This video is a significantly revised version of one originally entitled “He’s Markin’ the Pitter of the Universe”, posted in February 2022.
Tag: spoken word poetry
I Dress That Link
I open up my face in Brahman. Something happened. Death lives on in each of us. Transient houses you made us feel. Can we all surrender to hatred? To relations with each other I bring the death penalty; I’ve packaged everything— we hear death talkin’. Now will you please listen? Give this say to an individual, not a group of any nation or purpose, some wisdom on control. Absolutely parallel balance, that’s the frame I put this in, on the level. Hey, you alright? I just put love in enemy territory. Will I make it out of here alive? You tell me. My God that’s balance, and let’s score you again just too worth it. And nobody walks me huh? It’s crazy but I go all out with this one, and your attitudes about how social change comes about, the best advice. I put my peril down and tell you the safe, wholesome fight for everyone. You will kill me here I know, if you break truth with me, of course. He tore down his statue of self-defense and said one big one today, Smile Records. All I want from poetry is my two front teeth. We don’t need a bully. The safest place for me to be is away from you. I’m volunteering at your stacked deck straight ahead. Unbelievable. Do me a favor, I’m telling you don’t press defcon 4. We’re at the Geneva Convention. It’s so shallow if I even make it this far. I want your hands off hate. We’ve got to get down into the bowels of society to do that. That’s why I’m chargin’ bulls wearin’ red. I’m down to this science, and you’re in the war room. You know what he give me? Imaginations control, nobody harm one another in their thoughts. Can you see that in your mind? This is hot stuff. This is how we pay for peace Emily. Do a father to father talk about peace with Emily. Her underwear got crowded out by someone in her neighborhood when she was seven or eight. The backlist sells cookies so much slower. She looks blind, hyperactive. Identify that culprit with me. No, identify with the culprit. I’ve just spoken the secret formula that will save the world. I’ve just spoken huge change. You have my record. It was a peace mission. You’re just the Alamo. Behind you, that’s not a peacemaker. Someone in the vestibules throwing us all to evil. They even have a financial access. Hide and seek the world demon. And pray you don’t see him. It’s a calamity. Donny, filter. Read the endless pages. I’ll have the affordable print tomorrow. I just copy movies. I don’t have a thing to say that flowers a reader’s turnover. I don’t get published in the sky. I just sit in my room and write long letters to humanity. I’m a shrill voice. I run the gauntlet of change. I slip and slide all the time all over your meaning’s worth. I Excalibur this now, put it in a format for you to use/see. [words spoken simultaneously] Do me a favor, huddle up. We’ve got no other choice. I think the Griffins and the McCoys said that. Did I just say enemies should speak to each other? Without contempt. I’m a Jew you know that. Don’t hate me for it. I’m a rightwing political bureau. I think we would even charity you. Do suicide and pull down your pants a pedophile; can you find anyone that doesn’t want you dead or not allowed to breathe? This is poetry central, giving time a voice so it can move us away from destruction and decay, so it can bring meaning into our lives, give sense to things, and it can get bigger than all that be there for us. It can evolve time. That’s the secret to noon. We are not worthy of its hour. We can’t get out of our sleeping beds. The world is on fire, and everybody thinks it’s as plain as day: horse rider you started it, you comin’ from a land seize, or the hideous government, or a cooperation bring us to our knees. We’re to blame for the execution, all of us, each one of us. You hear that? You’re on it all the time. A government oppresses its people, and nobody sees the people themselves flavor it. Take the litmus test. Who supplies them with the labor to enforce and to punish and to obey? The numbers wanting free, that’s not big enough to form a majority, is it? And even they oppress the numbers wanting to obey. Do we call them traitors? Let’s click on you. You would not accept my submission, would yah? I don’t even think you’d understand it. Pop goes the weasel. Another one bites the dust. [heard sung by Queen, line names song] Oh the poems I’ve wasted on you. Can I get at this singular event, I get taken in by somebody a poet speaking? I’m still dawn on social approval. Can we get at being human? This poem’s for you, a higher source for love, even when you’ve exposed yourself on TV. So filled our cabinet and left. I’m a garbage bag. I take only a minute to throw away, but take a minute and look. I’m sculptured, rounded to your looks on things. You know what you told me when you were a child, sooner or later— thank you for the Pepto-Bismol, so I can start with you just knock on the door and tell ‘em you’re hungry dammit, for the zest of life, more than someone who sucks their thumb; I need to know I’m safe, okay? I’m this contradiction in terms— that kid. This is the draw-sight for human beings: love everybody’s neighbor, love and support. Crazy kid, he loves a pedophile. We give it much more than it came from, call it much more than it is: I love you too honey child. You hear us now. We are not strangers on earth. We carry the world in the litany of our smile. That’s 12 o’clock high. That’s our love song. Is that child safe with me? We bring the world together. Do you wanna make climate? It worked for our team so much. Film this great, narrow, stone bed. To put them in the mall? Pathway. I’ll have a Rottweiler to try to stay down there to put you in touch with time. She just makes everything so real. She's down there right now, a love angle. Can we calamity this? That’s the nature of this paper, the spirit of love. And I’ve just waved a red flag under your nose. Control yourself, will yah? I’m not asking you to accept pain to a child or harm done to him. I think I’ve reached into your hate basket and pulled out the biggest one: you can’t put these two together and make a story out of love. Self-defense mechanisms aside, that’s how I define the world: and he’s safe with me. Now let’s look at your self-doubts. Is he safe with you? Will you kill him because you’ve seen him on this page close to someone who loves boys? Is this to make you feel safe? Look, let’s give everybody some room to breathe. Mighty this one; imagine this one— I have a missed call: no, it’s not a hateful love. It’s right on time: for all the world to see.
