Selfie a few days before my 65th birthday, which is today
What is a hands-on prayer? Full of spiritual philosophy, do this, don’t do that, I won’t bring you to lunch. I won’t even put my arse on the toilet.
Oh you offended seekers read on. Can I hold God in my hands the stadium of this moment, in the guttural process be? I don’t know where we begin.
I can’t find my soul the laughable, lovable life I’m having. All love is taken from me by death and weary, and I can’t find joy on the sun. I can’t even find life.
I have split my mind with silence ineffable, sat for a moment in that nameless place beyond Earth’s ego.
I have even climbed the heavens in a seconds’ ride to the space beyond stars and sat in my true self.
I am not here to complain of God and soul. You would not believe me anyway. I want to meet God with life can I? Not in a station up there, but down here in living flesh that does not appear an illusion.
I want to mate time with life, and it doesn’t hurt or get boring. Fill me with woods now I’m clean. I’m on your dresser drawer vying for true spirituality, not plaudits, not wise sayings, not moral admonishments.
I wanna set myself on fire with the living God and be down to earth and warm, not disdaining life, not rejecting it. I want heaven on earth. Do you?
My voice recording realized ages ago a tale had to be told. Pardon me.
How many have drowned and seen God? It’s not in your litmus paper, fireballs from heaven. I’m just this silly nigger among you. I’m not allowed to cook at your ashram or say grace at a potluck dinner.
What do I do with community? Everybody’s competin’ for the same pair of eyes. It’s not pronounced yet, but these are God’s love eyes. How many hypocrites wear ‘em? I just wanted the field to say.
I can’t get over myself. I feel the claustrophobia of Don. I feel the pain of the world. You market too. I know it.
I’m stuck in this little person having bigger thoughts than I am. I have seen beyond the veil, but I walk the creek and cry for my dog, where she put her paws.
I crawl through the fucking hours just like you, listening for a laugh. I’m not a kingpin. The joke’s on me. I hug the hours what is this shit worth? But I want comfort from them you know.
I caught God in a torrent of this space is mine. I plant my feet and sigh God, wonderful to have this world guarding moment.
This just eats my lunch, the walls of the present moment that won’t let me see the eternal now. I’m stuck in flesh. I cannot climb out of this shell. I cannot get beyond myself.
You laugh at me and point fingers, or feel the compassion the sage feels seeing truant man, but I hold commerce with the universe, and I am crowded with deity on the tip of my pen.
They holler at me in the world and grab my hand, and I know the stench of devils and feel their blind assaults.
I hold my head up high in the pit of night and do sadhana. I call God down into my house and know the wretched I have been, and it’s with bowed head and extended prayer I cry to the heavens God. Come bake with me will you God on earth.
Such limited character changes development. I’m not a rosy fire-kingdom. My sadhana is my pedestal I balance the present moment on to keep in those thin parameters the divine name only mystery speaks, a firm and fast bewilderment at the thoughts of God taking shape in the world in front of me.
All else assails there. All else comes from there, or I am robbed there by my own insufficiencies. Why do I play in the yard? I ask zero that question and grab myself by the balls and move on.
I’m in line with the Earth, and I don’t throw the Earth away to meet God. The Earth is myself, and we are all climbing out of the Void.
I hold identity with the Earth, come rain or shine, and that’s how we form Earth, together, encompassing the world to find God, reaching out of the universe to bring God here, hands-on God, the eyes that we look out of and the hands that we use.
Needs spiritual experience wants the dragon response back to his house. Who’s pic do you follow? Hands on fate now. It’s time to get past lawsuits.
You just comb what was expected of you. I challenge the world and then pick my nose. My overdo’s, my out of dates. [vision with the line of Sri Aurobindo seated looking at me in one of the last photos of him taken]
photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1950, courtesy of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
He’s got a principle pair. He’s bigger than skylight. He’s my guru, has a leading voice in my poetry, is the principle behind my music, is who I look to for divine change.
He’s open-minded and warm, and I been with ‘im a long time. I do inner contact sadhana, right before your eyes.
I don’t sit and guess upon the world. I get my hand held, but I’m a rebellious student. I question and accuse, lift mine eyes to the heavens and tell the Gods off.
I give him a hard time. I hold him to his task, am livid and rude sometimes, but I love him dearly and follow him on nails.
You don’t know what’s been asked of me, the role I have to carry. There is no forgiveness among men, nor mercy for being left out in the cold.
I am principle love. Not a person has it really. I put you to the test. You only care the pool of men. The love of God you distain, yet I go on, wearing the vermillion caste mark, the scarlet letter.
You would be jealous if you knew the score. You certainly would never believe it. What I lose from men I get with God, companionship, love, and hope, to a degree you don’t know possible.
