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.
photo by the author, a chalkboard at the entrance to an Auroville middle school
Boxed in the corner, I hear You call my name. I last. I play the game. I know how to handle time. There’s a secret to it. Open yourself to the Invisible. Hold yourself on the inside and see the outside. Don’t just stand there and swim. Mount time the stadium you wear. Don’t be bashful about it. Don’t overrate yourself. Stand up and spell time the way you wear it. Give the voice to the ages. You want to be so sincere you spelled time for everyone.
It can be in a broom closet, but you’ve made that closet sing. I’ve been in dens of iniquity, and I found the price of the world that way. I found out how much we cost hurtin’ people. They wore the boundaries me. They were the hope that carried the world, and I just cried my eyes out when I discovered that. Can you embarrass God? I think I did.
Then I opened inside myself time and discovered its secrets. I had damaged time, and it didn’t punish me with it. The way of redemption is forceful and slow, but you can ride upon its back if you find redemption’s base: I am trouble I am, and that is a whirlwind, and I turn that whirlwind upon myself, and I open time and fate upon myself, to rack the tools up in inner man to overcome evil with good I’ve paid for myself.
It happened, and I grab you by the hand and show you inner healing’s ways. We are not an accident, and we are bigger than the wrong we have done, and you are bigger than having it done to you. We get trapped in these ways, and we make reality existence either hurting or being hurt, the clash of right and wrong.
How this fools us into little lives that can’t see past their own noses, and we make everything a sin, or we are trying to get to sin. How many can let a child play with themselves and stay out of it? Why you want to stop them or join in. Fuck let’s cut that asunder and just stay out of it. Fuck, you can stay here, or you can allow language to get a little tight to come into these narrow straits of time. It’s difficult to go past your moral boundaries, and the world needs to be saved, and our existence depends up it.
Children need to play with themselves, and men and women need to heal from sin, not punished, not beaten, not be made outcast. You cannot stop evil you can only heal it, and that changes it into something else. We can heal together. We can find the weapons to do that. It’s much deeper than a doctor’s office, deeper than a psychiatry chair, deeper than a religious conversion and any form of prayer.
We have to turn inside out. We have to get to the bottom of things. We have to open our consciousness and get in there to the secret stuff. / We have to get clean, not from sin, from even the desire to hurt and harm. We have to look at each other and know we are more than any me. We have to find the secret Inhabitant that sees out both our eyes, and we both see together that we are one through that gaze.
Man this is reality, who we need to see to survive, and it’s how we heal from hurting people and being hurt, but you have to arrive there not just in belief. It’s to see that Look. We wear time. It doesn’t bury us. It’s not our keeper. It’s not who we are.
The phenomenon is just a wonderful in the All-Look’s gaze. Wonderful we see that, and wonderful we see each other, and a panda is to us the moon and a dog the starry sky. Can you get there? All life has Eyes, and oh the splash of healing there, phenomenal.
Do you want to understand? I can give you all I’ve got. That’s the music in me. You have to be wide enough to take it and not stand in its way. We need to heal time, and are you gonna block that?
Oh look at that swing behind the throw up. It’s how you reach enlightenment my dears. Believe it or not a swing shows up in dreams when you approach it. It’s a force that takes you like the spiral, and you literally swing. How about that habitat? Nothing can get in the way. You’ve got to swing all the way there. Your life will proportion this out to you. You get closer, and you move further away, swinging back and forth until you get high enough to arrive.
Do you see how tall you are? The symbol of dream has shown you up close your waking life approach, time’s secret here I’ve shown to you. If you do anything, habitat this truth when it comes out.
Am I allowed to continue? Why thank you I appreciate that. The little swing of enlightenment people, how we tell time what we are.
I wanna restrict access to ether department material. I wanna clarify the sense of know. What is the irony? They never seem to remember they’re not dealing with science they’re dealing with train yards. It only becomes science when consciousness becomes involved. That dog exists. He points all the cartoons and movies. I’ve seen ‘im.
This is not just an English submission. And the way you must maintain, [sing line] inhabit this as if your life depended upon it. Disturbed her hand. Nobody knows where this is comin’ from, and no reader sees this comin’. Soon you’ll get bit and ice cream. It has the attention, [sing line] and you hit a basketball court, and it may happen to be our key.
Dobie you came to stop me why? Christianity does not know it’s interred. It thinks it’s the sandman. It hurts people, and it does not match reality. Fine, I’ll keep singin’.
I put everybody in bed with me so they can see change. It’s a safety measure. Where do we come from? Do we come from the trees? What happens when our pants are off when we were children? How angry does momma spank us? Are we left in a corner to rot? Is daddy a guerilla? Do we get enough to eat? Are we the brunt of everyone’s joke? How much pressure do we spend childhood with?
What’s mental health, and how has it failed us? Every scientist knows you put the telescope on heavenly bodies, the microscope on nature’s small dance. What makes us tick? The observational posts are not there. We’ve neglected our very selves, who we need to see to survive it’s gotten so big our department store.
Why didn’t we do this from the beginning, put all those training devices on us so that we know where we came from when a child comes out of the womb? Have I hit the most territorial seize the day? You can’t look in there. It’s the most agreed upon privacy in the world, that little family intake, by the time we got to where science was. I’m not countin’ cucumbers. I want you to look at this. We put our eyes on the workings of nature not us, as if that would change the world and make us live with one another well.