A Verb of Words
Who stays close to skyscrapers? A digital bureaucracy won’t look at my poetry. I don’t know what it means. Man’s critical college parallel universe was thrown into poetry. I don’t think no one reads him, even though it was a parallel universe. Did I just say that? You like mules that have no meaning behind them when they’re pullin’ a plough. You don’t like to figure out stuff. I don’t think you like meaning. It’s read it’s bread. Stop and take a look no way. How do we bring down poetry into the universe? My God the spheres here. I can make up a poem to please yah. See Dick run after Jane? Okay get out of the knob Joe. Meaning is paradise. It’s not your guttural wear. The random nonsense of meaning words, did I just say paradise? I’m at a loss for words. Nobody understands me. Critical Hank, is that self-meaning or self-pity? What do you see in an enemy? A reader. I’m all out of poems, and they just comin’. I’m really not doin’ this. Poetry has grabbed my testicles and is squeezing them. In silence no one can hear you scream. That’s what my mind dirts, when poetry comes in my window. I’m liftin’ silence to read it. It gets you all trashed in dirt modules, the mind’s interference, and unfortunately the more trashed the more you like it. I hear the mind there all readable by rationality. The mind likes symmetry. I put a poem in pieces where silence holds my poem. I’m tryin’ to say this pure verse, really, really from the silence, unadulterated by anything mind can give. Do you see me there? I’m listenin’ hard. Like I say I come in pieces. How do you value a poem? It’s meaningful to you. I don’t think you’re concerned with the silence. The root of poetry has no meaning to someone who looks at stuff all the time. Pure abstractness’s not what I’m talkin’ about. If you let it happen, meaning would come in time personal to you. It would hit you on the nose a vehicle trip. I can't get at this abstraction. Well can you let poetry breathe, take off your thinking cap a moment? You’re gonna be taken for a ride kid in the hit you of your stuff, in the node of your surround things. Poetry will take you somewhere out of yourself in the larger spheres. It has meaning all wrapped up in purpose, and we clear here. Poetry is a vehicle of meaning that will look at you in your underwear. Are you desnudo? Wow, amazing, can you come read your poetry? Can we understand your poetry together with silence? I think the reader’s talking to me again. Okay let’s say some hard words. I’m a stallion in Paris. When I look through my radar I see you. I’ve opened my first book. It’s just terrible. It’s just terrible. We can reader handle a book, shall we? You pronounce it better, that publication. They say I’m crazy. And a book shall lead them, trusting you. You’re open. You can definitely see the Sun. Get out of the way, and it will rain down upon us how to do poetry, be happy with what you make in a better way. Tall recognition of you’ve got some answers, the answer, despite failure. I put failure in. You got the Sun in your eyes. You can check and see if it’s there. Read this one. You’re having a beautiful Yahtzee surprise. Sit Sharma you have done. A poet has his word out. Shoulder gets a new test. Oh, this is getting down to me, the purport of poetry: be meaning and don’t expect anything in return. I think we just said the universe. How do we do that, get we and put it in a higher position? Yeah, okay, struggle to survive. Why am I gaslighting this? I broke through the crowd and I silenced the sound. They wondered if I was to blame for Mary. [This two above lines heard sung by Bob Ayala, “The Song of Joseph”] Into the divine, can I take you? There’s no struggling with, there’s no struggling with another person. Goddamn dude, it was nothing but I wonder why the U. S. has so many problems controllin’ that track right there. [line spoken at the end of a dream, a question I asked, a Green Beret in the dream, seeing a heavily armed train belonging to the Taliban insurgents, the track being representative of the field of Afghanistan while the U. S. was still there] Hey come here— wastin’ time. [heard sung by Dobie Gray, “Drift Away”] Just don’t bombard me okay? Go and see that as a blockbuster. [vision of having gone to the ocean floor to see the wreck of the Titanic] Harry Potter, you’re tryin’ to swim unlimited. We’ll be right back. That must be the phone. Now bring meaning down to time. I’m every bit in your skyscraper. Bring me down-to-earth, will yah? Get me outta here, a lonely meaning in time. I’m all about your reveille post. Open up to the meanings you have missed. I’m only there.
Email in regards to this poem, submitted to Poetry Magazine, dated May 18, 2023:
Dear Donny Duke,
Thank you for sending your work to POETRY magazine—and thank you, too, for your patience as you waited for our response.
We won’t be publishing anything from your submission, but we wish you the best of luck in publishing it elsewhere and appreciate you sending it our way.
Thanks so much for your support of the magazine. We hope you are as safe and well as can be.
