Recent Poems by Dr David     Section 1 Section 2 Section 3 Section 4 Section 5 Section 6 Section 7   Section 1   olfaction walking the warm, quiet asphalt behind a busy shopping plaza the scent of a restaurant’s wood-fired oven speaks of Guatemala of tortillas griddled in mornings still wet with dew of mayan back lanes in a highland village nestled along the lake where volcanoes meet the shore smell the most compelling sense conjures away the decades and the miles enchants this suburban backlot with youthful reveries of some exotic land. and I am happy to breath it in to find the adventure this time so close to home. starlings listening to people speak I am happy with my silence hearing teachers teach I am content not knowing a flock of starlings several thousand strong arrives in waves a black flood filling the great lawn squawking and foraging fluttering about until on cue they rise into leafless trees then fly away their massed silhouettes beautiful on the green poetry on-wing against the blue but, oh, what a racket morning meditation pulling out ear plugs the whirr of the refrigerator asserts itself the scuffing of feet becomes manifest unamplified the nuances of breath passing through larynx are lost sitting on this pillow opening my eyes I see that the sun has found its way between the shades to the kitchen counter like a hungry guest rummaging for food my own stomach is quiet and empty my mind almost so neither in a hurry to begin the day communication yesterday morning mostly before dawn it snowed a lot for early december in connecticut towards evening the wind came up night brought lightning and thunder then it got cold today the sun shines the phones haven't worked in twenty-four hours communication around here never was very good compensation greatness eludes me as does importance, success and significance I was significant for a while and also had a taste of success and to a daughter when she was young and to a sister when we were young I even was important somewhere a few may now and then recall the difference I made in their lives but memories fade as have my dreams of greatness I would that I could love better and more but love is an art like moving silently through dense brush which cannot be acquired much after childhood and things were noisy at home I do have some wisdom but it is a lonely sort hard to share and it comforts me now in a round-about way whispering in my ear that all this failure might yet have a silver lining that humility might yet be better compensation than the self I would have created I remember my old man cynically self-contained upon the couch I recall pete advising "forget about saving the world and save yourself" I think of buddha's last words "work out your own salvation diligently" still I wish there was someone who cared channukah days grow shorter rain will turn to ice tonight already this late afternoon drops congeal on naked branches growing fat and long attaining mass and shapes impossible for water in its fluid state the snow which changed late autumn into early winter lies upon the ground one week now growing heavy with rain here and there mist appears the cooling air unable to conceal its burden of moisture that which was invisible approaches form shadows fill the atmosphere swirling darkening like tea brewing in a glass night, confident in its season unhurriedly asserts its dominion we pull down the blinds and light candles anticipating renewal but now is all of loss complaining that the past might have been better or the future might be worse that the present is not as good as what was or will be that this might be right or that must be wrong all of this is at once the problem and the solution you have made it all why are you complaining? get used to it just get used to being hungry to being empty to not having and doing without understand that you don't know and don't understand realize you are irrelevant unimportant or wrong feel your fear experience the hurt breathe into the wound own the jealousy and anger the humility and surprise be open to loss pain is not punishment pleasure not reward start where you are quiet and still just being pus "do you want me to take my head off?" my eighty-eight year old mother asks me then gets mad when I don't answer promptly amusedly bewildered by the implications of her question literal and absurd. her left arm out of its sleeve her tee shirt bunched up between shoulder and neck covering the sore on her back I see that the answer is "yes". it started out as a dry, impacted pimple a deep whitehead then inflamed into a broad cone a sensitive, pusy volcano yet to erupt. she's had them before and just like now waited too long to tell me the first few pin pricks make her scream and cry and angry at me for hurting her the milky, green-tinged fluid oozing out more so under each of my tenuously ventured presses press, scream, tears, rebuke "it has to be done" press, tears, scream, castigation "it's this or going to the hospital." in the hospital there would be anesthesia and trimming and maybe cutting and maybe a staph infection afterward. if at all possible we stay away from lawyers, doctors, calling the police and hospitals still she can't stand much of this it hurts and she's a baby about pain the next day the mound is shrunken but the pin still pricks I tell her she can yell and moan, but not scream no matter how much it hurts it's too much over the top and I worry about the neighbors I decide that a couple big squeezes are more merciful and effective than a dozen small ones "stop!, stop!" mom commands unclean liquid squirting between my fingers but she doesn't scream she does make a lot of noise crying and carrying on so that she can't catch her breath except to bitterly complaining about me the inflamed area is smaller the third day the center of the taut tent of skin is dead insensitive to pain so I pierce it repeatedly with the pin pus flowing out the holes as I poke then give it one big steady squeeze she fights me off wailing if I were where she could hit me she would. only reluctantly in time she allows me to wipe up the sickly green flood the next day there is a crater instead of a dome a plug of thick pus fills its rim it won't wash out protesting even the drops of water mom won't let me touch it the next day she will and I see that beneath the plug there is more pus relieved of pressure and stretch the sore is less sensitive each day when I squeeze now a stream of gelatinous pus erupts from the hole leaping out like a tiny snake coiling itself mid-air like a shamanistic exorcism before landing on the seat of her chair there is nearly a tablespoon full of it I pick it up and leave it on a tissue on the table for her to consider hoping to mitigate the violence of her imprecations it'll take a few more days of draining and squeezing but that ought to be the worst of it the worst of it for me is taking care of someone who is deeply resentful especially about her need to be taken care of trying to please someone who wants to complain and does about everything swearing like a sailor first thing out of bed. the pus I can handle causing pain to my mother even necessary, therapeutic pain is hard made harder by her utter lack of stoicism but the worst of it for me is her blaming me for neglecting her for not caring even as I am serving her or this time for hurting her as I am healing for making things worse when I am making them better. I sit down across the table with tears in my eyes mourning the relationship I never had with her insisting, "I'm only trying to help I am a blessing in your life it's only that you're not ready for such a blessing" and she's not and wasn't when I was born either or when I was a child but at least now I know it's not my fault, that I am a good son even if she's not a good mother let there be light "he wraps himself with light as with a garment" psalm 104:2 the world is created by ten utterances so the rabbis say and by rearranging those letters and sounds the kabbalists assert we can change the natural order, and it seems we do creating, knowingly or not with or without skill, our own reality it is as mr bermon suggested in high school buddhism rearranging a cliche himself not "I'll believe it when I see it" but "I'll see it when I believe it" and if there is not one truth but many language and belief the matrices of multiple worlds the dogma in all their diversity might coexist like the answer to a zen koan mystics and medicine men shamans and rebbes pagans and popes nuclear physicists and pythagorean what we believe is true is true if there is enough in us and it the artist and the artisan by depth and breadth of craft live in worlds we only glimpse through the fruit of their doing in the beginning the bible tells us before there are any words human or divine the world is "formless and void". later we weave stories to cover our nakedness and make pants to put on god sneezing everyone is just waiting to sneeze neurological blackout brain and senses shutting down body losing control a gap, a pause, an interruption a tiny holiday from self what a relief snuff was used in olden days to stimulate the event and people thinking the sudden expiration of breath and thought was the soul going out blessed each other at that dangerous hiatus it may be so something eerie happens a change of state like diving below the surface of a lake or stepping through a mirror the brightness of light nurses my urge staring wide-eyed at a lamp or overcast smile all else held in abeyance the potential builds my nose starts to tickle and then the blessed release for one brief instant the world disappears. in that violent spasm perfect calm count to ten focus-relax-focus not focus-focus-focus give up the frontal assault in favor of a strategic retreat some things, other parts of your brain other parts of your world other people, need quiet to make themselves heard take a break count to ten or one hundred and ten go for a walk things have a way of resolving themselves when you stop and have a cup of tea sunday four inches of snow last night no paper delivered this morning high-spirited in general I am hopeful regarding the newspaper mumbles sitting zazen in the bathroom through earplugs I hear in the other room mother complaining about the technique of men clearing snow maybe she has not noticed my absence that no one is listening perhaps used to living alone she is just talking to herself neither trying nor not trying to understand through plugs of foam and an intervening door her words unintelligible, animated mumbles sound to me like one hand clapping a good news day today she did not complain that there were too many shopping circulars in the newspaper or that there were too few she did not angrily read aloud the weather report as if it were a prosecutorial accusation recounting a crime against society she did not attempt to share with me some particularly gruesome example of human cruelty from its pages the paper was no doubt again too thin as usual there were too many ads but she felt no need to comment upon these indignities no disgust was expressed toward the sports page no ridicule at the editor's choice of photos out the window nothing has