What was early scientists thinking? They established a model, and to get right down to the business of us, the making of the human being, was that akin to heresy? Now folks, what do you want to look at to be safe, how many items dance on the head of a pin or study the universe to systematize it?
Let’s be crystal clear. Science deals with the environment too and the damage we’ve done to it and the danger that’s put us in, but human choices made these decisions that have put us at risk. How self-centered they are, how monetary gain. Change the human change the environment so we don’t run amok.
Did I just spell out change? Why has the focus been on objects of nature, I mean in the intention of science? Momma don’t make your babies grow up to be cowboys. [sing lineto tune of the country songwith similar title] Well I lost the rodeo. Can we talk about small minds and violent natures that live in boxes? / I grew up in this milieu. I could say policemen or rodeo clown, or even schoolteacher, but the exceptions would pile up, and I can’t show you what’s happenin’.
How can I tell you we are a tortured device? We do not produce good human beings. Just look at the world. Do you know how violated everybody is? Do you know how mean? We are still guerrillas, even your newspaperman and mother with her child. We are not a functional society for the good of us. We have animal hierarchy and just let people die or rot in misery. We are a selfish lot. We are not our brother’s keeper, and we do not love our neighbor like ourself. We make war with him.
No gentil people would agree with me. They’re soft and warm. They treat their brother kindly. They go to church and pay homage to society, or they have the right liberal opinions and treat everybody equally. Do you know how immature you are? Watch yourself in transactions you get shortchanged, or where your opinion is busted, or you find someone you don’t like, or you’re brought up against your unconscious, and you watch it take over. You react and show your immaturity.
This comes from upbringin’, from where your family put their hand, their voice, their feelings, and their directed-toned thoughts. Now science would not say this. It’s not there yet. It won’t do that, look that closely at us when we’re in momma’s lap, in bed with daddy, at the dinner table bein’ reamed for somethin’ we done, or just sittin’ on stools with the family in our little private milieu.
We can’t put lenses there, and we don’t know how to get at that space and nobody knows we’re lookin’. We could’ve solved this a long time ago, but science didn’t see that we are behaviorally made. Put genes in the shotgun they come from behavior too, however many diseases get in the way.
Audible, we saw a destiny. It wasn’t religion. It grew larger than mankind. We’re in the apple in the trees now. We can’t get out of our underwares. We still slap children, make them feel uncomfortable with themselves. We breed disease. We don’t know how to handle children, and our world’s a mess because of it.
How can I get you to see this newspaperman, scientist studying nature? Who else would we look to for change? A politician’s a ninny-gag. The clergyman reads from a book and doesn’t see change except to be more Christian. I bring a new thing upon the Earth that we haven’t seen in awhile, as the poet lands Earth.
I bring you essays on living through my personal share that can see through the walls of humanity and show things even cameras can’t capture. I can show you the inner workings of our species, and the dice is on the table. I can hunt you in corners and show how this makes us mad. I can show the pathology of mankind and the rule book of disease that puts rabids among us, and I can chip away at your armor and show you your snakeskin, the hidden fount of your wrath, and you are as policy as the rest of us.
I do this with a divine eye that looks in on things, and I have found the hidden fount of poetry, new for the times we wear, a new font of poetry that speaks to us living men and women to bring our heights to the sun.
I am not a caged animal. I have a freedom in my room that walks on mountaintops. I am a receptivity to God. I hear the angels sing. Healing lives in my top drawer, and I let it out and sing to you the heavenliness of its smile. I can do more than that. I can rise the sun in your eyes and reveal to you the secret of the universe, the real person you are beyond time. I can bring you to the Silence that empties our race of all its cares and brings enlightenment into the room. I can hold your hand to the well of soul and have you touch base with forever. These things I have seen and been, where moments meet me in the well of change.
Do you see me there? Every impossibility meets its gun. I’m taller than you in that I have met my own impossibility and let God handle it, but I did not neglect my duty to pay. So I’m aligned with the times to give us living Earth. This is not a handmaid’s tale that robs us of our own divinity. We have it on our tops, and we will wear this one day in clear and certain skies. Time’s the animal we wait on now, but time is not our keeper. The hidden divinity is all across our tops in every movement of time.
Right on. I have some stature to gain. I want Silence to enter my room, but the world keeps swellin’ up. I tarry there. It’s not an impossible situation, but it’s bigger than I am. I’ll just put on my hat and let grace still me. It’s an office I wear, concentrating with no thoughts in my head bound for the Silence. I can’t get past the thoughts of the day, but I can ride the quiet for minutes or hours. It’s a warfare you know. They know you’re close, and the world steps in and robs you of your peace. Dangnabbit, I chase the Silence away.
They carry your name in the wind, the lovers of sky, if you’ve seen past the boundaries thin Earth. You are a flame shot up there that kissed the night goodbye. I’m hope in your room. Don’t let me down. Can you see me now? [the last verse came watching the movie The Summer Book walk its way into my heart]
We all understand tomorrow. I’m goin’ somewhere. It’s not dishes. I find my boy, bring him home to me and do something bigger than life right there in my homegrown. It’a about my consciousness and its see. I arrive my boy first, giving him healing. This is a new brand we will get good at so it can be mass-produced.
