tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53765103464705207752024-02-20T14:37:11.385-08:00Mick Karger's Poetry PageMickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-20321722337365606112009-07-30T19:26:00.000-07:002009-07-30T19:46:40.970-07:00Links To Some Great Meher Baba Web Pages<a href="http://www.meherbabatampabay.org/world-wide-groups.php">http://www.meherbabatampabay.org/world-wide-groups.php</a><br /><a href="http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/">http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/</a><br /><a href="http://www.mehercenter.org/">http://www.mehercenter.org/</a><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meher_Baba">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meher_Baba</a><br /><a href="http://www.meherfilmworks.org/ghf/home.html">http://www.meherfilmworks.org/ghf/home.html</a><br /><a href="http://mehermusings.blogspot.com/">http://mehermusings.blogspot.com/</a><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XrYySKASwA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XrYySKASwA</a><br /><a href="http://www.realnothings.com/Brabazonpage.htm">http://www.realnothings.com/Brabazonpage.htm</a><br /><a href="http://mandalihall.org/">http://mandalihall.org/</a>Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-19508643121755228782009-07-30T16:01:00.000-07:002009-07-30T16:29:52.658-07:00Ghazals in Remembrance of The Beloved“True Love is no game for the weak or faint-hearted.”<br />Only problem is, how do I stop once I’ve started?<br />Goddamit! Can’t go forward, can’t go back—<br />Ah, maybe I can try a whole new tack!<br />Forget it, buddy, there’s no third way.<br />Either surrender and move on—or forever selfward stand and stay.<br />Did You have to raise the bar so bloody high?<br />Demanding nothing less but the extinction of my little “i”?<br />“There can be no compromise in Love—it’s either full or not at all.”<br />Maybe that’s why I don’t stand very tall.<br />Ok, Ok, I want God, but I guess not that much.<br />That pretty much eliminates me from the whim of God’s touch.<br />“True Love is no game for the weak or faint-hearted.”<br />Too bad it can’t be swapped, traded, bought, or bartered.<br /><br />“Real happiness lies in making others happy.”<br />No wonder when we’re cruel we feel so crappy!<br />These wounding words seem to slip so easily from our lips.<br />But once launched they’re like ill-fated ships<br />Doomed to wander from land to land<br />All in search of that one Healing Hand<br />Which in a moment can wipe away crores of sins<br />And all the bedevilments we have drowned ourselves in.<br />A smile, a look, a glance, a word<br />Can lift and lighten, strengthen and gird<br />That life so fragile, so easily broken<br />But healed in a moment by the right word spoken.<br />“Real happiness lies in making others happy.”<br />Not a bad formula to keep us from feeling crappy!<br /><br /><br />“Mastery in Servitude” are the words o’er Your Tomb.<br />Seems we’ve made ‘em our anthem from womb to womb.<br />Each time we’re sure we’ve brought ‘em to life<br />As we begin a new job, or marry a new wife.<br />It never occurs we’ve not mastered a thing—<br />Except the art of complaining and procrastinating.<br />We’ve mastered and served all, but never once You.<br />It’s always a what, or a whom, but never a Who.<br />Maybe this time we’ll look up before bowing down<br />And engrave on our hearts those words that are found:<br />“Mastery in Servitude” are the words o’er that room—<br />Yet I don’t recall reading ‘em last I entered Your Tomb.<br /><br /><br />“The remedy for all ills is to remember Me<br />Constantly and wholeheartedly.”<br />Yet there’s so much to distract us from the Name of God:<br />Sony, and Samsung, and the new Mac iPod;<br />Spielberg, Scorsese, even Britney Spears—<br />Just to dump all that stuff could take years and years!<br />DSL, Broadband, wireless TV—<br />And You expect moi to forget I, my, and me!<br />DVDs, and jpgs, and PDF files—<br />It’s no wonder I can’t recall just one of Your smiles!<br />PlayStation, GameBoy, 2-way video phones—<br />These are the “thinks” that ‘round my mind roams.<br />“The remedy for all ills is to remember Me solely.”<br />But they’re exactly what cause me to forget You wholly.<br /><br /><br />“Things that are real are given and received in Silence.”<br />Sorry…can’t hear the words for all the noise and violence.<br />Can’t be a real pact without some kind of shouting.<br />‘Twill take the world time to accept Your words without doubting.<br />Some kind of hoopla always seems to seal the deal—<br />And makes that which is false appear so real.<br />Funny, how the deepest exchanges always make us aware<br />That something holy’s been spoken, like a hymn or a prayer.<br />And though no lips had been seen to have moved<br />A world-sized maxim has just been proved:<br />“Things that are real are given and received in Silence.”<br />A new Golden Rule to teach terrorists and tyrants!<br />They’re wordless contracts conceived in still air,<br />And they throb with the hush that whispers “Meher.”<br /><br /><br />“I HAVE COME NOT TO TEACH BUT TO AWAKEN.”*<br />Finally, an excuse for those tests failed and taken!<br />Learning by rote, learning by fear<br />Never once taught a lesson my heart could hear.<br />Learning through ridicule, learning through shame<br />Never once made me repeat the Lord’s golden Name.<br />Few things were taught, but much instilled,<br />Like which crimes could be committed without getting killed.<br />I got through my Bar-Mitzvah through phonetic spelling!<br />They sure must have bought it; Oy! Such quelling!<br />They could never have known Real Knowledge lay sleeping;<br />It just hadn’t been kissed into wakefulness’ keeping.<br />“I HAVE COME NOT TO TEACH BUT TO AWAKEN,” You said,<br />Where it would bloom in the heart—but remain in the head.<br /><br /><br />“If instead of seeing the faults in others—“<br />(Which denies us the pleasure of having our druthers)<br />“—We look within ourselves instead—we are loving God.”<br />(Might as well do as the Old Man says, no matter how odd!)<br />My faults are apparel that so brightly clothe me<br />They blind me to myself, but not those who loathe me!<br />Maybe if I blamed myself first before blaming others<br />I just might not feel like getting in those druthers!<br />It’s so easy to see someone else as the real S.O.B.<br />—makes it that much harder to see the real S.O.B.—as me!<br />I could go on for years, piling up sin after sin;<br />Digging deeper and deeper the deep hole I’m in.<br />“If instead of seeing the faults in others—“<br />I might find I’ve made my enemies my brothers.<br /><br /><br />“Let God flood the soul. What I am, you are.”<br />But I won’t know it for lifetimes; that’s really how far<br />I have yet to go. So many inner miles to travel,<br />So many inner knots to unravel!<br />How often You’ve told me, “But you’re already there!”<br />Gee thanks, God—but just where is there?<br />Talk about standing in one’s own way!<br />But until “I” cease to be, the game will still play.<br />Yet the place I’m standing—You’re standing there too!<br />Now how can that be—yet You say it’s true.<br />Actually, there’s no “two” of us there at all—<br />It’s lifetimes’ tricks for which I always fall.<br />“Let God flood the soul. What I am, you are.”<br />Takes a drowning good flood to drown a distance that far.<br /><br /><br />“Life at Its Best”, a “Guzzle” in Two Parts<br />(Requested by Ann Conlon)<br /><br />1.<br />“If understood, life is simply a jest.<br />If misunderstood, life becomes a pest.<br />Once understood, life is ever at rest.<br />For pilgrims of the Path, life is ever a test.<br />When relinquished through love, life is at its best.”<br />Help! I’m way back here, Lord, at the end of the line<br />Where suicides, murderers, and adulterers recline<br />On the pillowed softness of their most secret sins<br />Which they’ve packaged and sealed in bright-colored tins.<br />I’d deceive even You if I thought I’d succeed,<br />But my thirst for forgiveness is now the greater need.<br />Sorrow’s dipped arrows daily pierce my breast,<br />Putting any possible peace under immediate arrest.<br />It’s waking nightmares now that give me no rest.<br /><br />2.<br />“If misunderstood, life becomes a pest.”<br />Now there’s an understatement to which I can attest—<br />Glancing back o’er lifetimes, You can see how I’ve messed<br />Up a million-and-one chances to by You be blessed.<br />Though I know right from wrong, better from best,<br />I’ll say “no” to the good—and to the less-good: “Yes!”<br />Now glibly do I talk of “the Path” and its tests,<br />Though I’m unable to endure even its mildest tempests.<br />The gift of Your Name which I never could have guessed<br />You’d bestow on me now—surely an unspoken request.<br />After lifetimes the lessons have at last coalesced:<br />“When relinquished through love, life is at its best.”<br /><br /><br />“Repeating My Name is not enough. It should be done with all love<br />and faith.”<br />I’ve been doing it all wrong, sharpening memory on a lathe<br />Powered not by a heart, but by a wandering mind<br />That sees not what blind faith can only see blind.<br />I can’t ignite this love; ‘tis You who must give the spark<br />That will end in a conflagration, and dismiss this dark.<br />Until then, should I keep saying, “Baba, Baba, Baba…”<br />As though it were my own personal Kaaba?<br />One ‘round which I must circumambulate,<br />Perambulate, but never consummate?<br />“Spiritual love,” You told us, “is a gift from God to man.”<br />If it all depends upon Your Grace, why even do what I can?<br />I could go on for lifetimes, repeating “Baba” by purest rote,<br />Waiting for my heart to transform it as the most purest note.<br /><br /><br />“Repeating My Name is not enough. It should be done with all love<br />and faith.”<br />In other words, to be so consumed by Love as to become a wraith.<br />This poor flame of remembrance which I’ve kindled out of bone-dry<br />wood,<br />Please blow on it gently, if You could, if You would,<br />And ignite these sparks into a rousing good flame,<br />Burning all worry into cinders that scattered, spell Your Name.<br />For over 30 years, I thought remembrance alone was the key,<br />But remembrance without Love is loveless spontaneity.<br />Repetitions of Your Name are like a weight-lifter doing “sets;”<br />Don’t take ‘em as any guarantee of love; don’t place any bets.<br />I fear I shall spend the rest of my life taking Your Name by mere rote;<br />Is it too much to hope You’ll turn just one into a single, shining note?<br />“Repeating My Name is not enough. It should be done with all love<br />and faith.”<br />O, when will Your Love turn me into a Love-consumed wraith?<br /><br /><br />“Before going to sleep and waking up, remember to take My Name.”<br />What could be simpler, or easier, than to light this daily flame?<br />He tells us to call on Him every second, every moment.<br />What could be simpler, or easier, during times of trial and foment?<br />Alas, for me, it’s never been easy—often, it’s just too mechanical.<br />Only when remembrance is lit by love, will it become wholly<br />systematical.<br />For me it’s still a trying affair that by Your Grace will come easily.<br />Until then, I’m afraid, my remembrance will be measly.<br />Your Name is one beat longer than a stroke or heart attack.<br />Perhaps ‘tis just this emergency which will bring Your memory back.<br />Your Name is the in-and-out-breath which keeps all hearts alive.<br />Without Your sweet remembrance, whose life can truly thrive?<br />“Before going to sleep and waking up, remember to take My Name.”<br />Forgive me, Meher, if I forget to breathe in this flame.<br /><br /><br />“In Love one has to suffer a lot.”<br />Gee thanks, Baba, but no thanks. I’m not ready to tie that knot.<br />But it’s not a knot I’m tying, it’s really a cutting through<br />Of the thousands of knots I’ve tied to everything but You.<br />Union, I know, is the Goal, and the ultimate prize.<br />But I don’t care for union, only the flashing of Your eyes.<br />Union’s for lovers for whom the Game of Love is just a bore.<br />I want to keep on living just to love You all the more.<br />Of course, this Love must lead to the drop becoming the Ocean.<br />But I’m often given to sea-sickness, and have a dread of violent<br />motion.<br />I much prefer the simple life of loving You throughout the day<br />Asking, “Which film should I see, and when I can afford it, which<br />play?”<br />“In Love one has to suffer a lot.”<br />I guess I’m just not ready to tie that knot.<br /><br /><br />“Remember Him in every little thing you do—the responsibility will<br />then rest with Him.”<br />It’s always the most trivial thoughts that ricochet off mind’s rim.<br />Before the responsibility can rest with You<br />I’ve got some serious Name-taking to do!<br />But I’m forgetting You at a million miles per hour;<br />Can’t take my foot off imagination’s accelerator—there’s too much<br />power<br />Behind the thoughts that go whizzing by<br />So fast they’re a blur even to my mind’s third eye.<br />I’d love to let the responsibility rest entirely with You,<br />But I’m holding on too hard to my little world-view.<br />There’s so many ways to remember You, but I’ve forgotten them all<br />As each new movie or CD makes its debut at the mall.<br />“Remember Me in every little thing you do.”<br />But it’s always the littlest things which cause me to forget You.<br /><br /><br />Have you seen Baba’s erasure? He keeps it in His hand.<br />He didn’t buy it at Staples, I’m sure you understand.<br />It’s such a powerful erasure, He uses it every time<br />We die and change bodies, but leaves the memories behind.<br />He erases the memory of who we were, and what we did to whom;<br />Of where we lived, and died, in a grave or garish tomb.<br />If He pocketed His erasure, and left it all unused,<br />Think how nutty we’d all be, not to mention how confused!<br />It’s hard enough to live this life, with all its doubts and fears,<br />Without having to remember our former, which span a million years.<br />Thus He carries this erasure, so round from rim to rim,<br />That we might more easily live this life in complete remembrance of<br />Him.<br /><br /><br />“I am nearer to you than your very breath.”<br />But please, don’t wait ‘till I’m just moments from death<br />To give me a glimpse of Your closeness to me…<br />I ask just the smallest glimpse of Your Infinity.<br />I know it would help my love to grow strong<br />For however many years I have left, short or long.<br />But even this demand is an insult to Love, I know<br />Because of a story You told that took place long ago.<br />‘Twas when You were Krishna, and needed Arjuna to fight;<br />So You bestowed upon him just the minutest sight<br />Of Your Infinite Form; clearly, only that Vision would do;<br />But it still was a weakness, and, You said, an Avataric one, too.<br />Many a saint has besieged You for just a glimpse of that State;<br />I can only imagine how long I’ll have to wait.<br /><br /><br />Your smile’s a benediction, unlike anyone else’s on earth.<br />My heart informs me it has to do with Your birth.<br />I’ve tried to measure that smile from one end to another,<br />Embracing lover and friend, father and mother.<br />In fact it would seem that the whole human race<br />Is purely reflected from that singular Face.<br />I’ve never traveled the length and breadth of that smile<br />Because the distance can’t be measured in kilometer or mile.<br />There are wings on each glance or compassionate look<br />That fly ‘round the world in the moment it took<br />Each heart to request its Presence right then.<br />It travels so fast, there’s no question of when,<br />Nor no question of how, why or where.<br />The return address is always the same: Lord God, Meher.<br />When will the voice of asking be stilled?<br />When by Your Grace, my millions of wants are killed.<br />When will the winding of my fears subside?<br />When Your Name and Your Face never leave my sight’s side.<br />When will the debts I’ve incurred be finally paid?<br />When at Your feet each one has unconditionally been laid.<br />When will my lust for belly-full end?<br />When on something more filling my hunger spends.<br />When will my need of assurances wane?<br />When my trust in Your Love wins Love’s sweet gain.<br />When will worry lose at least some of its grip?<br />When my grip on Your daaman never once slips.<br />When will Your Name repeat in my heart?<br />When it never once ceases once it finally starts.<br />This little life is passing away as quickly as one, two, three…<br /><br /><br />“In illusion you may die at any moment. The illusory life has no<br />guarantee.”<br />But it’s passing away too swiftly, like grains of sand in a glass;<br />And the aperture hourly widens, allowing even more grains to pass.<br />One day, before I know it, they’ll all will have fallen through,<br />Leaving only enough grains to allow one more day with You.<br />And remembering all my forgetfulness, pain will mount upon pain,<br />To insure I’ll never forget You, even once, ever again.<br />But e’en now as I write this, Your Name’s begun to fade<br />Into images of old movies I’ve played and then replayed.<br />If I’d only known how quickly this little life would, I fear, end,<br />I would have given myself such a kick in my fat, rear end,<br />As to rush Your Name to my dry, parched lips,<br />And sail me to You on two-syllable ships.<br /><br /><br />“I dare not care not for My lovers.”<br />Does this mean He cares more for some and less than others?<br />Disturbingly, yes. Those who have submitted to the Surgeon’s Hand<br />Deserve their meals in bed, and around-the-clock care from this Man.<br />They have willingly surrendered to the Surgeon’s knife;<br />It is then His responsibility to look after each life.<br />Oh, the little surrenders count; but those that fall short of complete<br />Lie just outside the shadow of His dear lotus feet.<br />“Once your surrender is complete, all actions done by you are not<br />yours.”<br />Which means He’s destroying your sanskaras by the crores.<br />Basically, you put His responsibility to the test<br />When your love for Him goes from better, to good, to best.<br />“I dare not care not for those whom I love, though I let you stumble<br />and fall,<br />I take care of you one and all.”<br /><br /><br />“The time has come when I want you all to cling to My daaman with<br />both hands.”<br />I think it would be wise to listen, and make no other plans…<br />“—in case the grip of one hand is lost, the other will serve in good<br />stead.”<br />It’s as though You were reading the headlines—more than fifty years<br />ahead.<br />Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Saadam Hussein, fanatics one and all;<br />They’ll be the last to bow their heads, the last to heed Your Call<br />Which You sent out so plainly, in words unadorned and straight,<br />They’d dissolve even those hearts that thrive on fear and hate.<br />This fear they spew as vomit, this hate that nurtures fear,<br />Is enough to make even the firmest faith up and disappear.<br />You warned there’d be such circumstances to justify our letting go:<br />“Hold so tightly, should one hand slip, the other won’t know.”<br />So when the bombs begin to fall, and the body bags to fill,<br />Help us hold fast to Your daaman, and be resigned to Your Will.<br /><br /><br />“Things that are real are given and received in Silence.”<br />Does a kiss, or caress, taste of lust-making’s violence?<br />Certainly not. Whether that kiss is short or long,<br />It’s the absence of words that writes Love’s silent song.<br />Though this kiss may have occurred more than a century ago,<br />It persists, Proust-like, in memory’s warm glow.<br />The beating of breasts and the swearing of oaths<br />Are mad little cancerous, rancorous growths.<br />“Drink to me only with thine eyes”<br />Tells the same Truth, only in corny disguise.<br />He tells us He’s closer to us than our very breath,<br />That we might remember Him at the moment of our death.<br />“Things that are real are given and received in Silence”<br />Shouts loudest in the face of today’s ultra-violence.<br /><br /><br />“Any time a person’s thoughts turn truly to Me, I am truly with<br />them.”<br />Is this really true, and not a myth, then?<br />Of course! Because He says so, your imagination is free<br />To see yourself bowing your head on His knee.<br />Though your eyes are closed tightly, feel the weight of His hand<br />Caressing you gently, saying, “I understand<br />The pain and the pity of all you’ve been through;<br />Know and believe I am always with you.<br />Keep remembering My Name; say it more and more<br />And know I’ll be with you, now and forever more.”<br />If I can recall the dialogue from my favorite film’s scenes<br />And play ‘em over and over again on my mind’s giant screens,<br />Why not harness that same imaginative power<br />To see myself with Him, at any minute, at any hour?<br /><br /><br />“If you love Me, let that love not be wasted by escaping through your<br />lips as words.”<br />Forgive the rhyme, but spilling one’s guts turns His pearls into turds.<br />“It is an insult to real Love if and when such Love happens to be<br />deliberately exhibited.”<br />In short, shooting off one’s trap is strictly prohibited!<br />You said, “Love sets one on fire, but closes his mouth so no smoke<br />comes out.”<br />Thus, not even the quietest “I love you” must not be whispered or<br />hummed out!<br />It seems so damned unnatural not to shout one’s love to the world;<br />Each kiss and embrace is a flag demanding to be unfurled.<br />How were we to know that speaking it<br />Meant the same thing as leaking it?<br />Like a bottle of perfume whose top has been tossed,<br />No sooner love’s spoken, then its essence is lost.<br />“If you love Me, let that love not be wasted by escaping through your<br />lips.”<br />Like little Titanics, each spoken word sinks Beloved-bound ships.<br /><br /><br />“The heart of man has always been the ancient temple for the worship of The Ancient One.”<br />That You have endured our hymn-singing and verse-reading proves You are really The Patient One.<br />Because for so long You were not living amongst us as Man,<br />Incantations and damnations from our mouths ran.<br />We even hired priests to say our prayers and weep our tears;<br />We fashioned golden idols to save us from our fears.<br />We remembered You by forgetting You ‘midst words no one felt.<br />Yet all it took was just a heart-sigh to make Your God-heart melt.<br />Your Advent’s been liberally laced with warnings about the empty<br />right and ritual<br />Which to us has become so terribly habitual.<br />There is a clock-work regularity even to Your Prayers and Arti,<br />I feel as though I’ve stumbled into some spiritual convention’s party!<br />Can this be happening so soon after Your passing?<br />I hear the hollow roar of rituals-to-come like some gigantic army<br />massing.<br /><br /><br />“You should love God in such a way that you yourself are not aware<br />of it.”<br />It might be wise to leave this one in Your hands, and let You take care<br />of it.<br />But I fear whatever Love You’ve planted has not yet grown;<br />At least to these lights, the results are still unknown.<br />What a joke to be known as a “Baba lover”!<br />If there’s even a drop of Your Love in me, I have yet to discover<br />Its existence. At the very least, I’m only a Baba follower.<br />From Your messages, I have been a great borrower.<br />Maybe it’s better that I don’t know whether I love You or not;<br />That way I can’t be blamed, stood up against the wall, and shot.<br />Maybe, just maybe, the seed You planted has actually begun to<br />sprout.<br />If it has, Lord, please shut my mouth so that no smoke comes out!<br />“You should love God in such a way that you yourself are not aware<br />of it.”<br /><br /><br />“I HAVE COME NOT TO TEACH BUT TO AWAKEN.”<br />For this single Truth man’ s heart has been achin’.<br />Thank heaven, no more chapter and verse<br />For man to hurl at his brother as a challenge or a curse.<br />Nor did He need stone tablets, or an ancient parchment skin,<br />For He’d inscribed His words on hearts—only sleeping deep within.<br />His breath alone can awaken each lovely, living Word<br />That needs no human ear to be truly, deeply heard.<br />He’s been sleeping seven-hundred years just to wake us up!<br />And He’s aged a brand new vintage, for a brand new Loving Cup.<br />To hear these words each spoken in “Avataric sound”<br />Requires no wires to clutter the ground.<br />All one needs is a tuner and receiver…what audiophiles call “high<br />end,”<br />Plus a heart-to-heart connection from each lover to the Friend.<br /><br /><br />“I am not this body that you see. It is only a coat I put on when I visit<br />you.”<br />No wonder, even in this Advent, some of us asked, “Is it You?”<br />It was the first time You’d solved this most puzzling mystery;<br />Now we’ve a clear understanding of our God-graced history.<br />You sure picked the right century to make Your return;<br />Seems not even one of Your Lessons had we the sense to learn.<br />One war wasn’t enough, so we made it an even two—<br />Not to mention a Holocaust, a Vietnam, and a 911 to suffer through.<br />Still, You say, the worst is yet to come, but only You know where and<br />when.<br />Nor can it be unwritten by the most versatile pen.<br />None of this could we endure had You not explained it in “God<br />Speaks”:<br />What treasure upon matchless treasure for the one who truly seeks.<br />But speaking for myself, the following was the greatest surprise:<br />Each Avatar in history was none but You in disguise.<br /><br /><br />“I come for all, but am for the few—”<br />Who’ve gambled and lost everything of value except You.<br />How I’d love to count myself among that number;<br />But instead of growing wiser I’ve gown increasingly dumber<br />By the hour, not merely by the day.<br />Do I fool myself that it’s heart-knowledge holding sway?<br />No, that far even I won’t go;<br />My heart’s just as dumb as my intellect is slow.<br />After more than 30 years of knowing You and growing You<br />I’ve done a piss-poor job of sewing you<br />Into the dense fabric of my life,<br />Which can only be tailored by Your Love-sharpened knife.<br />“I come for all, but am for the few—”<br />Who have the guts to gamble all on just one Kiss from You.<br /><br /><br />“Love God to such an extent that you become God!”<br />Now, be honest with yourself, Karger, don’t just head nod<br />“Yes,” when you know damn well that the one you love most<br />Is lounging in a Lay-Z-Boy, sipping tea and nibbling toast.<br />God, why’d You have to raise the bar so high, the Goal so far out of<br />reach?<br />Look! I’m reading Lord Meher and God Speaks—under an umbrella<br />on a beach.<br />You certainly left no middle ground; even trying scores no points<br />with You.<br />It’s “everything or nothing,” stop trying and just do!<br />“You have to love so much that all this world you see around you<br />becomes completely unreal.”<br />Even if I tried 100% for 100 lives, this world would still be the only<br />thing I’d feel.<br />Maybe I could take a short-cut, reach perfection through my rhymes.<br />But I’d need to take off Sunday, so I could read The New York Times.<br />“Love God to such an extent that you become God!”<br />Something tells me I’ve lifetimes to slog through—and to slowly<br />plod.<br /><br /><br />“There is no compromise: either you please yourself, or you please Me in the littlest thing.”<br />I’d love to become Your bridegroom, but bear only a brittle ring.<br />Each moment presents me with this simple test:<br />Will it be You or I that I try to please the best?<br />Will I surrender to You and Your all-embracing Will?<br />Or will I surrender to my favorite pain-killing pill?<br />Don’t bet your dough on me, folks; you’d only lose<br />To a pint of Chubby Hubby, or a squishy charlotte russe.<br />We’re all fighting the same holy war: the enemy our desires;<br />Give in to one, you give in to all; they’re linked by the same wires.<br />It’s always a constant battle to see which of us will win.<br />But the odds are stacked against us; in the old days we called it “sin.”<br /><br /><br />“There is no compromise: either you please yourself, or you please<br />Me in the littlest thing.”<br />I’ve pleased myself so long, that pleasing You has a hollow ring.<br />“Once your surrender is complete, all actions done by you are not<br />yours.”<br />Now that’s a bargain you won’t find advertised in stores.<br />Takes a mighty big surrender to make You sit up and take note.<br />Think I’ll call it “The Big Surrender,” sounds like something<br />Raymond Chandler wrote.<br />Like a vaccine that’s really gotta “take,”<br />A down-to-your-toes surrender can’t smack of anything fake.<br />The recipe for this Big Surrender?<br />Toss yourself into His blender:<br />Every fear, every want, every last desire.<br />(Like those if the world knew, you’d really perspire!)<br />If it was only as easy to surrender your life as another’s.<br />(I know some who’d surrender their gray-haired mothers!)<br />“Once your surrender is complete, all actions done by you are not<br />yours.”<br />What a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to even up those sanskaric<br />scores!<br /><br /><br />“The really happy ones are those who are always contented with<br />their lot.”<br />Unlike me, Lord, always wishing for what I had not.<br />Like that missing volume of Dickens, the one with the original prints;<br />Or that rare LP by Gigli, the one in the sepia tints.<br />Ah, that feeling of completeness when buying that which I had to<br />own;<br />No sooner acquired, than consigned to greed’s Twilight Zone.<br />The happiest man I ever knew cleaned the offices at night.<br />His face always wore a smile, as though lit by an inner light;<br />Unlike the bloated executives who worked their twelve-hour day;<br />Their dreams had long since died, despite their six-figure pay.<br />That old janitor made just enough to see his family through the years,<br />With maybe a few bucks left over, for smokes, and a couple of beers.<br />“The really happy ones are those who are always contented with<br />their lot.”<br />All those things I wanted and bought? They’re in storage where I’m<br />not.<br /><br /><br />“Let your only worry be as to how to love Me and obey Me more and<br />more.”<br />Seems my favorite worry is a dusty, old bookstore.<br />Loving You and obeying You could be my only worry,<br />If it weren’t for others’ favors, which I’m ever trying to curry.<br />I’m ashamed to admit it, but their good opinion ‘oft outweighs Yours;<br />And they’re people I’ve disliked, and deem nuisances and bores!<br />Excuse the explicit comparison, but my love for You is flaccid.<br />Even after 30 years of effort, my resolve is way too placid.<br />You’ve lit enough fires under my tail to really make me to jump!<br />But it’s always into the arms of Maya, and her gorgeous garbage<br />dump.<br />Why does it feel like everything You say applies to everyone but me?<br />There’s a point I’m just not getting, though You’re giving it away for<br />free!<br />“Let your only worry be as to how to love Me and obey Me more and<br />more.”<br />Funny how Madame Worry looks the same old painted whore.<br /><br /><br />“Never forget for a moment that I am God in human form.”<br />Not for an Age had the five Perfect Masters held their quorum.<br />You’d proven yourself to be God not once, but a thousand times;<br />Answering each lover’s prayer, like a poet shaping rhymes.<br />Not a single heart’s wish remained unheard or unattended to;<br />You responded to each one as though You’d forever intended to!<br />Like the woman who craved the kerchief used to wipe Your brow;<br />Next moment You’d tossed it to her, though the question of how<br />You knew who…<br />Only proved you were You!<br />Thousands waited to bow their heads at Your feet,<br />The wish of lifetimes heard, and now Godfully complete.<br />“Never forget for a moment that I am God in human form.”<br />Now talking to God and getting an answer is quite the accepted<br />norm.<br /><br /><br />“The so many deaths during the one whole life....are like so many<br />sleeps during one lifetime.”<br />Think of it! Such an abundance of joy-and-strife-time!<br />Now, we may not believe in reincarnation, nor care for its spooky<br />feel.<br />Yet we require many births just to realize Who is real.<br />How fraught with pain and pleasure is each suspended span;<br />Yet we cling to each life with everything we can.<br />The road seems forever uphill, the path eternally strewn<br />With endless toil and tension, degradation and ruin.<br />Still we beg You for to be merciful, but according to our own design.<br />Small wonder that to Your will we can never fully resign.<br />Just think of all those knots You have to untie and then unwind;<br />And when You begin the work we begged, we think You nothing but<br />unkind.<br /><br /><br />“The sojourn of the soul is a thrilling divine Romance....”<br />In which Lover and Beloved unite in one divinely inspired Dance.<br />I take Him to be God, but I don’t take Him at His Word!<br />When He says, “Don’t worry; leave all to Me,” it’s as if I hadn’t really<br />heard.<br />Or having heard, not really and truly believed.<br />After so many years of following You, what can I feel but grieved?<br />This loving You by fractions is no joke; the punch line really hurts:<br />My heart is a Heart of Darkness. (Hey, my last name must be Kurtz!)<br />Oh hell! Who am I kidding? My problem is one of trust.<br />Very soon the rot will set in, and finally the rust.<br />That a contrariety so complete should have set up residence in my<br />heart<br />Only stops any real progress before it can really start.<br />No more contradictions, God, at least not this late in the Game.<br />Either my trust in You is complete, or it’s not worth the name.<br /><br /><br />Imagine! Taking You to be God, but not taking You at Your Word!<br />There’s only one word left to describe it—and that word’s absurd!<br />It really should be easy to leave everything to You.<br />You not only said You were God, You proved it to be true—<br />Not by raising the dead, or restoring sight to the blind,<br />But by becoming our Companion, ever patient, ever kind.<br />You promised You’d be with us, till we were one with Thee—<br />Now that’s a hell of a promise—the promise of Eternity.<br />Yet intellectually knowing this only stands in my own way,<br />For life’s grip holds my mind in such permanent sway.<br />It should be easy to stop worrying, and truly “become Yours.”<br />Yet the slightest breeze can shake us down to our very cores!<br />You couldn’t have made it easier, saying “Leave everything to Me.”<br />It was You who said You were duty-bound to set each one of us free.<br /><br /><br />“Leave everything to Me,” You said, “I’ll never let you down.”<br />But we never fully believe you, and so our lives go round and round.<br />“Repeat My Name every second, every single moment!”<br />That it might become natural in times of trial and foment.<br />Would that my heart might beat to the syllables of Thy Name.<br />Would that this was my heart’s sole and solitary aim.<br />One syllable for the diastolic, and one for systole;<br />Let no ventricular trick divide my body from its soul.<br />But even should this occur, let it stop with Your Name,<br />That I might “come to you,” which has ever been Your claim.<br />Now, what “come to you” really means, I couldn’t even guess;<br />Only that it sends me to You, a living letter to Your address.<br />I must take You at Your word, that Word made God and Man.<br />And still I find it hard to take Your Name as ‘oft I can!<br /><br /><br />“Repeat My Name every second, every single moment!”<br />Is this Thy order? I believe that is how it’s so meant.<br />“If one had faith in God, what would there be to worry about?”<br />Now that I’ve found the answer, it’s hard not to loudly shout:<br />The less we trust—the more we worry.<br />The more we trust—the less we hurry<br />Into worry’s waiting embrace.<br />And we need look no further than one Man’s beaming face.<br />He can smile down worry with a single gleaming glance,<br />And stop it in its tracks before it has the chance<br />To inter us in its tomb of doom and darkest doubt.<br />But be honest—is worry really something we wish to live without?<br />After all, it fills our hours with such hair-pulling thrills,<br />Or falsely calms us down with a chorus line of pills.<br />“If one had faith in God, what would there be to worry about?”<br />With full faith in His Name, we could each of us worry rout.<br /><br /><br />“Once faith is born, there is no question of our existence or our<br />passing away.”<br />Then no matter what happens, it’ll still be okay!<br />Not that I’m being cavalier about God-Man’s reassurance;<br />I’m just thankful that faith builds Path-endurance.<br />Still, why isn’t my faith stronger after all these years?<br />Nothing’s proved lasting, not the laughter, nor the tears.<br />Let’s call a spade a spade: I simply lack trust.<br />Yet here I aspire to the high station of dust!<br />As for worrying—I’ve made of it an Olympic sport.<br />How could I know I’d be captive in my own worry-built fort?<br />Distrust and worry: hold on to one and you’ve both in your clasp.<br />Then how, with no hands, will His daaman you grasp?<br />“If you have rock-like faith in God and flame-like love for Him,<br />nothing in this world will affect you.”<br />And best of all…you’ll have God-Man’s Love to protect you!<br /><br /><br />“Know that the paramount need, more than Self-Realization, is<br />simply the friendship of a God-Realized Master—<br />(No need anymore for rabbi, priest, or pastor).<br />“—gotten by resigning yourself completely to His will.”*<br />(No need anymore for penance’s over-kill).<br />“I am the only Friend who will never let you down.”