Starting Point

On By Donny Lee DukeIn PoetryLeave a comment 
The breathless crunch until the breathless cradle hits high air,
yoga limits above the currents,
fee-fi-fo-fum!
Gonna look forward to it.
Don’t get alarmed.
You’re a nice person.
This is not on your stool yet.
I’ll be arrested
being this little person in a little shell
exploding these bounds.

I don’t know where to put my see yet.
You’re not about a change of plans,
and I am an axe murderer among you
jumping in and cutting off the head of the snake.
I want a new worldview.
I want reality honored.
I want holism to rise among us.

Let me start where we hold most dear.
Let me start in the station of the room
we call square one,
right from wrong.
Are you in bed together yet?

I bleed this in the sky:
the unity of the wrongdoer
and whomever got hurt or harmed.
Can you see these naked clothes
oneness puts on us
where it touches our ship?

Pistol-whip the guy
oneness brings.
Stand on rooftops and sing.
Can you get out of your underwear
and know naked wrong?

Nobody understands me.
I want to hurt you
because I’m an answer to existence
bubblin’ up inside me
from hidden pain.
Can I toy with yours?
You suffer for it,
and I take my dick out and do it again,
arm harm.
I’ll shoot all you mother fuckers.

Who sees a child crying?
Who sees a function of the universe?
Who sees your identity with him,
and you’re also accountable,
and you’re also bear witness?

Who sees these roles?
Does the innocent child?
Does the baker and candlestick maker?
Does anybody?
Do you?

Can you count this to yourself?
Are we in the depths yet?
We have a view of harm’s end.
Deeper still.
I think we all go in there,
meet God,
the Unimaginable behind everything.

And we grasp ourselves deeper more.
Where are we?
There is no tellin’.
Take off the worlds.
Encompass more than Spirit.
Be there before God was born.*
Abide forever in motionless depths
we cannot fathom nor know,
and we found who we really are.

From the Alone in every face to the free from the Alone,
I’m controversial now.
That murderer needs ice cream.
I’m joinin’ spheres
so we can get out of darkness.

You would mistake the poet in the room
and let evil speak for us?
Conflasted guitar.
We all wear purple robes
and wipe our ass.

This is coming from the place beyond thought,
and it’s time to join darkness with its parent sun.
Not blinded by the light is the one who accepted my invitation.
We need to join the high and the low.
We need to integrate evil into our bedpan.

Can you count stars
and poke them through hell?
Yes this man is evil but he is us,
this woman a monster but she is we,
and even they are one,
the sudden genders.

Would you put me in your living room?
Thank you.
Vibrational frequencies
and a sudden way home
you are open.

Fishtails,
a sudden wasted mirror,
that’s the new password.
Confounded stars,
you don’t listen
there is adopted
the darkness at our breast
to make existence be.

People don’t understand
a light smote the darkness,
and it’s part of the picture
until we find us its hidden light.
I don’t throw anything
in your face to believe in.
Open your sudden eyes.

One second.
I’m the perishable end of the universe.
I confound you now with sudden God
right on our doorstep
immortalizing thought and sound
to bring the universe crashing down
to an epiphany of light 
never seeing darkness again.
Can you imagine that on earth?

Holistic’s charged looks corner
melody,
we don’t defeat anything.
There’s more to the sky bridge than integration.
We have to do this ourselves,
overcome darkness.
We have to change our own hands,
or this bleeds red river,
and nobody’s safe.

I’m a hope bridge,
just some wrong-ass person changed to light,
and I see the way behind.
I’m an immediacy of change
wherever I’m at,
and this is my hip corner:
I win hope every time
I climb through this music once again
and exercise muscle to see it through.

It’s strength of will overcomes darkness,
not a thing else.
Can you grasp this with your hands
you wanting to change your darkness to light?

I do not bask in separateness,
but separateness is all around me,
in every eyes I look.
This is normal human,
so accentuated in America.
We have no hope for each other.

Community means a gathering of individuals for events.
It’s not intimacy and soul room,
and Lord help you if you bless the children;
Lord help you if you cry.
Alone in separateness
we’re tryin’ to find the door
to fulfilled living.

It’s not about moral precepts,
kirtans and stage room.
We can’t be admonished to be good.
Did you open your heart to me?
Did you take risks with me?
Did you sacrifice?
Tell me to leave again I’m not sure.

I’ve let my hair down.
I feel deeply me and you.
I know our oneness inside.
I’m waiting for the behest of Spirit
to tell me what to do with you.
That’s just leave you alone again
nine times out of ten.

So here I am again
talkin’ to your backdoor,
tellin’ you amazing things,
and all’s I’ve got is in trouble
for bein’ so confoundedly real.
Let me lift my voice again
in danger
but willing to sacrifice.

This is what is looks like when you’ve opened your depths
and found humanity.
This is what it looks like when you love the world.
This is what it looks like when you’ve found God inside of you,
but you can’t yet manifest him there.
I’m about your liberation,
because I’m on mine.
There, universe.

Under these fruitless conditions,
buffing the pitch is to stream.
Switch to
takin’ utility out of my voice.
All use important
hard to get ahold of.

This is wide on earth
when Earth is in narrow times,
unconsolingly narrow.
Oh countin’ sadhana to myself,
the broad sky,
fine dog,
fine indeed.

