The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.
– John 3:8
There
is nothing but a bewildered one. There is nothing exercising properties but
bewilderment. There is nothing but Allah.
– Ibn Arabi
It
seeks to know itself. It is of no use to ask why it does so.
– Meher Baba
1:
O Parvardigar! The Preserver and Protector of All
Everyday
the human wakes, wondering
Where
on earth, within spirals outside place,
Is
one like its love—never anything
Once
appearing on par with that pure face
Whose
eye flashed eternal in the first soul,
Mirror
of day before light, only trace
Of
itself, dropping oceans down the whole.
I
am here more or less another you
Acting
out and in this singular role
No
one alone will play, truthlessly true,
Being
whatever nothing can be, split
Of
time spilling earth’s old excess of new
Thoughts
and words and deeds—as if tears, sweat, spit
May
turn to sweetness the world’s secret pain.
The
fact of infinitely being it
Informs
a jumping spider all the same
Now
transiting the moon glow of our screen
Like
black starlight distilled into a brain
Unfolding
the four-fold sense of the seen
Into
lightning ideograms of limbs
Hunting
the eye-color of longing: green.
Instant
conviction that the ocean swims,
Otherwise
no species of entity
Finds
open its path through labyrinths of skins
Enshrouding
the birth immaculately
Of
matter, life, thought, and the God whose glance
Marks
the plan of all spontaneity
Pointing
one asleep/awake in silence.
No
one moves the puppet of their being
Without
that infinitesimal lance
Sewing
the horizon of every string
Far
before it is twisted into form
Around
the zero-dimensional ring
Adorning
the end-origin, this storm
Absolutely
safe filling the abyss.
Not
a hair on any head comes to harm
In
the universe whose expanding bliss
Springs
from the seed of your eternal crown
In
coils to be beheaded with a kiss
Some
shoreless night when the full moon is drowned
In
highest seas of future memory
And
the pearl of pearls by itself is found.
Stay
nearest the secret whimsically
Ever
swimming this matrix so clear,
Bound
freely now in the one gravity
Whose
net saves all from all where I am—here
Long
before any were, lost in the care
Unending
that pierces each eye, mouth, ear,
Heart
with the sweet hook of life’s own navel.
2:
You are without beginning and without end
History
is not happening today
Here
in paradise where we not yet hang
With
nothing or not knowing what to say
Other
than remember me who once sang
Of
something so dearest that knowledge weeps
To
recall home the hunger of its pang
In
mansions where the king dreaming us sleeps.
How
many beings have you ever met
On
this horizon scarred with light that leaps
In
all directions outspreading the net
Into
a view from nowhere so glamorous
That
nobody sees you and lives and yet
One
still is present like an anchoress
Floating
wholly all well now in life’s tomb?
Answer
not in thought-words unamorous
Any
question left by love in the womb
Far
before abyss springs from the recoil
Of
asking in the first place like a bomb
Who
individuation is, this soil
Of
roots underneath gravity,
That
black earth of every atom’s toil.
The
soul is Mary, not an entity
Of
the kind my blindness of thinking sees,
No
thing squirming among identity
With
shadow forms of fine or gross bodies,
But
the real worm itself of life unbound
Echoing
ever new in ecstasies
Of
self-birth from her own omphalic ground.
Never
was and will be again always,
Such
is the first order of someone’s sound,
Anyone
who verses the rainbow rays
Expanding
from these shores of dreaming stones
To
find impressions of the perfect maze
Known
now-forever to one’s feet alone
In
the whim of suffering the very swerve.
The
vista of you nails us to the bone
One
may say were it not for the pure curve
Of
a plus lightspeed smile splitting the frame
Of
pronouns, the unwhole skeleton nerve
Of
humanity dying not to name
What
everything is always seeing,
First
image of fire before the eye’s flame.
I
know you know my beloved, the being
Whose
question calls yonder unlimited
Domains
the dark world-desert is fleeing,
A
numberless friend losing first his head
To
save each from themselves, bleeding such drops
As
pierce my bubble-sphere with sighs undead,
Everybody
falling before the sight.
3:
Non-dual, beyond comparison
Nothing
what it thinks it is (divided)
And
the one and only one so perfect
That
none anywhere ever has a head,
Each
face being before number bedecked
In
decollation, crowned nameless today
By
life’s body, the overboard subject
Beached
like Priam, Palinurus, Pompey.
