A poem for the new year

Words cannot explain the ineffable, they say
The mystery defies eXplanation, I’m told
But the X is plain to see
And it takes a Five and a good deal of defiance
To see that the story of the
IN-DIVIDE-DUAL
Is the story of polarity
Black and white
Good and Evil
Love and Fear
How is this division bridged?
By recognizing the essential unity
Of our experience.
I cross that bridge again and again
In every infinitesimal second
And I cross that bridge between my
Two hemispheres.

We live in a whole in time
A worm hole to a new dimension.

thanksgiving poem

You know its so easy to start a thanksgiving poem
With some soapy statement like I'm grateful for
And then start making a pious list of all the things one is grateful for:
Autumn leaves, and purring kitties
But could I really say I'm grateful for this headache that peppers my menopausal days?
Or that I'm grateful for my first thanksgiving without my son?
I'm grateful that my son and I are like virtual strangers to each other
And we give each other acute social anxiety?

But what is being grateful, really?
Its being full of great.
And gratitude is clearly a great attitude
Which comes from being full of great.
It begs the question: Am I really full of great?

And that question eternally winds me back to the answer:
an attitude adjuster like no other.

What I'm full of
Is the ever-evolving, infintesmial
life force, god-force
Messianic power, climbing up that spiral staircase
And breaking out through me
Like a shower of fiery autumn leaves,
Falling on cold hard earth,
Like a silky purr ball of ginger love
Sleeping on my head
Like the Northern lights
Lighting up my tiny little wigwam
Reminding me that all I am is god, god, god god, god
Oh God, is that all there is?

And that makes me feel great-full.

I Give You Back

I give you back.
I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear.
I release you, you were my beloved and hated twin,
but now I don't know you as myself.
I release you with all the pain I would know
at the death of my daughters.
You are not my blood anymore.
I give you back to the soldiers who burned down my home,
beheaded my children,
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who took the food
from our plates when we were starving.

I release you fear,
because you hold these scenes in front of me
and I was born with eyes that can never close.
I release you fear so that you can no longer
keep me naked and frozen in winter,
or hot and thirsty in summer.

I release you

I am not afraid to be angry
I am not afraid to rejoice
I am not afraid to be black
I am not afraid to be white
I am not afraid to be hungry
I am not afraid to be full
I am not afraid to be hated
I am not afraid to be loved, to be loved, to be loved.

Oh you have choked me but I gave you the leash,
Now I have no neck.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife,
Now you have no hands.
You have devoured me but I laid myself across the plate,
Now you are full and the plate is empty.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won't hold you in my hands.
You can't live in my eyes, my ears, my voice, my belly,
Or in my heart, my heart, my heart.

But come here fear.
I am alive, and you are so afraid of dying.

Unknown Poet

Room with a View

Same house,
different rooms.
One has light. One is dark
The dark room has a magnificent view
If you can only get to the window
Without tripping over the furniture
In the dark.

Limits

Containing Joy
I’m full to the brim
Walk steadily, now
Stay in balance
Stop when the stopping’s good
Then
The liquid ecstasy of Being
Will not spill
And get wasted.

Faithfulness in the Center

This morning at 7:30
I rolled out of bed
And while the kettle was boiling
I threw my hexagram for the day.

At the sixth throw, the coin stood
On it’s edge, perfectly balanced
Neither heads nor tails.
I nudged it with the Tao te Ching
Which happened to be
The book closest at hand.
But the coin didn’t fall.
It just stood still in the middle.

I saw that the choice was mine to make
Whether it would be heads or tails.
Rather than leave it to chance,
I could choose.
Heads gave me hexagram 61: Faithfulness in the Center
The power to move even pigs and fishes, hmmmmmmm
Tails gave me hexagram 60: Discipline, ouch!

But, as every disciple knows, faithfulness needs discipline.

So I didn’t choose.
I too, stood still in the middle.

Mnemonic

He Died
And entered the Ocean of Forgetting
For getting fish
For getting more
Aquatic invader par excellence
Sailing from shore to shore
Until all that’s left was Mnemniopsis
Littering the Black Sea shore.

Remember, remember, the jelly screams
There is nothing in my wake
I eat up all your protein dreams
Like you, I over take.

Form of Life

Only the couch is real.
I am not real.
Or rather I am real
My body is real
Until it dies.
Then there is no body.
Then where am I?
I don't exist.
Just a nobody.
So I spend a whole lifetime
Becoming somebody,
Just to die, a nobody.

But still after the body dies
I exist. This I know.
I exist in a body of bliss
Not as this form, Lakshmi
But as Spirit, formless.
So form less opinions
And embrace THIS form
In THIS moment
And THIS life
Can be full.

