Spoken word poetry, till I get it, I leave it alone. Wow, it’s left alone. In case of good poetry break this glass. I just sit here and discover, letting the word explain itself in the giving of lines and in the hurtin’ of the world.
If I show you the pain will you stop it? Will you even know it’s there where you feel your pain? Oh no another Holocaust movie all about bein’ numb. I can’t give you this star-glow to ride the world on its tongue feelin’ people. I’m not a robot I’m free, but the price of my freedom is your pain, your wellbeing I feel like my own.
It’s shoots me all the time, or it gives me stars. I’m there with you in the delivery room of another bucket of world today, huh?
I see through all these sleeves of world maker’s art, a world upon world in the moments with mine, a conglomerate of worlds of this group of people and that, of this person alone, of all the mini worlds that make up this world that we call Earth. Can you see that simultaneously with your own? I taste you there. I know you’re there.
How do I communicate this to you so you feel it too like you have your children’s hands in your own, like your best friend’s smile, like your mother’s love? I don’t die there, but I question God all the time and Sri Aurobindo.
These are terrible times, and they get ready for tomorrow terrible too, with a past just as terrible starin’ us in the face. Let the good times roll, and my God they do. How sweet life can be in its gathered moments, how manageable, but why does it always add up to this: life is not a bundle of joy; life gets us in corners and does bad things to us. Can you understand that?
Why does the world go on like nothin’s happenin’, like it’s free and easy and clean, so standardized? They scream on the news bad news to an audience of normal, of tie your shoe, of everything’s alright here, ain’t it? Not in every bubble. So much quiet desperation it has been said.
Do you know the rovin’ hellhole? Somewhere on Earth at any given time they’re eating each other alive. It’s the worst place on the planet for a moment. Hell swallows them whole, unbelievable cruelty, and nothin’ to redeem them. Goddamn that stinks.
Alight I’m blessed. I live in a little pocket of warmth and forgiveness. I have opened the doors to humanity in the stadium of my room. I ride there all day figurin’ you out. I take great thoughts to the skies, but I must remember I’m a low man on the totem pole in your eyes. I do nothin’ here that grants you my room, that shows what I’m doin’ larger than life.
A poet of world standing I am not. I’m a poet among many thousands in the availability of today, and no poetry comes along and wallops your head or smites your heart from my pen. I just spit in the breeze. That’s the trash dumpster, and here let me give it another poem. I put my dogs to sleep, and I wish you goodnight.
All united and happy they think. Come here Luna. Get your head… [vision of Luna Rottweiler putting her head in a hole in the ground] One doggy at a time. Oh fuck I’m on Candid Camera. He’s just gonna go for it. Well then the surprises and bad secrets, heart is ruined on the same thing: waging war on the Fourth of July. What’s the significance of your dog growing? Into a likeness of you. What I didn’t have: put every slept of it complete. My God, they should be spilled.
What is it this time? Dr. Milk Powder— I haven’t called you; I’ve had enough, is that the plan? You know he’s lost his boy. They’re travel uneasiness way to stutter. Don’t you see? Alongside with it it’s real. You know his boy’s called not in awhile. Suffer this, and it just last of people’s hittin’.
Do you like people? Is this fruit juice? Why is it we always hate somebody, run there all the time? You really enjoy this life don’t you? It seems all fair winds. Need to pull her pregnant with the grenade. It will get you every time. Just look around the world. Just look at your neighbor.
Do you know how we get along? Do you know how we get through this? We don’t be monsters to each other. We don’t be mean. We try to be kind and giving in our painful moments. This is overcoming the world and getting better at yourself. It’s a love angle, and we need more love. That house definitely, where you put your hat off, where you sit around. Love those people, the people you’re life-in’ with. You don’t know how much this counts.
It’s all an effort I know. We have to overcome ourselves to do it sometimes, but we have to give this baseball to all the standin’s in the world, so we can have a world that works. Is that so hard to believe?
You know the world is full of holes. Even the divine is negligent and will crush you to make the world, will just stand by and watch. These are not pleasant times, but we have to endure them, tryin’ to find joy inside, tryin’ to give our children a good time.
What else is there? Spirituality’s a pole we lean on. There are surprises in consciousness if we let them. There’s a world maker’s art you can see. These are deep down inside, past the underwear, past all that gets in the way. There is strong inside, even after you’re shattered.
This world’s a dream maker’s art, so much more than show, but this is a common dream we are having that the significance of dream shows. We’re living out a representation telling a story, and all our lives add to that One involved, and all our lives keep going. We’re where time loops around itself a great big mechanism of being that has definite boundaries that we can cross and get out of here after the whole has been complete. We’re goin’ somewhere together, and yes some escape before time, but they’ll end up on another world soon.
This great big ship has a destination you know, something worth time, something bigger than ourselves and is ourselves at the same time. I’ve gone out of the universe you see and been myself on high.
Stupid me, I describe experience like you’ll believe it, but you can kill me and it’ll still be there. It can’t be erased from time. I’m a nobody because of it, liftin’ up my room for you to see. It’s got crosses on it and monkey bars, because I’m just like you, but I’ve been given a breath of supernal air, and I need to tell you about it. It’s affected my vision. I see the world.
I’m just like everybody, but I don’t live like you inside. I live with you and inner vision. I get rocked by joys that fill my noon the outside world doesn’t bring me. I feel oceans of sadness I’m not in the world about. I feel existence pain, and when I walk outside, drive my bike through the town, the countryside, it’s a wonder-weft of miracle, and I feel every person I come across. I see the One inside, and all the many representations surround me. I can’t get over it.
