Poetry page
My son, the mountains, and drainpipes
​
When Jake was three,
his greatest fear
was swirling down the tub
drain. Pain at the needle's eye, trying
to drag your rags, your
boat, and your all-terrains-vehicle
through. You can't leave here.
Pine trees rattle like
a rib cage slamming
shut. A raven dives into a
cloud: where does the fear
end. Do we make marks
and return to find where we left
off? We tried the seashore, but there
Jake dreamed of going down the Big
Drain. The Paradise Canyon Electric
Company has threatened to cut
off the juice to my
synapses. The optometrist clamps
my head
down.
"Tell me when it's
blurred." It was always blurred.
It would seem our mountain
gods might be drains,
femaie ends, outlets,
receptacles for our
overflow. The taproot of a poplar
will eat into a sewer
pipe for water. The drains
will find us
where we least
expect.
The body takes me down
Like Orpheus I seek,
plunge my eyes
into the underworld
of the body.
It slinks away.
A titmouse made its nest
in a deep hole in the fork
of a tree trunk, close
to the roots. Did you know some birds hiss
when threatened?
Olympias dreamt of a thunderbolt
that burned the world down
when Alexander was conceived.
“I’m alive,” says that sudden branch that slaps me
to the ground, takes me out
of thought.
Every day the body hisses
from the trunk of the forked mind;
it hatches, crashes and collapses.
The keepers of this world
want to pluck the madness
from the bright eyes
of the awakened ones.
Every day I look to find
that one thin power line,
that one word stream
the world hangs upon.
Losing all the keys
​
I think I lost them during the flight
somewhere. I was holding onto them tightly at the end
of the journey, but during the descent, it seems
I had to let go of everything.
​
I don’t always know
when I’m a key,
a doorway,
or when I’m the one passing all the way through.
Sometimes the ripples are endless,
falling head first,
or being twisted.
​
I look into all my pockets, then
in the pockets of others.
When we leave here,
our tumblers are set
for certain keys to fit.
I’m sure of that.
​
When we lose the keys, we may find
those dwellings that are open,
like convertibles, birds’ nests, and Buddha.
There need be no keys to climb into them
No doors to step out of.
How thoughts get from me to you
​
These words, the bubbles of my thought,
cross the ocean of air that lies
between you and me.
Those bubbles fall into your inner ear,
wind down that deep seashell of your self
and with a wet sigh they give up their secrets,
And my voice becomes your voice,
my words become yours.
The thought-seed that’s nestled in the word-bubble
is alive in your eyes.
It has given birth
to the thought that blends you and me.
This is more real than hammers and anvils
This is the bridge across the deep waters of awareness.
On being deaf
​
What is it with the human mind
sealing off an Other,
naming and shaping it.
So many enclosures: a sliver
of atmosphere, a country, city,
home, room, brain.
So many walls, so little space,
each entity a thin wash,
a watercolor, seeking permanent status
in vain.
Of course, there is no mind,
just thoughts demanding to be…
well just to be, to be,
not to fizzle into not to be.
I’m deaf, lately, swimmer’s ear,
the conch shell that sound goes down
drunk with ocean foam.
The messages people send
I must get through other senses.
You who speak in soft puffy tongues
from the non-dual bathwater
can never reach me.
I need an archangel on a black horse
with a sword to slice
this darkness open
and set me free.
To my dog, Tera
​
I look into your eyes with love and sense
the same reflected back
but also pain and fear beneath,
so densely tangled, tightly packed.
​
When we go for a drive and stop,
you cry and howl, afraid
to be tossed once more
to some dark snarling corner,
with gaping jaws or metal door.
​
I want you to feel the beauty
I see in you, accept my gift
of soft petals, blankets,
and gentle hands to heal the rift.
​
When we walk at night,
release the darkness of your past.
Let us howl and ask the orb
that rises in the east
to absorb old memories,
replace them with its emptiness.
​
You stretched a leash from your eyes
to my heart and cinched it tight.
I feel the tug
when I’m out of your sight.
​
Dogs don’t do the neti neti dance.
You tell me you are real
when you glare at me,
put your head on my pants.
​
You herd me, circle my legs,
When I’ve briefly gone away.
“Don’t leave,” you say. I do the same
with my true self, circumnavigate it, beg
it, scold it, as if it might sneak off to Uruguay.
​
You stretch and leap and bark at ravens,
of late, and I see myself reaching
for that distant haven,
that pure awareness,
that escapes my vision.
​
There is a field we’ll someday float through,
many miles from all that hurts you.
Reading Nisargadatta in the summer heat just outside of Roswell, New Mexico
​
The landscape is almost as empty
as his mind. Reddish-brown clay,
shaft of yellow weed, a few green attempts
at life—the unmanifest sprouting
In the desert.
Rocking oil wells suckle the earth,
feed our travel urge.
Clouds in the distance are a mirage.
​
Maybe a mirage of a mirage.
So many places I want to go.
I know wanting to go somewhere
Is not being here.
He rarely left Bombay,
which was never
on my short list.
​
But we’re just dreaming anyway.
So I will dream of mountains, river rafts,
beaches and alien spacecraft.
​
There is no I, some say
​
There's a new way of knowing, some say.
No I exists, they say:
The I obscures the clean
empty sky.
​
But the I-flower breaks
through rock to get here
and won't give in.
It will burst Plato's form
to find the sun.
​
The "I am" will crack the word
like an egg, bleed out
the gamboge goo of Being,
and that Being
​
will push the boulder
aside in dead silence,
walk out and breathe
the golden air.
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Yes I'm fooled
​
Yes, I’m fooled by this 90-proof illusion.
I like to paint a glass of vodka, tonic,
and ice. The degrees of transparency.
I can’t fathom how so much
is so solid in the dream.
I use watercolor to soften it all.
Does the mind seek the density
of the word, which exits with the breath?
From there, the plot thickens, and shatters
Into skyscrapers, spaghetti,
nuclear fusion, and other confusion.
We continue to build things
though the earth grows weary
while the sun slowly explodes.
From this angle, I can’t
scratch the surface
of what’s real.
There are many
vanishing points.