All the worlds mix in me,
this puny self that I am
whose opened imagination’s wings
with the virility of my hands.
I’m open to thought
the very angels sing
when they’re looking beyond God
to the Unknowable,
a metaphor for I am open I am.

I cough this up
right here on you
in-between worlds.
I have a date with Heaven,
death or beyond that stair,
right here in life realized I don’t know.
Can I grasp the dualities in enlightenment?

A fancy speaker,
yes,
but I’m talkin’ about where I piss to myself,
explode in the toilet some goo,
wherever guttural I am
and reached enlightenment’s wings.

You laugh and stay sober,
but I am drunk on spring wine,
a Bacchus in revelry
a hundred miles away
from all that shoot you.
I’m settled in poise
of the gatekeeper
considers my case.
I’m a candidate for enlightenment.

I don’t know the history of the word
I have spoken to you these many years,
the poet at the drop of a hat.
I’ll meet you on the road again someday I’m sorry.
This poet takes leave of you now.
I’ve got a quest to cross.
I’ve got a quest to cost.
I’ve got a quest to conquer.
Yee-haw!

*a poetic idea from the epic poem Savitri by Sri Aurobindo

Take a Measure to Your Pants

On By Donny Lee DukeIn PoetryLeave a comment
photos by the author
Reality bag to boot,
and don’t try to gaslight me,
you tin can,
you person with a limited worldview.
I’m a marshmallow?
I’m starin’ down your throat.

How would you tell the unevolved ape he’s sorry,
the animal on pedestals
we’re sure we’re at?
I don’t think this is off the press yet:
the animals we are we don’t see.
Our understanding’s dim.

Our understanding’s wrong.
Everything you see is a placeholder
for a deeper reality.
We take the surface act as true.
Hidden deep within
are the origins of the outer scene.
Watch them rise,
if you can interpret dream.

Where does this knowledge bring us?
The field today
an inner necessity.
My that hurts.
My that’s brown,
and we see the origin of evil
in the clash of forces that make a universe,
nothingness made alive
and its answer to its painful start.

We have to see this to be made whole,
to put darkness from us
and bring in light.
Yours is the surface view,
reality in tatters,
the clash of individuals
that makes the human field.

You want to heal from wrong
done to you?
Open up the availability of Earth inside of you,
and that is spiritual process,
and I’m speaking from that place now.
How deep inside yourself you have to go to find healing.
It’s one with world act.
It’s one with universal means.

Okay silence me now
I am not in individual shares?
I stand on the function of reality?
I want accountability for reality?
I see the larger picture?
I think we can heal better than we do?
I see healing as an operation of oneness?
I don’t see an absolute separation between perpetrator and victim
in the area of wrongdoing?

Is this state of the art,
your method of dealing with this,
your crack on the wall?
Let’s break that wall down
and recover healing.
Is that is your mission today,
or is it all about accountability and identity of the individual?
You good there,
or are you cutting off your nose to spite your face?

Peter Parker
knows the score.
He’s an actor for a larger reality than his.
Buddhist reasoning throws it all away,
every bit of reality.
Merge in some distant Absolute,
and we’re done,
never mind the compassionate vow.
It’s all an illusion.

Can you get healing that way:
it don’t matter?
Throw on the world’s shoes
when faced with crisis,
is that what you’re doin’ here?
No, only talk about survivors and accountability.

Is this a Buddhist precept?
Is it in the jaws of enlightenment?
A reduced goal
in this examination Buddhist wounds.
What is the larger context?
A path to enlightenment.

Is that an impossible goal?
Has that happened to anyone?
Momentarily yes me,
and even people in the permanent state,
more than a few,
less than many.
Survivors of sexual abuse,
that’s the Buddha’s role,
that’s everything grist for the mill?

Supposed to go back home.
The ground nature of reality,
the emptiness of the I,
the way back in there from the world,
the complete absorption
in infinity,
the oneness that begets everything,
that’s cry wolf?

Wow, suppressed realities,
can we call them in the world today?
Visibility
exploded into silence
in this decade.
I expect full censorship.

Practice ill will on people and I’ll persist,
and it’s the closest thing
tellin’ people to be quiet.
When I read a paper,
and it’s just rose-colored glasses
the wearer’s wearin’ on themself,
I fill my room with creativity
in order that you might see better.
Confounded me,
I see myself better.
Is that the osprey?

An adult woman went public with a story of being a victim of sexual abuse so to get accountability from the organization where she was a novice in training to be a Buddhist nun. Her alleged abuser was her immediate teacher, an ordained Buddhist nun. She shares her story on YouTube and on a Buddhist-oriented website as an open letter.

It bears noting that they voluntarily left the monastery they were at in order to live together as a lesbian couple, which they did for some time, and that twice supervisors at the monastery asked the novice about the nature of the relationship between her and the nun, and she lied and said it was nonsexual, and that she was initiating their secret meetings in the forest for extra help in her studies. The former novice is framing the story in terms of and in the language of the Me Too movement, in terms of the individuality of human actors and not of holism.

