Me at work at the Roxie, photo by a kind tourist lady named Eleanor, taken just after writing the poem
This is one of the poems that got me fired from my job at the Greater Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce. The president, who fired me, told Douglas, who also works there, that board members and others were sending her excerpts of things I’d “penned”, claiming I was making fun of them.
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.
This is one of the poems that got me fired from my job at the Greater Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce. The president, who fired me, told Douglas, who also works there, that board members and others were sending her excerpts of things I’d “penned”, claiming I was making fun of them.
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.
Everyone feels themselves the maker of things. Alone in our body’s cells, we do a branded work. We have the secret knowledge inside, and we know the meanings of things. We just can’t express itself to men. We live in our longings a perpetual keeper unable to handle stuff, but ours is the mooring to the base of life. We know no one above us in this, and even ones that we worship, they’ve just validated ourselves. We can keep them. No one else can.
I am the secret front of time. The world calls my name human. I am a draft everyone wears in their rise to fame. I can’t control fate, and the talent show, I can’t grate my time against it, but I am bigger than lost rooms, or, if I am famous, for your information, I’ve been put there by all eyes on me, and the knife I am to everyone I don’t have to please, it’s sought within, and I believe mine eyes hold all true. I’m good to everyone even if I’m not good to some. I am the eyes of life and time in my living room.
Surprise, surprise, surprise, you are not the march of the universe, or anything tall and big. You are a worm’s crawl to our Sublime, and you would spit on the Sublime now, if you saw it. You would not hold it right. You would not even know it’s there in your tangible real.
I fight this battle every day, sometimes on a horse, sometimes in the slime of morose doubt. I can count my sins all day long. I can sit and bash myself upon the head for being such an eager worm. Here’s the kitten: I sit in the arms of the divine all day. My doubt is not to its existence. I have knowledge firmly there. I see the Larger like I take breaths, but is this a whirlpool, a jolly roger’s madness ride, that has no issue for a starstruck human being?
I see the Larger like I count my face, and it’s suspicious to me. It doesn’t count humans. Oh my goodness the proxies’ wear. Everything’s for the larger good, the whole. Individuals get trampled in the stampede, and we have to stand this, because it’s all a dream, even our suffering, and we are nothing more than sinless souls putting on masks of flesh for lifetime wears. The flesh doesn’t count. The soul does.
Great Department Green, is my soul in my beating heart, the exclamation point of tears in my eyes I fight back left and right? How heavy is this pain a moral wear, how real, fresh, and alive, and yet it’s cut asunder by ideas, by momentary experiences I’ve won and lost, by a look there a breath there on God’s heights, like you throw bones to dogs?
Feel me I’m real, the character, the mask, You’ve donned. I cannot last like this, a plaything upon Your pittance. I need Your honest answer to my living pain, or crush me now and don’t look down at me again (uh-gayn). The pittance, the role and show, how do we handle it?
Time is larger than our showroom. More power to yah God. What’s man doing there with his head blown off? It inspired an amazing journey. It manufactured an attempt to find another rule than suffering, point out joy as my hunting rifle. It’s my must now. It’s where I lay my head, oh time machine, I go. It’s important that’s a carpet, not a bed of nails.
Do you hear me breathe? I’m countin’ the breaths of all of us, and I am sin, hold me down?
This poem began where Death went off his office, and it revealed. It’s beginning to baby us, political allies. About exit, what does it reveal today? We’re not safe in our own shoes. Death is the beginning of misery.
I kill myself from the beginning I bet. It’s a written, a written piece of paper. Now I left coins of me, shekels, splashes of time, in your jukebox. They’re horrible. It didn’t work. I could not write my name in the sky.
Just how do you do? I’m small pittens for small fare, smaller than that. I just do your head in, don’t I? Come talk to me I’m worth? And you don’t. [The sound of laughter here] You’re the wrong people. You’re not wearin’ soul shoes.
This is message for the times today. We did love. We’ve lost some trying to get it in there now. What in the hell’s a matter? It’s the go car looking for enlightenment brown. Make alright boy that’s it cut the track. Just need to think your love can speak. [sing line] Freedom caring, just need to think. Some of it has been miracles in the room. [sing line] One at a shot have a world education. [sing line] He’s called a creature of a dying world job, little until tea tomorrow. You’re getting good at it. Leadership is worship. Bake down, ask about your soul technology. Become immortal.
Before my life was over, I want to find what my life was in. I’m normally ask that, if I haven’t given up on life. Would you lay with me [sing line to tune of song of that name] all over this answer? It’s not a field of stone. It holds us all in tight keeping, but it’s not the angel in the room. This is pre-God ladies and gentlemen. Can you hacksaw that?
