If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
How structure remains harmonious the Bible: and that was awesome! We have a blowup on aisle 9. The harmonious register just crashed. You never know you might get a receipt for just an hour, and that works because it doesn’t.
I don’t have any voice today. I’ve seen high and low, like everyone. I don’t dance on thin ice. I can actually see myself as other people, all day long, all the while nursin’ my own self.
I’m balanced inside, but I will tell you if you hurt me. I love humanity but know humanity’s not a nice person in its gears. I don’t fool myself that I’m loved.
I can sure react in an unguarded moment, and I hold you inside if you’ve hurt me, wonderin’ over that wound wanting justice to prevail, the justice of the other person: you count me as yourself and make amends somehow— in school; we haven’t gotten down to these files yet in our everyday life. We think punishment works.
We’re not even close to lovin’ one another. We are animals in a bullpen. We don’t know where we are. The sky’s the limit. It’s all up from here we think we’re high and mighty.
I can’t get over this lie we tell ourselves. It ruins our day. We can’t get out of bed and open up the mornin’ with us. There’s us and the rest of the world, and we’ve regulated nature to our tires. We don’t know the means of harmony. We think a boardwalk is something to eat. Our comfortableness in nature determines our appreciation of it. We don’t like it raw and wild in our ability to keep our hands off it where we elect officials or they are forced upon us. One day they’ll get it for their bulldozers and next of kin. The minerals on it rule out its welfare just wait and see its resources rule.
How do you change man? It depends on which stomach you use. You can’t find all of them. A communist rogue state, you can’t policy them forth, and a kingdom, well, their king rules. Let’s take democracy by the hand. No one can do that yet.
Can I explain we are not in the betterment of man? Primitive emotions rule the day, and they all center on greed. We are an economy of making money before we are a democracy. Well let’s roll up our sleeves and get at it, shall we?
Well the first thing you know ole Jed’s a millionaire. [sing line to TV song] Is that every politician that rules us? Do they have to be? Do you want them to be? Do rich people know best, and if they aren’t in office, do they determine who is? Does that make a representative democracy make life better for you if you have to grovel for a paycheck to make ends meet?
How many are in those shoes? Here, here, I’m here, and so are you, and know I’m speaking to the majority of mankind. Well how do we take back the city? Good God we’ve been animal all along the haves have ruled over the have nots. If you accumulate wealth, you determine society. Occupy did no good.
You can’t protest this out of the picture, but if you want your country back, change the way protests are made. You want to limit campaign funds to where the government gives them, no outside agencies. Not one dime comes from an outside source. The office will determine the price. We will we will rock you. [sing line to popular rock song] Among the candidates they’re distributed equally, determined by office. Obviously the president gets more. They get a certain amount of air and TV, newspaper and bulletin board. Nobody uses their own money. If they’re caught they’re out, not put in jail.
You disagree with this? It doesn’t have to be buffaloes. People need to be informed not inundated. We don’t have to make an election and entertainment’s scene or the gist our our lives. Do you still object? Can you see yourself in the mirror? Are you about real, positive change, or do you want a corrupt system that makes it for your greed?
Where are you at? You’re not on our side, we the people. Is this vacation spots? Know to be in office is to sacrifice. You have modest means. Scaled-Down, the living standards of those in power. They’re public servants. I’m talking modest, not meager or measly, befitting their role.
How do you vote for them? We look at requirements and qualifications, make an honest list, and narrow down the candidates to that. What’s you’re lookin’ for is a leader that is above the hatred of the crowd, that has compassion and sympathy and genuine goodwill. You need a man above the rest or a woman head and shoulders above the crowd, someone who can represent anybody. The cast is open to the humble and the low, economically speaking, and we’d wanna keep the rich out of office. Now that’ll change the world. Stock markets and political parties, they’d go the way of the dinosaur, don’t you see?
That’s how we begin, get at those campaign funds. It makes common sense. It will bring good government in time. It’s a place to begin. Dangerous, aren’t I? I’m not tryin’ to be. This is where we need to be to make it work, this human evolution we don’t even know is happenin’ and really don’t care, and that’s my fight: can you oh all ye people care?
The strength is on the distant, but would that you could hear me now. This is a way to be free. Do you want to be free? You’ve been lied to all along you know by politicians and their aggravators. They’re not in it for you, all ye good people of the United States. A few special interest groups control everybody, make their economic needs, power structures, and the rich take the cake.
What do we do? Don’t believe the liars for one. They don’t want Greenland. They’re just gettin’ ready to own the world. Do you believe that? How humble are you? Everybody’s pride believes the dictator, their own want the world. You are so very important you gobble up the world, right Disney, Yahoo, Microsoft, Donald Google? Meta is another name for greed, and Amazon delivers greed to your door, makes the whole world pay the price.
Executives, executives, executives, in that higher dollar amount, do they rule the world? Just ask inflation do they need that higher amount to make it all for themselves? Walmart, Walgreens, who’s getting richer? You know it. Okay vote for him again, the status quo, and see if you can afford the cost of living it grows and grows.
