An unbearable list of new poems

Going Forth

Then servant of the divine
And a young gun's whisperers

They told me:

"The cold face of the world,"
"stoning us from behind."

Bright blue tissues
And films of fuchsia rose.

The servants shrank
from the task.

"I fear why I see,
ruined what I have loved."

Leave us alone
You are
I am

The seed bursting into ripples
On the still jade surface of a
Salty salty sea.

Our busted Sherpa God
His lamed, depressed prophets.

"Do you want curd, child,
or do you want milk?"

Nothing.
We want nothing.

The red sun in the bright green paddies
Do you want curd?
Through blue mist rising
Or do you want milk?

We can see and we go forth
Limping and blinking
For all it's worth.




Vippasana Buddhist Poem Concerning Existence

I
Ain't.





Salute

Two words you not want to hear in Nepal:
Local
Bus.

The crone from the middle ages
With copper teeth

Blowing thick green mucus onto the plaid seat beside her.

She caught my eye
"Namaste," she said.

(I salute the God inside you)

"Namaste yourself," I said.



Chalice

Behind the bolted door
Guarded by snarled
Rottweiler, dead for two years now,
Lives anger.

It's a brimful of poison, a chalice we hunt for
Swallow it, call it medicine

All medicine is bitter,
It takes an act of will just to get it down
But then you are better.

Right?
Venus

Morning gongs in heavy mist
Venus still up in the darking purple

And the silence of 19 people
Breathing together
In a cavernous room
With one candle
For two hours.

The black butterfly in the orange flowers.


Antlers, verbatim

One was whole
Till he took on the antlers of knowledge

I see me through a smoked glass now
Caught between interior weather
And the wider, wicker world

Rams crack together
Maybe if I had a different mother/father/house/hairstyle.

Smelling of young son's photo whispers
Entranced by the silent cumquat of Mars
Hanging in an adamantine, flawless night

The flawless night clears the smoked glass
A little.

this night baffles
don't they all

A widening journey, lost
Lost is the natural order of things.










Name

Name is the tethered shadow
Name is the shambling monster

Keeping love to himself
And always hungry

So patient.
Grief, hidden in the crevasses and crannies
Like oil pooled in shale

Pull the trigger

The Pali chants died into the trees
Yo edam mito sa
Anicha
Anicha
Anicha

I turn and Name turns with me
Another cloak out of my shale.

Where have you been?
Here all along, here all along.

Look: here is the cold face of the world
If you dare.



On the Way Down

Another
Triumph of orange ego
The cold sudden plunge

Surrender, surrender, surrender
Good sir, finally at last
Won't you just surrender?

The way down is rush and soften
A velvet wind and red red drums, regret
Wistful regret and a harmless dog's snarl
As the trees grow their vines
As the fiddles saw
As the vines pluck out steady solos
Of greed.


The Event

Extra brick facade
Rumbled to the street

My P.R.version of myself
A travel brochure starring me
Had become exhausted,
Finally, it was like a corpse all dressed up
For a party.

Inside was the ghost of me.

At the time, of course, this all felt like the death of the sun itself.


Commentary

You and your dumb-ass "secret journey"
Motherfucker.
Lookit choo now.
Juss look.


Dal Bat

One thing they have
In plenty
Is rice.

I cannot eat anymore
Rice,

Though it does wonders
For my poopies.





Prescription

A man becomes very sick. He goes to a doctor, who writes him a prescription for antibiotics and regime of treatment that if followed, will cure him. The man goes home and sets up an altar, with a large painting of his doctor. He bows to this picture each morning, lights candles, and recites from the prescription pad:

"Take one pill in the morning. Take one pill in the afternoon, take one pill in the evening."
"Take one pill in the morning. Take one pill in the afternoon, take one pill in the evening."

He does not take the pills.
This is the church in the world today.


Nabaral Barat

My trekking guide Nabral Barat
Who had saved my life twice
Said to me
I wish to move to New York one day sir.

