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.