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“Harmony”
Hardy Are Red Mums On New Years-eve
Dusted by the fallen snow, warmed by fallen leaves
Our love blooms like those hardy mums and shimmers like the snow
It also warms like fallen leaves, as only lovers know
Harmony oh Harmony, i’m not the man i wish i could be
Harmony oh Harmony, i make up words, then sing ’em off key
Angels and Anarchists never stop to marry
Heaven and Revolution don’t leave time to tarry
But if they knew love like we know love, we’d see pretty soon
Angels and Anarchists on their honeymoon
Harmony oh Harmony, i’m not the man i wish i could be
Harmony oh Harmony, i make up words, then sing ’em off key
“Bodhisattva”
The world is simply illusion
Full of suffering and confusion
Still you guide us through the night
And do not pass on into the night
Bodhisattva oh Bodhisattva
Pass up Nirvana for Samsara
You alone are here by choice
To share your vision share your voice
Bodhisattva oh Bodhisattva
Pass up Nirvana for Samsara
We warp your words and cause much strife
And all too often we take your life
Still you ride on the Karmic wheel
Take upon yourself the pain we feel
Bodhisattva oh Bodhisatttva
Pass up Nirvana for Samsara
“Gordon Goes To Heaven”
I wrote this poem on the request of my niece after the death of one of her associate’s with severe developmental disabilities. She was struck by his Cookie Monster doll sitting by his plastic palm tree which she had always meant to decorate with christmas lights but never got around to it. Got me thinking about big questions and i wrote this surrealist thing:
The Cookie Monster sat
Under the seven foot cactus
That though never wore Christmas Lights
In this life for sure
Will shine in remembrance
Where we’ll all live the longest
If we get to live at all
The memory mansions of a communal Heaven
A place across the abyss
That is not alone
Many Many Memory Mansions
Are prepared for us for sure
Life without interaction is impossible
And Jesus said he could do it
And Jesus said he would do it
He might have said we should do it
And far greater things
Less we be swallowed up in the unimaginable
Not remembered Not remembering
Swallowed up in the divine for sure
Through the conservation of energy if nothing else
Can’t be all bad
Some noble folk seek it out
As their ultimate goal
But if its communion versus existance
Independent Existance
I stand to be here
To be Me if not I
Humility has its demands
And the Work has too few hands
And there’s shadows grow across the land
‘Midst the dappled sunlight of growth
And the warmth of gentle decomposition
The cycle turns and turns
But passions churn and burn
In their immediacy
The seeds of apocalypse
Are as easy to see as beauty
And which is more real
Only time will tell
That lying bitch
Mother of dogs
Man’s best friend
Do you remember the wolf
That you were
Or the angel you may be
May be becoming
Was a stop in the suburbs
Of arbitrary confinement
And casual nurturance
Worth a step toward the Celestial Hunt
Murderously vain about intelligence
We are
I have to say to not sound threatening
Though there’s no violence on my mind
Except the violence I see
In the stories I hear
In the papers I read
In the people I meet
Arrogant to believe intelligence
Trumps connection
That God does not preserve man and beast
And yet the socially constructed eternal soul
Of personality in interaction
Shines brighter in imagination
A fuller conception of the divine
Aids resonance
Resonance to dance
Outside the hallowed walls
Of someone else’s memory
Skating across the abyss on a name
A hope, a prayer
To soar amidst the other luminescent beings
And share our light
And shine brighter
We are all stars in time
and I swear I will try to remember
You all
In time.
“Jesus poem”
Here is my poetic take on the life of Jesus. Some folks have been offended by my take on things so i lead with that disclaimer. I mean no disrespect and am just trying to paint a realistic picture of what he may have actually been feeling on a personal level. Savior of the world is one thing, being a man and struggling with man things is more interesting to me as a writer. Jesus gave up a lot to do his Jesus thing and I like to honor all of that sacrifice. Happy resurrection day my friend.
