I am down on Main Street just by bein’ there. I’m everybody’s special mission. Ah, I’m studying the ways of the world, the field of mankind. I have the Earth in view. I see what I’m sayin’. Do you see it?
My poetry put you in barns. No, it’s not clipped prose. It’s symbol wrought. I speak from vision’s lair. You see the symbol on it and the all-managing meaning. What does a barn mean? You got animals in there, and it’s where you were raised if you can’t polite society, or if you don’t know what it means to be human. Am I calling you names?
Well let’s get there, to where I wanna take you, and it’s not the hatred bunch. I sit in your smile and sing. It’s got symbol on it. I sit in your animal and sing. We are all rough wars. We’ve got some things to learn about each other. Can you see the writing on the wall? We would celebrate that Hebrew saying. It shows us so much.
We are not kind to each other. World Kindness Day has an explosion test. This guy went off on me, and my kid just stepped on a red carpet. He was livid with hatred. I didn’t understand it. I thought I’d done something wrong. You know how kids are, they play. He stepped on a standing iron that meant nothing.
It didn’t make any harm. He was dancin’ into the ashram on his feet. No he wasn’t making swirls. He just got in there in kid shoes. A little pole he stepped on its base. You know the kind with tape between them to guide people in? I’m describin’ the action so you can see the picture: nothing happened.
The thing didn’t get injured, and it didn’t make any noise. The man jumped up, sittin’ there right past the gate, and started tellin’ somebody they were out of line. There was no line of people there. He was just talking to my kid, ignoring me, purposefully. Now who is he talking to I thought at first. The man showed me what my kid had done, like he’d entered Auschwitz a Nazi protector, like my kid had really done something wrong.
He demonstrated the action, stepped on the thing. I couldn’t believe it. I was surprised. Without saying anything, wanting to get to that Samadhi so me and my kid could learn the school of the Samadhi that day, its lesson, I half-turned and gestured a mock surprise, then bellowed my arms and changed my face a mine of that boy being guilty of grave concerns, but I was laughin’ about it in my eyes and face it was so trivial in nature the boy’s infraction. It was such a good performance.
The man did not appreciate the performance. He got mad as hell. I think I said first “He’s a child.” He made the Shh! gesture to his lips like he was shooting me. It hurt. That really isn’t the quiet area. The way he thrust his face forward and danced on his feet, I saw the problem, racial hatred. They don’t like foreigners in that ashram, though they’ll pretend to if they like your name, and my kid’s Tamil. That Indian was not. Wow, the can of worms we can open here. The Sri Aurobindo Ashram hates Tamils. No, but they look down their nose at them.
I tried to give him my name but he refused it, trying to be kind and not answer the reaction that was bubblin’ in me. He didn’t give me a chance to do the yoga. That man called another man, a passer by, Tamil if I’m figurin’ right, to enforce this prejudice against Tamils, but all he knew he hated foreigners too. You get that in India a lot.
There was a dance, as the rude individual safeguarding Nazi ways showed the other what the boy had done by doin’ it himself. If it was really wrong then why’d he keep doin’ it? Well the Tamil man hated me too. Why you’d ask, because the boy had done something wrong? I asked both if they were concentrating on the yoga. Those fingers to their lips stabbed me in my heart. I called out their hatred. I felt as though if I said another word they’d call the police. I just had to say it: the Mother is watching you know, and there I joined my boy on the steps. They gave off a noise with their postures and facial expressions that showed I had really messed up.
I walked away. Nithish was almost in tears. I could see the pain in his eyes. He was hurt. He wanted to go immediately, leave the ashram. No, we do our Samdhi today, and I glowed with him as our foreheads came to that special place, where we meet our masters and put their energy in our papers.
On the way out I stopped, right there in the gate, turned and faced the man and said good morning. I wanted him to see me. I had wanted to take his picture, but convinced myself no, cameras aren’t allowed. So I stood there, my camera’s eyes. He looked at me and put his hand on his heart, like he was the most gentil human being, and said good morning too.
I wondered over the proximities of human behavior. What mules we are. I could’ve done better, but how about you, do you see the writing on this poem? This is typical ashram behavior with guests. What can we do about it? We can write poems and show the world.
Deep in reality’s ways I will go to him. What share should I hold? What share should got on yourself? I went the length of the poem. They’re not gonna see it no way, the audience prime. Three people got sick while Israel sits and waits to fight again. That’s everyone in Israel, and each Palestinian man, woman, and child, and the whole wide world. There is no healin’ from this disease, unless we see what’s comin’: remove the Palestinian from the anchors of life. Here he’ll hear you. That’s Issac Saul.
Should we just shoot Palestinians? Israel is deliberating. If you like Israel raise your hand. You ever wanna rap its hand? It’s society mean to Palestinians. They can’t even allow themselves to be. They don’t have nowhere to go. Are they as human as Israel? They don’t know how to be. They rob their own clan. They destroy the water. They were not there first, no matter how many times they were there when Israel moved in. They kill each other. They don’t know how to govern themselves. They lie, and they cheat, and they steal, is that the roll call Palestinians? We get to murder them that way? Israel’s sayin’ it.
Let’s really look at the Palestinian question. They’re vermin, aren’t they? They would just take over the land if they could. They’re not there for rounds of applause. It’s day to day life they worry about, gettin’ by. They trudge along dreaming of a free state. They’re not there for happiness. They’re made to press the Earth with the weight of their suffering. They don’t know how to survive. They’re just blights on the land. They have no special rights. They can’t be Palestinians unto themselves. They have to have Israel on them all the time.
Even their children get stuck in prison. The kid threw a rock. Let’s do away with his life. Let’s beat ‘im up some. Oh my the boy got raped, and it wasn’t by a Palestinian. Can we press charges? I don’t have to do a goddamn thing. We own the Palestinians. Why do you look the other way? We have special permission to do this. We got it grafted in humanity we can. We are the special people. All our persecution says that. I’ll turn around and smile some. I don’t know how to behave myself where Palestinians are concerned.
We are the special people, and everybody’s got a hole in their heart, and we chamber the Palestinians there. Can’t you see it? Can’t you get away with it tryin’ to speak about this please? It will make the press. It’s not strong enough for that: we just don’t let Israel do this no more. Is everybody complacent? What’s goin’ on?
Wow, there it is. It’s a brandin’ iron: I’m a Jew leave me alone. How many times we seen this, don’t touch the Jews? You can’t question a thing about them. You can’t even call their name. Does every Jew see that? Not in large measure. I think this surrounds us in where ideas are made: it’s antisemitic to question a Jew.
Okay let’s do it some. Do we call Israel out on its racism? Why can’t the Palestinians live there? Why can’t they have freedom? Why can’t be treated as citizens of Israel? Why are they thrown in the gutter? Why does the Jew come first in the land of Israel?