Gratefully,
The Editors
The Poem of the Benediction
Their love of yoga, all that had to do with the divine. The divine is alive and well on Planet Earth. He sees you. Can you hear ‘im? Made out to be a man, but really She’s a woman, when you get right down to pictures of Her in the caretaker of Her smile. A Mother Might looks out on the world, and we are all the better for it. Let’s change some, become ourselves again, as children see the world: it glows, oohs and aahs; it’s bigger than us, and we love it. Gimmie the beat boys and free my soul. [heard sung by Dobie Gray, “Drift Away”] You know how it feels, so good to be alive. Thank you Mother. Now I’m dancin’ on this ice. I don’t know how to explain this. Oh Mother, that’s not You in Pondicherry, but I think we lifted You up when we adored her feet. I call on You through her, as our yoga sees the world, and in perfect deity fashion, that woman in Pondicherry helps. She’s in my living room. Now do we count blessings? I am in the arms of the Mother, you know? She fills out for me the way to move forward. I call on her some, but she is not my image of God. I mean like I do sit in her lap, pettin’ my Rottweiler, but I’m lookin’ at God. I can tell you a lot about deity. There are waves of them. I listen to them all the time. I mean, I hear them speak. I’m not always at their beck and call, and I’m choosy. I want those Sun voices way up there. They’re wonderful. They have our divinity all over them. They gauge us there, and they point us to God, the supreme all-encompassing universe that existence can light, and it’s a conscious Individual all things are. Don’t let my words get in the way. God is how we meet the One on its time. I’m talking big you understand. All this agency gets down to us, the level of existence we’re at— I think I just heard God. God will talk to you in spheres. That’s what divinity is for, and each time we mistake the day for the sun. Conversations with God are conversations with some deity. How much freedom to understand that. It’s yoga based, if you want to know the truth. We want to be God’s lovers here on earth. We want to know God here on earth. We want to see God here on earth, see God in everything we see, and one day, God will ride us who we are in time. I’m breakin’ in on barriers to show you God, and these words have failed I know to overcome that last barrier, to understand God real in this sentence. Can you light the fire of God? This is not a proverbial question. I’m askin’ ‘cause it hurts you if you don’t, hurts you in the fundamental ground of reality. You can envision no one cares. You can’t smuggle up to reality and say this is safe. You don’t know how to tie your shoe, and that’s lacin’ the world through your fingers a project that smiles. You’re just all bummed out because the wonder of it all is insufficient to pick you up and carry you along when you’re so discouraged you just want to die. And I gettin’ through? The fire of God is lightable on our time. It’s not a deity wear, some figure of God asking for your allegiance. It will burn off all this. It will be bigger than time. It won’t sit in an abode and judge you. It will with the universe hold your hand. How do you get there? You need God. Oh man I can’t get this through. People will kill you if you don’t, or the world will fall in. Look out, I’m tellin’ yah how to find God. It’s need determines present, and I don’t know how you make those conditions, but when you’re a pedophile they come naturally. That’s the price of your hate: I get God and you don’t anywhere near I’m showin’ Him to yah. God hates sinners, that’s a lie. Oh my little child, come let’s give you a bath. You’ve gotten muddy again. If you let Me I’ll get you outta there. And then ensues the relationship. You just don’t know God. Or do you? Come let us love together. High and mighty, I don’t see you in God. Take pictures of Sri Aurobindo. I’ve blossomed him, brought out his yoga to the ground floor. You’ll just think I’m lying, the worshippers of Sri Aurobindo. I’m golden atlas. It’s not Sri Aurobindo I’m seein’. You know the Supermind’s on the Earth. I’m tailin’ it in. Oh my God airplanes, now look at this one. It’s bigger than science. It’s a cash card. It’s the right way to do Earth. It’s not forced. It doesn’t have any artificial barriers between you and what you’re supposed to do. It’s not a morality flag. It brings a different formula into the equation. How big is this? It heals time. I’ve got roads on. I push reality through the basin of time. Shut up and go to sleep— a reader quibs in. Alright I’ll admit it. It’s the supramental. It’s very intense, but it’s the supramental has ahold of my paper. I’m telling you what the decision is: they are to occur the region. Heavy regions, girls we gotta absolve the conflict. You put it in right there, make the supramental the way we handle evil. We don’t just military our paper. Let me let you take a short look at that. And then I realized something: how does an honest criminal realize their mistake? You banish them forever. Agency, now to realize the Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s, yeah, exactly. Ensues the conversation. Are you gonna be prepared? I will be honest; I didn’t know your name Impossible. Let’s get one thing straight, surrender to God, it becomes possible right now. God is the answer God is the key, and the beauty is it’s not abstract. You get here to this post God is holding your hand. You can hear Him speak. You can feel His power. You can bask in His love. You can see Him in everything that touches you I do. Can we get anymore cornered than that? God’s got you cornered, and you can overcome any behavior. You can do anything. Okay those are the big city lights. Wow, I’ve just described to you how the world was won. Put that credit in my court, and let’s celebrate the world together. I mean not smoking and not being attached to smoking either. So this