The poem above is written to the owner of that website, who answered all the comments left for the former novice. The poem below is written to the former novice, and the website owner deleted it when I posted it. He also deleted a prose comment I posted in reply to his deletion of my poem and about the restrictions he placed on comments to her story. The above poem came the day after the poem below, before I knew he’d deleted the poem below, and I decided not to even try to post it and posted a prose comment instead, which, as I explained, also got deleted, what the above poem predicts, “full censorship.”

Rebirth
Precepts open home,
watch that public sharing.
Are you a freight train?
Whose right are you on?
You’re voicin’ grievances.
That’s for your benefit or ours?

Are you in the halls of social media for self-improvement?
Have you gathered the whole of us
in everything you think and do,
in every minute of your worldview?
Where is lone on moon,
where you make us better with your speech?

Exploratory has consequences
when it’s wanted redress for wrong
and not to shoulder humanity.
I’m a samsara of wrongs committed.
I want to reach healing’s reach.
I’m a product of fellatio in infancy.
My mom and her mouth,
the power was undeniable,
but the demon in the room had more,
my imaginary playmate I saw and felt.
His reality would change the stars,
and evil would have a new name:
we are its boxers not its originators.

How deep do you go?
You are a surface act in time?
No whole moves your ship?
We are alone individuals
on the inside,
left to make or break in matter’s wall?
We all heave to the same will,
and it’s only half our own.
We are a collective fist,
but who is personally responsible?

My mother was not all the game,
but I need her help to heal,
and she did that reluctantly.
Oh my God was I a baby to blame?
This is all torn up,
what deep necessity of being causes harm.
I think the religions say it:
the world is a redemption;
we are not here just to be animals in springtime;
we have a responsibility to our Earth
to overcome ourselves,
to get bigger than what we are,
to heal our broken wounds.

Okay there is no continuity of this self
other than the atoms’ flow,
or a speakeasy in time
we continually visit with every beat of our heart.
Even without that booger,
variability of soul evolving through lifetimes,
you can grasp yourself and heal,
let the sun shine in,
but I am a booger eater let me tell you,
and I graph on a sense of humor
to this gravity of being.

What deep necessity of soul,
or world process art,
has picked up your aspiration and thrown it in the dirt?
It is only a variety of evil,
whatever clothes it may wear?
Can you get the jump on it?
Have you been waylaid in your spiritual process
to find another,
or have you been challenged in the depths of yourself
to come up with a better plan
than the ego is leader of life,
and violating it determines all?

Do you hear the magic horn
crossing thresholds
and putting light on the subject?
Will you hear anybody at all
who comes up with another plan
than spilling this out to the world,
every detail you can think of,
to give your innocence in all this
and us say yes, yes,
get at them boogers?
Ride literary.

A Rabbit in the Query

On By Donny Lee DukeIn PoetryLeave a comment
Meditation’s Tall Seat, photo by the author
Are you sure you know your mountains view?
Shouldering light,
nature growling,
a more subtle sense high has visited.
We draw nigh to it.
It’s weathered the companion thought,
but it doesn’t speak to itself.
It doesn’t need to think.

It’s wedded to calm,
mountains of calm.
This is not on the fly.
You are in your meditation seat,
and you draw back and find this.
A settled slot you have entered.
I’m five-years-old.
You have left life’s cherished guests outside*
and anything you need.

You’re not looking for payment.
You’re not even looking for release.
You abide there with a spoon,
ready to open the vault of Silence.
This is carved out of thin air
while you’re waiting for the Silence to arrive.
You know the sound of silence.
There were no thoughts moving through your mind.

It’s a conference room
you do not use thought sounds to employ.
You know this is a grounded state
in the hush of thought.
You are beckoning the Silence now,
holding thought at bay,
and then the hurricane.

The fire department is changed into death,
self-awakening
over a river jar.
Ego death’s final round,
it’s a round coming.
Armed to that instruction.


*a variation of a line in the epic poem Savitri by Sri Aurobindo

Helicopter

On By Donny Lee DukeIn applied nonduality, PoetryLeave a comment
photo by the author
The pettiness of the human state,
are you sure you’re there?
Where do we go in morning?
Great big memories draw back.
We wear Heaven in our sleeve.
Do you feel it there,
in that nameless thing behind holidays
that makes the jack-o-lantern smile,
the yuletide behind Christmas tree,
a sudden spell of evening,
and you’re all on the front porch
under an autumnal moon?

How old is the starry night?
And I stick out like a sore thumb—
the nostalgia for greater eves than these.
We climbed Heaven once
and carry those memories with us now.
Just look into a fire
your kinfolk all around
or those with whom you belong,
and it’s not primitive man you remember.
It’s something beyond Earth.
The cracklings announce it.
The sparks send it forth.
The warmth bids you glad tidings of great joy.

The tears sting in the eyes.
You’re on a sleigh bell
all wrapped up in warm clothes,
captured by Christmas carol
somewhere way back in childhood
to a time that never was
you could’ve sworn was there.

You drop the bucket now.
You don’t know where to begin
to find this sudden community
that has everybody wrapped in childhood,
and no one’s lone nor mean.
It’s perfect feelings among everybody
and bodies that harm no one,
and you belong,
and this registers on the skies,
is in everybody’s thoughts’ glow
the round of applause we have for each other.