Are we lookin’ at religious declarations, and that’s why we let them kill Palestinians, take away their rights? Are we livin’ in the Middle Ages? We do really wanna give them that right? Look what it’s done. Well, what else is Israel? A Holocaust-created state. They deserve it, they need that land, because they were almost annihilated in Europe? Let’s give them the land, and all the Arabs become Palestinians losing their homes to that decree. Yes the Jews were there first in the history of the land. Well whaddaya do with the people on it today? Did the UN say that? They got displaced. They became the people persecuted today.
Their rights were taken away. They did everything they could to be free, even bad things. Munich, you son of a bitch, that was awful. Have we hit that far where we let Israel kidnap Palestinians and slaughter their women and children? How many have to die before we see they mean somethin’? And what of this oppression? These are Jews doin’ it, the ones who cry foul if they’re even questioned. I’m breakin’ on that idea again. No, not every Jew does this.
Alright do we let this be? Do we put the screws to Jews to end this injustice? I think there’s another way out. We see it first, admit it’s there, with our global eyes. We talk about it in the hurt of our hearts. We don’t let it go. We see this as a sore spot on the Earth that needs mendin’. We put pressure on Jews to see it too. We educate Israeli children? Anyway we can. That will be resisted. We can’t change this poem. We just have to listen to it and have it heal these wounds. Answer me brother— your Jew is bigger than your humanity?
photo by the author (not an actually rape victim, but you do get the picture)
Because of rape
I asked you to start talking about this.
You would kill me if I do.
Is rape like murder it never leaves?
Do we always hound people for it?
If there is a victim involved yes.
I must face this in society’s ways.
Are you fucking crazy?
We don’t have society here.
This is the explosive shell.
This is the dragon’s lair.
This is where we can’t understand right from wrong.
We don’t even want to.
We are society and it hurts.
In the comfort of our packs
we chop their dicks off.
There is no other way:
get at that guy mean.
Chop his head off
if you could get society to agree.
There’s no blame here.
He’s evil and we do ‘im in.
And who has stopped rape
doing that?
Do repeat offenders offend?
It’s all in a day’s work
if you’ve been violated,
and there’s where we lock horns:
heal a violation by a violation is a violation.
Would if a rapist said that?
Let’s get that motherfucker.
Okay I’ll stop.
I can’t play your hero.
I can only tell you what’s mean,
what destroys us.
I can tell that when the zeitgeist mean.
We tend to do that you know,
reformers.
We need an alternative to law here.
We need a better system to deal with it.
We are hellbent on revenge,
and not even the newspapers would admit that.
They call for blood.
What’s wrong with this?
More rapes
because of it.
I can’t crack open society here and show you its egg,
but is rape at an all-time low?
Oh my we pursue rapists.
It’s a planetary blight this.
It’s always been.
Wherever humans have gathered there is rape.
It hurts.
It pounds us.
It changes our daughters into
the notion of pain that binds them,
our sons into a warrior mean.
Japan had this in its arsenal
that unleashed the war.
Germany made Nazis out of crying men
when they were little boys.
It continues to rape us today
where we find inhuman conflict.
Oh such a pleasurable mean
a little boy graveled.
It’s the werewolf’s lair.
Even love can do this
to a little boy.
You see where I’m callin’ from.
Sometimes I get yah right in the poem.
I don’t know how to do this,
stop human behavior.
I can only tell you we can’t hate it away.
It comes down to do you love that boy,
and this is individually arranged.
I’m tellin’ you my side of the story.
Now what do we do with the werewolf in society
that pleasurably means
just to do us in blood
in whichever hole they do?
Great Scott I like it,
do a 15-year-old
in her scarlet letter.
Oh I’ve taken society by the horns.
You bitch,
I own you.
Oh the cram in,
it’s like I’ve arrived on earth.
Your gasp makes me cum
an earthquake.
I’ve put on models here.
This is not my do or die.
I want you to see how you identify
the purpose behind earth
where earth bleeds.
Can you smoke that cigarette?
Can you change its tune?
A little boy there
has been made to feel momma,
and it’s so comforting to him
to have sliced the Earth.
Maybe momma was a nanny,
a sister or an aunt,
but he’s probin’ you know
his Excalibur.
It was laden to him wrong
by women’s hands,
and we’d throw in a beard or two
of a farming man.
I don’t know the abuse.
I just know it’s there.
He’s been made to feel violated
in his thang,
his wherewithal,
his stewardship of being.
I’m not just callin’ sex parts.
We might not even see them here
in every case.
It’s a lowdown.
It blinds you.
It takes so long to move the Spirit there
even after Spirit has found you.
It takes so long to rectify this.
What do you do with this?
You don’t rape it.
You move it out of rape territory.
You deal with it like you do disease.
A cure is on the table.
A rape is on the table.
I’m givin’ yah high glimpses of it.
It got me too
when I was a boy,
a butthole of seven years.
I thought there was a sword in me,
and I thought I was gonna die.
You don’t know the pleasure of rape
when the tables have been turned.
It sleazes you.
It takes you through the field of yourself
a probin’ wound.
It can make a poet outta yah
if you’re strong enough,
or an artist,
if they haven’t gotten to yah,
those hellbent on revenge.
It can open up the world to yah
if you’ve gotten that far
in healing’s eves.
Ever you look at yourself
like the one who needs changed.
You never forgive yourself for it,
let yourself go.
You just wanna say your sorry
to the proper person.
Oh this can open doors
when it’s a healing divine measure,
a process of soul.
Who do I sing this to?
Oh my God world this is for you.
Block this out, will yah?
And you don’t have the ceiling to go that far.
You definitely do—
the spiritual guides of the net.
Do they pull your hair?
They’re a breakfast club.
They paint roses
on tall ships
that sink in port.
Where do you go with them?
Well ask one,
Donny Duke.
I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.
Are you listening to me?
The Gods talk through me.
They don’t hear me,
anybody listening.
It’s a complex Gordian knot this is all just grist for the mill,
and even if I had your attention,
would I be really worthy of your ear?
Would I shine?
Am I the right man for the job?
I put things in pigeonholes,
and I arrive at window time
to put you through a wall.
This is impossible,
explainin’ God
and join the spiritual path with life
in so many words.
I can’t tell you how to do it,
but I can try.
I sound so big on paper.
Hear me scream
when I hit my hand,
fly off the handle
when things don’t go right.
I do pick my nose.
I can’t handle everybody right.
I ride my bike and bark in traffic.
Really working on that now.
I tell you to practice God and I don’t
in Silly Putty,
or when that Tom has got my goat.
I’m a noise maker
when the text should be quiet.
I shoot guns
at my own reflection.
I’d sure like to quit
bein’ me.
Check it out,
no, I’m not
some spiritual master,
but I do go deep, you know?
I want out of this mess,
and I’ve opened my consciousness
to the point I talk to you.
