If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
The captive adult, I’m not that bad. Dated immigrant, 21 years in India, and I didn’t have a form to fill out, and they called me illegal. Are you kiddin’ me? Human beings are wrong, nasty, and evil, if they’ve overstayed their visa. Everybody says so. Look at Trump.
I’ve got a million dollars. I’ve got hair in my ICE, and my hair in on fire lookin’ at the human being. I judge is my luxury. I’m not as tall as I am, and I get downright small on the issues group think.
Now murder me some, the I now the poet, who can say I to anyone. Okay we’ve called down congress, hopin to find some expediency to keep tyranny from happenin’. I mean we’ve wrote a poem, maybe several, that ask government to be government and not make us bow down to nationalism and be a dictator over our lives.
No British government can force the crown on us. We are all we are in the halls of independence, and everybody who signed the paper put their lives on the line. Protest is useless. Give a government what it wants, total dominion, you stupid s.o.b. Let it take over Auroville and rule with an iron fist and remove the international scene if the people resist.
To point this out to people, to use poetry to stop it. Now let’s get on with it, movin’ Heaven and Earth to get our dogs. No, no, no, you can’t do that, ask the community for help, the man at large, the woman with the telephone. Get second jobs you fools and pay for your dogs yourself.
You selfish points of contact with the society in the bag. You are supposed to work, work, work and create no art, write no poetry, or go on your little round abouts and discover the community. You are of no value to us as a society, and you cannot ask for a thing. Asking the community for help with your dogs, you’re throwin’ pies in our face. Get your act together and stop asking people for help. So many millionaires on this island, and please don’t bother them. They’re makin’ money.
I think we’d need to ask the millionaire. We find some kind, nice, and warm, open to humanity, especially dog lovers, and we’ve gotten a lot of help. Thank you. But the thing most profound in all this mess, in all this criticism, concerns our way of life. We are digging a well into the meaning of life, and every decision is based on that. We live our lives to a spiritual plan and put that first. It’s not lip service. It’s the reality of our lives.
Even our dreams we hone in on God and seek to find the higher consciousness. We do not base our lives on survival, making money, or anything of the sort. We are not here to have a good time. The consequences of that are huge. We get attacked constantly. Jesus died on the cross, and you think it was for sin? Poor bugger got caught openin’ up God inside himself.
What’s this I say? Jesus was on a tree, castigated and torn, murdered, because he showed men how to change their lives in spiritual substance. He gave men and women a way to be free by breaking the bonds of consciousness and being born again into the higher type, and you think it’s a wish-wash hangin’ on a prayer, and you’re clean and good, religious for the rest of your life? A radical transformation of our whole life Jesus envisioned. Now shoot me for saying that he did not die for our sins.
So anybody we’re up against, as we try to change, base our life on this mountain, is either put off or keeps us at a distance. Few come inside our home or invite us to socialize. We are too weird for TV. I think you’d find us warm and very human to be with. We know you’re God starin’ back at us, a startling revelation we challenge ourselves with every day.
Now kick us and be mean to us because we are different from you, and you need validation that only your life is true. Have I said enough? I’m on time I think to be Who I am, a man in search of himself that his divinity time share wears, a man tryin’ to change in his higher type, and I’m doin’ that in normal life. I got kicked out of India.
Now say I keep my nose to the grindstone, work a 40 hour week, pay my bills, keep my mind to myself, unless someone asks— I’m talkin’ about at work. Can I be in America and do that, or is conformity the rule of the day now, and if I don’t conform I’m fired, lose my home? Will I be chased off this island for poetry like I was India?
Do you understand what’s your doin’? There’s a radical change of consciousness ahead, how we evolve out of this mess. There’s a new society of ourselves waitin’ to be born. There’s human survival in the balance. Let’s huff and puff and blow it down because we cannot tolerate change out of our satisfied little lives, and these two beggars, Don and Doug, we need them to straighten up and be just like us.
Now all you good people, can you get your head around that? Can you please? “Douglas at the Watering Hole”, another joy for understanding. It’s so true yes. All the whiles are looking at me. You raise your hands among yourselves. Why should I be any different? Another two weeks before bylaws are stated. A bunch of people, a bunch of people on this island support, are lookin’ at this way: I approach the bench, and there are good vibes there.
You’re on dissidence you’re on daily bread, you just take a deep breath and keep on goin’, confirmation code casting problems away from your human beings and comin’ to yourself for the love of man. Are there any other spring rolls? An island bright in sunshine, and all those puppy dogs— the love of animals too. Well they’re on our diet. Would if they’re off in time for us to renew the Earth? Yeah I know. I got a ways to go, but our dogs are our children, and I don’t eat those.