Can you count this on earth?
It’s the meaning of community
we all long to
but can never find.
We remember each other you know
foldin’ space
in our time between lives.
It’s not a page curl.
It’s the substantiality of 12 o’clock noon,
and it’s where we find ourselves
after a fruitful journey of afterlife
to our sojourn in Heaven.
It lasts for a thousand years
in the stamp it puts on our lives
we tarry after now.

Beethoven,
I think his music is a struggle to bring us back,
a clash of forces
to carry hints of Heaven
on their wings.
I cannot count this to you
so that you feel it as I do
a substantiality out of thin air.

Oh as a soul nears birth
all along alarm
nobody can recount the soul anymore.
Heaven loses the light of day,
and we have to deal with memory now
that blocks Heaven with the world’s forms
but has us feeling after them
for the signs they missed,
the perfect form of things
beyond anything Earth can bear.
Look homeward angel indeed.
Look at Heaven now.

In the calm of the freedom that knows no bounds
and is forever free from danger
vision Heaven.
It’s done already.
Avid of the real’s single shock, *
you know Heaven.
Nobody’s words
can prepare you for this sight.
It’s perfection made whole.
Well might our star maker die there.
The path is gone.
It can’t be summed up in words,
but we lean towards it now
on hidden eves.

Heaven the rescuer,
the stillness of form
you inhabit,
marvel at,
cleans wounds.
There’s a mountaintop,
a change of consciousness
to meet Heaven,
enlightenment’s starward stair,
enlightenment’s being,
what you cannot touch now
lost in the vision of the world,
but it’s coming upon you my friend
in a sudden moment
star-baked.

Whole lifetimes move towards it.
Whole lifetimes put you there.
It’s right around the corner
for some of us,
this side of death.
Imagine the steep then
after dying to the body
and all those fields you know,
all those many crosses you had to bear.
You put on enlightenment after death
for Heaven’s gates.

See that journey now.
Death does not have to be the stair,
but august and few
can win enlightenment now.
It’s the inevitability of its certain coming,
the crown of lifetimes
here in the flesh,
that put you to it,
that helps you look beyond the world
and go for it.

You hear that speaker now.
I know it’s there.
I’m slowin’ down my life for it,
stilling the instruments,
but I can dance and shout and sing
at the exuberance of life,
when sudden moments come upon me.
This is not a static state,
and I can work as well as sing,
puttin’ everything behind me
and goin’ for enlightenment’s wings.

Wake up.
The path is in front of you.
Come along darlin’.
The path awaits.
You hear me now
standin’ in the door.
What’s the world left to take from me?
I’ve lost society.
I’m an outsider on the roads of time.
You think that has defeated me?
I have nothin’ to lose.
I still my mind now
and reach beyond the world.
You comin’?

Fire responds to it call,
and we change names.
I cannot call this name.
In the eves of the inner fire
the inner revolution will begin,
and we will all cleave to the inner fire
changing the nature of man.
It’s just a shot away.
[sing above line, heard sung, “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones]

Heaven’s fire
on the road to Damascus
and under the Bodhi Tree
will surround us all.
This is the new Earth.

You seen it there?
My God there are human fields of emergency outside:
Avasis, throw out all the angels.
Pink cloud
the guy wrote in his underwear.
He did not rise till 10 o’clock eh?
How old you?
A star’s worth.
We have to pull those pictures first thing in the morning,
and the Man says his worth.

Tell us your name
oh Heaven on earth.
A-Long-Ways-Off.
Look at me.
This is the millennia.
Prepare yourself man.
You will lose everything to begin,
and uh,
it’s not the end of the world.

I will throw this out with balloons.
The new Earth will come with great upheaval.
Bright ideas
will cleave the mind of men
and see us through.
I’m inoculating you now
with the memories,
with the good days,
with the strength to hold on,
with enlightenment’s golden wings,
and the millennia will bring more surprises,
and it will turn you inside out,
inside in.

This is the law of things.
Death to the old transformation brings.
Energetically
good idea
go for the quiet of enlightenment.
Start tonight.
In the darkness bring it—
a model for the new millennia,
say it right there.
With this strength
we’ll look I in the face
and change his name.
Wow,
a thousand years,
and we made it.

I’m a seed bearer
planting our survival.
I’m an idiot,
but I’m your idiot,
and I remember you.
Don’t you remember me
my golden playmate
on Heaven’s wings?

*a partial quote from a line in the epic poem Savitri by Sri Aurobindo

three selfies and one photo by Douglas

A Firefly

On By Donny Lee DukeIn PoetryLeave a comment
photo by Christina

Dedicated to Nithish, 14 and a half

We leave the Earth better than it was before.
Exploded on the scene
oh my God I’m growin’ fast.
Get that riff from piano girl.

The tingles of world sensation now
so much bigger than the moon.
I spilled my malt
and could not put on socks and shoes.
My genitals have grown too big,
but I’m not supposed to reach for them in public.

Is that the Earth I’m falling into
or the sky?
I don’t agree with anything.
My parents are not my TV,
and my little brother’s a rat in the room.

He still likes cartoons.
I play with them every day,
but they’re too black and white for me.
Does the world suck or what?
Can I just be with my homies dog?

I could change sexes here
and reach for kittens,
but wherever we’re at
I have to be private now.
The feelings of childhood adore me,
but if feelings could slay a dragon,
I’m afraid that dragon would be me.