<br />(No more heart-shopping for friends the whole world ‘round.)<br />Still, being human, we need the comfort of true friends—<br />Not the kind who’d use us to further their own ends.<br />Only a few per lifetime will do, they of strong blood,<br />Who bear with you your sorrow when sorrow’s at its flood;<br />Whose eyes beam your joy, when joy lights up your life;<br />Whom the fates caste as mother, brother, or wife.<br />But even the best of friend-ships can be ships that sink:<br />Only the friendship of a Master can make you God in a wink.<br /><br /><br />“To love those whom you cannot love is to love God as He should<br />be loved.”<br />So He crosses our paths with those whose fists should be gloved.<br />The kind and thoughtful—who doesn’t have heart-room for these?<br />Their greatest pleasure seems to be an eagerness to please.<br />But the sullen, fear-furrowed brows of the eternally grieved<br />Are never happy, even when their fears are reprieved.<br />Oh, to find even one love-worthy trait<br />Requires digging so deep, you’d wind up in Kuwait!<br />Still, we’re enjoined to seek out and love Infinite God<br />Who dwells in the hearts of both the clown and the clod.<br />Because God is Infinite, He plays limitless roles;<br />And sets up shop in all kinds of souls.<br />“To love those whom you cannot love is to love God as He should<br />be loved.”<br />—like the ones whose push becomes the past tense of shoved.<br /><br /><br />“One who calls out sincerely to God never fails to be heard and to<br />receive His help.”<br />It needn’t be loud—just a silent, soulful yelp<br />Will do. He will hear you. He’s promised He would.<br />But trust Him to answer when it suits Him He should.<br />Ah, trust, that old devil, it keeps on cropping up;<br />We’ve heard so much about it, it’s all but stopping up<br />Our ears—until now it points like a finger of guilt—<br />Straight at trust’s tower that should long have been built<br />By now, at least one, in our lives lived with Him;<br />But it’s His Ocean we’re afraid to jump into and swim.<br />So we stand secure on a beach of warm sand—<br />Though we can’t feel its pressure, He’s holding our hand.<br />“One who calls out sincerely to God never fails to be heard and to<br />receive His help.”<br />Oh, He’ll hear us all right, when His Name we yelp.<br /><br /><br />“A blind man needs a staff in his hand; the seeker needs his hand<br />in the God-Man’s.”<br />Anyone left not holding His hand is truly the odd man<br />Out. But holding hands with God is just a come-on;<br />What He really wants you to hold on to is His daaman.<br />You’ll need both hands free, in case one should slip;<br />Then the other is at liberty His daaman to grip.<br />He’s held our hands for thousands of lives,<br />While we’ve held hands with husbands and wives.<br />Only now do we realize how faithful He’s been<br />While we’ve been savoring each succulent sin.<br />No wonder on each visit He never fails to remind<br />His lovers that faith is always quite blind.<br />Seekers should hold hands with those of the God-Man,<br />Lest they think of themselves as some sort of odd man.<br /><br /><br />“It is to live in your hearts and to share in your lives that I have<br />come among you.”<br />And history won’t repeat that we crucified or hung You;<br />This time, while in the body, they’ve come from all corners<br />Of the world; still, the watchers and the warners<br />Waited for a Messiah of their own cut and trim,<br />And as usual, He came, and as usual, missed Him.<br />How often must He come to convince human unkind<br />That He’s none other than God, but it’s only the blind<br />In faith who accept Him unconditionally;<br />For it’s only the blind who can truly see<br />The God in the Man and the Man in the God;<br />The rest are so dazed they can only smile and nod.<br />“It is to live in your hearts and to share in your lives that I have<br />come among you.”<br />Already have the troubadours written and sung You.<br /><br /><br />“Things that are real are given and received in silence.”<br />Unlike the gaudy gifts that are cloaked in world’s violence.<br />Sometimes silence is known to hide its claws<br />Like a diamond with its dazzling but unseen flaws.<br />It lies in wait for the guileless ones<br />Who feel the bullet but never hear the guns.<br />“You niver hears the one that finally gets yer,<br />Leastways, its not known to’ve happened yet, Sir.”<br />Sometime silence wears the saddest of all smiles;<br />Like the smirk of salesmen, who strut their vacant miles.<br />But the silence lovers speak is louder than any word;<br />However softly spoken, their love is always heard.<br />Greater still is the Silence of God-Man’s total care,<br />That wraps around each lover’s wordless, silent prayer.<br /><br /><br />“Oh how completely unconcerned my Beloved is!<br />I am dying for Him every moment, but He never asks how I am.”<br />How many times have You told me to remember you, or try!<br />Then why don’t You give me something to remember You by?<br />You pluck at my heart-strings, then walk away!<br />And You clearly grow more indifferent to my plight every day.<br />For God’s sake, God, why can’t You give me a break,<br />Instead of continually making this broken heart ache?<br />Just a wink, a smile, a nod of Your head;<br />Even a crumb from Your plate, and I’d feel well-fed!<br />But the more I take Your Name, the emptier I feel;<br />Or is it just me disappearing, as “I’ become less real?<br />I die for You every moment, but you care not for my health.<br />My pain is Your pleasure, my poverty Your wealth.<br /><br /><br />“The disciple must be able to face the blame or ridicule of the<br />world as if it were the chirping of birds.”<br />Praise and blame: are they both not built of words?<br />Yet words can wound as deeply as the sharpest knife.<br />As children, this is one of the first lessons we learn in life.<br />But when God-Man forgives, He also completely forgets,<br />While we grasp our grudges, and nurse our regrets.<br />What isn’t learned in one life, is carried over into the next;<br />The same lessons line up, but in a different context.<br />To face the world’s ridicule takes real bravery;<br />One has not only to forgive its scorn, but to forget its knavery.<br />And even this is impossible without the God-Man as Friend—<br />Then only His pleasure you’ll find will count in the end.<br />Sure, the world’s raillery can drag you to the ground;<br />But what will hurt even more is letting Him down.<br /><br /><br />“If you love Me, let that love not be wasted by escaping through<br />your lips in words.”<br />Or they’ll have as little value as the chirping of birds.<br />“It is an insult to real love if and when such love happens to be<br />deliberately exhibited.”<br />This isn’t the first Avatar to proclaim: Strictly Prohibited!<br />The trick, you see, is to love Him and not let anyone know.<br />And if you think that’s easy, just give it a go.<br />You’ll soon find yourself giving ‘way at every turn:<br />It’s so tempting to show others how much you’ve learned.<br />But you can’t tell a soul, that’s the deal,<br />No matter how restless you might inwardly feel.<br />On your face you must always wear a bright smile<br />(Though you’re bursting to tell your wife all the while).<br />“If you love Me, let that love not be wasted by escaping through<br />your lips....”<br />For upon the smallest sigh, the true lover slips.<br /><br /><br />“Be sane as a saint and innocent as a child.”<br />Between these extremes many lives can be filed.<br />The first should be reverenced; the second well-protected.<br />Only the saint takes lifetimes to become God-selected.<br />The latter requires only diapers that fit;<br />The saint needs love’s fires continually lit.<br />Yet the saint and the child can be formed in one soul;<br />Though they exist side by side, together they’re whole.<br />But for us gross groundlings, both innocence and sanity<br />Are poles apart, while we battle with vanity.<br />As for innocence, we’ve lived too far from its shores;<br />And sanity’s been lost in life’s waged wars.<br />“Be sane as a saint and innocent as a child.”<br />Only God can cleanse all the lives we’ve defiled.<br /><br /><br />“What a calamity! What tribulation! What difficulty me heart is<br />facing.”<br />Daily my troubles set my heart foot-racing.<br />Such was the desperation of my late worldly affairs<br />That I forced You to respond to my urgent prayers.<br />Now I pray for a desperation of a different stripe and hue—<br />The desperation of love which must eventually move You<br />To come to me in Your glorious Name and Form,<br />And still in my breast this raging storm.<br />But please, Lord, do not entirely extinguish this fire,<br />Which is but a symbol of the one true Desire.<br />My train’s still at that station where each grief appears vast;<br />They’re naught but impressions from the stations I’ve passed.<br />“How can the plight of my heart ever be expressed?”<br />Especially when each day brings one of love’s desperate tests?<br /><br /><br />“Spiritual advancement is a succession of one surrender after<br />another.”<br />But there can’t be a succession until there’s a first from a lover.<br />Even the smallest surrender requires some kind of thrust,<br />Like a rocket trying to escape the earth’s lovely dust.<br />Ironically, dust is the lover’s eventual destination:<br />Six feet under, or aloft love’s high station.<br />However, self doubt still holds me in its grip;<br />Thus can His daaman from my hand surely slip.<br />“Greater than love is obedience,” but surrender beats ‘em all.<br />It isn’t who to let go of, but Whom to trust your fall.<br />If love is a kindergarten, surrenderance is a Master’s Degree.<br />To Whom else would you dare surrender, if not to Perfect<br />Mastery?<br />“The last surrender is the complete surrender, equivalent to the<br />attainment of Truth.”<br />Still the last must begin with a first, as age from callow youth.<br /><br /><br />“Do not worry about anything. Keep thinking of me constantly.<br />I am the only one that exists, the only one that matters.”<br />Good, solid oak words when the world your heart tatters.<br />The words read so easily, yet it’s so hard to live them!<br />First word and last, there’s a Power you give them.<br />If they weren’t attainable, You would never would have said ‘em.<br />That’s when I’m glad I’ve read ‘em and read ‘em.<br />Except when I’ve preached them as though certain that I<br />Had brought them to life, which my actions belie.<br />And to think that I’ve preached them to some new lover—<br />No sooner spoken, than I quickly discover<br />That I’m still clinging tightly to the hem of my fears;<br />What’s taken moments to say, is sure to take years<br />To live. So I try like hell to hold on to Your Name:<br />Of all endeavors, is this not the best and most worthy game?<br /><br /><br />“By expressing in the world of forms truth, love, purity and<br />beauty…”<br />(Oh, that this was every filmmaker’s duty.)<br />“…that is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth..." worth.”<br />(Of films that shock and revile, there is no dearth.)<br />How I love the great films from the nineteen-thirties;<br />I get so damned tired of the kind that dirties<br />The canvas of my mind with so much vulgarity.<br />(Even the sex scenes are such a poor parody.)<br />There’s an innocence and idealism to the great old flicks—<br />Goodwill and tolerance instead of visual tricks,<br />That Laughton and Pickford and so many a great star<br />Had the great fortune to meet the Avatar!<br />Perhaps even now in their present birth<br />They’re playing the sole game which has as any absolute worth.<br /><br /><br />Why is it so hard to remember You solely?<br />It must be because I think myself holy.<br />Why else would I be enamored of my every thought?<br />It’s a self-spun web in which I’m delightfully caught.<br />And the marvel is—I don’t want to escape!<br />This love for myself—why, it’s more like rape.<br />I ought to be ashamed at such epic self-love;<br />After so much self-devotion, I’m my own treasure trove.<br />And this is the weight I wish to place at Your feet!<br />Only a full surrender could make this one complete.<br />It’s a grand tug-of-war which I hope I shall lose;<br />And I will if its Your Name I eventually choose.<br />May Baba be the sound I breathe with each breath,<br />That it’s You I remember at the moment of death.<br /><br /><br />Your statements on drugs should leave no one in doubt.<br />If you’ve still got some weed left—just chuck it out!<br />But the most potent of opiates You never mentioned at all;<br />It’s the one natural substance to which we’re all in thrall.<br />It’s the opiate of ourselves—and the high that we get<br />So turns our heads, it’s You we forget.<br />Our memories, our desires, our fears and our joys—<br />Life after lifetime, they’re our favorite toys.<br />We’re our own favorite film, our own favorite book,<br />One we can’t stop reading, for each page is a hook<br />That grabs our attention, and won’t let go;<br />We’re far and away our own favorite show.<br />Your Name and Your Form are my only hope,<br />Would they were my addiction, and my favorite "dope."<br /><br /><br />Forgetting to remember, remembering not to forget<br />Has become my sole pastime, and my sole regret.<br />I lose You and find You a hundred times each day<br />As I forget to remember You at work and at play.<br />The holidays, lit wonders, a source of joy to all,<br />Are as dangerous to me as an award-winning mall.<br />My world is a food court, a department store sale,<br />Where Your Name is forgotten, not to mention your "hail."<br />No "Jai Baba’s" are uttered or inwardly said;<br />God forgive me, but it’s as though to my heart You were dead.<br />Your injunction to remember You every minute, every hour<br />Lies dried and forgotten like some book-pressed flower.<br />Lord, please help me remember, never once to forget<br />Your Name every moment, or every moment—regret.<br /><br /><br />Beloved God, help me remember You, in spite of myself;<br />To discover which is the treasure, and where the wealth.<br />Each day brings me choices, and not one is easy;<br />If I thought of the dangers, I’d become quite queasy.<br />Let’s begin with responsibility, which You said not to shirk;<br />To do one’s duty, at play and at work.<br />Ah, but when does care become worry, and how do I stop<br />This mind from spinning like some out-of-control top?<br />I can’t parse out concern from over-wrought care.<br />It’s a tug-of-war always, and the rope’s fine as a hair.<br />You cruelly set the bar ever higher and higher;<br />Each failure to reach You only dampens heart’s fire.<br />The winds of my mind daily blow out the flame;<br />Till Your face I’ve forgotten, and finally, Your Name.<br /><br />Think of it! He’s actually offering us each a way out;<br />A real holiday from worry, if we don’t doubt.<br />The truth of His promise: If you leave all to Me,<br />I will never neglect you—while you remain free<br />To love Me; how’s that for a no-risk deal?<br />You’ve heard about bargains, man, this is a steal!<br />And still that old burden remains on my head,<br />Growing daily in weight, my thoughts lined in lead.<br />It’s always this heaviness that causes me doubt;<br />And still He offers me an easy way out.<br />By continuing to implore: Leave it all at My feet.<br />Do that, He says, and your surrender’s complete.<br />He really does want our burdens, but we want them more,<br />Or we’d long have left them at His threshold’s door.<br /><br /><br />I’ll be damned if I’ll love You like some limp-wristed lover!<br />Your breath and Your hair I leave women to discover.<br />I’d rather dote on your fearsome compassion<br />That endures such trials as would any face ashen.<br />Please, I’m not saying that the moon-way is wrong;<br />But men should sing a more masculine song.<br />For a guy to sing about Your tresses and curls<br />Is, to my taste, just too girly-girl.<br />Now I know this is going to make some people pissed;<br />Guess I’ll just have to settle for being dissed.<br />Men and women should love you the way each loves best,<br />With sighs of love, but no beating of breast.<br />The truth is, of course, that love has no gender:<br />What’s male or female about the final surrender?<br /><br /><br />“I am the only Friend who will never let you down.”<br />Wish I’d known that ‘afore I tossed my trust around.<br />But I threw it where it could be stomped on and kicked;<br />Even in the gutter I never knew when I was licked.<br />So one day I decided to trust You for the hell of it;<br />I’d had my nose rubbed in shit so long I lost the smell of it.<br />You’re now my companion even though I’m friendless.<br />You hold my hand when the night seems endless.<br />You’re my lover when love remains a stranger.<br />You’re my comfort when comfort’s hope is in danger.<br />I’ve looked all my life for the Perfect Friend,<br />Only to disappoint, and be disappointed, in the end.<br />“I am the only Friend who will never let you down.”<br />Now I know whose always worn that kingly crown.<br /><br /><br />“It is love, not questioning, that will bring God to you.”<br />But I keep sneaking in those questions, with a nod to You<br />That begs, “Just this once, God, is it okay<br />If I entreat again Your comfort to keep these doubts at bay?”<br />But You not only let me ask, You dignify it with an answer.<br />And still these doubts grow like some malignant cancer.<br />Oh, when will I stop questioning, and learn to unreservedly trust?<br />When will doubt turn to faith, dead speech to singing dust?<br />I’ve failed You and failed You, not once, but a thousand times.<br />They’re more than misdemeanors, pal—they’re crimes.<br />One day, I know, all my questions will disappear<br />Into a sea of love no bigger than a single, shining tear.<br />“It is love, not questioning, that will bring God to you.”<br />May I never again question, then in quilt, shyly nod to You.<br /><br /><br />Am I a Baba lover, or a Baba follower?<br />At best, I’m a Baba borrower.<br />Am I a Baba speaker, or a Baba quoter?<br />At best, I’m a Name-saying Baba motor.<br />Am I a Baba prayer-er, or a Baba pleader?<br />At best, I’m a Baba needer.<br />Am I a Baba dreamer, or a Baba doer?<br />At best, I’m a Baba stewer.<br />Am I a Baba shower, or a Baba hider?<br />At best, I hide the smoke, but use too big a lighter.<br />Am I a Baba pitcher, or a Baba bunter?<br />At best, I’m a Baba punter.<br />Am I a Baba reader, or a Baba scholar?<br />At best, I’m a Baba-spouting hollerer.<br /><br /><br />Sometimes, it feels as though I’d only just met You,<br />though I’ve known You for 30-plus years.<br />But what about all those moments of remembrance, did they<br />merely go in and out of one of Your ears?<br />Has even one of those moments found a place in Your heart?<br />Or was each one just a lame-brained spiritual fart?<br />When You said, “Remember Me every moment,” were You just<br />giving out more advice?<br />Or were You giving out pearls, precious beyond price?<br />Now I know You were being literal in every sense of the word.<br />But I lived as though I had never even heard.<br />I hate that feeling of newness when “oldness” is what I should feel.<br />And I would, if in my remembrances, there was just a little more zeal.<br />By now You and I should be the very best of friends.<br />But too often Maya’s means lead only to Maya’s ends.<br />Yes, this is the way its been for 30-plus years;<br />By discipleship standards, not one of Your most distinguished<br />careers.<br /><br /><br />“I want every lover of mine to repeat My Name with every breath.”<br />If I could only start doing this NOW, I just might at the time of my<br />death.<br />Why aren’t I making use of every single moment to remember You?<br />Instead of making lists of all the old movies I missed taping but<br />intended to.<br />If I had only 15 minutes to live, would I watch a silent movie, or in<br />silence take Your Name?<br />I’m afraid I’d be watching the silent movie, now silently, in shame.<br />Imagine me dying—with only a few precious breaths left!<br />And here I am watching an old movie—the worst kind of theft!<br />Once again, I’ve allowed the world to steal my attention—<br />And I have the nerve to expect a last moment redemption!<br />I’ve lost sight of Your face and the sound of Your Silence,<br />In return for the dream and the promise of dream’s violence.<br />“I want every lover of mine to repeat My Name with every breath.”<br />If I start now, maybe I’ll get lucky, even in death.<br /><br /><br />“Love Me.” “Leave everything to Me.” “Always take My Name.”<br />You make it sound so easy, like a child’s ruleless game.<br />But just try to succeed in even one of the above,<br />And you’ll discover how childish is your so-called love.<br />I’m still in the sandbox with my shovel and pail;<br />No wonder at adult love I invariably fail.<br />Yet it’s drunks and madmen whom God loves best;<br />They’ve discarded the toys the world loves to caress.<br />Gentlemen and highwaymen, ladies and dames<br />Who, at the point of a gun, couldn’t name even one of God’s Names.<br />‘Cept maybe Jesus, ‘cause He did so many a trick<br />That something of God would to some minds stick.<br />But I digress; please refer to the above injunctions;<br />How impossible it is to obey even one of Your instructions.<br /><br /><br />“Greatness lies in not overlooking smallness.”<br />Little things, like kindness, have their own kind of tallness.<br />The world measures greatness with the oddest of rulers.<br />Champions of saint-love just get sent to the coolers.<br />Philanthropists have their moneyed rewards:<br />These the world notes and faithfully records.<br />The ear that will listen and not give advice;<br />The friend who does favors without mentioning the price;<br />The small word spoken at a moment of great loss;<br />These can’t be measured in terms of mere cost.<br />A man’s greatest inheritance may be the bestowal of a kiss;<br />But the world will take little note of this.<br />“Greatness lies in not overlooking smallness.”<br />Little things, like a kiss, have their own kind of tallness.<br /><br /><br />“Your duty is to keep Me constantly with you in thought, speech, and<br />action.”<br />Thus, in our strides to You, we gain even greater traction.<br />But it’s not easy to remember You, and yet painful to forget You!<br />Both only remind me that I’ve never once met You.<br />Still, when on Your face and form I dwell<br />I know how very shallow is my own heart’s well.<br />Ah, how tiny the span of a single life!<br />The days and nights so incredibly rife<br />With chaos and emergencies—<br />And those unmentionable urgencies!<br />The truth is simple: I simply lack poise.<br />I’m distracted by the slightest psychological noise.<br />“Your duty is to keep Me constantly with you in thought, speech, and<br />action.”<br />Each act of forgetting is a kind of spiritual impaction.<br /><br /><br />“The time has come when I want you to cling to My daaman with<br />both hands.”<br />A good thing to remember when caught in life’s quicksands.<br />“In case the grip of one hand is lost, the other hand will serve in good<br />stead.”*<br />A damn good contingency plan to keep in one’s head.<br />My advice is: Get a good grip before the day begins<br />Its hydra-headed games of ego losses and wins.<br />You think it’s easy to grasp this garment’s hem?<br />It’s like hunting in the dark for the most precious gem.<br />In the argot of today, it’s “Hey, man, get a grip!”<br />But for lovers of the Beloved, it’s “Don’t let your grip slip!”<br />“Hold on to My daaman, never feel lost.”<br />Help me remember this, Lord, when by life’s tempests I’m tossed.<br />“Rely completely on Me. I am always there.”*<br />How sweet thy assurance, how constant thy care.<br /><br /><br />Today was a banner day for forgetting You<br />With plenty of opportunities for regretting, too.<br />It wasn’t as though I had tried to avoid each one;<br />My darkness seemed to blot out even Your shining sun.<br />You’re always “on the job,” Lord; I’m always “taking five”<br />And then ten, twenty, Lord knows how many lives<br />I’ve simply frittered away…<br />Leaving Your remembrance for yet another day.<br />I’m just trying to balance those sanskaric accounts.<br />But with each new breath my karmic debt mounts.<br />I remember You only when pressed<br />By the awful weight of these debts.<br />“Think of Me. Love Me. Obey Me. Take My Name.”<br />Incalculable guidelines for winning Your game.<br /><br /><br />“The more you think of Maya, the greater is your anxiety and<br />excitement for its enjoyment—“<br />Attending to Maya’s charms offers the typical gross mind<br />full-time employment.<br />“—and the more the anxiety, the greater are your fears.”<br />Mine have been accumulating for nearly ten-thousand years.<br />Trouble is, I want a thousand things at once, but none of them are<br />You;<br />What’s a poor drop-soul, so hopelessly lost to Maya, to do?<br />I want to dig the ruins of history, from Troy to World War One;<br />I want to devour every author, from the greatest to the unsung.<br />It’s sinful the amount of money I’ve spent on records and on books;<br />Seeing them amassed so obsessively always brings astounded looks.<br />You see how little time this leaves for the study of Your silent<br />teachings;<br />Oh, the precious time I’ve lost in pursuit of worldly reachings.<br />“The more you think of Maya—the greater your anxiety and fears.”<br />The true cost of all those books? Uncountable, insurmountable, tears.<br /><br /><br />“A staunch atheist is better than a hypocritical saint.”<br />Which is why ‘tis better to be who one is than who one ain’t.<br />Yet something strange occurs every time we call ourselves “lovers”;<br />The true self burrows underground, or crawls underneath the covers.<br />The posturing self comes prancing out where it can show off<br />its pretty face.<br />But don’t look in its eyes for honesty; of its like you won’t find<br />a trace.<br />To the world I raise my upturned palms;<br />While my mind swills filth and my voice sings psalms.<br />I’ve fooled ‘em all: From friends to the Meherazad Mandali;<br />Yet this was a fool they suffered not just sweetly, but fondly!<br />I’ve hidden the truth from all but Him because I couldn’t bear<br />the sight!<br />Did I think I could pull down the blinds on God, simply by turning<br />off the light?<br />“A staunch atheist is better than a hypocritical saint.”<br />What’s too ugly to reveal is easily covered with a hypocrite’s paint.<br /><br /><br />“Just a moment before dying, take My Name. Even then you will<br />come to Me.”<br />In case I can’t talk, please, I pray His Name you’ll hum to me.<br />Okay, let’s say I take Your Name when dying, and “come to You,”<br />what then?<br />Will I still be able to get The New York Times, or do the crossword in<br />pen?<br />Will calories still count, can I still have a smoke?<br />Would it be inappropriate to tell an off-color joke?<br />Really, Lord, I’m simply at a loss<br />To know whether or not to continue to floss.<br />Please, please forgive me for cheapening this most merciful gift;<br />That even the worst sinner could get such a divine lift!<br />“But how will you remember Me at the last moment unless you start remembering Me from now on!”<br />So START NOW, from this moment, don’t hesitate…PLOW ON!<br />I still don’t know what it means to “come to You.”<br />So why worry? I just pray, at that moment, I’ll run to you!<br /><br /><br />“Baba wants His lovers to know that it is very important not to<br />succumb to lust.”<br />Of all the rhymes I’ve rhymed, I’ve wanted to write this one least—<br />but I must.<br />It begins with the world: Why are its affairs so damn seductive?<br />It doesn’t help that it puts so much emphasis on the reproductive.<br />But such is our inheritance from the birds and bees;<br />It’s those countless animal couplings since we’ve crawled out of the<br />seas.<br />And why couldn’t they come up with sweeter sounding terms<br />For all those parts so susceptible to germs?<br />Well, here’s a cold shower: Just name those parts out loud:<br />Each one’s a sure-fire erection killer—a kind of verbal shroud.<br />Shakespeare was right: emptiness always follows gratification,<br />Yet that never stopped anyone from pursuing his sexual education.<br />“Baba wants His lovers to know that it is very important not to<br />succumb to lust.”<br />Only the hammer of Your Name can smash these desires into dust.<br /><br /><br />I’ve been seeking oblivion in all the wrong places,<br />Instead of simply gazing at the place where Your face is.<br />The look’s always forgiving, but never above<br />Giving me the occasional, but necessary shove<br />Usually in the direction I do not want to go,<br />But You know…You know…You know.<br />Strong drink, weak drink, a handful of pills<br />Only gives me the illusion I’m curing these ills.<br />This always comes from too much thinking;<br />I sure know where that leads: Thirstier drinking.<br />You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now<br />But the lesson’s too painful, so I put it off, somehow.<br />Perhaps one day, if I’m good, and bide by Your time,<br />You’ll grant this parched heart a small glass of Your wine.<br /><br /><br />How the world views failure and success<br />May appear from Him in quite a different dress.<br />What the world sees as failure, He may see as gain;<br />Measured less by sunlight than by pouring rain.<br />I persist on setting my goals and plans,<br />Forgetting completely they’re in Your hands.<br />And when the results are not as I’d hoped<br />I realize too late that I’d been roped<br />Into believing once again it was up to me<br />To achieve the results that were supposed to be.<br />“Results are not in human hands.”<br />They lie, as always, in beloved God-Man’s.<br />“It’s for humans to do, but for God to ordain.”*<br />Still I hunt the sun, but flee the rain.<br /><br /><br />Tumbling down in a ruin of days<br />I run the gamut ‘twixt blame and praise.<br />While I dread the former and embrace the latter,<br />Guess which one makes my ego fatter?<br />Though each life is severed by a breath<br />I’ve yet to die that deathless death:<br />The death of self to self’s desires,<br />Yet I keep on stoking those ego fires.<br />Only sinking hope and rising despair<br />Can drive me into the arms of Meher.<br />The spiritual scales are not measured by gain<br />But are brought into balance by accepted pain.<br />Tumbling down in a ruin of days<br />I must clear the rubble to sing your praise.<br /><br /><br />If I could (just this once) feel through and through<br />That I had really left everything to You,<br />How light would be my burden, how light the load<br />Of the baggage I’ve carried down this weary road.<br />Think of the wants, desires, and all those fears<br />Which have dragged me down these many years.<br />What a relief to finally let go<br />Of those millions of strangers now never to know.<br />Even a ninety-nine per-cent surrender falls short of the goal;<br />Only one per-cent left means the surrender’s not whole.<br />You’ve proven Your Godhood to me innumerable times,<br />Yet I keep on committing the self-same crimes:<br />Fruitless worries, time-wasted hours<br />Have wilted what might have been such beautiful flowers.<br /><br /><br />“When you worry for yourself, how can God worry for you?”<br />Ah, so easy to say, so hard to do!<br />My God, what have I been holding onto with a grip so strong?<br />That You might take from me what’s been Yours all along?<br />The smallest of worries is enough to undo<br />That totality of surrender worthy of You.<br />It seems only intense suffering has the necessary thrust<br />To drive me to Your feet, to lie as dust<br />To be blown where You will, by a single breath;<br />Each want and worry a single death.<br />For millions of lives have I striven for this goal,<br />Yet remain divided, instead of whole.<br />“When you worry for yourself, how can God worry for you?”<br />He can’t, He won’t, the more worrying I do.<br /><br /><br />O Meher, You’ve made my life complete;<br />Now I lay it down at Your holy feet.<br />No more to want, no more to do,<br />Now I’ve left it wholly to You.<br />No more striving, no more plans;<br />Now I’ve left them all in Your mighty hands.<br />Every desire, every wish, and every need<br />You’ve already granted, and now I’m freed<br />Of all my worry, all my fear;<br />Still I pray that You keep me near.<br />Though these lines hint at a final surrender,<br />Your Name and Form I’ve yet to fully remember<br />With such wholeheartedness of heart and mind<br />That I finally, and fully, leave myself behind.<br /><br /><br />If I’d only known that these cumbersome fears would continue to<br />raise their heads;<br />That these wants and desires would continue to flourish like drear<br />flowers in their beds;<br />I would long ago have uprooted them, and the seeds of their<br />beginning,<br />And know that I would always be on the side that was always<br />winning.<br />But I myself was the losing side, the Coach ever there to guide me.<br />I never really felt Him there, walking there beside me.<br />Yet He’d matched each step with my own, His stride so neat and<br />trim.<br />But more important than His being with me, was my always being<br />there with Him—<br />Through continuous remembrance and continuous praise, and never<br />again to assume<br />That simply because He walked with me, there would never again be<br />room<br />For still more worry and still more fear, and its dark attendant desire.<br />Now my way would be lit by praise, and the light of remembrance’s<br />fire.<br />So dear soul, remember these words, as You walk along the sand:<br />There’s a second pair of footsteps following and an extended, out-<br />stretched hand.<br /><br /><br />Perfect security, one day I’d found, means perfect insecurity—<br />But it’s taken me sixty years to achieve even that maturity.<br />What most I’d wanted to hold onto I did not really need,<br />Yet ravenously to the things of this world did I ravenously feed.<br />So I bought every book and record, and then each and every CD<br />As though I could take this library along when I had ceased to be.<br />Did I think I’d live forever, somehow cheat the angel Death?<br />I simply chose to avoid the thought, nor even give it breath.<br />These were the thoughts I’d banished from the citadel of my mind;<br />There’d always be another bookstore, another rarity to find.<br />So now I sit surrounded by bookshelves filled to the brim,<br />And in between the covers of are my forgetfulness of Him.<br />I often wonder what it would be like to lose my security blanket;<br />Would I rage against the emptiness, or, in His fullness, kneel down<br />and thank it?<br /><br /><br /><strong>Some readers’ comments…</strong><br /><br />From Ann Conlon:<br /><br /><em>“Lovely, lovely stuff, Mick. Thank you so much. Love ‘em, Mick. Keep them coming.”</em><br /><br />From Angela Chen, former President of Meher Baba House, New York City:<br /><br /><em>“Well done. Wonderful new ghazals! The collection is remarkably consistent. Every one of them is so human and personal, taking the God-Man’s words into our ‘real’ experience.”</em>Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-88758363092455886282009-07-29T07:25:00.000-07:002009-07-29T07:46:41.106-07:00Poems in Progress<strong>Poems in Progress</strong><br />by Mickey Karger<br /><br /><br /><em>The Gifts You Bestow<br /></em><br />The gifts you bestow, if we could but know<br />How perfect is each in its timing.<br />But out heads our so dense, we cannot make sense<br />Of the perfection of Your rhyming.<br /><br />I know You’re right there, enfolding with care<br />Each one in a loving embrace.<br />But it’s so hard to believe, and so easy to grieve<br />Because fear ever clouds Your face.<br /><br />I’ve peeled back the layers with ten-thousand prayers<br />And when I think I’ve reached the core<br />Comes grief, distress, and misery<br />Not the less, but even more.<br /><br />My particular delusion, my constant confusion<br />Was believing all pain was past—<br />Thereby ensuring that every alluring<br />Hope would soon be dashed.<br /><br />I hate to admit it, but I must submit it,<br />My heart always tells me it’s true:<br />That each wave of suffering has its own buffering<br />And brought me much closer to You.<br /><br />The path is well strewn and all but in ruin<br />With the litter of failed remembrance;<br />But I know that one day, perhaps far away<br />Success will be sealed with surrenderance.<br /><br /><em>The Worry Machine</em><br /><br />I wish I could stop the worry machine<br />But I keep on putting in dimes.<br />I wish the damn thing would just stay broken<br />But I’ve fixed it a thousand times.<br />No wonder all my efforts always seem to fail,<br />And fail in such a hurry;<br />Because, you see, I haven’t learned yet<br />The art of how not to worry!<br />Maybe today I’ll stop worrying—<br />No, I’ll do it tomorrow;<br />Time enough to hold its weary hand,<br />And its attendant, sorrow.<br />Worry Weaves Its Tangled Web<br /><br />Worry weaves its tangled web<br />Of figments, fears, and lies;<br />Stronger even than the tensile threads<br />Spiders weave to catch their flies.<br /><br />Shall I break this web or worry<br />And deprive the spider of its meal?<br />Worry decreases most appetites;<br />That may be its sole appeal.<br /><br /><em>How Would It Be?<br /></em><br />How would it be if I really left all my worrying to You?<br />I’d have so little to worry about, I wouldn’t know what to do!<br />Imagine the days and months I’d save—my time so much better spent<br />I just might offer it up for sale, or at the very least, charge rent.<br />I’m a world-class worrier, I really am—I could make it an Olympic game.<br />But with You up there worrying for me, it just wouldn’t be the same.<br />I like the thought that whatever comes—You’ll be worrying me through it.