For the love of dog, they’re honored guests on our island too, and who are we but guests on bright and shiny seashores the power of Nature rules? What causes earthquakes? Well, we might have something to do with them greed takes the shore, if we honor our pocketbooks more. Help was health insurance, but would the Calusa listen? There are no more creeds for the Calusa to close. It was 30 miles an hour, their hunting season, who put other peoples out. I pointed it out. Pointed it out wind, we do it, no socioeconomic class below the poverty level.
It’s easy for me to say. I just got here. And they’re real deep in there so be good to them Harbor Island. Ed the reason an algebra drive, if you wanna get past your schoolbooks. We are representative creatures ourselves hook, line, and sinker. An actor plays a part, you and me, and you don’t save your soul. Your soul you find it and rise above yourself to Who you represent in time. Find Yourself to believe in. That’s good news and that One is all of us, islands and dogs included.
Now believe in hell as a preferable option for most people, and you really need to examine yourself, don’t you think? I’m just talkin’ islands. Now you hear them speak. Rise power to Nature, or we’re not gonna make it. Will you listen?
Well legalized in a fiery seal, we’ve moved mountains on Fort Myers Beach to get in there. Would you welcome please Doug and Donny and let them have their dogs and spiritual life? I need to put poems on it, this startup page. Rock me gently, rock me slowly (sing to Rock Me Gently by Andy Kim) for the love of the island. It touches yah you know and helps people along like us. Thank you island.
Come on Jim, we’re just here for a little while. We’re off to the mountains in springtime. Not now. When we put our time in on the island. Meaning we are open to the island. Can you gauge that? Just let it be.
There’s somethin’ Earth husband, but can we be accepted not being gay doing it? We don’t have to be gay, do we, to be two husbands and a wife? We’re celibate you know, but we don’t live inside an egg. I don’t like it. You guys are doin’ great. Good riddens. Well we’ve heard from the crowd. It’s nice to be accepted, ain’t it? We’re just a laboratory. I’m doin’ the laboratory. Could you stop threatenin’ to kick me out? I wuv you.
I suppose you can read the writings after the fall, but I was really hopin’ humanity wouldn’t fall. Is there anybody out there? We don’t have to fall. Now I’ve taken on the voice of the world, but who believes you can get that done? Now you know the spirit of Old St. Nick, and it shows by a red light. Build for sunlit paths the stadium of our Earth. Is that today’s date? I have found good shit to faith, but we’re at a watering hole, and we have no sense of each other. Love others as yourself, that’s precious to us now.
Sure, are you singing the song, or does your music just get drunk island hopper? Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues. (sing to Honky Tonk Woman) Let the big sheet guests know that the grassroots can do it themselves, move Earth towards our up stand. Now gotta get to work. You have a great day.
If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
How do we know each one of us is a liar? How do we know each one is true? We’re not criminals anymore, those of us thinking the worst of you.
It’s just procedure, the inhumanity of our times, despite all the books that say so: let’s get our humanity down to a science, the feelings test, the look in the eyes, the agreements made by hand and not the machine.
The ones who take our humanity to the test crowd us up upon ourselves the attitude of you are a liar until proven guilty. We would just make them mad writing poems on their behalf.
Just to get a library card you have to take a lie detector test, and you live right next door, can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt you live there, without paper-wiping the machine.
Oh God give me a break you’re playing trivial pursuit— the one who looked me in the eyes and needed confirmation they were true. / I’m as tall as grass, and this is buggin’ the shit out of humanity: prove you’re a human being.
It’s everywhere apparent we’re crowdin’ in on each other, and you have to prove the rule of the machine. Oh my God bylaws, and I’m a derelict for sayin’ so?
We are all too common now, the gateway to total control the way we are with each other. Can I sing this to you where we bake our bread? Poetry doesn’t have a shoreline. It’s unhanded. It’s not the way we have with books.
Now they’re for leisure time. It’s not to challenge us in our thinking. It’s not to make waves where we meet each other to take us back to square one in mutual trust.
How do we lift the veil and get yah to read a poem? Any poem points to the human being getting higher than themself. Can you copy that? It can be in an estuary along a manatee’s spine line so glad you’re there leavin’ them alone. You feel better highin’ their part with you.
Now give that to everything you need to look at. Home owner’s insurance, are you sure you got a poem there? It’s the poems that take on life and better us with ourselves, and you’re not whistlin’ Dixie. Wow, I’ve landed a poem.
If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
Under Fire Lake with the hatred that rules society. I’m on a mountain. Each new tap on the shoulder crosses worlds Snoopy rides, but I’m into the fire large out on the floor from all the spiritual dawns. You hear the spiritual advice at the Roxie? Knock it off. I’m a tourist information booth.