This
all along was the absolute plan,
Projecting
our purposes far away,
Unframing
the picture of each lifespan
With
hands born of wind breathing wherever
It
will, all the while preferring a man
Whose
right love the left does not outclever,
One
whose sigh knows silently where to go.
Remember
the shore of birth, the treasure
Retrieved
there in midst of the first death throe,
This
vast cetacean stranding of dark souls
Bleating
syllables of origin’s blow
From
which nothing recovers only rolls
Playing
it again upon the om point
To
sew time’s hide-and-seek game through new holes?
The
supreme power splitting every joint
Of
being’s chain ain’t imaginable,
Hands
of one that all hands bind and anoint,
Tapping
open and closed the gates of hell
Or
paradise as love dictates within
This
pulsing of nerves immeasurable
Enveloped
in image’s very skin.
When
Teresa sees the beauty of them—
Peripherally
my eyes imagine,
Unable
to sustain the diadem—
Every
overestimation falls so shy
That
no wonder it is merely the hem
Mind
and heart are commanded to hold, why
That
limen is what best molds your grasp.
Line
is horizon, the far-nearest sky
Within
which all that makes contact may clasp,
The
special place for love itself to meet,
Filling
the spectrum between shout and gasp,
An
omnipresent spot or endless street
Where
all oppositions bow to the one
Whose
presence proves everyone wrong, his feet.
See
their shadow trample upon the sun,
The
illimitable darkness of light
Outshining
above and below the run
Of
gravity, hear their steps in the night
Stalking
the spirals of a lost thought’s ear
Like
a panther nonpareil in whose sight
You
will no more protect what never was.
4:
and none can measure You
She
felt like counting things, went to the sea,
Spent
three days there numbering the waves,
Seventeen
thousand eight hundred and three,
And
then to a desert, among the caves
Within
a centimeter of sand where
Dance
grains of void like dusty crystal graves
Containing
only themselves, what is there.
Truth
is—heard in dream—the truth is a tree,
This
whole slow bomb branching into the air
Of
one worlds writing now by dreaming we
Asleep
in the signature all over
Lining
the art of petals such as these,
The
ones sewn into beloved lovers
Of
life’s full zero of the human form.
Number
it as long as you can hover
Here,
daring once to unswallow the worm
Of
seeable spheres sprouting from a point
By
falling in fronds unto their own germ,
And
fail to fail to stop before the joint
Of
soul and body suddenly sunders
In
a dark flurry of stars at flash point.
Not
a deity can tally the hairs
Of
this—one’s very own—head, not one god
Flames
not into being by sparks that dare
To
swerve wheresoever spirit will nod,
Sewing
by seeing the shape of things bleed
Alive
into fresh forms perfectly odd,
Born
by chance more necessary than need.
So
full all place is with things never found,
Intersections
of all with all which seed
In
silent explosion the starry ground
So
deep to carry my hands even here
In
your heart-eyes for a moment unbound
And
so light to unclose the furthest near
Like
a banner rainbowing in the mind.
For
example, in iridescent tear
Shed
the skin snakelike from my face, designed
By
predawn in a sleep pattern bluer
Than
the purest lazurite ever mined
And
cupped as a double crystal ewer
Like
old interlocking hands of a man
Whose
sight pours silence into the viewer.
Truly
no ruling shall there be nor plan
Of
this one and only reality,
Never
a marking of its endless span
Beginningless,
far too present to see,
And
still just like that our appointment
Is
kept, arriving my breath to where she
Waits,
filling the ink of night with her eyes.
5:
You are without color
A
thousand yesses to all that transpires
Upon
this sphere infinite where we crawl
Like
ants spying the path of their desire
Until
today the curve of the whole ball
Carries
my heart into the first first dawn
Whose
hue memory will never recall
(Goldening
green eye of the Amazon).
Show
me a mirror that does not reflect,
Refuse
the force whereby a breath is drawn,
Lock
someone’s corpse never to genuflect
Before
mind, energy, matter, the whole
Massive
mess moving totally unchecked,
Charioteering
itself like a soul
Across
the curve of all continua.
Everything
here burning is in that coal
Of
brightest ever black as Siddartha
Waking
up and seeing the world anew
So
good luck voting here other than yea,
Appearing
elsewhere than in the pale dew
Of
motherless birth like a falling word
Or
moth-wing flaming the sun’s light from view.