I know realization occurs and I want it.
I’m not tryin’ to escape reality.
I would like to be the perfect motivation
it’s for God’s sake alone I try,
but realization has come to me
in stark moments,
and fuck God get me there.
I’ll sort it out with God later.
Took it home,
the stupid pinball livin’ I do,
and now you hear about it
I’m spiritual everybody.
Okay get away from me.
Well, even I won’t say that.
Needless to say,
I’m enlightenment’s bill
who’s bad on accountants.
A pink rose,
I put that on this little motorboat,
and let’s hope it makes it out of the harbor.
I’m not kiddin’ yah,
I’m not lookin’ for a dealership.
I just want you to hear me
because it’s there
my muse.
I’m out for business,
but don’t look to me
to be the one you adore.
I’m countin’ posters till pay time,
and that’s enlightenment,
and that’s realization.
Land more eyes,
I’ve got so many eyes
you’ve just got to see this,
Locked Press Enterprises.
It’s a rare form of shelf.
Study enlightenment,
whether you’re there or not.
It’s that special sauce, word,
that grounds you right where you’re at
in a better way of livin’.
Will Smith was gonna be an actor.
Oh my goodness,
we’re not tryin’ to broke you into goodness.
Based on love and importance
and only inspired by quotes,
quotes that I hear verbatim
and copy them down as they speak,
you’re listenin’ to the inner voice.
Am I okay now?
I cannot just leave—
thousands of these things to your neck.
Oh come on they missed the term for public defender.
Give superior consciousness,
the mind you bungalow the divine.
It’s jet ski.
You know what I mean by dick.
That gives vocabulary.
I made it through I did
the stupid likes of me.
Okay,
let me go.
It comes out of the box.
Photo by Douglas, celebrating my latest (62nd) birthday with him, Mithun, and Nithish
Evil our times.
It’s all our jail. [vision accompanying first two lines of one of the questions on the Together We Served Service Reflections interview I just re-posted on their site, as if this was an edit for the beginning of the answer, which one I don’t remember]
I said it right on Amazon.
He’d like to name you a place
where we could find ourselves.
It’s growin’ to war.
Delete that.
Don’t stick your fingers into your reflections.
They’re good.
They’re history,
of your own personal.
You just need them read.
Well let’s see how big men are,
how soft
on the board counts.
Life is a divine work until it’s finished.
It’s great in jars.
How much pepper spray?
We get lost here.
It’s not a divine moment
in everybody’s underwear.
And you said it:
we have to hate sex.
No, one just talkin’ while we stab each other with it,
or a hole grabs us and leaves.
You take care of man.
We beat each other with it,
but that’s not my lifelong toy.
I play with myself because of it—
some child grabbed his gun.
Now, if we’re just a folded joy,
we can get along better in the streets.
We can cash in on tomorrow.
We need to get rid of sex—
I think the mature person said this
about who they have become.
Do we get rid of it?
It’s just a football field.
We learn to outgrow it.
We put it down.
We do not condemn it.
It’s a mature decision we make.
We expect no one to follow us but us.
Well I think I’ve sowed my wild oats.
No one’s ever blocked sex from me.
I’ve had partners all my life.
I went from childhood memories
about our lust room
we had fun in
to a teenager doin’ it right.
I was a young adult party sex.
No one stopped me.
I never got punished for it.
I’m clear and easy on sex.
It’s not a hole in the ground.
It laughs in the breeze,
and it really feels good, you know?
We take it off now.
What am I, 30?
You’re not a kid anymore.
You’re at that mature age where life makes sense.
You don’t go screamin’ down the street if you cut your finger.
You’re not a nightclub in the kitchen anymore.
You’re free
from have to be with your buddies.
You’re doin’ sadhana.
It’s become the aim of life
God realization.
This is not boring, religious, clap trap.
You get long lasting ecstasies
in your body at times.
You’re inner life has opened to the Infinite.
You see visions
that represent things
that you need to grow.
The inner voice has taking you by the hand
and introduced you to life
where God leads it.
It’s an offer I gave you a wall but nobody’s comin’.
Your mind can stay silent sometimes,
and you love the world.
It bothers you less and less,
other people’s behavior.
Even your mistakes
are no cause for alarm.
Patience is painting your room,
and kindness drapes your social interaction.
You’re a strong person
that knows how to look at things.
You’re gettin’ trapped by sex now.
It’s spills you.
It does not hold your hand.
It’s a life force squeeze.
You’re tired of its pursuit.
How did we come here?
From all walks of life.
It’s an everybody does,
when they get old enough
to only pursue God.
This changes society.
Nay, this reinvents society.
We are bigger than machines.
We know how to handle ourselves even in love.
We’ve grown oceans bigger
than anything we look at.
The world is ready to evolve.
We can do this.
We can be free from sex,
if we know when the time has come to do so.
No premature ejaculation.
It has to be the right time.
It has to be real.
It has to be what we’re doin’ in life
to find God,
and you will hear it in your soul to give it up now.
You are the soul of society.
They’re uneducated,
anybody who denies this.
They don’t know what’s goin’ on.
They just want to stay kid.
How do we handle this with them?
With patience and honesty.
We don’t force them to comply.
World force does that,
as the soul force it truly is.
We’ve got such a long way to go
to reach our evolutionary path
mountaintop,
millennia,
and I’ve just given you a key ingredient
to get that done.
It’s wonderful you know?
free from sex.
You’re unhampered by life
in its sticky points.
You stand tall, proud, and free,
and you know the other half
and don’t have to mate with it anymore.
You are as much male as you are female
in the essence of yourself,
as you meet the world.
The gender of the body leads you,
but it doesn’t rule.
You’ve achieved balance in time.
This is cool.
You’re Hercules
and Diana.
You are fit do some dangerous big knife
or stay at home
and take care of the kids.
Now can I counsel you further?
Oh I’m around,
even in narrow we meet.
Come to my other business runners,
how the tackle game
plays with children,
or how dogs become human,
or how enlightenment speaks.
Join me will you,
on some other poem
battles down life
to a node.
They got a skinny little net,
the literary art house,
so you won’t find me there.
I’m on blogs and such
in my room
right here in front of humanity.
Let’s see this through:
no sex
when we get old enough to drop it.
Asses the future risk of poetry.
It will just sink.
It won’t even cut corners.
It will just sit there unread.
It’s just a bunch of words in a blender.
I don’t know what he’s talking about.
And now we’re in our teens.
It’s not innocent here.
They do it
despite we want them to stop.
It unbalances them.
Makes them crow.
It changes their minds.
It gives them a safe outlet
for their demands.
Now we’d need to stop pregnancy and disease,
not have them harm one another,
make it slightly difficult to get to
but not prevented or prohibited.
What have I said?
Teen sex.