Everybody has left the United States. We are beached on a poem. There’s nowhere to turn. I’ve fucked up. I’ve called poetry in on its job. I can’t even show you the poem. You’d fight me for it. Guaranteed I’d lose my job, and I’d be homeless again.
What’s these great stakes? Snowball, we’d watch it rise downhill, until my boss heard about it, our not allow four dogs landlord. Can I call them on it? I can describe their preferences that would reach the limit at this poem. How much help they’ve given me would end there.
What I am sayin’? I’ve got a poem to knock your socks off, but you don’t want to read it if you’re a normal American fanfare, if you reach deep in your pocketbooks to exploit people, if you make hell the end of the game for non-Jesus people.
Can I get away with murder? I have to be careful what I say. I can’t open my mouth in poetry. I wanna see my dogs, and I wanna live again. Can you blame me for self-censorship? This isn’t fair. I suffer.
I do not understand capitalism. It won’t accept another way of life that makes sacrifice a way of life, sacrifice for your brother and sister in life, sacrifice to the better in you. We’re beached on whale, and even communism beaches there and our church’s regard.
Come on Sacrifice Capitalism, the laissez faire don’t believe in, can we change the world there? I have a hunch. Before profits we ask need, what’s best for the community, and can we have humanity please considered too? Can we grand the whole world in business decisions so that animals matter and the breath of our life trees, what about for our island Fort Myers Beach?
Sacrifice Capitalism ladies and gentlemen. Work out the details school children in role play, every business leader. The profits take a backseat to need. Can we get there?
Not even to a poem I cannot show you because you would not let me do it, be a poet on live, talk about the weather, and political Christians control the weather that bursts apart in our minds, and money rules the show.
I can’t spit out the juice. I’m not exactly at fault. Do you believe in poetry? It’s just somethin’ to report to your superiors? Now I need everybody to take a deep breath. Is this paper weight? A ninny of a poem, a filler for time shares. Wanna see the real thing? Wanna see it? You do? Do you thirst for it?
I’m on a bank of the Lord deliverin’ the paper. A big decision, and I’m not safe. Ask you another question. Glory did somethin’? Whoa my poem just went in the air. It’s gonna take some doin’ I rush this right through. I’m 33-years-old, givin’ out a lot of free material. They killed him. Damn, you got your hands on me. Do you get me my poetry constituents?
Fire in the yard, I’m gonna put some poetry someplace else, a whole nuther anthem from here. I don’t trust you. You’ll kick me out for poetry. You won’t even give me a chance to bring my dogs to town my poetry has made you so mad.
This is the price you pay for poetry. They take from you what you love. They make you know you must comply in the bowels of the truth and keep your poem from the public mind that would change minds.
“Faiths Are Only a Doubt”, or whatever title it bears, the poem I’m waiting for to set the record straight, is blowin’ in the wind. Can you capitalism that? Can capitalism show that?
If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
For both a ride on me, ageless against you, and the age of the suns, I’ll be thousands of fallin’ underneath my mind, startled by the springs of enlightenment, and the cards are in play but too grandiose for my design.
Involved in the history, I’m not chuckin’ wood, but let’s face it I’m this little man in a little play. Now look, even in my beach job parking lot the herald of swift event patterned life. I saw the nuances of things to come, and I was a bearer there.
You can’t grasp this in your hand. I held the Earth in impossible lilies. I knew it was a steamboat. I handled it carefully every damn day. Can you imagine sleep without it? It held me at night, working on its intricacies.
I saw the world comin’. It held my gasping hand in its own. It was a birthday kiss. It was a holocaust of things known. I did not put all my rocks there. I had bigger plans than Earth.
Can you starry enlightenment? It will do you away. You’re not there seein’ it. You’ve disappeared, standin’ right there in the middle of it, and you’ve gone father than the world.
I know this land. I can’t describe it to you. It’s taken the world away in perfect seeing. I am not sure of its moorings. My times there have been brief, but you hear it in my gifted speech.
A whole field’s to play, famous hotel, unknown to the world. Can you imagine seeing the impossible, a world where none is, sights and sounds that not be, thoughts where none be? A whole world arise from the Void where nonexistence is. What arises now?
I don’t know if I’m worth this. I don’t know if it’ll come, the springboards of the Earth a seer’s grasp, the passive in God’s hands, the no-self of enlightenment, the end of suffering for individual man.
The floodgates are open for this puny start, a beach bellhop boy liberals through the strong right-wing the doors of enlightenment, contentment and peace, where the wild things are. I carry that trailer. I tarry there.