What is this drift within my head
that paints the world black in my drawing room?
I thought it was supposed to be fun,
growin’ bigger than towhead.
My genitals are huge,
and you’re so embarrassed I have them
pillars of society.

And I just want things back to normal,
when I could be sweetly naked,
and it was innocence you saw,
not goon.
I speak in code now.

Okay who turned the world off?
You lied to me you know.
I thought I was a big toy,
and everybody showed me I was important.
Now the change in my voice
changes your tone with me
dang blasted society.
I am worth only what I can produce.

You never met me before.
I’ve just suddenly appeared on this Earth.
God just circumcised my childhood,
and low and behold I am
whether I want to be or not.
It’s all happened so fast
no one wants me around.

Where are the bullet holes,
so I know I’m not crazy?
He must have shot me in my sleep.
God you brown paper bag,
I was a happy child.

You offer me no man’s land
my daily feast.
I’m not wanted anywhere.
The whole world’s gone fucking crazy,
but now if I fail in school,
no world will work for me?

Do you even know what’s important?
I just don’t wanna feel alone,
and I need protection from the void,
what just showed up as a gaping hole.
It robs my hours
with the need to fill it.

It’s just raw existence you know,
brand spanking new to me.
Cheap’s pretty good,
just watchin’ reels
on that Generation Z,
doomscrollin’ to all get out
or hangin’ out with nostalgia.

I’m so excited
there’s a big cover-up.
Tag in to find it.
Now it’s growing towards the ceiling,
and I can’t seem to make it stop.

I like to eat ice cream too.
Some things never change.
No calls for alarm.
I’m big and 14,
“A Thousand Miles.”

Monkey’s Paw

On By Donny Lee DukeIn PoetryLeave a comment
photos by the author, In a Child’s Eyes

Dedicated to Dylan, who turns three on July 5th

The emotional cost of suffering,
that’s just the same age as my three-year-old son.
Where do we light these lamps?
You can’t get at this with your green card.
Understanding dawns slowly,
or it doesn’t dawn at all.

Blow it out of proportion,
everything you see in a day.
We are present moment bound.
The rocks and the rivers and the trees and the forest,
they spend time with you there.
You can’t seem to sort it out.
The past is a distant mirror,
the future a scary glow,
and the eternal now escapes your grasp.

Did that just happen,
my childhood all in tatters?
I’ve learned to wear the good moments
my social persona.
Oh you bleeding heart liberal,
shut up.
I make even the liberals mad.

The child is what’s wrong with humanity,
your child you wear on your sleeve.
It’s all in a day’s work,
make that child behave and wear diapers.
Keep them out of our hair.
Oh fuck it’s duty time,
and even if we pay close attention,
we rob them of their feelings.

Don’t feel that feel this.
I want you to.
It’s a holocaust of toddler feelings
keeping them clean and pampered.
The Earth Mother approves
no, no, that’s free,
your self-exploratory muscle in the mud
pullin’ your own flowers,
you naked little thing.

It’s not all about socialization
or managin’ their time.
Do you want their attention?
I was gonna put a bridge on,
a warm, comfortable love free from the world
all available to you now.
Let’s get you cleaned up and eat.

The origin of sufferin’ in the breakdown of the bicameral mind, /
GooGoo and Gaga speak out.
It’s psychedelic in here you know.
We’re all over the place,
and those body feelin’s are meshed with the world,
and even the refrigerator has eyes.
Watch me bump my head and punish what I hit.
I fell down and the world made me,
sneaky fellow.

Alright fine, spank them,
and masters of the universe
has just defeated their life.
You don’t know the cost of touch here.
You’re not trippin’.
Fine, fine, we’ll put them in Montessori.
I don’t think you know the cost of raising a child.
Am I escapin’ reality?

Square one we need a new society.
It can’t be based on money it has to be based on children,
and the thought is God.
We are raising God.
Now put God’s hands upon the Earth.
Low and behold we have a new Earth.

In loving memory of Mugu, who would be 27 today.

Spiritual Dimensions

On By Donny Lee DukeIn PoetryLeave a comment
The Place of Poem Writing
My dog the bounding surf,
Luna lovely tail in tow,
she died you know.
Now I crave God,
who’s invisible to all get out,
who’s behind everything but not here,
who I can sense, smell and touch
but not put my finger on.

Let me explain this rhapsody.
The mountains bear Earth you see.
From a long ways off
wonder at their tops sublime,
wonder at their feet.
Now that’s God standing there
the everything you see,
touchable, feelable, palatable, real,
but you can’t get to ‘im, can yah?

He’s a mystery to you.
He can’t climb your dog
and fill the presence in the room,
be her bounding joy
your heart eats and eats
because she’s there
the love of her master.

It’s just a little spot on the world
that gives the world pedestals.
It’s so far from God,
so impossibly short.
What do I cave-in to?
What do I find,
the presence of God in love
when he is all around me
that bounding joy,
the leaves in the grass,
the wind in the trees,
the current in the river
and the river walk in me?

Oh God you are not jealous or lone.
You do not want to eat me a pumpkin pie.
You are not selfish and mean.
You are the earth and sky,
a mountain spirituality I can live
in the switch from spot to all.