We’d account for this
by all the kid sex they had,
where they’d learned to take turns
and be nice to one another,
before their genitals became armed.
Now I’m a roll in a hat.
End sexual hangups please.
In all this here we do that,
got it figured,
got it right.
Now you’ll blast me
with everything you can throw at me.
Now hear me out.
I’m in wisdom’s barn,
but I’m not settin’ down rules.
I’m understandin’ the animal we are
and seeing how we get beyond it.
You got it all wrong.
It’s not hide the genitals.
Let them play,
where appropriate does its measure
in the right age group,
where we are not keen on sex;
we just wanna feel down there
and have fun
with ourself or with friends.
We grow out of it you know.
You’ve seen it in this poem.
Has it terrified you?
Has it done anything at all but look at you?
Can we get over it.
Can we just make sex the plaything it was
before don’t do that got ahold of it
and put it down
when we’ve gotten bigger than ourselves?
Now test me please.
See how this works in public.
Under the right conditions
we are healthy human beings.
Some people are still reading this.
Some people have thrown it away.
Are you just afraid it’s a masturbate cushion?
If we stop right now
we’re at the end of the poem.
A risk teenager said.
Is it better to freeze?
We’re gonna try
hoppin’ a poem on Earth’s wheels.
The SF engineered
a better to see me with
well together we served.
Let’s see.
A military airlift,
hands brought me the breeze.
That’s the shot fired.
The bulwark of the law
has to undergo a transformation
in order to fit this into place.
Can you imagine the changes involved?
They’re bigger than sin.
They make us right
in our social relations
where we see attraction laid eyes
and mounted genitals and hands.
It changes us at the core
of our manipulable social relations.
We’re there
stuck at a roadblock,
women screamin’.
men peein’,
and everybody mad at one another.
Can you see that?
It’s right there in front of you
on communication.com,
on the nightly news.
It grabs the literary page
and hits up movie after movie
and theater television.
It’s a regular guest
on sope operas.
It’s everywhere we look
anywhere we got eyes
on the society of us.
it’s too tiring to see,
and we still keep it up.
Can we take it down,
when we get back to our old self
that has other gauges for life than sexual sin?
Pretty much all about Eve
is a sexual trauma notebook.
i don’t think this is smart land,
and here we go again another scandal in the news
this present poet creates.
I could’ve just stayed offline,
not bothered with dense matter,
and do my thing.
Am I stupid?
I’m not dumb.
Transparency
is the easiest way
to finish the world
a miracle on earth
enlighten us.
Martin Luther King Jr. at the Controls by Donny Lee Duke
The three best ways to keep a lovin’ song down:
keep it under wraps;
tear it apart;
or get it morally censored.
What will happen to this song?
Change the world
in person.
Chronos’ fuckin’ with ‘im.
What do we do with inner process?
Figure it out?
It’s discrepancy,
and I’m tired of it.
I can’t see anything straight.
What do I do?
Move off campus.
You mean not listen to You?
Don’t dwell on thought.
Don’t just sit there and think.
Try something different.
Image real to yourself.
Play with your thoughts as reality in front of your face.
You’re lookin’ at the world
you’re lookin’ at your thought.
Try this at home.
Image reality to yourself
where people really get your goat
they know you so well.
Try not to open the door with thought.
Be a blank mind.
Stretch this
to infinity.
Don’t stop tryin’.
Your effort is your sadhana.
This is not success or fail.
This is do.
You savvy sweetheart?
I wil try.
As I was sayin’:
I don’t trust inner process
to tell me what to do
in that moment in life.
Otherwise make it happen
to change the world,
and you know it can.
Why resist?
That little boy,
this goes deep,
the relationship I’m having with him.
It’s complicated in poetry.
Our lives are in sync.
We share thoughts and boundaries.
Our inner lives are in sync.
We temple together.
There’s a line of his muse
in my poetry
when he didn’t see it in my poetry.
I hear this and celebrate
close ties,
eyes that join
in inner vision.
Is this too much for him?
He’s just a kid.
I’m glad you asked.
You’re the engineer.
The little boy spills all in front of you.
You teach him how to handle himself,
play poetry,
what his nature house.
I never gave him the thought.
It just occurred
when the Mother,
the Mother and Sri Aurobindo,
they took that boy by the hand.
He became Their disciple.
Would you believe a bolt of lightning hit him in the chest
standing before Their last darshan couch
Supermental Day last?
That’s how it started.
The opening came then.
I was there to facilitate it,
to open him to God.
I am his sadhana master,
and that’s the basis of our relationship.
There’s no monkeys in the house.
I don’t cancel him down.
She’s had the dog
in her parents' room,
when they abuse
where the line are.
When it’s my turn
to be his parental figure,
I’m very careful with those lines.
I know he’s angry
about getting slapped and beat,
threatened with death.
Ice cream
I buy for him every day
in my care.
We talked about that.
We called it moral-minded.
I thought you understood
you don’t raise a kid with rules.
You can,
if you want a kid bound by rules.
I’m the horse guy look at me.
Put it right in your phone,
desire coming up.
Don’t put a hold on it.
Be free and easy with it.
Don’t stay there.
What’ll I do with it?
Put it in the iTunes Store,
avoid that button.
Just sit with it clear and easy.
Don’t let it push you.
Don’t give in to it.
Don’t even tickle your fancy with it.
We don’t beat it.
We sit it out,
wait it out.
It’s not wrong it’s just there.
It’s a smelling salts for reality.
It’s unique to you,
why would you say that?
Everybody has to deal with this.
We regulate it
with a host of laws and penalties
as if they work.
We do not let it be an excuse
for behavior.
Freewill comes into play
we are told.
We disclose it to each other.
We are ashamed by it.
We have children,
we block this sight from our own view.
We don’t see it
in our hands as we wash them,
in our eyes
as we see them so fabulously naked.
It’s there,
and time will show it to you,
if you look.
We run with this?
We don’t eat kids.
They’re special.
They are in the room
when we see it
in ourselves,
when desire comes up.
Desire comes and goes.
It’s in everybody’s life.
It has to be handled.
It has to be seen,
seen real.
We don’t play with it
around our children,
if we can help it.
That leads to dead ends,
and children get spanked and smacked on
and get molested.
You know this is true.
Don’t let it entertain your monkey.
I’ve given other examples
the right way sex can be with kids
in “The Use of Animal Freedom”.
Hear that one,
where sex and kids meet wrong today.
To Rumble’s house
farther to go.
Tamil Nadu,
a door of a red handle,
punch out man.
Tamil Nadu,
stay away from the red door.
Don’t beat your children,
slap them,
punch them around.
They’re precious to you.
Do you hear them scream?
I think this is written all over your paper.
Children don’t have it easy with you.
They suffer.
You don’t know this.
You can’t see your own hands
Mr. and Mrs. Abuse Children.
I call this up from the deeps.