It’s worth it, no firecrackers in the belly. Wish you that payment. I started looking at shiny objects. I realized there was a behind the behind in every word that’s true, when you touch base with reality.
I wanted a bridge. The vehicles of enlightenment silence the world, engineer reality to make the grand crossing. Uh-Huh, there’s a reality there enlightenment leads to, the nature of reality, where we come from.
And you think you’ve stalled on enlightenment? There’s a beyond. It studies the world for you. It’s its master design. The roads ever get deep. Another universe holds this one in ours, and we go on from there.
The All-Encompassing All-At-Once is the study of the game, and we’re on flat level Earth, the first rising structure to pick up This land. How can I get this across?
No sight can show you it. No mode of thought gets there. You can sit in the All-At-Once of the sun to use a metaphor, and there you can see the dynamics swiftly over your head in a secret passage to our Source.
Now bring enlightenment into the picture. It’s stills the world for you to get to the other side into the reality beyond the universe, into the reality that made us.
Glory in the spoken word of poetry. One bad dream is this universe to cross. Right this minute, can you get the sense of creation? Can you see it larger than the book?
We went past it. What happened? We got services hello Cape Canaveral. One accident, it’s gonna be close. Till Hunter gets back we don’t leave reality to the fishes. We get out of these beach suits, the mere survival looking for enjoyment, the group mind. I’ll be right back. And it was a hunter for spiritual dawns.
Can you see that out of the routine? Bonanza, we’ve established this fact on earth again. The pilot’s license, where we start. Oh my God my head on my shoulders, this is like the bus you know.
Me at work at the Roxie, photo by a kind tourist lady named Eleanor, taken just after writing the poem
If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
I sit and toil all day at the heart’s sky, laboring meaning into form that won’t surprise me with its despair.
I unhand time. It seizes me. I believe in miracles. It’s all a wonderful of the All-Look’s gaze. I labor to see that.
I can remember it happening long ago. All the sights I see hide God. Can you hide God? It’s a revelation in a day, the abruptness of creation organizing time.
I can see through the forms cloud my mind with meaning. That bus that just stopped there, it stayed a bus, but it carried mystery.
The people at the bar getting drunk next door, a singer sings their songs. I can’t find the music or the melody they become more than sharks wetting their nose on freedom.
I carry them in time, the little guy at the Roxie station wagon tourist information center, seeing past the show into metaphor’s play.
Bathing suits and butts don’t know what they mean. Their wearers are proud of them. They walk past smiling don’t look stirring sexual desire.
I don’t know how to do this, be a Roxie concierge and assign God to the role. I just mean somethin’ to everyone. My hand is ever on time’s grasp, “Yes ma’am, can I help you please?”
I study tourists tryin’ to find time a meal on paradise. Can I help you folks? Every meaning gets bigger than time and be what it means for.
Can you see that? Every meaning we look at wears the face of God, but every dog knows God is horribly attentive to things you don’t understand.
I will find meaning there. I will reach beyond the Earth and sit at the Roxie and be myself guiding tourists to their destination on Fort Myers Beach. Yah get me dog?
The podium on the stage of the Art Hall in Koreshan State Park, Florida, where the utopian religious group, Koreshan Unity, had its community, whose founder and prophet was Cyrus Teed. A visit and a meditation there inspired this poem.
If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
In dreams and visions my voices speak. What are you doing over here? I’m a religious nut. I can’t control myself I hear visions. I count the salesmen in my dreams. Go wake up humanity, I can’t count the number of times I tried. I can’t even get a word across.
This is not save the world vision. I mean like I’ll never forget that I made the wrong sort of mud pies. I write poetry to reach the world. I’m not a religious figure to charm it. I’ve opened up consciousness inside. There’s no barnstormin’. I’m a quiet place takin’ a mile. I sit and read muse, no religious fanaticism, but I answer questions bluntly and with sarcasm. Let’s see what stinks here. Your mind.
Flying saucers from outer space did not tell me a thing. I have not been visited by angels tellin’ me I’m the man. I don’t want to get in your pants. I don’t want you to obey me. I would like a better society. I would like to say things that mean somethin’. I would like to hold your hand, where you don’t look down on me. I would like to lift you up in your mind where you think and touch that heart of yours.
We have a society here growin’ money and hate your neighbor. The mind of us is not the best of us. Our souls are only beliefs not houses kept. We think each other wrong. We don’t hand out society so you’re a prized member. That’s the rich and famous. We don’t know how to do it, be kind to one another, and it’s not a social laugh, the uncomfortableness of putting each other down to get at time with one another, or at best we keep our distance from heartfelt communication. We laugh at one another and wear big social masks to prove it, or we’re tryin’ to sell somethin’ when fake that sincerity.
