WillSpirit!

The following poems have been previously posted as single entries. I’m placing them all on one page for the convenience of anyone who actually enjoys my poetry and wants to get to it easily. For now, I’m resisting the temptation to leave out the ones I’ve since grown to dislike. There are a few in that category, but my complaints are technical, not substantive. They each say something I found meaningful at the time, and they still speak to some part of me, however much I might wish otherwise.

TIME AND AGAIN

The cavern of yesterday has closed its jaws.
You will not find entrance to it again.
Yet its memory haunts you and
Inside history awaits, undigested.
Your triumphs and misdeeds, your nobility and pettiness
Have solidified like stalagmites.

Look there: You stand on that subway platform beside a broken train,
Your first love already mourning you with farewell eyes.
And there: You hike on a hilltop gazing at a frozen ocean,
As your dreams swim south like migrating whales.
Look at Grandmother missing the uneven stair step you meant to repair,
Locked in fatal time, her eyes startled but unchanging,
Like the broken hip that never heals.

Yesterday remains fixed in the amber of eternity,
But this next moment is exploding.
You can find it by opening your eyes
And spreading all your limbs wide before the burgeoning sunrise
As another infant emerges from your womb
Sticky and smelling of blood,
As another corpse falls into a tomb,
Her tissues falling away like burnt paper on a strong wind,
As you embrace your last lover, heartbeat to heartbeat,
While watching the spring flowers wither,
Their seeds landing on compost,
The rot of past generations
Nursing the fertility of the next.

Here, life remains fluid
And fossils have yet to form.
Here, ripened grain waits in moist caverns of soil
Yearning to be devoured by tomorrow’s open mouth.

OPENING

Don’t Shut Down

Open!

Open with your heart aflame
Open like a hatchling’s mouth
Open like a glassy lake under cloudless sky
Open like a deep cavern
Open like arms, waiting
Open like a new bride
Open like morning dew beneath the rising sun
Open like a smile
Open like an infant
Open as if dying happy

Open Open Open!

BAPTISM

Under a waterlogged canopy of tall trees
after feeling moisture dripping all day
from clouds, boughs and redwood burls,
and eyes
lit with unexpected clarity.

I feel aflame with sorrow
and joy, from understanding too much,
too late, about everything that ever went wrong
and right, about every heart handled carelessly,
about everyone already dead or bound to be,
and the slow flow of water
in shallow streams winding through sorrel and duff.

So much liquid in a world
of unslakable thirst,
and so much distress on a planet
of inexpressible perfection,
all fitting and clear in this moment, this place,
with regret and gratitude enlightening me
beneath the ancient stems and pillars,
the forest spandrels casting cool, damp shade,
In this chapel of nature,
This womb of my heart.

CREATIVITY: A FORCE OF NATURE?

According to most of the experts
Life began three billion years back,
When by luck in a tide pool culvert
Chemicals gathered in sacks.

DNA spiraled as mindless wound thread.
Nucleotides paired into ladder rungs.
By random cells changed and spread.
And life’s evolution on mutations hung.

I agree this story makes sense,
And has great theoretical power.
But did blind stochastic efflorescence
Truly make every insect and flower?

It’s a useful theory as far as it takes us,
And natural selection must play some role,
But is it true that only randomness makes us
And the universe has no trace of soul?

I believe the hypothesis primitive,
Though better than invoking a God.
A cosmology that excludes all initiative
Is both unproven and a little bit odd.

A POEM IN ONE ACT, IN WHICH EVERY IMPORTANT QUESTION IS ANSWERED

(The Players:

Humanity: A flawed race, deeply neurotic, never satisfied. Played by a woman, a man, and a nine-year-old child of uncertain gender.

God: The Creator, The Perfect One, The Ground of All Being, The One True and Eternal Soul, Etc. Etc. Played by a disembodied voice that sounds a bit like Lily Tomlin.

The Setting: A non-descript rooftop in some city, probably New York, but in one of the outer boroughs.

The Year: The future, most likely. Or maybe the past. We’re still working on that one.

The scene opens with humanity pleading to the sky; they’re looking up and raising their hands overhead.)

Humanity: God! O God! Help! Please Help! We’re drowning down here! It’s so confusing, we don’t understand and we need you to sort things out for us. Better yet, could you tell us the next Lotto combination?