Jesus had a hard life
When he walked out onto the stage
With his healings and his feedings
And his tempered sense of rage
At injustice and exploitation
At the priest’s hypocricies
And when he gave his life to the masses
You know that he wanted to flee
Into the arms of a lover
A faithful and caring friend
And was it the Magdalene or the Apostle John
That his thoughts turned to in the end?
The Magdalene had been around
She rubbed scented oil on his feet
And it was better than food for the poor
Even Jesus needed something sweet
But the Magdalene had sold herself
Before Jesus gave her a new life
And if Jesus wanted to sample Mary’s wares
You know he would have made her his wife.
And John was the disciple that Jesus loved
It even made it into the Book
And John rest his head on Jesus’s breast
In spite of how it must look
To the fishermen, turned fisher of men
Come to bid their teacher goodbye
But John needed to make one last act of love
Before he watched his Jesus die.
And the other Apostles followed the martyr’s path
Only John lived to an old age
For he was the disciple that Jesus loved
And Jesus wouldn’t give John to the stage.
St Valentines Day
I had a bit more of a traditional St Valentine’s Day weekend than a single guy has any right to expect. To get it you have to understand the origins of the day. According to legend St Valentine was a priest who continued to marry soldiers after the emperor banned the practice fearing it would weaken the army. So Valentines Day should really be more of a celebration of marriage than romance.
That being said Saturday night i went out with a young couple to Sycamore a fancy restaurant with a seasonal/local menu to plan their May wedding ceremony. This will be my 9th wedding (not counting my own) and my first since Halloween 2003. I did my first wedding in the late 90s when a friend asked if i could do their ceremony. I looked into it, got ordained on the internet for the Universal Life Church, and applied f0r my license to solemnize marriages in the State of Ohio.
It went really well, the bride asked me to be sincere and that has been my watchword. Personalized and sincere. I really like doing weddings, its an exciting time to share with people and it is one of the few times in our society that we ask ultimate questions of what we really believe in. Most of the people who want a friend or acquaintance to do their wedding have no set religious beliefs. There is this vague tentative agnostic-paganism prevalent in most of my friends approach to spirituality. There are also family members with more traditional beliefs that you also want to speak to you. I at least want to also honor my own spiritual principles. It makes for this really interesting tension as you try to dump the bullshit but keep enough to meet everyone’s expectations in the shared experience.
The first wedding I did was Christian/Jewish. That was easy i stuck to the old testament. I found this nice reading about “two are better than one. How can one be warm alone?” It was such a sweet idea that just laying together is a spiritual act. I really wanted to use a Jesus quote so i just referred to him as the Sage of Galilee, as i had seen in some Jewish works.
It was a big hit and that led to several more weddings, a Christian/Native American one, an atheist one complete with a quote by Mumia Abu Jamal. I married my former brother-in-law which was particularly flattering because his uncle was a minister.
The most different wedding i did was based in West African spirituality. It seems the essence of ritual is spontaneity to provide room for the spirit to move, so i was largely unscripted. I had folks in the back light candles and say a few words about the bride and groom and then passed the flame across the hall to the bride and groom with everyone saying something. it was sweet.
I’ve done two holiday weddings one on New Years and one on Halloween. The New Years one was tough because i had just separated from Amee two weeks before the wedding. Oh I cried before driving up there, the last thing on earth i wanted to do, it also was fun, got hit on by a former co-worker and got her number even though she had a date with her. Being a wedding minister is a little bit like being a rock star, especially if you’re the drinking and smoking kind of minister, with a novel, spiritually nuanced message, delivered with some panache. The Halloween wedding was perhaps my best. The theme they wanted was horror movies and i worked that into a whole child like thing, they had great music, a ghost story and a fun crowd and the ceremony was a big hit.
