A poem by Donny Lee Duke

Wear Time

What texture is your vision?
Is it otherworldly?
Is it right there on the spot with everything?
Does it see layers?
Can it figure out God?
Do you see the reality behind reality,
see that in everything in reality?
If you only see yourself
standin’ on nothin’ but atomic molecules,
do you see anything else?
There is no beyond the universe,
nothing bigger than any conglomerate you believe in?
Do you see a beginning and an end
to the concept of forever?
Do you see the forces behind the universe
making it all happen?
Do you see yourself in that
a representative player in a chess game
with the ‘figure-it-all-out’?
Do you see meaninglessness as only existence?
Do you see the meaning of the stars?
Can you see any bigger than your little figure on earth
a humpback in immensity?
Can you see yourself in the microscope of time?
Can you see what you’re here for?
Can you see what you have to do?
Can you see the meaning of this poem?
Can you it see it plain and clear?
Can you see I’ve shown yourself beyond time?
Can you see that’s your spot in evolution,
the journey beyond anything stars made,
the journey beyond the universal envelope we’re in?
Can you see that figure here
where you’re at,
a body on earth?
You see a lot, don’t you?

Wear Light

There is an honesty here I can’t seem to capture.
There’s guttural, bold-faced reality
we don’t know how to adapt
to our meaning lives,
to our ordered square one.
We’re faced with it everyday.
We negotiate.
We stand on our head.
We dance and sing.
We don’t know what to do about it,
make it so it works
where our lives face the world.
We just stand there and gaze at it,
not knowing what to do with it.
It’s just a great big mother fucker,
too much little in our lives,
a mountain highway
that falls from grace.
It’s a little bump in the road
that threatens existence.
Now I talk to you
about what we’re doin’ here.
Can we redeem chaos?
Can we take the barrel of the Void
and fill it with God’s wine?
Can we take God’s night
and make it show the world?
Can we be what we are in knowledge
to where we are beneath ourselves?
Can we be real man?
A little piece of God
has fallen into the light.
Will it ever see again
it is God?
I heard you on the stairway hum an old familiar tune [heard sung by Bob Ayala, "Silent Witness"]
with the yoga of the world where God has been,
and we’re reachin’ there, you know?
And I’m with yah buddy.

Abdicate in Light

I seem to see myself
apart from everything,
a whole world unto myself.
I’m inside myself
watching you out there
oh world events in time.
It’s special in here.
It’s got grand in it.
It’s incredibly vast
in the fingers of my see.
I can’t make of it
the right thing to you,
the all, the everything.
Can we call that for later show?
I’m a principle list
in the summation of my see,
and I grapple with you the same.
Equal integers
on this strange planet,
we broker a see.
Incredible, isn’t it?
Is that the only way to see stars?
Can we get out of this?
I’m holdin’ it tight
in everything I do.
Can you believe me?
Oh my God I believe you.
I really, really, do.
Hear me?
We broker a universe
in the substance of ourselves.
We are so down there, you know?

We broker a universe you know.
Get my wings,
and I’m free space,
and I give all that to you.
What’s wrong with this see?
I’m not there yet,
but I’m standin’ right beside you.
Okay I’m blind.
I think you said that.
That’s time’s worth.