God (in an annoyed voice): Jeez! Don’t you people ever give up? For how many thousands of years have I listened to your whining? Let me spell it out for you. You like lists, right? Well chew on my favorite list of “GREAT SPIRITUAL TRUTHS” (spoken with heavy sarcasm).

(Then God assumes a deep, authoritative tone, and continues):

1. Life is random, pointless, and meaningless.
2. You are born to suffer and die. Get used to it.
3. You get what you deserve. Unless something good happens, in which case you’re just lucky.
4. The universe is nothing more than billions and billions of molecules, which are like marbles, only smaller.
5. Every great mystic throughout history suffered from schizophrenia. Many had delusions of grandeur. Most had bad hair, too.
6. Have you ever had an oceanic sense of oneness with creation? Or cosmic and boundless love? Or a sense that everything is right in the universe? Then you need an MR scan, STAT.
7. You all annoy me. Yes, even you.
8. I don’t listen to your prayers. They all go into my voicemail, which I never check.
9. I don’t exist. Never did, never will.

(Long silence follows. Humanity looks around, kinda puzzled like.)

Finally, the child speaks: “O God?”

God (in a huge, booming voice): WHAT!!!

Child: Well… We were hoping for something a little more, er…, hopeful? And don’t you usually make lists of ten?

God: Fine. Whatever. If I make it a list of ten will you leave me alone?

Child: Uh…

God (with a tone of great exasperation): TEN: EVERY GREAT SPIRITUAL TRUTH IS A LIE, EVEN THIS ONE. Satisfied? Worry on that for another few lifetimes; then get back to me.

BLOOD PRESSURE

The tumbleweed’s heart aches for the infinite plain. It is
Ready to rock and roll! It is
Yearning to careen and skitter beneath telephone cables,
Shadowed by nectar bats and rising moons.

The heart of a bumblebee buzzes with nectar-lust.
A connoisseur of fine floral lines, she draws sweetness.

My heart thrums among trees that remember Jesus.
They stand broader than my pick up truck, and much
Higher than an apartment I once had on the tenth floor.

The snail’s heart has neither chambers nor valves.
It pumps the way a worm moves, stroking the blood,
Coaxing life forward.

The bacterium has no heart,
And could not care less.
It lives its short moment with the gusto of a pirate,
Before splitting in two and starting over.

I would love to start over.
I have already split in two.

There is the part that screamed into a pillow at midnight
On the psychiatric ward,
And left the hospital to find a carefully written life
Story in ruins.

And there is the part that sees a person rebuilt in every mirror,
Damaged, dented, and held together with telephone cable.

I am stronger than before.
I am communication, and stumbling flight, and peristalsis.
I am solid and tall with gallons of gusto.

Alive, I see my heart everywhere.
It is chambered and ready to fire!

ACCEPTING THE HEART’S HARLOTS

I make this choice:
I luxuriate with my harem of heartaches.

Why not wrap arms around Grief?
She looks so hungry and pitiful with her empty hands,
And she never leaves me.

Why not kiss the cheek of Sorrow,
And savor the brine in her bottomless well of tears?

I admit to massaging Frustration’s shoulders.
He is beefy and buff and his muscles cry out for kneading.

I embrace the ancient frame of Rage.
Yes, I hug him as he shudders in my arms.

I let Confusion nibble my fingertips as I comb out her curls
While her brother, Doubt, leans heavily against my back.

And I snuggle with Disgust,
Though he drools and mutters when he naps.

Shame and I share a mattress under the white moon.
She’s a naughty lover who hogs the bedclothes.

I admit to exploring the furrows of my wounds,
And to caressing the thighs of Fear as they tremble like two captured fawns.

Sometimes, when I stroke the eyebrows of Regret,
She points out sunflowers along my path.

So I make this choice:
I offer a bouquet to my Catastrophe.
I honor my Decay, my Fractures, and my Pettiness.

Yes, I accept my ridiculous Fate.
I accept my Bereavement and my Terror.

I won’t shun the beast of my Despair.
I will mend its lame forepaw.
I know it is the mascot of my Dissatisfaction,
But it is also the defender of my Dreams.

I make this choice.

WHAT’S LEFT?

There is no atmosphere.
There is no earth underfoot,
No stars overhead, no clouds, no birds, no sky.
There is nothing but your mind
Floating like a dust mote in an empty room,
A room with no walls, no windows, no door.
You are emptiness itself and you are full
Of nothing.
You have neither body nor brain,
Neither gender nor age,
You are not God.
You are not anything but your mind
Emptied of memories and history,
Free of concepts and desire,
Innocent, virginal, waiting.