I’m in enlightenment shares healing my boy, a spiritual consciousness override. They’re dealing with a mass showdown. Right now it’s all black. Not even a pinpoint of light gives hope. It’s all gone, the whole save my boy plan, and spiritual practice has fallen by the wayside. I’m merely drifting to no ends.
I count my stupidities now, where I am half-crazy in rants. I sound good on a piece of paper: I’m gonna see my boy; I’ll get that spiritual consciousness again; it’ll all work out. I talk to his parents like I have the power of God. His parents have the absolute power to rule his life. I just make them mad and guard him more. You’d think I’d learn by now my voices are deceiving me; my voices are derailing me.
You’re in trouble. You’re on a stage. Are you there with anything bigger than life? The world’s not gonna listen to you. Everyone ignores your pleas, and your knowledge don’t turn anybody’s head. You just sit there and sing. This is the gist of life. This is how almost everybody feels the world. It’s impotence sings.
I’m a diamond in the hall. I’m on top of everything. I really know my business, and I understand the rise of the world. I don’t spit there. I feel humanity like it’s my very self. I can see the cutting edge of time. Movements I see, world shaping movements, that give me a great yard. I’m of few people see them. Now I come back to myself again. I’m not the stupid guy.
I have reason to believe my boy’s comin’ back to me, and I will put on the Silence once again. It’s evidence I can get big as the world in tellin’; I can wrap the hours around God, and I can make you examine yourself in your hands on children. You sit there and believe me, some of you, because you hear the angels sing in this poet’s gut. I’m a strong one you know, and I hold up the world an Atlas unknown. I really do it, take the ideas that change the world and transmute them into verse, one rocket at a time.
You know I’m there because I love you in that special formula that makes you feel me in the very place we meet, in the intimacy of a poem that’s got handles on it that bring the world closer to you as God sees it, dangerously in love.
You must have some grace to journey this day. It’s the vulnerability of a poet I give it, just role of bein’ hallelujah. [line heard sung to tune of Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah”] You doin’ okay?
What is the reality of love? Also whisper. Facebook items, the key story homes. Nothing else taps it. I go through generations. Hear what was going on, my falsehood— I will stop him from going into silent night, silent ground.
But the graces of life protect me, and I look over it. I’m a field study. I’m an alpha nigger, higher than perfume. I get into cars, laptops and computers, and go the distance. I recharge my phone with the very ground of being.
I am so low I see high. Humility has me by the balls. I come upon sudden mastery. I’m not about to endanger your skies, and I have the formula for world change. We can’t brag about it. It’s hard on all of us. I just sit here and die in my tin can, and then all of a sudden I’m walkin’ the moon to its orbit. I have the sun in my eyes, and I don’t blink.
I know the power of the world. I am sure God’s there. I see Him on His rounds. I am commensurate with that on the top of myself at dawn. Nowhere in my being reaches that but there. It’s a knowledge I breathe that I can’t get out of, and I’m a little man doing little things as the day wears on. I don’t pride there.
I’m never alone. My inside is full of deity. You better be careful. I’m on the standin’ line of deity watchin’ the world, because I know They’re there. We need to open up and see this in each other. We are both stations of God, you and me reader. I die there sometimes the knowledge is so heavy, immense. I just stand and take it and come back to joy before long.
I know the knowledge that made the worlds, and it tears me apart, because the power does not come to me to change one single goddamn mind, to reach out and be seen, heard, to bring my child out of trouble, to even know the wind of the day. I am a barrel of monkeys to what it takes to perk up the world, and I have seen the world from God’s eyes, in a station beyond the universe right here intimate with man, a few glory-filled seconds, long enough to know the origin of all my lives, long enough to know that I am He, long enough to look up and see more.
You would not know what I’m talking about. It’s bigger than size and measure. It’s what the worlds was made. I can’t get away from that vision now. Oh how we but little grasp our day, little doings we try to put in big pots, but I know the pot you see. Can I study you the stars? They are wonderful in magic, are the Heavens we adore, but they do not bring us to God, and it’s God on Earth wore.
Can I tell you about history? Knock, knock, God is entering every room on the planet to happen here. This is inevitability rides the sun, and the years are carrying us there, one by one, evolution’s minutes wrote. Are you startled to see this? This is not a junk call. This is the hypotenuse of time, and high and lonely seers, we grasp this with our hands and spill the beans to you.
Are you sure you’re puttin’ me on hold? I have more to tell. I’m gettin’ down to bare bones now. I’m showing you creation’s ways, and I can see the world arise right in front of me. Awesome, ain’t it?
What do we do with it? We put it in its place. We don’t let it get away from us. We know that every day can work out the formula of impossibility and solve it. I’m referrin’ to us, where we love each other and why, and how do we make that love true? It’s the danger of the years, love’s high gamble in the face of certain death. We lose each other you see, and that just kills us. We hold our loved ones we hold death. How’s that for a keeper?
What brings the salvation before we cross that gap between love and death? A spiritual consciousness that’s bigger than us, and I’m sorry there’s no other remedy. Love hurts. Enlightenment’s wings unheed pain, and we do not suffer the pain of loss.
I’m there you see, in loss looking at the spiritual consciousness. I’ve put it on a time or two, short flashes that tell me know it’s there. It’s surety that rings it, sooner or later.
Now laugh at me, slap me, ignore me; I’m on ground-field Earth liftin’ up the sky. Shoot me; I’m a real thing, a genuine who done it, made the grass match the stars. Roll the planet down, and I’ll ride it like a speaker. Yah hear me kids?