rare new style is upon the Earth today, and as my teachers told me, I put it there, I and they. Car commander, be the example to everyone. You have my permission. Individuality under the Lord, you know? I could do it before I found these lyrics, lost lyrics, as you won’t find them until that thing happens whereby one sees a poem and gets other people to see it. That mystery engagement with poetry, I’m at a loss to understand. Better thank a look, knock out reader. You know, have a nice day. Make civilian source, make civilian ready, I am on my way in the literary of my smile, in the literacy of everybody’s smile. Now here. Is this Heaven? [vision with this line of being in a narrow exhibition space and colorful, extraordinary photographs on the walls all around me, more colorfully extraordinary ones appearing as I’m asking this question] Your vanity has registered a trip. Oh excuse the mule, he’s a real piece of work. But I’m still comfort in, and I’m standin’ by at your house, if you ever wanna change the world you live in. How do you want me to be? How to dream afterwards. Tell this to the press corps: I’m proud of yah; you stopped killin’ people on death row (Oh BBC do you hear me? That was pressure to kill the Parkland shooter, who you wanted killed. Now on with the scroll), and got the news ready to see the criminal as a human being you care about even though they did somethin’. And there that’s my piece. Not from institution to move along: to auto-flash cooking that old traditional paper just reports on. We put it in user-generated content. Hello gatekeeper, keep up. Now there, I got your number, don’t I? Supergame, everybody listen to Hairy. He’s got somethin’ make us all better people. You out to lunch? Glad you could join us, as you left your sin and came over to help us. Why do you all try to help? We care, which means we grow up to care, and everybody learns the three R’s while they’re learnin’ this— the whole import of school, and can you tell me why not? Newspapers here, I gave you a way to make yourselves better. Read this to the public: let’s teach our children to care, and we solve all human-made problems if we care about everybody. How simple that is to see, how horrible we are blind to it, and science-based gets us there? Here’s where science fails: it can’t see God, and God alone cares. We’re done. The root of all papers, and I’m figurin’ time. What would you quib here, I don’t see the import of your paper? And if you said that I don’t think you care or even write home— a poetry blush, I mean practice for enlightenment. Do we all come along? Spiritual enlightenment, it happens one person at a time. I didn’t end this properly. Let’s end this properly. Okay where does your paper take us, so long and thanks for all the fish? At a human let’s all look Christmas. I mean study love as the foundation of society. Would I be talking to a brick wall?
The Music
A poem by Donny Lee Duke
Have you ever seen the field of lyrics? They’re divine emails to singers, songwriters, and the sunlit path. Yah hear ‘em? They wouldn’t mail you to hell. They come on wings of golden charm in a literary ear, all of them that define music. How easily they come rollin’ in a song. I’ve sideswiped a mirror. This just doesn’t sound right. Force, cram, there, stars. Oh my the lyrics, they need a water table. I’m about your engines of change. I defy the world. You hear that rock 'n roll? It just poured in. Even love songs lit it. And the 60s went on until we could hear the sound no more. It really rolled in then. Lyrics told us what to do: be kind to your brother; watch the looking glass; we don’t need no thought control. [heard sung, Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall”] And bands played on. They all got out of sorts. The sound of music [heard sung, R.E.M., variation on lyrics “You Are the Everything”] compensates for society’s hard ways. You know what I’m talkin’ about. Music glows. I don’t know how to tell you to control it. It’s your business when to turn it off, but don’t you want that bare reality boy, you and the world face to face? You’d use that too to come together on yourself. Bare bottom reality, where we find ourselves in fight, come on let’s get out of here to the tune of music. Use a song to fight? Let’s listen to reality. Billy don’t be a hero. [heard sung by Bo Donaldson, line names song] Thanks for calling in, but sometimes reality’s really fucked, you know? and you’d die if you didn’t take up arms, you and your whole family, a Ukraine emergency. You, see the difference? I’m loud enough. I just don’t know where to begin. I’m on sleaze mode, and I just ego the world away, or I’ve lost my tune in a bucket of melodyless words. I don’t bring you anywhere the skylight gets ahold of yah. I’m pretty and all, sometimes, but I’m awfully small with sharks. Today’s music, right? I ego the moon away. Give it a Grammy to correct the past. I’m on it— a racially motivated statement. Got a guitar, just give it your play in the do’s of yourself. Music will come rollin’ off your lips when you trouble time with words that bring the world together on your knee, and you’re rockin’ it to sleep in its ballroom, no matter how loud it gets, no matter how tune. Oh you open yourself in the rhythm of your ear. Hear that the light of music. [heard sung by R.E.M., “You Are the Everything”] It’s in your neighborhood. It’s comin’ upon yah now. Play that song. If you want to sing out sing out. [heard sung by Cat Stevens, line name of song] You hear music? Do you know how to listen? It’s a metaphor for change. You’ve got to get down there and do it, make it better, your crumble with the world. It means so much. Now you’re listenin’ to another radio program than the one you usually hear. It’s got music in it. It’s also got love. It doesn’t neglect you. It tells yah how to sing. It’s a motion on a better world, a better you, a better me. The music of