<br />But the one thing I cannot seem to do, is stop worrying long enough to do it!<br />When Worry’s Wheel Turns Round To Me<br /><br />When worry’s wheel turns round to me<br />I see it now more perfectly.<br />I see its spokes, its nuts and bolts<br />And feel the throb of its million volts.<br />Oiled by fear and powered by pain<br />It starts to turn my way again.<br />But seeing now so perfectly,<br />Its twisted technicality<br />I give it a kick and unhinge its base<br />And send it spinning with a Name and Face.<br />I Wish That I Had Worried Less<br /><br />On that precipice of life and death<br />Where we each rehearse our final breath,<br />It was now even harder for him to confess,<br />“I wish that I had worried less.”<br /><br />Many were the outcomes of which he was certain,<br />Though not every one saw the rise of the curtain.<br />So long had he dwelt in the wilderness,<br />“That might have borne fruit had I worried less.”<br /><br />True, his life has been hard—many hopes were deferred,<br />And that which he feared most had oft’ occurred.<br />But the memories now which crushed his chest,<br />“Might now be lighter had I worried less.”<br /><br />His worries were long arrows of exceeding long range<br />Which he sent on before him in the hopes he could change<br />The outcome of that which he could never have guessed,<br />“Had I the sense to have worried less.”<br /><br />Though the past was frozen and the future unknown<br />(The first he’d thaw out, the second he’d own),<br />He’d discounted the present—real joy to possess!<br />“Had I but worried just a little bit less!”<br /><br /><em>“It’s Easy To Say ‘Jai Baba!’”<br /></em><br />It’s easy to say “Jai Baba!”<br />In a voice that’s loud and strong.<br />But can you also say “Jai Baba!”<br />When everything you do goes wrong?<br />I’m therefore reluctant to take His Name<br />Within another ear’s reach.<br />Then would I have the right to claim<br />That I practice what I preach.<br />Grief’s The Ladder We Climb To Him<br /><br />Grief’s the ladder we climb to Him;<br />Pain’s the road we travel.<br />In sorrow’s sea do we learn to swim<br />As each hope begins to unravel.<br />I wish there were an easier path—<br />I’d take it in a minute.<br />But then I’d delay by more than half<br />The prize, and my chance to win it.<br /><br /><em>In Strong and Bright October<br /></em><br />The goodly scent of loam and earth, of corded wood and sap of apples, resin ripe,<br />a trembling spider's web intersecting the corners of a branch in strong<br />and bright October.<br />Diamond-hard sunlight, blue so hard and dry you thought the sky would break<br />with snow, shines in strong and bright October.<br />Tang of cider, tug of woodsmoke, dilating my nostrils and my memory,<br />in strong and bright October.<br />The further death of fallen leaves under my feet, death was never brighter:<br />vermilions and scarlets and yellows burnished to fiery perfection in strong<br />and bright October.<br />Hollowed pumpkins with candle eyes and jagged leer delight the little girls<br />who point at them from the safety of the road and send them running home<br />squealing with delight to their mothers and fathers in strong and bright October.<br />Hard blue of early evening punctuated by small ejaculations of breath,<br />bullets of air from shotgun mouths panting up a hill in strong and bright October.<br />Pad of cat and perk of dog, a ravenless flight of wished for birds, a hunter's dream<br />in strong and bright October.<br />Adirondack, Poconos, and Saugerties with their great old hotels wood dreamt<br />and castle carved, turrets thrusting into leaden snow-filled skies.<br />And along the lesser roads the sad-hearted motels, dead leaves collect<br />at the doorsteps of forgotten rooms where the bedding gathers dust and the legs<br />of cheap furniture make permanent indentations on damp and mildewed<br />carpeting, rooms stale with cigarette smoke and innuendo, rooms forever darkened<br />against the daylight, rooms that witnessed the sullen union of divided lives,<br />rooms that were for some the last stop of a suicide ride taken long ago in strong<br />and bright October.<br />In the late afternoon the skies go impossibly gold and gray all at once, and lovers<br />walk along wooded paths, and as they walk the crunch of leaves and twigs<br />carries far on the thin and brittle air.<br />And at night comes the donning of woolen sweaters smoke-threaded with<br />Pall Malls and Lucky Strikes, damp earth smell on the bottoms of your shoes,<br />the sleeping half sun of the radio dial lighting up the room, and from a house<br />clear across the lake, the lonely barking of a dog.<br />Strong and bright October, burier of spring and summer under a flood of leaves,<br />each dropped leaf a death and a resurrection.<br /><br />And we are as leaves that fall to dissolve in earth and in due time rise up again<br />resplendent with new life and new humanity.<br />We fall singly, alone, or on the crowded fields of battle.<br />We are born to die, to nod or sprint through our days, sunstorming.<br />We fall in and out of our lives, singly and alone, naked and burning as the sun,<br />and determined as the stars.<br /><br /><em>He is in the Silences</em><br /><br />"Because man has been deaf to the principles<br />and precepts laid down by God in the past,<br />in this Avataric Form I observe Silence.<br />You have asked for and been given enough words --<br />it is now time to live them."<br /> Avatar Meher Baba<br /><br /><br />He is in the silences, that is where he can be heard<br />most clearly.<br />He is in that moment between systole and diastole,<br />between the taking of one breath and the exhalation of another,<br />between grief and the welling tear,<br />between joy and the sudden smile.<br />He is in the silences.<br />He is in that moment when wakefulness surrenders to sleep,<br />when soul slips from body,<br />(a moment whose echo reverberates as another life).<br />He is in the silences,<br />that moment between hunger and satiety,<br />between thirst and its quenching,<br />between pain and its surcease.<br />Do not listen for His silence amidst the noise of living;<br />listen for Him in the untrodden places of the heart<br />where even one second,<br />divided into ten thousand separate units,<br />may each hold all the silence there is to hear.<br /><br /><em>There is a Tragedy Performed Over Lifetimes<br /></em><br />There is a tragedy performed over lifetimes,<br />no one lifetime singled out for glory.<br />A continuum of days unspent<br />with good or bad acts,<br />just one flattened sheet of time<br />spread out across the years.<br /><br /><em>Englow the Filaments of Memory</em> <br /><br />Englow the filaments of memory<br />with remembered designs.<br />A smile carefully planned,<br />a word rehearsed but left unspoken.<br />Let fly the backward arrow of time<br />to hit its mark, heart-center.<br />Engulf the sorrow with remembered<br />sweetness, the little hours lost to time,<br />but not to memory.<br />In the crowded rooms of fancy<br />desks and drawers are near to bursting.<br /><br /><em>The Most Constant of Hungers</em><br /><br />The most constant of hungers,<br />the most constant of plagues<br />is desire.<br />Once awakened, rubbed into life,<br />the giant never sleeps again,<br />only closes its eyes for catnaps.<br />Desire ensnared in too much thinking,<br />no place to go except outward,<br />toward the world of forms.<br />Finger-laced, breath-entwined<br />in strangulated joy.<br />A heated palm against a thudding breast.<br />Old age only doth deprive that wind<br />of its force, howling<br />for another life.<br /><br /><em>A Brace of Tenderness</em><br /><br />A brace of tenderness<br />in an unexpected hour;<br />regretful words removed<br />from memory’s vault<br />by a kiss—<br />sudden, wet, redemptifying.<br /><br /><em>For the Streetcorner Crazies</em><br /><br />Armwaves and handsaws,<br />the semaphore of the lost,<br />the bewildered and the blind.<br />Those pathetically comic men and women<br />gesticulating on every streetcorner of the world,<br />a thumb-worn Bible or Koran<br />flung madly out in any season’s air,<br />the pages damp with terrored sweat<br />and troubled sleep.<br />Their minds rock with scripture<br />prophesying a doom that can always<br />be measured in hours and days.<br />God rest ye, muddled gentlemen,<br />whom everything doth dismay.<br />God rest you and recline you<br />in His arms, dear Lord, one day.<br /><br /><em>The Sinking of the Galilee</em><br /><br />The moon’s pale favor linelike falls<br /> Still yet across the sea.<br />Upon the eddied whitecaps sails<br /> A ship, the Galilee.<br />Her rudder smashed and mainmast mauled<br /> She is foundering ‘pon a rock;<br />Her unlashed guns gone overboard<br /> With all provisions and all stock.<br />Her shrouds are dark with sailors<br /> Bursting hearts to somehow save<br />The noble ship called Galilee<br /> From the tombstone of a wave.<br />But all the sinews and all the psalms<br /> Could not save the Galilee.<br />And so she sank with all aboard,<br /> No witness save the sea.<br /><br /><em>The Angels Breathe a Different Air</em><br /><br />The angels breathe a different air<br /> From that which fills our lungs;<br />Unrest from lifetimes’ burdens borne<br /> Lies ‘pon our hearts and tongues.<br />The grief which weighs us down to earth<br /> Is unknown to angels all;<br />Not one has known the bliss of love<br /> Or the beauty of its fall.<br /><br /><em>Still, Solid Air of Summer<br /></em><br />Still, solid air of summer<br />and a pale blue sky<br />dense with remembered clouds,<br />great continents asleep upon the<br />still, solid air.<br />In the trees a clamor of leaves<br />and a steady rising of fireflies<br />from the ground,<br />all in the trembling evening air.<br />A summer evening in high July,<br />deep winter a distant, impossible dream.<br /><br /><em>Upon what Tormented Beds<br /></em><br />Upon what tormented beds do the unjust lie,<br />awash in sorrows sharpened to such heedless points.<br />Upon what foaming seas do the fearful drown,<br />with landfall always in full sight.<br />Upon what shapeless rock do the tenderhearted recline,<br />trying to build a shelter from twigs and leaves,<br />and impaled upon their own forgiveness.<br />Upon what bed to do rich repose,<br />those restless rich who remain ever homeless in their homes,<br />the heart-poor who so lavishly spend their poverty.<br />Upon what grave does remembrance rest,<br />sprung so lately from life,<br />springing up so quickly again in layette and crib.<br />The unfinished dreams of an unfinished life,<br />waking again, eyes tight shut, and given voice with a slap.<br /><br /><em>The Night Sky Shattered with Stars</em><br /><br />The night sky shattered with stars,<br />proud day beaming up behind:<br />the trumpets of dawn.<br />World wheeling round in drear antiquity,<br />heave of birth, surrendered sigh of death,<br />a late, last relent of assiduous life.<br />That which is full striving to be empty.<br />That which is empty striving to be full.<br />Days dawn, nights fall, the living breath of days.<br />Hands entwine and separate.<br />Lives grow old and pass away.<br />Life restruck from life’s last ember.<br />Time’s wheel turns into break of day,<br />then a trail of grey across living skies.<br />The probing finger of the sun,<br />golden-cheeked day a bright surprise to the living,<br />and those about to be.<br /><br /><em>It Was a Firefly Summer that Year</em><br /><br />It was a firefly summer that year,<br />each perfect day perfectly rounded,<br />complete as a wish.<br />The promise of heat was in the stars’ surrender<br />to the day.<br />Slow summer dawdled on its way,<br />taking time out for ice cream<br />that ran in rivers across happy fingers,<br />the weather of our conversation punctuated<br />by bursts of laughter, sudden rain.<br />It was a firefly summer that year<br />when time took its time<br />and sadness was the truant of our days.<br /><br /><em>To Go Out Upon a Name</em> <br /><br />To go out upon a Name,<br />as a ship upon homeward seas.<br />Borne aloft on a two-syllable craft<br />beyond ear’s extension and vision’s net,<br />into the waiting Ocean’s arms.<br />Such is the Test of Love<br /><br />Such is the test of love<br />that the thing one fears most<br />must be loved,<br />and the thing one loves most<br />must be surrendered.<br />A collision of hearts.<br /><br /><em>The Big Surrender: <br />A Ballad of the Beloved<br /></em><br />It was raining that night, and the neon was bright<br />At the bar at end of the street.<br />Though it wasn’t that cold, my bones they were old,<br />Specially now that it started to sleet.<br /><br />So I turned up my collar and felt for a dollar<br />That I hoped had a brother or two,<br />And finding the fiver I owed to McGiver<br />Spied the bar and walked on through.<br /><br />The bar was warm and out of the storm—<br />I was mighty thankful for that.<br />My teeth still chattered as I took off my tattered<br />Old coat and hung up my hat.<br /><br />The bar was bright with that forgiving light<br />That says, “Stranger, come on in.<br />We don’t care who you are, have a seat at the bar;<br />We won’t even ask where you’ve been.”<br /><br />“We welcome a pipe or whatever type<br />Of tobacco you choose to smoke.<br />Keep your counsel or talk, Old Bill here won’t balk<br />If you share an off-color joke.”<br /><br />Resting my feet on an old, empty seat<br />I saw each bottle arranged<br />By whiskey or gin, and knew each one had been<br />In their places, which never had changed.<br /><br />The patrons were few, the news not so new,<br />But repeated just the same.<br />Soon the voices were stilled and then the room filled<br />With a sense of failure and shame.<br /><br />As though each one knew the false from the true<br />Yet clung to the version they’d uttered.<br />Soon the high-sounding praise of the old glory days<br />Was scarce spoken or merely muttered.<br /><br />All the old dreams and unfulfilled schemes<br />Seemed to hang in the air like a pall.<br />Though nothing was stated, they seemed long ago fated<br />To have come to nothing at all.<br /><br />An old salt in the corner with the face of a mourner<br />Looked up from his long drought of beer.<br />With a tear in his eye, he heaved a huge sigh<br />And said in a voice thick but clear:<br /><br />“Though we may be knaves, to our passions enslaved,<br />Some joy did I leave behind.<br />And though it ain’t much, some hearts did I touch,<br />When I had the good sense to be kind.”<br /><br />In his eyes shone tears aged ten-thousand years,<br />But not a one rolled down his cheek.<br />They stayed in his eyes, like the jewels of some prize<br />And not a word more did he speak.<br /><br />Yet his words had released a rare kind of peace<br />That each had claimed for his own.<br />Whether bourbon or rye, not a soul could deny<br />They were no longer drinking alone.<br /><br />In suits rumpled and creased, each mourned a deceased<br />Still alive in their minds and hearts.<br />Their funerals attended, yet something un-mended<br />Lay broken in thousands of parts.<br /><br />Then the silence was broken, the bar doors flew open,<br />And in walked a curious Man.<br />His movements so lithe, His steps seemed to glide,<br />And gave Him a certain élan.<br /><br />A pink jacket He wore, near reaching the floor<br />Hung a garment of cotton so white.<br />Such flimsy stuff, it seemed barely enough<br />To be wearing on such a cold night.<br /><br />He spoke not a word (at least none was heard)<br />As He took a seat at the bar.<br />The way that He smiled had us all beguiled,<br />And His gaze twinkled down like a star.<br /><br />He had long, flowing hair and a smile like a prayer<br />That His Silence bestowed on us all.<br />All eyes seemed to meet on His well-sandaled feet<br />Where the hem of His garment did fall.<br /><br />His eyes said, <em>Please, you may fall on your knees<br />Without shame, but with perfect surrender.<br />And there leave your cares, your unspoken prayers,<br />Each hurt, and each grief so tender.</em><br /><br /><em>I’ll make them my own, each sin you have sown<br />Will be yours, my dear, no longer.<br />Entrust them to Me — then let them be,<br />And your grief-weakened heart shall grow stronger.<br /><br />There’ll soon come a day, when I’ll wipe clear away<br />These burdens you’ve long labored under.<br />Free at last from lifetimes passed—<br />All terror now torn asunder.<br /><br />I can do this in Silence; I don’t need the violence<br />Of words, whose meaning has waned<br />Down through the ages on numberless pages<br />Writ when lies and hypocrisy reigned.<br /><br />A new wine’s been poured, so long it’s been stored<br />That no vintage could be more rare.<br />Come drink your fill, even let the drops spill<br />But let every drinker beware:<br /><br />If you choose Love, God takes off His glove<br />And may hold you so hard that it hurts.<br />That’s when you grab tight with all of your might<br />Like a child to its dear mother’s skirts.<br /></em><br />A hush now fell like some kind of spell,<br />And remained for a while unbroken.<br />What was stranger still, and gave all a chill,<br />Was the fact that no word had been spoken.<br /><br />His Name was Meher, a sound like a prayer,<br />“Meher Baba, Compassionate Father.”<br />Though naught was proclaimed, all knew His Name;<br />Our search ended, we looked no farther<br /><br />Than this Man at the door, whose eyes did implore<br />Each one to love Him solely;<br />They said, Give Me your hearts, e’en the most secret parts;<br />In remembrance of Me only.<br /><br />Hopes long put to rest like a seaman’s old chest<br />Had quite suddenly been revived.<br />It was hope without reason, choice fruit out of season;<br />And new possibilities thrived.<br /><br />The pall that had fallen now seemed to be crawlin’<br />Away at a runner’s pace.<br />The grief and the loss had all but been tossed<br />Far away from the likes of this place.<br /><br />You could feel the loads lift, as though some sort of gift<br />Had been given, unasked for, and free.<br />Unyoked from condition, paradise or perdition,<br />It was treasured as real gifts should be.<br /><br />Though no one had said it, they’d never forget it:<br />Forgiveness, compassion, and peace.<br />The sins that each wore had been washed from the shore<br />Of our hearts and been given release.<br /><br />Then the Man who’d come far to this forgotten man’s bar<br />Rose and glided, it seemed, to the door.<br />In His glance we’d found rest, and knew we’d been blessed<br />Like none had been blessed before.<br /><br />He wasn’t gone long, when a sweet old song<br />Was plunked out on the bar-busted spinet.<br />Though the keys needed tuning, they were far from ruining<br />The song or the sentiments in it.<br /><br />The song had no words, yet each word was heard<br />As though sung to each one solely.<br />Then I heard someone yawn with the coming of dawn,<br /> and the streets and the bums,<br /> the parks and the slums,<br /> the most sad sordid ones,<br />Were now shining, and bright, and holy.<br /><br /><em>Indelibly Happy Am I</em><br /><br />Indelibly happy am I in a certain kind of suffering.<br />Though my soul shakes and shrinks<br />when presented with real or imagined tortures<br />(inflamed fears, wound-up worries),<br />some small, brave part of myself<br />stands its ground, firm as any lion,<br />but frightened as any child.<br />How hard it is for the patient to submit to the scalpel<br />when there is no anesthetic save the thin resolve of trust.<br />Indelibly happy am I in a certain kind of sorrow,<br />one sweetened with a surrender that has not only<br />been accepted, but acknowledged with a kiss.<br />I never knew the Ocean had a mouth with which to kiss.<br />Yet do I do most of my drowning on land,<br />in pints of ice cream and pills parsed out for pain.<br />Indelibly miserable am I when, given the smallest burden<br />to carry, I refuse to shoulder even this little load,<br />nor carry it even a few small steps without my knees<br />buckling underneath me, having not surrendered,<br />but simply given up.<br />But imagined bravery is greater than realized cowardice,<br />and I see myself rising up, proud and fiery fierce as any lion,<br />ready to spring into weary battle,<br />slaughtered where I stand, and impaled upon a smile.<br /><br /><em>Crossing the Border of Sleep</em><br /><br />Crossing the border of sleep,<br />trailing your Name behind,<br />a thread through dream’s thickness.<br />Another night swim in original seas.<br />Shoaling the waters of sleep at a drift-by pace,<br />slow drift toward the solid shore that lies at the end of sleep.<br />Craft-weary and tired from trolling sleep’s unsounded depths,<br />I wake—and tie up the dangling thread of sleep with<br />your Name.<br /><br /><em>Beyond the Rim of Dawn<br /></em><br />Beyond the rim of dawn the morning wakes,<br />day lamp of sun turned bright full on,<br />stars’ purpose completed in a round of time.<br />Glimmer of summer in the still fragile warm.<br />Gone are the labors of winter,<br />summer come to kiss the ice away,<br />melt the weight of overcoats and galoshes.<br />Thank you, God, for summer,<br />for thinking of it in the first place,<br />for placing just right in the year.<br />Cloud ships and their fully filled sails<br />move with clock-like slowness<br />across the porcelain bowl of the sky.<br />We are as much seduced by a breeze<br />as by a slant of sunlight on old brick.<br />The warmth of summer days lays lighter<br />at evening’s tide;<br />small creatures become daring by dark,<br />until the darkness is effaced by the stars.<br /><br /><em>Anything Given Away<br /></em><br />Anything given away goes not away<br />but keeps returning with open hands, infinitely.<br />Anything kept for one's self goes away forever,<br />flees as a coward's run, or curdles inwardly.<br />How do I know this?<br />Because I have kept that which I should have<br />given away and given away that which I should<br />have kept.<br />The locked hand holds itself;<br />the opened arm embraces everything,<br />at once<br />and forever.<br /><br /><em>Go Forth<br /></em><br />Go forth ye, not fully clothed,<br />but naked as the risen sun.<br />Dive with both hands into the void stretching forth;<br />be not afraid to tickle Infinity under the chin.<br />Let the rains river in your veins<br />and the lava mountain in your heart.<br />Let thy footsteps tread the stars as stepstools,<br />and let the planets be as so much brushed away dust<br />from thine eyelids.<br />Swallow the Ocean to quench thy thirst,<br />and drown in its single drop.<br /><br /><em>A Kind of Prayer</em><br /><br />My Father, please do not let me idle away this little life<br />Without first and last making the most of it by loving You<br />As much as possible, by Your Grace.<br /><br />Do not let me wake in the morning, muddle-headed,<br />Automatically turning on Turner Classic Movies<br />Without first tuning into You.<br /><br />Do not let me dress myself in my mind and room’s<br />Most flattering mirrors<br />Without first clothing myself<br />In your protective Love and Care.<br /><br />Do not let me sit down to my usual breakfast<br />Of cinnamon-raisin bagel and Philly Lite<br />Without first scarfing down a healthy portion<br />Of Your most delicious Name.<br /><br />Do not let me wander thickly through my day,<br />Sorting book titles in my mind—<br />Which edition of Trollope to buy or which<br />Rex Stout mystery to read next<br />Without first making me look closely<br />Between the covers of your incredible<br />God-life.<br /><br />Do not let me slouch toward my first evening Scotch<br />Without first remembering to toast You<br />With a swig of 100 proof Divine Love whiskey.<br /><br />Do not let me drift into yet another nameless sleep<br />Without first speaking Your Name in my heart.<br /><br />And finally, dear Father, at life’s last, <br />Please do not let me cling pathetically to these too well-loved shores;<br />Rather give me the courage to caste off boldly—<br />But not without first and last remembering to remember<br />The Infinite Ocean that is You.<br /><br /><em>Into Terrors Arms Do We Sometimes Fling Ourselves<br /></em><br />Into terrors arms do we sometimes fling ourselves<br /> to avoid sudden further pain, eager always to turn our<br /> backs against its furies, only to find a sudden<br /> stillness waiting there for us.<br /><br />Into terrors arms do we sometimes fling ourselves<br /> to be rid of the pain long beforehand, long before we<br /> have the remotest chance to ponder its miseries.<br /><br />Into terrors arms do we sometimes fling ourselves <br /> wanting to hug the pain to ourselves first, before any<br /> other pain can turn its glance unto us.<br /><br />Into terrors arms do we sometimes fling ourselves<br /> so that the hurt should be over and done with before<br /> we ourselves can have taken note of it.<br /><br />Thus into terrors arms do we sometimes fling ourselves<br /> so sure of the sudden and coming pain, and we wonder<br /> at the sudden light that embraces us.<br /> And then we weep. And then we weep.<br /><br /><em>To God, All Things Matter<br /></em><br />Though nations raise and nations fall<br />And men’s dreams end in tatters,<br />God sees every little thing<br />‘Cause to God every little thing matters.<br /><br />Though kingdoms great and kingdoms small<br />Make some men mad as hatters,<br />God knows every little thing<br />‘Cause to God every little thing matters.<br /><br />Though wise men dream and fools agree<br />Their words like rain that patters,<br />God hears every little word<br />‘Cause to God every little word matters.<br /><br />Though men think “God is gone, not here”<br />Wise men know the latter;<br />‘Cause wise men know that God’s alive,<br />And to God, all things matter.<br /><br /><em>The Suburbs of Love</em><br /><br />I have been living in the suburbs of Love<br />When all this time I thought I had been living in the city.<br />I had just purchased a round-trip ticket to Your Home,<br />And, scanning the minutia, noticed the Total Amount.<br />I was stunned. Who dared raise the price like this?<br />Whomsoever was responsible, I would send Whomsoever<br />One very hot letter. That would show them!<br />But instead of mailing said hot letter, or even writing it,<br />I put my pen down and thought instead.<br />Foolish me, thought I after a while.<br />The cost had not risen;<br />It was simply the price I had been paying for living so far away.<br />(And judging by the distance in heart-steps, I was an outlyer, alright.)<br />What could have brought on this delusion?<br />What else? but my old nemesis and life-obsession, reading.<br />It wasn’t the quantity of my reading, but the quality.<br />I had been reading Your words with my eyes, not my heart.<br />I had been devouring Your books whole, instead of allowing them to devour me.<br />Reading madly away, little blips of warmth would suddenly pop up<br />On the radar screen of my heart, and this it was that fooled me<br />Into thinking I was living closer to You than I really was.<br />What I imagined to be the bright lights of Your city<br />Turned out to be only very distant stars.<br />To think! (or not to think):<br />All this time I could have been living at the very heart of Your city,<br />But it was I myself who chose to live so far away.<br />Instead of living the words I read, I had made of them little knick-knacks<br />Which I delighted in displaying just-so on my bookshelf,<br />Endlessly arranging and re-arranging them, never satisfied;<br />Doing everything but bringing them to life by true and simple action.<br />So here I sit, gazing wistfully out of the tiny barred window of my perceptions,<br />Seeing the bright lights of Your city and wishing with all my heart<br />That There I may one day reside.<br />But I shall never live There until I can live each word here.<br /><br /><em>What Love Makes Possible</em><br /><br />What love makes possible,<br /> Only love knows.<br />What great love makes possible,<br /> Only a great love knows.<br />What a greater love makes possible<br /> Only a greater love knows, and<br />What the greatest love makes possible<br /> Only the lover knows, but does not tell.<br /><br /><em>What Griefs May Come<br /></em><br />What griefs may come, unnamed, unnumbered, or what despair ,<br /> long held at bay, may knock at heart's locked door—<br /> only God knows.<br />But He leaves behind planned mercies of unknown name, unknowable at<br /> the hour of their happening, though men may call it Grace, or Bounty, <br /> or sudden goodwill.<br />What griefs may come unmeted out, unwished for and unwanted as all<br /> griefs are—only God knows.<br />But He has ever and always allowed for His Grace to enter in, unexpected<br /> as Grace always is, but always welcomed straightaway into heart's now <br /> unlocked door.<br />And though men may call it Grace or sudden, unanticipated goodwill, God<br /> knows from whence and wherein His good Grace flows, and is glad in<br /> His own Universal Heart.<br />What griefs may come, only God knows, but He leaves behind<br /> planned mercies to tend His Self same soul to rest.<br /><em><br />In Hospital, Awaiting Surgery, January, 2002</em><br /><br />When push finally came to shove<br />And I had the chance to prove my love<br />I discovered what kind of lover I really was<br />And did what the coward always does:<br />I prayed for my life, that I might not die,<br />That in an early grave I would not lie.<br />Now I lay here, breathing still<br />Unresigned to Your wish and will.<br />I had the chance to prove my trust;<br />So close was I to singing dust!<br /><br /><em>When There’s Nothing Left to Hold On To</em><br /><br />When there’s nothing left to hold on to,<br />Not the glance or the word of a friend<br />There’s always Meher Baba’s daaman<br />To help you hold on till the end.<br /><br />When there’s nothing left to hold on to,<br />Not that trip to Paris, France<br />There’s always Meher Baba’s daaman<br />And His invitation to the dance.<br /><br />When there’s nothing left to hold on to,<br />Not the hope of a midnight tryst<br />There’s always Meher Baba’s daaman<br />And the chance by Him to be kissed.<br /><br /><em>I Saw A Woman in India Once</em><br /><br />I saw a woman in India once<br />Whose job was to shovel shit;<br />A sea of human excrement:<br />There was no end to it.<br />Upon her face she wore a mask<br />To protect her from disease.<br />The air itself had long been fouled,<br />Made foetid by any breeze.<br />I thought, What wrathful, vengeful God<br />Could build such a hellish place?<br />The Lord I loved was a forgiving Lord,<br />A Lord of love and grace.<br />Then I realized with a heavy heart<br />How construction always begins.<br />Such places are not built by God,<br />But assembled from our sins.<br /><br /><em>How Deep</em><br /><br />How deep the various wells of grief,<br />How great the general pain.<br />How slow the well-deserved surcease,<br />How long the freezing rain.<br />But one day, perhaps, the well will dry<br />With just one of His breaths,<br />And all griefs shall go down with a weary sigh<br />To each of their watery deaths.<br />Not a drop shall linger or remain,<br />Nor a shadow of sadness show,<br />But t’will drown in the ocean of His name,<br />And His peace shall forever flow.<br /><br /><em>The Street Was Lit with Lampposts</em><br /><br />The street was lit with lampposts<br />So softly in the dark.<br />Their golden crowns were shining bright<br />That evening in the park.<br />Though the sky did pulse with a million stars<br />I was quite content<br />Just to sit and be with you<br />And count the blessings that He’d sent.<br /><br /><em>Imagine</em><br /><br />Imagine if my memories could revive those of every other;<br />Each man would then be unto me the same as my own brother.<br /><br /><em>In Night-Heavy Silence</em><br /><br />In night-heavy silence only does the truest love grow,<br />Sans vestments, prayers and any outward show.<br />With each silent passing hour, love rises to its task,<br />To give and go on giving, and never once, to ask.<br />Sometimes the Brightest Summer Days<br /><br />Sometimes the brightest summer days<br />Are the hardest of all to handle.<br />So relentlessly cheerful, so glaringly glad<br />I’d rather light a candle.<br /><br /><em>Harmony </em><br /><br />War is God’s will at its loudest.<br />But it’s harmony that makes Him proudest.<br /><br /><em>My Courage, it Seems, Simply Came and Went<br /></em><br />My courage, it seems, simply came and went,<br />And folded up its tired tent<br />And moved to some dark continent<br />Where none would hear of its strange demise<br />Or mourn the loss of it in my eyes<br />No matter how clever the old disguise.<br />The peeling paint, the tattered shades<br />Upon the wall strange shapes are made.<br />Grief-hued light just doesn’t fade.<br />The twilight grey of cigarette smoke<br />Resists the sun’s broad hammer stroke;<br />Now I wear it like a cloak<br />That’s been expensively custom-made.<br />I’ve shaped its contours with consummate skill.<br />It hangs there now and always will.<br /><br /><em>Like a Master Jai-Lai Player<br /></em><br />Like a master Jai-Lai player<br />Who hits the ball each time with great accuracy and force<br />So that it goes exactly where he wants it,<br />I am slowly becoming that ball,<br />First hurled against the wall of pleasure, then pain, then pleasure,<br />Until now I am happy simply to drop and fall at his feet,<br />And lie completely still.<br /><br /><em>Beloved, Take My Hand</em><br /><br />Beloved dear, take my hand, and walk me through this day<br />Through all the labyrinthine lanes,<br />For only You know the shortest way.<br />Honesty and truth, please grasp my hand<br />And help me not to sham<br />The world into thinking I’m a better man<br />Than my poems pretend I am.<br /><br /><em>To Us, His Followers</em><br /><br />Here’s to the misfits of the world, the broken and the wounded,<br />so self-absorbed we forget others as easily as we remember ourselves,<br />endlessly eternally dancing in our own light.<br />We are the bitched and the beleaguered,<br />the broken, the totally fucked.<br />We are the ridiculed and the reviled,<br />the fired, the canned, the sacked.<br />We fool none with our bleak attempts at compassion.<br />We are the stammerers and the stutterers,<br />the ones who get caught opening other people’s drawers.<br />We are the fleer of fights, the makers of the best excuses.<br />“I’m sorry, please forgive me” is the coin change<br />with which we buy the world’s amity.<br />We are the truth seekers who get caught up in our own lies.<br />We are forever getting the short end of the stick.<br />We are the tortured who only now can understand the torture<br />we have meted out to others for centuries.<br />We are the twisted and the deformed, the gimps, the crips, the freaks.<br />We are the deniers of death, until the death of a dear one unhorses us.<br />We are the great surrenderers of other people’s problems to God.<br />We are the denouncers of dishonesty who honestly denounce others.<br />We are the chanters of prayers loud enough so that others may hear them.<br />We are the more eager chanters of our wants and desires into the crowded ears of God.<br />We are the deniers of lust who always manage to turn to the dirty parts first.<br />We are the ones who know too much and are only too happy to talk about it.<br />We are the palm-joined in public, and the groin-grabbed in private.<br />We are the ritual renouncers who stand wall-eyed and blank-faced in front<br />of Your picture, thinking instead of tonight’s dinner.<br />We are the maya mockers who worry all day about losing our jobs,<br />making our mortgage payments, etc.<br />We are the goddamned and the godloved.<br />We are the infirmed and the injured.<br />We are the unjustly treated, always the victims.<br />And it was You Who saw to it that we are made this way,<br />so that in our plight we might have nowhere else to turn<br />but to You.<br /><br /><em>Heart-Surrendering<br /></em><br />Heart-surrendering our way to You, tender submarines lost at sea without a compass,<br />we wait to receive that signal that will sound our way Home.<br /><br /><em>A Poem is Born</em><br /><br />A poem is born in a moment of fire<br />That lives on after the poet expires<br />And makes it home on pure white pages<br />That may become brittle with the passing of ages.<br />Some poems, though, reside in two places<br />Yet somehow retain their poetic paces.<br />Look in that book where the pages part<br />Then close in silence in the human heart.<br /><br /><em>Beloved Executioner<br /></em><br />O dear Lord let the suffering come<br />Let me even become undone<br />By Your merciful cruelty.<br /><br />Be quick with Your cuts, do not delay;<br />Too many lifetimes have I kept at bay<br />Your merciful cruelty.<br /><br />Be gone! Be near! No, stay away<br />And please put off for another day<br />Your merciful cruelty.<br /><br />Damn it to hell! Let me be molded<br />By Your hands until unfolded<br />In Your merciful cruelty.<br /><br />Beloved Executioner, come,<br />Only give me the courage to be undone<br />By Your merciful cruelty.<br /><br /><em>The Seeds of Love</em><br /><br />The seeds of love have peen planted, sure<br />But in loamed soil or in manure?<br />The answer, of course, is in the living,<br />The daily dying and forgiving.<br />How will I know which soil was chosen?<br />The fruit will tell me which soil it grows in.<br /><br /><em>Within My Heart</em><br /><br />Within my heart lays a core of fear,<br />A spreading, malignant cancer.<br />My prayers, entreaties, all my prayers<br />Have not charmed the smallest answer.<br /><br />Perhaps the answer lies within Your silence—<br />If only I had the ears to hear!<br />Yet I miss just by half that total reliance<br />That would melt this core of fear.