Now I’m in your neck of the woods, a long time ago repented of my sins. Big fucking deal— you’d rub my nose in it anyway. You’re incapable of being ought than you are. You have not the oneness inside.
You do not love God you love your morality, and you are good to the good, bad to the bad, forever more amen. You want punishment and castigation. You don’t know the law of healing. You can’t stand it.
I have healing ways. I’m a doctor of behavior and attitude, of the soul heals. I will die with my knowledge unused. You don’t know the value of such things. You spit on it.
Doctor of the soul, where the soul leads the way, is the therapist and changer of man, that is what I bring among you. It doesn’t come easy. You have to have a need naught else but healing. It will take years.
You guys do me a favor. Come through my poems. It’s all in there, but most have been taken offline. When I die open them up and read them, and then put my name in the list of life. Include me again in your society. I did the work you wanted me to do.
You would be pleased I suffered. Oh, I suffered, threw myself up against your heart so many times, cried out to God in pain. I’m showin’ where we’re stuck in the ways of man. No one sees it.
There are more of us than I can bear, hated outcasts, and I am the heart of humanity shoulderin’ the world.
This is the place you need to work, right here, to change the nature of man. Right here today I give you the example of sacrifice. Fire away, take away my world from me, again. I’m showin’ you what love looks like when it’s in your hands, and know I love you.
Marriage of soul and Earth, I thought it was attracted to something beautiful. It’s the most guttural, physical location there is. We’d need to make plans. Where are you going? My butt’s yours man. All for one and one for soul.
I could get worse and I could get chicory, but we do business with the Earth you know, and we all share this intimacy. You got God there watchin’— oh my honey child, it’s all my plan.
I feel coverage beating on the roof of the world. I’m not smiling. This is so crash and burn. I don’t know how to reconcile this with God, the holes in the program. It’s bigger than me, but God is here my friend, like this is the Void, and he can’t get at it in his shoes.
I’m not worried about that. I want to mate my life with God in everything I do. How does this play out in the world? We come upon a change of consciousness, not just worship God.
We take God’s coverage and go there, until we look out the eyes of God. I have, and I’m tellin’ yah it’s greater than enlightenment. Mountains are movin’ me there now, that way station of enlightenment.
You would laugh and tell jokes— who does he think he is? Can I just be plain water? I’ve reached bare earth. I’m not haughty in my mind. I see myself and whistle Dixie, the idiom dear not the racism.
Nothin’ I do is great or small, and I can hold my dick in my hand and not play with it, but that’s not all I’m after. I want to look at you and not be offended by I’m such a shit to you. I don’t want to hurt by it no more, feel the pain of this earthen outcast. You are mean you know.
Terrible my time with you I do not speak right, and you are so hung up on speech, get offended at the guttural word. I’m loud and clear it takes willingness to change.
Get off your high horse man and meet us at the river, where even naked we’re not ashamed of ourselves, and we do not harm one another, but where the wild things are, myself and all these people, who’ve torn you a new asshole interpreting God anew. The river my friend, will you join me?
A cyclic poem, I pull myself up on the crap all the time, and here I am writin’ down wood. I’m bustin’ your balls. I should just go swimmin’ with you in everybody’s freeway.
Can we reach each other at guttural need, or are we alone inside that’s it? We play ballgames here. It’s not divided up in sexes. It’s not even wrong.
The New Jerusalem is galvanized on we lift up you and me. It doesn’t falter it doesn’t shame. We heal through change of consciousness, and we love one another.
Are you ready to buy this thing? This cycle I un-stigmatize God, the lover of all of us, the inside and outside of every situation. I hated it there until I realized what it took to change.
I smell soup. All these cut up ingredients, they’re in the zero God, right there to form the ingredients of the long-awaited paradise on earth.
Fool my ass, I’m joinin’ reality with heaven right now. You got them balls? They’re skyrockets, my love made real.
Fine, I’ll wait. You’re gonna be up in my room either here or in heaven on earth: ah, ah, a neighborhood this got foreseen; this was available for everyone; are you risking your life?
Blockbuster down and not one single person to help. Oh vagina. Now let’s grab by the bones and grow taller than mankind. Okay brotherhood?
You just get offended at plowshares. I’m followin’ my inspiration right. This is not sex do the poem. Okay Goldilocks? Alright man, I’m not dangerous help. Without a muffler I brighten the thoughts of God. If you haven’t noticed he’s a character. Great Scott! they kicked 'im out of town.
I couldn’t come from the city according to our needs. A oneness organization, that’s the start of it, the city the Earth needs. The walls are coming down, it’s where we begin. This is the largest city in Heaven, and it’s expensive to live in.