Who is vulnerable and sweet? Who lets their guard down and give people meaningful communication? Our minds are full of the kingdoms of ourselves. And I’m not sure how to write that. Would you group with me? I’m a group-minded person, and I give group to my human being. I don’t consider other groups human, the Democratic Party for instance, or those Republicans. Man I love everybody. Now you everybody’s get off the bus. I’m lying to my social lying. I can only tolerate certain people.
You disguised my I, and I’m sharin’ in your business I don’t understand. You’re not the biggest people in the world Americans. You’re not even tryin’. What happened to me? There are changes in consciousness ahead. I’ve had some previews. I was not someone you handled correctly. You didn’t know how to see me, and I just fucked up. I got intah trouble. The previews came as a start to help me feel you as I feel myself, even if you look down on me.
I saw humanity. I’ve seen the world as my eye, no, no, not its offerings to me. I am a vision of the world as we speak. We look out each other’s eyes, in the world being that we are, and we look out the eyes of God, who is the vision everything. It is possible to break free from single vision’s number lair, from one pole of consciousness don’t you see? I’m about that vision. It’s universal. We all share it.
We’re lost in me’s and the boundaries of our group. I’m so sorry this chain gang has defeated my eyes too. Can I help you some see the truth, reality as it is, no religious overlays, no scientism that can’t see past its own nose? Reality’s bigger than you think, and you have identity outside of time. You aren’t this puny self laboring on a hapless globe that can’t see itself and know it’s true. You’ve put on actors wings, and it’s a hell of a ride ain’t it?
And all your dreams represent things to you because you are representative in time. You’re bigger than you think, in household wears, not your peckin’ order. You are actually beyond the stars lookin’ through a thin pigeonhole at that embarrassed I down in time. We’re all naked down here, and pride just can’t seem to go with us to sleep. It takes coffee to perk it up, and who knows the master plan of the universe? Kids we are and kids we’ll be, until we wake up on ourselves.
Do you know a mature notion? It’s not here, in every man for himself, in the little world we’ve made, in the societies we’ve engendered that make you obey it like it’s a real group but blames its faults on individuals, a world that does not know itself.
Good works and technology, you can’t move the field there. We have consciousness to change, and that’s not a thought process. The consciousness changes into its larger type. I’m puttin’ this in your hands, the ideal for the ages, the thing we’ve been workin’ at all along. It’s not a messiah you see. It’s not wings from outer space. You do the change and me, and we get bigger than ourselves. Blinded I am?
A lot of things up there I don’t like to talk about. It’s a mess up there, and it chases your life. I’m an idiot for believing it. There’s no hope on this runway. I can’t even see my dogs. I lost all the people who matter to me. They’ve taken me out of India for a visa violation. Can you imagine Dylan?
I had several minutes to pack. Nithish came and we talked. Everybody was crying. No appeal allowed. They were stone-hearted men. The immediacy of the situation derailed me. I was not prepared to go. No one would listen to my pleas just a few days please. It was heartbroken. The dogs were so confused. Bruno knew. The pain in that dog’s eyes, can it kill you?
Who knows the price you have to pay for poetry? I made the Auroville Foundation mad, and they promptly got rid of me and didn’t even show their face. Their lackeys did it. I’m going to shoot them tomorrow, not with guns with their guilt. Douglas and I are on a plane to nowhere. We’ve been kicked out of our home. I am over skies now. I don’t know where I am. I don’t care to. I will never see my dogs again.
A few minutes to pack after a life of 20 years. No international rights, what do you do with that when your life-blood is on the table, all your hopes and dreams? Even Nithish’s parents cried, and we all forgave each other. So many crying people came to see up off, and it didn’t move a cop.
This is land’s lamb, a spoken inner voice, and it will even tell on itself. It won’t leave you alone. To trust it is to invite paradise, but hell is its price. Pain and suffering slam me now, and I don’t know what to do with that. More poetry please. Look I gotta get out of this ride. Most things have to be deleted anyway. I’m sorry. Look it’s over.
What happened? The government has cancer. It only has a gun. It breaks people’s hearts, is only concerned with its name, can’t see past its own nose, is a bear eating people. No one can call it on it. You get in trouble. They won’t let you talk. When you give them a divinely inspired poem they get mad, shoot the messenger, tear apart his family.
What’s the wasted gun, where I meet the government, or where it meets me? Hand that over a hide and seek. Show dinner now how much bullshit serves me on myself, or am I worth the life of this poet?