This is what’s going on, and God opens His eyes. Tryin’ to interview Pitch Thought about his character, you gotta draw the line somewhere. Ode to the line, a good friend to you, I think your security blanket, and I’m a top down answer.
I had a momentary experience. It’s all written. I had a visionary experience of every local thing on Earth realizin’ dream to catch up with God, and you had just told me look bread. Oh, I didn’t realize it was me. Anyway, look bread.
When you meet people, it’s said to have a book confession. Don’t you like camera? There goes my hand in. Unlimited her tools, creation mother. I am really serious about my tea. I don’t pick up girls at happy bars. I’m bigger than that. No I live and learn. I too must lift the curtain of worn-mind. I can’t go overboard. I have to go to somewhere. I can’t get there too quickly.
We challenge each other, and you hear that basket in my house: my gravities have to be steady. I can’t pull the plug on reaction until I’m right where I need to see it. I’m pretty much a whole too. I see my desires. I’m not habituating them, and the sex chakra says no. Hang on, to the orgasm out the top of the head I am loyalty tower. I guess that’s way I rise behind this consciousness and enter the Silence again.
Astronaut, I am that astronaut torn the curtain between Nursemind and Supermind. Okay, if I get mad at you for up us in Elvis, I should just poet you shut up. Is Goofy’s rig not bad for sellin’? I’m at the end of my ferter of dynamite. You are all young. It’s a bit of closed up there. Can’t touch the Gods.
It’s not me didn’t see. That’s some awesome shit. I’m half-grown. Did you bring it one possible? Here it goes. Been there done that, I need you to do that, then study me some. Boy do I look different. Comin’ here’s comin’ here; I tried comin’ here for basketball, and it left me singin’ monster. I think you should just go inside.
He’s finished with the pencil, he’s ready for the expense. The world is not there with any street signs on it, how about that? Horse please, you can’t see the world as a substantial form. It’s a bare outline. You’ve lost the world right in front of you. It kinda gets me in my brother, and everything’s silent don’t you see you’re in the background noise?
Oh God it’s principle arrangement. There’s nothing in your pockets. You’re not tryin’ to get anything. There’s no motivation on your own. The world is just there, and your oyster’s not in it. You’re stunned. You’re taller than mankind. You’re deep in the Silence, and you come upon God ways.
We’re almost there. Just shimmy up that tree and stop field mouse. I’m breathin’ hard, but I’m right there at the gun a pageantry. Don’t throw me away. I know the business, and I put two and two together. My little boy’s the land rover that principles enlightenment. He’s got the starry list, and I’m in my union circle. Is no ants get to bar. He gets held and catered to, healed, and I reach the 5th dimension. I’m a bullpen for he comes home tomorra. I’m in the Silence come home. Enlightenment is it, a shoulder's worth.
The New Atheists,
I remember them.
Forget it,
they’re history.
They’re rotten fruit,
and they are bad for your health.
Lies though—
there’s no answer
to life’s great mysteries.
They don’t know where to go from there.
We went up to the front.
We just had to break it,
their insistence on no God.
You can be kind to Him.
We have military wares
to bring God round to your table,
if you care to look,
if you care to find out,
or you can keep your hole in the sand,
forever trying to keep it from caving in.
You don’t doubt the world,
and it is seen to come from afar,
some storybook laid on atom’s ways,
something that arises from the deeps
from some unimaginable One science is playing with now.
Aren’t you startled?
The world is a cheat and hue upon your senses.
What do you make of this?
It’s real isn’t it?
How do you reconcile this with your atheism?
Wow, how big it all is,
how much beyond us.
Science is grappling with now
the funds of the universe,
from whence they came.
Absolute atheism denies this:
there is a greater reality beyond ours.
You’ve many-worlded your ego out there,
a good many of you,
in the speculation of alternative universes.
No cap for the whole?
You like your ego.
I’m learning to manage mine
towards a larger reality
it acquiesces in.
You don’t know the purpose of life.
It’s purposeless, gaugeless,
as you look at your stars.
I’m managing this
in Protonmail,
count the universe in my grandson’s safety,
to fulfill his purpose in time.
We all measure this:
to get ourselves in time
on the right boat,
believe it or not.
I gauge you there.
All your books and shows point this out:
you have something to say
to stand there and call us purpose—
you nincompoops,
God is not your purpose
I am;
I win the battle with time,
or so I believe.
Alright boys and girls I’ve mimicked you I’m sorry,
but I have to get a load across.
You are not exactly the wrong sort of people.
You just hum wrong.
You can’t stand melody outside of time.
You just want us to be right with ourselves,
in a wrong sort of way.
All your anger and spite flushes
your nobilities down the toilet.
Can’t you be nicer to us?
There is a lot in our harbor.
It gets stuck there—
no public viewing.
You can’t be counted on to change.
You’re not there
on the brink of change,
and you stay away from there.
It’s not your cup of tea.
Brain in matter’s lair,
you’ve sectioned off consciousness.
It doesn’t breathe.
It doesn’t even think,
to hear you tell it.
A consciousness larger than the body,
a consciousness that encompasses all bodies,
a Consciousness the ground of things,
has you looking on ice.
This is larger than your thought.
The consciousness of thought
can’t grow that big.