rebellion, I’m talkin’ to it. I don’t think we’d leave out our own change, would we, “Dream On”? Unbelievable the way that song rocks us, so help us look at ourselves, rollin’ and all. There’s a distance. He’s fishin’ me off. He’s right. We can’t get at music’s purpose. I say change, and I’m puttin’ words on starlight. I mean heavy a world has deepened in music. It gathers us way beyond the song. This is experimental candy. It’s got loads behind it. It will refashion our world if we let it. It will get bigger than time. It’s in your inner ear. Play it out. Not so much what, what in the world— who dat? It’s not the Devil son. It’s glory. I’m not gettin’ a chair or somethin’. I’m gettin’ all this juice to dance my religions/relations. [two words spoken simultaneously] Teletransport investigations, I think we’ve just spoken easy money. Let me see your hand. You would have no hair on the palm if you want to be transported right with another. I mean it wouldn’t be about gettin’ laid that brings you to world union. Okay you’ve got my song, and I give it to yah for free. Can we mix music and money? A need to get rich can’t. Jay, I just want to say you ease my music. But would I let it lead the song? It doesn’t sing, a laboratory substances faces only. Unbelievable where we need to see the world. It’s in our holding hands. Without it eclipsin’ the world— it’s not at a pot party. Hey, you know, can we play that again, a thing on making rules? We dance here. It’s not how we make the world. We come together on ourselves, you know? World understanding dim. I got your door. It’s so sweet it’s in the air. It will be music, and then you sing, you sing the song. You remember me. I was so 60s. I brought you the right music for social revolution, to change the world into the peace that will change the world, into a love that will last longer than you feelin’ it, into a brotherhood that goes beyond race and people-kind. Let’s make this revolution happen. Let’s go to town on music. Open to your brother. To my brother? We need peace to make this music happen, to get this show on the road. If he’s got a different opinion than you he’s your friend. If she’s disagrees with you you still let ‘er in. You see my catfish? You see the food bank? You see where we all need to improve? This is a weird pharmacy. You actually give your brother your time, give your sister a shoulder to lean on, and they disagree with you what if? Oh my puddin’ and pie, don’t feel bad. Don’t get all upset. Give them the love on your corner without bendin’ the rules: keeping out of opinion debate and trying to convert one another to what you believe in. Opinion circles never give up. You have to give in. You have to, no matter what, no matter who you are. Yes, talking that’s not listening. After all man, we’ve got so much work to do gettin’ our hearing to hear past TVs and radio poles. We need to hear music. We got to right now. It’s the light of the world, so much paper to put that in your vision, so much time for you to see. Alright music industry, crank it out. Who we gonna work with, the major groups and singers? They’re hardly listenin’ to where music reaches us a better generation, the pop sound that joins reality to love. You are so romantic you love the world. It can’t be faked. I’m singin’ it everyday, where I play the world, this clavicle of house, this Earth of mine. I can get better at. I can improve. One final word: make peace within meditation the meditation begins. God it’s beautiful. How’d you do in your family? Come over here. Look’s like burnt out. They subset got on the phone. It’s gonna last you again. Your family is the arrangement, those people in front of you, whoever they are. There’s your boss. Oh history of change it’s here. Music will tell yah. Listen. Let’s get out of town square. Falls the world in, and we’re go back to music. Thought of giving it all away to a registered charity, if I ever get outta here. [three lines heard sung by Paul McCartney and Wings, “Band on the Run”] Come on Paul let’s go. We’ve got music to attend to.
Listen to My Dog
A poem by Donny Lee Duke
A guy that’s on the net. It’s on the net. I not been poet before. Spirits in my head and they won’t go. [line heard sung by the Strumbellas, “Spirits”] We’re shoppin’ for cars. Can’t find a one in your neighborhood. Bubble me up please. This is Ranger. I’m calculating science. You don’t understand the net. I’ll make a video to make everyone laugh so I can feel special inside. I’ll waste my time here. I don’t know what to say. Can you do it, make meaning out of worth? A horrible commotion the whole damn net. Where do we put it? I’m sure some voices rise. Some everywhere. Let’s not fudge with it. Let’s put meaning on there. Can you mean somethin, make us all grow, like we mean something? Where is it the meaning of this paper? I think you’ve thrown me away. The net’s speaking me. Can you hear that? Can you show your inmost self on TV? Just one rupee sir, and we’ll have taxes of course. See that net? You won’t be a voice talking. We won’t take you there. Do I wanna go down there, to a person’s imaginary poet world? Nah, I read a few lines. I think we’re good. What’s he gonna say, meaning? Throw that poet away. I’ve got an appetite for stuff. Many rules gonna get broken for the net value. You are not prepared for its worth. You just think it’s ticklin’ time. It’s like a Ouija Board. Who moved that dial? Quagmire. I think you read me loud and clear. Now let’s test this boat. Too heavy for us. I know; you can’t do it, wash your hands with Jewish genitals and save the world. See how smart you are. You can’t get your head down your pants. You need to go really, really, slow. That book will scare you, Between Jerusalem I’m Sorry. Read that book. It’s an understand the world book, not just human genitals. In this book they’re just redeemed. Can you see Jerusalem? Oh my God he’s on paper, the Internet, the whole