This will be my first wedding in Missouri. No license required. Might generate some more gigs. And i love this couple which makes it quite a bit more fun. So this year, divorced though i may be, i was more than ok with being single on the big couples day. I got to celebrate the real reason for the season and feel a part of something special.
going insane part 9: flying first class
I settled back into the luxurious seat and enjoyed an immense feeling of rest and safety. I had been telling myself for better than a week that i would sleep on the plane when i was safe, when i was out of this nation of peril, and now i was here. I was seated in the back, in the middle seat with empties on each side. There were only a scattering of other passengers throughout the rest of firstclass. Seeing all of the well dressed folks made me aware of my own appearance. Green cords, a matching flannel i had bought with Debbie at the Berkeley Ross especially for the trip, and the Vans Kirk had left at the CAN house after we had booted him for slinging acid out of the house. I had been wearing that outfit for about 2 weeks, no socks, tshirt or undies. I think i’d lost them when i came out of the isolation tank all freaked out by the womb without a heartbeat. I wasn’t drawing any bad vibes from my fellow travellers and figured they thought i was a rock star or something.
The flight attendant, a body builder type with the brown hair and mustache of a 70s porn star and the biceps of a lou ferrigno of the 80s asked if i need anything.
“Like what?”
“Oh something to drink, maybe?”
“That sounds good what have you got?”
“Water, champagne, orange juice…’
“That sounds good give me an orange juice and a champagne.”
“Very good sir, champagne and orange juice. I’ll have those out as soon as we get in the air.” Almost immediately the plane began to taxi up the runway and we gained speed and left the ground. I could feel our acceleration in a very visceral way and as we sped down the runway my feelings of relief increased, i had made it.
Once we leveled off the muscular flight attendant brought me two flutes one of orange juice and one of champagne. They were both so good and i felt more rejuvenated and more relaxed. They went down easy and I quickly finished. “Finished already, would you like another round.”
“That would be fine, but probably just one more mixed.”
“Very good, a mimosa.”
“Yes a mimosa. Thank you.” I drank it down when it arrived and reclined back in the comfortable seat. I looked out the window at the sun, such a strange angle to be seeing it and looked at the electronic map of our path going up and over the arctic and coming back down across greenland to minimize our flight over open water, i’d learned on the way over. I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
I dreamed i was flying over the world in the company of Lucifer. He pointed out the great expanse of the world below and said it was all mine if i should desire it. He was very beautiful and i felt relaxed in his presence, i felt he was sincere but part of me new i was in very dangerous ground. I told him no i did not desire the world. He told me i could save those masses of folks from all the pain and misery i had felt and they all feel in our brief and pitiful lives. I told him no i did not wish to save the world. He showed a flash of anger then. “Well alright then. There can be nothing but enmity between us. I will raise an army and you shall raise an army and we will finish this now.”
I saw in my minds eye myself walking through the streets of paris an unkempt mob behind me marching too some great and final confrontation, knowing many would die but that final victory would be mine. This reality was far more tempting. I felt my Michael self resonate to the call of battle and a final end to all of the destructive nonsense through one act of bitter destruction.
I said, “no, my friend not now. Let the truce abide awhile longer. Let someone else marshal the forces of good for i will not fight this fight. Not at this cost not even for the final victory will i pay that price.” I awoke with a sense of momentous loss. of a missed chance to put things right. of a sense of relief.
more old poetry (john and salome)
I’ve noticed since moving the blog to wordpress that poetry is all of a sudden a big hit. I haven’t been writing a lot of new poetry, it seems to come in waves. I think there has to be a certain amount of space in my life to stay up late, having already read my fill, and a certain level of reflection. Right now i am living life. sometime in the future i will write about it. Here is one i wrote about John the Babtist probably sometime around 1998. Its not as subversive as most of my religious poetry but all of it just arises out of the subconscious. I actually have little to do with the process. I struggled with the last line but finally just kept to the same pattern. I like the repetition and juxtaposition of the two characters. I’m curious as to what other folks like.
