to step down the frequency of wild aliveness,
to block the one wave length that matters:
the complete rush of just standing on the planet.

I devised you, with that lovely x chromosome,
so I could tell us apart
and I invented the euphoric shock of sex,
that slippery disturbance of the neurons,
so that your sweet skinned body and mine
could revive the experience of being one being.

Five Visions of the Afterlife

1
People float.
All your wants sprout
like mushrooms every morning.
You dice them into unheard-of
soups of heaven.

2

Everybody’s mother is there,
all of them as golden as your own mother.
Eternally... she knits for you
sweaters out of her sweet, warm breath.
She has quit drinking.

3

Silk scarves travel in flocks
like liquid birds and sing
The food is strange
and weightless; you can eat it and eat it.
It only fills you like music.

4

There are black eels with human faces.
They laugh at you
because you can never get away
from this place that is a fire
fueled forever by the fat of your soul.

5

Shopping with a Zombie

A zombie knows precisely what he wants.
Purity of purpose guides his every spastic step.
He stumbles his way through Dadeland Mall,
oblivious to low low prices and everything must go.

Crashing into shopping carts and tipping over stalls,
he is as thoughtless and as empty as the cold, vented air
that gently ruffles the filthy shirt he was buried in,
wholly numb from the broken toes to rotted earlobes.

The smell of strolling flesh inflames his relentless hunger
into hell-bent lust, a hunger that screams to be sated.
All these yummy shoppers are wafting their fragrance of mortal meat,
all searching ravenously for a bangle to kill their own endless ache.