You’re rained in
by outer phenomena.
You don’t test your thoughts
in the lucid room of dreams.
How many of you even go there?
Where does consciousness connect to other bodies?
Every damn place on earth,
everywhere you look.
Your science can see this
if it would investigate that far,
if it would get there.
It just wants to prove matter reigns,
or some unconscious substratum field.
It blows up in agnosticism.
It couldn’t even admit a puppy had consciousness
just a few short years ago,
or a blackboard.
It’s not for edited materials.
Do not ever translate.
This is the divine word in a barn,
off-the-cuff.
It’s not that great, exalted word
you hear in Savitri.
It’s precisely written,
no need to change stories.
You’ll get it out of context
if you destroy its idioms.
This word occurs to me,
presents itself,
and I write it down.
I wait for spoken inevitability
so the next line matches
its counterpart.
I don’t write channeled writing.
I’m not a channel speaker.
This is divine inspiration
bottled up in heart
and served to you in poems.
A poem is a snowball
aimed to reconcile you with peace
hit in the head with peace.
I’m starting over
to take this ball to reality.
Man the sky smarts,
and the sea looks like a dream,
and I’m here on the land
a gopher dashing in and out of holes.
I champion reality,
but it’s too big to see.
Dancing in and out of holes,
where will you find me
a reality keeper?
A change of consciousness ahead,
from ego consciousness to another state.
I won’t be little anymore.
I will hold infinity,
and you’re there too
in the gift of tomorrow.
These are school days
for us,
and enlightenment is a graduation angle.
We all get there
in one lifetime or another.
That’s the field show,
where infinity replaces our I.
Now,
we are ready to put on our destiny.
We get bigger than time.
Our Godself who sits above
leans down
and grasps it embodiment here.
That is the temple mount.
That divinizes Earth.
You there,
yeah you,
come with me.
You’re a kid,
and I’m gonna open this up in you
a little portion at a time,
my little grandson Nitish.
What a pedophile can do with a child besides molest one
(one who doesn't molest children),
but you would filter this out too,
if you had the arms.
It’s God arranged.
Our souls meet.
You can only grumble.
You can’t break us apart.
If you actually tornado,
enter a magnetic field
your tornado cannot impede.
It’s God given.
The divine word,
it manifests in him.
I climb on this every day
and teach him meaning
to say his lines.
What do you teach your children,
to pass exams?
What more could you ask for?
You didn’t actually prevent me.
I’m the voice of America,
and I speak for India too.
I’m fuller than your lists,
and I’m here to stay.
Can I congratulate the future now,
on its job well done?
I had a hand in that.
I’m reading a timetable.
I been dead and gone
so far back you know we were underwater.
Hello reader,
am I lively today?
Am I in the compartment
that opened the door to infinity?
You know you’re reading me now.
I’ve layered explained this,
and back at Heaven’s gate,
my own time,
we thought we were giants.
You laugh at us now,
feel sorry for us.
We are so little man.
Turn around,
lose your friend now.
You can’t believe they are censoring him,
and people know what’s in the book.
They don’t even want to look at it,
They just want some better man to bring it,
preferably a lesbian seagull.
I’ve got your romance.
It’s with dawn,
and I’m a better man today
than I was yesterday.
I see tears.
She’s not happy with your father if he turned around and did it.
We have formidable papers to contend with.
There’s so much to climate change.
It’s Book 1.
We have so much unkindness to wear.
We can go all the way to a nuclear bomb.
We’ve got a tough living ahead,
not extinction,
not annihilation,
but a bed of nails upon our road.
There’s just so much to think about,
so much to do.
Let’s get over this:
we censor the wrong individual;
we blacklist the man that helps.
We do it dangerously.
Right.
There’s this field:
we are not free on this planet.
I’ll open it and see what’s deleted.
I’m a fence.
He hears you about kill people,
and the East are now humanity’s law center.
Okay listen.
I don’t really think
you’ll have super duper prices
to drag you down,
intolerable living conditions,
but it will be expensive.
Work,
I am working
to liberate this planet.
I think I’m one in a multitude,
but how many see the light ahead?
How many see we get through this?
That leaves only a few of us
who tell it like it’s gonna happen.
I’m sorry, you wanted a better arm than me.
You know how the divine is,
sends you the outcast,
sends you murderers and thieves.
I ask you ready?
Let’s not let the world slip through our fingers.
Stand tall now,
if you can.
We’ve been too long on the internet bashing people’s heads in.
On the phone
we look for better change.
You know we look for generations.
You know where generations is?
You take the cord and release it.
I left my parents.
I’m not bound to think their way,
act their way.
The lunar module
was our friendship module.
The moon landing lit the world
with our common humanity.
No other vanguard but this,
that the future holds,
will ensure our survival.
We share a common humanity.
That has to override every nationality,
every religion,
every people,
everything that divides us.
Nothing else works.
This is base 1.
From there we can calculate God and soul.
From there we can survive.
Will you please join me my friend?
Need to go back and dig to the community.
It’s buried under mountains of ill will.
This is destroying us,
the hatred on the inside of us.
What do you have to say?
You mind if I ask you this?
Ladies and gentlemen for Asiya talking to you right now,
and that smarts.
The voice I sing,
you can poke it you can prod it,
but it will still bear fruit.
I’m in the ditch about yesterday.
I habitat this sing.