world. Green light, oh we can go back and change something if it didn’t work. What am I supposed to do, with QAnon and that whole Trump’s the savior mess? Let’s get them meet the press and it’s we lose our democracy if they’re voted in. You okay? It’s in Nature to stick up like that. This is a long poem, exact words. Give it with me, the meaning of life. Back them I didn’t realize, well, your anxiety’s gonna come up. I’m sorry, give yourself a tight squeeze. We’re handlin’ the book. This poem needs a picture. Who Hannah? She’s a lovely dog. Leading a dog to where we belong in time. Must be some book, leading a dog through time. You got my wolf? I think it’s your wolf actually. Anyway read the book. Is that my measurement? Yes sweetheart. This person is solvin’ the world. You got that Houston? Which asks you to stretch. It's not fun for The Family Guy either. Small snake bite— you won’t get away with it, no matter how you read it, without it doin’ you some number. Enjoy it; this is the end of the world that doesn’t know its origin. You’re headed for a disaster, oh world we live in, if you can’t bring this book to light, or its ideas on some other page. Look I’m talkin’ to yah straight. No other book has the power to bring you to change. You mean it where this book is bound to you, and that’s a doctor, the one you need right now. You think I’m exaggerating. It’s all in the book, and I’ve just mentioned time. Can you see that far? I don’t think you’re even lookin’. History has a book party. I think you’ll find this book in its Rolodex. You’re not listenin’. You’ve watched too many commercials. I reader am in the whole thing. Read it and don’t look back. You want extra-terrestrial contact I should ask. I’m not talking about the one in spaceships. This is bigger than words. Okay talk to the world the very nature of its see. I’m showin’ you that extra-terrestrial. No other formula has it quite to this degree. You understand me? The nature of the universe will talk to yah in large poetry ships, and the prose will just knock you sideways. All in a day’s work in that book. You take it from here. Anyway, let’s call most everybody: what do you want to do when you grow up? You want to be mountain and feel pregnant with the world? Excellent, I got it. I got your book, and we’re right here in the lighthouse Pondicherry U.S.A. to the spirit of India, where star wars meets the Earth in Israel. You got that car? I’m drivin’ it down the street. Hop in. We’re happenin’. We're leadin' a book through time.
The Whole
A poem by Donny Lee Duke
Wear Time
What texture is your vision? Is it otherworldly? Is it right there on the spot with everything? Does it see layers? Can it figure out God? Do you see the reality behind reality, see that in everything in reality? If you only see yourself standin’ on nothin’ but atomic molecules, do you see anything else? There is no beyond the universe, nothing bigger than any conglomerate you believe in? Do you see a beginning and an end to the concept of forever? Do you see the forces behind the universe making it all happen? Do you see yourself in that a representative player in a chess game with the ‘figure-it-all-out’? Do you see meaninglessness as only existence? Do you see the meaning of the stars? Can you see any bigger than your little figure on earth a humpback in immensity? Can you see yourself in the microscope of time? Can you see what you’re here for? Can you see what you have to do? Can you see the meaning of this poem? Can you it see it plain and clear? Can you see I’ve shown yourself beyond time? Can you see that’s your spot in evolution, the journey beyond anything stars made, the journey beyond the universal envelope we’re in? Can you see that figure here where you’re at, a body on earth? You see a lot, don’t you?
Wear Light
There is an honesty here I can’t seem to capture. There’s guttural, bold-faced reality we don’t know how to adapt to our meaning lives, to our ordered square one. We’re faced with it everyday. We negotiate. We stand on our head. We dance and sing. We don’t know what to do about it, make it so it works where our lives face the world. We just stand there and gaze at it, not knowing what to do with it. It’s just a great big mother fucker, too much little in our lives, a mountain highway that falls from grace. It’s a little bump in the road that threatens existence. Now I talk to you about what we’re doin’ here. Can we redeem chaos? Can we take the barrel of the Void and fill it with God’s wine? Can we take God’s night and make it show the world? Can we be what we are in knowledge to where we are beneath ourselves? Can we be real man? A little piece of God has fallen into the light. Will it ever see again it is God? I heard you on the stairway hum an old familiar tune [heard sung by Bob Ayala, "Silent Witness"] with the yoga of the world where God has been, and we’re reachin’ there, you know? And I’m with yah buddy.
Abdicate in Light
I seem to see myself apart from everything, a whole world unto myself. I’m inside myself watching you out there oh world events in time. It’s special in here. It’s got grand in it. It’s incredibly vast in the fingers of my see. I can’t make of it the right thing to you, the all, the everything. Can we call that for later show? I’m a principle list in the summation of my see, and I grapple with you the same. Equal integers on this strange planet, we broker a see. Incredible, isn’t it? Is that the only way to see stars? Can we get out of this? I’m holdin’ it tight in everything I do. Can you believe me? Oh my God I believe you. I really, really, do. Hear me? We broker a universe in the substance of ourselves. We are so down there, you know? We broker a universe you know. Get my wings, and I’m free space, and I give all that to you. What’s wrong with this see? I’m not there yet, but I’m standin’ right beside you. Okay I’m blind. I think you said that. That’s time’s worth.
