The Garden Sleeps

feature image by Dhina on the occasion of my 61th birthday this year

A tale like you wanna know. [vision of the title being introduced like a movie is on TV or at the movies, it appearing in the center of the screen, the line sounding, and this line sounding as the vision faded]
Put spiritual in there.
I’m talking to a Dumbledorf:
who are you friend who almost had him killed?
How exceedingly lovely.
I don’t blame him.
He looks different
Dombledorf.
He looks connected.
There might be. [vision of a small otter-human-like creature’s head coming up out of a small square pool of water and looking up at me and saying the line, the pool the irrigation tank where Nitish swims but not in the location it actually is]

The answer’s not complete.
Tryin’ to help.
I feel so inadequate at the task.
I just sit here and write.
We would reach in and pull sincerity out,
but I’m at a halt in myself,
and I don’t know where to begin.
I can’t capture this page.
I can only tell you what it says.
We are mountains from molehills.
I’ve done things with your memory
all the while holding sincerity in my hand.
I think I’ve lifted the curtain of existence
and shown you what’s inside.
I revealed my room.
A lot goes on there.
And the world is in my room
staring at me.
I can’t put it down.
Where would I be without you?
And I can’t get at that you.
When I meet you on the street
you’re just another person to me.

I glow with this,
hold you around
the feelings of my mind
that we may meet.
Death do us in.
I can’t champion this.
I hold you in my arms and cry
when you press too hard against me
with a sad story of yours
I’ve encountered through public media.
I don’t know how to make you go away.
I feel the group like it’s my own soul,
yet you banish me and call me names.
I don’t know what to do with this.
It hurts,
and I don’t think there are ears in your heart.
I spend myself on them.

I think we’ve gone beyond good and evil.
I think we’re just human beings here.
Can you tell me how to get along
with you
and still be myself?
I don’t know how to make you feel what I feel.
I can’t take my heart out and show it to you.
I pull words outta my heart,
and you can’t see the symbol
for the words.
I’m a dead delivery.
I’d like to smile,
having your social hand,
but you won’t give it to me.
Where do I find you
in disease?
I don’t have to wait long.
You would spit in my eye
if I came too close,
and I mean so well for you.

I was taken down.
I looked at him.
The idea
I think he’s beauty with
is feelin’ the whole.
I come to read him.
I find solace here.
I’m taken to the top of myself.
I see and understand I have depths.
I would just like him to be alive,
continue writing verse.
He means something to me.
He’s a wild space in the world yet
that hasn’t been taken out.
He does not kiss ass.
We don’t want to see him get in trouble.
He is right there in our taboos
a guiding light.
You don’t know strange men.
They will test your boundaries.
They are not a shake off.
They come to see you definitely.

These questions,
they’re for answers.
We don’t ask them just to say please.
They’re all around us now,
ardently studying who we are.
I’m a voice in that multitude.
I could get better answers.
I fought with meaning
to break it open,
and the world fell into place.
I grapple with it now.
I mean I hold it in my hands and sing to it
the poetry of the school.
This is beyond answers.
It’s just basking with you
in the warm sunshine of our being.
It’s weird to be alive.
There’s so much that shines on my nose.
You know what I mean.
I could run amuck
plucking at things,
just bein’ led by the nose.
Symbol imagery,
I mean the world with that,
and I’m stupid.
I show you myself too much,
but that’s what makes vulnerable
the strength that it is.
You trust me.

I’m happily
so much more than show business.
I reveal things to you.
They come from the sky.
I hold them in my hand and paint this page with them.
The moonlight of their starshine glows iridescent.
I spend them
in hours of verse.
It looks like we have another day.

I’m selfish.
Get out of your closet.
Tell us everything.
Gave the world a black eye did yah?
Bring your wife and kids.
Come with me now.
I sit at risk,
write a ledger of emergency.
I’m trying to show the way out.
Will you join me?
No confessions for this place please.
You don’t tell the cops what you did.
We will not ask the law to get us.
We want to overcome the law,
so it’s not rigid it’s human.

How do you know they’re not here?
They’re gonna work with him,
unfortunate souls
that need a time out.
You can do this in your living room.
Where are you?
I was just in that kitchen spot,
tryin’ to collect
all the ears that help you outta this.
Let me be your emotional man.
Let me find the way out.
Even the cigarette
a lot of the times
light up the temple.