I twelve it.
This keeps me going.
I love God and I love Sri Aurobindo.
Doesn’t let me falter in life.
This lets me abide.
I am a weathering rock.
I staple you.
I feel better now.
I’ve let the voices gleam
and pursue my life force.
The world is too deep to understand.
It smarts.
It’s a rollercoaster.
I ride it an adept.
How many of you know this mountain?
So and so for good measure looked at me today
half field of measure.
Give what type of brass pick him up.
Oh stand,
steady on full,
and 19 and motorbike.
That means it will get its due,
and we will heal with it.
It’s a stadium piece,
and it shows
you will see.
Meanwhile,
first magnified rock in about 20 minutes.
You’re not just gonna scour at him.
He’s gonna rock your boat.
In the midst of the trial,
he’ll go beyond your anger.
Name our library.
Library
and I’m not interested
in being the man of the hour.
At first just in diffusion
all this word,
then it fulfills.
Self-fulfilled,
is it what I really should be learning the forms of things?
I step over the forms of things.
I step over your stars.
I am your poet now.
The word was an action to take
to breathe upon the world its holy flesh.
The truth went into people’s homes,
stayed there.
August 2023 Military Memories Competition (on the internet site Together We Served)
Which song do you connect most to your time in military service? What specific memories does this song bring back for you?:
Aug 17, 2023, 3:43 AM
The Eye of the Tiger
It was a hot June afternoon at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, and we shuffled off the buses amid the yelling of NCO instructors shouting for us to line up shoulder to shoulder, our bags at our feet. It was a scurry; it was a hustle; we were hassled. There were over two hundred of us, not enough room for the place inside the gate we were, and so the line was a long L shape. I could feel my heart in my throat. This was it, what I’d been waiting for since I was seven and saw John Wayne in The Green Berets at a local drive-in. The Duke looked like a giant on that big screen, his green beret the headgear of a hero. At that moment, 1968, the Vietnam War was a nightly feature on the six o’clock News, small clips of U. S. soldiers at rest and in misery a staple of my childhood. At the movies it was just my dad and I, as this was a man-thing between us, and you must pardon me for such a masculine pronoun. He had wanted to join SF when it was being formed, or somewhere around that time, but he had decided not to reenlist.
The aspiration came to me. Sitting there absorbing every minute of that movie, it hit me like a self-realization: this was what I wanted to be. I don’t think he realized the weight of that in my consciousness because, when I told him, he looked down at me—we were in the front seat of a 1965 Mustang—and he smiled that patronizing smile adults give little kids when they are so earnest at being ridiculous. I was pigeon-toed and had asthma, a very small, little thing of a boy. “You know son, they select only the best for that.” He tried not to let on that he thought I was a weakling, but it came through in his incredulous smile. It didn’t matter. I knew I would be selected because I was the best. Of course I was. After all, I was the center of the world. At least that’s what my eyes and ears told me, seating my vision and hearing in the dead center of everything; smell, touch and taste put me there too, not to mention my thoughts, as you only hear your own. Those cheats—it’s a big and very disappointing fact of childhood that you discover your senses have been cheating you; you are not the center of the world, or, to put it more how it is: everybody else thinks they’re the center too.
One SF instructor was coming down one side of the L, and another was coming down another. They would stand in front of the SF candidate (we have to get one thing straight: the term Green Beret is for Hollywood; it’s called Special Forces, SF for short, and no, Rangers are not Special Forces). He would look you up and down and move on. The one that stood in front of me began to laugh. I became indignant, but of course I couldn’t show that. He said something like, “You, you want to be SF?!” I heard some splashes of laugher down the ranks. I burned inside. I think I said, “Yes sergeant!” but I don’t remember. It happened that I no longer had asthma, but I was super skinny and was still pigeon-toed, which really showed when I ran, and we’d had to run to get in line. I wasn’t the smallest in the class, but almost. The smallest guy had made the mistake of getting the SF patch tattooed on his arm before starting the Q course, and folks, you just don’t do something like that. He was hounded by the instructors until he quit, which did take awhile. I think he got to Phase II, as I remember him being hounded on a ruck march on Smoke Bomb Hill back at Bragg. At any rate, I don’t remember anyone standing in front of him and laughing on that fateful day (they hadn’t seen his tattoo, I gather), a day I’d be grateful for. It gave me the gumption to keep going. I had something to prove.
Enter “The Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor. It was 1982, and that song was at the top of the charts. Cliché today, back then that song was real. Incidentally, that was also the year the movie First Blood came out, and I saw it in a theater full of SFers, SF candidates and paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne. When the line in the film was spoken, “Those Green Berets, they’re real bad asses,” the theater erupted in the spurious noise of young men trying to sound like beasts. You know, that never sounds right. Anyway, right there in that line of men, just inside the gates of the greatest challenge in my young life so far, to win the green beret, I started singing that song in my mind. It was the part, “rising up to the challenge of our rival,” that really got me motivated. I have to explain here a little of the layered workings of our minds, specifically that mechanical part that just starts repeating things in the background of our conscious mind, especially songs, in odd moments. If you take the time to consider the moment, chances are it’ll be one that relates to that song, not in every instance, but in many I’ve found. Anyway, [1] it set a president. Anytime I got into trouble or wanted to quit, which was damn near every day, I either played that song in my heart and mind, or it just rose up in my mechanical mind playing on queue. I let it move me. It gave me strength; it gave me hope. I rose to that challenge with the help of that popular tune. I became a Green Beret, and you’ll have to pardon me for sounding Hollywood. It sounds so much better now than SFer in the early evening of my life.
