Integral Poems & Koans

Hi Gary, the last time I saw you was quite some time ago, early 70’s you were walking up the stairs at zen center, I said hello. I dig your poetry, you said thanks and kept walking, this was right after Suzukiroshi showed me about sticking an incense in the sandbox and making it stand up, This is a collaborative piece I put into a dna strand , it might be transformative? Hope you njoy it, love to hear your feed ac

1.straightest line walked
straightest line drawn
big-toe dips

           shoreline 
                sands 

                    of yours and mine 
                      Was the result 

of years and years
of painstakingly laborious corrections

and restitution
   Or maybe 

     it was just a remembrance 
       of something 
        not lost 

but only obscured and forgotten
by betrayals
and broken treaties

    by morbidly precocious 
      Mother and Fathers

         by the blood 
           of tasking peons

toiling for dignity and necessity.
How does one begin
to sculpt and chisel
calcified remnants,

          rusted imperatives,
             flagging convictions 

                of that hangdog defeat,

stuttering and stumbling
into blind obeisance

  and servitude
    Will we inspire 

        through semaphore 
             and symbol 

through the clarion call
that pierces and destroys

      obstacles and illusions 
         in the midst of clouds of worry,

clouds of concern
admirably misty-eyed,

       gnawed and uncertain rays 
            of hope
              rays of relief

rays of us originally.

2.The fairness of death
that frail carnation bodice

    that cocoons the encasement 
       of the eternal dove

         forgotten freedoms perched 
            on razor wire fences

the masterful escape
of a luminous spirit

  confined in flesh and time 
     from an unforgiving world.

        Justice operates beyond this realm

and frees
those whose journeys
have been completed.

        I can't comprehend 
          why some are chosen

              to depart 

in such a seemingly untimely manner.
But your consciousness

   evinces a courage 
      that rages against fettered souls 

        and skins subjugated
           by the sensesheld 

by guilt and shame.
Yet we are forgiven,

  rejoice in the reunion
    of whence we came
      to where we go

        Tethered to impertinent strongholds
            grasping wholeheartedly, 

knuckles porcelain-white
whiplash smash clear through invisible walls

    psychic trash piled sky-high 
        each and every piece
           carefully placed, architecturally arranged

prized installation,

  insecure and secured frantically 
    thrashing about 

         you lose a finger 

that falls feather-slow,
dinner-plate-crash
ten-thousand-little-pieces

      easily recognizable, 
        when frozen in shock

finger flying skyward
bird brains

  slow-motion rotation 
      mid-air summer salt twist

         meridian mudras 
             handicapped and plaster cast

ungovernable ambition
rocketing feebly

    surveying the remnants 
       abound in fevered compensation

          the golden-armed misdeal

perceived as providential
atoning

  and redeeming 

     faithfully.
1 Like

Looking Up, Waking Up

Who among us has not been awed by an iridescent dawn,
dazzled by the white light of high noon, or deeply moved
by a deep sunset?

Heavenly spectacle on a loop, proof we have not been
forsaken. Beauty, goodness, and truth still find us
worthy of beauty, goodness, and truth.

A Singular Energy, the boundless life force, still binds us
together, has not withdrawn its presence nor reneged
on its promise. Order yet prevails in the turning of day

to night, night to day, in the interplay of your light
and my shadow (and vice-versa).
Is this not enough? Is this not adequate?

Who among us has not been mystified by starlight,
enriched by a moon wealthy in silver and gold, or
giddy-fied by a telescopic view of our kosmic origins,

left blank and silent by the vast grandeur of the galaxy,
one of billions, and by the vast grandeur of humanity’s
longing, initiative, and intelligence.

The Supreme Consciousness, like the sky, is everywhere,
everynow, and everywhere endless, as splendorous in you
as in me, and absolutely identical. It wrote this poem,

you wrote this poem, as did we, as did I, recalling
raptures, revelations, radical intimacies.
Who among us has not had at least a taste of these?

Finding conventional thought unpalatable, some claim
or imagine portals into the parallel worlds of a multiverse,
our super-powered other selves, from kind to killer,

superimposing on and taking over for the base model
of the current moment. Geometric forms of light
proffered as signs of a superlative universe, reality.

The Reality of Love lives in you, through you, as you;
the love that gave birth to you, the love that sustained
you in desperate times, the love that destroyed you

and is even now, transforming you. “Love is Bliss,” it is said,
the felt-sense of Energy and Consciousness as One,
all love deriving from and, at length, being realized as That.

In the short run, love is universally a free-use intuitive
technology for happiness, don’t you think? with X-factors
often as stunning as the blueness of a blue sky.

1 Like

(And in a different vein…)

unpunctuated run-ons

the long weekend of barbeque and beer roasted hotdogs swimming in watermelon grinning
ear to ear of corn it’s a party in the neighborhood of I am independent in the city of I am free
to do as I please in the state of mindlessness it’s a celebration in the nation by of and for
all of us exceptional four and a half tons of garbage left on the lakeshore patriots leave empty
cans as contribution paper wrapping donations bags of plastic offerings to the anthropocene
tempers soar temps hot hot and hotter still smoke in cahoots with dregs of oil drought death
dollars denial but hey relax chill the skies void of birdsong no match for the big bang of bombs
ocean waves lament rising higher higher and higher shrill and so it goes it goes it goes it goes
surreptitiously conspicuously in the gap and in the yawn of the world making thorny stabs at
gaping wounds across the sleepy planet cruisers gasp at port terribly sorry you had to see
reality red slaughtered seas blubber of whale roses on the grave hybridized modified with care
now sturdy and plenty sacrifice the subtle scent subtle hint mass vacuity common virtue rare

2 Likes

Autumn 2023

Homo Sapiens finely synchronized with the season,
chilly air, spun webs, trees in various phases of loss,
the faint scent of decay in the mid-Fall humus

Humanity at odds with itself, decomposing
the corpus of meaning, decomposing
soma, decomposing

Lives upended, red-maimed or trauma-wounded;
like the wind-blown feather intercepted by a branch,
mid letting go and hanging on, destinies suspended

Witness the collapse of structures, sly elucidations,
the spread, the dread of the modern dread tripling;
in every corner, fear and sanctimony stationed–

And yet, yet–scrape the bottom of the box emptied
of ills, of baseness, find what the myth has bestowed
beyond leaf rot in the frost, that gossamer thing, Hope

Dreaming ancestral realms dreaming the world wise;
dreaming astral family trees where like little birds
unheard, the ones yet to come are perched, singing

Dreaming tremors on the branded altars stem not
from shellings but from sacred shakings, the land
indwelling inviolate and indivisible, stirring, waking.

Partitions

A wealth of numbers

and the blessings of creativity,

integers and diamond light

swirling in the smoke of incense

on the puja where Ramanujan

worshipped the Goddess Namagiri.

Mathematics is God, said Ramanujan,

mathematics a field of glory, a space

in which shapes and formulas,

quantities are contained,

made sense of when unveiled,

like the Shakti who whispered

theorems in Ramanujan’s ear,

bestowed visions of infinite pi,

orderly and truthful down the line.

The Royal Fellows thought of this

as intuition and wanted proofs,

so the Indian devotee meditated,

gave them proof after proof,

offering partitions but no

dividing lines, proffering as partners

evidence and the Divine,

offering science and Spirit

hand-in-hand, tendering

in totum God and the Goddess.

Abhaya, he said, have no fear

of this, and at his time,

leaving his young body

on the pyre, slipped into the arms

of Namagiri, who was unbereaved,

still counting

on what had been offered

being someday fully received.