The Intense Pleasure of Small Things

The sound of the buttons
in the dryer.
The stillness in the
small hour of the night.
My brown fingers on the
black keys going tap. Tap. Tap.
One leg familiarly crossed over the other.
Tightly.
Lilting to the left.

Waiting at a red light, glancing up.
And seeing a flock of
migrating geese.
Flying high above me in the
night sky.

Standing on the bridge,
My feet firmly planted.
My hands folded.
Bird-song everywhere.
The rushing waterfall
of the expressway behind.
The sun on my left cheek.
I glimpse my breath
exhaled in a cold vapor
out of the corner of my eye.
The dog’s shadow,
My hand on the leash.
And through it all,
Something more suBtle,
Something with a silent B.

The sound of Luke’s guitar, throbbing.
The sound of the dog chewing
My indrawing breath.
The computer humming
Lamplight on orange stripes,
Warm and comforting.
Words appearing on the screen
From somewhere forming.
What mind writes this?
How pours it forth?
I know not what the next word will be
and yet, it appears with coherence.
Co-here, two here,
My yin and yang.
My belly is full of this.

I am conscious of the beginning
And at the end I am here again.
But the middle happens all
unbeknownst to me.

A child is born this way
Making love creates the seed
The child grows in the womb by itself
And the birth requires labor.

Uncross my legs.
Scoot closer.
Sit straight.
The mouse clicks.
I search my mind.
Nothing there.
Objects all around me
Quite meaningless.
Sunset!
Quick, walk the dog
Before the light disappears…..

I AM back.
A creature riffling thru the reeds.
The smell of greenness in the dusk.
The shrill sunset cry of a bird
Gravel crunching,
The dead tree silhouetted majestically
Against the pale red clouds fading into night.
A good sight.

The air so crisp today.
Even the sun is crystallized.
The frost on the bridge sparkles
Like a carpet of fairy dust.
Dazzling my every step.
Rabbit footprints etched on ice.

The cold air envelops my brain
Seizing every errant thought
A thought crystal for my contemplation.
Until finally I can stand it no more.
I turn off the light inside
And I simply feel the pebbles hard
Under the soles of my sturdy shoes.

I love you Life,
and I love you God.
Keep me aware of these essentials.

Benefits of a Low Place

I’m in a low place
From here I can’t see the big picture
But I can smell the dust in the air
And count the pennies on the floor
From here I don’t know anything
And that relieves me of planning ahead

It used to be scary for me to plunge so low.
I would immediately try to get out of the situation
By any means available to me
I would flutter around and bat my wings, hoping for lift-off
I would thrash my tail wildly back and forth
Hoping to agitate my way out of the mess
I would make decisions and intentions
Hoping the tension would incisively cut through my difficulty
But you know, my difficulty was very simple:
I didn’t like low places.
I judged them wrong.

And so every time life
Took me for a little dip,
I drowned in sorrow.

Now I don’t mind the low places.
I enjoy the view from here.
I can’t see over the horizon
But I can smell the wildflowers on the hillside

I feel happy that I can stop driving for a while
I can just let myself be led
And let life show me that the answers to my questions
are not all that urgent
And that I won’t lose anything that really belongs to me.

So I, a lover of truth, can truthfully say that
I am willing to lose those things that are born of illusion.
Even those illusions dearly beloved to me
And most difficult to give up.
Because the gap created in my being by this disillusionment
That gap, is small and dark and empty, a chasm
And it grows more empty, more hollow every day
And one day hollow turns holy
And holy turns whole.


So who am I to complain about

small
dark
places?

My Roomy Heart

I intend to make my heart roomy
Expand into infinite space
So that there is no You and I
I see no pairations
And all I feel is Love

Love that I draw up
From the infinite well of my
bottomless heart.
Love that filters through my poetry
Holds me in divine rapture.
Oh I have felt you touch me so.
And even though I know
That 'You and I'
Is a fiction.
It is a lie worth telling just to have
That dance of union
It is so delicious to anticipate,
You drawing closer to me
And my heart filling up
with divine Ecstasy.
It mends all things
Heal all shortcomings
Blesses my wounds
And sanctifies my life.

I want to make my heart roomy
Just to welcome You.

New Moon

who am i ?

in the scheme

of no thing

where even

my sound

is silenced

when I dot

my i…

by Shanti Hudes

Divine Hand

These archetypes:
Shaman, poet, designer,
Magician,
Goddess
Child,
Fool...
They're like a deck of cards,
Shuffled to fool me
Into thinking that's real.
But then the deck collapses into one card,
That lays flat on its side
And disappears into melting hands...
And only in that moment do

I realize that I AM
The divine hand holding
That Ace up my disappearing sleeve.