It was that way with me
when I was little.
Now my kid has made me mad,
done something wrong,
or just bothered me.
Then it all comes up again,
my unhappy kid-dom,
and I operate on program.
I don’t care the position he’s in.
I just start slappin’.
I don’t know this hurts him
in his developmental function.
I have that right.
I’m his parent.
Thank you God.
What’s happening here?
Desire has found its home
in a socially approved response mechanism.
It’s condemned on TV.
The presenters themselves
wack their kids
off camera.
I can compare this to touching a vagina
in a little girl’s life,
but you don’t know this is more harmful,
hitting them in the head.
I’m sorry I’ve made you mad.
You don’t know the power of violence over children’s lives.
You don’t know the power of sex over children’s lives.
Both harm.
One gets out the shotgun.
A sexual cannon no.
Mr. and Mrs. Abuse-Their-Kids,
pay attention please.
Where thoughts occur,
it’s not a bright and shiny place,
is laced with uncertainty.
It’s all on holdin’ the world wrong.
You see this you look.
The Whole looks at us.
The fragment looks back.
We are separate beings in time,
an erroneous vision.
Whatta we say about thought?
It arises.
It comes.
It’s there.
And a tenebrous unknown
has the thinker’s brow.
What gulfs lit the night
when we looked at the world for the first time
in the handicap of thought.
It pressurizes time.
It makes of us mincemeat.
It will not stop even for death,
what narrow bridge that is.
You seen it?
How special thought is
to make sense of the world,
to help us help or slay one another,
to give us more feeding room,
to come up with plans,
to turn around and change the world.
It hammers nails
on the fence of time,
held apart in yummy synchronicity,
modes of thought,
and get some answers—
quite the hero.
Do you get me?
I get yah dog.
Put your blue down it doesn’t stink.
It just sits in the powder.
These are the conditions.
You’re talkin’ about that boy, ain’t yah?
Don’t worry,
I have the edification.
I’m gonna spell it out to you.
We have a different choice.
You’re not gonna bust us up.
You’re not gonna hurt him
or me.
You’re not gonna regulate our relationship.
You’re gonna leave us alone.
Humanity needs this vision.
We play the game.
We don’t commode.
We be convenient.
We are open to you.
Two seers in time
startle vision.
We're not gonna compromise vision.
We’re going to remain loyal and true
to our seership.
That boy,
a man he will become.
Housed under my roof?
And in line with his truth.
You can use another poet
who can bring down Earth
on the stars of Heaven,
let them know our plight
and our road beyond them.
Here we’re playin’
some Krishna tune.
We are a bright and shiny love in the wells of time.
We do not make you stink.
We are Heaven and Earth together,
and we are seers of the Sun of Truth.
Throw all that over here,
everything we need to survive,
a protected house
and a place for our dogs.
We need your help.
Without your protection
we get violated
Auroville Media Ashram.
You know we’re your entity,
and we see the master plan as one future Auroville.
It’s up to you.
It’s your movie.
We are the inner you were built on,
5th army,
and we’re here to see the Sun.
There’s no stopping us,
unless you throw away reason
and pin us to the ground.
We’re your seers Auroville,
he and I,
the little boy and me.
Stick with the plan:
Auroville becomes divinized,
and the Yoga works.
Great the visions lay, huh?
Hey, you give thirsty a drink,
and you feed us with your vision.
Okay poets,
do your thing.
It will be misunderstood.
Can a kid change parents if they’re not happy?
What would address the soul need?
Would the parents have a right to say no
if his soul wanted him to leave,
if that were God’s will,
if that’s what the Mother wanted?
I ask you that.
How do you tell that?
First we establish that art,
and art alone,
will show that child’s soul
and the divine will operating in his life,
that art inspired by inner voice and vision.
Can I show it to you?
My grandson wants to live with me.
My little student wants to be near his master.
A seer-poet in training
wants to learn the inner craft.
This is soul arranged,
and I’ll prove it
with poetry written from the inner voice,
the boy’s poetry,
set in a video the boy filmed
just being a kid.
You will see inner process
amazingly match the outside world.
The two are in sync.
I have other prizes to show you,
but this one is the crown achievement today:
“Menu of the Gods”.
Now go
and see this video.
[hover over the last three lines and click]
a man wearing a red suit and sunglasses standing in a grassy area, photo by Simeon Asenov, Lightning, photo by Mélody P, both on Unsplash, image Gimped by Donny.
Indian spirituality,
can you turn on the lights?
Can you be exhausted?
You are there for the world.
You’re everything,
not just a lonely mountain.
You encompass the world.
It gets bigger in you.
It tells us how to deal with consciousness,
and very few Indians know this.
It’s not their religion I’m talking about.
It’s not the worship of some deity in a temple.
It’s bigger than Hinduism.
It’s much bigger than nationalism.
Sri Aurobindo yoked this to the world,
unfortunately.
An occupied country had him in bounds.
He shed this yoke
Supermind
and love his nation.
Can we falter?
In the spirit of nationalism we can.
Bombs away.
Okay now we have to deal with humanity.
It’s tangible it’s real.
It’s not just an idea;
we’re all here.
It’s not bound by nation or creed.
It’s how we gather ourselves
to do good on earth.
It’s not the soul.
It does not encompass God.
It’s where we begin
to save our planet,
to survive.
Think about it:
you as important as me
in the nation roll call.
Why can’t this happen?
No spiritual vision.
You have to go deep inside yourself to see it,
beyond ego.
It’s not just believed in.
That falters.
You have to experience this.
You have to get there.
How many do?
A handful on the planet,
not enough yet to guide the others,
not enough yet to change
from nationalistic vision,
not enough yet to see us.
You don’t know the value of this vision
of the whole.
I say humanity but dogs are included.
The whole damn world’s there.
You feel fish.
You identify with everything.
You suffer for this.
You can’t live in society
around other people.
They expect you to adopt their enemies.
They expect you to be mean.
A terrible noise
someone sees you with a prostitute.
They think you’re buying her services.
You make no distinction between people.
They all need help.
You can’t grasp this.
It’s too foreign to your concepts
of how to behave in the world.
You give everybody equal time?
You fool.
Oh you have your attractions,
your preferences your paint,
if you’ve seen humanity
in spiritual vision,
and you’ve not yet shed ego.
Hello everybody,
that’s me.
Those preferences,
I don’t just use them.
I don’t just foster them.
They can be used by the grand Creatrix to do Her work,
if you know how to wrap your life around Her,
around the divine mother.
Look I’m Indian
in my questions and answers.
An American said that.
Sri Aurobindo
gives me tools
so I can climb mountains
and give you the word.
We all sit in the lap of the Mother.
This is all play out
dynamic duo.
It makes sense, doesn’t it?
We can put together the world that way.
It comes in spiritual vision.
