I am my own all and nothing
Sensations of the body brain crowd in
What of these am I and not
A new mix of All That Is
Dawning like any other new dawn
But a measuring stick was left
By an unexpected guest
And unconsciously I pick it up
Fumble, aim to use it until I see
What it is, grasped in hand
Walking backwards sizing things up
I trip over the empty footsteps
That were never there
And that is when
Everything relaxes back
Into simply What Is
The notion of a virtual blog tour landed here upon being sparked by my dear friend and colleague Daniel Ari, who made the initial suggestion that I might like to participate in such a tour, following his blog tour post (a poet friend and colleague had invited him.) I felt the spark land and since then the question has been did the spark become an ember and did the ember survive? Or perhaps another question might be was it a virtual spark and does it, now, have what it takes to light this contemplative, virtual fire? Perhaps. Shall we see?
What is not a perhaps is the whole-hearted conspirator I find in Daniel Ari, the person, being, and creator afire. I invite you to visit his blog Fights With Poems, as long as you have more than a moment to explore and drop in. Daniel’s projects are a many (writing, publishing, teaching, collective blogging and more), his stretch is broader than most and not confined by his idea of himself, if I can say so. One project of note is his forthcoming book, One Way to Ask, a book of querons, a poetry form of Daniel’s originality, inspiration, and making. For this book, he is collaborating on many levels with artists and other co-conspirators, which has Daniel’s signature of ever-ready-to-remake-oneself with each sitting, writing, and re-versing. It has been my honor and stimulation both to be included in amongst the co-conspirators included in this book. I look forward to the publication of One Way to Ask.
And thank you, Daniel, for inviting me once again into territory that I may not otherwise find myself in if it weren’t for you and our connection! (Another such invitation from Daniel brought numerous years of my participation in his collective blog, IMUNURI. Currently Daniel has 131 submissions there, I have 57, and ten other poets have submitted their works/poems there, as well.)
A photographic interlude as the blog tour continues…
The Virtual Blog Tour comes with these party-c-pant questions (putting on these party pants is one way to participate!)
1) What am I working on?
I don’t know what I am working on until I am working on it. Even then, while I am “working on” something, it is more precisely working me or opening out through me or pondering within this persona/non-persona. It doesn’t seem to be my way or mode (at this time) to know what I am working on. What does come, at times, is some kind of knowing being expressed through words on paper or words being typed on a computer or iPod screen. Question #4 seems to be creeping into #1.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Similarly, I am not aware of my poetry and writing being of a specific genre type. If you know otherwise, please let me know! Ha! What comes through as poetry seems to be unique to itself. I will say something that does come to say around this question: the poetry I write comes from or via direct experiencing, an internal voicing or somatic experiencing as the words present themselves. I would not say that I don’t think about what I write, but something like that. It seems to me that I am ready when something seems to come through and have easiness of expression as words in some kind of structure close to what we call a poem. Poems as awareness as felt sense, perhaps.
3) Why do I write what I do?
“Why do I do what I do?” as a question seems to come out of some unseen or unconscious motivation to seek security (or need to know) when security of that kind is simply non-essential. So, for me, there is not an need to answer such a question. The poems ponder enough on their own and simply get written (or not.)
4) How does my writing process work?
There are tastes of this question in the previous answers 1, 2, and 3. What else I might share here is that there is some kind of seeding and then a gestation period and then, perhaps, a kind of birthing in the writing. The writing usually takes my full attention and is something that moves through and I respond in the now. Often there is the anticipation of something before it finds its form as words on paper, mostly as poetry, sometimes as contemplative writing in prose, sometimes in photography or a combination of the aforementioned.
The writing is a kind of direct experience, as in I am present for something as it is felt and expresses as words. The photography, too, is a kind of calling or marking of direct experience and has a numinous quality within it. What gets expressed, conveyed, felt, or sensed through the sharing of these, I also do not know what that might be. It is like breathing for me. Or at least that is how it comes today to write about such things.
Monsoon skies in El Rito north of Questa, New Mexico ~ July 2014
And finally, the blog tour may continue in a similar fashion to above, if I have other bloggers to invite for you to check out with blog tour posts of their own. However, I found that I did not have currently active bloggers to invite! So I invited both a poet/artist and a songwriter/musician/poet to start their own blogs such that they could be included with accolades in this Virtual Blog Tour.