But what is left in absence of earth, sky, and body?
What remains without memory, history, or desire?
Would you still exist?
Is there any mind free of context?
Is there any being separate from brain cell and society?

No one can say, though many try.
You cannot know,
And might not want to.

A MOMENT OF CALM, AS IF BEFORE A STORM
(Based on a photograph)

She is smiling from chin to brow.
He is jumping on the bedspread in baggy toddler overalls.

He is laughing as if he will never stop.
She is holding his hands as if she will never let go.

His eyes are not sunken with grief.
Her smile has not vanished forever.

She has not hidden in this bedroom for the past six months.
He is not choking on her stale cigarette smoke.

No one has clamped electrodes onto her skull.
No one has tried to shock her out of her sorrow.

She has not lost interest in her son.
He has not lost faith in his mother.

She is still smiling and he has no reason to be afraid.

BEGINNINGS

The first three breaths after the last tremor of orgasm.

The first sixty seconds after the argument’s final howl.

The silence echoing the phone call that said,
“Your father died last night.”

The heart’s gallop when a future lover smiles in your direction.

The feral cries of an infant after deliverance from the birth canal.

Soon…

The world reforms itself.

The second hand starts moving.

THE CERTITUDE OF A MOUNTAIN

Blessed be the dust mote,
For it is humble.
Blessed be the mountain range,
For it is arrogant and large.
Blessed be the castle of sand and the flake of granite.

I am as fragile as stone but I bless them anyway.

Blessed be ice and rain and sun,
For wearing down everything.
Blessed be the gravity of Mother Earth,
Which pulls all things down.

I am as ignorant as a rose but I bless them anyway.

Blessed be the unhappy mother,
For singing the lullabies of fear.
Blessed be the insatiable infant,
For he will inherit her lament.

I am as broken as the moon but I bless them anyway.

I bless all broken things,
And all children who navigate blindfolded,
And all that is lost or crumbling,
And every mountain reduced to dust.

MY FIRST POEM AFTER A TEN YEAR DRY SPELL, WRITTEN ON MY BIRTHDAY

The worst part of me says:
I will never be happy lining the pocket of God
unless I am Her only coin.

The best part of me knows:
I am dust on the tabernacle, and that is enough.

I am a drop of rain that fell a million years ago.

I am yesterday’s sunshine.

I am a middle-aged man who hears God whispering on his shoulder
who knows not what God is
but knows well what God is not.

God is not an old man with a white beard and a whip.

or if God is

then God is also a brown baby with a binky

and a girl clutching a candle

and a young man with a hammer

and a woman screaming as a child enters the world
crying tears that rain the promise of God

and God is a tree fallen by lightning

and God is a sapling in loam

and God is a white man fifty-nine minutes into his fifty-first birthday
typing

and God is a person giving that man his first birthday present
by reading these lines.

God is not ego.

Saturday night I spoke at a twelve-step meeting and many people laughed.
Many told me how much my story moved them.
Many looked me in the eyes and we saw each other
as children crying for the help that did not come.

It went to my head.
It felt like warm butter in my heart.

A voice has been whispering to me
“I have much to say
and yours is a mouth I am choosing.”

I know others answer such commands
and God
helps them

but I am afraid
I am unworthy
and I am afraid
it will go to my head
and I am afraid
the voice will go quiet.

I don’t want to be alone again.
I like to listen to that voice
all by myself
just the two of us.

I want to sit under a stone under a tree under a cloud
and listen to those maple sweetened words
as they flow like a lively brook through my heart.

“SPEAK!!!”
Is sometimes all I hear as I clutch my knees and feel so much happiness at last.
“SPEAK!!!”

I don’t want to be conceited, or ignored, or to start running a race again.
I have so much to say.
I believe I have much to give.
I am filled with tears and with smiles and with bloodshed and hugs.

It is my fifty-first birthday and my hair is becoming white.
Who am I to speak up?
And where would I find a soapbox?

I want to be God’s coin.
The most selfish part of me wants to shine alone in a dark, empty pocket.
The best part of me wants to jingle like one of seven billion gold dollars in a bursting sac.

When I lived for ego it all looked so simple.
Living for heart has brought me to this precipice
where I must jump and drop like a suicide victim,
spread my arms on the way down,
and hope God becomes my wings
so I can carry my message across the gorge.

Happy Birthday to me
and you
and God
whatever She is.