blank blank fullness

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,

don’t hesitate.  Give into it.  There are plenty

of lives and whole towns destroyed or about

to be.  We are not wise, and not very often

kind.  And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left.  Perhaps this

is its way of fighting back, that sometimes

something happens better than all the riches

or power in the world.  It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant

when love begins.  Anyway, that’s often the

case.  Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid

of its plenty.  Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Mary Oliver

There's a wilderness inside that doesn't want to die
Resistance its kiss of death
Blowing love up to the sky
It's the only place she could get by
Passing whispers of denial
Turn her on a dime
From sleeping beast to angry bitch
She'll tear you limb from vice
Reconcile the price
Of getting close to the twinkle in her eye
Reflecting the embarrassment of life
And the love for mystery veiled just behind
The struggle to deny
The pleasure of the unknown

----

longing like the spring for her flower petal dress
the lady laying waiting across your country wooden bed
days long spent quietly
nights unfolding stories, weaving a humble glory
life packed up like this
hard work and dinner
troubled minds and love to lean on
and chasing the days when magic poured forth freely
we pause and wink
invite it in
ah there it is
again
the totems shift
with each level passed
how long can this evolution last

quiet fantasy in a mid winter lull
time is marvelous at reformation
you know it when you run to
where you’d run from
that is, stillness embraced now
- then -
a strange footlocker in the ethers
I peek into
in these passages between
by the way,
I’d still like to have my akashic record read
footnote to self*
yeah,
the past, what good is it to a futurist
caught in the winds of change, hair in her eyes
I sit in the dark kitchen of my friend’s home
envisioning a spring filled with driving, Thelma and Louise
style
cooking up wishes by feeling them so gutturally
the universe is tricked into deliverance
building sunrises with the light of my mind
sunsets with the nostalgia of
dreams
hung like clouds around me since day broke
long lost lovers really have a way, huh…
false hope be damned
and while I’m
on the eve of stinking up this place by the sea
ah wouldn’t you know,
this fish is ready
to run its course
that’s just me
keeping up with time

money has replaced commitment
has replaced giving from the heart,
from our gifts,
those special things that only we have to give
like fireflies lighting up a July night
or the owl humming from darkness,
some wisdom and steady light
now we've flipped the script
and we chase the pages desperate to get
and yet,
when money is not the lens
how clearly we can see the world as a sacred dance
and our step
by step
is the only payment truly worth anything
and each movement is laid with 'how can I share?'
the life within me
instead of
how can I earn a life already mine to keep
for this short time, anyway
for this material game
is so temporary
so make your mind a blank slate
forget money ever mattered anyway
and look to see
how can I support what's already in front of me
and trust
trust sweet child
that we are held
by a hand of grace
made most happy
by your gifts made illuminated
when that hunger for having
is fed by giving, sharing, serving

what would your days look like
if you gave up your life
that is to say
the force animating you this way
and that
what if you gave it up to
the things you love the most
the people who stirred
and stole that precious secret you once hoarded
against your higher wisdom to share
and grow more for it
yes what if you were that kind
of person for another
a thief in the night catching moments with a glass jar
and then setting them free to the eastern winds
an offering so seemingly small
and ridiculous
that God
like a proud mother
a softened father
chuckled
with creases around His eyes,
sparkling in the way that only joy
only tenderness
could evoke
because you tried, dammit
to live a life the 4 year old you
would catch and release

This wretch calls out your name
From the depths of time
Just to grasp your precious feet
This wretch calls out your name
Trapped in the circle of time
From my own past created
For what fault was I plunged
Into the cycle of becoming?
From my own fiber created
For what fault have I been thrown
Into the ocean of time?
Why brought to this world
Guru, o guru
Why brought to this world
In such an abject state that I forgot
Your compassionate name?
Just to attain your holy feet
This wretch calls out your name
From the depths of time
You bear the name of wish-fulfilling tree
So the clan of ascetics told me
You bear the name of wish-fulfilling tree
So the clan of ascetics told me
Why be renowned as compassionate
If you can't help me be free?
Of what use is your fame as compassionate
If you can't help me be free?
Just to grab your precious feet
This wretch calls out your name
From the depths of time
I fail to remember Heeruchand's feet
Heedless Panjushah says
O Master...
I fail to remember Heeruchand's feet
Unmindful Panjushah says
Is this your famed compassion
That you don't let me near your feet
Just to attain your holy feet
This wretch calls out your name
From the depths of time