I looked at the peaks of the Himalayas catching the pink light of dawn.
Why? Why would you want to do that?
Do you want some power, or some money?
Oh no sir, i haven need of such things.
But you wish to move to New York.
Yes sir.
How will you live, with no power, and with no money?
On kindness sir, and on fate.
Also, I can guide treks, as you have seen,
There are treks in New York?

Oh yes.



Aha

Now I get it
Why there are more fools
Than holy men

Holy is harder
Than you can possibly imagine.

It's the aloneness of the tightrope walker
Over the Grand Canyon
It's the pressure
Of the diver in the black sea
Run out of air.






Matthew: six new ones, the best I can manage before flying out to Everest trail head. I may not get you more before Thanksgiving, but soon after. I'll be on Everest for at least three weeks and out of range of technology.




The Split

"It's true."
I panted on the mountain's top
And for once,
I meant it.

Below me was the distance I had walked
The rivers crossed
The mosses, stone, trees
And the path
Narrow and deceptive

Above were the Himalayas
Pink in the sunset
And impossible
In their dignity

I reached down in the dust and picked up a stone
I split it open
And inside there was the fossil
Of a nautilus
As perfect in its spiral as a newborn fern.

"This place used to be an ocean."

And it was the truest thing I have ever said.


Earth, Totally

Earth is only half day, you know
The other half is always night
That we flee

Howling down the sunset
Building our fires
Locking our doors


But me, I have a shadow
Wisely named Name
Who loves the cusp of night

Name goes howling down steep mountains
And through swamps and ditches
In charcoal black night

I've discovered
A way to unchain Name.

I tried whiskey, painkillers
Acid cocaine, sex of any kind
Trying to find a bridge
Between the Names night
And the day that belongs to me only.

Nothing lets him out
Nothing.
Nothing lets me out.

Nothing can heal up the wound
Between day and night
Except climbing a mountain
By starlight
To see the sun come up

Pink and cantaloupe
All over the created world.

Myself and Name, we sit in the dirt
For a little while
Grinning like idiots.



Wild White Pillows

Thick,white and yellow smoke
Pillows up from a roadside fire
Competes with brown dust jealously
For the attention of the fickle wind.

In long grass
A ewe licks clean
Her pink lamb.
Between fire and lamb
Is a field of mustard flowers
The yellow God intended
Before us painters
Fucked it all up
With our interpretations.


Let it all come down


The glossy black buffalo
In deepest shadow
Moves through green bamboo

I open my eyes and see
That green fireflies
Are brighter than the crescent moon.

I breath the cool air
Thankful
And desperate that some avenging angel
Stops us
Before we succeed in destroying it all.

As time itself becomes a vertical river
In all the colors we have to offer
I sit and watch
The way I would watch a carful of clowns
Careening into a telephone pile.


First the Monastery, then the Field


We grope on through, some of us blinded, others lamed, others with sight. Plopped here in a place none of us can recall asking for, and certainly did not make. It goes on like that, till the velvet curtains close and we take our bows, to a tepid smattering of applause.


The old woman in the red sari harvesting her rice paddy.
"Who do these fields belong to?" I asked.
"To all of us," she said.


Ego

An orange Popsicle
Melts in the morning sun.


Allison

I thought about her, then
And all the things I had left behind

Something generous there was about her,
In bodies movements,
The sweep,of a hand,
Or a quick,light step.

Her hair had once been red
Orange when she was young
Then the rich autumn color
So mqny women pay
To have created with chemicals,
But in the bright sun
The artificiality always shows,

Hers was showing some thick kinked pieces, now
And watched het prepare herself each
Morning,
grooming herself unhurriedly
With same care she gave toherfamilytoourhouseto
Everything

Including me
Sitting now on a foggy airstrip
Dusty, and alone.
Not unhappy,,exactly,
One can find any unhappiness anywhere

Even here, even in the Himalayas
Diamond Gateway to the promise
Of the sky

But the fullness of my life with her
In al its pink warmth and yes
It's share of falseness,
That fullness I've not found anywhere else.