The absence of my dog assails me now
and all the spots I’ve lost,
Lisa bless her heart.
Come God come,
step into my reality
only you.
God I await your commend,
your behest,
and let’s rumble
the earth and sky without you
until resistance is gone,
until no longer I remains but you.
That’s all I ask of thee.
The River I Saw

The Jerusalem Crossing

On By Donny Lee DukeIn PoetryLeave a comment
video by Douglas, made a month ago. I have not watched it and cannot

Oh Delaware,
I am bandaged with poetry.
I do not set sail.
I cross this with my feet,
crouch
and look for the corpse of my dog,
hallowed in heaven without me.

Whose banner do I raise?
Terrible without her,
but that is not all I’ve lost.
I’ve lost the hope of man.
Oh outcast come find me.

No amount of woods will separate me from you
seeking law.
I have written poetry
in troubled times,
and the oppressor is on the snake,

but that’s not all I’m worth.
My social stigma rides me now,
bigger than all humanity.
The pathology of man when he is healed
is not a glorious sacrament.
It blithes.

What is heaven’s hope?
I make it to the other side.
I cross this bridge in time.
Do you hear the doubt in my voice?
Doubt rides the keel,
and I’ve drawn a ship for my feet
made of pebbles.

Sinking sands my rivers lie.
I cry in my bedclothes.
Dreams fling me to challenge and test,
and I see my loved ones pass before my eyes.
So where do I take my day?

I stand up goddammit and make this crossing,
failure ever looking at me.
Etched deep in the lines of reality
I have lifted up my voice.
It’s not my name I want you to know.
I want you to grab reality by the balls and love man,
every last one of us,

and for this I cross your heart
in the inner spaces of our kind.
Bury me please
the fountain of your love.

Passion of the Rainbow

On By Donny Lee DukeIn ego activism, PoetryLeave a comment
Selfie a few days before my 65th birthday, which is today
What is a hands-on prayer?
Full of spiritual philosophy,
do this, don’t do that,
I won’t bring you to lunch.
I won’t even put my arse on the toilet.

Oh you offended seekers read on.
Can I hold God in my hands
the stadium of this moment,
in the guttural process be?
I don’t know where we begin.

I can’t find my soul
the laughable, lovable life I’m having.
All love is taken from me by death
and weary,
and I can’t find joy on the sun.
I can’t even find life.

I have split my mind
with silence ineffable,
sat for a moment in that nameless place
beyond Earth’s ego.

I have even climbed the heavens
in a seconds’ ride
to the space beyond stars
and sat in my true self.

I am not here to complain of God and soul.
You would not believe me anyway.
I want to meet God with life can I?
Not in a station up there,
but down here in living flesh
that does not appear an illusion.

I want to mate time with life,
and it doesn’t hurt or get boring.
Fill me with woods now I’m clean.
I’m on your dresser drawer
vying for true spirituality,
not plaudits,
not wise sayings,
not moral admonishments.

I wanna set myself on fire with the living God
and be down to earth and warm,
not disdaining life,
not rejecting it.
I want heaven on earth.
Do you?

My voice recording
realized ages ago
a tale had to be told.
Pardon me.

How many have drowned and seen God?
It’s not in your litmus paper,
fireballs from heaven.
I’m just this silly nigger among you.
I’m not allowed to cook at your ashram
or say grace
at a potluck dinner.

What do I do with community?
Everybody’s competin’ for the same pair of eyes.
It’s not pronounced yet,
but these are God’s love eyes.
How many hypocrites wear ‘em?
I just wanted the field to say.

I can’t get over myself.
I feel the claustrophobia of Don.
I feel the pain of the world.
You market too.
I know it.

I’m stuck in this little person
having bigger thoughts than I am.
I have seen beyond the veil,
but I walk the creek and cry for my dog,
where she put her paws.

I crawl through the fucking hours just like you,
listening for a laugh.
I’m not a kingpin.
The joke’s on me.
I hug the hours
what is this shit worth?
But I want comfort from them you know.

I caught God in a torrent
of this space is mine.
I plant my feet and sigh God,
wonderful to have this world guarding moment.

This just eats my lunch,
the walls of the present moment
that won’t let me see the eternal now.
I’m stuck in flesh.
I cannot climb out of this shell.
I cannot get beyond myself.

You laugh at me and point fingers,
or feel the compassion the sage feels
seeing truant man,
but I hold commerce with the universe,
and I am crowded with deity on the tip of my pen.

They holler at me in the world
and grab my hand,
and I know the stench of devils
and feel their blind assaults.

I hold my head up high in the pit of night
and do sadhana.
I call God down into my house
and know the wretched I have been,
and it’s with bowed head and extended prayer
I cry to the heavens God.
Come bake with me will you
God on earth.

Such limited character changes development.
I’m not a rosy fire-kingdom.
My sadhana is my pedestal
I balance the present moment on
to keep in those thin parameters
the divine name
only mystery speaks,
a firm and fast bewilderment
at the thoughts of God
taking shape
in the world in front of me.

All else assails there.
All else comes from there,
or I am robbed there
by my own insufficiencies.
Why do I play in the yard?
I ask zero that question
and grab myself by the balls and move on.