How many people protect themselves from the Infinite? How many people have bibles they won’t cross thresholds with? They can’t get out of the Book or this Name says. They can’t plant infinity there, and they argue and bicker among themselves about it, the rulebook says.
Am I just a hedonistic paradise? I sacrifice even my thoughts to the divine and live a simple life to prove it. I don’t cut down banyan trees. I sit together with everybody there, and I know hard work, and I know rest and play.
I love God, and that is my first priority, not the God of this man says, the God of the banyan tree. I have seen God’s eyes staring back at me in everyone’s. I can pet a dog and feel that, rub a cat.
I am about the mountain in springtime. I know how to address the world: oh my God I love you. I have seen fire and rain, and I changed my life because of it. I no longer hurt people or cause them pain. I draw the lines everywhere to prevent that. I know the meaning of sacrifice. It’s how my thoughts meet the world. It’s how my hands meet the day.
I am an Aurovillian comes theoretically, and I shout this to the Earth. I will get bigger than my kind. I will transform consciousness inside into our greater type. I will give birth to divinity on a collective field, and our hands will salt the Earth with its great and needed change, and I am here my friend opening doors for you that you may walk through them. Auroville will you hear me? Auroville can you feel that looking?
This poem was emailed to many Auroville email addresses, most all the principle leadership bodies, and it was the object of an art action on Sept 3rd and 4th, where I and Mithun taped and tacked it up on bulletin boards and walls around Auroville and on banyan trees in the township, or it was just handed to individuals. This is the performance art a recent poem, “The Diamond”, mentioned, before, I might add, there was inkling on my part to do any.
This poem and the preceding one made the secretary of Auroville, Jayanti Ravi, mad, and she got me kicked out of India over it, personally.
image by the author, Earth in space public domain via Wikipedia
The world is at the skid point. We are so caught in this movie we can’t even see beyond. Tell me you don’t care. Tell me you’re hangin’ out clothes to dry, and your little one’s screamin’, and that’s just big stuff on TV. Got caught in the movies. I know you ache at night, just about to spill it all, everything you know about the world but don’t. You don’t know what to make of it it holds you so close.
Can we climb out of this? We can sure get lost in it. Will you play with me? I’m a poet from Skid Row. No I’m not a drinker. I’m a free world thinker, and I want the world to last longer than its appointment in the annuals of our sun. I’m with you on that. I want to outlast the sun where I know I can be happy.
Have you ever seen the world up close? It’ll finger your dickens. No, no I’m not talkin’ about the rovin’ mania all around yah— the whole teeming world as an entity in front of your face. Got boxes and spring cards, but it’s the real McCoy.
I don’t know if you know what I’m talkin’ about yet. I scrap it off my shoe no. This is a divine appointment in time, the world as an organization that brings God on earth, and we can’t get over the word divine. I’ve lifted up your skirt and showed you religious offerings. I mean an intelligence bigger than the skies that can fit in our green Earth and bring it to the next level. You think of the universe as a flat individual organization, but the many levels of the universe go beyond the universe, and I tell yah Earth is scheduled for that.
I’m far from the clothesline now, but that screamin’ kid, I’ve gotten into his ache. We want a better world, expressive of need, and the world as an organization can do that, be unto our need. It’s flat and big everywhere we look today, but have you met the world yet? That’s what I’m tryin’ to say so that it matters, so that we can get bigger than ourselves, knowin’ the world’s done with livin’ for your kin.
Bigger than any national flag, the world is our step-brother that needs to know its name spoken on your lips. Oh no Mohammad you don’t own the world, nor Jesus Christ, and certainly not Hindu or Buddha, and the Jewish people will not rule the Earth. We’re all gonna get goin’ to see the world in each of us, to understand its nature bigger than the machine.
Are you with me on this? I think you’ll fight me some, until we realize Earth’s got an appointment in blue skies, and we will all revel in it, giddy with the realization of harm’s end. Do you know that cost? Can you turn around and see the world today? Flabbergasted can you see it?
A step-mother, seven kids, and digital shock, can you grab that? Help me chase it to we meet the world there. I’m not horseplay. I’m the world looks in on you, not the teeming multitudes, the world as a being in front of you in time, and I’m travelin’ a poet to forgotten shores, what a seer give society, its determining wings, how it lays out itself and what it be's. It’s the arms of society to tell you the truth. You must not let that little you. It’s the One looking in on itself. You’re the One. I am really here for you.
Now sing along. You can’t fool me anymore by your nonchalance. I know the score. You can’t shoot me anymore either. I know what I’m about, and even dead I’ll know it, and so will my poetry.
Open up in there. There can be no losers. Bite into something hard. Stare into something new. I gave you the congressional service. No shame in that. A wardrobe you know you can catalogue here take this self: we’re goin’ to the end of society as the machine.