I’m Indian
in the truth of things,
American
as I handle the world.
See all this word?
It’s not narrow-minded.
It’s not even George.
Gender fluid this is.
Okay I’m feminine here,
masculine there.
I don’t think we understand gender fluidity.
It’s a consequence of spiritual process.
You give birth to your feminine
if you’re masculine
and vice versa.
No genital has to be removed.
No surgery called for.
You are a man
and a woman
in the essence of yourself,
in your ground zero.
I hold this in spiritual hands.
I’ve gotten down to that core
in a rising sea of inner process
and dreamwork.
I didn’t just adopt a belief.
I’m dual,
but it’s okay to be man in my pull.
I am a man
as the world sees things.
Let me fight this
because I identify as a woman?
I don’t think you understand spiritual process.
It goes that deep.
You’re okay in whatever skin you wear,
but it’s taken years to put this on,
no quick fix.
How do you open the inner consciousness?
How to you grow a tree?
You must become conscious of inner process
and dream is just the beginning,
but it’s a way station.
It will get you there
if you keep going.
Lots of hard work and inner concentration.
Your world will suffer some,
your outer being.
To find the balance takes years.
You see the problem:
how hard this is.
Enter the inner teacher.
Who puts together your dreams?
You’re gonna find out.
You’re gonna see deity at play,
your soul,
a world arising,
the thoughts and intentions of others,
a demonic voice and presence,
and all the things that make you tick.
Now the inner teacher is all that and more.
It orchestrates things
to put you in touch with yourself.
It’s inexplicably large.
It sees past, present, and future.
It’s personal to you.
It’s the inner guide.
It’s there all the time,
buried under layers of you.
You gotta get to it.
It’s there.
So this is not a machine,
a spinning matrix of unconscious doing.
It’s not automatic.
How do you find it?
Continue looking
until it dawns on you it’s there.
You savvy?
You hear me?
Let’s keep going.
Let’s not stop.
How can you trust your inner guide?
It’s infallible.
It’s larger than time.
It don’t leave you alone.
It wants the welfare of everyone.
It doesn’t stop at nothing
to get you right.
It’s very beautiful.
It manifests art.
I’m showin’ you what it looks like
when it’s on loudspeakers.
Inner process guide,
you’re hearin’ it.
It will bottom you
all the way to the top.
It will hold your hand all the way to the top.
Can you see it now?
I’m showin’ it to yah,
years of inner process.
You gonna stab me for it?
You gonna do me in?
I did follow him.
I’m all over him.
Something happened.
People are coming in on me.
Are they gonna interrupt?
I can’t do anything.
I’m a sitting duck.
Humanity it’s up to you,
but how do we call your name?
You’ll just delete
everything online
powers that be.
என்னடா?
So vulnerable.
Donny you’re tumble.
What are you gonna do?
You’re just right here for the job.
All this gate,
you think we’re gonna shut it?
Why wouldn’t he inspire?
Yeah sit down I see the world.
You see the world?
12:30 [vision of this on a digital clock]
Yes?
You have to start looking,
all of you.
It’s gonna go through this.
That’s inevitable,
whether you like it or not.
No, not what I was hopin’.
I recorded news.
It’s like this:
objectional voices included.
You’ll see how I got here.
All that big TV,
what’s happened?
You want this term to end.
He’s the man of the hour.
Who is he?
I want you castrated.
By the time he gets at that computer
it won’t be castration that you’re worried about.
Bragg at war,
you know it’s at war.
They handle you.
You keep doin’ what you’re doin’.
You’re not in trouble.
Don’t dally.
Come on,
poet’s progress.
I mean we can’t have you
knowledge just sitting there.
Alright,
I have a solution.
Turn your switch on. [vision of someone holding my laptop a little askew and turning on a switch on it]
That means keep typing.
Okay guitar, [spoken in Douglas’s voice]
it’s just a Mac,
a close-up of syrup.
You are actually good.
It’s time for the bulletin board.
Give this wings.
It’s off the top of my head,
rough note.
I was in school.
What did actually camouflage?
I was blocked in America.
We were told to run,
as the Green Berets had gotten our medal.[1]
No but they threaten you.
We’ll see what they do.
Okay get this classroom online.
The figure we cast in time.
What's your new ID?
I fence towards the One.
The precise figure we cast in time.
August 2023 Military Memories Competition (on the internet site Together We Served)
Which song do you connect most to your time in military service? What specific memories does this song bring back for you?:
Aug 17, 2023, 3:43 AM
The Eye of the Tiger
It was a hot June afternoon at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, and we shuffled off the buses amid the yelling of NCO instructors shouting for us to line up shoulder to shoulder, our bags at our feet. It was a scurry; it was a hustle; we were hassled. There were over two hundred of us, not enough room for the place inside the gate we were, and so the line was a long L shape. I could feel my heart in my throat. This was it, what I’d been waiting for since I was seven and saw John Wayne in The Green Berets at a local drive-in. The Duke looked like a giant on that big screen, his green beret the headgear of a hero. At that moment, 1968, the Vietnam War was a nightly feature on the six o’clock News, small clips of U. S. soldiers at rest and in misery a staple of my childhood. At the movies it was just my dad and I, as this was a man-thing between us, and you must pardon me for such a masculine pronoun. He had wanted to join SF when it was being formed, or somewhere around that time, but he had decided not to reenlist.
The aspiration came to me. Sitting there absorbing every minute of that movie, it hit me like a self-realization: this was what I wanted to be. I don’t think he realized the weight of that in my consciousness because, when I told him, he looked down at me—we were in the front seat of a 1965 Mustang—and he smiled that patronizing smile adults give little kids when they are so earnest at being ridiculous. I was pigeon-toed and had asthma, a very small, little thing of a boy. “You know son, they select only the best for that.” He tried not to let on that he thought I was a weakling, but it came through in his incredulous smile. It didn’t matter. I knew I would be selected because I was the best. Of course I was. After all, I was the center of the world. At least that’s what my eyes and ears told me, seating my vision and hearing in the dead center of everything; smell, touch and taste put me there too, not to mention my thoughts, as you only hear your own. Those cheats—it’s a big and very disappointing fact of childhood that you discover your senses have been cheating you; you are not the center of the world, or, to put it more how it is: everybody else thinks they’re the center too.