Perhaps they will do just that and at least one new blogger will be featured here in short time. I will update this entry with their URL and some of what inspired me to invite them to participate. Perhaps.
arriving with the full moon ~ July 10, 11 2014
while camping near the Kagyu Mila Guru Stupa, north of Questa, NM
We have our things
Even if we have very little
or essentially nothing
Not threadbare are any of us
And some semblance of things
is brought together, even if
just to drink this or eat that
We can sit on the ground
The body will sleep when it comes time
the preoccupation of belongings
is such a high order in our lives
that it is nearly invisible
I pause to think, as if thinking is
the way, how to live
on the land with no amenities
It seems preposterous
Just sit on the ground?
Rest under a tree?
Wait until batteries run out
and then be silent?
As if Silence was not there
all along
Everything we eat, drink, sleep
is there in the Silence
Everything we are
is that Silence
We love an entry into.
Leave an opening
And something will move thru
Even if just pretend.
So when we really go thru
What then?
Is there no going back?
We’ve moved between
And are never the same.
Something has passed
From here to there
And back again is only onward.
We pine for what was
Looking thru What Is
Trying to see something
Other than
What simply is, Just This.
And pining, things just look the same
But never are
Or are so inextricably
The same it would take
The widest open eyes
To see This
And not see something else.
Perhaps it is the putting aside
Of what the eyes see
And letting things be
As empty as they are
Each thing a doorway
To itself
Nothing more, nothing less.
In that entry
We move as all direction
Within and without
Leaving nothing aside
Going nowhere but everywhere
Without departure.
And the openings
Await nonetheless
Waiting as the perceivable
In the perceiving
As they are
As they are.
When there is nothing to do
Something seems to be found to do
It’s a circus we didn’t even
realize we had tickets for
and have been going to
all so regularly
It looks like life
And yet life isn’t doing
Life just happens
All on its own
No tickets necessary!
There is no grand entry, no backstage
Just ask the wind
the thunder
the rain
None of these need permission
And cannot be kept
Under lock and key
There is no one to pay
Even if that makes us
Feel more real somehow
We have so many wallets
all around and everywhere
Most of them hidden away
(what are we protecting, really?)
But there they are
What good would it be
if we didn’t find ways to fill them?
Is it a question of good?
Or is it a question of a day
yet upon us when all
bartering ceases
And something yet known,
however already conceived,
bursts forth taking us
as we are
as our most direct
Unfettered, alive beyond word
Nothing need be done
The question of do and not do
Too will cease
despite the pure fluidity of all things
things still seem stuck frozen at times
at times like these when reflections surface
distortions refractions images broken up
broken up into many pieces then shorn
as if cohesive and malleable workable
workings as if reliable and functioning
stable we take hold perhaps unawares
unaware of the tenderness of the situation
the pure fluidity of all things and more
10 May 2014
the dogs are in the sky
in the clouds
the colors are their sniffing ground
I walk with them wild openness
nothing tethered
their playing field
is pure changeability
from one moment to the next
the sky dogs roam
but in their roaming
come home again and again
never leaving the vastness
of their infinitude
bedding down only
in the thunder and
the lightning
howling and braying
cascading down the gorge
the tender-footed ones
follow the light traces
wings of birds
starlight
the calls of coyotes
and bright cactus flowerings
they dig
and dig deeper
into my being
pirouettes and thermals
carrying me to the
outer atmosphere
beyond any longing
swimming a rarified ocean
and as I follow
will I tip onto the other side
even imagining
another side
has the weight of
pretend and posture
this vastness holds
no bars on any spiral
The perimeter is littered with things fallen by the wayside
They can rest there to simply suggest activities of once was
Faerie circles of a different order perhaps, but truly they are
≈
Have you ever heard of ‘Life is Sacred’ or transmutation?
Just look and look in the looking with the eyes of I Am
How many times do I say, ‘Astounding, astounding, astounding’?