Light in the world—

I Have News for You
by Tony Hoagland

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

One of my favorite friends in writing: across time and space his words have padded my inner safe place at moments in this decade of soon-to-be-done 20 where all that was certain was the uncertainty. Yes, I usually tried to love it and through that somehow it became so: loved and somewhat bearable and known and alright.

In that snare of paradox I found my own rhythm of loving, trusting and letting go; of knowing what to pick up and when. It's a dance with the world that delivers and the self that desires. An ongoing lesson in bridging the work expressed without and the sacrifice unseen within, the quiet messages received and the waiting for your will to come through and commit. All a certain kind of effort in parsing the light from the sin, the tiny crimes against the heart we all sometimes commit.

That writer is Rainer Marie Rilke. His name even soothes me somehow. Like a tender-sighted sage, a good grandpa or woolen-clad neighbor, bearded, who knows that all will be well, and can dispense of compassion and bolstering wisdom. Maybe standing on the porch within earshot of your sighs, offering a helping ear from his rocking chair in the early darkness of a crisp, cool night.

The bits and pieces of his sweetness strewn across the halls of the web can maybe sum the feel of what he stands for as a being. Might not match quite what I feel, but that wouldn't need be the clue for you to know that his contribution paved a humble road made of some kind of real noble truth.

And here, in this simple stanza, is captured something in the way of why... Why I dedicate my time and my life to spiritual practice. The farther I go down my road the more I sense the very precarious edge, the sword that sets me apart from the ways of the big bad world and sets me into the bush of a journey towards the soul. The soul of man, of God if I dare can, of my own intimately brewed blend of breath in the skin.

To unfold all the creases and lies pressed into me, by me, with or without my consent over time, over eons perhaps: this is the nature of the cutting through, of the making, of the walking the path; the nature of blazing fires I set time and time again, like a ranger who knows that to clear a new season, some damage must be done to what's simply overgrown. May it bring us closer...

I want to unfold,

I don't want to stay folded anywhere

Because where I am folded,

There I am a lie...

- Rainer Marie Rilke

More of him here

When you can endure

Life clicks into place and the signs race with a fervor
Or is it my mind trying to align what's already been assigned
A reflection of god's grace seen in the eyes of every man as I walk by him
He recognizes me and startled
Jumps back to make room for the space between us suddenly filled with light and meaning
As if to ready himself for the purpose which has been revealed
Seemingly out of nowhere
Now we're here
Words like fate and free will
Reflections and devotion; still my beating heart to catch a glimpse of
What is this?
Fire rises as you hear yourself sing in another
Sing the knowing electric
The co-creating
Thoughts of one becomes love for others
The moon beams on this night full of
What can I call it but-
Life
Synchronicity
I's connect to find that line, that nectar of the soul tempered as it pours back and forth
Between two
Between levity and hope

Welcome to another edition of My Bootlegged Book Club!! It's been a hoot dang (?) long time, I know, I know. But here I am, bootleggedly posting an excerpt from "The Constant Symbol", an essay written by the dear poet Mr. Robert Frost in July 1946, almost 67 years ago. In it, he addresses the form and function of the poem; the nature of its content once it is released into the public domain. The jab-and-dive living nature of poetry that speaks without saying, nods without claiming...

"There are many things I have found myself saying about poetry, but the chiefest of these is that it is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority. Poetry is simply made of metaphor. So also is philosophy--and science, too, for that matter, if it will take the soft impeachment from a friend. Every poem is a new metaphor inside or it is nothing. And there is a sense in which all poems are the same old metaphor always.