Tag Archives: poetry

Photo Shoot :: dance of innocents

If I could see with the eyes
I See with ~ the wonder and gravity
Of What Is would be deeply evident yet
Needing no evidence nor questioning

And yet the power of those eyes
Is that they don’t see in the plainest
Of ways, but as the ordinarily extraordinary
Depth of field without f-stops

Nothing captured for posterity, contrasting
All sense of judgment with the luminosity
Of vibrancy such that even the Camera
Obscura lays wait, no pin prick necessary

As bubbles burst upon forming, projections
Simply do not arise, people do not gather for or against
And even places do not serve as some kind of Dominion
Nor as shoving off, point of departure

How odd that our lives seem to balance
Between a collection of events and things
As we surround ourselves with tangible markers
Of the intangible. What a task

We ask of the humble traces of earth and sky
When their very nature is just to be
No claim on anything, but abiding and giving
Nonetheless. Purpose perhaps but no need.

for James Wheeler (in asking to take photos) and Peter Kater (for Dance of the Innocents)

20131117-114003.jpg

Stir The Pot (taste the life)

With each veil, whether opaque or transparent
There you are, such that the phenomenon
Of ‘behind’ a veil takes on a new slant.
You’ve redefined it for me in the juxtapositions
You carry, heavily, awkwardly, and some tenderly.

For ‘behind’ becomes ‘out in front,’ the evening drunkenness
Marries with the sober mess of another day
Creating one breathtaking yet somber step
In the choreography of this life, the life
You have surreptitiously invited me to witness.

Which of these veils lay, in their transparency,
Across your heart? How do you know
Your own heart when that which obscures lends
Its fashioning to nearly every breath you take?
What, in your own private ken, can take your breath away?

Why not let it be so even here, even now.
Regardless of what it could bring, what could
Be said of you, of the other. Melt, like the snows,
That brick of larder sheltered in the walk-in
Of the kitchen of your existence. Taste.

What is here. Taste. Join me in the life that is yours.
Join me in taking in the smells, the fragrances.
Yes, you may suffer immunity from those. Walk
Anew into your own life through my eyes,
Landing there in a freshness that is Timeless.

May these words beckon to you in the way
Your touch has softened something in me,
Even in your withholding. For touch is beyond
Flesh, includes flesh, is the origins of flesh,
Something more than the senses that sees, hears, and listens yet.

I Have (Am) This Book (Life)

The book within which my mind/fingers/perception now inter-tangles

Is a numinous window/doorway/matrix where abiding is

Beyond and through the inside/outside being question/answer

Nothing held back even in the current system version and nuts ‘n bolts

We are meeting everything we are ALL the time NO exception

Where are the reins, if there are any reins at all, once a bit ‘n bridle

This book unwritten and written both, abides with effortless grace

Just before its expression, as the tenterhooks of the unconditional

We praise those who can pull the physicality from the vision As if

Its existence were something of utterly impossible proportions

The way you cannot put your finger on the music itself only the score

But to inhabit or rest with that which is only you or self, vibratory-self

Do not go to that tempting sense of separate identity, so many filters

Must be engaged, energized -only to dumb down the very essence of You

What is pleasure but an awesome joining with What Is, no separation,

Which identity and falsehood claim as their territory, a cocks’ waddle

We take exceptional acceptance to preferences in which identity relies

Not even realizing we are doing so, we become the pecking order itself

I am this book, closed or open. I have this life. I am life here and now.

Many pages are there written, unwritten, erased and rewritten, evermore

Transparent to the phenomenal existence of the felt sense and beyond

Pages turn within pages, simultaneously flowing, multi-directional space

This book that carries space as the primary ingredient and we write with

The particles of our beingness, sometimes so tightly and so densely

Only to see in sharp contrast in those moments outside of time how we

Catch our breath on the densities, grasping and gasping in that weather

Worn way of guarding ourselves from What Is as if there were something

Better to have and hold even though having and holding are pure fiction

Just look at the nature of phenomena, what has ever stopped phenomena

In such a way that What Is is stored, saved, made impervious to that which

We Are. The background and foreground, look there, as they are so often

Reversed or better yet, made real in their opposites, then chosen and fitted

As yourself. Choosing, a kind of choosing we call living this life, takes us over

And the true choice is no choice: simply not setting yourself/other apart

All within these pages whether of paper of earth or pages of touch screen

Enter in and rest, as the you you know/don’t know is already resting within.