≈
Can we spread the arc of this perimeter and find a dancing ground
In common even as we stand at times nakedly in The Commons
Unaware of what seems lost but never was, never was, never was
≈
I place my hand near, near to your heart but only in my mind’s eye
Somehow even this touch saturates the field, touch outside of resistance
And therefore deeper than even what seeing and believing can grant
≈
We bring what was/is split into this unseen contact covert mending
Of rifts that once cast asunder flesh from flesh eroding of earth
Demanding only that we become the missing element innate intelligence
≈
It might shock what is seen, perceived, felt, known with Presence
And this gentle but penetrating wind lays bare all coverings, the battens
Perceiver and perceived intertwined in a choreography unwrought
≈
Venerable heart of us all we are held in this music synarchic tune
However raw unfinished untempered diamond in the rough still
A diamond facets inherent within aware or not as beloved we see
≈
And yet we wrestle fighting not what we know but what fears
In us that loom large truly only in our imaginations what grace
This wrestling too a dance and reconciliation of the highest order
≈
birthing and dying simultaneous actions
twilight and break of day cannot be disjoined
music and silence virtually one and the same
∞
so why do we carry such pretense as
playing as if there is only life creative
without life dismembering itself too
∞
our bags are overfilling as we carry
the carcass of all that has already
departed carrying on the pattern
∞
of What Was tripping over What Is
forging some remnant nonexistent now
into something we pay homage over and over
∞
memorializing as a preoccupation takes over
while the beautiful concerto of life / death
carries on all around us in every way and thing
∞
listening now to the music and the silence
welcoming birthing and dying simultaneously
such moves in us breath in breath out
∞
to RUH and the crystals of consciousness, too
For thoughts on the writing of this poem, see below. Originally published on IMUNURI.
(s)
a = morning
b = afternoon
c = evening
d = day
does a + b + c = d
(?)
apparent passage
of time
walks all over
everything
we think
($)
without time
the space
between
things would not
contain monies
(!)
as if those
spaces
did as we think
dark matter
anti matter
(*)
IT previously
not conceived of
not seen
electroweak field
strong interaction
| (10−22) |
of a second
disassembles
Standard Model*
shaking in its
spin-parity
(¡)
little
do we know
yet beautifully adapt
(we = cognizant)
as/within all forces
(<3)
*the so-called Standard Model of Elementary Particles
This poem found its canvas and spark via an experimental poetry, group blog, IMUNURI,which I write on somewhat frequently. The prompt we were given for this cycle of writing was called Zephyr. I find the prompts can spark something for me, as in the case of this poem, that otherwise I may not have arrived at within a more familiar terrain.
I’ve had a lay person’s passion for quantum mechanics and quantum physics for as long as I can remember. Recently, I’ve been reading on the phenomena of entanglement or quantum entanglement in The God Effect by Brian Clegg (St Martin’s Press 2006). This phenomena is not a mind boggler for me, as it is something I experience again and again and seem to have a perception of rather naturally. Yet I am fascinated by its seeming elusiveness. Clegg describes the time when (some very famous) physicists could not conceive of matter exhibiting non-locality (or entanglement.) For some it was considered a joke or, at best, utterly outside of classic lines of thinking, thus impossible.
I’m inspired by the shape shifting aspects of certainty. What we once thought certain, no longer is from a different perspective. Can we let ourselves be open to new perspectives? It’s that ‘outside of the box’ possibility that inspired this poem. Playful, risky, celebratory ~ all characteristics of an experimental poetics.
.
This one showing up
Rises on the view
Looking out over open horizons
Curious and curiouser
And I, what is I am, watching
.
I stand in your company
The stories pour and pour
Forth that great big vessel
Of a heart uncontainable
But wishing to be contained
.
Who has the story or does
The story have us intermingled
Woven in and out of the weft
Of being thread of becoming
Such a delicate thread it is
.
However it is it is a gift of
Heart of love of seeing
Beauty speaks through these
Strings strum simultaneously
Tremolo sostenuto entangle
.
Trust Fortitude Misfortune Joy
All gather ’round the table
Made just for these and Two
Others autonomous resplendent
Everything celebrates This One
.
“Will you let me love you?” Awry
The question shines like a diamond
Many faceted and subtle in its stark
Beauty because Love has no bounds
And knows this source from its core
.
No permission is needed as What Is
Is simply What Is ~ how many times
Does saying that make it so? It seems
Easier to speak the unspeakable
Than freeing that which is Unbound
.
My friends the journey we are on
is astonishing
–
The capacity to relax as What Is
breathes in us
–
Tickling the odds into something
odder still
–
The Yes that has been resting
as pure Being
–
Since before and outside of time
whispering ever
–
Not even the slightest touch of
stern effortlessly waits
–
And when it is come upon
just so
–
I’m not sure what astonishes more
that presence
–
Or the suddenness of recognition
-There All Along-
–
Like a bolt of lightning and
lightening both
–
Takes the breath away aloft
of preoccupations
–
The preferences forged amidst stress
of polar opposites
–
And forgetting the stark beauty of
All That Is
–
~
–
What captures our attention
rays of light
–
Reflecting the prism of the mind
in its dance
–
Or attention within awareness
as awareness
–
Where the Yes that rests
as Itself
–
Needing no argument nor
push against
–
Opening out even without opening
simply presents
–
Life Being Life 