Cell liberation

Throw away Hope
And where is Hopelessness?
You said.

Its in the same place where I threw Hope
Lurking behind it like a shadow.

Throw away Life
And where is Death?
Lurking behind your wasted life
Like a shadow.

Shadows and reflections
You cannot escape them
In the world of form.

In the world of Form
(and there is no world of no-Form, by the way)
Time, space, distance, speed
You, me, this, that
All the pairs that you see
Separate you from seeing
The silent infinity of non-Being.

People strive to be non-dualistic.
There are paths and destinations.
Once I get There I will be this
Great Being: a Bodhisattva.
But we are ALREADY a body of truth.
Creation cannot sustain itself for an INSTANT
Much less for a human lifetime
Or a millenium, or aeons
Without Truth resonating
resounding, vibrating
and oscillating in every cell.

So liberate yourself from this cell
of constantly striving for Self-knowledge.
You already are, and Life already is.
Because all the understanding in the world
Cannot make the sun rise,
Cannot make a Poppy unfurl its petals
Like a Tibetan monk
Throwing off his orange shawl and
Dancing naked in the sunlight
Scattering his seed and his fragrant essence
To the wind. Just for free.
Just for the joy of Being
Here Now.

Alkaline

Alka walks the line
Blue-throated...
Creamy substance of space,
Rising UP
From the milk of human kindness
Churned up within her.

Extra-ordinary

Sleeping too late
Dreams, irresolute chaotic
Psychic forces stirring, tempting
My dream house splitting apart
Unrecognizable, all-too familiar
The doorbell leaps me awake.

Awake to the reality of a Vow.
Chastity invites the lower nature
To vy for supremacy.
And in the midst of this agitation
I EXIST:
Unthinkable, Untouchable, Unstoppable.

Firmly rooted moving forward
Doing nothing but allowing
The rising and falling of
Being and becoming
Within the hills and valleys of
Heart-mind body-soul:
I revel in my spirit journey.

Choosing a pathway
For now and tomorrow
Without knowing what may lay
Around the bends and breaks
Of, perhaps, a tortuous route,
I go forth in wonder and surprise
As one who has just
Arrived.

Arriver; To come
And I stay my arrival,
A rival I to the forces that bend
Joyously bubble I through the tortuous route
Like water,
I reflect the sky in open spaces.
I still myself in stagnant places.
Holding, containing, growing, waiting
for the moment when I may
rush forth innocently
Certain that I will be joined
to an ocean of eternal love.

"I" must be clear.
Here. No fear
Of fear. No interference.
At once definite as crystal
And diaphanous as light flowing through.
Wu wei!!! Ride and rider merge.
One being
Not doing
Time still and moving.
Fish swim in air.
I breath in ocean.
Now there are two. We
Make dolphin love forever.

A vesica piscis is a fish
Sacred geometry.
Two circles intersecting
Definite as Christ
The middle is adore-way
The woo way.
The two way
To One.

Through One
Each and every being
Harmonizes in holographic
Multiplicity, all
Falling in love,
Kaliedescopic jewels of
Starlight magnificently
Masquerading as formless form.

In adoration
Rivers of light and
Gold in grain
Conspire with earth and rain
To form loaves and fishes.
World so willing to hear
Echoes of the first word
And respond with miracle songs.

Is this a dream?
Of an ancient garden?
Or are we the bringers of a new dawn?
Once I saw a way to be
So natural
Rivers of light traveling blue-electric
through my veins.
My love a net wide enough for all
I stood there in radiant reflection
Saying to myself
I know I know
That THIS is my birthright
And it is an extra-ordinary state
Extra, Extra! and free to boot.

unfelt

no more uneasy bonds for me,
no more rusty blades of grass...
I'm feeling a longing
for alchemical bonding
that I have not felt in the past

The Abyss

We look to the heights
But are afraid of the depths
Mental, we forget what's elemental
to Life on Earth or anywhere else.
Water, the formless feminine.
It's womb dark mystery to Man
Unconscious, emotional, intuitive.
From tears to oceanic bliss
A realm
That the masculine mind
would rather avoid.

But it's not. A void.
It's full of life. And full of answers.
But it takes a plunge into
the abyss to unearth
the mystery of our ancestry.