Plenty of people have no pride. It’s part of the hardship of life. Do we let then in? Do we let the haphazard come in? They’ll throw it open like they’re dying without it. They are not sincere. They’re trying to get over on you whatever they can. They can’t look you in the eye and say they’re sorry. They’re all over the place, a dim a dozen.
I need to know what that man’s like. Test him some. Come to his house and sit at his table. Is there anybody but himself in his banyan tree who are not satellite I’s of his solar I? Can he have compassion? Will he sacrifice for those around him? Is he a hope in humanity’s heart? Does he genuinely feel the presence of others? What does it take to make him smile? Can you count lighthouse in him?
I’m askin’ the right questions say you find an illegal immigrant. These are the criteria we live by, and he needs to show that. Can I get a horseman here please? We’re blowin’ humanity out of the water throwin’ somebody out of the country such as these. An immigrant’s status give the immigrant’s worth?
Look at yesterday. They pull a poet out of his home. Because I didn’t read his poetry. I listened to the bossman. We celebrate this. You’re at 1 o’clock. Put more tickets through. It’s all good. Put the police upon the table, and this defends a society of Indian spirituality?
Our family there were told that the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation, Jayanti Ravi, filed a police complaint against me for the past three poems on this blog, which are about Auroville. Four men came to our house, all in civilian clothes, and only one would show his ID, the one from immigration, whom it’s reasonable to assume that they brought just in case there was a visa violation, and there was. Later, since I was holding out in my house, the regular police came.
Recently Auroville News and Notes reported that the Auroville Foundation has brought 15 members of the special police who are crushing dissidence in Kashmir to do that in Auroville. I suspect at least two of the men who wouldn’t show ID were them.
The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi at the great Banyan Tree in Auroville on February 25, 2018. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Prime Minister’s Office (GODL-India)
From the paths of the Alone, if it’s any consolation, I alone this to you, the next lesson cheerio. The heart of Auroville is the banyan tree establish the Earth oneness drive everything. The Infinite of days, things are stepped back, exploded on the scene: I hate this bible; I have a schoolbook to cram down your throat, the rules and regulations; I just wanna have fun. The voices chorus. Just leave my damn trees alone and my vegetables— I’m sustainable Auroville. I’ve got some rocket science get yah, a whole lot of Sri Aurobindo— the Mother’s disciples’ Auroville.
It’s a land grab right in the heart of the city, and then the government comes in and makes you disciples of her all the way to India that’s the tower we find. It makes you want to pull up stakes, the whole registry. A failed experiment has come apart on itself. You can’t get there from here. You can’t even try. You just sit and wait for another dawn.
Where do we go wrong? The goodwill to continue. It doesn’t hurt anybody. It doesn’t seek them shame. It’s taller than a government and is not about right of way. It has no agenda to sell you at the expense of itself. It’s charitable to everybody, even the weak. It has no bad man. Goodwill lifts him out of that. It’s good to everybody.
The fundamentals of goodwill started this place, and all this was hijacked early on and has led to today, a fractured Auroville. Policy glows in goodwill, is meant for the right change, and it glows on our vegetables. People’s particulars glow in goodwill to come right themselves. This is not known among you? If you see the fruit you see the tree. Goodwill governs all, and that’s where we land Auroville to come back to itself. Are you going to fight this? Are you going to make it mean?
The heart collapsed, the heart of Auroville. It puts lunch in children’s boxes and go all over India. Get to every place on earth, the Auroville plane. This trap is completely in our noosphere, such is the spirit of this endeavor, the daunting human-wide of Auroville.
You’ve blocked me with anger and ill will from the anger and ill will in the very pocketbook of Auroville, the poet of your gifted change, the poet sent here to warn you. Just come and govern everything with ill will, is this just your blindness or your willful stance? Time of death, is that the lesson of Auroville?
This is the form of the divine. I report that they are only satellites. It's all fences regarding the sun. We can’t get at that meat in the matter. It’s too broad-minded you, and you will not meet us there. I cough this up now a poem rose in certain straits, but I’m not in a tin can. The availability of truth is relative to the participant, but I tell you sincerity guides my house. It’s what I lean on. I can get closer to the truth, but will you meet me there? Will you even try?
Oh my goodness Auroville, that’s the study sheet, that’s what we make our daily rounds: ever widening to the truth, ever widening to contain it all, to stand at last on higher ground, to get there, the reason Auroville was made. We localize human divinity here, and that is ever the strength now.
I attempted to send this poem via email to recipients in Auroville, but my email ID was blocked. I’d sent the previous poem on this blog, “The New Business”, to all the addresses that blocked this one. This poem and the previous one made the secretary of Auroville, Jayanti Ravi, mad, and she got me kicked out of India over it, personally.
