A poem by Donny Lee Duke

Yes of course you can go beyond man.
I felt the house alone.
I stood there on a bridge of time,
not expecting outcomes.
I just saw reality.
It was frozen bare,
and it challenged me to think
surpassing thought.
I was alone in the room,
and even Nitish was there
and my beloved dogs.
I heaved,
approaching the Silence.
It was an illusive prey.
Infinity stole my mind.
It grabbed me by the Silence.

I was a good day.
I cooked lunch,
did my duties
and took care of the people around me.
They were fighting their own battles
and needed my help.
I stood there and be a friend.
I listened to myself
giving them what they need.
I was withdrawing from time.
I stared at the gates of forever.
It orange glowed.

I gathered myself.
I didn’t have any pockets.
Things were to me on the shelf.
I craved no vital indulgence.
I was tired of the play.
Relaxing it was just to stop my thoughts.
It stood upon a verge of time
unaccompanied by time.
I was in that place where God was
the spectator in the room.
Sri Aurobindo held my hand.
The Mother surrounded me.

I loved myself,
faults and all,
but I was in transit from the center of the room.
I was beginning to smile.
I was beginning to hold water,
reacting less to things around me,
but still a reaction bore.
It was a principled state
that divined the reality of others to themselves.
I felt them Self with me.
I felt them safe with me
reacting less and less.
The world was a communiqué and a sound.

Still I was hated
in Auroville
and by the yoga.
No one looked at me
with kind eyes.
I understood and did not hate in return.
I continued to send them postcards:
help me
undo being this outcast among you.
It fell on deaf ears.
I was pariah.
Hello?

Great big bold thoughts,
when they looked at me,
gave them pause to think
for one second.
That’s it.
No one would talk to me,
except to brush me off.
I realized the condition of man.
We are animals in nearness to each other,
even when we have our high ideals
and so many rhymes to sing.
When you’re an outcast you see that.

We are stuck in our ways,
and change is a four-letter word
when you hit that most basic stuff,
someone’s morality,
their motherland,
their lens with which they view the world.
Can you tell me what changes minds,
open hearts
to what they are closed to?
What a position I’m in to learn that.

Our race is doomed,
and the divine has chosen the wrong race to foster.
Change is incremental and slow,
if it happens at all.
But then I look in my own eyes
and see what’s happening with me.
Oh my God we have a chance.
Oh my God we have a chance.
How do you fill in light?
How do you bring change into the room?
You bring change into the room.
It won’t come any other way.
Okay children?