<br /><br />This fear in my heart, it’s always there,<br />Undissolved by complaint or prayer.<br />The only solution isn’t divine retribution<br />But the remembrance of the name Meher.<br /><br /><em>Sunlight</em><br /><br />The sunlight dies upon the wall<br />And creeps politely from the hall<br />Leaving me enwrapped in a kind of thrall<br />That daylight passed this way at all.<br /><br /><em>The Day is Halved by a Single Breath</em><br /><br />The day is halved by a single breath;<br />A vast but imperceptible breath<br />That divides the night from its brother, day,<br />And blows the dream-stuff clear away.<br /><br />The right of seasons to pick and choose<br />Which fruit shall flow and which shall lose<br />Sweet favor in the mouths of men—<br />None of this is in your ken.<br /><br />The rush of morning from star’s bright grasp<br />Delivers day unto the Doer’s clasp.<br />The pull of thought teases out the actions<br />That divide or conquer their separate factions.<br /><br />The bold grab hold, the rest hang on<br />To dreams so lately rained upon.<br />The rest awake to sleep again<br />And dream of a better now and then.<br /><br />The week, unwilling, or merely lame<br />Limp toward night on a broken cane.<br />They’ll greet the dark like a dear old friend<br />Who has no need to repair or mend<br /><br />A careless word or wanton act;<br />They’ve known discretion, and value tact.<br />Such friends I’ve had, and I’ve had the best,<br />Each now’s returned to night’s dear rest.<br /><br /><em>The Notes Were Ironic</em><br /><br />The notes were ironic, but hardly symphonic<br />As they left the conductor’s hand.<br />But they formed a tune to which I was immune<br />Or I’d certainly have had it banned.<br /><br /><em>Distant<br /></em><br />How distant you seem to me now;<br />you in the picture and me on the other side;<br />in a wink they are gone (or is it that I’ve let you go?).<br />Sometimes the page disappears, and a congress of sorts occurs.<br /><br /><em>Wounded by Life</em><br /><br />I’ve been wounded by life, seared by its events.<br />I take Your name solely in the hope it prevents<br />Some unforeseen sorrow, some unexpected grief<br />Before another disaster shatters belief.<br /><br />Each devastation grows greater in strength;<br />I can’t pull myself up by even one length.<br />Frozen by fear, quite unable to move,<br />My needle stuck in the same foolish groove.<br /><br />Like a cavity deep in a well-rotten tooth<br />You have excavated my heart in search of Truth.<br />When will the digging be complete—<br />When the hole goes down to the soles of my feet?<br /><br />Please fill it now with the mortar of trust,<br />That mortar which strangely is the weight of dust.<br />Why must Your grace always be earned with pain?<br />Why does each stroke feel so bereft of gain?<br /><br />This last blow must surely be close to the last,<br />A final excavation of a too-deep past.<br />I’m an angry red scab at which you persistently pick.<br />You don’t mean to be cruel, but the sight makes me sick.<br /><br />And so I would strike what bargain I could<br />If I thought it would do even the slightest good.<br />Yet I know how You work, You untier of knots,<br />You changer of plans and undoer of plots.<br /><br />These were the knots I tied life after life;<br />I’d just wish you’d dull the blade of Your knife.<br /><br /><em>These Tin-Can Lives<br /></em><br />You have kicked these tin-can lives of ours across the boundaries of time and space.<br />You waited until they’d rolled at Your feet for a glimpse of Your form and face.<br />Then you kicked these tin-can lives in a direction we could scarcely have dreamed.<br />And when we awoke, we’d each found out that our lives had been redeemed<br />By the casual glance of just one of Your eyes across the boundaries of time and space.<br />And when we awoke on that incomparable day,<br />We knew it had been by Your grace,<br />We knew it had been by Your grace.<br /><br /><em>The Flags I’ve Waved<br /></em><br />The flags I waved when I was brave<br />Have fallen long ago.<br />Now I wave the flag of surrender<br />When I’ve the courage to let it show.<br /><br />The courage I’d known before I’d grown<br />Afraid of the smallest trial<br />Was lion-like in its ferocity<br />And had daring, élan, and style.<br /><br />But my courage died each time I tried<br />To stand up to the world and its ways.<br />I know it’s a shame, but please don’t blame<br />The wretch who in locked rooms stays.<br /><br />An old movie is playing, in bed am I laying<br />Watching Bogart, Bacall, and Gable.<br />And if I appear to look merry, it’s that old Ben & Jerry<br />I was too lazy to eat at the table.<br /><br />Yes, I’m going to ruin in an unwashed room<br />And a tray that’s lain there for weeks.<br />I’m just sitting here in my underwear<br />Passing wind through my fattened cheeks.<br /><br />It’s what happens to heroes when they’re racking up zeroes<br />In the game they keep losing called life.<br />I’ve returned to the womb of a darkened room<br />Locked and bolted ‘gainst all strife.<br /><br />Sometimes in the dark you can still see a spark<br />Of the man who once was so brave.<br />In the front, not the rear, I mastered each fear<br />But now remain their slave.<br /><br /><em>Every Day I Sink Deeper<br /></em><br />Every day I sink deeper into the well of myself,<br />And farther do I grow from Thee, Thine, and Thyself.<br /><br />Sure I know just what to do: Lose weight, exercise and swim.<br />Especially on a regular basis, wouldn’t that make me slim and trim?<br /><br />Yes, it’s easier just to remain unconscious than be pulled by conscience’s tug;<br />It’s easier to pull up the covers and swallow a designer drug.<br /><br />I’m going nowhere quickly, and am happy at the speed;<br />The speedometer still says zero last I troubled to take a read.<br /><br /><em>It Was a Winter Night<br /></em><br />It was a winter night for sleeping warm<br />So I settled in for the coming storm.<br />I raised the sash just an inch or two<br />To let the wayward snowflakes through.<br />Imagine my surprise when I woke to see<br />A mound of snow so conformed to me<br />That I dared not move nor breathe too deep<br />And disturb this landscape of my sleep.<br /><br /><em>The Earth Above My Head So Lately Thrown</em><br /><br />The earth above my head so lately thrown—<br />Room enough for a worm’s new home.<br />And I inside my private box—<br />I expect no visitors, so why the locks?<br /><br /><em>Your Wish or Your Will?</em><br /><br />Is it Your wish, or is it Your will?<br />The debate seems endless and always will.<br />You can parse the differences from now ‘til forever;<br />The discussions continue, like the stocks and the weather.<br />But one thing’s sure to always remain true<br />Is that which feels most true to you.<br />Whether wish or will, the result’s the same;<br />Both are consumed in His fiery name.<br /><br /><em>Your Smile’s A Benediction<br /></em><br />Your smile’s a benediction, unlike anyone else’s on earth.<br />My heart informs me it has something to do with Your miraculous birth.<br />I’ve tried to measure that measureless smile from one end to the other,<br />Embracing lover and friend, man and wife, and every father and mother.<br />In fact it would seem that the whole human race<br />Is purely a reflection of that singular face.<br />I’ve yet to travel the length and breadth of that infinite, heavenly smile<br />Because the distance can’t be measured, you see, by kilometer or mile.<br />There are wings on each glance or compassionate look<br />That flies round the world in the moment it took<br />Each heart to request its presence right then,<br />For there’s never a question of where or when;<br />No question of who, or even where:<br />The beginning and end is always Meher.<br /><br /><em>Because You Are<br /></em><br />Because You are<br />the Beatles were…<br />Because You are…<br />the movie Big is…<br />Because You are<br />hot chocolate after ice-skating is…<br />Because You<br />are the 60s were…<br />Because You are<br />french-kissing is…<br />Because You are<br />knock hockey is…<br />Because You are<br />there’s that episode of The Twilight Zone where you find out at the end that the aliens’ book To Serve Man is not a manifesto for peace but a cookbook…!<br />Because You are<br />Beethoven and Mozart still are…<br />Because You are<br />Cracker Jacks are…<br />Because You are<br />Hostess Cupcakes and Twinkies are…<br />Because You are<br />sunblock no. 31 is, and so is the skin cancer you get if you walk around<br />like a blooming idiot not wearing anything to protect yourself from the sun…<br />Because You are<br />there’s that great feeling you get just after you throw up…<br />Because You are<br />that last long chord in the Beatles’ song A Day in the Life is…<br />Because You are<br />having sex for the first time with the person you are going to spend<br />the rest of your life is…<br />Because You are<br />Lemon Pledge is…<br />Because You are<br />toothpaste now comes in a stand-up container that pushes out the toothpaste<br />so you never get blamed for squeezing the middle of the tube again…<br />Because You are<br />taking a short, unexpected nap on a rainy Sunday afternoon is…<br />Because You are dental floss is…<br /> Coco-Puffs are…<br />Because You are<br />finding a bathroom when you’re outside just when you need it is…<br />Because You are<br />the dreambar on your bedside clock radio is…<br />Because You are<br />Alfred E. Newman is and always will be…<br />Because You are<br />Faukner and Steinbeck and Hemingway were and are, especially Mr. Hemingway…<br />Because You are<br />stickless band aids are…<br />Because You are<br />Post-It Notes are…<br />Because You are<br />morphine is…<br />Because You are<br />Zoroaster was and Rama was and Krishna was and Buddha was and Jesus was<br />and Muhammad was and now Meher Baba is…<br />Because You are<br />everything is, was, and ever shall be, amen…<br />Because You are<br />nothing is, was, or ever shall be, amen…<br />Because You are<br />we can become what You are, by Your grace…<br />I think that about covers it, Lord, for the moment, anyway…<br />because You are.<br /><br /><em>Sunday Evening<br /></em><br />There, the old brick building, shellacked with sunlight<br />in the late breathing air;<br />there, a shaft of sun through an embrace of trees;<br />there, a child in a stroller, damp fingers<br />clutching a dry pretzel, eyes awash with pleasure;<br />there, on the sidewalk, an afterthought of pigeons<br />in the late seeming day;<br />there, at the curb, stately Packards and de Sotos;<br />there, in the quiet clamor of twilight,<br />the sound of a band playing a hymn;<br />there; in the playground, a swing still moving<br />with the remembered weight of a child;<br />there, a Good Humor truck, idling for a smile;<br />there, above the wheeling earth, a tremble of stars<br />in a cloud-packed sky;<br />there, and there, the lengthening shadows<br />and the spreading silence.<br />And everywhere, in everyone, the unshaped anxieties<br />so peculiar to Sunday evenings,<br />the little, unattended funerals of the year.<br /><br /><em>Poems</em><br /><br />Poems are really excellent liars;<br />They give the impression of inner fires<br />When nothing is really lit.<br /><br />Yet we keep on writing ‘em<br />And take such delight in ‘em<br />‘Cause they show us off a bit.<br /><br /><em>Lord of Day, Lord of Night<br /></em><br />1.<br />Lord of day, Lord of night<br />I surrender to You the night in all its dark enfoldments.<br />I surrender to You the dawn<br />And the earth’s turning toward yet another bright horizon.<br />I surrender to You the day<br />With its promise of pleasure and pain, utter joy and utter defeat.<br />I surrender to You the minutes<br />And sing a new song for each one’s passing.<br />I surrender to You this and every moment,<br />Celebrating without regret each one’s leap and fall back into Your ocean.<br />I surrender to You all of passing time,<br />The million moments’ opportunities gained or lost, each moment passed<br />Either in a full-throated cry of remembrance,<br />Or a winter-dry season of forgetfulness.<br /><br />Lord of day, Lord of night<br />I surrender to You the deep stairwell of days and the deeper stairwell of nights.<br />I surrender to You my thick-volumed ledgers of lifetimes,<br />Those thoughtless thousands of pages torn and tossed away<br />Without a single backward glance at the sun of Thy smile,<br />The endless and ongoing days and nights of pricked conscience and unrepaired acts.<br /><br />2.<br />O Lord of day, Lord of night<br />Father of form, Creator of light,<br />May Your daaman ever be within my sight,<br />A winding sheet about my days<br />To bind up action and the price one pays<br />In dull repentance or ecstatic praise.<br /><br />Unseen by eyes that only see the norm,<br />Earthbound angels await human form.<br />Incorporeal, weightless, unenslaved by desire<br />They shall soon be enhoused in flesh and fire.<br />Tongueless and speechless they could not rhyme<br />The poetry of praise that mountains climb.<br />Only as earthbound souls can they<br />Soar sunward to Heaven once more to stay.<br /><br />Lord of day, Lord of night<br />You sing the stars into timeless flight.<br />What more could I surrender<br />Than this star of me<br />To burn bright and die<br />In remembrance of Thee.<br /><br /><em>What Can I Give You?<br /></em><br />What can I give You, today, my Dear?<br />A wisp of wanting, a dew drop of tear.<br /><br />What can I give You that isn’t already Yours?<br />The heat of my desires, and the rain it pours.<br /><br />What can I give You that would make You glad?<br />Any thought, word or deed that would make others sad.<br /><br />What can I give you that would please You most?<br />The puff of pride and the brazen boast.<br /><br />What can I show You that You have not yet seen?<br />A night and day of remembrance, with naught in-between.<br /><br />What song could I sing that You have not yet heard?<br />The song of myself set to Your Silent Word.<br /><br />What dish can I serve You that You’ve never tasted?<br />That morsel of me that lifetimes have wasted.<br /><br />What game could I play for Your entertainment and delight?<br />That end-game whose loss makes even the winner contrite.<br /><br />What prayer could I utter that You could not possibly ignore?<br />That prayer that asks nothing but simply seeks to adore.<br /><br /><em>M-E-H-E-R B-A-B-A<br /></em><br />Your Name is woven from English letters plain;<br />Out of twenty-six only six remain<br /><br />To be spoken in silence or whispered soft;<br />A Name to lift the heart aloft.<br /><br />Woven of breath and muted sighs,<br />Hopes unhoped by sadness rise.<br /><br />Three of these letters are repeated twice.<br />Once is sweet, but twice is nice.<br /><br />Nine in all do spell Your Name;<br />Lit by love, each one’s a flame<br /><br />That burns our grief and desperate woe<br />And helps each one Your love to know.<br /><br />Our alphabet is truly blessed<br />To select just six and discard the rest.Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-25050444052177307852009-07-26T10:03:00.000-07:002009-07-30T16:43:24.867-07:00"Time Poem": Closing Baba Quote, References, and Readers' Comments<strong>Closing Quote from Avatar Meher Baba:</strong><br /><br />"I am never born. I never die.<br />Yet every moment I take birth and undergo death.<br />Although I am present everywhere eternally in My formless<br />Infinite State, from time to time I take Form,<br />and taking the Form and leaving it is termed<br />My physical birth and death."10<br /><br />"I have come not to teach but to awaken."11<br /><br /><p><strong>Sources for quotes made by Meher Baba:<br /></strong><br />1. Discourses, by Meher Baba, 6th Edition, Volume III, pp. 97-98. Copyright 1967 by Adi K. Irani, King’s Rd., Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India.<br />2. Ibid., page 180.<br />2. The Everything and the Nothing, by Meher Baba, pp. 51-55. Copyright 1989 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust.<br />4. God Speaks, by Meher Baba, Second Edition, pp. 253-254. Copyright 1973 Sufism Reoriented, Inc.<br />5. The Everything and the Nothing, by Meher Baba, pp. 57-55. Copyright 1989 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Charitable Trust.<br />6. Life at its Best, by Meher Baba, page 59. Copyright 1957 Sufism Reoriented, Inc.<br />7. The God-Man, by C.B. Purdom, pp. 343-344. Copyright 1971 Meher Spiritual Center, Inc., Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.<br />8. The Path of Love, pp. 84-85. Copyright 1986 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust..<br />9. Lord Meher, by Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. XVII, page 5832. Copyright of English translation Lawrence Reiter 1980. All quotes of Meher Baba Copyright Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust.<br />10. Glimpses of the God-Man, Meher Baba. Volume V, by Bal Natu, pp.161-164. Copyright 1987 Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust<br />11. The God-Man, pp. 343-344, by C. B. Purdom. Copyright 1971 Meher Spiritual Center, Inc., Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.</p><br /><strong>A few comments from other readers</strong><br /><br />From Ann Conlon, about "Time and Its Passing"…<br /><br /><em>“I think it’s wonderful! I’m saving the rest of it for Silence Day. Lovely, lovely stuff—and a terrific flow to your words.”</em><br /><br />…and about a selection from "Ghazals in Remembrance of the Beloved"…<br /><br /><em>“Lovely, lovely stuff, Mick. Thank you so much. Love ‘em, Mick. Keep them coming.”</em><br /><br />From Angela Chen, former President of Meher Baba House, New York City…<br /><br /><em>“Well done. Wonderful new ghazals! The collection is remarkably consistent. Every one of them is so human and personal, taking the God-Man’s words into our ‘real’ experience.”</em>Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-44158097798735149992009-07-26T10:01:00.000-07:002009-07-26T10:03:09.598-07:00Part Ten (finale): "In Meher's Time"<strong>Part Ten</strong><br /><em>In Meher's Time</em><br /><em><br /></em>I<br />A child is born and takes its first breath,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A middle aged man arrives at his mother's bedside just as she takes<br />her last breath,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A collision of flesh and steel is averted at the last possible moment,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A heart is healed at the utterance of a healing word,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A kindness, too small to be accounted for in the ledger book of heaven,<br />arrives in Meher's time.<br />A telephone rings and saves a man from the razor and the warm bath,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A plough is put to soil when the moment is most ripe,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A last will is written at the last hour, revoking all previous iterations,<br />leaving everything to the gardener,<br />in Meher's time.<br />Rain arrives to save the harvest,<br />in Meher's time.<br />War is only just averted with a gift basket of fruit and roses,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A father reconciles with a son,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A taker becomes a giver,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A murderer becomes a saint,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A saint becomes his Self,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A warrior becomes his opponent,<br />in Meher's time.<br />An ancient enemy is converted to deepest friendship,<br />in Meher's time.<br />A commoner becomes a king,<br />in Meher's time.<br />The Lord Himself becomes a warrior and a king both,<br />in Meher's time.<br /><br />II<br />In Meher's time everything is accomplished, though it takes a million years.<br />In Meher's time, everything happens, and nothing happens.<br />In Meher's time, a child cries and is comforted, though no one else is there.<br />In Meher's time the dawn breaks, and a heart opens.<br />In Meher's time a yearning is answered and a new yearning is born.<br />In Meher's time layers of mind-woven fear are painfully unraveled,<br />exposing a core of joy.<br />In Meher's time a healing takes place in the space of a Name.<br />In Meher's time a fragrance without source fills one's life with solace.<br />In Meher's time the waves roll, the leaves fall, and a bubble is set free<br />in a sudden embrace of air.<br />In Meher’s time a bubble bursts, only to know Itself as the Ocean.<br />In Meher's time a tear falls and a joy rises.<br />In Meher's time a world is born from a single, beautiful thought.<br />In Meher's time a world dies with the killing of an idea.<br />In Meher's time sailors drown within sight of land, but are reborn<br />as captains of men.<br />In Meher's time a life goes out like a candle and is reborn as flame.<br />In Meher's time a room is filled with sudden light and a quiet darkness dies.<br />In Meher's time a war is fought and a peace is forged.<br />In Meher's time a problem is solved but the solution is overlooked.<br />In Meher's time a solution is found but the problem remains.<br />In Meher's time no one escapes but everyone is freed.<br />In Meher's time everyone is freed but no one escapes.<br />In Meher's time a prison is destroyed and a binding is born.<br />In Meher's time a prison is built and a binding is destroyed.<br />In Meher's time a faith is destroyed and a religion grows.<br />In Meher's time a religion dies and a true faith is born.<br />In Meher's time a trumpet sounds and an ear is opened.<br />In Meher's time a tear is dried and a flood of tears is released.<br />In Meher's time seconds are saved and a lifetime is gained.<br />In Meher's time a garden grows untended by any gardener.<br />In Meher's time a race of people perish and rise up stronger than all life.<br />In Meher's time a king abdicates but finds a new throne for his heart.<br />In Meher's time a flower opens and a leaf falls.<br />In Meher's time a friend lost a thousand lifetimes ago is suddenly found.<br />In Meher's time a smile, a glance, a word from a long-ago lifetime<br />tickles the nose of memory into sudden wakefulness.<br />In Meher's time everything is left behind but nothing is abandoned.<br />In Meher's time everything passes but the NOW remains.<br />In Meher's time goodbyes are uttered endlessly until one hello makes<br />the last goodbye final.<br />In Meher's time all men die and are reborn as ancient children.<br />In Meher's time sunlight old as time falls across ten thousand lifetimes.<br />In Meher's time the wick of humankind is trimmed, leaving human unkind<br />and unforgiving in communal groping darkness.<br />In Meher's time the world grows sick with gnawing fear<br />and dark with trampled light<br />and sour with rankest envy<br />and bitter with darkest hate<br />and suicidal with unbearable sadness<br />that seemingly only the bullet and the blade can allay.<br /><br />III<br />In Meher's time a dervish wanders the roads of India dying of thirst for God.<br />In Meher's time this dervish instantly renounces his wandering<br />by promising to marry a thirteen-year-old girl skipping blithely down the street,<br />a pink ribbon in her hair.<br />In Meher's time this dervish father's the Father of all creation.<br />In Meher's time God wills Himself alive once again<br />and like any man is born bloody from the womb.<br />In Meher's time a handful of lives cluster like stars around a brand new sun.<br />In Meher's time the players are gathered for their new role as companion<br />to the Constant Companion.<br />In Meher's time a new song is written for a new instrument.<br />In Meher's time this new song is sung by hearts trained lifetimes ago<br />in its singing.<br />In Meher's time this singing becomes the envy of angels.<br />In Meher's time an old man in Nanking, China prepares to die<br />while the womb of a young woman in upstate New York prepares for his rebirth.<br />In Meher's time the din of chaos rises, and a silence is born.<br />In Meher's time childlike singing and courteous conversation begin,<br />most unexpectedly, one more time.<br />In Meher's time voiceless men hear the voice of unconditional love<br />in their hearts, and turn toward that voice, singing.<br />In Meher's time a singing silence is born that fills all the dark places<br />in men's hearts with singing light.<br />In Meher's time, time and memory converge in the center of one Man's smile.<br />In Meher's time desire and longing are resolved in the desire and longing<br />to please Him.<br />In Meher's time the tug of memory and the pull of events grows slack<br />in His embrace.<br />In Meher's time a soul wanders the byways and pathways<br />of inconsequential action and finds the true road to Your feet,<br />stops knocking himself against the walls of want,<br />stops driving the engine of desire, or at least stops driving it so hard,<br />stops acting blindly and starts seeing,<br />stops making blunders and starts making sense,<br />stops wasting time and starts passing time with remembrance,<br />stops finding faults in others because he is too busy finding them in himself,<br />stops hurting and starts mending,<br />stops talking and starts paying attention,<br />stops challenging and starts surrendering,<br />stops planning and starts living,<br />stops living in the past and future but takes up residence in the NOW,<br />stops losing and starts finding that One who can lift him out of the drama<br />for just a moment, turn his head around, give him a sense (not Knowledge)<br />of the detritus of uncountable lives, and set his feet moving Tomb-ward<br />and his heart beating Name-ward.<br /><br />IV<br />In the time of Meher men's hearts will turn toward His light like a flower<br />toward the sun.<br />In the time of Meher an unknown song will sprout fully rehearsed from the lips<br />of men and women.<br />In the time of Meher nations will celebrate their differences instead<br />of going to war over them.<br />In the time of Meher compromise will no longer be considered a dirty word.<br />In the time of Meher compassion will count at least as much as cleverness.<br />In the time of Meher cockiness will give way to confidence.<br />In the time of Meher philanthropic acts will have a very small audience:<br />the one who gives and the Lord who sees.<br />In the time of Meher big business will calculate the value of stillness<br />as well as busyness.<br />In the time of Meher athletes will remember to never again forget that this is<br />a spectator sport.<br />In the time of Meher films will once again show us how far we can rise<br />instead of how low we can sink.<br />In the time of Meher silence will fill the world almost as completely as noise.<br /><br />In Meher's time, in Meher's time,<br />don't prod the moment in Meher's time;<br />it will arrive, my dear, in its own sweet time,<br />-- in the yearning of an angel for a human form<br />-- in the sigh of a lover for a pair of encircling arms<br />-- in the laughter of a lunatic indifferent to derision<br />-- on the breath of an infant<br />-- on the smile of a child<br />-- in every moment's measured step<br />on the wings of time and its passing.<br /><br /><strong>Time Rhymes<br /></strong><br /><em>Dying Moments</em><br /><br />In the wake of dying moments<br />I say your holy name.<br />No sooner it falls from my lips<br />Then I say it once again.<br /><br />I have slept the sleep of centuries,<br />And on a thousand deathbeds lay.<br />But when I enter that final sleep<br />Your holy Name I'll say.<br /><br /><em>Delay<br /></em><br />We delay our ultimate sacrifice<br />and postpone our surrender.<br />We casually forget to take Your Name;<br />trusting in time to help us remember.Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-7656011123916075892009-07-26T09:59:00.000-07:002009-07-26T10:01:09.338-07:00Part Nine: "Weary of the Journey, and Ready for Rest"<strong>Part Nine</strong><br /><em>Weary of the Journey and Ready for Rest<br /></em><br />I<br />The lifetimes turn round and round within my breast<br />like the turnings of a man in a long and restless sleep.<br />The corners of dreams nudge me awake, yet ‘tis still a dream.<br />So many suns have I seen rise and set, so many moons wan and pale<br />have shone in the eyes of so many beloveds.<br />So many skies have I wandered under, loved under, died under,<br />with their time machine clouds and memory winds.<br />How many rooms have I yet to wake in, sunlight splashing<br />through shaded or slatted blinds, asleep on sheets new or yellow with age,<br />coverlet poor or of finest down?What view shall next crowd my eye, what scene shall next frame<br />my slender sight?<br />How many faces have yet to peer into my crib?<br />Will they be kind or cold or unconcerned, will the eyes shine with thanksgiving<br />or watch with gray regret?What womb awaits my form, able-bodied and athletic, or infirm and given to books and the shaded room?<br />What if by some faulty magic, some accidental vision, I could see<br />my next custodians, and I disliked their faces, the cut of their clothing,<br />the way they spoke?<br />Why, they might be people I would snub at a party, and turn away from<br />with a drink in my hand!<br />And yet these very ones shall stride like giants across the landscape of my next<br />childhood and youth, their utterings and injunctions to be obeyed at once<br />or soon the downswing of the imprinting hand.<br /><br />II<br />How many wives or husbands have yet to overturn my heart,<br />and sear it with yet another love?<br />How many casual hellos and aching goodbyes,<br />how many entrances and exits have yet to be endured?<br />How many cards and letters sent over how many land or ocean miles<br />have yet to be penned?<br />How many sleeps, fitful or untroubled, have yet to round this paltry poem,<br />so poorly rhymed and scanned?<br />How many beds will I expire or sire in?<br />How many plots of earth await a form that has yet to be born?<br />How many children that now might be closest friends will I one day cradle<br />and wipe clean?<br />What weaknesses and faults am I engraving with the nib of my current<br />words and actions?<br />What future friends and enemies am I making,<br />what scenes sad or embarrassing am I writing out the parts for now?<br />What future debts am I incurring, what promises broken now<br />will need future reparation?<br />What torments are being mounted upon what future stage<br />where the terrors of the schoolyard and the bully lie in wait?<br />What books have I yet to read again, marveling at Shakespeare's or Dickens’ genius as though for the very first time?<br />How many times will the strains of a Beethoven quartet unravel my heart?<br />And all the petty sorrows and all the petty joys are lining up like soldiers<br />to march across my dream.<br /><br />III<br />The weddings and processionals, the birthings and the burials,<br />the layette and the tomb are now only shifting images upon a once<br />and future screen;<br />but make no mistake, they shall come into focus clear and soon enough.<br />Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep<br />from rebirth’s weary wheel; yet that wheel is turning endlessly,<br />so ceaselessly turning round, so perfect in its constancy,<br />so unerring in its course, and yet propelled by nothing more<br />than the primitive engine of my every thought, word and deed.<br />I bear the weight of too many lifetimes;<br />the hands of my heart are tired from carrying so much baggage;<br />Oh Dearest One, press into my palm the ticket for that train<br />which makes no scheduled stop save One.<br /><br />IV<br />There will come<br />a last day,<br />a last hour,<br />a last minute,<br />a last moment,<br />a last tear,<br />a last laugh,<br />a last silence,<br />a last temptation,<br />a last hunger,<br />a last meal,<br />a last lust,<br />a last mistake,<br />a last regret,<br />a last reproach,<br />a last work-out,<br />a last trip to the store,<br />a last vacation,<br />a last book read,<br />a last movie watched,a last piece of music heard,<br />a last website searched,<br />a last email sent and responded to,<br />a last left and picked-up voice-mail,<br />a last sent and received birthday card,<br />a last nap and a last sleep,<br />a last trip to the bathroom,<br />a last speech,<br />a last joke,<br />a last fear,<br />a last hope,<br />a last dream,<br />a last hatred,<br />a last forgiveness,<br />a last longing,<br />a last thought,<br />a last breath,<br />a last reflection,<br />a last lesson learned.<br /><br />And all of life’s firsts shall begin again…and again.<br /><br /><strong>Time Rhymes</strong><br /><br /><em>If Suddenly Death Should Come: A Sonnet</em><br /><br />If suddenly death should come to us, would we<br />Be caught surprised, afraid and loath to go?<br />Or clinging with frantic fingers, would we flee<br />From a cherished past to a future yet to know?<br />Or part with eyes averted from all tears,<br />From joys and countless moments gone forever?<br />Or bid good-bye to triumphs, praise and cheers<br />Heaped roundly on our heads, but now not ever<br />To be heard again, still fading in our ears?<br />Or will His name set sail, a handsome ship<br />From a heart-shaped dock at full and breakneck speed<br />To arrive at the final harbor of our lips,<br />That soul, so lately chained, is finally freed?<br /> But leave the Name unspoke, and God’s machine<br /> Engraves new joys and sorrows upon the screen.<br /><br /><em>He Awoke in the Gallant Evening</em><br /><br />He awoke in the gallant evening<br />When the stars caress the sky,<br />When the arms of lovers intertwine<br />And the hearts of lovers sigh<br />To once again unite their souls<br />In a union nearing bliss<br />That begins with eyes both opened wide<br />And ends with a sudden kiss.<br />But that night union never came;<br />It remained a future tense;<br />It remained that way deliberately,<br />Detained by a will immense.<br />“I bless this blessed ignorance,” said he,<br />“That separates You from me.<br />I long not for that union<br />That would join us eternally.<br />I would not end this love affair,<br />Nor the games that lovers play;<br />I’d rather love for loving’s sake,<br />And live to love another day.”<br />So he slept once more the gallant sleep<br />And dreamed himself awake<br />To begin again another day<br />Of loving for loving’s sake.Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-38020338588583038532009-07-26T09:56:00.000-07:002009-07-26T09:58:26.164-07:00Part Eight, "Steeped in Time"<strong>Part Eight</strong><br /><em>Steeped in Time</em><br /><em><br /></em>“Time steeped in infinite eagerness and patience rolls on<br />and, at the opportune moment, the aspirant begins to lose<br />the awareness of himself as being a separate ‘self….’”10<br /> —Avatar Meher Baba<br /><br />I<br />Fully steeped in time’s brew are we, such fragile containers of every word, deed, and action, yet strong enough to withstand the millions of plunges into that tiny cup of misery, shame, and sheer fun we call life.<br />And this brew will darken, as in and out of it we dip, careless of the fragility<br />of that cup whose upsetting might capsize us in that Ocean, a shore-to-shoreless Ocean, in whose depthless depths none would drown, but only merge and dissolve instantly, for each would know the Ocean as themselves, drop and Ocean indistinguishable forever.<br /><br />II<br />Before, however, this forever drowning, comes first the forever remembering: each drop its own ocean, into which it daily dives and drowns, rising up breathlessly from the frenzied foam of one drop-life, falling backwards<br />into another, helpless against the too-swiftly moving tides of time<br />and its forever remembering and forgetting.<br />So many billions of time bubbles longing for time-bursting and time-surrendering, but each drop too drowned in its own infinitesimal ocean<br />to see outside its own bubble-identity, its own bubble nature.<br /><br />III<br />And each moment is a memory,<br />each memory a world,<br />each world a drop the size of an ocean,<br />each ocean greater or lesser in depth or breadth, according to the shores<br />whose boundaries we ourselves have measured: some safe harbors,<br />some too wind-blown and high-bluffed, some too shallow-reefed to even dare approach, some great cragged peaks upon whose rocks we continue<br />to hurl the frail ships of ourselves.<br /><br />IV<br />Time the great harlot, the great whore, whose bright-bangled arms<br />ever hold out the promise of another moment, another this-moment-now becoming a this-moment-next, seducing us with a wink and sultry smile<br />that says, Sleep with me, let me encircle thee in my sweetly scented arms,<br />and you shall never wake to that timelessness which might set you free<br />from time’s embrace.<br /><br />Drop-deception by dint of sheer persistence: each moment’s persistence<br />the guarantor of the next.<br />And this is time’s greatest seduction.<br /><br />V<br />Time piles up:<br />people, places, things, things, stuff; children, husbands, lovers, wives, friends, enemies—particularly enemies.<br />Time piles up:<br />bank accounts, mortgages, bonds, loans, securities; books, CDs, DVDs, computers, cell phones; furniture, clothing, objects d’art, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, all the playthings that fill to the brim the toy chests of our lives:<br />the relics of yesteryear becoming the reliquaries of tomorrow.<br />Time piles up:<br />photographs on hard drives or between the leaves of glossy photograph albums;<br />saved voice and emails in the dead circuits of disconnected and discarded machines, in the deep pockets of thrift shop suits, dresses, and overcoats,<br />in the urns and caskets of the gone and long forgotten, the no longer grieved for nor even remembered.