High Performance
A Donny Lee Duke poem
I'll Show You
The sweet graze of the stars, children enhance this; children block this. We don’t know what to do with children. We crush children, make school their only occupation, even if it’s tribes. They’re not supposed to do that, hitch school to their star. It’s mean: so much force is used to get them to do it. They’re whipped and beaten, and you just think them frauds. You don’t know how they are with you, look up to you for so much sustenance. They trust you. Is that the only way to solve this, with violence? You don’t know what that kid’s thinkin’— “You’re a bad woman Miss.” Can you see yourself? Do you even care? What would you do if I told you Nitish is a star in his own right? He has the Mother’s calling. He’s been initiated by God. He will grow up to be a poet, and I’m not kidding you. Dyslexia has him by the throat. You can’t seem to believe that. You don’t even know what it means. Is that so funny? Dyslexia’s a large size. It’s where kids go to school. They don’t know how to behave themselves. It’s all a mystery to them: why can’t they do better in school? They’re just dyslexic children. Is that imagination to you? Why do you hit him? Is that your way with children? You can’t do any better? Why the hostility towards him? He really tries, you know? And he really cries. Can you hear it? Nitish is ugly now, like he’s some derelict child. He can’t do the simplest things when it comes to letters and time, numbers and what they do on the page, school facts and memory power. This is dyslexia. It’s not a mean child. Can you grasp this? Now let’s look at Nitish as who he will be when he grows up. What makes you see failure? You see his soul? I’m a grandfather that does. How do you know he’s going to fail? He’s bigger than you. He’s captured a star already. Just take a mousetrap together and don’t worry about it. Just take here your punishment. You’ve got no right to hit him. You have no right at all. Now be a proper teacher and be good to that boy. You know I love that boy. Believe me, you hurt him, and please stop. Hand it down, wean it down, hand it to yah. Ask that boy to come closer. You see a captain there don’t yah? Never mind the school. Please be good to him. His burden is the world, you know? A poem walk off with him. You can history sing it. You’re gonna see him be the very person children believe they can be. I too had the world on my knee and turned it wrong. I was like you and thought I did no wrong. I couldn’t grasp its significance. I’ve learned my lessons early and late. I have to power you if I’m going to power me. It’s something we all do together, be reality human beings. I pet my dog and say why. We need a better world, don’t we? That’s the story today. Are you listenin’? I am here with the Eyes. See them? Are you hearin’ me? It’s the star point of Heaven’s gaze, if you want to know the truth of the matter. Now buckle up. We got a long ride to see the Sun.
Humbly and without reservation the teacher in question apologized to Nitish after reading this poem, and his teachers are learning about Dyslexia, but we still have a ways to go, and so I am not naming the teacher or the school and don’t want, don’t need, any outrage from you. I think this is the very first result I’ve gotten in an art action, that I know of at least, and it is so very close to home and so very personal, the most appropriate and needed kind of result. Thank you Mother.
I Understand It
A poem by Donny Lee Duke
He did. He figured it out. You haven’t seen it. Oh my God no one has even read it. What is your name? A holistic reader. There’s a lot of censorship of the ideas that make the world. The world ran out of culture. It couldn’t see itself. It didn’t care. It couldn’t come up with itself. It just stayed where it was. It didn’t know where it was. It had no means for improvement. It was small and intimate. It was huge and dim. It didn’t know where to begin. It’s stomped on itself. It raced ahead. It lagged behind. It wore horns no one could grasp. We sit here and stare at it today, just confused by what we see. This was self-taught, how we reach out and touch the world. It didn’t come in the papers. It wasn’t on the Internet. No course in university taught it. No book could grasp the whole. It wasn’t in speech. You couldn’t find it anywhere. Everybody was afraid of it. They thought it would bite them. How to reach out and touch the whole came from inner experience. It was deeper than the world. It really tested your boundaries, and you had no choice but to surrender to its process. It had your very being at heart. It schooled you, showed the inside of everything. You never saw it completely. You just handled it with care. It would eat you alive if you affronted its mission. You understood it was a Larger you. You saw it dream a nation of particulars. It gave you vision, spoke to you with the inner voice. You held it close to you and processed its thought into the unknown. Great the days lay the seat-point of vision. You just studied reality absolved in yourself. You had no way to communicate this to men, wherever you came from. No poem would read it, no prose spell it out. The visual arts could not express it, no drama act it out, no dance routine show it, even in its living room. It was beyond itself. If you got life that need a poet, I’m your subject right here. Now go floss with the rest of that form. You’ve left something incomplete. If I just listen, I’d find it out numbers me. I’ve encountered a different verse. Its form is amplified by common speech. There is the line. Give me back my lunch; I can do nothing with the way it works. See there you’ve been taken in. Now tell me I’m a Great Lake I’m ready to play. Now tell me I was murdered. You know I just heard the news and wrote it down. I’m a five star hotel, and I’ve got the muse in poetry form. I mean inner voices speak. It’s the divine muse of poetry. How raw and off the cuff. It has every name involved. It won’t leave you alone. Now say I’m silly understanding prose. All is said to top