One SF instructor was coming down one side of the L, and another was coming down another. They would stand in front of the SF candidate (we have to get one thing straight: the term Green Beret is for Hollywood; it’s called Special Forces, SF for short, and no, Rangers are not Special Forces). He would look you up and down and move on. The one that stood in front of me began to laugh. I became indignant, but of course I couldn’t show that. He said something like, “You, you want to be SF?!” I heard some splashes of laugher down the ranks. I burned inside. I think I said, “Yes sergeant!” but I don’t remember. It happened that I no longer had asthma, but I was super skinny and was still pigeon-toed, which really showed when I ran, and we’d had to run to get in line. I wasn’t the smallest in the class, but almost. The smallest guy had made the mistake of getting the SF patch tattooed on his arm before starting the Q course, and folks, you just don’t do something like that. He was hounded by the instructors until he quit, which did take awhile. I think he got to Phase II, as I remember him being hounded on a ruck march on Smoke Bomb Hill back at Bragg. At any rate, I don’t remember anyone standing in front of him and laughing on that fateful day (they hadn’t seen his tattoo, I gather), a day I’d be grateful for. It gave me the gumption to keep going. I had something to prove.
Enter “The Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor. It was 1982, and that song was at the top of the charts. Cliché today, back then that song was real. Incidentally, that was also the year the movie First Blood came out, and I saw it in a theater full of SFers, SF candidates and paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne. When the line in the film was spoken, “Those Green Berets, they’re real bad asses,” the theater erupted in the spurious noise of young men trying to sound like beasts. You know, that never sounds right. Anyway, right there in that line of men, just inside the gates of the greatest challenge in my young life so far, to win the green beret, I started singing that song in my mind. It was the part, “rising up to the challenge of our rival,” that really got me motivated. I have to explain here a little of the layered workings of our minds, specifically that mechanical part that just starts repeating things in the background of our conscious mind, especially songs, in odd moments. If you take the time to consider the moment, chances are it’ll be one that relates to that song, not in every instance, but in many I’ve found. Anyway, [1] it set a president. Anytime I got into trouble or wanted to quit, which was damn near every day, I either played that song in my heart and mind, or it just rose up in my mechanical mind playing on queue. I let it move me. It gave me strength; it gave me hope. I rose to that challenge with the help of that popular tune. I became a Green Beret, and you’ll have to pardon me for sounding Hollywood. It sounds so much better now than SFer in the early evening of my life.
It did fail me once though. I was in Robin Sage, Phase III. The G chief had given me the task of doing a recon before a body snatch mission, and that means kidnapping someone. I was a Sergeant E-5, an 11B2P, airborne infantry, and I was supposed to have a lot of experience in the field in my m.o.s. I had very little. I’d spent a year in the Horse Cavalry Platoon at Ft. Hood (now called the Horse Detachment), and other than being on a runaway wagon an hour before the Inaugural Parade for Ronald Regan, in Washington, D.C. in 1980, I hadn’t really gotten my juices going, and after that I spent about a year in a Pathfinder section doing mostly static line parachute demonstrations for Ft. Hood, never going to Pathfinder school, with very little actual field duty. As an SF candidate on a mock A team, composed of 12 people, I was in charge of half of the team. I was to lead my half on the body snatch mission, and so I had to go and get eyes on the target, alone and in the dark. That usually wasn’t a problem for me, like it was for many of the candidates. We as a species are so herd sour it’s not even funny. My dad had made me walk alone in the woods at night, or ride a horse alone for miles in the darkness, and if I didn’t do it, he’d threaten to whip me with the belt he had in his hand, not the best way to overcome fear, but I did get used to being alone in the woods at night. It’s off target, but he also made a slide for life over the pond we swam in (I was 10), so to get me to overcome my fear of heights. He was a serious man-maker, and I don’t cuss him for it, but, like I said, it wasn’t the best way to overcome fear, using the fear of a whipping to get me to face my fears. When he whipped me, he left welts on my legs and butt, and a bucking horse, the dark, or a high place were preferable to that.
So normally I would’ve been fine, but this time it was different. There was a Christian militia out there beating up SF candidates and taking their weapons. That news had sent a shiver of fear through our Robin Sage. I dreaded going out there on that recon, some several klicks from the G base. It was a mostly follow the railroad tracks sort of journey, and I arrived quite easily at the road the jeep was to be going down carrying the person we had to snatch, which was to be at 9 o’clock the next night. I hid in the bushes and mixed coco beverage powder, milk powder, and a couple of sugar packets together, making a Ranger pudding. It was my favorite thing to make out of a C ration, a comfort food that didn’t give me the comfort I wanted in that instance. I tried to shake off my fear, but then I heard men running on the tracks, and I looked, and sure enough, there were two men hightailing it down the tracks from the direction I’d come. It was the Christian militia looking for me. They must’ve seen me somehow. “The Eye of the Tiger” played in my mind, and whether I actually played it or it just played in my mechanical mind I don’t remember, but whatever the case it didn’t work, and I ditched the song in my thoughts, replacing it with, “Oh my God they’re after me!” And I got the fluff out of there, after a little wait to make sure they were far enough away. I think it was about 8:30, just a half hour before the scheduled jeep. I arrived at camp sometime later, relieved I’d made it, and I went to report to the G chief the militia were in the area. He wasn’t there, but one of his assistants was. “You idiot! That was the G chief going to town.” He had gone on a pogey bait run with an assistant. “You mean it wasn’t the Christian militia?”
It bears mentioning that, under interrogation by the local Sheriff, the SF candidate that had started the whole Christian militia thing had confessed he’d made it up to cover up having his weapon stolen from a wall locker in the 82nd Airborne barracks. He’d left Robin Sage and gone to meet some friends in the 82nd, to have a night on the town, stowing his M-16 in his friend’s wall locker. Big mistake. Someone stole it. After an initial, “What the hell do I do” moment, he concocted the plan, or that was how it was told to me. It’s amazing how such fine details go through the ranks. He had his friends rough him up some so to look like he’d been beaten up, and he went back to Robin Sage and told the G chief and his team leader, a captain, the big lie. Officers had recently started going though the Q Course with the enlisted, to make it harder for officers, who had up to that time gone through what was termed ‘The Gentlemen’s Course’. All this happened because a female captain had passed the course, and in those days, that was not to be, and they ended up failing her on a technicality after the fact. (For the record, I think she earned the beret.) I never learned what happened to that poor fool who just had to go party with the paratroopers. (82nd infantrymen were our OpFor during Robin Sage.) He did not become an SFer I’m pretty sure. What a gust of fear he stirred up, as I wasn’t the only SF candidate to swallow it, but I might admit I swallowed hard. Yeah, fake news is dangerous.