John was a young man, he lived in Galilee
And about two thousand years ago he baptized in the sea
He baptized in the sea
He wore a coat of camel hair, ate locusts and honey
He cried out to the people to repent, but they refused to see
They refused to see
But while John was busy preaching, Salome began to dance
And the King of all Israel fell into her trance
Fell into her trance
Salome was a young girl, the daughter of a king
She does the dance of the seven veils while a thousand eunuchs sing
A thousand eunuchs sing
But while Salome was busy dancing, John began to say
The King of All Israel is living in sin this day
Living in sin this day
John was touched by God, his words were like a fire
But when he turned the people against his king he lit his funeral pyre
Lit his funeral pyre
Cuz while John was busy preaching Salome continued to dance
And when the last veil hit the floor she knew she had her chance
Knew she had her chance
Salome was given a gift and it was up to her
She asked for the head of John the Baptist served on a silver platter
Served on a silver platter
So when Salome was finished dancing, John was finished as well
Now John is preaching up in heaven and Salome is dancing in Hell
Salome is dancing in Hell
prose poem with lots of unatributed quotes
The Kingdom of heaven is like writing in the margins. For all of the writing in the book there is always room for more words. The kingdom of heaven is within you, heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away, in the beginning was the word and the word was god and was with god and everyone who loves is a child of god because god is love. Solomon says truly there is nothing new under the sun and yet i am a new creation. i sing a new song, i love the truth, i fall short of the glory of god and write obscenities in the book of life, i fall short, but the wind rocks me, i lay each night in the cradle and feel at home, i fall short, i am selfish and self centered but mostly lazy and yet i am rocked by the winds of change. i feel at home on the dusty plains, i feel at home in the snowy mountains, i feel at home in the winter’s rain. god loves a cheerful giver a forthright spirit and an upright heart. Plato says rightly that we are in a cave looking at flickering lights cast upon the darkness of our cave all these things that will Pass away. How many walls that limited Plato’s walks still stand? How many bowls from which he supped his soups or knives that carved his bread? hath not moth & rust destroyed? yet the idea of Knife guides every hand that makes to cut anything anywhere ever. heaven and earth shall pass away but my words will never die. this world is illusion only in the eye of the eternity and for now walls still stand the cave still surrounds us with darkness. but it is only contrast on the page of the limitless light of the now. dare to read your life as a book, your experiences as words on a page in the book of life. store up treasures in heaven, someday all there will be is communication, isn’t that what communion really means? but now there are walls and roads and knives and bowls and soup and bread and the stuff that Stories are made of. tales to be told when the weather just doesn’t matter anymore. heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall never die. time is a fire that burns away all the things that in the end are dust, but star dust nothing less, “its the cosmos that gave us life its from stardust that we’re made of”. “we are all stars”. “every woman and every man is a star” because of the truth. not the idea of truth but the truth itself, the known and the unknown, the beginning and the end. just as our bodies, molded clay of life stuff, for a time, a temple of finite properties but infinite possibilities. we are born into a world in which we are a part and we live and we die like the birds in the field. but our fallible material shells generate consciousness. a self. an entity capable of knowing and being known. remembering and being remembered. the kingdom of heaven is within you. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, to be grasped. to be known to love and be loved for god is love and what is love but a knowing a being known. [the book of wisdom says the great build up walls of lies, great houses and lands and things that twinkle and gleam, that block out the light of eternity, (an experience of both truth & love) and leave them huddled alone in darkness. a land of dark despair] just as every hand that cuts is guided by the same perfect knife every heart that loves is guided by the same perfect love. God and heaven and all the saints and angels are an “a priori” assumption, a self evident fact by anyone who has ever been lost in the moment of love, the sharing, the knowing of another soul be it our neighbor or the god who made the universe its really all the same eternity, if you do it right. do you want to know if you are going to live forever? are you living forever right now? my home is the planet earth and my family has six billion children and i yearn to know their names and know their stories. i have a name, i have asked to be remembered and promised to remember. i have loved and am loved, i sing songs to the angels, i love everyone i have ever loved and that love lives inside of me. moments of eternity when we shined brighter together, lost in the moment, timeless and so eternal. heavenly treasures, stories to tell when the weather just doesn’t matter anymore because heaven and hell have passed away and there is only the word. the word is truth. the word is love. the word is beauty. the word is.
