In Dire Straits

image by the author

This poem was sent to the editorial board of Renaissance (BharatShakti) of The Sri Aurobindo Society, who I’ve submitted poems to that use obscene language and present ideas people don’t like to talk about. It has been published by Edge of Humanity Magazine: https://edgeofhumanity.com/2024/11/11/harms-end-blog-by-donny-lee-duke-in-dire-straits/

We have that place where,
yep, you need to turn on that character light.
I would say he does not deserve the title respect
call him.
Thank you sadhak.
Nat started a story.
It was obscenity of being,
the crazy what’s up nails trauma
a bunch of us go through.
Are we on your calendar?

You’re nice and pretty.
Does that mean you’re good
in the sense of good to all of us?
We’ve got a world here in a tin can.
It hurts everybody.
You would not like a story that makes you mean.
Is that transformative?

Watch movies that’s all you see,
a blight of entertainment
“televised from the gulfs of Night” [from Savitri, an epic poem by Sri Aurobindo]
that tells stories
to pit you against one another,
to make your blood boil,
to let the demons in.

There isn’t a place on the planet it’s not
on your local TV.
This is what we’ve gotta get out of,
get back to our dream maker
as the one we watch and write.
Is that a perverted slam?

You would boil at the inner consciousness
because it pits you against your morality papers:
don’t say cuss words;
don’t mention sex;
don’t talk about getting your dick sucked when you were five
by your mother.
What have I just done?

I let the inner consciousness in
in language that grabs you and moves you,
that has the day on it,
that gives you a porn whereabouts
so many faces are into these days.
It hits you where you’re at
if you can’t tell right from wrong,
if you’re lost in all this sleaze.
We’re tryin’ to reach people not preach to them.

A dream comes out
from someone who suffered this
in the language that it felt like,
and the elect can’t take it
because they don’t know how to deal with it.
They’re into quotes of Sri Aurobindo and pictures of deity.
They look at spirituality as the cure
and not addressin’ what’s wrong
in the language that needs to.

Everybody just be nice.
Make your concentration daily
and let no wrong movements in.
Be cheerful and happy.
There’s no end to the advice
in spiritual seeking.
Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of life.
Let’s use those quotes to solve problems.
The Mother and Sri Aurobindo are a wealth of that,
applied in ways you haven’t imagined yet,
because you’re religious and one-sided.

We need to heal,
so many of us.
You can’t imagine what it’s like
where hell has opened in humanity.
This is all over the globe,
terrible stories
that’ll make you cry
if you had your empathy on.

We need to heal the world first,
then spiritualize it,
and spirituality will be healing,
because that’s what it’s made for,
if it’s the soul involved.
You don’t know this.
Soul healing’s to you a preacher wrote.
It’s not test the limits of humanity
in making healing the order of the day.
This soul is wide and free.
You don’t know that either.

You look at the Gods of Overmind,
the lowest rung.
They’re moral and straight.
They have seen God in passing
one time maybe.
They are closest to us
in the ways of deity.
They make rules and regulations,
put experiments on vice
and get rid if it not heal it.
Our whole world is taken by Them.
It’s what we need to change
and bring a new order upon the Earth,
soul healing
in the dynamics of Supermind.

You don’t know how wide God is,
when it comes to the personal growth process of wholeness and healing. /
That’s been my path all along,
and it’s gotten acute where I show it to you,
all Sri Aurobindo’d.
What else can I do?
I’m his disciple
and a seer of his wisdom,
and I’ve been told to talk to you.

I’ve spent 25 years learin’ my craft,
a lifetime before that as a poet.
You can’t fault me
in preparation,
all prepared for yah.
Grab me by the balls will yah
and throw me to policemen,
or at least try to shut me up?
God’s will be done.

One editorial board member, Dr. Alok Pandey, who is listed as a “Member, Research Advisory Council, Sri Aurobindo Society,” replied to my emails, three times, the first: “May Her Grace be with you,” her meaning the Mother, the second: “What is tormenting your soul so much dear child?” and the third: “You are quite right. You seem to be an angry and arrogant brash revolting angel.  I don’t find your poetry tasteful or even poetry. It is a blurting out of things stirring in your subconscious, not mind nor higher, but inframental forces. That’s my view about your poetry. By the way I am not part of any organization nor have any access to publishing poetries so you could perhaps try some other place or person. Good luck. May the Grace be with you.” No one else on the board or in that organization has replied.

To Heal Holocaust

Watched this film, and then the second poem came, the long one, an hour after, and it came all night.

The Banality of Evil,
We’re Watchin’ a Different Movie


This is grand cinema.
You’re left wonderin’ over its price.
Are you opened to that puppy?
Just to the pain it caused.
Just to its wherewith with evil.
We need more from cinema,
powerfully done.
I’m the long ride.
I’ll get you there
on sudden bleeds:
you will identify with the snake,
or your heart pounding no.
I heal awhile.
Listen to me.