aroused her wrath inside no offenses have been reported so far the news is all good all quiet this morning all is quiet sun shines brightly off the snow wind billows the flag tea steams merrily in its cup everything is different and yet it is the same the orchid's last blossom opened today it has been blooming for months insistence here at the close of her ninth decade my mother has gotten worse more isolated a caricature of complaint she overwhelms everyone with her bitterness family doesn’t visit friends are nonexistent house-keepers quit often after a single visit. she gets angry at trifles inanimate objects the weather news stories imagined discourtesies people out the window and often at my efforts to help. dad used to say “you have to make her think that she thought of it” but more and more she is lost in her own logic today it was over the water she boils three minutes in a misguided attempt to prevent swine flu regularly forgetting it on the stove until half the pot has boiled away and even then doesn’t take my word that it’s been long enough angrily restarting the process when she finds I’ve turned it off. today we marked the time the boil began and when four minutes late I announced completion she exploded yelling, “goddamit” and banged the table I retreat to my seat but she kept it up exaggerating, “I’m always wrong,; I never do anything right” invoking irrelevancies “I’m always moping the counters” inventing misery sticking to the point as I dressed to leave I repeated “all I did was tell you that the water had boiled for three minutes and you got mad” she was crying pitying herself as I went out the door. taking refuge across the street in the public library where I sat and wrote “the comfort pretending you can make a difference produces the anxiety of knowing you haven’t” and other laments on trying and failing returning to mom’s when hunger and sympathy had gotten the best of me the old lady surprised me apologizing sweetly and articulately “I don’t think we should let these things come between us. I’m sorry I got mad. I’ll make a real effort not to do it again” I stroked her and gave her kisses and not expecting the miracle to last suggested “you’re going to get angry just don’t stay that way” just now as I write these words she passes with her walker to exchange kisses on her way to bed and says about my intervening legs “put them down or I’ll chop them off” then laughs “you’re a real fighter” I retort “that’s what you think” she replies refusing to agree sometimes all you can do is walk away and admit failure my insisting on my way is no better than her insisting on hers giving up opens new possibilities of success Back to top   2   happy landing “you didn’t touch us enough when we were kids” I said and thought from the indignant scowl across my mother’s face that perhaps I was wrong still my body knew better and one week later she tearfully admitted “I know I didn’t touch you enough when you were young, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love you” unfortunately to the child that is its most direct, visceral meaning at best it was a frail deficient love crippled inadequate to fill the hollow of the heart or the empty catch in my belly. I looked to feed that hunger the desperate need to touch and be felt to know and be known in the intimate, biblical sense and made a fool of myself and others because I expected as I had learned that closeness involved difficulty that love was about trying to have a relationship with a woman who wasn’t open to relationships so I turned away from ease and left when things were good and if they could hear me know I would apologize to the good women who offered love when I couldn’t receive what I needed most at least know I’m learning when to stop trying that not everything is remediable to my ministrations that people need to be allowed to make their own mistakes myself included my maternal archetype rehabilitated more lovable and more loving less anxious and needy I am friendlier to others and self my relationships with mother, ex-wife and girlfriend all improve it’s a pleasure to be here now but it sure was a hell of a ride learning students all away the hall is quiet simple profundity along the southern wall plants bathe in sunshine leaves patiently turning towards the light fourth reich adolf couldn’t think of anything to do with people but kill them his weird nazi doctors welcomed warmly by the west had more modern ideas. we are all being farmed for our labor kept like animals on bread and circus realize that your thoughts are already under their control along with your purse turn of the television shut down virtual reality try to imagine what it meant to be human before technology’s seduction open the window go out the door say hello to strangers write a letter with pen and paper cook a meal from scratch play a game with a child take a walk be patient after a while your tastes will change. like a tongue rendered insensitive from too much salt the fault is not in the food the flavor is there, but you are not visualize the world as alive see soul everywhere resist the commodification of life revolt against this genocidal economy! weather report last night it rained this morning the sky was grey ground fog floating above sodden earth and melting snow this afternoon the sun came out blue sky eventually vanquishing the overcast tonight stars shine brightly around a half moon the atmosphere has its moods I am to be forgiven mine rolling away they rolled sarah away today from her home at fellowship housing covered by a black drape with a silver star of david at first seeing police by her door conditioned by experience I expected an ambulance crew to roll her out on a stretcher I watched curious and concerned dressing for the cold alerting my mother as two civilians emerged with a gurney between them holding down a dark cover lifted by the wind not strapped down as the medicals do not the way to wrap the ill I knew then she was gone “she’s dead” I announced interrupting my mother’s speculations twice to get the point through. outside half-dressed I stopped after a few steps seeing the procession headed our way recognizing the undertaker as they came close I asked him by name “lenny, is that sarah?” “yes” “baruch dayan emes,*” I intoned, submitting to god’s will “when did she go?” “they just called me an hour ago” “I’m sorry,” he offered and I believe he was a little old lady she used to walk by twice each week not much taller than the shopping cart she pushed back from the store or we’d see her making her rounds across the quad naked legs under her half-buttoned coat to friends or laundry or taking the trash she was always busy always talking she’d knock on the window and wave hello but refuse an invitation to come in “I’m busy” well, she’s not busy anymore I made time to walk her home to admire the photographs that proved her youthful beauty to chat and wish her good shabbos** when I saw her then and gud yontif*** when the holidays came the cold moon shines pale and full eastward in the sky the flag snaps fiercely in the wind its colors catching the setting sun two days left in December the world keeps spinning years rolling away I’ll say kaddish for your soul shayna soara**** --- *blessed is the True Judge **Sabbath ***happy holiday ****pretty sarah blindness special sensitivity results from deprivation at least in the realm of the senses blind musicians and poets are compensated by the gods with song, lack of eyesight favors musical genius. the brain’s visual cortex deprived of its usual input devotes itself to perfecting other senses and abilities similarly neurological development occurs at the expense of more primitive, essential functions language compromises perception and more as the left hemisphere comes to dominate the right and without that domination wonders may occur the savant’s idiocy often involves language and its neurological roots free of this that may flower loss and gain new worlds open to replace the old what’s helping us? what’s hurting us? who knows? beginner’s mind it is all a matter of convenience a manner of speaking or understanding a way of putting things into thought, feeling or words but not the thing itself a method of maintaining our dialogue inner or outer a device enabling the placing of one foot in front of the other keeping on allowing us to proceed with a reasonable degree of certainty or at least the illusion of such something cobbled together the present remembered recalled, remixed creative if only in the most routine way. the brain compounds its strange amalgams conglomerating memory, imagination and perception into an approximation of reality elements vying and yielding according to prejudice, preference and style but what of the moment itself? the elusive essence? there is an advantage to knowing you don’t know the recognition of ignorance is better than its bliss start here the mind you are so afraid to change was never yours to begin with grow your own we are all starving an apple today at the close of the millennium’s first decade is seven times poorer than it was thirty years ago halfway through the last century government studies show the soils were already severely depleted. that we are not as robust in body or mind as our parents were has much to do with the health of our food you can taste its poverty the micronutrient deficiencies gone the metallic salts with their subtle flavors ah, molybdenum oh, manganese zinc, boron, vanadium wherefore art thou, oh, chromium agribusiness is happy with its bushel and tonnage the big heavy vegetables grown chemically with nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium alone animal feed is empty and so is the meat you eat and that is why now farmed salmon is white before they color it the old folks think it’s their taste buds going the young never knew chicken is supposed to have flavor before the sauce when mom cooked broccoli you knew it when you walked in the house your kid doesn’t have enough minerals in his brain to carry a thought your immune system is running at less than half speed nutritional supplements only help a bit commercial ones, not at all tear up your lawn and plant a garden compost your waste and spread it on find a community garden or rooftop in the city grow your own support community supported agriculture death wish people die of alcohol-fueled stupidity every day drunken burroughs shots his drunken wife playing william tell a few inches low at close range cassady expires shit-faced alongside a train track in the cold Mexican night kerouac succumbs to alcoholism at forty-seven. the stuff of legends glamorous only when it’s not your life hypothermia, cirrhosis, a bullet in the brain living without rules brings you up against sobering biological imperatives I have seen such recklessness and it scares me harbinger the first spring flower here in new England is neither pretty nor sweet skunk cabbage producing its own heat melts icy mash soil a then a way up through the snow first unfurling bright green leaves and then a stinking purplish flower our love is like the early spring asleep beneath the snow which stirs inside the first green thing and makes it upward grow. as