To be silent is to infold,
like some flowers when night comes,
and to open, by the chemistry of darkness,
to another black luminescence
from within the central fountain
that light unseen except
by the eternal flower maker
peeking through the other
pair of eyes
to listen as if
it were the simplest atom of the voice
like the astonished awakening of sex.
If we want to own the rose we must bring about its death,
shatter the sacred continuity of its cycle.
All death comes as an act of possession.
Beauty dies because of our compulsion to understanding
cannot satisfy itself with its lack of answers;
it must prod the timeless freshness of its scent.
Man’s hands are wilting machines.
Whatever he touches dies
because he is the hand of death.
And then he wonders: “why do things vanish,
why is my yearning for persistence always met with loss…?
Because we want to possess the rose
-the moment as fleeting as the freshness-
because things possessed and known
travel in time where death is the ultimate destination
and we are the deaths’ dark knights.
Freedom…
The word spins whirlwinds in my mind
dancing in the midst
of dreamland, unattached,
a soul
without a body.
“Father, – I said
resting my serious head upon his lap,
what is freedom”?
(A shadow on his face,
a glint of joy,
both paradoxically present.)
“Freedom lives at the heart of illusion.
Therefore, my child,
to have her you must have all your dreams
shattered.
Among the fragments
you will find her,
like a gleaming jewel…”
“Freedom, oh God, freedom…”
Teach me how to fly
without barriers or boundaries.”
And he came down upon the shore
striking me down with a blast of lightning.
And all my illusions were scattered on the spot.
All my tears cried forever
and all my laughter spent.
Depleted I stood, aghast.
Empty.
Totally and absolutely empty.
And then he kissed my cheek and said,
– “Now you are free”.
Writhing in greatest agony and despair
I watched the horizon disappear
and felt the sprouting
of new wings.
And in my total emptiness
I was free,
and gladly paid the price:
Renunciation.
– “Man – he explained softly
is the illusion hunter,
forever enchaining himself
in the vision,
entrapped till eternity
in his dream of beauty and perfection.”
– “Man – he spoke quietly
is the illusion maker,
building a universe of truths
on the structure of a lie.
He ought to see that truth lies
in the denial of all illusion.
By then, man, who remains enmeshed
in his dreams, is not a man.
He must give up his castles in the clouds
And come darting into his center.
Then he shall be free,
and only then he shall be a man.”
Come, you feared and longed for bird of rebirth,
I invite you to execute your sacred ritual
in and with my soul…
Come burn away this flame,
squelch the fire,
transmute this organic amalgam of earthly baseness
into cosmic ashes,
burn the fundamental building block of lies,
make room for the magical bird
that soars impelled like a comet in love
with infinity on wings that are
a kaleidoscope of jeweled dawns and sunsets
beyond the reach of time
or the confining holds of space…
I do as you say:
I lay myself on the burning desert sands
under the scorching sun;
watch the buzzards hover in circles,
-their dance of death-
see them approach to check for the stench
of putrefaction every so often,
knowing that soon they will make their final approach
when the last light of time and memory is still warm,
to sever the vessel that connects you to known time,
the vessel of oblivion will be open then,
the feared unknown trembling you will feel
as it spills out the guts of your soul
on the desert’s sand
to nourish the creatures of a past
that will soon die
that will soon rest in the arms of Lethe.
I lay under the endless starless night
of total silence and wait,
hoping without certainty
for an unknown light of redemption;
listening to the concert of the insect orchestra
in the windless air hum their insane song
and wait for the feared yet longed for death
of the known, the remembered,
stored in Mnemosyne’s caskets,
the living death we live and to which we must all die
in order to be reborn
as a phoenix, out of the ashes of oblivion
as a glorious new dawn
after the extinction of the universe,
for god’s word to shake the universe from slumber
back into light.
Each flower is innocent:
she is a song of yielding to Nature
received as given, without questioning.
Each flower is innocent:
she is perfection in loveliness and goodness
by her submission to Nature’s decree which reads
“thou shalt reflect infinite beauty in a finite garden”.
Each flower is innocent:
she gives boundless joy to the heart,
untouched by men’s thought on life or science.