It did fail me once though. I was in Robin Sage, Phase III. The G chief had given me the task of doing a recon before a body snatch mission, and that means kidnapping someone. I was a Sergeant E-5, an 11B2P, airborne infantry, and I was supposed to have a lot of experience in the field in my m.o.s. I had very little. I’d spent a year in the Horse Cavalry Platoon at Ft. Hood (now called the Horse Detachment), and other than being on a runaway wagon an hour before the Inaugural Parade for Ronald Regan, in Washington, D.C. in 1980, I hadn’t really gotten my juices going, and after that I spent about a year in a Pathfinder section doing mostly static line parachute demonstrations for Ft. Hood, never going to Pathfinder school, with very little actual field duty. As an SF candidate on a mock A team, composed of 12 people, I was in charge of half of the team. I was to lead my half on the body snatch mission, and so I had to go and get eyes on the target, alone and in the dark. That usually wasn’t a problem for me, like it was for many of the candidates. We as a species are so herd sour it’s not even funny. My dad had made me walk alone in the woods at night, or ride a horse alone for miles in the darkness, and if I didn’t do it, he’d threaten to whip me with the belt he had in his hand, not the best way to overcome fear, but I did get used to being alone in the woods at night. It’s off target, but he also made a slide for life over the pond we swam in (I was 10), so to get me to overcome my fear of heights. He was a serious man-maker, and I don’t cuss him for it, but, like I said, it wasn’t the best way to overcome fear, using the fear of a whipping to get me to face my fears. When he whipped me, he left welts on my legs and butt, and a bucking horse, the dark, or a high place were preferable to that.
So normally I would’ve been fine, but this time it was different. There was a Christian militia out there beating up SF candidates and taking their weapons. That news had sent a shiver of fear through our Robin Sage. I dreaded going out there on that recon, some several klicks from the G base. It was a mostly follow the railroad tracks sort of journey, and I arrived quite easily at the road the jeep was to be going down carrying the person we had to snatch, which was to be at 9 o’clock the next night. I hid in the bushes and mixed coco beverage powder, milk powder, and a couple of sugar packets together, making a Ranger pudding. It was my favorite thing to make out of a C ration, a comfort food that didn’t give me the comfort I wanted in that instance. I tried to shake off my fear, but then I heard men running on the tracks, and I looked, and sure enough, there were two men hightailing it down the tracks from the direction I’d come. It was the Christian militia looking for me. They must’ve seen me somehow. “The Eye of the Tiger” played in my mind, and whether I actually played it or it just played in my mechanical mind I don’t remember, but whatever the case it didn’t work, and I ditched the song in my thoughts, replacing it with, “Oh my God they’re after me!” And I got the fluff out of there, after a little wait to make sure they were far enough away. I think it was about 8:30, just a half hour before the scheduled jeep. I arrived at camp sometime later, relieved I’d made it, and I went to report to the G chief the militia were in the area. He wasn’t there, but one of his assistants was. “You idiot! That was the G chief going to town.” He had gone on a pogey bait run with an assistant. “You mean it wasn’t the Christian militia?”
It bears mentioning that, under interrogation by the local Sheriff, the SF candidate that had started the whole Christian militia thing had confessed he’d made it up to cover up having his weapon stolen from a wall locker in the 82nd Airborne barracks. He’d left Robin Sage and gone to meet some friends in the 82nd, to have a night on the town, stowing his M-16 in his friend’s wall locker. Big mistake. Someone stole it. After an initial, “What the hell do I do” moment, he concocted the plan, or that was how it was told to me. It’s amazing how such fine details go through the ranks. He had his friends rough him up some so to look like he’d been beaten up, and he went back to Robin Sage and told the G chief and his team leader, a captain, the big lie. Officers had recently started going though the Q Course with the enlisted, to make it harder for officers, who had up to that time gone through what was termed ‘The Gentlemen’s Course’. All this happened because a female captain had passed the course, and in those days, that was not to be, and they ended up failing her on a technicality after the fact. (For the record, I think she earned the beret.) I never learned what happened to that poor fool who just had to go party with the paratroopers. (82nd infantrymen were our OpFor during Robin Sage.) He did not become an SFer I’m pretty sure. What a gust of fear he stirred up, as I wasn’t the only SF candidate to swallow it, but I might admit I swallowed hard. Yeah, fake news is dangerous.