herald now of all to bloom in springtime’s warmer hours more welcome is the strange perfume of purple stinking flowers if god? if god, then what? p.k.d. master science fiction writer philip k dick having created a great number of alternative universes in his large opus spent a long time wondering especially as he approached the end which one was real. if you were an extra-terrestrial intelligence trying to prepare the denizens of earth for the next cosmic developmental leap you might settle on the amphetamine-addled consciousness of a prolific writer of fantasy in berkeley, california as your vehicle consensus reality the common delusion seemed to him a particularly poor candidate it was and is a trash culture nothing made to last everything disposable consumer goods, music, entertainment, friendship, marriage partners Californian instant intimacy with no messy follow up trade it in throw it away crumbling, fake, degraded disneyland, hollywood, television phony airbrushed like the models in the magazines made to look at not to touch like a boob job the whole act of consumption corrupted transformed from the natural function of living things into the sacrament of a post-war economy determined to stay white hot to convert as much as possible of the earth’s resources and beauty into cash the men who slaughtered the buffalo are still at the wheel the technology that brought you auschvitz is alive and well life as a product a disposable product the commodification of reality exchange value everyone has their price “if god manifested himself to us,” dick asserted, “he would do so as a product advertised on tv” his work was and is remarkably predictive especially about the dark side of technology the government was out to get him fifties anti-communists Nixon-era paranoiacs today super computers at the nsa listen and watch us all he was right about the corrupt power elite malevolently profiting big government, big medicine, agribusiness, wall street consuming our health and freedom trashing the planet trash culture consuming us all. dick, skating on the edge of madness regularly falling through the ice, gives us a truer picture of reality than our media masters a religious man a church-going christian at least later in life a student of mysticism his ideas reflect the gnostic doctrine of a higher god trying to fix for us mistakes made by the creator v.a.l.i.s. dick christened it in his last novel save one “vast, active living intelligent system” leaving clues for us setting up moments of revelation significant incongruities meaningful coincidences beams of light to the brain well, that’s the way dick saw it coming more and more to believe in the true faith just beyond his understanding too many stories too many pills or not enough a benevolent deity leaking truths to a drugged up science fiction writer in the san francisco bay area? well, why not? you could do worse if you were god and, who knows maybe you are dick’s obsession with parallel dimensions duplicate realities had something to do with the loss of his twin born to a depression-era mother without quite enough resources she died at six weeks he lasted another fifty-three years carrying on a dialogue with her throughout his life although in it she was the one who was born and he was carried blind and stunted inside her. now they lie next to each other sharing a stone in the family plot in Colorado or maybe he was born fifty-three years late into the more perfect world she found much earlier perhaps together they soar one with dick’s satellite god orbiting earth benevolently sending down signals who knows? stranger things have happened forecast it’s been snowing all year on and of for four days since new year’s eve never very hard for very long fat flakes or skinny placidly meandering or gusting on the wind blowing off roof in small wisps or large plumes kicking up in clouds where it has collected on lawns and walks the atmosphere revealed proves chaotic massively roiling even the gentlest breeze is wholly turbulent only when it is invisible can we imagine any order at all defying analysis its moods unpredictable at best we are left with only our poor probabilities hieroglyphics the wind paints hieroglyphs, blowing snow into strange forms on the roof across the way. where’s an egyptologist when you need one? Back to top   Section 3   unsolved it will not be solved nor will it remain a problem it does not go away nor does it stay from the self’s perspective disease is the difficulty but from the vantage of the disease the problem is self earlier today the sun came out now the clouds return where is the cause of tears? hieroglyphics every morning she complains her hands are cold when I advise “put on a long-sleeve shirt beneath your sweater” she objects “it’s my hands that are cold, not my body” today shirt in hand I patiently but firmly explained over her angry sputtering “now mother, everyone knows putting on more clothes makes you warmer” she agrees to try if the gloves don’t work two nights ago my composure cracked already stretched thin by my girlfriend and I yelled at mom to leave me alone and when she didn’t I yelled more and she cried and yelled back and I went for a walk in the snow and could have cried but it was too cold still today’s suggestion regarding the shirt was more acceptable because of the other night’s anger. patience and impatience depend on each other one doesn’t work without the other dreaming the poor dream of wealth orphans dream of love hungry people dream of food, but fat, pampered, rich ones are not happy either. through these veils of hope and fear the light of awareness shines, follow it begging it is neither good nor bad the importance you confer on it is accidental deprivation or surfeit are beside the point if I run out of paper I will write on bark when I run out of breath the story is over. you are like a person sitting on a lake bottom begging for water sloughing sprouting seed sloughs its coat transforming itself into new growth infant becomes child becomes adult nothing lingers and that’s as it should be to meet the present unconstrained and now is challenge enough relying on ghosts is a mistake what can be accomplished by fixing the past? the dead are not amenable tor rectification, leave them an offering and get on with your life, we’ve had one hundred years of psychotherapy shouldn’t we be getting better by now? almost right snowflakes falling fat and leisurely under the streetlight drifting in from the darkness infinite in number and form face up I receive their wet kisses trying to guess which in the heights will fall upon me following the chosen ones down with my eyes sometimes almost right satisfaction the pigeon certain of its roost salmon confident of the way home contentment is the only wealth want what you have don’t want what you don’t have the seeker must disappear keep quiet and all will come to you calm your worrying mind snowy dreams when it snows you might think that the yard is a meadow and the pine trees that surround it the edge of a forest especially when no one is out and it’s falling hard enough to imagine that there aren’t any neighbors but then men arrive with their clearing machines plowing, scraping, blowing, growling, beeping an army against the quiet vanquishing snowy dreams it’s easier it’s easier not to care about other people unloving parents, wayward children lovers, strangers, friends if they want your help they’ll ask for it and just because they do doesn’t mean they’ll take it it’s hard knowing your own heart let alone someone else’s. of course you want to help or to ask for love but nine times out of ten they’ll lose respect for you and rightly so and you’ll have squandered the chance that might have worked if you had waited (and even then only if you were willing to walk away) better to wait and work on yourself. it’s hard to sit quietly when love feels a need to give or to receive it’s easier not to care or not to care as much tv after jeopardy and wheel of fortune the hour of television mom watches every day I turned off the sound and finished dinner kissing her in the process and being kissed when my plate was empty I brought out my journal and worked on a poem or tried to largely distracted by the mute pictures on the screen (it’s almost always better without sound without knowing just how inane it really is) then switched it off and wrote finishing that poem and writing a few more until after eleven when I switched it on while I got a snack and ready for bed and found a movie with good acting about a father and son and the mob a period piece shot in sepia tones and stayed up past one watching it. waking this morning at the regular hour hours less sleep that usual I was eager to rise writing half this poem before meditation. it feels good not to be sucked in by the sights and noise to turn off the tv and create art better to go to bed and better to rise. I only wish I could do the same with my relationship avoid the inanity and turn it back on when the show is better for nothing those crows are around here always flying from tree to tree and roof to roof never coming down to earth somebody must be feeding them they don’t come around here for nothing childhood’s end that people don't act n their own self interest dawned on me at childhood's end the first of many adult ironies the way to success clear, they detour the necessity of the moment obvious, they ignore it "unless you do this, the sky will fall" and they don't and it does john who's chronic overstaffing sank the enterprise jane who couldn't accept what was good for her even when it bit her on the ass "take this cake to the shop on the corner the man will give you ten dollars with that I'll make three cakes you'll eat one, I'll eat one, the third will bring down to the shop on the corner." and on the way she drops it, or eats it, or gives it away again and again it's simple math but they can't add it up or don't. amazing me in my youth because it is so commonplace I've come to take it somewhat as a natural law. the trick of course is to recognize it in oneself to see the wrong turn the lost cause the risk which is certain to fail the good money after bad and beyond that the root of the tendency the blind spot, even if you can't fill it in or pull it out compensating for it may be possible as suzuki roshi said "even if your effort is in the wrong direction, if you are aware of that you will not be deluded" as van gogh said "so I have a horror of success" stop banging your head against the wall keep painting like a river new york rushes like a river mad at finding itself constrained pinched through a cataract, white water surging up and down avenues damming up cross-town vehicles and pedestrians rocks and rapid we paddle in in my twenty year old chevy down the major deegan across the third street bridge into harlem coming to rest right in front of this brownstone on one eighteenth finding the key where she told us to look we let ourselves in it is a haven thick walls insulating from the city street noise sounding far away an eddy a backwater just off the pounding mainstream thunder. we arrived at four-thirty just before the craziness of rush hour and will