She knows not even that she is or is a thing called flower.
There are no words hanging from her petals,
or libraries –altering the aroma of heaven-
in which to study herself.
Each flower is innocent:
in the single contentment of being
she bursts through the ground, blossoms and withers
according to the rhythms and cycles etched in her memory.
She does not disturb the universal silence by asking
“why am I rooted in this damp sweet earth?
what is my source and my finality?”
Every flower is innocent:
when Spring’s light warms the garden,
she frolics, naked, in the breeze, thankful
for the gentle ray that travels from afar to touch her.
Her wisdom rewards as she explodes into glorious flowering.
Singing the song of gladness.
Each flower is innocent:
she knows not of joy or pain, life or death.
She remains forever empty, yet fills men’s hearts,
as a language of joy in their loves and of comfort in their pains.
In the flowering season she remembers the secrets of rebirth;
life’s memory is woven into a serenity of petals,
the ambrosia of pollen, the pride of stem.
Open and unafraid, she invites
the bee to feast on her.
Each flower is innocent:
she is the dance of light reborn as beauty,
within her glorious harmony speaks a quiet voice;
the key to a sacred universe is held…
Yet, she knows nothing,
absolutely nothing.
“I am invisible…”-you said,
as I, perplexed, contemplated your face
and heard your voice
and touched your hand –
so seemingly concrete, fashioned
as if from stone, fire, water, air and earth -.
“I am invisible…”-you said.
Eyes shut closed by veils of ghosts,
how blind I was! And being thus
I could not see that invisible you
which hand will never touch
nor eye will see, nor time destroy,
that which earth
shall never swallow or rivers drown.
That invisible you will remain
forever intact as it always has been;
the perfect, pure and untainted soul you are
will always fly aloft
will always soar above the mundane pains and joys,
it will always be here with me
as I am with myself.
As long as I can see this invisible self
you are, I’ll never be alone,
never away from you
nor you from me
for far beyond the reaches of the flesh
we have always been and always will be
one forever.
The stars will rise and set.
Universes will be born and die.
Men’s dreams will stir and fade into oblivion.
The rains will come and the rivers swell,
the tree-frog will whisper secrets to the flowering grass.
A dog will send its bark sailing to the moon at night
as you rock in your porch.
And the ancient oak tree will dry
and weep for you,
remembering a you
who never rested his head against its trunk.
And when the last bell of destiny has tolled,
and all men’s dreams are put to rest,
we will always be together, for eternity…
The children lurk
absconded in darkness,
shreds and shards of a broken self:
floating fragments
in the universal void within.
They smile and chant and play
forever alien to themselves.
My smiling and chanting and playing
are but the faceless echoes
of their calling out to darkness
for redemption,
for an unknown light
vaguely remembered
as in a dream…
I awaken in the misty hours before dawn
and before the first glimmer of lucidity
stirs my senses; you are already filling
all the spaces of my life.
Your unknown face: conjured
as a puzzle, from bits relayed in words,
but fashioned, mostly, from parts
of other faces I have loved.
Your voice is heard again,
resurrected from the storage shelves of memory,
its softness, its dark and infinite warmth
-textured almost like a touch-
calls my name… I tremble.
Then, surges that longing of ages:
the unending ocean of desire
swelling in waves
stretching its tentacles across space
to reach your shores…
In the secret chambers of my mind I whisper
your name, softly,
look into your imagined face,
and your imagined hands reach out to me.
Your electrifying touch travels across
the entire topography of my form,
visiting and revisiting those places
where my longing calls them…
My body convulses at the inevitable joy:
the tenuous links between body and soul
are severed and I escape into an open space
of love unendurable.
I wonder if at this hour,
in another distant darkened room,
you were startled by the call of my heart,
awakened and listened for a phrase…
And watched the shadows dancing on the wall
expecting my form to become flesh;
and when it did not
you mourned, as I do, this unborn child,
this love always potential:
condemned to purity essential.
We are being textualized to extinction…
In the beginning was the word
-logos-
and the word became flesh.
Now, we, converted into text,
are only known through our words
and the word that we name ourselves with.
So how do we translate ourselves
back into flesh?
Must we become gods?