To Heal Holocaust
Heal God.
Boy God has done some bad shit,
if we count Him responsible for everything,
if we say He’s the doer here.
How do we get round this table?
And now the poem starts.
Let’s write it.

You must know into the most horrible places.
I’ve climbed down there
and got burned.
I can identify with the snake.
I’ve opened Holocaust doors
by beer-bottlin’ a boy.
He cried
and then got tough.
I hit him again and again
with that beer yard,
two or three boys.

It didn’t make me throw up.
I took pleasure from their pain.
The control I had,
I was in their control room and I knew it.
Their weakness turned me on,
their vulnerability.
I liked it.

This is a Holocaust memorial.
It’s not me writin’ on myself.
I showin’ where it came from,
that and a knife blade.
These smites
transform into big smites,
transform into Holocaust.
I'm helpin' you some.
I’m going ludicrous.
I’m just stupid sayin’ this.

Let’s change poems.
What do you feel when you hurt people,
your power over them?
No you feel your delight
that it’s not you.
We’re explorin’ some.
It’s a probe.
Not every formula has got this written on it,
but somethin’ happened to you,
when you could not fight back,
too little to do anything about it.
It scarred you.
Now you’re investigatin’ that reality,
and it’s your hands cause pain,
your thrust of life.

This is not healin’ you’re doin’.
You just keep doin’ it,
a wack in reality that repeats itself,
with your hands.
What do you do to stop?
I can’t get yah there.
It’s too wide open.
Jeffery Dahmer pulled the plug.
Then he started killin’ again.
You didn’t know he suffered.
You didn’t know
he didn’t turn that down,
his longness in the inner cycle.
Where do we go for change?
Wrapped up in an investigation of yourself,
you open the inner doors.

Really watch yourself in dream.
The plug will come up.
You’ll eventually pull it
the right way.
You just keep erasin’ mood,
that spell that comes over yah
when you’re around water,
when you’re at that place you can do it.
This is your fault line,
and it’s inner sprung.

You’ve got to get ahold of your behavior,
on the inside where it starts.
This ain’t hard/this is not easy.
[two above phrases heard spoken simultaneously]
You’ll see how it’s done
in your visual immune system.
Message,
it will message you.
It gives a little chance
for you to aim behavior rightly.

You’ve got to get ahold of the bull.
You’ve got to grab it by the horns.
I took years here,
in Holocaust denial.
It’s when you begin to see it it’s the hardest.
You can’t close the curtains,
even when you do it.
You can touch it
and move it around.
You’re puttin’ light down there.
This is not about feeling guilty.
This is about recognizing pain.

What is true remorse?
You feel pain buddy,
making other people suffer,
but you’re still not in the geography bowl.
Look on these two:
the ordination of love,
and the realizing of oneness.
How deep you have to go to get there,
how much time pass.

This is integral healing.
I know someone
that can’t even rise a fantasy.
The light got down there.
You feel the vulnerability of the other,
and you just want to hold them in your arms safe.
You can believe you did that.
You can see yourself doin’ it,
not playin’ it in your mind,
I mean it had sergeant over you before,
but you’re at peace with it,
and you put it out of your room.

We have no laws for this.
We’re not ready to find it.
There are too many of us
to make it safe.
It’s good for the environment.
I wasn’t so bad
I chained people.
I was a love roll.
I know you don’t understand this.
The assurities of Adolf Hitler,
that was absurd,
and afterwards so complex.
It was positively brilliant.
Wow, you said brilliant.
We would eat lunch there.
I’m not bragging it.
I’m not starring it.
Nobody has a secret weapon
to find change
in these dark waters.

I’m putting a healing light to it,
using my own brand.
You don’t know the fashion of evil.
You think it comes from us.
Its dark nature rises
from the Abyss.
There are creatures there
on a beanpole,
with tremendous might,
that invade our dreams
and conscious minds,
and tell our hearts to do things.
They are compulsion’s will,
and they are smarter than us.
Oh my God they’re there,
right in our room,
pushing us to fall.

What do you do with that?
Where do you put it?
They don’t give up,
and we have to put up with them,
on our world endeavor.
That’s not fair.
It’s not even funny.
It’s a stark reality
we have to live with.
So when you’re coming out of darkness,
you’re confronting these,
the Snake in your room.

Oh my God they are blind,
the ones who hate you
for the evil you have done.
They’re just self-righteous idiots,
and they will see when this is done,
when their life’s over,
the complexities of fate,
the manage devils in your room,
the horrible nature of reality
in its bottom lair.

We have to contend with this
to overcome fate.
We cannot escape it.
I’ve mentioned the ballgame,
what we’re really here for,
to change our nature
into God dwellers,
to spiritualize, divinize, Nature.
I’ve pulled the rank card,
and you are blind to this.
It’s too big.
It’s the science of changing your nature,
and your own process will see
that glory immune system,
the one I talk in visions and dreams,
the one I talk now.
It holds your hand here,
and now we are complete:
God heals.