venture out at ten-thirty to collect our daughter from the newark airport the one good thing to come out of our brief marriage flying back from seven months in africa, tomorrow we may paint the town red at least we'll wade out into it all take in a museum do some window shopping watch the river flow splash around a bit right now I'm fine sitting on the bed like a bank of sand drinking a cup of tea letting the big apple do what it does so well without me. I've been in the country a long time nonsense the brain wants to understand trying to find meaning patterns in visual or auditory stuff. meditating behind a screen in the front room I become aware of regina's ugandan accented speech towards the rear through my earplugs I cannot make out her words the brain scrambles to arrange the meaningless sounds into intelligence but before it can I come back to my breath and a quieter, less active part of mind, her lilting patois continues on the periphery but I am not involved it is not up to me either to approve or disapprove it does not have to make sense green before us sailing down fifth avenue at ten of seven monday morning stoplights slowly, gracefully turning green before us perfectly timed at thirty-two miles an hour like dominoes falling in slow motion one and then after a slight pause another down without a stop from one eighteen to forty-eighth where I drop her for her appointment. over on madison it's the same thing uptown precision and ease a dozen cars jockeying in the flow around those stopped or turning how rational how efficient something working as it should I love new york out of the city coming up out of the city onto the highway north there is a different geometry space transforms like riding up out of a canyon land onto a plateau immediately the landscape flattens revealing the horizontal perspective swallowed in the city by buildings walls of buildings near and far here this snaking road promises ever more openness eventually you can imagine a horizon decompression leaving manhattan the world slows even at seventy-five miles per hour on the highway north, senses relax away from the jostling bustle mid-day traffic not noticeably lighter because it's a federal holiday king's birthday the sun is out the road is dry and after what must be the densest concentration of stoplights on the planet unobstructed movement is intoxicating one hundred miles later the highway some kind of magic bridge an intermediate zone between here and there I exit in connecticut where the quiet always strange after new york contrasts more because of the holiday schools, banks, library, post office are closed I spread out into the suburban landscape itself wide and open leaving my car almost alone in the lot enjoying the uniqueness after the city's hordes of the few people I pass on my way down the sidewalk it was an exciting visit the flood of stimulation that it is a happy reunion five days with my daughter on her way back to the west coast her mother's company trying at times a lot of people wouldn't want to live anywhere else but all things being equal I'll take my quiet over their urban exhilaration the frog doesn't know the water is hot until it jumps out of the pot end times the world as we know it is coming to an end so he believes and tells me in a stream of emails from northern michigan near saginaw brief communiques often only an address a link to some webpage foretelling catastrophe the utter demise of our economic system yellowstone's eruption devastating solar flares the return of planet x some of it is compelling some drivel I stopped reading it long ago people have been predicting the end of days with or without rebirth for millennia personally I think we'll just continue limping along toward ruin that armageddon if it comes will be so gradual as to defy observation anticlimactic after all that leads up to it. some month back I advised him to stop worrying about the health of the world and start worrying more about his own now he insists that the forty extra pounds around his middle will serve him well when the food supply is interrupted today he told me not to postpone the things I want to do "we might all only have another couple years" good advice whether or not the world is coming to an end at fifty-two I am not so interested in the doing of things as I am in their appreciation I don't want to go anywhere only to be more completely where I am for the fully alive I'm inclined to believe there is no fear of death the master says for such there is no death having welcomed it it disappears bukowski writes "everybody is afraid of the bomb and they're all already dead" it amounts to the same thing the question is not when or whether we die but if we will live now and fully noble truths buddha's first noble, life involves suffering, isn't effected by your efforts to get things right it doesn't matter how good and careful how smooth and powerful you are things go wrong the second truth speaks to the cause of suffering namely, our idea that things should be different our attachment to a right way of being as yet unattained but possible it seems if we were just more good, careful, smooth or powerful or if other people and things would just cooperate the third noble truth while not violating the first suggests a way around it giving up our attachments our ideas about what should be happening in favor of what is letting go of our prejudices regarding right and wrong and just being in the moment here and now the fourth noble truth prescribes a lifestyle to accomplish this giving up of attachments and tuning into now a fixing not of things but of our attitude and this does involve being good and careful smooth and strong buddha exclaimed upon achieving enlightenment "how wonderful; all beings are already enlightened just as they are" not god or bad things are okay it's just that our efforts sometimes are a little out of place wising up a few days after my daughter's bas mitzvah ten years ago she and I stood listening as her mother complained about her family "my sister is crazy and my mother is nuts." the implication regarding the further application of this observation this family tendency was obvious at least to my daughter and me our eyes meeting for the briefest instant then looking away afraid that our conspiratorial silence expressionless though it was would be detected last night sitting on the sofa with my girlfriend the chaos of dissolution strewn about us as her mother's house is made ready for sale softly so as not to be heard she observed "both of my sisters are crazy so I must be crazy, too" knowing that you know is ignorance knowing that you don't is wisdom knowing that we're crazy is the closest we can come to sanity. at least when it comes to women I'm wising up unquestionable twice this week I made the two hour drive back up to hartford from new york city alone and happy. first four days ago after visiting almost a week with my daughter in manhattan, then, following her quick trip to connecticut, today after dropping her at the airport for a flight back to the west coast two beautiful drives north through january days sunny and mild and light mid-afternoon traffic with a heart warm and certain of direction the world, even at seventy-five miles an hour, reflecting my contentment and peace my father was never a talker in this she reminds me of him and further I am reminded by a parent's pride and the simple joy he took in an automobile on the open road. he had an unquestionable presence a stability of being beyond incident and twice this week driving home on the highway I had it also happy birthday, daughter sunday after your mother left for connecticut and her flight back to california I made dinner and we worried about how you would wake up for your seven-fifteen meeting the next morning earlier that wet day taking the train to an art gallery in brooklyn we argued politely but impassioned about the attention I am due and the demands being placed on you and both cried turning a few head in that jaded city on the quiet platform where we exited attracting the curious gaze of the woman in the glass booth who's already seen it all that out of our systems we walked with little said down to the river and the drawings taciturnity a family trait the art and especially the views of the bridge out of those big windows were great there was little that needed saying the cobblestones and quiet compelling after manhattan's busy commerce after dinner and part of a movie and an early lights out lying in our beds talking you allowed with a wisdom transcending loyalty that you knew you must break away but would wait only until she was stronger and then right before sleep from a place very deep whispered "dad, "I love you" a few days later in connecticut at cousin rebecca's table it was good to see you relaxed and laughing and at easy driving back down to the airport the words escape me now but the small talk was wonderful making it with you now a few days more and a continent between us I celebrate your birth taking pride in your being in some great way you measure my being orient and remind me of my wholeness you are the best "thing" that ever happened to me and I love how you keep happening a better world in a better world people would mean what they say and not be swept away by every passing mood or extravagance. but in this world things and minds change and there is no requirement the thought precede speech in the first place. the only recourse is to stop listening at least to give less weight to people's pronouncements hold the rudder to your course despite the wayward breeze the kabbalists assert that god originally intended to make the world through the attribute of severity a world of definition, limit and precision but realized that it would not last instead we have this vague creation colors blending into each other messy emotions words with multiple meanings or none. if diamonds were common we wouldn't value them but pearls of wisdom if they were more would make us all richer there is a lot of sound but very little of it is music for all the conversation there is very little intelligence a man of his word is always rare poet’s lament somewhere there are glorious things happenings worthy of a poet's tongue here clouds lazily fill the sky pine boughs bob and sway on the breeze the music on the radio overflows with passionate events this chair is just too comfortable the smartest man in the world until she was twenty-one my younger sister thought I was the smartest person in the world and by then she already had seen a bit of the world including university our parents well-intentioned but neglectful and unschooled themselves I supplemented her rearing a concerned and loving older brother giving her the benefit of my academic curiosity and philosophic inquiry as well as lessons on grammar and style as dad would put it when to say "the" [pronounced th-ee] and when to say "the" m dethronement when announced several years after its occurrence left me wondering as to its cause that lack clarity in itself perhaps a sign of my declining brilliance a quarter of a century later I'm still not sure what happened she was studying architecture in new york I was