<br /><br />VI<br />And in the end,<br />everything is put away, disposed of, recycled, auctioned off, interred,<br />hefted into boxes taped up tight and shoved into the darkened corners<br />of storage lockers whose caged bulbs burn on and on in nightless night<br />and dayless day, for everyone and no one.<br />And in the end,<br />everything is whisked away by relatives or strangers who give them<br />new homes, a new place on the shelf, endowing them now<br />with new meaning, new purpose, at least for a little while…<br />And in the end,<br />everything held on to is eventually let go of, deleted or done away with, erased or eradicated, removed or relinquished, demolished or destroyed, cancelled or crossed out, carted or carried off, rescinded or repealed, dumped or ditched, dismissed or disallowed, forsaken or forgotten, scrapped or scrubbed out, written off or wiped away, rejected or refused, jettisoned or junked, thrown out or thrown off, only to be taken up again in some future lifetime, perhaps by the very soul who’d possessed them last time.<br />And so begins again the collecting and accumulating, the hoarding and the heaping, the amassing and the accruing, the stockpiling and the storing up, the piling up of people, places, things, stuff.<br /><br />Time piles up.<br /><br />VII<br />And so<br />we climbed up and out of our lifetimes, standing on the shoulders<br />of our accomplishments and cringing under the fortresses of our failures,<br />craning our necks to see over the tops of our ambitions,<br />always looking outward but never turning our gaze inward,<br />ever captivated and even consoled by the bright lights<br />of our own teeming cities, each abode a dwelling place for our<br />million-footed wants, desires and fears, which then begat new wants,<br />desires and fears.<br />And so<br />these cities of our own design and construction soon became over-crowded<br />to bursting, and, as with all over-crowded cities, slums began to appear<br />where once stood the proud and shining towers to ourselves,<br />and with the slums came the crimes: the crimes of self-absorption and self-pity and self-loathing and self-indulgence, and to stem this tide we sent out our thought police and word police and action police, but all our efforts<br />to arrest them were met with failure, because this war was within ourselves, deep within our own hidden hearts.<br />And so<br />the rot set in and we were helpless and hopeless against its spreading decay;<br />we were still untutored in the arts of that higher helplessness and hopelessness that comes not from placing our help and hope in the world outside of us,<br />but rather in that world within us.<br />And so<br />began the time of time-wasting and time-abiding; began those great<br />Olympic games of time-play: time-sprinting and time-hurdling<br />and time-swimming, all played out in the mammoth arena of ourselves, ourselves the cheering crowds, ourselves the daring contestants, ourselves<br />the time-keepers who would cheat time itself it we could, cheat even death<br />at its own game, if only the Coach would, for God’s sake, please call “time-out,” but there can be no time out for time.<br />And so<br />You bided Your time while we played our games, and kept playing until<br />the games played themselves out, exhausted by our inexhaustible need<br />to succeed but always so fearful of failing.<br />And though we could not see them, Your footprints were there beside our own, had in fact always been there, Your hand too always out-held to help and guide, but we saw not, nor felt the occasional tug.<br />And so<br />in Your infinite patience You waited for us to grow tired and weary<br />of our games, our endless time-wasting, time-filling and time-emptying,<br />waited for us to fully and finally become bored with these outward distractions<br />and begin turning our gaze inward, where the footprints could now be seen beside our own, inward where that tug at our hearts could now be felt<br />and responded to.<br />And so<br />You watched and waited while we climbed up and out of our lifetimes,<br />watched and waited until the climbing tired us beyond even our own endurance, watched and waited while the seed You’d planted once so long ago<br />now began to take root, this time in fertile soil, watered by the rain<br />of our own tears and the winds of our own sighs; no longer did the seed<br />lie fallow in the hardscrabble earth we’d grown so accustomed to dwelling in,<br />we never imagined that there might be a better place to live.<br /><br />VIII<br />Live we now in this moment’s dreaming, still lost in the dream<br />but waking just long enough to differentiate between You,<br />the Dream Creator, from us, Your dream creation.<br />Live we now in each moment’s possibility of Your pleasure,<br />placing Your pleasure above our own, when we can, Lord, when we can.<br />Live we now in each moment’s possibility of Your remembrance,<br />which only the folly of forgetfulness can fully teach us.<br />Sing we now the song of Your sweet Name, and swell each chorus<br />with Your praise, though the realization of our own unworthiness<br />‘oft stoppers up our throats and ties our tongues.<br />Die we now not the easy death of the body, but the slow and painful death<br />of our desires, though each desire’s death doth scorch the lining of our hearts.<br />Drown we now in Your Ocean, though the fear of drowning keeps us clinging<br />to our own most slippery shores.<br />Wake we now to Your ever-abiding presence, though we absent ourselves<br />too willingly and too often, ever turning our faces away from the sometimes<br />too bright shining of Your sun.<br />Content us now with Thy gifts, which Thou hast heaped full-handedly<br />upon our this-time-lives, though we oft take both gift and Giver<br />for granted.<br />Forgive us now our sins, though we oft seek Thy forgiveness only to continue our sinning, assured of Your ever-again-forgiveness.<br />Preserve and protect us now and forever in Thy care, though we sometimes appear to care not.<br />Hold us now and forever in Thy embrace, though we oft struggle<br />against it’s seeming constraints, and keep us now and forever<br />in Your world without end, Amen.<br /><br />IX<br />Hurry down the days did we at a madman’s sprint, so eager to feel the wind<br />in our faces, the breath rising in our expanding chests, storming the heavens<br />with a poem or a song.<br />We’d jettisoned the past and the future in favor of that ever-elusive NOW.<br />But that now always became a then; we none of us knew<br />where that now-and-then would take us.<br />Only too late did we come to know that we’d drunk and smoked our lives away<br />for a promotion, a raise, a VP-ship, or some ship doomed only to sink beneath<br />the weight of empty ambition.<br />But somewhere, sometime in one or more of these lifetimes,<br />Someone had knocked on our heart’s door, essentially coming to meet us<br />instead of our coming to meet Him.<br />And though we may have never met Him in the body this time round,<br />time steeped in infinite eagerness and patience had rolled on<br />and caused Him to knock on the door of our hearts,<br />the door very nearly closed but not completely;<br />it was still slightly ajar and alight with love for Him.<br />So yes, yes! we really did meet Him in this lifetime, but we always invert<br />the pronouns, saying, “I came to Baba," when the truth is, He had come<br />to meet us.<br />He had touched our hearts outside of time, during this our-now-lifetime.<br />He had put His finger into the cup of our unique and distinctive brew<br />and stirred out hearts into His wakefulness.<br /><br />X<br />So much now for the coming and the going, the dying and the birthing,<br />the fathering and the parenting, the sowing and having sown,<br />the loving and having loved and the hating, too, the accumulation of stuff<br />and then the tossing of it away, the stockpiling of riches that must one day be left behind, the ceaseless rocking-back-and-forth of the same damned chair, the chair which has become ever weaker from the ever-increasing weight of it’s occupant, until it threatens to collapse completely<br />And isn’t this what You wanted all along?<br />To stop the incessant rocking, tip us over, crushed and cowed finally,<br />at Your feet?<br /><br />XI<br />So much now for the coming and the going, the looking inward and the looking outward—to find what? What?<br />A Face that would always be there to greet us,<br />a pair of infinitely wide and stretching arms that would always be there<br />to hold us, to rock us in the Name of His Love, to greet and hold us<br />in unvarnished joy and unshaded sorrow, in deepest-hidden shame and still, still, the unalloyed acceptance of our every fault and failure.<br />For this was the Face of the Friend whose glance would now always look down upon us as long as we continued to keep our faces turned toward the sun<br />of His smile, whose hands would hold ours throughout the millions of lifetimes<br />though there would be times when we would not be able to feel them,<br />yet somehow we would know they were there, encupping ours in His,<br />this Friend who would never leave us, no matter how many miles we traversed<br />always going nowhere, no matter how many wives and children we had,<br />always exiting the stage alone, lifetime after lifetime vanishing in memory,<br />each falling and fading back, yet tumbling toward that forgetfulness of self<br />so sought after and yet so elusive, each lifetime too short a span of time<br />to remember You truly, deeply, and wholly, the so many distractions <br />always there to turn our faces away and blur the fragile framework of Your face.<br /><br />XII<br />It was that auld lang syne time of the year, lipstick on cigarettes and champagne glasses, everywhere a glad confusion of streamers, pulled taut and snapped<br />over parquet floors and pirouetting figures.<br />So that you might remember, I sent you that too-feminine embroidered card,<br />the one with the poem I had labored over till each line scanned and each rhyme rhymed perfectly—Oh, don’t you remember? It began, “Dearest one…”<br />or was it simply “My dear one…”?<br />I don’t recall just at present, but surely you remember.<br />Please say that you remember…<br />Why should the winds of our lives carry off everything,<br />but always leave the words, the words so carefully chosen, so carefully wrought?<br />But this wind is no chisel but a chiseler, that most petty yet persistent<br />of all thieves: time.<br /><br />XIII<br />Like an old, retired pianist, whose fingers remember the notes but not the brain<br />that first learned them once so long ago, comes the sudden, surprising memory<br />of long-ago fashions and dance steps that magically awaken in legs that know only be-bop, jazz, rock—each aghast at how in the world they could possibly remember such arcane footwork as the Charleston, the Mambo, the Twist,<br />the Mashed-Potato, and-oh-my-god, even the cotillion.<br />Say, where did you learn to waltz, for chrissake? Look at you…<br />Then sometimes also comes the memory of long-fallen-out-of-use words<br />and phrases that seem to rise to the lips as though unbidden, unsolicited<br />and unexpected, a priori and astounding to the speaker.<br />And perhaps most telling of all: one’s clothing—for apparel doth oft proclaim<br />the man—in the sudden yearning for a walking stick or shawl collar,<br />or a pea coat we somehow knew would look right on us,<br />despite the jests of spouses and friends.<br />Sometimes we aren’t even amazed at this instant-moment’s-now knowledge,<br />but look upon it as some well-deserved gift or inheritance we were once<br />entitled to, long, long ago.<br />Such heart-swept heights have we climbed, such fear-fathomed depths<br />have we plumbed, amidst skies cluttered with airplanes and parachutes, battlements and bombs, amidst skies unclouded by fear or grief,<br />under summer suns that warmed young and old hands enjoined<br />in a forever-promised love, under night stars that ached with stars<br />and starbright words whispered in the throbbing dark,<br />in rooms sweet with memories of a lifetime lived well,<br />in homes warmed full up with forgiveness and tolerance,<br />each life as a puff of breath in the frozen air, soul wisps so eager to be seen<br />and heard but so reluctant to vanish, each life a new chapter-heading<br />in that almost pageless book we proudly call the book of ourselves.<br />Sing we now our songs into the whistling winds and swift-flowing currents<br />of our lifetimes, sing we now into that void we so desperately fear will swallow us up, devour us whole, and delete the memories we want to hold onto forever, though it were holy writ.<br />And this is why we sometimes exclaim, for no apparent reason,<br />Don’t you remember? I remember. How can you not remember?<br /><br />XIV<br />It had been a busy night, and the souls were whizzing about like crazy,<br />trying to find suitable forms to inhabit, the right parents to secure,<br />to be happily enwombed once again and on their way to the world,<br />the loadstone of desire forever pulling them down into yet another lifetime.<br />We couldn’t make reservations for the perfectly positioned life<br />the way we made reservations for the finest restaurant or play.<br />We had to take what we got, and deserved, and learn to make the best of it<br />in His Will and time.<br /><br />XV<br />There had been a terrible air disaster the day before, all one-hundred-and-seven passengers, pilot and crew, lost at sea, the FAA having now gone from<br />search and rescue to search and recover, one-hundred-and-seven souls now never to be found by human eyes but followed nevertheless by the ever-watchful gaze of His love and compassion.<br />And then, almost simultaneously, there had occurred that earthquake in China,<br />9.7 on the Richer scale.<br />Now all of these poor souls were either suffering the torment of the hell state<br />or the delight of the heaven state, each and all according to their destiny,<br />or were already humming wombward to a new life and yet another opportunity<br />to play the whole game again and for once get the goddamned thing right…<br /><br />XVI<br />Oh dear, another life gone, the roar of the crowd in my ears, such crowded hours, each moment demanding its own spotlight, the screams from some smoke-blinded battlefield becoming the cries of a babe, pulled wet, naked,<br />and helpless into yet another lifetime, into yet another birthing room, immaculately clean-tiled and too brightly lit, too many pairs of hands yanking<br />at me, trying too hard to pull me out from a place I don’t want to leave,<br />at least not yet, to wake from that nether sleep of forgetfulness and remembrance.<br />And so the crowded hours of one life begins its frightful roar into a new<br />calendar of days, months, years, whatever the allotted time shaped<br />by our ever-present past.<br />Dipping into one life, then dunking into another like some enormous<br />karmic doughnut, making the brew of ourselves stronger and stronger each time,<br />swimming wildly about in that cup and then drowning again,<br />only to come bubbling up into yet another cup.<br /><br />XVII<br />So we grew up on Coco-Puffs and Nestlé’s Hot Chocolate, unaware of the sweeter seed that He had planted in our hearts.<br />And in time we would learn to stop hurrying down the days,<br />and begin rather to parse them into a highly mnemonic, endlessly repeatable,<br />two-syllable word: BABA, BABA, BABA.<br />We awoke to that portion of grey sleep which perhaps for the first time<br />disallowed the density of dreams and the insistence of desires<br />and drove us up into that region of His wakefulness and Name-remembering.<br />Our souls bubbled up through their individual lifetimes, hurtling each one<br />into solid flesh but a body now with a new name, new birthplace, new parents,<br />inhabiting a new moment of existence which would be called our birthday,<br />the imprint of past impressions coining each one anew, like a coin that is struck<br />from a single dye and the dye tossed away forever.<br />These imprints of impressions from so many lifetimes are the fingerprints<br />we leave behind, leaving a trail better than bread crumbs<br />by which God may find us, take our hand, and lead us Home.<br />So that was what all that soul-whizzing was about.<br />Even as we walked about chain-smoking and guzzling bottomless drinks,<br />wandering in and out of marriages, careers, cities and townships,<br />parents and people’s lives, we were all aware in a near-dawn-sleep kind of way<br />just what was going on all around us.<br />New lifetimes in His awareness were being started,<br />some begun at just about the same point at which they’d left off,<br />only some now a little or a lot more tolerant, a little or a lot more kind,<br />a little or a lot more awake to that sleeping wakefulness<br />which has the power to erase all previous sleeps.<br />So many beautiful soul-bubbles, each going its own sweet way: north, south, east, west, rich, poor, sick, healthy, beautiful and less beautiful,<br />childless or drowning in a caldron of children, not leaving the baggage<br />of our pasts behind at the station but taking most if not all and then some to our next destination.<br />Thus do we become the travel agents to ourselves,<br />and the handmaidens of our own destinies.<br /><br />XVIII<br />Little shuttle-crafts are we, mini flesh-and-blood missiles, hurtling wombward and tombward, the flickering images from one screen projected onto another, even before the old screen has gone silent and dark.<br />Film running time this last time: eighty-five years, three-hundred and twenty days, four hours, three minutes, nine seconds…or just a blink of the Cosmic Eye.<br /><br />IX<br />And each life is its own Cracker Jack box with its own peerless, precious prize hidden in its saccharine-sweet depths, to be taken out and admired<br />and held up to the light of ourselves’ bright shining.<br />Then one day this prize’s bright shining is seen to have tarnished some<br />around the edges, grown dull and unattractive, until it too is eventually<br />tossed onto the heaved up and still mounting higher trash heap of time.<br />So we look for and find a brand new prize, which too tarnishes with time,<br />and is again tossed away, until one day our hearts rise above our heads<br />and we dive deep into this box and find that prize which never tarnishes<br />but is its own bright shining, sufficient unto itself, now and forever.<br /><br /><strong>Time Rhymes<br /></strong><br /><em>There’s an End to Everything<br /></em><br />My son, there’s an end to everything,<br /> Be it good, or bad, or worse;<br />What began one day in the cradle<br /> Will end someday in a hearse.<br />So what’er you may be suffering<br /> Be assured of this one true fact:<br />There’s an end to every beginning,<br /> And a curtain for every act.<br /><br /><em>The Lord’s Erasure<br /></em><br />Have you seen the Lord’s erasure? He keeps it in His hand.<br />He didn’t buy it at Staples, I’m sure you understand.<br />It’s such a powerful erasure, He uses it every time<br />We die and change our bodies, leaving the memory of each behind.<br />He erases the memory of who we were and what we did to whom;<br />He erases the memory of where we lived, and where we died, in a grave or<br /> garish tomb.<br />If He pocketed His erasure, and left it all unused,<br />Just think how nutty we all would be, not to mention how confused!<br />It’s hard enough to live this life, with all its doubts and fears,<br />Without having to remember our former lives, which stretch over millions<br /> of years.<br />Thus He carries with Him this erasure, so round from rim to rim,<br />That we might more easily live this life in complete remembrance of Him.Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-28717452688929797252009-07-26T09:46:00.000-07:002009-07-26T09:54:40.242-07:00Part Seven: "So Many Sleeps"Part Seven<br />So Many Sleeps<br />"The so many deaths during the one whole life,<br />from beginning of evolution of consciousness<br />to the end of evolution of consciousness,<br />are like so many sleeps during one lifetime."9<br /> —Avatar Meher Baba<br />I<br />He went out of his life on one breath and into the next on another;<br />he slept and then awoke, nestled in a new pair of arms.<br />The arms that only a few days before had held him as he expired<br />were even now consigning him to the earth, while a new pair of arms,<br />so soft and cool, held him in a sweet scented embrace.<br />He dangled, a fleshy apostrophe, from a swollen breast.<br />His mother's slow, steady breathing barely raised the thinnest of hairs<br />on his small, moist forehead.<br />And this waking was but one in a multitude of wakings into other forms,<br />other rooms, other arms, suspiring and expiring, a bridge of sighs across<br />the centuries.<br />Longing and wanting the bow, desire the arrow, anxiously awaiting parents<br />the target.<br />Imagine if these two could somehow see, hear, and feel the well-trodden years<br />in the eyes of their newborn, could hear the roar of voices that had so recently filled the eighty-some-odd years of a just-passed lifetime,<br />with all its cries and clamor, which even now is fading<br />like the end of a dream, drowned out by the uninhibited wailings of infancy.<br />Past mother, past father, past wife and children, forever severed by a little sleep,<br />now a brand new set of parents, their proud beaming smiles<br />bright suns and moons rising to forever extinguish the previous night's darkness; funeral dirges turning into lullabies.<br />Sleep, my old-young heart, sleep until the next sleep between wakings.<br />A simple sleep between lifetimes, so short a rest before restlessness<br />of impressions impels the individual soul to indwell once again,<br />each last breath an arc of memory and flooding desire.<br />Memory and desire fuel the fire, the hot breath of craving the driving wind,<br />propelling us forward into one body after another, smoke of impressions<br />clouding our heart-skies, until one day a new kind of longing and desire<br />turns our smoke into incense.<br /><br />There, all around us, can't you see?<br />The souls are streaming toward their next birth,<br />personality projectiles aimed at marks a street or a continent away.<br />Can't you see them?<br />Like radio and television waves, they are all around us:<br />there, as we exit a theater into the teeming city streets;<br />there in the restaurant as we order our salad with dressing on the side, please.<br />The souls whiz by, asleep, the memory of their passed lives sleeping too,<br />like a tightly curled infant who every so often cries out,<br />and we, no matter where we are, hear the echo,<br />and reasonlessly sigh.<br /><br />II<br />He was born into a room thoughtfully darkened by heavy shades<br />and thick blinds and appointed with furniture as old and heavy as time.<br />The furniture, a chiffonier with heavy brass pulls and a bed fit to die in,<br />stands heavily upon old loomed carpets woven by hands more than<br />a century ago.<br />Outside the window, fifteen floors below, the traffic wends its way<br />across the expanding city of New York, past Saks Fifth Avenue<br />and Bonwit Teller and that new building on Fifth Avenue<br />called Rockefeller Center and on up to Harlem and down to Times Square<br />and the Bowery with its sunken lives, but he does not hear it,<br />he is sleeping the first sleep of this, his next birth,<br />and all the voices that had crowded his last life are now merely<br />the ends of dreams, far faint echoes of another life, another time.<br />The siege and substance of another day, silenced by a sleep.<br /><br />III<br />And he lay sleeping in his new infant crib, while carefully composed photographs of his last self with wife and children and parents and relations<br />lie fading in old boxes tied with twine or faded ribbon and in wallets<br />shut away in drawers that he will never open again.<br />And the remnants of still yet other selves lie scattered around the world,<br />in photo albums forever closed against wistful eyes, in storage trunks and attics<br />and in the air as incinerated paper and ink, ancient love letters<br />falling to earth as rain.<br />Across oceans, across time lie the relics of his former lifetimes, each life<br />a turned and forgotten page of an unremembered book, his hundreds of names<br />on so many tombs and gravestones, "In loving memory of..."<br />But who now is left to lovingly remember?<br />The very ones who swore to always remember are themselves forgotten.<br />His every lifetime a sort of library book taken out and returned by God<br />over and over again, but each time returned to a different place on the shelf,<br />or to another shelf entirely, the cover and the contents of the book<br />always changing, but the binding strong enough to last a thousand years.<br />What new lines would be written on the blank and waiting pages of this new volume would be determined by countless lifetimes of impressions,<br />forged in the furnace of action, one word, one thought, one deed a time.<br /><br />IV<br />And as he slept he did not notice the gathering dusk of a soft summer evening<br />which purpled the edges of the sky and lengthened the million city shadows<br />and dropped a curtain of rest over a tired island soon to be rattled awake<br />by el trains and thudded awake by nighttime jackhammers and jazzed awake<br />by Harlem hipsters.<br />And the darkness breathed life into some parts of the city that only<br />came alive by night: Tin Pan Alley and Times Square where thoughts<br />collide as songs and Greenwich Village where the most casual reply is poetry.<br />And in the air is the smell of Chesterfields and Camels and boiled chicken<br />and pastrami and rain-soaked gabardine and brilliantine and in the air too are<br />Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman as well as sudden oaths and grunted regrets<br />and ejaculated apologies and tragic laughter and ridiculous tears.<br />V<br />But he neither heard nor saw; he was sleeping the uncluttered sleep<br />of the newborn and only once thought he heard the gallop of former days,<br />the hoofbeat of ancient contests and elder uproar,<br />the canceled history of a million lives.<br />See how long I have been carrying the same baggage, he would have said if he could,<br />I pack it up oh so neatly and then carry it across the centuries.<br />Weary, weary soul, your arms so tired from the weight, the damned awful weight.<br /><br />VI<br />And he slept the empty sleep of the newborn, while old time, ancient time<br />sang sadly in his ears.<br />And the wind blew up and down the corridors of his lives, such a mournful,<br />empty sound.<br />And he turned and stirred in the darkness, this darkness woven of heavy drapes<br />and thick blinds, and thought he saw his mother sitting there beside him,<br />her head down, reading to him, but when he looked again, she was gone.<br /><br />VII<br />A ramp at Auschwitz.<br />A beach at Iwo Jima.<br />A cattle car in Poland.<br />A lifeboat in the Pacific.<br />A trench on the Marne.<br />A hospital bed in London.<br />A bunk in Treblinka.<br />A wood in Vilna.<br />A foxhole in Guam.<br />A crib in Brooklyn.<br />Falling in and out of this world in every imaginable condition and position…<br />some sitting, most lying down, asleep, awake, in a coma, dreaming,<br />waking from a dream in loving arms, alone, naked, clothed,<br />on fire, in the air, under water, under ground, under nourished,<br />fat, flatulent, full to bursting with dinner, brandy and cigars,<br />resigned, unresigned and mad as hell, the most casual remark or the name<br />of God on your lips, fleeing down the corridor of thought and desire,<br />trying to achieve balance for once, somehow never succeeding but trying<br />mightily anyway, returning, returning, remembering forgotten names,<br />songs, books, films, faces, most far faint echoes heard once in a dream<br />a long time ago but still remembered faintly, rising to fame, to obscurity,<br />to poverty, to affluence, to self in all its forms, to all the paraphernalia<br />of an incident-encrusted life, donning all the masks, loving and leaving,<br />fathering and mothering, brothering, befriending, belong to all parties,<br />embracing all causes, trying on beliefs like so many articles of clothing,<br />exchanging one when another has worn out, espousing them with<br />utter conviction, sometimes even dying for them, only to reject them all<br />out of hand next time around.<br />Next time, last time, this time, maybe there is no next or last time<br />but all time, everything happening not in some remote past or far away future<br />but all at once, NOW, in a single moment of God's dreaming,<br />perceived as past, present and future but really all<br />ONE GOD-BLESSED MOMENT.<br /><br />VIII<br />And in his ears the sound of steam ships and freighters and ocean liners<br />and in his gut the roll of waves and the stomach-rumble of smokestacks<br />vomiting thick black smoke into skies the color of gray wool and the eye-tug<br />of streaming faces on the shore waving goodbye, farewell, take good care<br />of yourself! don't forget to write!<br />And as taut streamers snap in the cold and steaming air your ship steams<br />out of the crowded harbor on its way to Tripoli and Constantinople and Bombay you grasp the woodsplintered rail tightly with your hands weapon-callused<br />and cold and you feel the heave and roll of a few hundred tons of bolted steel beneath your army regulation booted feet and there's the smell of damp khaki under your nose and what feels like a hundred pounds of metal on your back<br />and the heart-weight of memories of left-behind mother, father, wife and child<br />and the million and one comforts of home that already feels like a dream<br />you will never recapture like waking on a cold winter morning to the sound<br />of the radiator hissing and your bedroom windows frosted over<br />and the smell of baking biscuits from below stairs and Christmas mornings<br />on a hearth rug in front of a roaring fire and here you are steaming to some godforsaken place where savages perform unspeakable acts with horrifying casualness and worship devil-gods with eight arms and where it's never<br />nice 'n nippy but always steaming under a foreign sun where the 'eathens<br />eat animals we civilized folk keep as pets and wouldn't know a knife and fork from Adam and when they're finished shit where they eat for and for God's sake don't forget to take yer quinine and keep yer solar topee on yer 'ead<br />you bloomin' idiot!<br /><br />IX<br />It was a time once again when young men died with their eyes open and saw<br />the sky reflected in stagnant pools of water and cried out for their mothers<br />on bloody battlefields and went out of their lives on a Hail Mary an Our Father<br />a Hear O Israel the Lord is One.<br />Once again it was the time of oldness, when boys still in short pants<br />went off to war and came back old men, when mothers and fathers<br />on all sides prayed to the same God in their different tongues the same prayer: Please bring my boy back alive;<br />a time when newspapers spread sheets of sorrow and despair<br />over too many faces, and December 25th was the cruelest date in the year.<br />It was a time of grieving and comforting, of apathy and anger,<br />rage and resignation, of fighting and surrenderance, of sitting down to supper and becoming slowly accustomed to the empty place at the table,<br />of substituting missed voices with empty conversation,<br />of learning to grow comfortable with the deepest grief.<br /><br />A Psalm for the Great War<br /><br />1.<br />Comes a soldier ‘cross the blackened earth,<br />Only eighteen years since his distant birth.<br />Gone over the top by sheer force of willSome stranger at fifty yards to kill.<br /><br />Bayonet fixed (his resolve fixed, too)<br />Comes the soldier to die, or to do.<br />At fifty yards a man’s not a man;<br />‘Tis better to shoot him square if you can.<br /><br />But come you close enough to smell his breath<br />What ye’ll then be smellin’ is eventual death:Either his or yours, only blind fate decides;<br />Just don’t, for God’s sake, look into his eyes.<br /><br />Comes the soldier, his courage undone.<br />Did he look into the eyes of that other one?<br />Under the black and regimental skies<br />Two soldiers lie with opened eyes.<br /><br />2.<br />Showers of earth, showers of mud<br />Shoes slipping sideways in the rain and blood.<br />Slow death, quick pain, a quicker death still<br />Arrives the moment the bullet will.<br /><br />Across No Man’s Land the figures come<br />Blue-grey smudges in the drowning dawn.<br />Crouched low against all-embracing earth,<br />The soldiers come singly, alone as birth.<br /><br />Neither feeling nor thinking the soldiers advance<br />O’er the trembling earth of Verdun, France.<br /><br />February 1st, 1916, 7:12 am<br />Verdun, France<br /><br />A rush of air not cold against exposed and broken bone,<br />a scream where a mouth should be.<br />A probing of tongue into vanishment of flesh.<br />The weight of sunlight on eyelids gravid with mud.<br />A press of fingers, not his.<br /><br /> Still alive, this one.<br /> Put im over there.<br /><br />A lifting into air thick with no living thing.<br />An opening of one eye against a reluctant sun.<br />Above a shamefully beautiful sky, too terribly blue over the waste,<br />an embarrassment of clouds scudding majestically over the carnage.<br />Now he felt himself being carried over broken earth,<br />the broken parts of himself going painfully.<br />A lifting onto a cot, a rush of agony from each of the broken places at once.<br />A scream strangled by wetness.<br />A flood of morphine, sudden surcease of pain.<br /><br />In the full bright fever dreams that followed he dreamt not once of war.<br />He did not dream of trenches fortified by mud and sand and the arms and legs<br />and torsos of mostly unrecognizable comrades.<br />Nor did he dream of the filthy, skyless rain,<br />nor of the earth showers,<br />nor of the gas that drowned men inside their own lungs,<br />nor of the rats that swam under water,<br />nor of the rot that melted flesh and wool so that both came away at once<br />in your hand,<br />no longer in his nostrils the stench of blood and urine-soaked wool.<br />He dreamt instead of his room in Camden Town when his mother<br />put him to bed in the summer when it was still light outside<br />and the way the dark came slowly until only the darkness remained.<br />He saw once again the dreary floral print of the wallpaper<br />and the carved pineapples on his bedposts and the heavy furniture<br />growing fuzzy and indistinct and the slow dark coming more quickly now<br />and from downstairs the low muffled voices and the heavy tread of feet<br />and the door opening and the sudden wedge of light and his mother,<br />the largeness of her, the weight of her, becoming huge and towering over him<br />as he lay there, then bending over him, then the press of her thick lips<br />on his forehead, then the slow going away of her and then the quick going away of the light and the darkness which was now filling his room and soon,<br />sooner than soon, sleep.<br />He dreamt of his room in the woollthick grey light of a winter morning<br />and the great clock in the hall ticking its way toward yet another<br />Christmas morning.<br />He smelled once again the pudding, the whole house filled with the damp sugary smell of it, saw once again the crusted sugar bubbling smally<br />against the sides of the pot, saw his father and mother laughing and pretending to steal a taste while the other wasn’t looking.<br /><br />Then the seasons began to tumble one against the other,<br />now a crisp fall day and the rising of a church steeple into a hard blue sky<br />ripe with sap and snow,<br />now a day in summer and the air thick with unshed rain,<br />now a night in May under a sky flecked with pulsing stars<br />and the press of a hand in his and his face in the hollow of a neck<br />damp with sweat and sweet with the smell of lavender and inhabited wool.<br />He felt himself being carried over broken earth and in his ears<br />the thud of cannon and in what was left of his mouth the taste of blood and mud.<br /><br /> Put im with the other blighters ‘oo ain’t goin' to make it.<br /> Even if ‘ee did ‘ee couldn’t ever show his face to anyone, poor bastard.<br /><br />It was painful, more painful even than his wounds, to hear himself<br />spoken of in such a way.<br />Didn’t they know he could hear as well as they?<br />He could not bring the pieces of his mouth together enough to tell them.<br />Nor could he nod.<br />He tried to speak but his voice was strangled by a gushing wetness. <br />A sodden groan.<br /> <br />February 1st, 1916, 8:27 pm<br />Verdun, France<br /><br /> This one’s caught it, Sergeant.<br /> Put im over there, like I said the other one.<br /><br />But he was not yet gone, there was still enough of him to mouthlessly cry out,<br />put an ear to my lips, I’ll tell ye.<br />It was over and he knew it, it just hurt to hear himself spoken of that way,<br />so casually, as though he were already not there.<br /><br />While one is alive, he thought, it is impossible to imagine being not alive,<br />until suddenly, one simply isn’t.<br />How could I have ever fooled myself into believing<br />it could ever have been otherwise?<br />And he spiraled out of himself into incorporeal air.<br />Floating, floating, streamers of dreams following, lost and dangling ends<br />of conversations strung together like long and wisping kite tails.<br />And the earth turned huge and silent beneath the soles of his feet,<br />the tender undersides warmed, now cooled, by zones torrid,<br />now tundra-like as he soulspun out ever farther out,<br />a dreamwrecked star hurtling toward the further dream of a next life<br />then a soft painless slipping out of himself and a rising above himself<br />and then a welcoming embrace of light.