off the mountain, to be a governor unto itself, to let you fly in the word. How could that be? I don’t think I got all freaked out about it as grey mountain. The poetry of redemption lands here, the upper money. I will just let you fuck me, give in. I’m about to be homeless. That death I was telling you about, they take my sky away from me. The ground of silence eats me up. I become a Silent Mind. Realization proves my calling. There’s nothing else to realize: we’re in love with the whole thing, each business and everybody. We grok this. It’s standin’ on your shoe. Great the papers play in the immediate seat of your room. Welcome to the lost word. That’s the sound of silence, a preface to Enlightenment. A shortcut, I can write it down. What else can we do? Headphones surround— you’re hearin’ the interior music. You’ve opened up that wide. Wrap up some milk left you some poetry. This is your ticket. For you it would be nice right here: the grinding of the dog. I’m a farmer. This is my business. I keep business spoken. Pinecones have left to a civilization. What are you guys? TikTok describin’ the universe, time of missed a keyframe and causality. Whether you want to or not, the movie echo system. You said what? Reality in this page. I’m gonna listen to yah. Good mornin’. I’ll loosen poetry I’ll listen. Find that way offshore. But Enlightenment seeks. Ask her about the whole thing. Did you tell ‘im you’ll take the horses, make that your team? Not that saying but keep outside science, and never cry wolf. Read my full exposed. My hands are tied. Make me feel better. Make me feel so much better. We’re in this cut; at least our voices aren’t. He actually science. Cosmopolitan I understood it, no doubt. He’s right in front of me. I could sing up here for hours. I have everything I need to start the revolution. I’m a purpose. I want a bigger world. You can keep me out as long as you can. I’m not gonna die. I’m gonna change consciousness. Look me over. I’m real. I am so very real. You can’t get around me. It’s reality I’m showin’ you, all holistically laid out. You can dance all you want. Reality’s not goin’ anywhere. It’s on the way to you, even if you don’t want it. Reality’s comin’ for you. Hold your head up high and embrace it. A poem with your name on it Marginalian. Poetry works I can’t ignore. She’s busy, clean up what happened: showed herself a calloused human being, with no feelings at all for the man everybody hates. There is no Whole behind the whole— she shows you what that does to you when you believe that. You don’t have to love everybody, and you can pick and choose. You don’t even have to treat them human. Your ethics just come from ground zero, and you make ‘em up on the spot. Okay Riviera, let’s see you explore your consciousness. Can you do that? Wow, have you blocked things. You will not be happy with yourself on the other side. Maria Popova, live up to your ideals, and that intelligence of yours, taking it to some encounter on the inside you see the whole, you see it all means somethin’. Put your finger on it, and let us hear your own source material. Has the jacket, a lonely packet, of quoting the right material. That’s starfish. It says more than what you want it to say. Okay I’m outta here. I have to let you everything, be a work in progress understand human. I’m reminding myself of what I’ve been taught. You can have this. It’s a seer’s wisdom. Handle it with care. They were talking about y’all are choosing the apartment you’re gonna let this seer in. I’ve reached out to so many people over the years. A big no they wouldn’t even tell me, usually. They just read me and tossed me aside. Put up his banner, that’s where we go. Who stole the cones? You know it’s not coming. You’re here for the Rachel Carson. Write someone back. You never had more powerful that was the end of the game.
Can I Apprentice You With Love?
A poem by Donny Lee Duke
But in your routine, what is the foundation of the whole thing? It’s that the technology? Can you point to God? What’s happenin’ in your soul’s process with God? Can you get your soul to speak? Why always this: you channel beings of a particular order? Can you grasp the inner voice, hear that on the inside that your record? Definitely more personal, it’s got you at heart, a wide variety of vision. You’re hearin’ it now. Now let me speak some about capital. You are not Nathaniel Hawthorne. I hear no substance in your words. Do you know the power of divine revelation? It knocks you off your feet, shakes you up, makes you confront yourself, and is really, really, poetic, you know? No convulsions needed. We can actually open a gateway in people’s lives to hope and possibility. Wounded by something. Now let’s go to the doctor, and the young body can open now. Closed it, closed it earlier, channeling the soda pop. I’m sorry, that is not your next of kin. I wouldn’t even call it divine. I’m not gonna be used by things that destroy you just tell yourself. Go get the basics a little deep man: we’ve whooped it up on stage. The eve of creation— you’ve hit the run around with a big referral to some starfish. It’s got ears, your soul buddy. You have to ask it for help fervently, ardently. Your soul rises to the surface over many lifetimes. I think you are where it speaks. I offer you solace in the form of understanding. Come with me. Stupid me, I am not a perfected master, not in Realization yet. I’m sorry I sound so heavy, so blow your tops off, so glory in the hole. I get in trouble tryin’ to help. People spit on me the big bad outcast. Oh have I sinned, and so no one lets me speak. Will you?
The stage the poem speaks of Tonight on Television.
I wrote this poem, or my muse did rather, which also serves to introduce the poem I’m currently disseminating, “Tonight on Television”, to a person who channels, Asil Toksal, after watching a video on YouTube where he channels, or says he’s channeling, the archangel Ariel. The video here. I watched the whole video and left this poem both as a comment after it and in an email sent to his site.
Harm's End 