I’m getting deep into society’s ways. I’ve just found Spirit, the first covering of the Unknown. It’s how we have being. It’s where we come from. A great big Spirit wears everything. It fashions God. We’re getting into preexistence ladies and gentlemen, when only the Formless arise. Can you imagine nothing as its sailboat?
What’s the rule of this ship? Don’t fashion nothing. Expand into global waters. Make existence be to pronounce Itself. Spirit is the first form it wear, that makes for us souls. It’s aligned with God, but it’s not God. It’s the soul, the basic who we are.
You can touch that ship in intimate contact, feel it ride the wherewithal of your day. It can take over and rubs your belly with sweetness, and you are charged for awhile with everything’s honey. You see the soul in things.
How can you do this in a concentration camp, in the worst hell on earth? That’s the soul of the ages in bare bones reality giving you eyes to see. Overcoming physical pain is one thing. Watching cruelty mark the Earth, devour babies, and we’ve gotten down to the purpose of soul: don’t let it in, the despair.
The soul can get you out of this, even in the midst of it's bear. We are a sublime soul range, God gave us Savitri reads, and this is down on earth. We tarry there. The soul is completely out of this picture, the whole fortnight of evil takes our ship. The soul is not responsible for sin. It loads up our day with the honor we give one another for being the Itself to Itself, and we feel sweetness everywhere and principles of joy.
This can break in on us in the hell we have made of our lives, or what others have made us suffer. It can even break the dull routine of the days. It can be in ordinary and lift on you extraordinary in every mode you wear. There’s no end to the soul’s keeping. It’s the basic ground of everything. It’s goodness rides the high seas. It has so much feeling for everyone. A plant is to it existence and little dogs so lovingly looked upon. It can hold matter in its hand, and you don’t want to bruise that ship either. You’re careful with everything. You have respect for the Earth. You are never out of love, even when you see society’s nigger, the people we are allowed to hate.
I can’t fashion this for you. The soul is a mystery you know, but I can tell you how to do it, reach for soul, let it in. You grasp it all the time in bridges you wear. It’s the most common thing in life, coming upon your feelings, and you feel so alive with everything, and you want no harm done to the aliveness in front of you. You feel the pain of the Earth, the sorrow, disguised as your own or your close neighbor’s, and you grasp your loved ones to yourself and be good to them. You feel ranges of Spirit right there in your baked pie.
A moment of eternity has looked in on you, and you feel sublime with the Earth. You hold them with your children, these feelings, or your best friend’s face, and you love to pet your dog with them like you’re petting moon time. You want to protect everything don’t you? And you put down your enmity for a minute.
Can we range there, take those feelings to the sky? We can sure get along there, if we try. There’s more to soul science you know, but I’m trying to get you started on thin ice. We don’t know how to handle the world. It ruins our day, even when we’re drinkin’ with it, but we are not left out of soul. It envelopes everything, and when existence can be anything, the soul is there first a witness, then a power to bring the soul round to things, and you just have to grasp it in what I’m saying now.
Is everything okay? Is everything alright? I wear society like a sleeve, and they do not worth me in it, not even my own kin. I am left apart by everybody. Few call my name. I’m treated well by Douglas and a few others. My child cannot call my name, and though he is living I cannot see him. I live in isolation, bearing pain. I look at the specter of death. I’m in danger of society’s wrath. It sneezes on me.
Have you ever seen the sun and the mysteries of existence? I’ve pulled them out of my pocket. I’m a crash course in reality. I write this to you now in poetry that has never been seen before, and I’m a black bag. Society won’t read me. It spits my name out, never calls it. I want you to recognize this pavilion. I want my boy back and safe, and I want all of you to be safe.
How can one man’s love change the world? If it opens up the eyes of God it can. It can bring us to soul. I rabbit there and show you soul moments, a day or an hour, I can see because I wear. It’s close to enlightenment’s springs, and I refuse this honesty just as much, feeling my pain, my isolation and the loss of my boy, who tells me he’s walking in a void, in secret messages, and he’s lost on himself no light he can see.
I bear these days not as a guerrilla. I return again and again to the house of soul, what I’m lifting up for you to see in a certain light that give us release from pain, and I love you there, even though you give me the cold shoulder, again.
Rushing through a path of ambulance, I participate. I don’t promote my own story. I hand it to you because it’s how I found out things. I’d rather not tell it as honestly as I do. This does not do me good. It gets me ignored, not a poet in good standing, and no one will promote my work, except a fellow poet in Israel I can count on to call my name.