Hands down, the most poignant and pressing moment when “The Eye of the Tiger” saved my ass was back at Camp Mackall, at the end of the course, negotiating the infamous SF obstacle course. I swear to God, I heard a man break his thigh on the Dirty Name two events from there. The snap sound was sickening. My biggest moment of truth of the whole six months of SF training was a piece of cake to many if not most other candidates. You had to crawl 10 or 20 meters (it was miles to my mind) through a culvert that was about a meter underground, and it was full of SF candidates moving very slowly. I was so claustrophobic I could hardly ride an elevator without panic rising. I had a terror of tight places. There was an instructor at the top of the pit that led down to the entrance to the tunnel, and there wasn’t one at most of the other events. It seems I wasn’t the only claustrophobic candidate. I went down and looked into the tunnel and saw the men on their hands and knees moving slowly in it, just enough to make me hop back out of the pit and beg the instructor to let me skip it. He told me if I didn’t go in I didn’t pass, and here we were at the end of the course, and did I want to fail now? He wasn’t a jerk. Well, the only thing to do was play the song, this being the rival of rivals, and I made a conscious decision to play it in my mind; it didn’t just suddenly start playing in the mechanical mind. After a moment or so of letting that song motivate me, I jumped down there and went into the tunnel. About halfway I panicked, just went berserk, the men behind me groaning and complaining, as I’d come to a complete halt, but in my thrashing around, not going forward at all, I hit my head on the concrete above, and that snapped me out of it, and I made it through that tunnel. Everyone behind me was relieved. The feel of the open air after that battle, it did not smell like horse dung or the fear of night, let me tell you.
Our class was 6-82, the numbers designating the date, month and year, of that class of the Special Forces Qualification Course. When we came to attention as a class, we yelled, “6-82 WETSU!” the acronym meaning we eat this shit up, and I really did eat that shit up. When we first started the course, we were taken to an auditorium at the JFK Special Warfare Center. Some field grade officer stood at the mic on stage and told us to look at the man to our right and left. He said at the end of the course they wouldn’t be there. Sure enough, when we graduated, they marched us back into that auditorium, and two thirds of us were missing. I got a big surprise and made the Commandant’s List; the top 15% of the class. It happened too that I was called upon the stage to receive an ARCOM for becoming the Soldier of the Year of III Corps and Ft. Hood. I was so embarrassed, and the surprise on my fellow classmates’ faces, well, it didn’t say I was the best among them. The center of the world thing, it had vanished a long time ago. Every single day through that course I was sure I’d fail. I just racked up a lot of points. When others were kicked back in their tent during land navigation, let’s say, where we lost most of the class, I was out there doing it, every practice run. Pardon me if tears are welling up writing this. I am very proud to have won the green beret.
You know how it is as you get old. You look back on your life a lot. If I could pick a time to return to in my life, it would be to be back in the Q Course. That was the time of my life, and I only knew at the time it was tough, and I couldn’t wait for it to end. Isn’t that just so human? I’m listening to “The Eye of the Tiger” now, my headphones on as I write this. I’m in that tiger’s eye once again at 62. I’ve just published three books on most of the major e-book sites on the net, and I’ve stood up and spoken my own personal truth, with courage and sincerity, without hatred and anger, but I have little doubt most of you will not think me the best among us, but it’s in self-sacrifice that we are at our best. I’ve been seeking spiritual enlightenment for these past 30 years, and that’s not something you get to by rules and regulations, or even the one, two, and three of steps. You wing it in such a way you win it. Life is so short to live in line. You must understand that Green Berets aren’t soldiers who always go by the book. We are unconventional, and that means thinking and living outside of the box. SF, please don’t ever forget that. In any event, you can read my military memoir here, which is patterned after the service reflections of Together We Served, called An American Story: https://harms-end.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/an-amercan-story-3.pdf
[1] I’ve edited the story since the competition, from “I have to explain here…” to the word “Anyway,” and in the three other places the mechanical mind is mentioned in the story, the first later in the same paragraph and in the 6th and 8th paragraphs.
This is Nitish’s new video for his YouTube Channel
Nitish wrote this song himself, while in school. Sitting in class, the core of the song and its basic melody came to him via the inner voice in the space of several minutes. He heard the lines sung to him on the inside, and he copied them down one by one, a process he’s watch me do since he was very small in the writing of poetry. Then, over the course of the next two weeks, as I put the song to the guitar, both he and I heard lines of the song sung to us on the inside, my muse giving the last 2 lines of the 3rd verse and the last 5 lines of the song, the repeats not included.
You may not grasp the significance of an 11-year-old having this kind of ability and talent, or that of his inner self speaking its truth. Heretofore he’s only written lines of poetry via the inner voice, and this is his first song. And, despite him not being able to carry a tune to save his life, it’s a song so you might listen to him this time, this video, as it seems you only really like music videos.
This minor miracle is a soul rescue. The boy was once again on the verge of tears at school, because he’s unable to keep up academically because of undiagnosed dyslexia, but at least at this school he’s not being beaten for it, as has happened in the past, trauma that surfaces very easily. His soul is not telling him he’s a victim, however. It’s letting him tell how he feels, but, it’s telling him not to run from his challenges. It’s interesting that it’s not telling him to do good in school but to shine in his room, your room in dream and vision a symbol for your own personal room in the house of humanity, your individuality, your personal consciousness, the body included, distinct from others but an integral part of the whole. We need parents, teachers, religions, organizations, big business, and governments to respect the sanctity of our room.
You might understand that the sudden attention to the song and the making of this video concentrated him on a difficult task, not to mention the awesomeness of having your inner self sing you such a song and all the faith in the divine that brings—like God really cares—drawing his attention away from his suffering and his ‘woe is me’ attitude, and it’s also helped him to cope at school, and now he’s doing a little better academically, but he wants me to home school him, something I very much want to do because it’s my job with him to teach him the craft of the poet-seer, my craft, and tell me the Tamil people and the world does not need another poet of that force and stature. Here are some recent lines of his inner poetry:
ஒலைய வெட்றது மட்டும் தான் நம்ப வேல, ஒலைய கட்டுறது கடவுலோடய வேல. [Translation: Don’t believe just the sound. Building a sound is a divine task.]
I wasn’t born to be my parent’s child. I was born to be the universe’s child. You will express trauma.
Sometimes you can bend life.
God’s gift.
He’s wearing a ghost costume and a makeshift burka as a means of protest. It’s an artistic representation of the social position of children. Their voice is not respected or even heard, and they are not looked at as real people but only as someone to indulge, protect, and care for. Adults speak for them and tell them what they should think and how they should feel. They have no right to be an individual. They must obey the adults in their life, and they must go to school. If they protest, they’re threatened with punishment. It’s as though they themself, their personhood, is a ghost because it’s not seen or recognized.
The costume is also a creative symbol of the attitude in society of restricting the images of children in the public sphere of the internet, speaking of images that are not pornographic in nature. It’s as though we’re putting burkas on them in our attitude and, increasingly, in our policies. Specifically, we are protesting YouTube recently taking down a video, “Nitish 9 to 10”, a video that features photos and videos of him around the house and outside. In some of the indoor shots he’s in his underwear. There are no nude shots, no shots to suggest anything sexual. No strike was given for the video. As time goes on, YouTube is restricting content more and more, and what was okay before suddenly isn’t now. We would like YouTube to reinstate the video or at least give it back, as we don’t have a copy of it, and it’s an important record of his childhood.
Harm's End 