In the stories of the Self, the eyes of sunshine, it’s been Armageddon. A small voice out front says no, it’s been leading to something big. I’m a hope, and a skip, and a jump away from that. That’s what I’m pettin’. You hear the ups and downs, the soliloquies harbored on the snake. I swear these muse. I’m tellin’ the story of God. I’m not coughin’ up Skid Row, but I’m giving you pencils and integers of everything, and I don’t neglect nothin’ out. We’re on a roll now.
I feel something big. I can’t get my heart out to show you. I’m bein’ pushed from the inside. Still I can’t see my boy or anything else big, like a sudden public share. I still sit in someone else’s pain and cry, anyone on the planet I hear their story loud, and join that with my own. I still see the pain of the world and not its bright sunrise.
What is this bear I speak of now? A coming tidal wave, my head upon the stake? My faith in God hasn’t reached that far: he loves me at high noon, I mean like in front of everybody, and I’m not a bad man anymore. I’m a way with him. Would you count that, or do you even see him right out here open fields with everybody? I do have that smile.
Do performance art, and I’m from there. Stay in your room, that’s me. Catch me, you are my god I announce things at the seriousness of a child, and I am hurt by one. Look at me, a fattening calf, I have golden reins. I don’t know how to handle this: you don’t put my face on. That’s how it needs to be done to God knows what. You cannot contain this. You think aliens wrote it, or a moved lunatic. Some of you know I smile the meaning of the word. Play your blindfolded world.
Did the boy end up revealing anything to us? He’s happy and content on the outside I heard that your honor. On the inside he can’t handle himself, is boiling in pain. These are irreconcilable. He can’t hold this script down. Those around him only see the happy kid. He doesn’t reveal himself inside. I am not a name on his lips, like he doesn’t want to see me, but he cries for me inside and is continually scheming to see me or make contact.
These are all along the lines of Earth. He can’t make it right. He can’t get up out of his stool. He’s frozen there, and he and I are frozen there. You don’t know how this hits me. It’s like a betrayal that loves me so impossible to understand. He won’t even call my name, acts like I do not exist, and he is finished with me. This just does my head in, confuses me to no end. I swear the real boy’s right there, but he is so earnest when he shows me his inside, especially when he calls me and cries— so much pain, so much out of control, with a rage that wants to blow up the world, and I’m supposed to believe him? I get so worried about him. There is no end to this. There is no issue from this as he grows older.
I just want to walk away, but I’m pulled back every time by divine love and my unmanageable love for him. He is so big inside me. This is all in my reality. Can you lose a child, have him kidnapped, and he’s winin’ and dinin’ with his kidnappers just down the street, sending you secret notes of ransom that say daddy I love you so much and want to be with you? This is a crash course in reality. Fuck this I want off, and the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and other divine bid me stay with him, and I love that kid so much I do.
Here’s the trick. Get rid of the pain they say. Don’t even operate on that attachment. Count the divine only you see in everybody. Don’t be forlorn. He’s comin’ back. It’s all in my muse, there or in the background of every poem I write, his name, his name, Nithish, Nithish.
Stop the forlorn? The ache inside my breast all the time, the absence of my child and his dangerous psychological situation, how in the world do I stop that or believe the divine he’s here sometime soon? This plays with me and plays with me. Are the divine devils? I don’t know what’s goin’ on. I’ve lost my child.
You my divine reader swing with the Gods with your heart-breaths, your beliefs, your unaccountable sum. Have you seen the Great Beyond? Are you a born object of God, what others now discuss as an occasional moment in the Sun? It would change your way of life, radically transform society, because it’s there at our divinity’s base. We lit triumph with our children to bring this home to us.
Do you know the transformation of the outer life into the inborn divinity we wear? When do we put that on with our children, a radical new way of life that busts out of the husks of the old, where children can be themselves and not the uniforms they wear, not crammed down society’s schoolbook, not made to think your thoughts but open God up inside themselves? I’m a motion on that, a mover, and can I remind you here of our high aim in your classrooms with your kids, in your downtime? Nothing more to say except my time with children is that, who they are in time and their inborn sense to go beyond it a revolutionary.
How do the boatmen row? Gently and in springtime. I’m saying my worth, and I’m not a cherry picker. I’ve seen the city up high and the elephants the grass ate, the thieves that robbed bottom and the song they sang when they saw God they now with children row. I’ve counted the stars and their admonishments and protests, their gifted speech to the poets of the time. It’s all a crocodile beautifully put. It doesn’t change us. It only makes us mean towards our brother when we find them doing wrong.