.

September 25 – 28. 2013

Painting Bodies

for Becci

.

If I had painted myself today

I would have been thinking

of our conversation and how

.

you seem to be in two places

at once while I — take chase

in hopes of getting sympathy

.

for an aged cheese, long sitting

on the shelf in wait of a gourmet

taster, just like you, someone

.

who’s not deterred in the least by

stinky concoctions, can see them for

what they are — real, incased, beauty

.

in a tough rind, the skin of this

body politic, the only one evident

to me at this time. “I don’t think

.

you understand,” I say to myself after

the conversation has gone on to other

doings. I’m so tempted to say, “What good

.

will it do?” But I don’t. Instead I look

for anything that could serve as pigment,

binder, carriers, brushes –preparing.

.

As I paint myself today, the body which

is not me, returns into its elemental

unfolding falling back towards the

.

natural order of its emanation: water

to water; seed to seed; fold unto fold;

mineral saturations and truth and grit.

.

“What/where is that other place you exist?”

.

A Stand In As Myself or Something Else

I have sometimes written a poem without having to be aware of the writing

You see, the poem aside from its writing or typing is an entity of its
own. It is seen, heard, felt, paused,

And squeezed out from behind the corner of the eye, the eye that is not
an eye

.

One where seeing comes in a whole other spectrum than

The usual one –not one you can manufacture here –one that exists already

It comes of its own accord like twilight or dawn, nothing can stop it or begin it

.

When you pause in the words, you’ll see a whole shift of light

It can easily be blocked, consciously or unconsciously; but if you let it be, everything takes on a different tone

For that time when things look as they do in between

.

The poem appears, it comes into its own, and recedes as if it has breath

[those reading and writing access it equally yet different]

It cannot be said even which comes first, the one who reads or what writes

.

And being is like that, too –am I myself or something else

What moves this now, not such that it is a hall of mirrors

But the something else continuously speaks itself as if I were the pen and paper

morning sketch

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

14.5″ x 18″, in pencil and filtered light on paper

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

IMG_0296

Mapping the Material World

[written & drawn as an opening to a creative collaboration w/Daniel Ari in some way, shape,
or form for a book of Daniel’s querons* & drawings/art/illustrations of 58 artists – titled ‘One Way to Ask” to be published later in 2014.] 
 
*a poetic form of his design, although this poem is not a queron
 
.
We map our existence
with the oddest of things
And yet is it any surprise
really? We being the creatures
Of comforts, habits, all the controls
strung out barely discernible
Yet everywhere we go ~ handling
this, setting that just so,
Hot, hotter, quiet, quieter even still.
Beauty, fragrance, order, mess.
Taste, timing, listening ~ all experience
awaits and awaits, yet also
Passing us by, pondering us like
the creatures we are.
Experience having us, we are
possessed by that which dawns on us,
possessed in measure, great and small.

.

IMG_0236Mapping the Material World

iNotice

Incoming

I notice there are things
that
people
tend to notice

There is what I notice
almost
too subtle
to take note

Is there something we notice
possibly
other than
what seems to be

Departure

Walking
everything stays in one place
eyes toes nose
back hand

Notice(?)

How you don’t leave
anything
behind
everything comes with

When orientation is fixed
things return to
the same
the same

Again and again

How often do I agree
even in writing
gross holds
over subtle

Otherwise

Flame light of fire
Musical tonality
Aspiration
Synergy

 

 

Re: Point of Reference*

.

There comes a point

It’s coming into focus

Scanning it, seeing

What it is, might be

.

Reference points all

Around outside inside

Cascading the senses

What to measure or

.

Score

Nothing

No need

Or is there

.

There comes a point

When seeing is seeing

Not a tool to shape

Reality map-out frame

.

Barter coordinate banter

Store hold hand-hold

Tether tie keep

Sure secure free

.

Advantage to what

Who pays the piper

What lock to key

Surveyor’s level rod

.

There comes a point

When no point is

True measure in the

Long or the short of it

.

Seeing

Only

Only

Seeing

.

And as that reference

One to another as

Other to one

We are

.

Searching

The crosshairs

Behold beyond

That I Am

.

.

* new title and layout of an earlier poem