Just at the home of mankind, I’ll have the day at some point, and I’m in your picture of what everything means. For now I want to pass ships. I’m on a mission to get past my own boat. Come get me please. You’ll like what you see.
the new recruit, the author (18), basic training photo
As a member of Together We Served, the largest U.S. Military veteran’s site, I recently participated in a monthly writing competition, my entry below. Each month they ask a different question, and there is one winner and five runner ups, and they give prize money to all. I did not even get runner up. Click here to see the winners of June 2025. (If it’s been awhile, you’ll have to click on the back pages at the bottom of the page to see the winners)
The question for June 2025: “Lessons Learned Advice: What advice would you give a new recruit just starting out their military career? Please describe any specific lessons you learned the hard way from your own service!“
Godspeed
Wow, the question:
what would you say to a new recruit?
I'd light 'em on fire
with the spirit of the ages
guardin' humanity wore,
put them in a soldier’s uniform
to bring them round to themselves
the substance of that uniform,
the evidence they need to survive.
The secrets of the army:
let's go up the ladder;
Abraham Lincoln,
look it square on.
He was the underdog.
Even his boots laughed at him.
He needs to get its specification places.
How tall is that lamp
if it’s minus airborne freeze?
Get into the business of the army.
You’re not there pullin' teeth.
No matter how wide you have come,
how much this will do you in civilian life,
be unto the army the soldier it needs.
Any specialty can wear Airborne.
Educational benefits aside,
that Airborne's a gig.
You have an opportunity to face yourself,
learn how you grow.
Test yourself,
be that Ranger,
that Green Beret,
if you re done with paddy cake,
if you want to climb the world,
go the distance.
I can t hold you close.
Everybody's their own mood.
Alright you're an orderly,
or a vehicle repair specialist,
or get into computers.
We need those too.
See how you tick.
Be an army specialist.
Let that uniform wear you.
Volunteer for field duty,
sleep out in the cold.
Your entire life will talk about this moment,
and you're setting its patterns now.
Your time in service
is an aquifer
you'll draw from all your life.
Test yourself.
Know your limits.
Repeating that's good practice,
the best boat you could drive
over your troubled waters.
It s what you're here for,
the army your qualifier.
If you haven't done it before,
challenge that square one of yourself.
What does it mean out of the hand,
this frozen,
your stamina?
Can you get past that point?
Can you teach people to do that too
when all hell breaks loose,
when you engineer combat?
I'm a survival parade.
This is soft stuff.
Alright commando,
what has she seen with you,
the modern warfare?
You can sure run amok.
You’ve done it,
you’ve bloodied corpse,
pinched some ears off
tearin' apart civilian lives.
You would not want to kill civilians
or cause mayhem.
Would you ever,
would you ever brush your teeth in it?
Human rights law,
and let that be your guide.
I found someone needed to be intensity through now,
the cutting edge of that battlefield,
goin' on main street
doin' the duty
that lifts apart your life.
Habit something else.
About time is it.
Bring the money,
payin' for the part.
Can you advance as a human being?
I don't think this is rank put on,
but certainly a sergeant
has peaked encountered himself
at the role of that rank,
and a captain has gone beyond
the pettiness of himself,
and yes ma'am you wear rank too.
You certainly do.
Yes sir you certainly have,
gut in the garden,
you pull out pearls.
Mirroring enough NCOs,
we knows we have to count Brunos,
a dog that rides shoulders with the army.
This will happen
while we attack
we give everybody a hard time
as if it shouldn't be
some stupid protocol.
Well you've got it.
Learn how to be
I'm glad to be here,
and I'm getting good food anyway.
Perfect,
you're in the army now.
It’s costly.
Wide the terrain.
It will shape you for the rest of your life.
Write All the Paper
Full of self-importance, and there being no doubt in my mind that I should be chosen as a squad leader, I went to the platoon leader’s room at the back of the barracks to tell him, not worrying about anyone hearing, that a ruckus was happening he should attend to. I actually said it outside his door loud enough so that people could hear it. I thought I was showing my leadership skills by taking responsibility here.
It was a one-station-unit-training, basic and infantry school combined, at Harmony Church, Fort Benning, 1979, and it had just started. It was after lights out, and almost the whole platoon had gathered to watch a fight in our barracks. After I told the platoon leader what was happening, a new recruit also but one near 30-years-old, he put an end to it, and we all went back to bed, and nobody suffered any consequences, and I knew they wouldn’t, he being one of us. All stupidity aside, my action really did have a lot to do with not wanting us all to be outside in the push-up position for however long the infraction called for.