I’m in line with the Earth,
and I don’t throw the Earth away to meet God.
The Earth is myself,
and we are all climbing out of the Void.

I hold identity with the Earth,
come rain or shine,
and that’s how we form Earth,
together,
encompassing the world to find God,
reaching out of the universe to bring God here,
hands-on God,
the eyes that we look out of
and the hands that we use.

Needs spiritual experience
wants the dragon response back to his house.
Who’s pic do you follow?
Hands on fate now.
It’s time to get past
lawsuits.

You just comb what was expected of you.
I challenge the world
and then pick my nose.
My overdo’s, my out of dates.
[vision with the line of Sri Aurobindo seated looking at me in one of the last photos of him taken]
photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1950, courtesy of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
He’s got a principle pair.
He’s bigger than skylight.
He’s my guru,
has a leading voice in my poetry,
is the principle behind my music,
is who I look to for divine change.

He’s open-minded and warm,
and I been with ‘im a long time.
I do inner contact sadhana,
right before your eyes.

I don’t sit and guess upon the world.
I get my hand held,
but I’m a rebellious student.
I question and accuse,
lift mine eyes to the heavens
and tell the Gods off.

I give him a hard time.
I hold him to his task,
am livid and rude sometimes,
but I love him dearly
and follow him on nails.

You don’t know what’s been asked of me,
the role I have to carry.
There is no forgiveness among men,
nor mercy
for being left out in the cold.

I am principle love.
Not a person has it really.
I put you to the test.
You only care the pool of men.
The love of God you distain,
yet I go on,
wearing the vermillion caste mark,
the scarlet letter.

You would be jealous if you knew the score.
You certainly would never believe it.
What I lose from men I get with God,
companionship, love, and hope,
to a degree you don’t know possible.

Now I’m in your neck of the woods,
a long time ago repented of my sins.
Big fucking deal—
you’d rub my nose in it anyway.
You’re incapable of being ought than you are.
You have not the oneness inside.

You do not love God you love your morality,
and you are good to the good, bad to the bad,
forever more amen.
You want punishment and castigation.
You don’t know the law of healing.
You can’t stand it.

I have healing ways.
I’m a doctor of behavior and attitude,
of the soul heals.
I will die with my knowledge unused.
You don’t know the value of such things.
You spit on it.

Doctor of the soul,
where the soul leads the way,
is the therapist and changer of man,
that is what I bring among you.
It doesn’t come easy.
You have to have a need
naught else but healing.
It will take years.

You guys do me a favor.
Come through my poems.
It’s all in there,
but most have been taken offline.
When I die open them up and read them,
and then put my name in the list of life.
Include me again in your society.
I did the work you wanted me to do.

You would be pleased I suffered.
Oh, I suffered,
threw myself up against your heart so many times,
cried out to God in pain.
I’m showin’ where we’re stuck in the ways of man.
No one sees it.

There are more of us than I can bear,
hated outcasts,
and I am the heart of humanity
shoulderin’ the world.

This is the place you need to work,
right here,
to change the nature of man.
Right here today
I give you the example of sacrifice.
Fire away,
take away my world from me,
again.
I’m showin’ you what love looks like when it’s in your hands,
and know I love you.

Marriage of soul and Earth,
I thought it was attracted to something beautiful.
It’s the most guttural, physical location there is.
We’d need to make plans.
Where are you going?
My butt’s yours man.
All for one and one for soul.

I could get worse and I could get chicory,
but we do business with the Earth you know,
and we all share this intimacy.
You got God there watchin’—
oh my honey child,
it’s all my plan.

I feel coverage beating on the roof of the world.
I’m not smiling.
This is so crash and burn.
I don’t know how to reconcile this with God,
the holes in the program.
It’s bigger than me,
but God is here my friend,
like this is the Void,
and he can’t get at it in his shoes.

I’m not worried about that.
I want to mate my life with God
in everything I do.
How does this play out in the world?
We come upon a change of consciousness,
not just worship God.

We take God’s coverage and go there,
until we look out the eyes of God.
I have,
and I’m tellin’ yah it’s greater than enlightenment.
Mountains are movin’ me there now,
that way station of enlightenment.

You would laugh and tell jokes—
who does he think he is?
Can I just be plain water?
I’ve reached bare earth.
I’m not haughty in my mind.
I see myself and whistle Dixie,
the idiom dear not the racism.

Nothin’ I do is great or small,
and I can hold my dick in my hand and not play with it,
but that’s not all I’m after.
I want to look at you and not be offended
by I’m such a shit to you.
I don’t want to hurt by it no more,
feel the pain of this earthen outcast.
You are mean you know.

Terrible my time with you
I do not speak right,
and you are so hung up on speech,
get offended at the guttural word.
I’m loud and clear
it takes willingness to change.

Get off your high horse man
and meet us at the river,
where even naked we’re not ashamed of ourselves,
and we do not harm one another,
but where the wild things are,
myself and all these people,
who’ve torn you a new asshole
interpreting God anew.
The river my friend,
will you join me?

A cyclic poem,
I pull myself up on the crap all the time,
and here I am writin’ down wood.
I’m bustin’ your balls.
I should just go swimmin’ with you
in everybody’s freeway.