Hands down, the most poignant and pressing moment when “The Eye of the Tiger” saved my ass was back at Camp Mackall, at the end of the course, negotiating the infamous SF obstacle course. I swear to God, I heard a man break his thigh on the Dirty Name two events from there. The snap sound was sickening. My biggest moment of truth of the whole six months of SF training was a piece of cake to many if not most other candidates. You had to crawl 10 or 20 meters (it was miles to my mind) through a culvert that was about a meter underground, and it was full of SF candidates moving very slowly. I was so claustrophobic I could hardly ride an elevator without panic rising. I had a terror of tight places. There was an instructor at the top of the pit that led down to the entrance to the tunnel, and there wasn’t one at most of the other events. It seems I wasn’t the only claustrophobic candidate. I went down and looked into the tunnel and saw the men on their hands and knees moving slowly in it, just enough to make me hop back out of the pit and beg the instructor to let me skip it. He told me if I didn’t go in I didn’t pass, and here we were at the end of the course, and did I want to fail now? He wasn’t a jerk. Well, the only thing to do was play the song, this being the rival of rivals, and I made a conscious decision to play it in my mind; it didn’t just suddenly start playing in the mechanical mind. After a moment or so of letting that song motivate me, I jumped down there and went into the tunnel. About halfway I panicked, just went berserk, the men behind me groaning and complaining, as I’d come to a complete halt, but in my thrashing around, not going forward at all, I hit my head on the concrete above, and that snapped me out of it, and I made it through that tunnel. Everyone behind me was relieved. The feel of the open air after that battle, it did not smell like horse dung or the fear of night, let me tell you.
Our class was 6-82, the numbers designating the date, month and year, of that class of the Special Forces Qualification Course. When we came to attention as a class, we yelled, “6-82 WETSU!” the acronym meaning we eat this shit up, and I really did eat that shit up. When we first started the course, we were taken to an auditorium at the JFK Special Warfare Center. Some field grade officer stood at the mic on stage and told us to look at the man to our right and left. He said at the end of the course they wouldn’t be there. Sure enough, when we graduated, they marched us back into that auditorium, and two thirds of us were missing. I got a big surprise and made the Commandant’s List; the top 15% of the class. It happened too that I was called upon the stage to receive an ARCOM for becoming the Soldier of the Year of III Corps and Ft. Hood. I was so embarrassed, and the surprise on my fellow classmates’ faces, well, it didn’t say I was the best among them. The center of the world thing, it had vanished a long time ago. Every single day through that course I was sure I’d fail. I just racked up a lot of points. When others were kicked back in their tent during land navigation, let’s say, where we lost most of the class, I was out there doing it, every practice run. Pardon me if tears are welling up writing this. I am very proud to have won the green beret.
You know how it is as you get old. You look back on your life a lot. If I could pick a time to return to in my life, it would be to be back in the Q Course. That was the time of my life, and I only knew at the time it was tough, and I couldn’t wait for it to end. Isn’t that just so human? I’m listening to “The Eye of the Tiger” now, my headphones on as I write this. I’m in that tiger’s eye once again at 62. I’ve just published three books on most of the major e-book sites on the net, and I’ve stood up and spoken my own personal truth, with courage and sincerity, without hatred and anger, but I have little doubt most of you will not think me the best among us, but it’s in self-sacrifice that we are at our best. I’ve been seeking spiritual enlightenment for these past 30 years, and that’s not something you get to by rules and regulations, or even the one, two, and three of steps. You wing it in such a way you win it. Life is so short to live in line. You must understand that Green Berets aren’t soldiers who always go by the book. We are unconventional, and that means thinking and living outside of the box. SF, please don’t ever forget that. In any event, you can read my military memoir here, which is patterned after the service reflections of Together We Served, called An American Story: https://harms-end.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/an-amercan-story-3.pdf
[1] I’ve edited the story since the competition, from “I have to explain here…” to the word “Anyway,” and in the three other places the mechanical mind is mentioned in the story, the first later in the same paragraph and in the 6th and 8th paragraphs.
And anything like that means human.
No problem,
Lisa is fine.
Look out,
are you prepared to see a human dog?
What he told you:
Lisa is out and about;
her human hand
gave Mugu a lift.
This is extraordinary.
If we just
could accept this as true,
it would mean so much to us
magnificent.
Oh I get it.
We’ve brought humanity to bear,
and this has made it so much brighter.
This has raised its stakes.
We mean more because of this
monumental.
Well I’ll be damned.
Lisa’s got the world in her paws,
and she’s making it a safer place,
and she’s helping it survive.
Who would’ve thought of it?
Mugu
is A-okay.
She’s rescued him.
Can you believe it?
She’s rescued him,
and I’m happy now.
You’re good to go
Mugu.
You’re safe now.
Your journey up has begun.
You’re on your way.
The world’s a deeper place because of this.
This is computer heaven.
This is wonderful news.
We will celebrate this
as a milestone
when we are ourselves again
together on high,
as nothing goes unnoticed,
and what happens between two people can save the world.
I’ve recorded this.
Wait and see.
Oh my God it’s real.
It’s really real.
It makes you dizzy
just to think about it.
Can you grasp this?
She’s wonderful.
She’s there.
She’s a human dog,
and she’s got Mugu safe and sound.
How incredible is that?
Let’s see her come in
and show me where she’s at,
so I can love on her,
and we don’t
traffic our problems.
Lisa’s on the case
right here at the house.
She’s our guard dog,
so human she can help us with our human problems.
On our side
we have so much love and hope.
You don’t understand what hope means.
It’s what gets us through.
Reset boundaries
to enlightenment
and reset myself there.
That’s comin’ up the road.
Are we ready children?
We can almost see it now.
It’s right there in front of us,
and how wonderful is that?
Will AI better or ruin us? Will it take over or replace us? We go to things unmistakenly horrible. At bottom we blame ourselves. What’s the highest good have to do with it? That’s the poem. It will challenge your sense of good. It will blow the world out from under your feet, and I’m just talking read it. Who owns the official compound? The Helicopters. I’m a first provider.
Harm's End 