Monthly Archives: October 2012

Penthouse [and other conversations]

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Penthouse and other conversations

 

This is not a house / but what pretends.

                      I am here nonetheless living / and life and my life fill this space 

Life unfolds through different orders

                      There is tenderness amongst these words,

and I might wonder in the in-between

                      I just was not able to crowd out the thoughts 

where holding, housing seems real.

                      that gruffness in the face of subterfuge, mine or ours.

•

Building has made things lie lifeless

                      I’ve been a builder of many things

and what has come to know these?

                      split myself –polarity of material plane

Something feigns to dwell and comes

                      as if one thing is better than another                        

nonetheless as if dwelling here abides.

                      confined within the designs of things.

•

Oh, the mis-take of it all. We borrow

                      No mistakes really whenever I see

and borrow such blurring until

                      resting is what is such that

little edge or distinction remains.

                      resting and restless find their joining.

•

I rest in the in-dwelling,

                      Yet I cannot be in without out

the in-dwelling needing no arrival.

                      coming and going are the same.

It is the departing, which lays waste

                      This one who departs and does not see –this

and waste again, as unsettling ensues.

                      song is for her to remind and restore her.

•

I dream of simpler forays

                      In the dream there is this dream too

the meeting in directness

                      one cannot be without the other –yet

where the purest movement speaks stillness,

                      their divide is what is not real –breathing

unlike the manipulation of reality taken on

                      now –All is beyond question welcoming

as second nature and even first.

                      the manifest as the poetry of it All.

•

I pause, considering ~ the in-dwelling remains

                      Still point / zero point

needing no artifice, climbs without effort

                      welcoming the manifest

and also falls with no aversion.

                      as the poetry of it All.

Upon Finding East Coker*

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Here and now  is my beginning, not mattering
where I am or where I come from, my voice
of ash and cornstalk and leaf finds its ally.
With stones, this folly and forewarned failure
of words no longer tending that which once
tasted the palette of timelessness and seeing,
I return with those twenty years, also, that feel
wasted and yet not, steeping within which may,
just may resolve the quickened art of questions.
•
I will have this kind of conversation, however alone
it leaves me, But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of this woman only 
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
It is these stones that rise to meet me here, good company
yet uncompromising, as must be in folly, casting shadow
of experience haste and heavy and also humble.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
•
My day, this time, this world where I traverse and scold
as a private affair, the interior tides occasionally spilling
sometimes tarnishing, but also giving possibility to the polisher.
When should I, if ‘should I’ is the way to say it, when is it to be
plain, as uncontrived as animals coming to greet and pose
as themselves, not how we might wish them to present
only to fulfill matters that are ours, when is it to be plain?
Something is held back, reserved, calculated to create
a hidden reserve with interest, interest in and of what?
Let the dark come upon you, thus the beginning of the unraveling
and there are those who are with me here, in that here and there
that does not matter gives rise to exploration, communion,
even desolation ~ The sharp compassion of the healer’s art.
•
Thank you voice of voice recognized
Whether posing or not of one time and place
I find the ground of heart of heart synchronized
Mess of imprecision of feeling within this space
Fierce, monstrous, Love is most nearly itself, grace.
•
I’ve found something here of myself and of you
And found and lost again and again
It is that tarnish I now polish but seeing the hue
before the scour
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.
Having considered apology, I carry on
in my work of this day of words and all that I know little of.
 

note ~ In italicized bold are excerpts from:

* East Coker by TS Eliot

Please consider reading East Coker in its entirety, if you are at all inspired!

Thank you Daniel Ari, TS Eliot, Kim Rosen, Jason Wheeler, Marna Hauk