across the continent becoming a physician then we each got married busying ourselves with life I didn't know I had been so elevated or that I could fall so low the tension she felt towards me swelled into dislike bursting forth in ways large and small siding with our black-sheep brother "he needs me more" when I took his blows and her blame for his eviction instead of our father furthered our estrangement I followed her recipe to remedy our rift taking more interest in her life but met only indifference a shrug of her shoulders our father to her face more than once defended me against her low opinion telling me in private "she can't help it" which I took as a reference to the irrationality inherent in the gender but now I think she rebelled not against her parents but me throwing off her childish idealization a freeing of self a necessary revolution taken to far a turning away from certain harsh family realities about which I was more cognizant "david, I want to be in la-la land" it has hurt me deeply more than I admit this loss of a sister excluded from her life she is having trouble now with her eldest son I learn from him and from bits of conversation with her when she calls to speak with mom and I ask about the kids at sixteen I surmise he is going through his own adolescent rebellion and making his mother sigh for the first time in years she is interested in talking with me when I offer her a perspective she finds curious and new that we all fail our children and in that do them a greater service on their way to becoming separate individuals and if I felt welcome I would share more about forgiving ourselves and those who have failed us but as the former smartest person in the world I have learned from all that is not and may never be about what cannot be communicated and when. and as I grow older my parents' inattentiveness and remove seems more and more like wisdom. my father conceded when I was sixteen "how can I tell you what to do? go make your own mistakes" different the master asserted "I am an ordinary man" and continued with a smile when the questioner shyly insisted that he was different "you are asleep while I am awake after all that is not such a difference" there are different kinds of sleep deep or light restless or refreshing sweet or nightmarish. there are different kinds of wakefulness. even though we feel alert most all of us are dreaming better to awake than to try to change the dream more than halfway walking down a steep mountain trail it is more difficult and perilous to make sure each step is firm and stable than it is to exercise a controlled fall following the momentum from foot to foot trusting that a slight slip in one step can be made up in the next much harder to stop and start than it is to continue attempting the scorpion pose balance eludes me until going more than halfway I bend my back while up on my arms we think that caution is safer but boldness has its rewards prudence may be the better part of valor but there are other parts no breeze no breeze the flag is just standing up there can you see it? it's just standing still not even moving (spoken by mom) no birds no birds out there not a feather in the bush (spoken by mom) Back to top   Section 4   fatherly advice if you know what you're feeling and you've thought about what you say and the other person doesn't understand then you have to assume that they're not listening or you're with the wrong person or both. repeating yourself repeatedly getting more excited as you do never has the desired results. lao tzu said it thousands of years ago "the wise person speaks little and never argues" fresh step mom tells the same stories over and over not to me but to anyone else who visits including the home aide who comes twice a week and they are always a complaint about the weather, the next door neighbor, the squirrels... the near exact wording each time I don't know how or how long the woman can stand it it's a different same old story with my girlfriend a constant repetition of injustices perpetrated long before I arrived on the scene and even though I've gotten very careful and refined myself in the process I can't be careful enough our closeness provoking the horrors of intimacy betrayed new, after all is not so easy encumbered as we are lumbering under the load to land a light, fresh step and change direction is quite an accomplishment with momentum demanding its way but lately the burden is lighter redefining what I need learning how to shift what's left to help me make the turn and when I don't how to tumble and roll and now and then just recently I can imagine dancing naked and free stacked against you my mother forgets how long she has lived here that she has something on the stove whether or not she has eaten dinner who my ex-wife is when she walks in the door my girlfriend rages against her inconsiderate family against her mother's stupid friends against consumerism and the vanity that is destroying the planet each of them uncomfortable with affection forgets I love them gets mad an blames me for their misery. after years of trying to explain myself in those situations I have found that here is no one listening. push away from the table cut your losses get out of harm's way stop throwing good money after bad, you can't win the cards are stacked against you logic the logicians have concluded much to their chagrin that logic is a failure or at least necessarily incomplete and that intuition the mysticism they have forever warred against is mathematics more intelligent twin. anecdotally this was known flashes of insight coming in dreams and visions to great scientific minds and it seemed obvious once goedel pointed it out that no matter how large the axioms you start with something always lies outside them still he lost his mind not his mind or at least not the mathematical part but the more ordinary connections to life trying to prove this incompleteness a mathematical intuition a creativity outside formal rules resuming meditations on infinity that had already driven other genius to suicide or mad "no man sees my face and lives" like thinking about yourself thinking about yourself thinking it is a dangerous loop but by then the plane he was flying was diving too steeply to pull out of it and anyway where would he go if he did? of course trying to logically prove that logic is limited has its own logical limitations. creativity is a big slippery fish and thank god it is or if you're afraid of the word thank the source of those mystical inspirations the unknown, infinite fount of the magic that vibrates subatomic worlds and the strings of our hearts. no, it doesn't add up how boring it would be if it did good morning on hold for twenty minutes this morning with the university dental clinic trying to make an appointment for mom when the hold music stops and a ringtone begins as simultaneously across the room mom informs me that she is ready to have me prepare her breakfast as I do every day a little desperate after the long wait not to miss this opportunity I plead "I'm on the phone, just a minute" and then while I am conversing with the receptionist must listen to my mother grumble and complain in a voice made loud by hearing loss with a spirit made sour by her own bitterness about how she always takes second place to my phone calls and other things untrue and unkind after the forty second phone call I attempt pacification explaining that the call was for her but she is on the warpath and won't let go not wanting to miss the opportunity to vent her spleen sputtering at the table about the indignities she suffers at my hands all mean fabrications while I toast her bagel and make her coffee. several times I ask her to stop increasingly exasperated by her tone and content trying as hard as I do to be the conscientious son that I am and then just before the toast pops up she curtly commands me over to the table to take from her the remnants of a plastic bag brusquely ordering me to throw it away no please, no thank you all the while complaining about me going on with increase vengeance when I beg her to stop inspired by my reaction. she loves the fight enjoys feeling sorry for herself cutting people off verbally and emotionally uninterested in resolving the matter the point in question she switches subject and continues to fight finally after I raise my voice also she quiets down and drying a few tears of self pity she eats her breakfast. I finish what I am doing and slip out the door without a goodbye a goodbye which even on the best of days is for her an opportunity for yet another set of complaints inaccurate and unfair. often it is nice sitting there with her sunny, warm and quiet yet even then we are all just objects in her world ultimately denied our own personhood and then equally often she turns reptilian hissing like a snake lacking the most rudimentary mammalian affection even for her young if I let her, she would consume me it is in her nature to bite good night, mom after fifty years she has started returning my good night kiss reciprocating the peck I plant on her cheek with one she plants on mine "you don't have to get up" she has told me often enough so that when she rolls her walker over I merely sit up and lean in to enable the exchange but sometimes she misses catching my beard and then barks feigning offense with anger that come to her far too easily loudly protesting "that's not a kiss!" as if it were my fault. the proximity the overlapping of her anger and affection right in my face shocks me every time my eyes widen and smile drops muscles involuntarily expressing a mixture of fear and childish disappointment as she smile quite pleased with her performance and my reaction to it and demands another try she is uncomfortable with love always has been and enjoys pulling its rug out from under me from under us both leaving me sitting there as she toddles away an echo of something horrible and old reverberating in the emptiness between us science gets religion science has a religion to not believe in god but it is hard to explain the elegant symmetries without him beautiful theories are more likely true. darwin had no notion or the vast intricacies of cellular physiology or he would have classed them along with the eye as too complex for evolutions random chance. hawkins unable to dismiss divinity from his physics admits we don't understand how the great cosmic forces are so "finely adjusted to allow life." the smarter science gets the spookier things seem materiality itself resolving into quantum omnipresence superpositions and entangled everywhere at once angelic radiations seem not much different from the subatomic kind and whatever the mechanism medicine confirms the efficacy of prayer. something is going on that does not meet the eye or instrument at least not much not yet but as it does miracles are revealed science's unified field the holy ground we thought we left behind. if the deity is dead he was lifeless to begin with a man-made, sunday-school bugaboo; religions come and go einstien's god is not the dying sort money can’t buy people accumulate wealth far beyond what they can spend quantities that are not good for them that ruin