You’re kidding me.
You would go to bat for me?
You would show me the way out?
Aren’t you a confession machine?
Wouldn’t you tell on me
and limit the ways I trust you?
You’re just not smart.
You expose yourself.
My existence
depends on me.
Can you tell me society cares?
I’m just a target.
No, no, don’t go back there.
Come out and breathe awhile
clean air.
Don’t you wanna feel good?

Some kid came daddy
and rode me monster.
I don’t understand.
This is a social dilemma.
Can we handle being people?
Where’s the living room?
Is it full of vice and TV?
What’s got you fascinated?
I don’t know how to show you this.
You gotta get outta that.

Alright,
he’s just not a problem
you understand.
Until you understand him you can’t do anything with him.
Even my problem,
we go awhile with each other.
We learn the lampoon
sticks out.
How do we stick this in chocolate?
We fold ourselves.
We learn to let go of the spoon.
We challenge ourselves
with bright horizons.
You come together
on the role you need to play
who is behind you.
Can you see an island?
Challenge yourself with more than yourself.

Study your room.
It will take you there.
It’s hitting me.
To turn around,
made a turn.
I got outta cars.
I stopped doing bullshit.
How does this happen in science?
We need to see our disease,
and then
get going.
It’s 10 a.m.

We need to apply pressure to the program.
Can you representative breathe?
You can have it,
lunch treatment.
It’s always good for you.
Are you sure you know yourself?
Do you know you’re real?
An actor,
that’s just the part that says hello,
drive basically.
It’s who you think you are.
Is the wonder at coyote?
Is the world not real?
That’s somebody to get hurt.
You need to tell them you’re sorry.
Put it on the difficulty what had me.
Buckle up,
honey any moment now you’re to get theft or hurted.
We’re just not here.
We’ll levity rehearse. [vision of three or four black and white photographs I couldn’t make out, the last one I could, one of a girl of indeterminate age in a white ballet tutu on a stage doing an exaggerated curtsy]
Don’t rob yourself with identity.
You are not you.
You’re a field in a play.
You get along you understand.
That taller You
you’ll find one day.

She doesn’t care.
She’s a dysfunctional human being.
Don’t equate her with your room.
Be a baby unto your room.
How are you?
It was more about Joe than the rest of us realize.
You’re free to discuss this.
You’re free to dance.
You are as important as the President
in the inward bowels of ourselves.
You are a process dip
into forever.
You make it happen,
the representative figure you are.
You’re changin’ lives
by ever bein’ yourself.
You’re gettin’ bigger all the time
if you reach in and find yourself
not the author of the program.

My God this world has ways in it.
It’s mind-boggling.
This should keep you busy
for a lifetime.
Okay stop
putting your identity on your name,
on that little figure you are,
and understand your importance in the scheme.
I went downstairs and I told him
play.
David actually feels like somebody,
but way was he tryin’.
Somehow this triangle has evolved
from multiple scores.
You are not who you are,
but you’re more than that.
You blindfold wisdom
and chop it in half.
I wanna explain to you all
none of this is happening.
Do you see the horror?

You see the relationship.
You’re a salt on the Void
to bring out its something.
You’re doing nothing but complaining.
Don’t complain.
We’re high animals.
We’ve got this world goin’.
It’s our livelihood.
We hate everything.
It’s not that bad.
It’s quite good actually.
We’re here,
and we’re alive.
Okay we ain’t free.
We can’t have everything.
but everything’s coming.
We just have to land first.
We can manage from here.
It’s got Goldilocks on it,
until we find the horses
that put on planet right.

Hey dude I want yah to know out your brains I’m gonna blow.
We’re just forlorn that’s all.
Winter’s comin’,
and we need to be prepared.
We’re a little nuclear holocaust here,
a little nuclear holocaust there,
but nothin’ gets us outta the way.
We retain civilization.
Any homeland,
any way of raisin’ children,
we’re gonna have to come to the dice
and end up eliminatin’ all of them.
The better way of bein’ human,
it ain’t out yet.
I’m tryin’ to tell you
what’s goin’ on,
but you’ve climate changed my answers,
and they don’t get to the public.
I’ve got a whole host of answers,
the nitty-gritty college details of existence
to help you survive.
I won’t be here.
This is a future log.
I’ll see you later.

Fascinating,
I think you just said the peace.
Could it be the color of my skin
the audience is a thimbleful?
Where’s that little Seventh Manager
welcome spectacular?
Don’t look now,
They’ve got a buffalo for yah.
The Gods must be crazy.
Mother you with this?
The stairway’s there.
You have the purple stairwell.
Turn those shoes;
let Me turn them,
the stairwell’s up.
Ride handsomely.
That’s a wrap up
with my own medicine.