Who can translate poetry the Gods themselves can’t bore? Do you know the living Ray? It comes form other shores, and we hand it in our pencils blockchains we wore. Can I pencil this in for you with the freedom of the Infinite involving children, involving Light?
It breaks on us a new path: you’re the leader finally acting, and I storybook my little boy from a full moon today where we draw redemption. Outstanding citizens no, we want radical revolutionaries with every child we write. Do I dare you? Radically I write time. I am life’s sacrament. It won’t pull me under. I am not dyin’ here. Somethin’ climbs in my room I don’t know. It’s got handles on it, but oh what they are? I’m a space nigger in time. Maybe that’s coming to an end? Maybe there’s a zombie apocalypse, and I get loved right out in the open by my boy? I think it will take that for him to act, despite this poem I wrote. Maybe I’m onto better days. Maybe I’m big stuff.
It’s Armageddon folks, is that how this is supposed to end? No we just pray there, and we get up and run the world again I lit in the face of certainty. The foreigners would wait outside folks, and the lady is a figure on trapped. Startled by his brightness, I see the Alone in every tree. It looks out at me with my dogs’ eyes. It’s in every figure of self, looking out at the world with timeless eyes. I am not alone here, even though you keep me at bay. I am a figure of Self, and I break bread with the Alone as a matter of happenstance. You can’t rob me of that deep. You can’t even see it.
Fine, I will wear your society, but I’m on revolution’s springs, and I stand there alone investing in time an uprising out of it. Now read me won’t you please? I see the Alone in every face, and you are nothing but he. Crowd me now with your figure of him. I dance on this delight on Earth’s shores just poetin’ the hell out of time, and that’s the start of it, prayfully yours.
The muse gave me a message to you, the muse rise and poetry. I’ll see it in the garbage can, won’t I? I don’t know how to negotiate this landmine in outer things. Every world has rejected me. I’m a nation to nobody, dear reader except you. This is across the board. It’s unhand me. It’s blue and it’s red and it’s gold. It’s unbelievably tight.
What do you say to no, we don’t want to have anything to do with you, and this is the entire of the yoga you follow, the city on earth that’s to realize the human dream and be alright with each other? I get kicked out of there too and in the hearts of every man and every woman who could make it possible to see my boy again right out in the open his daddy again, and that anomaly is solved: why the divine in-look on me carries his name, and it is a phantom make.
I stand here confused. Even the halls of poetrydom have spit me out. I have no place in society. I live in some little island of bright, and Douglas and our dogs hold the world together. Our visitors only want something, all they can get, and they only come here for that. We have no friends here. We have no one looking out for us. We are here alone and that’s it. This squeezes you, you know? You don’t understand when humanity and the world mean so much to you.
I’ve painted this isolation for myself. Douglas has friends and family who care for him and provide, else we wouldn’t make it. He lives in his room and I live in mine, but our best-friendship has reached the stars, but can I tell you about Paul? A friend for all the years, who is in the world at large giving me e-blasts I’m your friend. When the world rejects you, you get compensation, friends for all the world, if you’re holdin’ hands with the world, if the world means as much to you as yourself.
I can’t bear this, spit on by everyone, and I’m just diggin’ my hole deeper with these poems. They cost me so much. They tear me apart I am so real with you. I don’t know how to begin to really say it, the be there of the human being.
Oh my God I want to describe it to you, so we can join there. I want you to see my humanity. I don’t want to be an outcast no more. Oh I wish you could feel that. God does, and he’s here with me all day in bright thoughts and muse on the edge of time. Would that you could feel that.
A meaningful life, that’s established. Come to terms with myself and terms deeper. This is all in the sky. I’m a blockchain. I matter to mankind. I’m significant to your notions of self. I’m good to all you haven’t seen yet. I love people and feel their oneness. I am not about the snake. I touch you with deep meaning. I am really there.
The world blows up inside me it has eyes. I commune with the Unknown. I’m about your rocket ship. I ease on you these things: the starling oneness inside us, the jumprope to God, everything we have to do with each other in our ballpark with children and the animals in the room. You hear me there petting my dogs in wonder and taking children to the sky.
I cook meals for you and attend to your business all day. I am not just a selfish wound. I have lifted up the race everywhere I look. I am dawn on you the understanding of poet, and here I am, in my most serious mood, standing up and be counted, because you’ve shunned my face, a rocket-man that knows we share meaning together, that knows my part in the world, that knows I can’t live without you.
You’ve kicked me out of your homes, you’ve kicked me out of your hearts long enough. I’m not a beggar at your gates. I’m the poet at high noon. It’s time we fly. It’s time we fly.
Harm's End 