their children and hurt society when questioned why he kept making money the billionaire confessed "I've forgotten how to do everything else." like the alcoholic who doesn't know when to stop there is truth in that but money is also power a primal quest for domination or, at least, security and since in this regard it is necessarily imperfect there is never enough the drunk takes another drink business craves the next dollar come home early play with the kids invest some energy into the marriage cook dinner together go for a walk... such simple coexistence does not figure in power's equation inhabiting the transient now even if it is the key to happiness does nothing to further elusive security dad said, "money is only important when you don't have it" it has been shown over and again that wealth beyond the basic human needs does not make people happy each dollar spent not only buys less joy than the last increases wealth increases worry as the dalai lama replied when asked about poor people's great joy "more money, more problems" the very wealthy it seems are largely miserable knowingly persisting in behavior that hurts you or others is wickedness and "the wages of sin is death" scans measuring brain activity have shown that the happiest thing to do with extra money is to give it away. as the master said "if there's water in your boat or money in your house it's best to empty it with both hands" already here it is all here like a statue already present in the stone what is required is undoing chipping away the non-essential setting free the poem already on the page needs but to disengage from awkwardness and excess a few words more or less a phrase in need of turning or excision some small cuttings away which depending on the patient may bring a deeper vein into view or require a stitch or two we have it on good authority that in some way mysterious to us our lives are already perfect all that is required is an adjustment of attitude a releasing of what is not in favor of what is truth it seems would be revealed if we would just get out of the way Back to top   Section 5   discovering zero the indians discovered zero giving nothing a mathematical symbol and place allowing not only ease of notation and calculation but whole new concepts fields and systems of mathematical thought science as we know it an explosive charge on detonation will radiate out in all directions unless a hollow is left in its formation an empty space over and around which the tnt is packed then especially with some sand tamped down over that the initial explosion taking the path of least resistance starts releasing its energy towards that nothingness and the rest of the charge follows its lead another product of india buddhism puts great emphasis on the concept of nothingness not as void but as the ultimate source of all that which unifies the diversity of life each moment arising and returning to it zero brings numbers to life emptiness sets quantity dancing vacancy directs force formlessness gives birth to form nothingness is all all is nothing the kennedy curse joe kennedy was a son of a bitch and though other people had to suffer for it he got what he deserved he was a philanderer and a bootlegger an associate of mobsters a gangster and probably a murder himself such is fortune or at least too often its making the first blow came at his own hand his daughter disappearing quietly into an asylum in the midwest when her mild retardation became profound after he ordered her a lobotomy as ambassador to england he advocated appeasing hitler and told the german ambassador that he agreed with their policy towards the jews churchill suspected him of collaborating with the nazis and ordered his phone tapped he ruined his political career by predicting the end of democracy in britain and the united states a defeatism that even those who were against america entering the war could not abide his own presidential ambitions crushed he transformed his hope to his first-born, joe junior who, trying to match his brother's exploits in the pacific, died when the explosive-packed bomber he was piloting blew up somewhere over enemy europe joe's political mantle was then conferred to his second son, john an unlikely candidate sickly and lame (steroid therapy for his kidney disease put some flesh on him later) perhaps heroic (the book he only claimed to write marketed his mystique) and a womanizer acting like his father at great risk to his political ambitions "I can't help it" he confessed the old man made him a senator and four years later during the presidential race started by buying the west virginia primary and finished by using his mob connections to deliver illinois (and probably missouri) to win the general election but such is politics. getting a good dose of his just desserts the patriarch is paralyzed by a massive stroke his god's retribution and watches silently from a wheel-chair for the next eight years while first his presidential son after almost starting the third world war then begins our tragic involvement in vietnam finally getting himself shot and killed and lionized in the process "once there was a place called camelot" america needs heroes. then he sees his third son, bobby find truer religion it seems reaching out to the oppressed in his own presidential bid before being assassinated himself in a kitchen in L.A. but his youngest boy, teddy receiving last rights when he broke his back was the straw that broke his at eighty-one refusing all nourishment the blot that he was on humanity faded away. but the curse the old tyrant brought on the family continues until today. why do we admire these people? ancient and accomplished at first it started as a joke my surprise and words you spoke then I grew sober as I guessed the truth which is concealed in jest the luthier revealed to you a violin both old and new and from its ancient body flew a sound more tender deep and true as there silently upon the table your instrument august and stable a friend that served you long and able lied hushed before a voice of fable you yourself did chide acting the rash and fickle bride as I pretend to but half-hide the shock of love so thrust aside and am I just so coldly cast or do you find me here at last? say does your heart run wild and fast or wed the present with the past? the luthier so admired your play his fiddle gifted you that day so I make you present of an ancient and accomplished love others and ourselves housebound by age, stubbornness and an unfriendly spirit my mother's world is small refusing to read or wear her hearing aids she is cut off spending her days looking out a generous window at a pleasant view doing word-find puzzles an aid comes twice a week to help her with the housework in the ground-floor, two-room apartment and keep her company she gets meals delivered daily for someone at the end of their ninth decade she is comfortable and remarkably healthy. because her horizons are so limited and because she is losing not so much her mind as her memory she busies herself with trifles and because she is bitter she complains over and over again about the same things the address labels that regularly come as promotions from charities listing her apartment as f not e greatly insult her for years she has been infuriated daily by the newspaper's new format and that the president's picture appears so regularly in it she never tires of bitching that this neighbor is that way or that one the other I generally escape her wrath unless I try to correct her increasingly strange behavior not putting food into the refrigerator not wearing her emergency necklace to bed not using soap when she washes the dishes I pick my fights and practice patience gradually of a solipsistic bent I am inclined to believe that which annoys us about others exists in ourselves at least we should be wary that this is so especially with family my mother's world is in some ways a minimalist rendering of my own my obsessions, more sophisticated my repetitions, more circuitous my vision and spirit, not as bound but still not free her bitterness with life a reminder that I should take more joy her irritability advice to take some things easier. life show us what we need to forgive in others and ourselves breaking the surface at first the source was hidden submerged gas bubbles floating up from an unknown depth breaking the surface with a foul belch a toxic plume sometimes distant, sometimes near, sometimes encompassing me when it is my turn gradually I learn to keep my mouth shut speaking only makes it worse best to hold my breath while the noxious cloud disperses into a sweeter atmosphere but then the bubbles' rank upwelling increases forcing me out of the water and then back from the shore as the pond begins to roil a fetid haze hanging over it and up from its depth something emerges a monster a creature hideously misshapen before a muffled roar now forms a thunderous cry pathetic and revolting. it's time to find another place to swim warm goodbye the sun has been shining through a long strip of blue sky for a good long while now I'm glad I waited out the intervening clouds opportunities for sunbathing being few in february still it's low in the west and from the look of the overcast along the horizon I'm pressing my luck it got pretty chilly there for a bit I guess I'll quit while I'm still warm timing after a morning of writing poetry and yoga and breakfast and more writing early this afternoon I realized that this february day was unusually warm and that he sunshine might not last. riding my bicycle over to the high school (the kids on vacation for the week) I found a place out of the wind after an hour the clouds came in, the sound of water flowing decreases as snow on the steps stops melting, the sun occasionally breaking through the clouds has been hidden for quite a while my hands are the first to get cold as I sit suffering for my art and my tardiness waiting for a window of blue american ceasar the supreme court has removed all limits as to how much money corporations can spend on ads for political candidates freeing big business to strengthen the stranglehold it already has on government commentators not known as alarmist complain that the people's business is not being done that nothing is working in this country except the further acquisition of wealth by the wealthy resources concentrating into fewer hands warning that unless money's grip is broken the republic is lost none of this is entirely new the country was started by rich white men who restricted voting privileges to their own but the court's recent decision is a great leap in the wrong direction even worse as the corporate contributions can be made anonymously so the public won't know who their manipulators are. sweeping aside one hundred years of precedents the justices are changing the rules they pledged to uphold. at the end of the roman republic everything was bought and sold including the senate and army corruption was the rule nobility was absent the strong arm of the emperor seemed a hopeful solution. it's hard to believe but these may be remembered as the good all days hole in the bucket it's hard enough getting a handle on the big