When’s it gonna end the tyranny of the few? Don’t we want a fair system, the right people in charge? I’m sorry commies and religious oligarchies and them damn kingdoms, only democracy can adapt to coming pressures. Democracy was made for man, in these shadow times, in these shallow times. You think man was made for the system of rules?
You don’t know the price of democracy. We grab it by the horns, make it work for what it really is. It’s a system for man. It’s a system for real. Now you take the campaign funds and make them work for the people, bring democracy down to science, who needs to be in office and who don’t. Is that so hard to believe? Is that so wrong? I’m a red-blooded American tellin’ you this, an ex-Green Beret, and I love you. Is that okay?
I want change, real change. I want the system to stop hurtin’ people. I want a representative democracy that works. I’m not tryin’ to tear down the system, and that’s where I’m scary, you know? Can you hear my campaign funds? See what I mean?
This is all about hitting the form. I’m a grocery boy at a supermarket, and I have worlds behind me. I could go to vagabond rivers yes, but I don’t think you want to see me there. I don’t want to stand here and sing. I’m a checkout boy at a grocery list, and I have to eat to survive. You don’t have poet shelves. You throw out the poet’s long underwear. You don’t have room for poets.
There are no guardians in history today. This is all about makin’ money, your personal toolkit. I will not be rescued by who gives a damn, but I just might take off with my dog and find greener pastures, from point A to point B. No more vagabonding for me.
I’ve lifted the race up, and you don’t knows it yet. Fuck me I’m tired, and there is no end in sight to grovel for a paycheck, to workin’ my ass off for the Man. Son of a bitch, I want a better world don’t you? Is it a paycheck?
The vital part of the vital, is it there? Look in Matthew’s sermon, so you can ornament it, love your brother as yourself, especially in these days. Works, huh?
That’s my beautiful latest poem. With the internet conked out, open the woman that doesn’t have it yesterday, and let’s have a new field today. Is that so hard to believe?
The Dalai Lama in Auroville, 1993, putting in the foundation stone for the construction of the Tibetan Pavilion there. In a speech afterwards, he said, “You can be a believer or an unbeliever…, but there is no choice between being a compassionate or non-compassionate person.” Photo courtesy of The Auroville Adventure
Did you know an Aurovillian won’t read this, no matter what I do? These are tough shares. Talk about hang in the water all in yoga. My cousin slapped my mother. It’s hard to believe such anxiety. Let me muscle you at, heart poundin’ in my ears.
Let me say that again. Oh boy, you wouldn’t believe it. These are in heartbeats that you don’t know to measure the light of the sun. I wish I could come down to a heart in my living room the Shambhala success magic. I cannot spray this in numbers. The heart central has to be the case. It’s dog eat dog otherwise.
Where do I put this compartment? In everything I do and breathe. It can’t be left out. You regard everyone as potential shares. You can’t stop evil among you with the ball and chain. You can’t just keep it from happening with everybody’s suspicions.
You have to rise to the occasion and also consider the bad man. What does he need to do to change? Can he do that among you? Yeah, people just want him gone.
There’s somethin’ I can’t get across over here. If you wanna create Shambhala, you have to envision his place among you healed and changed. Shambhala is the perfection of humanity where Auroville is. You have to rise above yourselves and do that.
You will not even listen to the change. You have closed your hearts and ears to a peaceful man among you who is poeting this change. How can it leave out the community, the bedrock of the change?
You know it would speak to it drum rose people. It would have the imprint of the divine sounding poetry’s worth. Terrible is it?
I come from another land. I do not meet the world it’s a thing out there and I’m a thing in here. / Those lines have been drawn, and they are wiggly now. I meet the world inside myself. In the substance of my vision something is wrong. The world is not a normal train ride, and my thoughts don’t take me there. I see the substance of vision it’s all acres of That, the substance of the show. You wanna know the gist of it? It comes to oneness.
Now bake my bread I’m normal, nothing special to look at, just another person to be around. Now test my feet I’m normal. I get angry laugh and cry. I can give you an argument. My difference is my hands on you. I’m lookin’ at the One starin’ back at me.
This is so real to my eyes my hands collaborate this. I am in your field of vision, and my that hurts, if I even make you feel bad. I don’t wanna do that, and this is strong stuff to prevent me.
Are you an alien on that? Have you reached the divine in vision? Do you know how to heal the sick, and they are not sick in body they are sick in hands, and their actions hurt the world, rob the community? How many times we said we needed that, heal the community?
This is a frog suit. I’m lifted out of the water until I cry. I mean I have to come up and record lines. Do you get the picture back and forth? I’m hearin’ these lines in inner vision I’ve developed over a lifetime. You hear the sauce now all Sri Aurobindo’d, the Mother’s guidance please.
Here’s the thing. It changes consciousness. The world grabs you in this. You see signs everywhere. You’re walkin’ hand in hand with the divine, but that’s not the beauty of it. It’s soundin’ bodies way out in front of you the substance of their mystery crayola figures of That, and it dawns on you it’s peeling you through everything, and will you get a load of that? The invisible ties connects us. Wow, I’ve just shored everything.
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?
Harm's End 