Sheltered animals move and breathe. They just don’t get away. What was defeated in Mexico? Waiting by the bomb. You’re encountering that work’s envitalment, and you can’t get out of it. Best documentary That Worked. What are you doin’? Getting our own hands dirty in blowing up the machine, a long action that we can do without war or blowin’ people up or shooting them down. Here I am doin’ it don’t you see?
Never mind the behavior they stopped us from realizing it. What was that membership? Blowin’ up the world in I don’t care, oh no. I’ll give you as much as possible to farm time freedom from the machine.
Love, it actually gave us tomorrow, is the active ingredient. I find that news with anything. It’s real and normal if you realize you have met the world out during the day in every box you’ve met today, in every pair of eyes staring out at you, all of it, the whole damn show.
Take the questionnaire. I have problems existing the way you want Council Bluffs. An opera, just what the world needs right now, our post-traumatic show, and I can’t do anything to stop you. You’re the stupid muse.
Who’s to listen to? I’m talkin’ storybook Earth. Are you wrapped around the axle with it? My God it’s got me by the balls. I’m in Nithish’s pan. Other than that I’m free. You would not stage this.
I’m too honest for broad noon, and I’ve got some big thoughts Earth don’t wanna look at, I mean in your society room. Have you ever seen an Earth poet? You’re supposed to. That’s what we’re all made of. We’re speakin’ to all mankind. Earth today, we get mad at the word man, but it farms poetry, you know?
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, I’m in a limousine, but let me get more Tennyson on yah and Marilyn Monroe. You think poetry’s got to have capital letters and sing about verses and stuff. Emily Dickinson would agree poetry comes from the inner voice. Slipped into you a mind swell the beautiful rose of poetry, even if it’s not a football field of the huddle of verses that high sound poetry to you. I give you an inner lunch.
Okay we’ve brightened our books today. I give you an inner sound, tryin’ to find your head. It’s all Madagascar. Have I opened a movie on the showroom’s floor? Train’s coimin’. It’s all about them dice watch your hedge podge in where you put your blinders on. Cute animals, eh? And everybody’s longing to be free.
Be not normal men and women, but reach above our kind and show how it’s done, ain’t that the anthem? Movie after movie of the greatest stories on Earth get by our living room with this. Would you believe they keep you in line, even in your underwear? Ask the surveillance movie Drop from start to ticket or Seven Veils, and I’m sorry I’m giving them credit, but I can’t watch every movie in time that littles us, I mean like right now as we’re havin’ lunch.
So many lies are told to manipulate your mind and bring all the bad country to bad men so demon they shine with the impossibilities of human nature taken to that degree. They’re demon bad. My mother sucked me when I was three, and my step-mother terrorized my mind, and I had to hide from her in the woods until my father got home. Teacher after teacher put me in the corner, the kind that hate little boys all over the globe for bein’ who they are, and they had a score to settle with men. Give a world this schoolin’, and let’s see how she acts. You can’t trust nobody.
Now I’ve got a little boy in the lurch taken from me and reamed, who grew up with me since he was five, but I was there from birth his daddy. It makes you all nervous inside that I’m speaking about him in this poem. Exactly. Can I show you the hurtin’ in the machine? You think it’s child abuse or a host of other ills, men bad to women, or a sudden and frank genocide, or tumultuous war. It’s our wrong seeing that causes harm, how we bake bread willfully and ignorantly with the guardians of the universe resistant to change.
I love my little boy, and that’s right and proper, but I’m a White man and he’s a Tamil boy in a red flag zone. Surely his parents must be right in beating him, slapping him across the face, not letting him go out of their sight or surveillance system or visit friends so he will not contact me. Do you know what this does to a child? He doesn’t write poetry. Now buy him anything he wants and wine and dine him. Surely he’ll stay on our side.
What’s the beef you reckon? I made better miles with him, and he preferred me to them. It’s all in the menagerie. Parents got rights over their children’s lives. Just ask Child Welfare. The mother gave them a bribe and the police and paid my lawyer more than I was paying him. This is India and this stinks, but who gives a damn?
Is anybody listenin’ to this poem? I mean he’s got to go with us, how you make a child today serious to produce that child the staple of the machine. Now let’s give ‘im bright airs and promise him the moon when he’s older if he complies now. Study hard kid. Your worth is in those grades, and your future depends on them, and we will ignore your dyslexia by ignoring it, you lazy little bastard. We’re smart can’t you see?
Now this has been shut off, squeezed out of him in a parental vice par none. You like that? That’s okay with you? Who the hell are you anyway, ordinary people? I heard you. The Indian consulate the Indian dear, kick ‘em to give this boy what he needs. For fruit to work tell ‘em read this boy.