Now I’m here with another poem. Let it ride the day if you read it, because it puts us together if you escape, because it’s here we learn to live again after your world has been taken away. Can you see me now? Can you hear?
I had to work in a cave last night. I’m afraid. Bring me back. Wastin’ the water when electricity was comin’. [sing verse]
Can we be expendable? I don’t even know if that’s the question. Do we just acquiesce to everything, ride out time like it’s a bump in the road? I feel my larger spheres pent up in here, and I know I’m expendable.
I don’t know how to find time. I’m just a hole in the ground in any largeness I make. People just want to get me for it, counting victims in my pen. A few loyal survivors have the guts to hear me and not have me taken off.
I just wanna do away with it all. Do you say that, overwhelmed by existence, how it doesn’t all work out, how you go home one day, and people have put a fence, blocking your access road, how you get slapped for kindness and sincerity, how you can’t even trust yourself to be good when your free will’s compromised by the shade from black night?
I’ve put on this flesh I know. A body of man I’ve put on. I wear existence’s sleeves, and sometimes I think it’s a punishment. I just want my boy to come home.
How do you know a poet’s worth? They remind you of yourself where you touch ground. They grab existence and almost show it to you. They tell yah where you’re at when you’re on the moon, and they will lay with you in hell if you’re sorry of the pentance you’re payin’. I’ve grabbed a purgatory slot. Hear my worth as I try to find my time today.
Who you be lookin’ for, someone with words better than me, someone who can grab the times today and get all Tennyson on yah? I’m alone with Shakespeare you know, grabbin’ his hat and puttin’ on my day, all sound and fury. I get all field on yah. I life this to you. I'm not an idiot. I’m a Neptune in the history of fishes.
I can get Barbra Streisand. I can put on symbols like they’re lunch. I can really tag you in the sound of these words when they’ve jumped off a cliff and pulled a child’s pants down to show you they’re lost there and grow up fighting any sticky business that puts you there.
I’m about a wheel and chain on the road to time. I want you to grow up and give chances out on freeways. I want you to be kinder than you are, not as clannish always in control. I want you to be better than that, not even giving me a word I’m supposed to touch.
I’m your poet today, like it or not, that brings poets’ meanings home. I’m Jack Field. Test my word in life. No edit summary.
This poem was posted on the private Facebook group Auroville International. If you have been following recent posts on this blog, I’ve chronicled how they’ve declined everything I’ve tried to post on that Facebook group, totaling nine posts. Now, do I erase all I’ve chronicled? No, I think this might be valuable to show what it means to be heard.
Many a short to a poem. They won’t do definition. They get Auroville working in its nitty-gritty. I’m a mountain boat. We’ve gotta come up with a freeway to blanket taxes. Are you on the hate side of reason? Does anybody get your goat? Would you like to see them punished?
I’m a round about can. You’re supposed to do this in your underwear. I’ll let them know they have my vote today, and I will drop all punishment lists and let them be there, on the star of human unity, and I will include them in the new human being. How can I ensure all this happens? I don’t require of them anything. I am just kind to them, whatever they’ve done, whoever they are.
If it’s really close to home, some dirt they’ve done, my gee that hurt I will tell them, but I’m not going to hate you in this conversation. I’m going to battle you with love. It’s my duty as an Aurovillian. Can’t you see the problem? Human unity cannot hate. It cannot exclude anyone from its acceptance speech, meaning you ignore no one, and all get your goodwill. Are we right on that?
That’s the holistic speaker. That’s how we bring human unity into the room and not just talk about it. You with me kids? I didn’t think so. I’m just teachin’ yah how to be human, and you refuse me. Are you still a mountain to my molehill?
Unconscious everybody take the city apart. It can’t stand from within. A foreign body of law then comes in and lords it over all of yah. Let’s get the goats out of the shed. She’s not gonna happen you have no more scapegoats. That’s a big horse you’re ridin’ Auroville, and you’ve achieved human unity.
What else is it but including everyone in the worth you give human being? You don’t have to take them to lunch. You don’t have to tie their shoe. You give them the time of day like you mean it. There’s nobody that gets excluded from this. Alright Aurovillian, measure up.
Now look behind you. I’m on your report card. I open to you a scientific altar ego, the scapegoat of the day where sexual sin meets the railroad tracks. Nailed on the Cross to suffer with Jesus I said this isn’t working. I can’t author you along. I can’t show you art. I can’t startle you with spiritual experience. World experience doesn’t impress you or the quality of my education Classical Greek and all that. Even that I’m a kind human being that cleans his own house and makes buttered bread for yah doesn’t move your feet. Tada! It’s a miracle my boy back this evenin’, and it wasn’t supposed to happen in a million years. That made me human to you.
Okay let’s go. We got so many who just need good faith to add to their humanity to make it work, or at least put try on the table. Come on let’s go brother, and let’s get goin’ sister. Made you human enough to look center stage, and that’s where we need to be blessed, oh people of Auroville.
That was an impossibility you threw away my opportunity that boy’s comin’ home. We’re going to do some work in other children’s bedrooms, and I’m just going one, one, one. Silly boys, eight girls, this tie your shoe. In the nominal, in the history of God, where will we hunch those things? I want you to lay down, and we’re gonna move through dream to spiritual experience. That’s my forte with kids, and I know how to do it, and I love it there. Not the shoes. A little open-minded— if I don’t touch a worry root, okay? Now let’s get God manifested on this Earth.
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.
Harm's End 