At
what point in whatever story heard
Has
any of it made the slightest sense
Or
single truth-drop from the cloud emerged
Other
than unknowing’s own turbulence,
Something
like the pure tint of this color
Out
of space, a most ultimate presence
Sweetened
inside bewilderment’s dolor?
Not
beings but fatal contradiction
We
are, latest singular plural spore
Of
lives scarring the corpus with fiction,
Shadowing
in ever-expanding gloss
That
text unseen, yet felt, without diction,
In echoing sport of children across
The
day’s darkening oceanic skies.
See
the impossibility of loss,
Take
and read the total zero of whys,
This
infinite sum of points escaping
Everywhere
from your dreaming, unborn eyes
As
if the one behind all creating
Is
simply the pupil’s simplemost act
Of
missing the moment of its shaping.
Something
that nothing will ever distract,
A
person so spontaneously friend
Now
friendlier than the friendliest fact
Of
original friendship without end
Right
in the middle of every movie
Suddenly
taking life by the left hand
To
walk straight out of this void cinema.
6: without expression
As
the boulder he and his beloved
Are
climbing at once begins to give way,
Rolls
back crushing soon their small bodies dead,
He
twists as if somehow to shield her clay
With
his, curl space beyond the weight of dust,
Pressing
gravity this once to obey
A
will other than its own heavy lust.
Can
you fathom the secret of their smile
In
that total moment of helpless trust
When
universe, contracted to a trial
Of
instant spirit, with nowhere to flow
Save
through itself, unfolds a new while
Neither
temporal, eternal, or now
Blazing
to gold the ash of all words?
Help
me to hug that love, to be not vow
Whatever
alone knows silence, as birds
This
moment musicking in nearfarness
A
sweet raw scent erasing the deaf herds
Of
noise still demanding just less and less
Of
a more and more available free
Among
palms who labor first to confess.
Time
is not much—do not ask—like a key
To
no door, nor to mention any state
To
save you from life or death which can’t be
Regardless,
simply a sense of breath, fate,
If
you will, some mist of dream on the glass
Murmuring
echoes back where we await
Thoughts
stirring in the diorama grass.
Some
days immutable so full of light
And
strange like speaking in tongues to the gas
Whose
souls we once were in unearthly night
Already
too long after the first sound
By
saying nothing produced the big plight
Of
being others, not one but we, bound
By
birth into cosmic history.
Others
so heavy with some ancient wound,
Unable
to respire the mystery,
Only
boring horror of me hanging
As
brain or hookbait of self-puppetry
Signifying
nothing—muffled panting
Of
the heart needing water not vapor
Trapped
in required facemasks of ranting.
So
the next day spent burning this taper
Fly
the whole world upon smoke unsaying
Whatever
ink can shadow on paper,
Let
all the drones of silent prayers praying
Themselves
until the end of ends swallows
The
tongue express what truth is conveying
Without
pressing lips to flute, snake to ear.
7: without form
Those
beautiful hands Saint Teresa saw,
Same
ones each breath holding all our hearts,
Conducing
crystal to leaf, limb to claw,
Midwifing
birth’s whole into body parts,
Move
here themselves exactly as they wish,
Not
unlike an atom’s flow into quartz
Or
the swirl of seas into fins of fish.
Whatever
wondrous thing this is, neither
This
nor that and both (query Ramakrish-
na),
wherever one folds between breather
And
breath the line of one’s own living who,
It
is what it is and, yes, not either,
Forever
an X for him, her, me, you
To
fathom alone wherein silence drowns.
Is
there something to be, someone to do,
In
the daily masquerade of sad clowns,
Mad
heroes, and bad sages, idiot
Slave-porters
all to painted leaden gowns
With
masks unhiding faces hideous,
Or,
in deserts wild where unnamed flowers
People
the sun with thoughts mysterious?
No
directions lead to the sudden hours
Where
the whole shape of life’s monstrous circle
Feels
to fall itself in unseen showers
Landing
in my mind’s lap like some purple
Skin
of ouroboros shed around dawn
By
the still centrifuge universal
Until
I understand and it is gone.