issues don't sweat the little stuff saving pennies is foolish if it contributes to the loss of pounds narrowing scope and focus managing details may be comforting but then so is opium the larger picture may be dizzying but at least it has perspective put a plug in the hole before you try filling the bucket excalibur some people think king arthur was a comet because legend has him burning five towns in one battle and because his sword shaped like a comet with a tail was said to shine as brightly as the moon last night with you, it all seemed true above me you were the lady of the lake holding my sword conveying kingship illuminating the night excalibur a healthy disease what a relief like a fever breaking or a boil coming to a head the pressure had been on for months irritating, painful delirium of a heated brain but far too real then with everyone gone the expected deliverance delayed the crisis seemed to deepen intolerably and just when it seemed all was lost writhing the disease exhausted itself and a blessed calm was revealed such as that which follows a storm. today I am happy to report that the patient is feeling better hopeful of full recovery expecting a greater health than before the sickness began effort and ease like anything worth doing with practice poetry improves words finding expression, finding feelings, finding words adding, subtracting, rearranging until the rhythms emerge balancing effort and ease. reading the masters mixes inspiration and deflation we continue in our own humble way discovering, refining our gifts such as they are. when I started practicing yoga in earnest three years back many positions which eluded me now are my friends extending both reach and relax balancing effort and ease master iyengar advised regarding the practice "be happy with small progress" comfortable enough somehow instead of south the clouds move east while I wasn't watching or disappeared resolving into blue leaving the sun's westward decline unobstructed. the view before me is large and open pleasantly unpopulated except for a little girl and boy siblings perhaps just dismounted from their bicycles exploring on foot whatever noise there is conspires into a lullaby if it were just a little warmer I'd be sleepy and comfortable enough to nap Back to top   Section 6   photosynthesis there is a man in india who claims not to have taken food or drink for sixty years researchers studying him in a hospital setting confirmed that this is so at least for the ten days of their observation a week and a half and the blood samples they took from him was enough to convince them that metabolically at least something defying scientific understanding was occurring. the man claimed that by looking at the sun five minutes a day a talent he acquired gradually he received all of the nourishment he needed in the form of a sticky mass that formed in his throat the brought up a trace of it for inspection human photosynthesis one man's sunlight is another man's food. I don't know how many years were on his aged frame already but it seems unlikely at this rate he will live the thousand years he boasted I can't imagine why anyone would want to live so long nor do I understand the advantages of a sunlight diet maybe like climbing mountains and falling in love we do these things because we can further contemplations on immortality the epigram of eliot's wasteland refers to the sybil at cumae who wished for eternal life but forgot to include youth in her request growing quite tiny over the millennia. the latin and greek translates so "I have seen the sybil at cumae hanging in a bottle I asked her 'sybil, what do you want?' she replies ' I want to die'" beyond words stroke victims having lost the power of speech can often be taught to sing melody coaxing along the words which won't come plainly the center for song located in the opposite hemisphere than that for speech music, it seems, finds a way to make new connections in brain as well as heart conveying its wordless power to heal even to words as the blackman said "sometimes all you can do is play the blues" art saves lives like a symphony I cover you with love enveloping you in my embrace every part of me caressing every part of you playing your body like a symphony rhapsodic enchanting our spirits sweeping us way in blissful flights together. the arrangement is flawless every voice in tune the closest intimacy touch, response, touch what will we do for an encore reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse oil companies murder african villagers to bring you cheap gas don't waste it driving aggressively you are wiping your ass with a dead forest fold the toilet paper and make another pass we are trained and encouraged to use more but selfish consumption doesn't lead to happiness sharing and caring for others does finding yourself part of a larger context discovering a greater whole. turn the lights off when you leave the room reuse the aluminum foil don't let the water run down the drain, less is more follow it's not that there is nothing to say but that there is no one to say it no one listening for what needs saying keep quiet trust your intuition believe that there is something trying to communicate with you knowing what you know it is hard to accept anything new valuing things as you do it is hard to discover other worth great things often begin soft and small pay attention or you may miss it pick up the thread follow sun worship there is a long thin cloud that has been passing in front of the sun for miles the blue sky on either side is just out of position to warm my bones now and then, more or less, it pokes through and looking ahead it is possible to believe in sunnier times. in the school yard the geese are making a racket otherwise sunday afternoon is pretty quiet the same chilly wind that rustles these pages keeps the cloud moving finally blowing it away bright warmth pours down just as the geese take off trumpeting two hundred of them heading north believing in spring. after sitting in the cloud's shadow forty minutes this february day it is easy to understand how it was that primitive man worshiped the sun as a god right now it certainly does feel divine snow again sitting at the table looking out over the yard mother announces, "it's snowing again" coming out of a yoga pose I walk up behind her and enter another my fingertips on her back, just below her shoulder my torso bent forward beside her pretending to take a better view when it is an emotional perspective I seek. as a child I wasn't touched enough I suppose neither was she and although the touch I initiate is now too little too late it is better than the nothing we would have without it and like my other yoga poses with practice makes it better. straightening up from the table I agree with her about the snow plato’s cave today it was obvious beyond dispute even by her prejudiced mind. sitting at the table mom called me over to ask what was the light flashing off of the window before her? a light coming in through the back window from a truck on the street, I explained "I looked and didn't see anything," she persisted "look again and you will," I advised no, she didn't want to but she wanted to grumble about how I am always telling her she's wrong and yelling at her and I do have to raise my voice because she won't wear her hearing aides and if I do while insisting on some point against her increasingly strange behavior she starts yelling herself and going on cantankerously but today I come up softly and point out that nobody had yelled and no one was angry but her and after a few more sputterings she stopped. illusion's clear examples come few so one best point them out when they do though reason is an art still one must make a start somewhere quietly among them snow falls fat and thick ennobling all with pure whiteness roofs, rocks, trees and ground sitting still all receive its blessing how good to be quietly among them sour grapes I have never been able to act against my inclinations very long even when I am getting paid to do it while this has rendered me a poor employee and compromised my business skills I am remarkably disciplined when working for myself or for a cause in which I believe deficient in capacity to do what I don't want I am yet gifted with a talent to change what I do to find something worthwhile in the endeavor or failing that to leave. work in a group has never been my strength finding it impossible to take a backseat to incompetency, even when my anarchist tendencies are unspoken they disquiet people still, I love when someone tells me what to do I just haven't found many people who know what to do I get along well with alpha males. as hard as I try to be nice controversy follows me pluto, sun and moon conjunct at my birth my openness makes many uncomfortable about what they are concealing. craving recognition when I was young I am now content with anonymity solitude being the refiner's crucible free time the best commodity my strategy has brought me to this strange success, just being left alone, unmolested is a great victory I saw it in my father's proud resignation age has a way of changing tastes, the grapes may not be sweet but the raisins they make are still good to eat what you love "do what you love" the gurus of self-help advise and with this writing I am working and playing with words letting them talk to me it is here but you have to pay attention open the faucets or at least stop turning them off "and money will follow" is their promised result and while I doubt these poems will make me a dime they already have enriched me life becomes more interesting when observed thought deepens when exercised still just as money can't buy happiness so the kind of health I have acquired has not freed me from my demons but I am more conversant with them and like woody guthrie who as a runty child would play harmonica for the schoolyard bullies I find that sometimes they are entertained by the way I turn a phrase birth control if every couple had only one child the housing market would implode social security would fail the prison industry would shrink deprived of its ever-expanding markets capitalism itself would collapse leaving us free to find less consumptive, more sustainable livelihoods wild animals would return to wander deserted, newly-forested suburbs carbon dioxide would not be a worry, with less of us around and more dependent on each other people would be friendlier life would be a lot more worth living. large families don't make sense anymore it's time to start taxing children has anyone else noticed how crowded it's getting? something is wrong something is wrong the world's ecology collapse under human strain but nothing you or I do or don't do in our personal lives is going to make a significant difference in it public action is another story but your private life and whatever good or bad you do in it except for the people who share it with you remains the individual's living rightly is important mostly for the individual at best it is symbolic an example something which if everyone did would offer a solution but compensating for others' blissful ignorance with your own hyper acuity creates a lot of