The World Is Curled

You know the world is curled
up inside itself, within the minutest
labyrinthine caverns, much as
the nautilus conceals hidden halls
within its rigid shell. No one can tell
but the most sensitive, seeking souls.
Most of our lives are simply hurled
helter-skelter at this or that goal,
flung along the landlines and wireless
streams of the banal and the tasteless.
But all of life, the whole sweep of life -
not just the visible, the detectable
or the easily experienceable - all those
thoughts, feelings, ecstasies and mysteries,
all thought lost, forgotten or trashed:
now only the most delicate taste can detect
and trace, only the most assiduous can replace,
only the most nimblest fingers unfurl.

Some really, really old poems

Some go back nearly 14 years.

Everything Flows

Observe a Cooper’s hawk flying,
slipping seamlessly through a rift in the pine-row,
moving brilliantly through air,
the turbulence from his wings
exciting the air in the atmosphere.

Though standing still, at your most basic level
you are moving, too. The earth is turning,
the galaxy's wheeling—everything’s in the mood of movement.

Today what you call I is just an oscillation between two opposing poles...

Lodestar

When you lose all attachments to the world—not of volition, more like undertow, where the moment you turn your back, you realize you're already in its grip; when you disregard the tender gaze or the coy smile—the treasured currency of human intercourse—you become like heavy ore slipping down into dark depths, back into the fold of the mother lode. But when you finally capitulate, you don’t have to be thrown into the scales; you don't have to be weighed and found wanting. That, then, seems to be the turning point. What once was the despair of emptiness in you is now a nascent universe with vast swathes of opulent nebula gleaming in the inner spaces of your being where stars continually coalesce, die and are being reborn. Slowly you begin to perceive, in the far-inward distances, the tremulous shimmering of your lodestar.

Advice

Hey, you, up in the tower -
alone with your glass of wine
and your books, your mind
clenched into an iron-fisted grip,
you who does not relinquish
control so easily - come down,
come outside, don’t fix your hair
or your clothes. Go run in the wind
and blowing rain. Slide and roll
in the gritty mud. Take a walk
or a stroll—let yourself bleed
into the countryside. Crouch down
by creek-side or pond, wade
thigh deep into the secretive waters,
letting your forearms get slimy
with protozoan life. Learn to live
through your body again.

The Crow

Atop a large maple a solitary crow lands almost falling off the fragile topmost twigs. Not knowing he’s arrived somewhat awkwardly, he nevertheless proceeds to squawk and squawk, disregarding his lack of dexterity. That squawk, that hoarse cry, is what sets him apart - defiant against the sounds of church bells and laughing children, incessantly passing cars and other birds. It must be passion: a pure, dark, imperfect, inchoate desire to be known, to be heard among the multitude, ruffled feathers shining iridescently in a flash of spring sun.

The Moment

Ah, father, a man can build up layer upon layer of lives around him, so easily slipped into, to which he clings relentlessly with a raptor’s talons, burying his true self deeper and deeper. Yet when he's pierced by the sharpest anguish, something like a star shines through, emanating out of his turbulent and guarded center. This is the moment all poets and mystics long for—a chance to see one’s true life unfolding like a flame-emblazoned lotus. It’s like some mythical treasure that rises out of the sun-scorched desert once every thousand years—and, if missed, sinks back down whence it came. This is that inner vision for which Jesus and all the prophets would have torn down Jerusalem’s golden wall, stone by holy stone.

The Stone

In that hollow place deep inside me, where, occasionally, a river floods its dry riverbed, bringing life to the vineyard surrounding it, an enormous stone slows the river’s flow; and some carefully cultivated words that were hanging in grape clusters swell with passion only to fall down on this cold stone, lying there half broken or split open, never tasting of that river which comes and then goes.

Words

Words have a way of working on you, or some part of you anyway, suffusing their way into the labyrinthine roots of your secret life, transforming something primeval deep within you, eventually burgeoning through all your undiscovered channels, filling the very air that envelops you with a foreign fragrance.

Wanting More

I don’t want to be stranded in some soulless profession.

I don’t want to be left floating in some tidal pool
waiting, drying up, until nothing is left but
traces of sea salt, indistinguishable grains of sand—
a vague memory.

That’s why, when I feel the sun tapping my shoulder,
and the moon, which pulls the oceans’ tides, pulling mine also,
I’d rather walk right over the useless sand, walk waist-deep
into the dark sea, plunging into the opaque waves,
peering into the hidden places.

Walking Around

Walking around in daylight my entire being seems infinitesimally small, discreet, knowable, too easily accessible – as if I had suddenly appeared, carved out of air and embellished with abundant light: a shiny object a bird might use in its nest, or a plaything a child might discover but soon discard.

But alone, in solitude as in utter darkness, my whole existence becomes boundless, like an expanding universe. I become darkness: whatever darkness once covered, my flesh absorbs; the anonymity darkness once gave to things, I claim for my own, endowed with unplumbed depths, unknown, illimitable, unimaginable possibilities—an original mystery once again restored.

Concerto

A solo instrument playing against an orchestra


The instrument is not a mere implement
or a tool, nor even a more delicate utensil.
It's not dancing against chords discordant,
nor is it just counterpoint or a complement.
Only a novice discerns what's essential:
the gliding, serpentine fluidity so important
for transcendence, helping to dispense with
the notion of oneself - even for a moment.

Growing

As you grow you become
more of who you already are,
or were - a nascent germ
biding time, waiting for fire
to scorch the fertile earth.
Not something altogether
different, like a new birth,
the twice-born metanoia
of the persecutor turned
suddenly the persecuted.

Grimness & Grandeur

Just when you think you have so much
more than you can handle, instead of rising
you sink, and your slowly trickling candle
continues shrinking. The simple solace you crave
is never a true salve; it's never able to save.
And what you vow to abjure will never stay,
nor keep at bay, the grimness and grandeur of life.

Storm

Can you carry my storm
without so much alarm,
weathering the vagaries
of such a splintered form?
Can you endure being torn?

Zones both cold and warm
swirl round more and more
than ever imagined before.
Can you abide such swarms,
treading the years with aplomb?

Lost in the frosty heart of the herd,
have you heard my plaintive voice,
or my sweet but fractured verse?
Caught me gulping down the entire sea?
Wondered if we all are as we must be?

Impulse

When following an impulse
there's a danger that by
pulling too hard on its string
you'll begin to unfurl
precisely that thing
you meant to hold and explore.

The Highs & The Deeps

Some people live their lives horizontally,
looking both forward and backward,
tidally advancing and receding, contingently.

And some people live their lives only vertically,
being yanked down until sunk in a well,
or propelled into the rarefied air of fancy.

Yet some souls can live along both axes,
not just merely in the holes or the heights.
There's a compulsion to their oscillation.

Like mercury sealed in its slender glass cylinder,
the pressure within starts an irrepressible quiver;
and when the internal weather begins to dominate,
the delicate conduit is then destined to splinter -
inescapably spilling onto the horizontal plane.

And this is when these horizontal livers
become alarmed and may again tidally recede,
because weathering the highs and the deeps
may just give some of these types the creeps.

Walking the Floor

When walking the floor
one eyes all the doors,
and maybe even the windows -
though rarely do people
come in through those.

The Point

To get one's point across.
Across what, you may ask - a vast
and possibly unbridgeable gap?

But what if you tried too hard
and overshot, using an arrow or
a spear, not aiming to maim or kill
but merely convince the other fellow?

Still, the point in getting one's
point across is, ostensibly, for you
to reach consensus, a sort of détente -
instead of a senseless folie à deux.