all saints day
Samhain has passed and its a pagan new year, a new pagan year. something like that for sure. i definitely felt a thinning between the years waking from a dream of my mother on halloween morn’. I dreamed she’d been in the bath and the water was running, had overrun the sides of the tub. She hid herself when i arrived but i could see where she’d started to towel up the water. and that was that. i found her presence, or at least the feeling of her shortly gone, comforting. something of some meaning to ruminate on to get back to the true spirit of the season, pardon the pun. i carved a pumkin, the last of the 3 volunteers that came up in my strawberry bed out of the compost of presumably last years jack o’ lantern. i made a square eyed square mouthed fellah with bolts on the side with a definite frankenstein look. my best pumpkin in a decade i think is safe to say. got 10 trick or treaters, up from 7. Only one without a costume, a little guy who said he was a christian when the popster asked what he was supposed to be. played some D & D, ate the bulk of the candy after Harry’s Halloweeny beanie weanie for dinner. Finished off the evening with an HP Lovecraft movie. Party Bonus for the end of daylights saving time. Today i give my nod to all the saints, the lives they led, and they’re continued comforting presence.
Up North part 11: the final chapter
I grabbed some Taco Bell, got oriented and was on a bus to Lansing in short order. After a short walk I was home. I showered, put on some clean clothes and started to walk down town. I was struck by how I was a man on a walk and no longer a vagabond. When I started walking up Capitol the point was really sent home when a gent with silver hair past the collar of his denim jacket approached me. “Excuse me,” he said. “I just got into Lansing and I’m trying to get some heat for the family, do you have any change?”
An hour ago I would have said, “I was just going to ask you the same thing,” but instead I reach into my pocket. Coming up empty I said “I don’t, but I’ll be coming back this way.” His eyes turn away before I am finished. I continued my walk to the florist and order Amee flowers for her new job. It was one of my pre-trip errands I just didn’t get too. The florist was really nice and promised me a nice arrangement, Gerber Daisies and wildflowers in Fall colors, no carnations.
My errand done I strolled back Capitol. I didn’t spy my sparechanger where I left him, but I looked up the block and saw him copping a squat with a buddy eating a sandwich and drinking a soda. I walked up the block and handed him a dollar, from my right pocket, enjoying the look of frank surprise on his face. “I told you I’d be back.”
“You must be a Christian, aren’t you?” he said as he got up to talk to me, eye to eye.
“I’ve been accused of that,” I said letting my internal grin shine through.
“I knew it. I have a verse for you, Acts 16:31, maybe you know it. It’s when Paul is in prison and is freed by the angels and the jailer asks what must I do to be saved? And Paul says, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, thee and thy house.’ Now I take my house to mean my parents, my wife, and three children, even though I don’t see them. I know that this is at least something I can do for them.”
I am struck dumb by his sudden openness, his sincerity. I think of my own ‘house’ shaken as it is and I can only nod. Then I thought of another ‘house’ and the power of the prayers of beggars in the Rabbinical tradition I had been reading about up north and I asked. “Will you say a prayer for me? There’s a boy who fell in a river last night. They haven’t found the body and I know it would bring peace to that family if they find their boy. At least then they’d know. Will you pray for them?”
“Right now?” he asked.
I looked around suddenly aware we are standing on a crowded downtown sidewalk. “Yeah, now would be good.”
We clasp hands as brothers. “Dear Heavenly Father…” I quickly lose track of the words, journeying on in my own thoughts and my own prayers and my own gods but joined to this man, beggar no longer, but a gifted and beautiful man of God who I am honored to know for this short time. He calls on the God of the Bible and His Son Jesus Christ that this boy shall be found and peace come to his house, his family.
We open our eyes after the amen and just look at each other feeling the magic. I was the first to break away and release his hands. I reached into my left pocket and took out the last of my money. “Here’s another ten to give it power”.
Again that astonished smile. “God bless you”, and I know She has, just as I knew before I read it in the paper the next day that the boy is found this afternoon. For there is power in prayer, inexplicable, miraculous and comforting. As I walked away I offered a prayer for my new friend. To see a paper tomorrow and to know his own worth. To believe in his power. To inherit the earth.
The End
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