pressure internally and outwardly doesn't win you any friends so too it is a magical thought that makes one's friends responsible for the moods which sweep over us expecting that if they had or had not done this then we would or wouldn't feel that again it is mostly symbolic their behavior eliciting a latent, ready-made response you know logically that I have done nothing to deserve your massive anger even if I inadvertently provoke it you take too much responsibility for the external environment and too little for you own internal one extremes make for good stories and political rhetoric but except on moonless night and during heavy snows the world is not black or white 2/24/10 Back to top   Section 7   free-floating Mom woke me up last night at four AM sitting on the edge of her bed calmly calling my name "where do we have to go to get my gift?" she asked after I presented myself discussing the need to bring her pocketbook with us before noticing my look of bewilderment "they announced my name over the loudspeaker," she explained. Contradiction of any sort tending to enrage her and still hoping to get back to sleep I gently place my hand on her back kiss her cheek and suggest that she's been dreaming. "No," she insists still groggy with sleep, "they announced my name over the loudspeaker." "There is no loudspeaker, Mom." Saved from argument only by the undesirability of travel in the middle of the night I continue on to the bathroom. Back in bed I attempt sleep, keeping my mind sedate remembering my dreams. It might have worked but my bowel gradually becoming alert to the approach of dawn delays the process and before I know it I am thinking about the decline of newsprint journalism in the age of the blogosphere. After an hour including sitting in meditation and on the toilet I am back in bed emptying my mind when body consciousness stops awareness hovers disengaged from form and its orientation. I have been here before floating free of personal constraints and as before after brief successful experiments with locomotion I fall asleep. My mother wakes wondering where to go for her gift, I fall asleep wondering what to do with mine. The Black Woods Aside from the woods around the golf course it was the last large patch of wild in the neighborhood maybe forty acres grown up into dense secondary-growth forest while the rest of the farmland yielded to suburban homes. There was an asphalt path running along the near edge of it (its blackness naming the woods for us.) We'd take it half way through then go off exploring once scavenging lumber from houses going up to repair an old tree-fort we found. I was in sixth grade when they bulldozed it down clearing it for the new high school. I remember climbing the huge piles of trees they later burned and the big muddy waste between them but nothing else. Forty years later I sit with my back against that school wall looking out across playing fields fenced, treeless, rectilinear marked out in yards and backstopped baseball diamonds, but in my heart the wild forest remains and I am still young wandering there braving marsh and bramble pleasantly lost. Today, sitting here I meet myself bearded man and little boy coming across each other deep in the black woods. Westmoor Park Pedaling up I see the bench right where I left it two months ago carried from aside the little cabin with melt raining down on it off the roof, out from the shadows of the spruce one hundred yards to the hill's southern exposure where the sun shines now as then. In pastures still just slightly patched with snow horse and donkey, llama and sheep graze yet on stubby dormant grass. The cow too elegant for such meager fare, is nowhere to be seen. Things keep changing but not here, the town deciding long ago to save this rural oasis its last farm from the encroaching suburban desert. Bicycling through the shopping sprawl then a half mile down a side road and I am in the country at least in miniature. Whistling through the evergreens wind batters this bench even tucked as it is behind a large tree. Any warmth the sun lends me whisked away. The shelter of the barnyard invites me to ride over and check on the goats and geese to say hello to chickens and ducks and, playing the gentleman farmer, to pat the brown cow if she's close enough to the fence. They give whether we deserve or not eggs, milk, wool, flesh, labor, beauty and, if we can still taste it, a sweetness thick and rich as the honey held within this meadow's sleepy hives. Picking and Choosing Picking and choosing when to pay attention you can convince yourself of almost anything. Kirpal Singh said, "A dog chews on a dry bone until its gums bleed tasting the blood he thinks the bone is sweet," but as often it tastes sour or insipid. People get mad at me for no good reason then equally easily forget about it. They have a need to get angry and to forget. If it bothers me, how can I blame them? I must have a need to be bothered. Silence is golden and the only response to a ridiculous argument, politely walking away is wisdom when your opponent has already decided what they are listening to instead of you. The child erroneously feel responsible for the adult tragedies around her. Growing up to realize that you are largely insignificant to someone else's emotions is a sobering realization. Freedom and happiness are available but not on your terms. Each cuts both ways. Unless you sacrifice your notion of what you are looking for you will never find it. The end of suffering is not like we imagine. Overlooking I am afraid of overlooking the obvious. A fear justified and reinforced every time I do. I worry also about what is below the surface vigilant for hints, clues and innuendo, but a lapse in regard to the occult is more easily forgiven. It seems to stem from my overriding conviction that something is wrong and that it is my responsibility to fix it or at least that things could be better and my job is to improve them. All this may be terribly human striving for the new frontier onward and upward and while all this no doubt has its place in the species' march of progress for me at least too often it pushes aside satisfaction with what is. Paradoxically it seems feelings that I should be happier preclude my happiness. Charles Bukowski Say what you will about Charles Bukowski at least you know what he's writing about succinct and direct which is more than you can say about a lot of the other fellas, obtuse, I guess! reflections of their pale academic souls. After wondering long enough about what they were trying to say I concluded that they don't know themselves. Now, I can tolerate ambiguity with the best of them, I appreciate that life and art aren't just black and white feelings and ideas can be quite misty clouding into one another, but what I can't tolerate and don't appreciate is deliberate obfuscation. If I want cryptic, I'll open a puzzle book. As the hippies and brothers used to say, "Tell it like it is." And what's with those weird rhymes? Bird Song For the first time in days there are clouds in the sky a few tiny scattered and one or two small. The wind comes up every now and then noisy through the trees cooling things off for a minute keeping me close to the ground and the break I piled up. Well, it is early March. Not "in like a lion" this year more like a pussycat some big old farm tom who's happy to curl up on my lap but might give a scratch if I tease him, now cocking his head as he listens with me to a bird in a nearby tree whistling a tune and off in the woods his lady answering back miming perfectly as the caller varies a note's pitch or adds or subtracts from the song. Then she takes the lead. Spring is definitely in the air. Outings After a winter spent mostly indoors, venturing out dressed for harsh elements, these warm early March days are delicious. Not a cloud in the sky, if you find a place out of the wind it's almost hot. Yesterday my face started to sunburn over at the high school stadium just south of the bleachers while the kids played soccer. Today, with school on I've found a back corner of the park almost secluded slipping out of the house while it was still early and cool with a blanket for yoga and breakfast packed for later. Now, sunbathing on the blanket especially when I close my eyes I feel like I'm at the beach vacationing. The wind through the trees could be the ocean's roar. Fenugreek After rinsing the sprouts I shake out Mom's toaster jostling it upside-down over the sink. Crumbs bounce around inside shishing and plinking. Burnt manna rains down from an unplugged electric heaven. A blackened staff of life along with less incinerated morsels frosts the steel basin like cinders from a volcanic explosion. Opening the faucet to wash away the destruction I see in the drain catch a single fenugreek sprout rising from the ashes trapped there green and hopeful. Rinsing it off I pop it in my mouth a living metaphor slightly tangy. Brain Scans Brain scans can now reveal at least to small extent what someone is thinking. The process still very crude involves predicting which of a small set of events or images a person is remembering. Scientists are very hopeful the rapid advances in this field will continue. Maybe soon someone will be able to tell me what's going on in your head. Momster I choose to believe that the abuse is somehow good for me beyond its lesson in patience. She is a mean old lady ordering instead of asking me to help her getting mad at me for witnessing her ineptitude going on about it angry when unbeknownst to her I retired to the toilet and couldn't holler loud enough with a neighbor on the other side of the wall to reach her deaf ears through the closed door and across the apartment to answer her question about the date, today's newspaper spread out before her on the table. or while making my breakfast because I don't spring immediately to get a piece of paper for her to transcribe the shopping list I jotted on an envelope for her and at me when I'm helping her to pay her bills mad that she's paying her bills in the first place telling me with a snarl after I've made her breakfast put out the bird food and more that I don't do anything for her. Any itemization of my assistance elicits ridicule. Informing her I am leaving to return later in the day invariably provokes a hurtful diatribe always the same no matter how often or long I've visited even staying days "You’re never here. Don't come back!" Today I sling my pack on my back grab her rent check to bring to the office and her social security check for the bank and walk out without a goodbye. Always searching for a reason to complain I have given her a present something to chew on. Without looking behind I know she is watching as outfitted for the day I walk across the quad wide-eyed. She is quiet for the moment relishing the latest insult soon out loud she will bitterly complain of the indignity heaped on her but certain as she is of her prey there is no rush to sink in her teeth. Never a very good mother how can she recognize a good son? Torn between honoring her and enabling her cruelty I've always been trying too hard. Back to top

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