The next morning my whole world changed. The entire platoon was seething at me with one word, rat, and it took days to even get my best buddy back at my side, although some weren’t involved in this, but I couldn’t see those people for trees. The fight hadn’t been a fight but a mock fight involving the new recruit at the top of the pecking order, not in anything to do with the army but was some carry over from the popularity status of high school, the most of us being just fresh from that. He was play fighting with his best buddy, and the whole platoon wanted to watch, minus recruits I hadn’t noticed they were so, how can I say, mature for their age?
There then ensued two months of day and night harassment and bullying that took on TV proportions. Begs, the popular kid, made up this ongoing role play. I was Frank Burns of M.A.S.H., and Begs was Hawkeye, of course, and his best buddy was Trapper, and others had other roles. I can’t give you the awful enormity of this. It was played out to the tune of me just wanting to kill myself. My pride in myself, and my self-respect, I lost one day when I just broke down and cried in front of everybody, like an eight-year-old, after being lured away from my unlocked wall locker so that I’d get in trouble when they told the drill sergeant I’d left it unlocked. But my crying only made it worse. Soon after, one night while sleeping, I got my hair filled with shaving cream, and it was so strange to me how that made its way into my dream and became a part of it before I woke up, seeing that culprit shrinking off, and I can go on and on, but the worst would happen in the cattle car going back to the barracks at night after a long day of training.
One night, Begs had made up a song aimed at me, and the platoon was singing it, and with so much glee, some popular tune I don’t remember that he’d ill-adapted to fit his nefarious needs, but you had to hand it to the guy; he was creative. I looked on in disbelief, just silent now with all the abuse. Then out of the woodwork and out of nowhere two normally quiet recruits stood up and put a stop to it, one engaging the mob and the other bending down and making me feel better, they both befriending me and remaining near me watching my back until the end of the course. Heroes there were to me then and still are, gentle souls but with sharp teeth. They went to the drill sergeant when we got back that night and told him what had been happening, and he locked the platoon’s heels and made sure I wouldn’t be harassed anymore, and I wasn’t.
I might add that I graduated ranked third in the platoon, won an off-base pass, but no one said a word, and in subsequent Jump School, I didn’t get a gig the whole time but had somehow been overlooked and didn’t get a white helmet, and because I saw how harassed the white helmets where, I didn’t say a word. I was soldier of the year of lll Corps and Ft. Cavasos, 1981, had dinner with that general more than once, and I graduated on the Commandant’s List of the Special Forces Qualification Course, 1982. Hawkeye got an inability to adapt discharge while we were in Jump School.
The moral of the story is be very careful in telling on anyone, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do, and I’m talking about those two heroes in that cattle car, not what I did, which could remind you of Major Burns.
photo by Lydia, Dylan’s mom, a representative photo: the you in the poem is you, who ever you are, not the kid, or not until he reads poetry
Shooting rifles into the air, that’s my electric snow. It won’t move men. It can’t get at the oil in time that damages us, makes us mean, and I can’t even make you feel better.
Headlong into our joys and pains, into what makes us tick, into together you and me, I come up empty of the value of our ship where you whistle on board.
I don’t know how to reach the other side, where I’m not a page in oneness, but I’ve crawled under your bedcovers, and I’m up against your body safe. Tell me how to do that.
I spill myself. I just pour my guts out, and darlin’ you get enough of that. You aren’t gonna lie to me I know I reach your bed or not. I can hold innocence in my hand, but I can’t rub myself with you with it, but I can’t find that spot on you you take it.
Dang blast it stars, it’s not all about the body, but that’s where we meet each other in person. I’m tryin’ to say we can still do the value in verse of the sincerity meeting you.
It’s the secret of poetry. It’s my hand in yours as you dally with your own. I find you there my sweetness givin’ your kids a bath, takin’ your dog for a walk, liftin’ your mind to the skies in anticipation of more there be. Oh honey boogers, can we swing together?
I think you’ve found your verse, Eastern were able to read. There’s a piss on your blacklist. Guess what ladies and gentlemen, a rowboat, and there appears on your ears deeper meaning.
You think you’re too weird for our TV? You’ve touched hearts, you know? But the chorus rings out— how did it happen? How did you do anything at all? [sing this and above line] It’s about how to hold life at bay when we’re in a very physical intimacy. My official model is bliss. This will be call master.
Harm's End 