OLVE

It takes a lot of LOVE to create,
You have to LOVE what you’re doing
It really helps if you LOVE who you’re doing it for
You have to LOVE doing it
And you have to LOVE it even when you hate it
So if you take one LOVE and turn it backside front
You have EVOL
Then take another love and invert it: OLVE
Bring ‘em together and you will
EVOLVE

Tap

Tap tap tap
On the keys
Tap tap tap
On my Psyche

Insistent?
Not really.
I could ignore it.
But wouldn't that be
something like ignorance?

Who are you?
And who am I?
Mysteries, both.
Unfurling,
Like my heart.

Not-knowing, is contentment.

Life the poem

I feel like writing a poem today.
My poem is an expression of my inner ecstasy.
X-stasis. A deep inner stillness. Capable of receiving.

These poems never come because I intend them to.
They arise in me spontaneously,
Not brought forth by my intense inner longing...or some exquisite rapture.
But rather, when my longing drops off into empty space.
And Gravity isn't just a force. It's Love.
An image in my head burns like a jewel and then there it is…
The movement of my body waking up in the middle of the night.
Stumbling in the dark to find a pen, turn on the lamp
And scratch a few words--uncomprehendingly---on an old envelope.

Next morning, a poem.

But that’s when I’m asleep.

Awake, Life is the poet, and I am the poem.

Serendipity and the Muse

Light arises in an empty room.
My room was too full
And you couldn't find the space
To arise, to alight, to amuse
I'm a fool!
I mocked you by saying
I'm over resistance.
I'll show you, you said
And you won my submission.
To forces beyond me
In scope and in sheer
Power and imagery
Completely the life of me.
You're the subject,
The sadness,
The comic relief.
You're the drama that wakens
The drone and the thief,
You revel in coincidence,
And lavish cliches,
Serendipity is your middle name,
I'LL MEET YOU ON THE WAY.

Life, the lamp oil

The Golden Flame of Truth
It burns in my heart
Bright, big flame
Life, the lamp oil.
It has never stopped burning.
Burning away the dross of this existence
Burning away the rutted personality
The fears, the night terrors
The panic, sealed tightly
With brilliant reflections.
Mind control, mind control
Intended to contain and curtail
Things that burn up in the flame of truth.
But no more.
I have opened Pandora’s box
And Pan must flee,
And Dora must be free.

Fine Lines

Its a fine line between beauty and over-indulgence
A fine line between self-absorption and contemplation
Between honesty and brutality
criticsm and destruction
And one has only to step over the line by a hair
And the action, once immodest is once again positively pure
Or the action, once inspired,
is now sullied with negative ambition
A hair's breadth, a very small step,
Hardly noticable to oneself
Yet with huge ramifications in the world of form.
For positive energy spirals upward
And negative energy spirals downward
And its always one or the other in the world.

Maybe its those fine lines, that etch character
Lessons learned the hard way
They become white hairs and wrinkles
Each line a lesson learned, a wisdom gleaned
A softness unveiled
A tapestry of self-realizations
The sum of age, a new age.
Teaching me again and again
What does not contain any lines of distinction
No boundaries and no withholdings
The smooth truth behind all faces.

One Voice:

Two hearts
conjoined
speaking with one
voice.

One heart is true.
The body is a divine illusion
that occupies mind.

It takes spirit to know different.
It takes love to be different.

Like this, we are as children
frolicking in make-believe, laughter for the joyous
tears for what goes wrong.

These illusion do not dispel as we ripen.

No, why should they?
We are divine illusion
I AM Love made different.
They do not dispel
but I begin to see through them

To myself behind... the illusions like hair

written by two voices: Kabir Kadre and Lakshmi Narayan

Man longs to know it all.
God longs for immortal forgetting.
And so a child is born.

Burglar Alarm

Most of my thoughts are thieves
A den of thieves, skulking around in my head
Stealing the moment...
I need to call Bob
Don't forget to buy dogfood at New Leaf
I have so much to do tomorrow. I hope I don't forget
I better make a list...
And on and on, in mundane burglary.

Soon the weight of all the things I must do
But cannot obviously do in this moment
Are like a ball and chain on my ankle
For in THIS moment I am standing in my blue robe
In the kitchen
My belly full of cool water
Waiting for the tea kettle to boil
I am feeling the coldness of the wood floor on my bare feet
I breathe out Ali baba and the 40 thieves
As I select the hummingbird cup and pull out the green tea bag
The one which says its authentic Japanese tea.
And in that gap, the silent space of Now
Joy arises, like steam from the kettle
And whistles its splendid song.
For in this moment, there is nothing I can do
But what I am doing.
All else is snatching away my life from Being
In this celestial moment.

How to stop these thieves from breaking and entering?
Silence is the key. Silence is the guard.
In silence, every errant thought rings loudly.
And crown jewels shine in their glass cases.