<br /><br />Oh soon to be forgotten life: a wisp of hair, a curling smile, the tender hollow of a fragrant neck, flutter of girlish laughter, a roiling, rolling caravan of images, where? Upon what screen?<br />All around, himself the screen, himself the image, viewed as if from a great distance, ready pain arrrowquick to his heart, nothing left out, everything viewed and reviewed, to what purpose? What lesson?<br />I’m so tired, he thought, let me sleep, sleep.<br /><br />And sleep did close about him like a fist, and did fling him like a stone across starry webbed night, across time and geography, into another puddle<br />of indwelling flesh, yet another internment in gristle and bone.<br />Gone out of his life on a sigh (or was it just another futile battle cry?)<br />on what felt like an uprushing of air whooshing him out of yet another body,<br />short interval of womb silence, then a sudden inrushing of air and outrushing<br />of blood, a moment of strangulation, then an upside down interval in space,<br />now a slap, a cry, and a swaddling of soft blankets and new flesh.<br /><br />February 5th, 1916, 7:12 am<br />New York City<br /><br />He’d tumbled out of the trenches and into the glare of a delivery room<br />on the upper East Side of Manhattan; no rain of earth over his head anymore,<br />no shells to halve the night into fire and light,<br />He was safe in his new mother’s arms, still wet from the bath of birth, his still unopened eyes unbefouled by blood and broken bones.<br />Bloody bandages became swaddling clothes, bursting shells became lullabies.<br />No uniform to wear now but the suit he was born in.<br /><br /> Call it, will you please?<br /> 8:27 am. Male, 12 pounds, thirteen ounces.<br /> C’mon, c’mon, the date, goddamit…<br /> February fifth, in the year of our lord, nineteen-hundred and six—<br /> Oh shut up.<br /><br />December 5th, 1941, 5:33 am<br />Ponary Forest, Vilna, Poland<br /><br /> they'd taken him out and were bringing him to the shooting place<br />they'd tied his hands but did not blindfold his eyes because then the going would be slower and they were in a hurry to finish and go back to their breakfasts and he noticed the air was sharply cold for september and very dry because the rain had come little that year and the ground was dry and hard and the leaves were loud under their feet as they walked him through the wood and he looked up at the sky and in the west it was still yesterday but in the east it was today which for him would never become tomorrow that would be there for the ukrainian guards who when it was over would sling their carbines over their shoulders and turning swiftly back to camp would joke or pass wind loudly and this was their way of leaving what they had done behind them for they worked here every day and when they'd finished they always turned quickly from it and that way they carried nothing back with them still the one with the tied hands was very calm as they prodded him along with the barrels of their guns why am i so still inside he thought it must be a favor from god and thinking this he remembered to remember to pray the lord is my shepherd i shall not want but i want to remember everything and forever he thought and now there came to him her scent in his sweater the one masha had knit for him last winter at vilna the lavender she always wore coming to him even here and he would take her with him finally and she would remain with him despite what they had done and were about to do<br /> and with the dawn came a sweetening and softening of the air and the birds woke and wheeled overhead and he was glad he was not blindfolded and he looked up and tried to follow a finch in its flight but lost it and the earth and tree smell came to him and he filled his lungs with it and he was very happy he was happier than he remembered being in a long time happier even than when they had hidden and then smuggled the jewish family to safety and then themselves had hid in a peasant's barn and afterward had fallen asleep in hay rich with the smell of foaled animals and last summer's rains and now as he walked he carried the smell of the barn and the heavy warm weight of masha against him and he was very happy and in his mouth he suddenly found with his tongue a kummel seed from the bread they had shared yesterday and the small taste filled him full and the two ukrainians and the one lithuanian who were taking him joked and talked among themselves as though he were not there and already a ghost and only when he had looked up at the sky and his pace slowed for a moment did they remember their work and prod him forward with their guns<br /> it was lighter now and he could walk and look up without losing pace<br />and as he did he saw that the leaves at the top of the trees were like lacework<br />against the lightening pearl blue of the sky and the birds were louder now and freer in their singing and he thought how happy they sound how happy to be alive they will be singing even after no stop it you are in mourning for yourself when you should be happy for you did what you had to do and are dying the way you always pictured it but picturing a thing is different from living it but even so he thought it's what i wanted why should i not be happy make yourself remember the happiness of a few moments ago remember masha and the barn and as he walked he remembered the still quiet of the cell and the chill of the dawn and the guards entering loudly and coming eagerly between them and then a scuffle of feet as he and masha tried to cling to one another but they used the butt ends of their rifles to separate them and then they told them how they would work it<br /> they said at dawn each would each be taken to a different site masha to the ponary side and he to the vilna side they said they would first shoot masha and then when the sound came it would be his turn because it is especially quiet at that time of the morning and one of the ukrainians said to the man you should be able to hear quite well and then masha said bastard and the hitting began and he could not bear to see them hurting her and he screamed obscenities at them to attract the blows to himself but they stopped soon enough for they were tired and sweating from their efforts and then the ukrainian said both of you have caused far too much trouble already and to the man he said i shall personally be happy to put a bullet through your head myself and then he spat thickly at the man's feet and turning to go he said take the woman now and so they took you from me but they did not succeed for you are with me now<br />your scent is with me in the sweater you knit so lovingly with your hands which held the wool to your breast so many times that your scent is woven into it so you see my darling they did not separate us at all and we are going together as we said even though it will be to another part of the forest<br /> they’d handtied and blindfolded her and so her footsteps were unsure and this slowed her pace which annoyed her escorts very much and one of them used his boot to kick and his rifle to hit and the woman felt weak in the bowels but resolved not to show any weakness if she could help it i did not know i would feel the fear so badly she thought and then a bad cramp made her stop for a moment the leaf sounds under her feet stopping too and one of them poked her between the shoulders with his gun barrel and the pain together with her resolve made her body tighten and this helped her not to embarrass herself and in a little while she felt the ground becoming harder and the sound of the leaves becoming less and she lifted her head and tasted the air tangy with autumn and saw clearer than if she had no blindfold the arching of the oaks and heard the birds freely singing and went out of herself to greet them and she felt the tears start from her eyes and go hotly into the blindfold and she tried hard not to think of tomas but he was there for good and he would not go away he was there in the poem he had written on their last night together and which she had secreted into her left shirt pocket whose corners now pierced her heart and all at once she felt a great happiness unfold inside her like a large and breathing flower and this happiness so completely filled her that it took away the fear and even the guards and she had an uncontrollable urge to laugh purely and loudly just to let the happiness out and she thought how wonderful it would be to really let the laughter out and send it singing skyward like a bird but only the merest smile was visible on her lips which went unnoticed by all<br /> it was almost light by the time they reached the shooting place and he could see the tops of the branches very well now as well as the clearing between the trees and the rounded edges of the large open ditch just beyond the clearing and there he saw a group of prisoners in filthy camp clothing filling a section of the ditch with earth some with their hands and some with make-shift shovels but they did not look up as he approached and he thought how odd to measure the rest of your life in moments instead of by the usual calendar which makes a man say i will do such and such a month or two months from now or such and such next year or five years from now but for me there can be no from now there can only be now which even now is passing away but this now had the past very much in it yes it had his brother too and his mother and his father and his friends from the university but principally it had masha and each fought for dominance in his heart and now it was his brother in his wandervolk clothes the large and heavy rucksack jumping up and down on his thin shoulders as he walked and then stopped to wave at the top of a hill at sunset a stick figure against a vermilion sky and now it was his mother tucking him into bed her round and smiling face coming close very fast to kiss him wetly on the forehead and now it was his father coming home on saturday night fully drunk and suddenly very playful as he picked him up and held him high over his head and then brought him quickly down to his lips and then the pricking of his large mustache as he kissed him and the pipe and beer smell on his clothes and the calluses on his fingers and palms as he held his face in his hands with the oil and rag smell still on them from the factory and now it was his friend lustig from the university who could barely see even with the thickest possible glasses but who had no trouble seeing into human hearts and now it was this one and that one but most of all it was masha who was being taken by two ukrainians and the litvak now a kapo who had joined them from the camps and they too were hungry and eager to be finished so they could return to warmth and their breakfasts<br /> and the ukrainians walked quickly prodding the woman along with their guns and they joked in their language while the kapo whistled a tune he had heard at a cinema once and which he could not get out of his head but the litvak was silent and walked at some distance behind the others for he was shorter than the others and his uniform hung poorly on him before the war when he could choose his own clothes instead of having them chosen for him he’d needed to have his trouser legs shortened but the war made no such concession to fashion and so his trouser legs were too long and hung well over the heels of his boots and got caught under them as he walked and frayed them to ribbons and the upper half of him looked no neater with his tunic two sizes too large and the sleeves which were too long were rolled double over his wrists it was clear that the litvak did not care for the war but now that he was in it he had determined to acquit himself well as long as he did not have to do anything too unpleasant still shooting the woman would be unpleasant but he would not be doing it alone and besides who would know if he decided at the last second to withhold his bullet for he was no more made for war than his uniform was made for him because he was a dreamer and a reader of books and he day dreamed now as he walked and this together with his trouser legs which were continually getting caught under his heels caused him to lag behind one too many times and the big ukrainian who had gone far ahead had glanced over his shoulder to look for him but the glance was not one of concern<br /> it was light now as they approached the place and now the ukrainians stopped joking and the kapo stopped whistling and they stood now just beyond the clearing and waited for the litvak to catch up they were bored now as well as tired and hungry for the ukrainians had each heard the other's jokes many times and had grown tired of the tune that was still bouncing around in the kapo’s head coming out of his lips hey pipsqueak come here said the big ukrainian and the litvak shuffled to where the others waited for him and stood at attention before the ukrainian and suddenly confused about how to address his superior whether to say yes my captain or yes sir he chose what he considered the safer course and remained dumb for he had not been in the war very long and then the big ukrainian said take the woman and stand her over there and pointing to the thrown up rubble at the edge of the ditch said pick your feet up when you walk and the others snickered then quickly straightened their faces when they saw look on the big ukrainian's face and then the kapo said you had better move faster than that they're waiting for the shot remember but the woman stood tall and erect and proud her blindfolded head tilted heroically at the sky but because her eyes were blindfolded the expression went unnoticed instead she had about her the curiously absent air of someone intently listening for something that is just out of sight and hearing and the litvak shuffled up to her with feet that would have preferred to walk elsewhere and reached for her elbow anyway but the moment his hand touched her the woman caught his weakness the way an animal in a moment senses fear and she jerked her arm away do not touch me murderer she said and the litvak jumped back as though he had grasped an electrified wire and his trouser legs becoming caught under his shoes made him trip but he righted himself before he fell weakling said the big ukrainian and walking swiftly up to the litvak delivered a blow to the right side of his head which knocked him down you disgrace yourself and us as well he said but perhaps you need a good example to follow so watch little litvak watch and learn this is how you escort the enemy to the execution site and so saying the ukrainian grabbed her roughly by the shoulders tugging her first to himself and then pushing her away so that she nearly fell but this time the woman did not jerk her arm away or make any motion to resist she was glad the weak man was not taking her after all how would her bravery appear next to such weakness and the woman felt under her feet the broken ground and her heels slid once or twice on the rubble but she regained her balance quickly and walked on as though she were not blindfolded she did not even mind the iron press of the ukrainian's fingers through her thin jacket into her arm pain was a minor discomfort now a momentary distraction then she felt the earth going higher and the earth looser and then the ukrainian shouting halt and grabbing her by the shoulders again in his push-pull fashion he jerked her around so that she stood facing the three who waited about a hundred yards away and when he was satisfied that she was standing where he wanted he kicked her feet apart like a folding table that needs righting and then she heard his footsteps going away on the broken earth and she heard the wind high and strong now as it came from the east and she tasted on the wind the piney resiny scent of the forest and breathed it deeply into her and she liked the way the wind played with her hair teasingly one moment now a little rough like tomas then the big ukrainian walked back to the others and sat on the ground watching the litvak massaging the right side of his face get up he said and after one or two tries the litvak struggled to his feet and tried to stand at attention but he felt his heart hammering like a madman inside his chest and the big ukrainian said you will have the honor of firing the first shot and then we will all fire and that should put some backbone into you eh and when he had said that a sinking dread a of nausea of the heart settled like some dead weight inside him and he felt his face grow white he did not mean to be insolent but he could not control the words and said please do not make me do this thing she is a woman i cannot shoot a woman and the big ukrainian did not know whether to hit him again or to shoot him and only said flinging an accusatory arm out behind him in the direction of the ditch that woman has helped hundreds of jews escape and do you know what those escaped jews will do they will spread across europe breeding like flies as they go now what do you do to flies eh how do you stop filthy flies from breeding you swat them like this and the ukrainian gave the palm of his hand a ringing slap and said now swat her like the fly she is but the litvak not only did not jump to his superior's orders he sat back down on the ground and putting his head in his hands began to weep please do not make me do this thing he said at least not by myself he thought if they all fired at once no one would know that he had withheld his bullet or he could fire just above her head yes that was what he would do while the kapo and the other ukrainian watched disinterestedly for they were by this time very hungry and the kapo cursed himself for not having the foresight to pocket at least a small piece of bread while the litvak remained on the ground and continuing to sob loudly did not hear the unsnap of the ukrainian's holster nor did he hear the sleek slide of metal against leather as the pistol was withdrawn and looking up suddenly into the barrel of the gun he heard and saw the flash but did not feel the bullet enter his brain well there’s an end to you said the ukranian and a mile and a half away the man standing on the broken earth stiffened at the sound and then went limp but did not fall and everything even masha had gone out of him now and closing his eyes heard one of them say that’s it and another say but only one has fired and then the other say who cares i’m famished heard the grunts of men rising stiffly from the ground and slapping the earth from their clothing heard them shuffle into position and heard one of them say aim for the head no said the other the heart but his heart was already dead and the two fired in unison one a split second later and as he fell back he saw the morning sky huge and wide as forever and a cloud large as any continent floating immense and wonderfully above him and it was just like a castle he had seen once in a child’s picture book it had turrets of soft pearl gray even a moat and the sky was a pale and dusty blue which reminded him of something he had not thought of for many years yes he thought the robin's eggs the sky is the same color as the robin's eggs<br />I used to gather here as a child how strange and beautiful to be thinking of this now<br /> three miles away the woman heard but did not move for she was hard and dry inside like the ground and when the volley of shots came from the vilna side it turned what was left of her heart to stone and because her ears had also become like stone she did not hear the men ordered into position nor did she hear the them shuffle into place take desultory aim and fire<br /> with these shots the morning was broken for good and in the trees the birds screamed and flew their branches and many leaves fell and the high wind blew<br /> somewhere a sky of unbroken blue<br />a robin’s egg blue<br /> the sound of the wind soughing in the high trees<br />somewhere a long time ago<br /> in another dream now only dimly remembered<br />like the running-down of a projector<br /> the last images flickering and fading<br />before the bright lights come up<br /><br />Once again in the winter the dark came early but in the summer<br />the dark came slowly.<br />Once again it was daylight when his mother put him to bed,<br />and so his room was still full of end-of-day August sunlight.<br />On summer nights the dark in his room came by slow degrees,<br />a soft wool-grey light that slowly blackened until the darkness<br />was a completed thing.<br />He could feel the summer-baked city, a presence behind the pulled down<br />green shade of his bedroom window.<br />A sense, even from within the darkening room, of red brick russet turning<br />in the dying trombone-colored light, and a thickening of shadows<br />that cooled the bricks to a dull brown flatness and leavened the city’s heat.<br />And with coming of night came the further darkness of sleep,<br />and the sound of an oscillating fan turning now toward him and now away.<br />In the far corner of his bedroom, on top of the bookcase that held<br />his 25-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, sat a three-speed oscillating fan.<br />This is what I will always remember, he would say one day many days hence,<br />the sound of a fan in a room growing slowly dark with end-of-day summer light.<br />He would always remember the slow going and coming away of the fan,<br />the turn and return of the sound, and the pulse of air that reached his face<br />a second or two later, and the room growing slowly darker every moment.<br />He remembered winter nights when the sky beyond his window was so hard<br />and blue the sky broke with snow, but it was the summer nights he would<br />always return to in his memory, those long suspiring summer nights that never fell but faded, layer by layer, into darkness.<br />In the sun-song of morning, a pinprick of sunlight would peep through a tiny chink in the cracked green shade and the fan still turning, pushing the air at first toward him and then away, like a whispered kindness.<br />Across from his bed stood the tall and massive Chippendale armoire<br />with the double brass pulls on each drawer that always clinked too loudly<br />when opened so that he had to grasp the pulls and hold them from falling back against the fine wood so that no one would know he was awake.<br />To the right of the armoire was the heavily draped and green-shaded window.<br />Running the length of the wall was another bookcase which held his books<br />and records and toys.<br />And his bed was a boat that navigated the night,<br />with its bedpost masts and pillowed clouds and the sea a coverlet<br />of dark blue cotton squares.<br />And always the sound of a fan turning in the slowly deepening dark.<br /><br />X<br />To wake in a sun-crowded room, still tangled in sleep,<br />or a room shadow-soaked but trembling with immanent sunlight,<br />a gondola dream of Venice, a mud-tombed nightmare of Verdun,<br />all fading in its passage from sleep to wakefulness.<br />Oh kind cloak of sleep that covers night and lays like a pillow<br />between one life and another, cover me now with thy dark and starry caress.<br />Tender me no more dreams, at least for a little while.<br />Plot me no more plots, weave me no more mysteries,<br />dim the lights of the stage and keep the characters in the wings,<br />at least for a little while.<br />Return no more lovers to my breast, keep wide the distance<br />between past-life friendships and next-life handshakes,<br />at least for a little while.<br />Slow down the mad flurry of debit and credit exchanges,<br />the old-new introductions, at least for a little while.<br />Let blessed silence reign, at least for a little while.<br />But soon the rising and convergence of thought and desire,<br />surrender and appropriation, nakedness and possession,<br />relinquishment and achievement, nothing ever coming quite into balance.<br />And so the jettisoning of souls, the thrusting up out of one dropped form<br />and missile diving into another, the condensed mass of millions of personalities<br />and countless millions of experiences bullet-shot into a human being<br />no bigger than a fist.<br /><br />And waking. Again.<br /> <br />XI<br />They say that dying, that is, the actual moment of death, that moment<br />when the soul slips the body and enters the hell or heaven state,<br />is painless. They’re right. I know.<br />I’ve done it thousands of times.<br />And I remember each time with the wide-open eyes of memory.<br />A memory that never lets me forget.<br />Memory is my curse, forgetfulness my Lethe.<br /><br />XII<br />The dream of life, these lifetimes of dreams, merge and swell,<br />the swift-running streams running together, the images blurring<br />the outlines of my this-moment world, and in my ears the echo<br />of forgotten laughter, muttered oaths and whispers.<br />My heart triple-beats with a thousand memories that speak in a hundred voices,<br />most of which, alas, are my own.<br />Only in sleep, or under the comforting cloak of morphia,<br />does my mind find rest in the cease and surcease that follows.<br />I am adrift in a sea of my own stories, their ends left dangling,<br />to be finished in some future life.<br /><br />Perhaps this one.<br /><br />XIII<br />The sad fact of the matter was, it was all very sad,<br />this constant coming and going, dying and being born again,<br />gaining and then losing and then gaining again<br />the very ones you loved, or hated, or loved or hated simultaneously.<br />The only thing that seemed to remain eternally the same were the skies,<br />the endless blues of summer, the leaden grays of winter,<br />great continents of cloud massing themselves above his head.<br />Looking at a one sky could remind you not of one lifetime<br />but a hundred all at once.<br />Skies were his time machine.<br /><br />July 25th, 1948, 12:05 am<br />Dehra Dun, India<br /><br />He died in his sleep, Surrendra Kumar did, the Name sleeping still in his heart.<br />Because he had neglected, at least occasionally, to taste the Name,<br />like a kiss that is always there to be stolen and savored, he did not taste of it now,<br />and so nothing escaped from the too tightly closed gates of his lips;<br />the Name simply lay there enharboured, an unlaunched ship.<br />He had died in his sleep, not having consciously<br />taken the Name of the Lord, no “Hai Ram!” to catapult his soul<br />slingshot-like into birthwheel-breaking freedom and eternal nowness.<br />No, the Name had remained unspoken, anchored by sleep, thickened no doubt<br />by that second (or was it the third?) toddy.<br />And as his soul spun out and away he had time, just a moment really,<br />to regret the little lusts and lies that purred and pirouetted through his life,<br />so venal in their tiny singleness, so stone-heavy in their aggregate,<br />no wonder the Name had sunk with his wasted body,<br />had not soared nor lifted him Home.<br /><br />July 28th, 1948, 8:45 pm<br />Kyoto, Japan<br /><br />He lay there, did Eiji Kurasawa, breathing out the last breaths of his life,<br />and did not dream.<br />He didn’t really exist at all.<br />The personality he wore for the last seventy-six years was quickly evaporating.<br />The last shreds of the cloth that had so tightly wrapped his life<br />were unraveling now around him.<br />Very soon, the flesh-shroud that was he-his-own-self would become undone<br />to the last most-finite fiber.<br />All his thoughts, feelings, dreams, hopes, fears, and desires would,<br />at the exhalation of his last breath, sew themselves up neatly into a small,<br />yet imperceptible bubble, and snap its beloved link to him forever.<br />But rather than burst, this bubble which is nothing but the hardened impressions<br />of he-who-was-his-own-last-self will travel into another self who will be<br />but an extension of his-own-last-self and it will lie sleeping there<br />only to be awakened in dreams and flashes of insight, split-second reactions<br />of hatred or instant love, all of which will mystify and madden him<br />with a slightly unpleasant, nagging uncertainty, but he will not question any of it<br />beyond a moment’s inquiry .<br />Then he will forget them each and all but will stop to wonder sometimes<br />in the middle of a thought or a sentence,<br />What was that?<br />Who was that?<br />And why...now?<br /><br />XIV<br />This damned coming and going, coming and going, dashing and darting<br />in and out of each another’s lives until we achieve some sort of balance,<br />please dear God, or at the very least let there be an equilibrating<br />of blood and flesh, desire and loss, instead of carving out from the heft<br />of a just-passed lifetime simply more heft,<br />craning our necks above the hubris of our humanity, until we can at last<br />see clearly, if even for a few moments, a way through our own darkness.<br />Unless by the Grace of a Perfect Master a balance is struck,<br />we shall stumble and stagger blindly and blithely on interminably,<br />in search of yet another exit, another entrance.<br /><br />XV<br />Fallible as soldiers do we fall into one lifetime after another,<br />tumbling in and out of each other’s lives like so much discarded clothing.<br />The consequences of our griefs lie too solidly against our hearts,<br />so we rummage through the detritus of our lifetimes<br />and give thanks for occasionally coming up empty-handed.<br />What dumbshows do we enjoy, paid for over and over again at ever<br />higher prices.<br />The curtain falls, a paring down of lifetimes into a single breath.<br />Unwhispered griefs slip through our tightly clenched teeth.<br />Tumbling down the years weariness wears the days away;<br />sleep divides the rest.<br /><br />XVI<br />Ah sweet bitter memory that rubs against the heart<br />turning it slowly inside out,<br />turning it over and over a thousand lifetimes over.<br /><br />The ache and pass of time<br />the thrusting of hands into the swiftly moving stream<br />a feeble attempt to pluck just one moment from the waters<br />one moment more fragile than a breath.<br /><br />The weight and press of time<br />a million moments that lean their insignificant weight<br />against our hearts exerting the minutest of pressures<br />enough to catapult us through ten thousand lifetimes.<br /><br />The wail and weep of time,<br />The forward press of its backward hand,<br />the taut muscles of memory<br />stretched to the tearing point<br />over some word or scene<br />so long forgotten, capsized by incident,<br />by the six-o-clock news.<br />Time bends but never breaks.<br />We try to outbreathe the moment,<br />until the moment passes us by.<br /><br />XVII<br />And behind his eyes the memory of each of his beloved's eyes so fair so kind<br />so heartless so cruel so thoughtful so impossibly gone forever a thousand<br />wedding rings on a thousand skeleton fingers till dust do us part<br />the memory distant and fading like the tail end of a beautiful and frightening dream a high sweet voice in a whipping wind full of pledges and promises carried away by the wind and the years.<br /><br />XVIII<br />The clutch of a child's moist hand in yours the joining of old hands veined<br />and spotted and about to part in a final goodbye oh my heart I pledged to love you forever but now you have slipped behind that curtain where I cannot follow,<br />that curtain which I cannot part until I myself am ready to lift its heavy fold.<br />Dear God I know it's all part of your plan but I don't like it I never did I never will it's not fair goddamit I don't care about heaven and hell I just want to be with my beloved oh why did you have to rip her from my sight which left a hole<br />so deep and wide my love could never fill it up?<br /><br />XIX<br />And in his heart the stirrings of other lovers, other beloveds, each precious and rare and unique beyond all telling yet attempted anyway in wood and marble and clay in oils and water color and crayon in diaries and stories and novels and poems and scraps of paper seen by no one.<br /><br />XX<br />And every moment says, this is real, this will last forever.<br />Childhood and first schools and first friends.<br />The first shy forays into humanhood.<br />Gossip, girls, boys, and their incomprehensible ways.<br />First date, first walk in the moonlight, sweaty hands welded together.<br />First kiss, the startling wetness of it, never has another face ever come so close.<br />Then a change of schools and friends, maybe a beloved grandparent dies,<br />or a sleep-shattering phone call in the middle of night notifying your mother<br />of the fatal accident of a beloved parent, brother, sister, son, daughter.<br />Then one day your father comes home and announces, We're moving…<br />Or declares: Your mother and I have been talking; we both feel it would be better<br />if we lived apart for awhile; you'll understand better when you're older.<br />And suddenly a whole chunk of your life, with its aggregation of scenes and acts<br />you unconsciously depended on not to change, to somehow by some kind<br />of mutual agreement no one made to go on forever, just as it was,<br />suddenly ends, the final act concluded by a period or exclamation point<br />made of stone.<br /><br />XXI<br />Now comes the time of restlessness; the compulsion to do, to achieve,<br />to make, to perform, to build, to invent, to beget, to write, to sing, to paint,<br />to heal, to adjudicate, to preach, to collect, to craft, to cobble, to complete,<br />only in the end coming to realize the great and recondite secret:<br />there is really and truly no need to do anything, only a need to become .<br />Or unbecome.<br /><br />XXII<br />Now is the time to stop becoming and unbecome.<br />We have already become all that we could ever hope to be<br />over countless thousands of becomings.<br />We cannot become any more.<br />It is now time to unbecome.<br />Unbecome hate.<br />Unbecome fear.<br />Unbecome lust. (Good luck!)<br />Unbecome greed.<br />Unbecome doubt.<br />Unbecome jealousy.<br />Unbecome becoming.<br />We have spent enough lifetimes becoming what we are not;<br />let us now indulge in unbecoming so that we may become<br />what we always were.<br />If the truth is that the end of every lifetime is the total and complete annihilation<br />of one's individual personality, then what does it matter what one does.<br />It's not what we do, but Who we do it for.<br />If we do it for ourselves, it binds us; but if we do it for Him, the doing<br />sets us free.<br /><br />XXIII<br />This little life, rounded by so many sleeps,<br />is passing, passing, minute by minute,<br />hour by hour, day by day,<br />year after year, and thus will it end.<br />And on that last day I will not have<br />thrown off the weight of my wants<br />nor will I have effaced even the smallest<br />fragment of my self,<br />save that which His face has melted away.<br />And the weight I so carefully nurtured in life<br />will weigh me down into another body,<br />fit or lame, colored or white,<br />but heavy nonetheless with the weight<br />of ten thousand wants.<br />And on the wall will hang baby's first calendar<br />with ten thousand days of wanting yet to fill in.<br />Begin, oh begin again, little life.<br />Begin again.<br /><br />XIV<br />Like a young and reaching stalk you shoot into adolescence,<br />prodding experience into being with shy, brave fingers,<br />testing it against your infant endurance,<br />rearing back in terror when it rises genie-like from the inside coat pocket<br />of your first Brooks Brothers suit.<br />Now a job, a career, a purpose, a work engine to drive the car of you<br />across a lengthy lifetime of busyness.<br />Now a family, torn apart by pettiness or welded together in other-pleasing love;<br />children as adornments or finger-pointing shadows of yourselves.<br />In due course arrive achievements, honors, disappointments, the uncomfortable silences, failures turned inside out as successes (and vice versa);<br />speeches, concessions, reluctant compromises made in the last desperate moments of a teeming hour; congratulations, condolences, commiserations,<br />the obligatory pat on the back, the sideways kiss.<br />And over the years no excuses are made, a million excuses are made,<br />and all is forgiven in the end.<br />Then a memoir, an obituary, a biography,<br />and oblivion.<br /><br />And didn't every moment say, This is real, this will last forever?<br /><br />XXV<br />Rushing in and out of each other's lives, colliding like kisses,<br />womb-exiting and entering, tomb dwelling and crib residing,<br />wrestling the demons of one life onto the mat of another,<br />endlessly losing and winning the game of self-solitaire,<br />building, tearing down, starting over, beginning at what only seems like<br />the beginning, forever forgetting that we have passed this way before,<br />not once but ten thousand times.<br /><br />XXVI<br />Just a lifetime or two ago he had passed away in an untimely hour<br />while he was tying his shoe (or was it his tie; he'll never remember<br />now), a blinding red-white nova before his eyes as the vessel burst,<br />unfairly snatching him away before he had really started living.<br />All his goals and wants, all his ambitions and aspirations<br />were cut off at the legs, as it were.<br />To his way of thinking, his life was a best-selling book whose exciting<br />middle hadn't even been reached yet.<br />Clearly, this was unfair.<br />Too much had been left unfinished, unresolved, his life a beautiful<br />sculpture still locked inside the marble.<br />Oh, his Last Will and Testament was made out and duly stored away<br />in the obligatory strong box, along with some valuable stocks and bonds<br />and his mother's heavy and depressing old brooch, which she insisted<br />he give to his wife who refused to wear it, saying she dreaded the very<br />sight of it.<br />Presently, however, his won't was much stronger than his will.<br />Death, coming unexpectedly as it did, was an exceedingly inconvenient<br />interruption, an annoying delay and postponement of his plans.<br />It had arrived in an untidy hour; the bits and pieces of his life<br />left strewn about him in incompleteness.