Can we reach each other at guttural need,
or are we alone inside that’s it?
We play ballgames here.
It’s not divided up in sexes.
It’s not even wrong.

The New Jerusalem is galvanized
on we lift up you and me.
It doesn’t falter it doesn’t shame.
We heal through change of consciousness,
and we love one another.

Are you ready to buy this thing?
This cycle
I un-stigmatize God,
the lover of all of us,
the inside and outside of every situation.
I hated it there
until I realized what it took to change.

I smell soup.
All these cut up ingredients,
they’re in the zero God,
right there to form the ingredients
of the long-awaited paradise on earth.

Fool my ass,
I’m joinin’ reality with heaven right now.
You got them balls?
They’re skyrockets,
my love made real.

Fine, I’ll wait.
You’re gonna be up in my room
either here or in heaven on earth:
ah, ah, a neighborhood
this got foreseen;
this was available for everyone;
are you risking your life?

Blockbuster down
and not one single person to help.
Oh vagina.
Now let’s grab by the bones
and grow taller than mankind.
Okay brotherhood?

You just get offended at plowshares.
I’m followin’ my inspiration right.
This is not sex do the poem.
Okay Goldilocks?
Alright man,
I’m not dangerous help.
Without a muffler
I brighten the thoughts of God.
If you haven’t noticed he’s a character.
Great Scott!
they kicked 'im out of town.

Where We’re Camped

On By Donny Lee DukeIn applied nonduality, ego activism, PoetryLeave a comment
photo by the author

Look at God.
Some of us are too busy to look up.
I wanted to say that God is silent,too invisible for us,
too round about the chain.
I don’t know how to reconcile God
with the need at this moment,
and would if I need community,
a flesh and blood moment?
Do the mountains care?

How do I find God in the hours
the substantiality of a reality in front of me
I can hold, touch, and feel?
Give up my attachments and longings
so I can meet naked God,
where does this happen on earth?
I can’t find him
in the rowboat I’m in.

I hear a voice
explaining to me things.
Visions give me knowledge.
I have the substantiality of this playing card.
It keeps me company more than men.
Sometimes I glimpse God through the rafters.
I capture for him my eyes seeing things.
Doubt has been removed
he is there.
I’m not playin’ silly putty,
but where does this cross the line into flesh?
Where does this reality bear down on me
God is there the world is not,
the face of the world wears God?

Where do I find this?
It’s not make believe.
It’s the reality I seek.
My wife has told me of enlightenment
where God becomes real in the world,
but when I was there all I saw was emptiness
and an illusionary world,
just like the Buddha said.
I was flabbergasted
entering ego again.
I could not deal with the illusion.
God was no reality there.

How do I reconcile this with time?
Have I arrived at God now,
so that enlightenment would bring me God?
Knowledge speaking inside me says yes,
but let’s put enlightenment as a criteria to meet God,
and we’ve put impossibility into our mule,
the rarest thing on earth.
A person who’s been there can say that.
This is beyond the world.
Three times I’ve stepped past the threshold.
I didn’t comfortable.
What’s going on?

Maybe this
put God on my table,
and now I’m waiting on the full picture.
I can’t get past this moment
of being uncomfortable
with all these feelin’s
of being terribled by life,
the pain of this moment,
the vulnerability,
in every face I see.
The human condition assails me.

I am grasping world pain,
and I do not like it there.
So enlightenment
is so far away,
God the distant grandstand.
I don’t care if you believe me or not,
I have a gift:
the world,
and there it is your identity.
It cannot be thrown away,
but are bigger steps God?

Hey world,
my very self,
we’re there.
If you stop hittin’ me maybe I can see it.
This chapter about
anybody home?
Take off your shoes.
Put ‘em in the corner.
Can’t see why you won’t look at me.
Well I’m putting back
it’s not so bad right now.
Conversion clinic,
conversion 13,
you doin’
a lot of things that hurt,
and I am wonderin’ what’s next.
There’s more
wallop me upside the head?

There’s a car dealer.
To thee I was a flyin’.
Now that I came back from,
I strongly suspect you’re arms God.
Who knows complainin’,
my goodness,
might rob me of a strong sword.
Now how do I greet the day
pain in my tennis shoes?
Greet the world with a poem.
Can you believe that God?

Have to do
my flip-flops.
I’m gonna take ‘em off.
So much easier than tied shoes
goin’ indoors to the common room.
Do you understand that ditty?
Buddy,
when you had to take your shoes off in community,
I’m one step ahead of you.
Mount Everest just came by.

I saw the guy did you?
We’ve been to the marketplace.
We’ve been to the moon.
Where will we go next?
In your living room
my sweet, wonderful world,
in your driving car.

Sophisticated,
you have to let it go.
He doesn’t believe in it.
Voices wrote this poem and voices end it,
good voice,
so honey
with this guy’s sweat and blood.
It’s a poetry
to help light the fire
of inner revolution.
Inner witness,
I remember you.
Hear that reader?

Juice on the table
from hot water,
we’re gonna sell it
to even the children.
Chris says I earned it everything,
everything
buddy there
reading my poetry.
He gives it all away,
amazing
volumes of poetry.
Gonna look back on
and see the price he paid
For All Mankind.
In this episode
he just walked through the spacecraft.
What sees you?
Tell me your story.