Give
yourself a name, sex, now run ahead
And
place the stiff neck of that tiny pawn
Unpromotable
to king on the red
Line
of any guillotine’s little moon
Because
everyone both living and dead
Is
dying to fly from the dark cocoon
Of
your cosmos into our home of homes.
Planlessly
plan to meet me yourself soon
On
a shoreless shore where the ocean foams
Bubbles
sweet as spittle from Krishna’s flute
Or
upon primordial plains where roams
Only
love’s sigh bearing scent of the fruit
Of
paradise, or elsewhere wherever
You
want because to here there is no route.
Walking
down the street today I never
See
anyone anything anywhere
Until
one far more circumspect ever
Appears
right in the middle of a prayer
Silently
there sculpting the wild wind
Into
waves of sight and shadows of hair
Darker
than darkness and lighter than light.
8: and without attributes
A light shirt woven of your signature
Is the one my naked heart wants to wear
In this darker celestial color
And living texture of something’s hair
With the weight of a warm feeling or thought
Interested in everything without care
To breathe between all that is and is not.
Colder than today have you ever felt
In the people-less world of people fraught
With mirror-forms frightful that live to melt
Under the tongue of one’s own siren gaze
Spitting breath’s spice to the asteroid belt
Of history’s tomorrows, that flat maze
Or screen whose blade now beheads Earth’s children?
The only god who will save us—O rays
Of my real eyes neither seen nor hidden!—
Is the one one now is, this that no one
Seems willing to face in the lion’s den
Of your own lion-soul or soul-cave sun
Blindingly brighter than all daily dreams
And beaming from the ears of everyone.
Thread myself like zero into the seams
Of the garment of garments, God’s rainbow
Of flying sky whose silent freedom beams
In all directions or none with the glow
Of becoming whatsoever it may
And is and will be forever ago
The simply true happiness here to stay.
Or wait—while the thing-counting never stops
Adding un-verses to none—let me sway
Like a tear swimming itself in the drops
Of light that cannot escape your pupil
In some pink sunset drowning the rooftops
Up through the gravity unusual
Or smile sometimes known as anagogy.
One day (says heart with sweet mouths quadruple
Aping the tetragrammatology
Of causes unsaying its own event),
One day the time of speleology,
Of downclimbing the cave of time’s descent
Will uncoil itself as a butterfly
Surprised by its spontaneous ascent.
Since from the beginning of the first why
Or unplace of all places glimpsed unseen
To the final it, passing through each eye
Shut tightest on itself or piercing keen
As an eagle’s, this one spot has it all,
A knot of blue and white and brown and green
Where right now no world has ever been known.
9: You are unlimited and unfathomable
As they scribbled with the friend about scars
Of the horizon, more and more was said
Than known and vice-versa; words like stars
Cut themselves from void, burning to be read
By a few disjointed no ones who feel
That everything alive is beyond dead
And more than any mind may observe, real.
To die in secret is the life, unheard
Outside boundless silence who feels the deal
In all directions since the first sigh stirred
Your waters of sleep the way it pleases
To be what things are really like, absurd
Or flooded with form that never freezes
Swallowing all on the way to nowhere.
Now one more reason to love the breezes
That breathe upon the temples of your hair
Whose priestesses sweeter than the honey
Dropping unseen on their own heart-tongues’ prayer
Sway as lions to drive off the money
Changers, thieves of blood who have no business
Near the pure pulse of something so funny.
No one will ever stop laughing at this
Which nor can be indicated as that—
A wild abyss of mountains of such bliss
As is hardly felt living on the flats
Or in cities dense with desire’s pain,
Only closer to the sea habitats
Of Andean stones singing in the rain.
What I mean is that the entire world
Of everything (all) is totally vain
Or simply the shadow of a dance whirled
Of itself by God hanging round your neck
In cords out of life-creating cuts twirled
Down to the diameter of a speck
Whose color dots the pupil of image.
If at some moment on this mountain trek
All strength stumbles before the vast mirage
And the bubble of breath drowns in the blur,
Do not think that you are not the mad mage
Whose spell is causing all stuff to occur
Or that somehow anyone arrives here
Else than from here, the future where we were.
O bewildering whisper of the ear
Speaking all truth in a spiral of spots
Still-staying faster than the speed I hear
Passing time by through a series of knots
Each nested in the other yet somehow
Shortcutting the circuit of endless thoughts
How on earth to face whatever you are?
