Sri Aurobindo Birth Cemetery

from Twitter

A poem by Donny Lee Duke

Tear the whole thing apart.
I’ve been writing all of my life,
over a lifetime’s hole,
the orange and white.
I shake my hips and sing.
Some call me indecent.

Do penises shame?
Do they dance and sing?
It's so down to earth your control program:
nice and cool
leave the boy alone.
We can get over matter.
The most gorgeous boy in the world’s layin’ beside me,
and I’m writing a poem.

Now where do we do business?
That goes there. [vision of a TV screen in snow static]
Walkin’ to Sri Aurobindo’s birth anniversary.
I live it down.
All this interest he’s generated is not sincere.
I don’t know how to tell you this:
he’s clickbait.

Grab his pants will yah?
I’m awfully strong.
I feature in lit fests,
in everybody’s alter ego.
I liberated India
and will the superman bring.
I am bigger than the world,
but I’m only in Indian subcultures:
tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.
We put the energy abounds,
the mesmerizing of a name.

Okay take him apart.
Where would we put him?
I don’t think we can find him
in his early quotations.
Do you know the fullness of his thought?
He wasn’t a barnstormer.
He wasn’t even a nationalist in the end,
where so many put him.
He got bigger than stars.
Would we say Supermind is an Indian thing?
He’s callin’ the shots
for the whole damn race to change.

So pigeonhole him
the nationalistic spirit.
Be a lie unto yourself
because you vote for Trump.
I’m sorry, I’m crossin’ lines.
Can we say Trump’s Modi?
They’re not identical twins.
It’s a time spirit phenomenon
all wrapped up nice and pretty.
Nations are heaving with nationalism.
Hear India?

I don’t know which one there is victory or defeat.
I’m not a time spirit reckoning.
I just came to say Sri Aurobindo
is not a nationalistic voice.
He saw Supermind on earth,
and that was his evolutionary aim,
and that’s what he showed us
much better than we think we saw.
You’re all wrapped up in particulars.
Let’s look at the Sun, shall we?

I think he built a bridge
from here to there,
there beyond this field of stars.
It’s bigger than the universe,
even if you don’t understand it.
I’ve studied there
in one great big moment of my life,
the only way you can see there:
be there.
I’ve offended everybody I know.
It’s not that you believe me;
read me
and tell me I only know here.

Now can we get past a name?
They trip us up every time.
Okay put a pedophile in Supermind1
for one sudden moment in life,
and we’ve found a way out of name.
You got it.

________________________________________________________________

  1. For a description of the experience click here.

The Strength is on the Distant

This line of guidance from the inner voice came to me some months back:

The strength is on the distant

The first interpretation that jumped out at me was the yogic technique of distancing yourself from undesirable lower movements, looking at them as not oneself and detaching rather than struggling with them. Looking at the line that way helped me to free myself from the weakened but lingering siege of a strong vital reaction that had gotten in the day before the line came.  Do any other interpretations jump out at anyone?

Snowshard that Ape

Recently I was going through my files on my computer and I came across an aborted dream/inner journal from four years ago that I’d forgotten about. It only had a few entries and one of them was this line from the inner voice:

Snowshard that ape

Below the line I had written some comments stating that I thought the line had to do with sexually staring and fantasizing, that this was the ape-like behavior I was exhibiting, and that I needed to stop it. That may very well be true since that was a big problem I was struggling with back then. As Donny pointed out to me however, the ape is more of a general symbol for the animal vital in us and symbols like the dog, pig or goat more commonly represent sex itself specifically. Given this the ape could symbolize any primitive movement such as anger, jealousy, selfishness etc. and not just sex. With this idea in mind of a wide range of movements potentially symbolized by the ape, let’s further analyze the line’s meaning by looking at the words snow and shard.

As far as snow goes, the first thing that word suggests to me is purity, but there’s also the sense of cold or freezing. This gives the idea of stopping the ape-like behavior ‘cold’ and purifying myself of it. The word shard suggests something sharp and dangerous that can cause harm, so here we have the idea of ‘killing’ the ape-like behavior. In addition though I would also point out that when something is shattered it breaks up into shards, and like humpty dumpty can’t be put back together again. From this we can get the idea of ‘shattering’ the movement, weakening it to the extent that it can’t reconstitute itself and become a significant problem again.

So I guess I could sum up the line’s meaning as “Stop that ape in it tracks and shatter that impure movement.” Now one thing I really like about this line is its bluntness, the way it calls a spade a spade. It really helps me see how I’m acting like an ape, so I’ve been making use of the line since rediscovering it. I’ve mainly been using it to remind myself to snowshard the sex movement, but I also used it this morning when some annoyance reared its head. If you’re reading this and think it could help to snowshard the ape in you please feel free to use it.