A Belief in a Miracle

photo by Donny

A poem by Donny Lee Duke

One of the ones that let me in,
that touched my soul,
profound mailbox.
I came homeless
year after year after year.

We’re good.
We don’t understand your concept,
the jolt in the room.
Let’s keep busy
so we don’t have to reply.
Is this license
to just take the trouble to ignore someone?
Seldom I got a reply.

The root task
and how profound it is.
It’s indeed the world.
It’s indeed larger than the universe.
I can’t carve this out for you.
I can only sing.

I don’t know the Rumpelstiltskin of your life’s work.
Your struggles are a Banyan tree to me.
See the consciousness there?
It has handles on it.
Study books and thought process,
I don’t think you’ll arrive at the explanation of the universe.

Can we hold a tree?
What do we do with time?
How do we say the world to ourselves?
Do you hear the inner speech?
It’s spoken softly in so many inner ears.
You’re readin’ it.

It’s what you hold in your hands
in an ancient text of wisdom.
Not everyone has the fire.
Not everyone can read the text right.

And we’ve come back to your story:
not everyone has the inner fire,
though they long to see the universe as it is,
though they long to be more than what they are.
Can you grasp this?

You light it that way:
the object of your romance with time
the inner fire
to see the Invisible.

I think you’ve accredited universities with this task.
I think you’ve stopped at representations.
I think you’ve stopped at outer process.
Hidden meaning.
Self-doubt see
in your own blue pen.

Who am I cooking?
Jessica Frazier
the academic.
Have a little
finger pointing in your own direction.
The TVS fixed.
It was incredibly difficult.

Why do you believe in miracles?
I’m standing one.
You hear my measurements?
The boy in the yard.
Bigger then reality
I have not made them.

For years I’ve been sending emails to scientists and academics, or I’ve commented on a tweet of theirs, usually with links to something I’ve written involving inner exploration. Less than a handful of times have I gotten a reply, and when I have it’s just to express thanks for reading them, not to engage me over the importance of such experience. This is the latest example of such an email. If you’ve been reading my latest poems, I’m trying to show where we fail as a world. Here, it was not from reasons of moral outrage, but it was one of the titanic: the best minds aren’t. It was from an ‘expert’, i.e., a person influencing world opinion on an official level, in this case a person assigning meaning to the world, not listening to someone trying to get their attention, someone who just might have something valuable to add to the conversation. Click on the link at the end of the email, read the article, and tell me that’s just not possible.

[Subject] “Communicating with someone, and learning what they have to teach us…

learning to adapt our view to the information they give.” From your YouTube video Gadamer. Hello, I’ve just read your article in Psyche “Ancient Indian texts reveal the liberating power of metaphysics”. I’d like to get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible please. “We can do something extraordinary: our mental parts can climb out of the window of the body, and up into the higher levels of reality.” What a wonderful statement worded so well, but are you speaking literally of actual hands on spiritual experience, or are you talking about using your imagination and having high thoughts? I think it’s the latter, and it’s precisely here your article doesn’t capture truth, that being what’s actually going on or has. “I might live in 2022 in Oxford, but I can share the experiences of persons in Thailand or the US, and imagine different lives I might have lived. With the help of scientists and philosophers, I understand levels of the cosmos that lie beyond the senses, and can access realities, values or ideas that cannot be destroyed with any mere physical body.” What it seems not only you are missing, but also the scientific establishment and the humanities, as university teaches them, is that it’s possible to have the experiences that the mystics (or metaphysians describe). They are not only basing their ideas on the use of their imagination or on their thoughts. Many if not most are basing them on firsthand experience. Furthermore, though beyond this email, the authors of the Upanishads and the Vedas did not compose their writings but heard them via the inner voice. Do you know the meaning of Agni in this context? In other words, the texts came whole and ready made from their inner vision, one or a few lines at a time, and they wrote them down, something not possible unless you’ve had the experiences the texts they wrote describe, what would open a rishi or seer to such inner vision.

Although I can give ample examples of the latter, the inner voice writing one’s seer-poetry (you can look that up if you want), I will only give an example of the heart of the matter of the email. It would be quite something if you even read it. There’s just so much vying for our attention, and something from out of the blue and from someone unknown, well, that’s usually what automatically gets sacrificed to the expediency of time:

The Spoiler
What’s bigger than the universe? Hang on, What’s bigger than everything?