<br />And he would have none of it.<br />But he had already set sail for that farther shore,<br />and he knew from watching too many movies that there was no returning,<br />except as some angel on a mission of mercy, but that surely wasn't him.<br />He had already risen far above his body (so strange a sight!);<br />there was his wife weeping (but not too hysterically) over his lifeless form,<br />in the suit he should have had pressed weeks ago; and he cried out to her:<br />I never said I'm sorry for the lousy way I treated you, all those many years.<br />But she did not hear.<br />His death was an accomplished thing, like breakfast.<br />O please! came the silent scream, please merciful God, not yet!<br />I had so much to be happy about, but I made myself and everyone around me<br />miserable with my continual whining and wanting.<br />Why was I always wanting more instead of being content with what I had?<br />Was what I had so little? Maybe it should have been less;<br />I would have appreciated it more.<br />Dear God, I had so many gifts from your hand, and I dishonored each one.<br />I let them all slip through my fingers.<br />Now I have no fingers with which to grasp!<br />I had a beautiful wife, a true helpmeet (look! she's actually crying for me)<br />yet I lusted after other women!<br />I had a beautiful home, yet I always wanted to live somewhere else!<br />Now it's all receding from me, like my hairline.<br />I weep and have no eyes!<br />I cry out and have no mouth!<br />My precious tears have no course!<br />And so he set out for that farther shore in a vessel made of sleep;<br />regret and longing filled his sails, his next appointment to keep.<br /><br />XXVII<br />You asshole. You self-indulgent shit.<br />You act as though you were the only human being who ever<br />felt anything.<br />You and your talk of slowly darkening rooms, old schoolrooms<br />and libraries, the sighs for lost time and lost sunlight,<br />just who the hell do you think you are, anyway?Think you've got some monopoly on feelings, for chrissake?<br />Think you're the first person in the world to mourn the loss of a parent?<br />A wife? A child?<br />What you need is a good dose of the salts.<br />A stint in the army would fix you up, it would.<br />Put your handkerchief away (I'll give you something to cry about)<br />and get off that bloody mountain of yours.<br />Stop thinking of yourself as some angst-ridden character in a Doré engraving.<br />Rain isn't bloody tears.<br />It's just rain.<br />Cold, lousy, soaking-clear-through-your-Pierre Cardin-suit rain.<br /><br />XXVIII<br />And in some future life, who knows how many more<br />if he keeps trying to get it right,<br />he will achieve the reparation of all wrongs,<br />the healing of all wounds,<br />the righting of all failures,<br />the sweetening of all sufferings,<br />the relaxation of all strivings,<br />the harmonizing of all strife,<br />the unraveling of all enigmas,<br />and the real and full meaning of all life --<br />past, present and future.<br /> <br />“From your mouth to God’s ear,” he said from nowhere.<br /><br />XXIX<br />It is now the second day of his new life; almost a week has passed since<br />he has passed away.<br />It's late August, 1948.<br />The temperature is at 87°, and it's not even 8 o'clock in the morning.<br />The sun is an angry red eye weeping hazy reddish light into his room.<br />The space of these few days is enough to begin the dissolving process<br />for those he's left behind, more than enough time to begin canceling<br />other people's memory of him and his memory of them;<br />the distance widening with every passing minute and hour.<br />Someone in fact has only just laid flowers over his newly dug grave<br />and walked away.<br />The wind blows; a leaf falls.<br />He opens his eyes to a new morning.<br /><br /><strong>Times Rhymes<br /></strong><br /><em>Have You Seen the Lovely Stranger?<br /></em><br />Have you seen the lovely Stranger?<br />Have you seen his lovely smile?<br />Please tell me if you’ve seen him,<br />For I’ve searched such a long, long while.<br /><br />Have you heard from the lovely stranger?<br />Have you heard of the gift he brings?<br />The gift of a kiss in the darkest night,<br />And the song of silence he sings.<br /><br />Have you touched the lovely Stranger?<br />Have you touched his curling hair?<br />Or has he touched you with his love<br />That’s silent, but always there?<br /><br />O have you seen the lovely Stranger?<br />Please tell me, do not conceal;<br />For I heard that once he passed this way,<br />And my heart is it his heel.<br /><br /><em>One Life's Not Enough to Love You</em><br /><br />One life's not enough to love you,<br />So a thousand times we return<br />To live our lives in a thousand ways,<br />Your grace to try to earn.<br /><br />Each life's a single movie frame,<br />A simple, childish rhyme.<br />How sad it is we need so many lives<br />To become that which we were all the time.<br /><br />We drag our pasts behind us<br />Like Marley's well-forged chain.<br />We wear the fabric of our sins<br />Which shows each bloody stain.<br /><br />Yet if we could love for a moment<br />With all our lives and hearts,<br />We might cancel all our tomorrows<br />And never have to learn new parts.<br /><br />But time it will be that steals Your Name<br />and mixes it with the dust,<br />where we've let it lie like a fallen flower;<br />a heart-wheel gone to rust.<br /><br />We live for some other moment<br />in the future or the past,<br />instead of living each present moment<br />as if each one were our last.Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-34435956851400737962009-07-26T09:42:00.000-07:002009-07-26T09:46:30.374-07:00Part Six: "Song for My Father and Mother"<strong>Part Six<br /></strong><em>Song for My Father and Mother</em><br /><br />Oh my father, what was the exact, precise moment in time when time stole<br />the essence of you and wrapped a shadow around your so thin shoulders<br />like a shawl?<br />What was the exact, precise moment that the grayness came?<br />What happened between that moment of wellness and that moment<br />of sickness?<br />What malevolent sea-change took place in your cells?<br /><br />My father, on that July 4th, when you stood there tall and proud<br />at your eightieth birthday party, wearing a paper American flag vest,<br />Lucille's gold chain around your sunburnt neck, did you not think<br />you would live forever?<br />Did not we all?<br /><br />I awoke early in the morning and thought I heard your voice<br />solid and strong and not breaking.<br /><br />My father, it broke my heart to see you struggling up the steps of your condo,<br />thin as a puppet and as light footed, your feet hovering over each step as though<br />someone were dangling you from wires, your six-foot one-hundred<br />and sixteen-pound frame so fragile on those unforgiving stone steps.<br />How I cursed each one that lay there thwarting you with their stony deliberateness.<br />Legs thin as arms lifting and wavering over each step, unsure as a child's.<br /><br />Oh my father, why did it pierce my heart when I heard myself asking<br />to borrow a pair of your shorts which I knew you would never take back,<br />you telling me to go ahead, pick out any you want, I don't need so many.<br />Go ahead, Mick, take what you want.<br />Me, bumpy-legged me, in my father's shorts.<br />Papa.<br /><br />And we ate Chinese food from paper plates on trays around your bed,<br />but the food gave you no nourishment; instead it took what little life you had left<br />for the now slowly becoming useless function of digestion.<br /><br />And that night I tucked you in and kissed you a skeleton child<br />and I could see in your eyes how you dreaded the sudden night.<br /><br />And soon my father you will go to that place where I cannot follow;<br />you will slip silently behind that curtain which I cannot peep behind<br />like a child trying to find his playmate's hiding place.<br />Your eyes once bright as summer lanterns, your flesh once taut and firm<br />now ghost-becoming before my sight, becoming as transparent as film.<br /><br />Oh my father, time is turning down the light.<br />Please do not turn it off just yet.<br /><br />Would that I could have had this vision before my eyes when, as a child,<br />I cowered before those arms that could hit and those eyes that could burn<br />with unforgiving anger.<br />If I had known then that one day those arms would cling to mine<br />as I led you to your walker and those eyes would silently plead for kindly death,<br />I would not have judged you so harshly.<br /><br />Some pass quickly behind the curtain, some are as houselights<br />that slowly, slowly bring the curtain down.<br /><br />My father, young and tall and erect in the sun, bent solid over his putter,<br />the caddie waiting impatiently a few respectful feet away,<br />leaning I think too casually on my father's golf bag.<br /><br />My father, a founder of businesses, a feeder of families not his immediate own,<br />a tender of sisters and nieces and nephews, solid sentinel of a loveless marriage<br />for more than fifty loveless years.<br /><br />My father, when I waved goodbye to you through the window of Sam's car,<br />the picture of you standing there, a meager inhabitant of your clothes,<br />bravely trying to stand erect and wave as though time had not touched you<br />with its withering finger, this is the picture I knew I would frame forever<br />as my last picture of you.<br />Time has developed and preserved it perfectly.<br /><br />I dreamt of you again last night, father.<br />I saw you standing on legs that had not yet been withered to sticks<br />by slow disease.<br />And I looked up at your wide forehead, the same forehead I had bent to kiss<br />as you lay there in your funeral shroud, all 90-something pounds of you,<br />your skin slightly cool, like the wax of a candle that has only lately been extinguished, but in the dream your forehead was bright red with sunlight<br />and coursing blood, and you were telling me how all you needed<br />was physical therapy, that would do the trick, just five minutes more<br />on the exercise bike every day, and I thought, dear God,<br />you are eighty-four years old, you can't keep death away by exercise,<br />though you pedaled your way round the earth, moon and stars.<br /><br />My heart ached for you, father, ached for your fear of approaching death,<br />whose well-timed footsteps you heard all too clearly, even then.<br />How strong is the will to live, to not surrender to that sleep which sets us waking<br />all over again to yet another life with its new problems, new parents,<br />new schools.<br /><br />And mom, I saw you too, though not in the same dream;<br />I had separated you both even in my dreams, as fifty years of loveless marriage<br />had separated you both in life.<br />And mama, you also were wondrously alive, your body still firm and full<br />and smelling of Evian and cold cream, and not yet reeking of unevaporated sweat and the slightly sweet sick smell of the chronically bed-ridden.<br /><br />Mom, I cannot even now bring myself to remember you as you took<br />your last breath.<br /><br />How could it be that the same child you cradled in your arms would<br />forty-five years later be standing by your bed, watching as you died?<br />How could God allow that?<br />But oh, what a special privilege it was, to send you soaring out upon His Name,<br />into forever.<br /><br />That Tuesday in March, while I was accelerating my heart in the warm West Pool<br />of the Vanderbilt YMCA, my father's heart stopped beating.<br /><br />And I will always remember you, father, the long narrow form of you<br />in your funeral shroud there in the synagogue, like a mannequin on its back,<br />so straight and still, so unalterably still, the high dome of your forehead<br />and circling tuft of white hair, the purse and press of your lips, the caress<br />of your eyelashes against your cheek, all so suggestive of movement<br />that now would never occur.<br /><br />And I cried I love you to the echoing rafters, though no one was there<br />but I knew you were hearing me.<br /><br />After you died, your voice on the answering machine still greeted people<br />who called; a ghoulish irony.<br />When my cousin Bonnie came down, she recorded over it.<br />In the two minutes it must have taken her to change the message,<br />she had erased you, and the last audible sound of you left in the world.<br /><br />And I can still see my mother and father walking together down the slight incline<br />of east 66th street to the apartment on second avenue, much like the one<br />on 81st street, for here too was a boulevard of tall trees on the right<br />and old apartments on the left.<br />I watch them from behind (I am following with my wife; we all four had just gone out for dinner): two very old people bound by more than fifty years<br />of marriage, walking down a street on a summer night not so very long ago, walking with the herky-jerky arthritic walk of the very old.<br />And they are holding hands.<br />This meeting of flesh and bone suggests a joining of heart and mind that I know<br />is an illusion.<br />It is a symbol only, but one which I willingly, almost eagerly, allow myself<br />to be fooled by.<br />And I can see them still, holding hands against the dark, their bent and rounded<br />backs to my eyes, walking down 66th street into memory and forever.<br /><br />And God in his compassion gives each of us someone's hand to hold<br />as we walk out of our lives and into forever.<br /><br />Somewhere in time my father is still walking in sunlight<br />toward the house, striding toward me with open arms,<br />arms sweet with sun and sweat and suntan lotion,<br />wide linen trousers billowing in the breeze.<br /><br />Somewhere in time we are walking in sunlight that will never dim or fade.<br />In that somewhere we have just eaten but not to dullness;<br />we have slept but not to lethargy;<br />and time is a stranger we shall always be meeting and forever forgetting.<br /><br />My mother and father lived in the world and never thought they'd leave it,<br />as we all do, and must do to survive.<br />My mother and father thought the sunlight would never fade,<br />that the latest movies would always be there to be enjoyed,<br />that the Sunday Times would always be there to be skimmed through<br />and matzo always there to be nibbled at<br />and birthdays to be celebrated<br />and parties to be attended<br />and friends to be consoled<br />and relatives to be gossiped over<br />but both your end dates had been arranged a long time ago,<br />the time and place fixed,<br />the hour reserved down to the second,<br />for the last sentence was written when the first was penned,<br />the last breath assured when the first was taken.<br />Do we not each live our lives truly believing that death is something<br />that happens only to other people?<br />Do we not each live every day firmly believing in a tomorrow?Which one of us goes to sleep at night unexpectant of a tomorrow?<br />Who among us plans for a future we expect won't be there?<br />We go on endlessly filling in our date books, making appointments,<br />reading the latest bestsellers, eating in new restaurants,<br />steadfastly refusing to countenance the thought that our date too is inscribed<br />in permanent ink in that largest of all volumes.<br />Try as we may, none of us shall be tardy for this appointment;<br />even the chronically late-for-dinner shall arrive on time;<br />when our appointed time comes, we shall each our appointment keep.<br /><br /><em>For Father, at Rest<br /></em><br />Eighty-six years of you lay wasting upon the bed,<br />your thin, shriveled form so frail it broke with every breath,<br />inner waste turning outward toward skin, teeth, and hair.<br />The machine of you finally beyond repair.<br />All the rivers of you drying up.<br />Slow disease at long life’s end and your skin so paper thin<br />I could almost see the spirit underneath,<br />eager to sprint out of its cage of days and nights,<br />to flee the house crumbling all about itself<br />and take up new residence.<br />Sing we now the farewell song, woven from blood and bone,<br />single-voiced but, thank God, forever unalone.<br /><br /><strong>Time Rhymes<br /></strong><br /><em>Life is fleeting, time is fast</em><br /><br />Life is fleeting, time is fast.<br />Nothing ever seems to last.<br /><br />Though I held forever in my hand,<br />Through my fingers like grains of sand<br /><br />The moments slipped, each one away;<br />Not one grain could I make to stay<br /><br />Alone, apart, not on that beach<br />Whose grains of sand You’ve numbered each.<br /><br />The moment's here, and then it's gone--<br />Too late to hold or grasp upon.<br /><br />Words are writ or sung as song,<br />But neither lasts so very long.<br /><br />The stars in their courses can ne'er be stopped,<br />Not even the rain, not a single drop.<br /><br />Away each slips, away, away;<br />No man's power can make them stay.<br /><br />The sun has set, the moon is nigh,<br />Forever remains the changeless sky.<br /><br />So to Him I turned in restlessness<br />And prayed for true forgetfulness.<br /><br />To escape the moment’s unyielding hold,<br />To keep what's young from growing old,<br /><br />Is not for the likes of you and me.<br />We could as easily part the sea<br /><br />Or deprive the wind of a single breath,<br />Or shield a life from oncoming death.<br /><br />Not with a groan or aching sigh<br />Could I stop time from passing by.<br /><br />I sought to stop time in its tread,<br />But past my grasping hands it fled.<br /><br />No lips meet that do not part;<br />A kiss's end is in its start.<br /><br />What embrace can hold and ne're let go?<br />Between them air at last must flow.<br /><br />Meetings have partings, helloes their goodbye,<br />Each moment is born, only to die.<br /><br />In hopelessness only does true hope grow;<br />'Tis the only wisdom I've come to know.<br /><br />So to Him I turned in restlessness,<br />That I might know Love’s Timelessness.<br /><br /><em>Where Did All the Moments Go?</em><br /><br />Where did all the moments go,<br />The ones that passed so long ago<br />Or within the last half-hour or so?<br /><br />Amazing, each one had the feel of forever;<br />Now all are gone as though they never<br />Lived, only shammed a damn good show. <br /><br />Each moment’s brightness burns as bright<br />As any dark, extinguished light<br />A week or even a century ago.<br /><br />Eternity’s pulse is quickly taken;<br />Everything sleeps, but appears to awaken,<br />Flare, and then, to nowhere flow.<br /><br />Now I think I know where the moments go,<br />Come they fast or come they slow.<br />They’re all happening NOW, not in a row;<br />Or is it because You’ve told me so?Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-72386750736345229392009-07-26T09:31:00.000-07:002009-07-26T09:37:02.273-07:00Part Five: "Lost Sunlight"<strong>Part Five<br /></strong><em>Lost Sunlight</em><br /><br />Song for Meher<br /><br />I<br />The sunlight of long ago was soft and long and lay like pale fire in the air,<br />soft breath humid, leaves languid, sweetly tired.<br />Lost sunlight, lost time, a wave of Your hand in the pulsing air,<br />a glance suddenly turned in my direction, a smile in the shape of an arrow,<br />a sigh wrenched from the lips of a thousand throats.<br /><br />Where did the sunlight go, he wondered?<br />Where did it fade to, like lost weight.<br />The somewhere it went is still there…a bright and shining day.<br /><br />And we walked through sunlight thick as stars.<br />Turning, I saw sundrops in Your hair.<br />A light breeze lifted one of Your curls and I was lifted away.<br />Now in the frozen dark of my forty-seventh winter,<br />I hunt the sun.<br /><br />Vanished sunlight of long ago, found sunlight (and stars’ envy)<br />of Nineteen-Fifty-Four, the shadows of Your swiftly moving feet<br />above the turning earth more bright than a thousand suns.<br /><br />Afternoon tea on a tabled lawn, late afternoon sun golding the grass,<br />the folds of a muslin dress lifting slightly in a sudden soft breeze.<br />Continents of cloud drift overhead.<br /><br />(Have I learned too late not to worry?<br />Have I learned too late that “leaving everything to You”<br />implies not passivity but activity of the highest order?<br />Or have I lingered too long in the country of the blind,<br />turning my face ever away from Your face?)<br /><br />(When will it deepen in me that really depending on You<br />doesn’t mean knocking on Your door every two seconds,<br />hoping for a friendly smile, a pat on the head, and a confirming nod,<br />but just sort of going ahead anyway and doing what feels right,<br />not really giving a damn but giving the action to You.)<br /><br />(When will I understand that to rely upon You does not mean<br />to lay the full weight of my load upon Your shoulders, broad as any galaxy,<br />but rather to walk forward, without continually looking over my shoulder,<br />somehow sure that You are walking beside me.)<br /><br />Vanished sunlight on a vanished world, lost sunlight on vanished faces<br />seen in black and white on an old, old screen.<br />When You smiled from your car and then sped swiftly away a thousand hearts<br />went with You.<br /><br />The road turns back the way it came;<br />Forward or back, each seemed the same.<br />Which the beginning, and which the end?<br />Impossible to measure the smile of the Friend.<br /><br />The film threads its way through the projector.<br />The film of time runs so much faster now that you have<br />come and gone<br />come and gone<br />an echo in my heart.<br /><br />Who could plumb the depths of Your eyes –<br />two oceans with no bottom, no shore.<br />Who could gauge the breadth of Your smile –<br />stretching to everyhere to everythere.<br />All the tears that have ever been cried<br />could not equal one drop of Your ocean –<br />yet it is with tears that we drown in You.<br />O God Almighty Sustainer of my every breath!<br />Bear me swiftly to my self’s death,<br />that I may awake and sing a new song –<br />a song of one note singing its way to You.<br /><br />Late afternoon sun, hammered brass, the air thick with risen and fallen dust.<br />A million impressions of a million lives, rescinded, revoked, renewed,<br />just in time for Your smile to rise like the sun.<br /><br />Summer shadows lengthen,<br />goldenrods and fireflies float in the heat-throbbed air.<br />Heart rise and sorrow set over an enormous summer moon.<br /><br />Memory like a shadow lengthens across the span of our lives,<br />darkening the empty places with a strange longing.<br />Memory plagues the hours with its insistent whisper<br />heard above the roar of events and circumstance;<br />it licks at the lobe of our ear and arouses a longing too deep for words;<br />it quilts the comforter we throw round our shoulders in the cold and dark.<br />And memory is a whisper heard as a thunderclap.<br /><br />The light was lambent as it struck Your cheek,<br />illuminating a fairy network of vessels and tears.<br />The shadow cast by just one of Your eyelashes<br />was enough to rest in, and to sleep.<br />So in that shadow I took my rest,<br />and awoke as the beat of your heart.<br /><br />The glance You shot at me toppled my dreams,<br />yet I clung to them like a mountain climber<br />on a breaking precipice.<br />Would that I could have let myself fall,<br />and broken the fall with thoughts of You.<br /><br />Bright stars in their turning stop turning; the engines of infinity<br />deliberately lose a second just to pay You an eternity of obeisance.<br />Would that I could slip unnoticed into the eternity of that lost second<br />and pay You obeisance forever.<br /><br />Raised hands lift like palms in the sleepy air to bid You goodbye<br />once more, yet once more.<br /><br />Summer and woodsmoke, sandalwood smiles.<br />Time was, time was, time was.<br /><br />In some lost lifetime I held an umbrella over Your head<br />and that lost sunlight I so carefully shielded You from<br />I have been trying to recapture ever since.<br /><br /><em>Lost Sunlight<br /></em><br /><em>To have walked in the footsteps You once had trod<br />Is to walk in the footsteps of Almighty God.<br />To have walked in the sun which streamed down upon You<br />Is to have walked an eternal mile or two.<br />O! lost sunlight that I can never now share<br />Shines still in time upon lovely Meher.<br />O! lost sunlight, now lost to me<br />Must remain for me, mere reverie.<br /></em><br />I walked in sunlight long since gone,<br />Threads of lights ‘twixt dusk and dawn.<br />I walked on ground You’d once passed by.<br />What to do now but ache and sigh?<br />Time has distanced what can never be:<br />Just a moment’s meeting ‘tween You and me.<br />What use are regrets for what might have been?<br />That one day, by Your grace, this meeting I’ll win.<br /><br />Now I move in a harder light, a harsher light,<br />ringing with sirens and cellular phones,<br />the sound of angels’ wings drowned out<br />by the electric dynamo of progress.<br /><br />We moved through a slower time, a more tender time, or so it seems<br />when seen through the distant lens of memory, the slowly moving seconds<br />a gentler finger on the pulse of a slower time,<br />take it slow, take it slow, take it slow.<br />The sky an untrafficked blue, the sky as yet unpierced by skyscrapers,<br />the sky still a bed for dreams.<br /><br />The seasons turned more slowly, or so it seems.<br />And there was always more time.<br />We didn’t demand that every minute be filled to the last second.<br />Whole hours might be allowed to pass without regret<br />that an opportunity we only imagined had been lost forever.<br />Now our opportunities are our undoing.<br /><br />Okay, so there was an unhealthy heaviness to the past;<br />it lay dead all around you and no one bothered to pick it up.<br />It was dead, alright, and so God had to come and quicken the pace a little,<br />set in motion the springtide of creation and all the other tides that foam forth<br />from His shores.<br />Don’t mean to belittle Your energy, God, but how about a little balance here, okay?<br />There should be time for time, for Christ’s sake, time to savor God’s name<br />on our tongues instead of the latest stock quote and theater review.<br /><br />Evenings lit only by starlight and moonlight and cowdung fires<br />and kerosene lamps linger longer in the memory than the neon evenings<br />of our own present.<br />Now the days are seized by enormities and alarums masquerading<br />as importances.<br /><br />We communicate not face to face anymore but over cell and fax and modem;<br />no eyes meet, no hands touch, our empty words couched<br />in business speak, the vocabulary of machines.<br /><br />II<br />Now is the time of remembrance, for the backward glance<br />and the inward turning.<br />Now is the time to lock arms with stillness, to tightly embrace<br />the escaping quiet.<br /><br />Now is the time of surrenderance;<br />time to stop twisting and turning and squirming;<br />time to deliver the weight of myself into Your hands;<br />time to let the Sculptor mold the clay.<br />There will be many protestations on behalf of the clay;<br />it will cry out at the slightest touch, but heed it not.<br />It will resist the Sculptor’s every attempt to expose the form<br />hiding within, but heed it not.<br />It is only a lump of clay that labors under the mighty delusion<br />that it is its own creator.<br />It sings its songs and thinks its thoughts and speaks its words<br />and writes its words and does not realize that without the Sculptor<br />it is just a thoughtless, wordless lump of clay.<br />Ah, but what a proud and vainglorious lump of clay it is!<br />How pleased it is with itself!<br />What a beautiful lump of clay I am!<br />So very fashionable!<br />So very au currant!<br />So very…oh! I just don’t know what!<br />I’m just about the most wonderful lump of clay that ever came down the pike!<br />But one day, if the lump of clay is very good and behaves itself,<br />it meets its Sculptor and begins to realize that it could use some adjusting,<br />a little smoothing here and there where the years have sharpened the edges.<br />And if the clay has any sense, any sense at all, it will stop fighting the Sculptor<br />and submit to His design.<br />This takes courage on the part of the clay, but even courage and sense are part<br />of the Sculptor’s design.<br />Now is the time of surrenderance;<br />time to stop twisting and turning and squirming;<br />time to deliver the weight of myself into the Sculptor’s hands;<br />time to let the Sculptor mold the clay any damn way He pleases.<br /><br />Now is the time of forgiveness,<br />to forgive in heart what cannot be forgiven in mind.<br />The wiping away of regret with an act of wishful thinking,<br />the cleansing of wounds by the operation of tears.<br />Slow candles lit by broken bedsides,<br />bundles of seared sheets in a tangle on the floor.<br />The stripping of one bed for the next occupant.<br />I thought forgiveness would be easier after death.<br />How could I have known that it should have been accomplished<br />while I still had breath?<br /><br />O Mason, take this stone heart and make it weep<br />at the slightest touch of Your hand.<br />Take these stone eyes and make cool drops appear<br />at the sight of Your lovely face.<br />Take this stone tongue and make it cry Your praises<br />where none but You can hear.<br />Take this stone of myself, soiled and filthy from being dragged<br />down the years, and melt it down in the heat of Your love.<br />And though this stone may cry out and shed tears,<br />heed it not; it is only a stone crying out<br />to return to its home of dust.<br /><br />Forgive us our strangers, Lord,<br />those millions of wants and desires that keep us from You,<br />those trespassers on the hallowed ground of our trust.<br />Forgive us our strangers, Father,<br />those millions of yens and yearnings,<br />those occupiers of the rooms of our hearts.<br />Forgive us our strangers, Friend,<br />those hungers and hankerings after fame<br />and fortune in men’s eyes.<br />Forgive us our strangers, Beloved,<br />those intimates of our nighttime hours,<br />those snake-tongued temptresses who whisper Why not?<br />So seductively in our ears.<br />Forgive us these foreigners<br />who populate Your country in such great number,<br />who are so fruitful and multiply so quickly.<br />Forgive us our strangers, Lord,<br />whom we are always more eager to embrace<br />than our truest and best Friend.<br /><br />To stop struggling like a fish and surrender to the hook,<br />to allow one’s self to be reeled in hook, line and sinker<br />into the waiting arms of the Fisherman,<br />that is the desire, but not the accomplishment.<br />To allow one’s self to be pulled wriggling from the water,<br />gasping for air, and to die upon shore,<br />that is the imagined bravery.<br /><br />To remember You between the spaces of our own self-remembrance,<br />to sneak you in between the wayward laugh and the inconsequential tear,<br />that is the goal, but not its achievement.<br />To hear You between the millioned moments of our self-made noise<br />that is desire, but not its fulfillment.<br />It was one of your dear ones who once so sagely pointed out<br />that the words LISTEN and SILENT contained the same letters,<br />because to really and truly hear You silence one must listen to it<br />so that we may hear it’s ever-speaking voice speaking always <br />in our hearts.<br /><br />He is in the silences, that is where he can be heard most clearly.<br />He is in that moment between systole and diastole,<br />between the taking of one breath and the exhalation of another,<br />between grief and the welling tear,<br />between joy and the sudden smile.<br />He is in the silences.<br />He is in that moment when wakefulness surrenders to sleep,<br />when soul slips from body, (a moment whose echo reverberates as another life).<br />He is in the silences, that moment between hunger and satiety,<br />between thirst and its quenching,<br />between pain and its surcease.<br />Do not listen for His silence amidst the noise of living;<br />listen for Him in the untrodden places of the heart<br />where even one second,<br />divided into ten thousand separate units,<br />may each hold all the silence there is to hear.<br /><br />So we struggle through the days, hauling our hearts<br />and a thousand lifetimes’ worth of baggage and good intentions.<br />And one day there we are, on the mighty precipice of imagined bravery,<br />arms outflung to empty air, ready to jump, but still standing, feet planted firmly,<br />solidly, on the ground.<br /><br />III<br />And there will come a time when you will want to remember everything:<br />the fragrant laughter of children, the way sunlight filled a room,<br />the slow way summer night came, the sound of an electric fan<br />in a slowly darkening room,<br />the patter of summer rain on the window and the steady rise and fall of breath<br />from the sweetly closed mouth of one who has slept and kept by your side<br />these many faithful years.<br />And you will remember all these things and more, holding it all so tightly<br />against your heart that it hurts.<br />And if you hold it to yourself hard enough and long enough,<br />you may one day be able to hold it with open arms.<br /><br />And the work you labored over so long in offices of brittle light<br />will not linger long in your memory;<br />the awards and speeches have already been deleted from your computer,<br />now initialized with someone else’s name.<br />Instead you will remember the held glance and the encouraging touch,<br />not the stapled smiles nor the endless hollow hours that contained them.<br />And you will go out of your life thinking not of the memo<br />that praised your over-the-weekend efforts before a big pitch<br />but of the sudden smile of a child as it glanced up to you for just a second<br />before skipping merrily across the street and out of your life forever.<br /><br />IV<br />How sad is time.<br />How sad is time that turns young men old and old men into ghosts.<br />How sad is time that turns a well man sick and a sick man into a shade.<br /><br />How sad is time that occupies itself with nothing<br />and makes you pay for that nothing with your life.<br />How sad is time that turns your head away from that face and that name<br />with the promise of name and fame that promises to be forgotten.<br /><br />How sad is time that engraves on countless plaques, “In memory of…”<br />when even that memory is wiped away when those who mounted the plaque<br />have themselves passed away.<br />Name and fame the flung away layers of an onion,<br />memory disremembering itself.<br /><br />And time is turning the pages.<br /><br /><em>What is dust?</em> Asked the professor to himself.<br /><em>What is this something which apparently comes from nothing?<br /></em>Suddenly one day the professor knew.<br /><em>Dust</em>, said the professor to himself, <em>is God’s seal upon what we call the past.<br />And each layer of dust is, as it were, a page from His diary,<br />which, having once been written, is turned over by Him, never to be read again.<br /></em>And the professor sighed.<br /><br /><strong>Time Rhymes<br /></strong><br /><em>And I Have Passed This Way Before<br /></em><br />And I have passed this way before<br />On my way to love, on my way to war.<br />The cities, the towns, the ocean’s shore<br />Tell me I’ve passed this way before.<br /><br />A street, a road, a gabled roof<br />Each one a seeming solid proof<br />That I passed them once in age or youth<br />Robust or young, or minus a tooth.<br /><br />A church, a school, a meadow fair,<br />Something has drawn my footsteps there.<br />Memory’s flame in my heart does flare<br />But sears the memory of when and where.<br /><br />A cloud, a tree, a morning clear<br />Whisper to me, You’ve once been here,<br />Though not, I’m afraid, for many a year.<br />Is that the cause of this sudden tear?<br /><br />I can’t remember, but something odd<br />Has caused me to stop and faintly nod.<br />Perhaps it’s where my feet have trod<br />Or knelt to an all-forgiving God.<br /><br />What distant memory knocks at my door?<br />What devilish drill through my heart does bore?<br />The ache of a memory I cannot restore<br />Tells me I’ve passed this way before.<br /><br /><em>Each Life Is a Dress Rehearsal</em><br /><br />Each life is a dress rehearsal<br />For the one that follows next.<br />Each day conforms to each new page<br />Of a previously written text.<br /><br />Our actions herald grief or joy,<br />Our words may herald woe;<br />Together they determine who we will be<br />From head to predestined toe.<br /><br />The run of the play, its chosen cast<br />And its wide array of reviews<br />Can each be cast in any light—<br />You simply have to choose<br /><br />The words you speak, the deeds you do;<br />Both will set the stage<br />For the drama that’s about to unfold<br />From that previously written page.<br /><br />For each day lived now, one page is writ<br />In a book not yet in print,<br />But will soon be stamped with your nature, sure<br />As a coin from your own mint.<br /><br /><em>And When I Reach My Final Day<br /></em><br />And when I reach my final day, who shall have the final say?<br />My wife or the friend of some long-passed day?<br />Who shall make the final decision long after the last bloody incision?<br />Who will decide to pull the plug on this old, mustachioed, but mortal mug?<br />And at the last moment, who will win the game,<br />Myself, or Him, whose prayer-like name<br />I might or might not remember, more woe to my soul<br />If indeed I should forget to remember Him whole.<br />Will I pass away with His name on my lips?<br />Or shall my soul set sail on future ships?<br />If I don’t begin to remember Him now,<br />Will my last uttered question be the dreaded word, “How?”Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-34982743359110108792009-07-26T09:25:00.000-07:002009-07-26T09:30:14.344-07:00Part Four of "Time and Its Passing": "Manhattan Nocturne"<strong>Part Four</strong><br /><em>Manhattan Nocturne</em><br /><br />I<br />I come from the land of long overcoats and unhailed cabs,<br />of dull drinks in the afternoon,<br />of half-smoked cigarettes stubbed out on a windowsill under an ashen sky,<br />of thin club sandwiches and vast Waldorf salads,<br />of worn-out apologies to agents and wives,<br />of Broadway dreams that broke apart on Bowery gutters,<br />of cashflow and bloodflow, of Madison Avenue brainstorms<br />and Broadway heart-throbs, a land where the sun comes up once<br />and goes down a thousand times each day,<br />where death is only a siren away, where a steaming cup of coffee grows cold<br />by the time it reaches the 40th floor. <br />I come from the land of the missing neon letter, of borscht and brisket,<br />of hustled cutlery and worried patrons, of piss and pavement,<br />a land of take-out and order-in, a land of missed busses and jumped turnstiles,<br />of the all-night pharmacy and the all-day hangover,<br />of the destitute rich and the wealthy poor, of the three-day bender and the<br />one-hit wonder,<br />of the unstrung and the unredeemed, the land of the cold shoulder<br />and the stab in the back.<br />I come from the land of uniformed elevator drivers in white gloves<br />who hide their Negro thoughts and speech from tenants in ermine and mink,<br />who drink their beer and watch the Friday night fights in the darkness<br />of small and distant rooms, who when they do talk to the tenants<br />talk of only the weather.<br />I come from the land of the unswept sidewalk and the unleashed threat,<br />of the hurled hurt and the sideswiped kiss,<br />of the cold handshake and the word-heated heartbreak,<br />the land of the unpressed doorbell and the unreturned phone call,<br />the let’s do lunch, don’t-call-me-we’ll call you.<br />I come from the land of numbered streets and the numberless lost,<br />of the lettered avenues of the illiterate poor,<br />of the hungry and the starved, of the waited on and the waited for,<br />of the empty subway car rumbling under sleepless streets,<br />of old whores and old men,<br />of unmade beds in unpaid-for flats,<br />of dim and dying light bulbs that shine for no one.<br />I come from the land of the hansom ride through Central Park,<br />their starstruck lovers oblivious of the dawn breaking over their heads,<br />of the first furtive kiss stolen under a nameless doorway,<br />of prayers poured out in thick-stoned churches and synagogues, in tongues twisted with grief and unfulfilled desires, yet silent with unspoken hope.<br />I come from the land of the whisper and the caress, the fist and the finger-point,<br />the slow brush-off and the swift rebuff, the land of the star-crossed<br />and the stage-struck, the unpublished and the unheard of,<br />the unknown and unsung for.<br />I come from the land of the burning bright lights and the forever darkness<br />of men’s souls,<br />of the unslaked thirst and the thirst too well quenched,<br />of the madness in office towers and the sanity of lunatic asylums,<br />of the shylock and the shyster,<br />of poets whose last breath is an unsung verse,<br />of taxis and troubadours, pot-heads and priests,<br />of newborns birthed in charity wards and the silver-spooned in private rooms,<br />of neon and night, diners and dime-a-dance halls,<br />of unthumbed nickels and dimes in the cold metal slots of pay phones,<br />of luncheonettes and laundries, museums and movie houses,<br />of quickie weddings and quicker funerals,<br />of concrete and crayons, roller skates and ice rinks, bars and bowling alleys,<br />of carousels and the hard-sell, gyp joints and gin mills,<br />the street-wise saint and the too wise sinner,<br />the hip and the helpless, the dreamers and the waiting-to-be-dreamed of,<br />the amnesiac and insomniac, the immigrant and the ignorant,<br />the addict and the addle-headed, the con man and the cop,<br />a land of endless longing for stars that always seemed forever out of reach,<br />but somehow always within view.<br /><br />II<br />We lived in upright mansions that fought their way into the stratosphere<br />with all the arrogance of their tenants, mansions built to last forever,<br />turreted fortresses ribbed and boned with smooth-riding elevators<br />driven by colored men or Irish boys wearing white gloves<br />and unfought-for braids on their shoulders,<br />mansions with names as garish and gaudy as their tenants,<br />names like the Dakota, the Beresford, the El Dorado, the Ansonia<br />and the Apthorp , the Astor and San Remo,<br />stone behemoths unrepentant in their steadfastness<br />and persistence against time.<br />And in their well-appointed apartments fathers and mothers had children<br />who would live forever, who themselves would live forever,<br />who would come endlessly in and out of rooms that would always be there, whose pianos and bookcases would stand forever where they stood in corners and against windows, whose heavy furniture would forever stand their places, indenting the lush carpets with their overproud weight.<br />We lived in upright mansions that dared the seasons with their solidness<br />and immensity, that could take the snows of winter upon their shoulders<br />and the rain upon their roofs for a hundred years at a time, and show no signs<br />of wear, while buildings lesser or minor grew up or fell around them.<br />We lived in upright mansions that defied all dating,<br />and were sentinels of a silence which dared to be broken.<br /><br />III<br />Late sun, the color of trumpets,<br />blown across the sky in sheets of light,<br />dawn-threaded by way of twilight,<br />followed by the evening’s sigh.<br /><br />Night over New York, plummet<br />of sudden rain, a mask of water.<br />Hunched shoulders of tenements,<br />red brick and brown, in watery<br />disarray.<br /><br />Lives of unslaked thirst<br />not in parallel with their destinies<br />run counterclockwise in circles of regret,<br />remorse, and rain.<br /><br />In the teeth and jaws of midnight<br />riders of train and bus<br />peer out of smeared windows<br />a second self, peering back,<br />no place to go,<br />cold, neon, alone.<br /><br />A fright of pigeons upon<br />a blackened roof, upward<br />into watery air.<br />Dream ache for breadcrumbs<br />on a dry sidewalk.<br /><br />A smear of light from an all-night<br />diner, spread across the sullen sky.<br />A lipstick-smudged dawn<br />and a burst yoke sun fearfully<br />rising up behind slow, dense clouds.<br /><br />Dull thumping dawn, and<br />a swollen-hearted sun<br />afraid of the new day.<br /><br />IV<br />In the thousand-atomed night a tunneled darkness runs<br />Through the eyes of the lost and forgotten ones.<br />In dime-store hearts starry anthems play<br />The songs of a long-passed summer’s day.<br />In the lunch-counter brightness a shadow falls<br />And dreams are made of clay.<br />Arcades of sadness open and close<br />So quickly no one really knows<br />The moment of decay or where it goes<br />To sleep or wake another day.<br />And we rocked and we danced and held on tight<br />To the dreams that were blinded before our sight.<br />Candy wrappers and cellophane floats<br />On ice cream sticks in the shape of boats.<br />They litter the street where love has lain<br />In the summer heat and freezing rain.<br />The wisdom of Solomon on matchstick covers,<br />A murmur of an apology hovers<br />Over the eyes and lips of ransacked lovers<br />Who, in the moment just before the flame<br />Spoke silence instead of Your holy name.<br />In the tin can dawn a quiet rises<br />And hope puts on its dear disguises.<br />Next street over, that’s where the prize is.<br />Why doesn’t hope come in all our sizes?<br /><br />VSun glinting off the buildings on Columbus and Amsterdam Avenue<br />touches the old bricks with a lazy fire, ember-like and drowsy<br />in the late afternoon sun, as the day sighs toward evening.<br />The people are out now, up on the roofs of their tenements,<br />craning their necks at the shy stars.<br />They breathe their dreams into the newborn night, alive now with jazz<br />and recriminations, cigarette dialogues and perfume despair.<br />And all over Manhattan there is the almost soundless click of radio dials<br />being turned on and twirled, a filigree needle in a cocoon of soft yellow light.<br />In the velveteen night Benny Goodman and Igor Stravinsky lock<br />in an aerial embrace.<br />In hotels and street corners gabardine men slouch in phone booths,<br />fedoras over sleepy eyes, riding a lifetime of dreams one nickel at a time.<br />I got dreams, say the voices, I count for somethin' too, give a guy a chance<br />for chrissake .<br />And the music swells bebop and baroque, cottony blues and subway swing,<br />drifting over Park Avenue sidewalks and Bowery gutters, over swells and bums,<br />over black men with Paul Robeson voices and doormen with unctuous tongues,<br />over forgotten men with their pockets full of dreams,<br />over Fifth Avenue millionaires in their book-lined tombs,<br />over lovers fumbling in the back seats of DeSotos and Pierce-Arrows,<br />over Broadway sinners and Canal Street saints,<br />over children burrowed under Mother Goose comforters,<br />over the whole God-blessed lot of them.<br />And the broken dawn comes stumbling up from the east like an old hobo<br />with wind-ruffled hair, the dawn in his starry eyes,<br />and his breath scented with forgiveness.<br /><br />VI<br />There, the old brick building, shellacked with sunlight<br />in the late breathing air;<br />there, a shaft of sun through an embrace of trees;<br />there, a child in a stroller, damp fingers<br />clutching a damp pretzel, eyes awash with pleasure;<br />there, on the sidewalk, an afterthought of pigeons<br />in the late seeming day;<br />there, at the curb, stately Packards and DeSotos;<br />there, in the quiet clamor of twilight,<br />the sound of a band playing a hymn;<br />there; in the playground, a swing still moving<br />with the remembered weight of a child;<br />there, a Good Humor truck, idling for a smile;<br />there, above the wheeling earth, a tremble of stars<br />in a cloud-packed sky;<br />there, and there, the lengthening shadows<br />and the spreading silence.<br />And everywhere, in everyone, the unshaped anxieties<br />so peculiar to Sunday evenings,<br />the little, unattended funerals of the year.<br /><br />VII<br />And there, in a sky wide with gray, a pocket of light opens and sunlight<br />the color of trumpets spills out and lays in a hammered sheet alongside the gray.<br />The narrow concrete island that divides Broadway is crumbling now;<br />no more do the old ones from the old country sit and sigh on the benches;<br />the young homeless have taken up residences there, wrapped in their plastic<br />and lunacy.<br />On either side of the island stand the monuments of his childhood:Charles Addams apartments bursting with gables and gilt,<br />dormers and dead rooms, pre-war, pre-glitz, predictably ghoulish.<br />Inside, the pipes rattle and clang with a comfortless heat;<br />shadows deepen in corners unswept and unseen.<br />The years mark their passing in layers of dust that collect, undisturbed,<br />on windows, on walls, on the eyes of old ones who see only the past.<br />And as the gray and the gold of the sky hardens into hardest blue,<br />the yellow light of bulbs that even now have burned most of their old lives away,<br />burn amber behind cracked parchment shades that have yet to rise<br />more than a few inches from their window frames.<br />Outside, the ghosts of the dead ones gather on the benches,<br />and in the dark and frosting air can be heard the sound of Ferris wheels turning<br />as wedding rings are placed on hands that will never grow old.<br /><br /><strong>Time Rhymes</strong><br /><br /><em>Bright Meteors that Flash Across the Night</em><br /><br />Bright meteors that flash across the night,<br />Sing the air on Your sweet flight.<br />How bright Thine eyes when the moon is high,<br />Like meteors across a sunken sky.<br /><br />Vast oceans that roll without age or fear<br />Could be gathered up in a drop of Your tear.<br />How boundless Thy compassion, how infinite Thy grace,<br />Like an ocean that’s lost both shore and place.<br /><br />Waking universes that turn and spin round<br />Could fall into one of your tears and drown.<br />How forgotten thy pain, how ignored thy sorrow.<br />Like a universe your humility stretches into tomorrow.<br /><br /><em>Your Hem of Fabled Fire<br /></em><br />Your hem of fabled fire trails just above my hands<br />Above that point where courage fails<br />In the teeth of life’s demands.<br />‘Tis such a small effort to grab hold of Your hem;<br />All that I have to do is reach<br />Beyond desire’s where and when.<br />Though Your hem is fire, it’s cooling too.<br />The cottony softness of its touch<br />Is mild as the morning dew.Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-212939673941860652009-07-26T09:13:00.000-07:002009-07-26T09:23:40.639-07:00Part Three of "Time and Its Passing": "I Remember", with Time Rhymes<div align="left"><strong>Time Rhymes<br /></strong><br /><em>I’ve Passed Away<br /></em><br />I’ve passed away on palanquins and mattresses of straw,<br />On aerolplanes and baggage trains where fate obeys its law.<br />I’ve died on battlefields and fields of flowers wild;<br />While I’ve never lived past ninety-five I’ve often died a child.<br /><br />I’ve been carried off by fevers and every known disease,<br />bubonic plague and symptoms vague, and once a violent sneeze.<br />I’ve shuffled off the mortal coil of woman and of man,<br />unhelped by pharmacopia or the wafting of a fan.<br /><br />I’ve been guillotined and garroted, shot and stabbed and hung;<br />at the end of planks, inside of tanks, from cliffs have I been flung.<br />I’ve felt the link snap suddenly in trenches stained with blood<br />where I died in the arms of comrades half buried in the mud.<br /><br />I’ve died in the arms of lovers and once in the arms of a maid<br />who tried to lift me from my chair in the sun into the shade.<br />I remember once I slipped away in the middle of a speech,<br />the papers fluttering to the floor, forever out of reach.<br /><br />I’ve watched with growing anguish unassuaged, unrelieved<br />as I died a hardened prisoner unforgiven, unreprieved.<br />I’ve watched beloved spouses shed tears on my behalf<br />and seen my rivals gather who scare suppress’d a laugh.<br /><br />I’ve died in the act of fathering, and once to save a life;<br />I’ve died the death that cowards die to the strain of drum and fife.<br />But of all the deaths I’ve never died there’s one I’ve yet to try—<br />the death of self to self’s travail when to self I finally die.<br /><br /><em>Dying Moments<br /></em><br />In the wake of dying moments<br />I say your holy name.<br />No sooner it falls from my lips<br />Then I say it once again.<br /><br />I have slept the sleep of centuries,<br />And on a thousand deathbeds lay.<br />But when I enter that final sleep<br />Your holy Name I'll say.<br /><br /><em>Remembrance</em><br /><br />Remembrance is the sigh that is sighed across our lives.<br />Forgetfulness of You is so natural it so easily deprives<br />Us each of Your presence, though each of us daily strives<br />To untie the knots upon which pleasure so sweetly thrives<br />But which could be cut, if You were so kind, by one of Your<br /> temperate knives.<br /><br /><strong>Part Three</strong></div><div align="left"><em>I Remember<br /></em></div><div align="left">I<br />He'd begun thinking a lot about time.<br />He'd reached the midpoint in his life and he'd begun to feel,<br />more than ever before, the swift, inexorable passing of time.<br />Everything was passing, and with each passing day he became more and more<br />conscious of it.<br />Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be held back, even for a moment,<br />because that moment too was passing.<br />Nothing could be held in place, because the swiftly moving currents of time<br />would always displace it.<br />No embrace, human or divine, could keep even one moment from passing away<br />into the next, and the next, seemingly forever.<br />Even photographs and recordings, those monuments to stopped time,<br />eventually yellowed and faded, the distance between them and the illusion of now<br />widening with every passing day and year, forming an unbridgeable gulf<br />whose far side no one had ever journeyed back from,<br />except in the carriage of memory.<br />He'd begun thinking about time and the million living moments that were past<br />but were still alive inside him.<br />He remembered his father's face as it bent to kiss his, the prickle of stubble<br />against his soft child's flesh, the man aroma of Old Spice and talc.<br />He remembered the crisp sound the bed sheets made when his mother turned<br />his bed down and the soft clean coolness of the sheets as he slid between them,<br />his body still warm from his bath.<br />His remembered his mother's face, a large round kindness, growing larger<br />and larger and then the soft slippery slidey feel of night cream on his cheek<br />as she kissed him goodnight.<br />It was impossible to imagine that this face, this kind round star by which he guided<br />his life, would ever not be there for his heart and eyes to clasp and light upon.<br />And most of all he remembered the way his bedroom grew slowly dark<br />in the summer when his mother put him to bed even though it was still<br />daylight outside.<br />He remembered the slow way the darkness came, like a drifted sleep, the room<br />slowly dissolving into atoms of half light, the sharp corners of his desk<br />and wardrobe softening and rounding until they and all the objects in his room had dissolved into a purple atom-wheeled darkness.<br /><br />II<br />And he remembered the sound of the oscillating fan and the slow going away<br />and coming back of the sound, over and over, and the slight push of air<br />as it turned slowly toward him caressing his face and afterward the room growing very dark and very peaceful and sleep like a snowfall<br />drifted gently over him.<br />He remembered and would always remember the sound of that fan in a room<br />going slowly dark with summer light, nor would he ever be able to hear<br />the sound of a fan without being instantly transported<br />back to his childhood bedroom.<br />Of the millions of sleeps he would sleep in his life he would enter none<br />as peacefully as those he slipped into those summer nights so long ago.<br /><br />III<br />And he remembered the dancing atoms and molecules,<br />and the game he played with them.<br />He imagined he could see the molecules of air which if stared at long enough<br />and intensely enough would suddenly form themselves<br />into a huge living sphere, which he could make revolve one way<br />and then another just by concentrating.<br />This did not frighten him in the least, but comforted him very much.<br />One night he dreamed he awoke to see his mother sitting<br />in the green leather chair beside his bed, wearing the faded flower-printed housecoat she always wore.<br />She was reading a story to him.<br />He called out to her, but she did not answer.<br />Mom. Mom?<br />The next morning the chair was in its usual place against the wall.<br />He loved too going to sleep to the sound of a thunderstorm, distant and crashing,<br />scary yet safe, that and the steady sound of the fan and the room<br />growing slowly dark and the sphere of molecules turning<br />and the mantle of sleep slowly covering him, like a great and gentle hand.<br /><br />IV<br />And he remembered autumns crisped with piercing sunlight.<br />He remembered the air sharp and stinging and the coming out of sweaters<br />from a cedar trunk and the wool smelling of camphor and cedar both<br />and afterward the coming out of corduroy and flannels and the dry<br />brushing sound of the corduroys between his legs when he walked<br />and how in the fall the leaves caught fire and smoke<br />from a thousand chimneys rose into a sky so hard and blue it made<br />the sharp edges of things stand out clean and clear against the sky.<br />And he remembered the way the bricks of old brownstones caught fire,<br />turning russet in a sunset of hammered brass.<br />He remembered everything.<br />He remembered the light harder and brighter in winter and the way the light<br />threw all the familiar objects in his room into sharper focus:<br />the encyclopedia in the maple wood bookcase, the cedar trunk,<br />the four-poster bed with the pineapples carved at the top of each bedpost.<br /><br />V<br />And he remembered protractors and pencil cases and Dixon Ticonderoga pencils and cat's eye marbles and bottle tops and the musty smell of old libraries<br />with card catalogues carved from honey-colored wood and on the front<br />of each box was a little brass frame that held index cards and on each card<br />a book title either typewritten or fountain pen scripted in black ink<br />that had faded almost to brown, and a little brass pull that drew the box out along metal tracks so smoothly the sound was like silk and inside the box<br />the smell of linseed oil.<br />And he remembered the magic that came from simply entering the library,<br />especially the marble coolness of the place in summer,<br />a coolness that lifted off the surface, arriving first at your face<br />and then coming to gently rest on your arms.<br />The heavy wood doors closed behind you, and summer was gone,<br />yet not entirely, for there was something about coming in<br />from a blazing August afternoon into the cool still permanence of the library<br />that made you even more aware of the heat outside, a dragon to be slayed later.<br />Now to the books with the past still in the pages, on the surface of the pages<br />themselves, the humidity of summers long passed still in the paper,<br />a memory of other fingers, other eyes.<br />The feel of hand-sewn bindings, tissue paper covering steel-engraved illustrations, the smell of fallen forests destined to bear the weight of Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Defoe, Trollope, Dickens, Tolstoy, Hugo, Proust, Melville, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Thomas Clayton Wolfe,<br />that giant of a man whose angel-nature always looked homeward,<br />and who better than any other writer knew the taste and smell and feel of time<br />and felt in his veins the river of time in all its variegated currents and tides.<br /><br />VI<br />And he remembered that little girls had pigtails then<br />and they could be made to blush so easily,<br />and sex was something you were born as, not something you did.<br />And boys still fought but broke it up by mutual consent at the first sign of blood<br />or tears and whose most daring exploit was reading a whole comic book<br />without paying for it or sneaking into Loew's and slipping past the matron<br />into the grown-up seats where a few well-formed, well-aimed spitballs interrupted the flow of female tears or giggles.<br /><br />VII<br />And he remembered Milton Berle nights and Howdy Doody afternoons<br />and cowboys and Indians who fought and died in a black and white world<br />and Farmer Gray cartoons that actually used Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream as background music and Andy's Gang ("I got a gang, you got a gang, everybody's gotta have a gang...") with the shot of all those kids going crazy<br />in their seats and Froggie making the stuffy old professor say words<br />he didn't want to say.<br />And somewhere in time Froggie is still plucking his magic twanger<br />and will be forever, forever.<br /><br />VIII<br />But most of all he remembered 15 West 81st Street.<br />Standing on the north-west corner of 81st street and Central Park West,<br />looking west to Columbus Avenue, stood the great pre-wars built into the very<br />bedrock of the earth, solid stolid monuments to an artistry and craftsmanship<br />that would never see their like again: the Beresford, Hayden House, 15 West,<br />the Excelsior Hotel...<br />And directly across the street, running parallel to it,<br />stood the Hayden Planetarium, whose wonder-filled future was frozen<br />in a timeless past, and this street was lined with ancient trees<br />and paved with cobble stones Peter Stuyvesant himself may have strode over, clip-clopping his way in uncomfortable wooden shoes,<br />puffing on a Schimmelpenninck.<br />No matter in which direction you looked, west toward Columbus Avenue<br />or east toward Central Park West, you faced a glorious boulevard lined on<br />the south side with tall arching trees and on the north with apartment buildings<br />built to last a thousand years, their turrets, towers, spires and steeples lying<br />framed against the sky high.<br /><br />IX<br />And he would always remember the apartment itself, a veritable mansion<br />built onto the fifteenth floor of a castle and reached by an elevator paneled in<br />mahogany and, until the advent of automation, driven by elevator men<br />who wore white gloves and whistled opera or quoted Kipling<br />("On the road to Mandalay, where the flying fishes play...").<br />He remembered winters and the cold hard blue of its face<br />pressed against the glass in the kitchen, all steamy with dinner.<br />And he remembered century-long summers and the green pre-thundery light<br />of days scalded by the sun and afternoon skies pregnant with rain<br />and he remembered the way the summer light softened everything.<br />He remembered room giving onto room, hallways leading into other rooms<br />and other hallways; and the walls were cement, not plasterboard;<br />his mother used to say an A-bomb could explode downstairs and you'd never<br />hear it.<br />He remembered cedar closets that went up so far that he could never remember<br />having seen all the way up; they probably went on forever.<br />He remembered leaded glass windows in the dining room and a maid's room<br />behind the kitchen that smelled of pomade and unfiltered Pall Malls and beer<br />and the damp smell of hampers and laundry and a bed so impossibly soft<br />it couldn't possibly be good for your back.<br /><br />X<br />And he remembered that his father had a dressing room where he did<br />his push-ups and sit-ups in his pajamas every morning and showered lazily<br />and long in a shower made of green-veined marble tiles with a door<br />of frosted glass that opened with a curlicue silver handle and got dressed<br />to the John Gambling Show ("Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. What's the use of worrying, it never was worthwhile, soooo...pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile!").<br />And he remembered his father bending over every morning to fix his garters<br />and he thought how funny that must feel against your legs but his father never<br />seemed to mind.<br />And he remembered his father standing and drinking ersatz Postum coffee<br />while he caught a few minutes of the Today Show with Dave Garroway.<br />And he remembered especially the Today Show set with the clocks on the wall<br />set to the different time zones of the world, giving to the world the illusion<br />that we were all somehow connected to the rest of the world, a world<br />still very much disconnected from itself, a world as yet unblessed<br />by the double-edged miracle of the digital age which one day truly would connect everybody with everybody else, causing us all to bump into each other in space and time, connecting the poorest peasant standing in a rice paddy<br />with a forgetful husband in Florida whose wife needs him to bring home<br />a quart of milk on his way home from work.<br />He thought, Not only are we filling up earthly space, we're filling up space itself <br />with our constant chatter.<br />He remembered it all and his heart ached for a simpler time that was perhaps<br />not as simple as he remembered it but the memory was sweeter than the reality<br />and the sweetness lingered like an old tune from an old time such a long, long<br />time ago.<br /><br />XI<br />Back then, he was fond of saying, telephone numbers weren't numbers,<br />they were numeric magic carpets, the exchanges conjuring images of places<br />only dreamt or read about: Trafalgar, Murray Hill, Plaza, Lexington, Susquehanna, Rhinelander, Oregon...<br />More than just a collection of digits, telephone numbers were personalities,<br />and loud ones at that, for they proclaimed your address for all the world to hear:<br />Plaza (PL) -- the east 50s; Susquehanna (SU) -- the upper West Side;<br />Oregon (OR) -- Stuyvesant Town.<br /><br />XII<br />And were the stars brighter, or did they just seem that way?<br />Was the music sweeter, gentler, less savage, less crowded?<br />Were there fewer notes cluttering the lyric?<br />Were songs easier to remember?<br />Were vulgar words less easy to say?<br />Were the skies less crowded?<br />Were car horns less piercing?<br />Were there more seconds in the minutes and more minutes in the hours?<br />Was there simply more time?<br />Were there fewer choices, but more desirable options?<br />Was there less of everything but more of the things that mattered?<br />Were there fewer books, but more worthwhile reading?<br />Were there fewer diversions, but less need to be diverted?<br />When did the labor-saving machines we always wanted<br />begin to create more work instead of less?<br />When did we begin to waste time instead of saving it?<br />When did the boundaries disappear?<br />When did it become fashionable to vomit in public?<br />When did inappropriate behavior become acceptable?<br />When did the coat of conduct get turned inside out?<br />When did violence become fun?<br />When did fun become frightening?<br />When did the boundary between work and life totally disappear?<br />When did technology turn space into something that connected us<br />but made it almost impossible for anyone to be left entirely alone?<br /><br />XIII<br />There was room enough and time back then, he would say.<br />Things had a certain space around them then.<br />A day could feel like a week, a week a year.<br />Summers stretched out and away into forever, and afternoons were an eternity.<br />And if you ever felt like sighing, you just held it, and listened as the wind<br />sighed for you through the leaves of an ancient tree.<br />Back then, televisions had only six or seven channels, instead of five hundred.<br />Radio and TV stations didn't broadcast twenty-four hours a day.<br />You had to wait for what you wanted, and the waiting only made it better.<br />The cellular noise was forty years away, imminent in time, but mercifully unborn.<br />Children, he remembered, used to lay their heads upon the breast of the earth,<br />counting stars, their young ears attuned to that silence which inhabits all spaces;<br />not yet did their ears perk to the electronic chatter of video games,<br />connecting their living flesh to its lifeless pulse and dead heart.<br />Back then, it was still possible to see all the world in a blade of grass,<br />instead of a computer chip.<br />And things lasted.<br />When a manufacturer made something, it usually stayed made.<br />Things had to last because there weren't that many other things to replace it.<br />Now we're drowning.<br />Drowning in a sea of our own excess.<br />Our greatest poverty is our wealth.<br /><br />XIV<br />And he began to remember all the rooms of his life,<br />each one in its time and place.<br />I remember them all, he whispered, though no one was there.<br />I remember rooms where singers sang all night and daylight never entered<br />and words were chosen as carefully as wedding rings.<br />I remember rooms lit only by candlelight and time was spent at a penny's pace<br />and clocks poised at midnight never chimed the midnight hour<br />and old men in their grandfather sleep never woke<br />and old men poised to loose the fragile bonds of flesh never died.<br />I remember rooms in summer that grew dark so slowly<br />that the darkness came as a surprise.<br />I remember rooms heavy with history where time walked in thick-soled shoes,<br />shuffling its weary feet.<br />I remember rooms fortressed against the sunlight,<br />Lily Pons on the radio or Stokowski conducting the Liebestod <br />on two heavily shellacked discs only slightly heavier than the music itself.<br />I remember rooms stifling with smoke, old men at tattered green card tables,<br />yellow teeth clamped down on fat Cuban cigars,<br />eternally losing and winning and folding...<br />I remember rooms softened by the living gray light of dawn<br />and a bed of tumbled sheets left in the patchwork patterns of sudden love.<br />I remember the birthing rooms and the dying rooms<br />(for there is always enough room to die in, but often not enough room to be<br />born in).<br />I remember rooms we entered for the first time and rooms we left<br />for the last time.<br />And now the rooms are empty or not at all -- someone else's memory.<br />I remember schoolrooms filled with August sunlight and motes of centuries-old dust and old wooden desks with inkwells and initials and hearted declarations<br />of love whittled by small fingers unaccustomed to pushing down so hard.<br />And I remember the homeroom's sickly green wainscoting and puke-yellow walls and the heavy tick of the old clock whose ornate hands were forever<br />being prodded ahead by little boys dreaming of the baseball diamond.<br />And I remember washrooms so depressing you could weep; the smell of cheap detergent hand soap and dank porcelain, and high above an ancient toilet<br />you were sure emptied into Hell itself stood two great windows<br />with inch-thick frosted glass that opened and closed by means<br />of weighted pulleys forged by hands long since turned to dust.<br />And I can still taste in the back of my mouth the renegade kummel seed<br />that had somehow escaped the ham and Swiss on rye I had eaten for lunch<br />only to surprise my tongue two hours later in the middle of math class.<br />And all the rooms that have ever been are standing still or not at all,<br />the inhabitants drifted and gone, the swell and surge of a thousand sleeps<br />have carried each one away.<br /><br />XV<br />When I was young, he was fond of saying, no one died.<br />Everyone who was famous then for being famous perpetually and everlastingly<br />was still famously, fabulously, alive: Frank Sinatra…Jimmy Stewart…<br />Gene Kelly…Fred Astair…John Steinbeck…Somerset Maugham...<br />Leonard Bernstein…hell, even Ed Sullivan.<br />They were older, sure, but their hereness made them seem as though<br />they would always be here, just older, but not dead.<br />Being dead made a difference. Being dead meant you were no longer invested with that here-and-nowness that made for all those glamorous four-color<br />Life and Look Magazine covers.<br />Frank Sinatra & Co. weren’t the only ones who weren’t dead<br />and who would never die.<br />My parents would never die and I…twenty-something I…I would live forever.<br />Only old people died. I mean, really old people.<br />Like your grandfather or grandmother.<br />Or other people you didn’t know, like the ones in the newspapers<br />or on the nightly TV news who got shot by police because they were bad anyway or just died crossing the street.<br />They had no faces, no names. In fact they all had one thing in common:<br />they had nothing in common with me.<br />And my world would continue forever. Or so I thought…<br />These were the illusions I nurtured with my too-much-longing<br />and too-deeply-buried fears,<br />illusions that remained illusions until I grew older and noticed<br />that some of my favorite people were disappearing from the worldly scene,<br />and doing it rather too quickly, at that.<br />They were dying while I was still alive, and that meant that someday<br />I would die too.<br />Death was one club I didn’t want to belong to.<br />Like Groucho Marx said (hey, he was live then, too): I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.<br />Then more and more of the famous people died, one at a time,<br />like they always do.<br />And then my mother. And then my father.<br />And then other people’s mothers and fathers.<br />And slowly the number of funerals per annum began to outnumber<br />the weddings and Bar-Mitzvahs and other mindless social occasions<br />that each had their photo album, each one daring to show people whose pictures would fade, or even worse, stay young while they themselves grew old<br />and eventually died: the posturing posed who would one day be reposed,<br />each picture a testament to their mortality. (Not my own, you understand.<br />I wouldn’t be caught dead with a photo album.)<br />Death is something that everyone knows will happen to everyone else,<br />but no one thinks it will happen to them.<br />There was simply no pause button on God’s Time Machine.<br />Even He couldn’t, or simply wouldn’t, put His finger on it.<br />If anything, He seemed to be hitting the fast-forward button.<br />And the faster forward we travelled, the faster too many lifetimes<br />seemed to be coming to a too suddenly-arrived at END.<br />It just wasn’t fair, all this death and dying, but people were doing it anyway.<br />And I damn well didn’t like it.<br /><br />XVI<br />This little life, rounded by so many sleeps,<br />is passing, passing, minute by minute,<br />hour by hour, day by day,<br />year after year, and thus will it end.<br />And on that last day I will not have<br />thrown off the weight of my wants<br />nor will I have effaced even the smallest<br />fragment of my self,<br />save that which His face has melted away.<br />And the weight I so carefully nurtured in life<br />will weigh me down into another body,<br />fit or lame, colored or white,<br />but heavy nonetheless with the weight<br />of ten thousand wants.<br />And on the wall will hang baby's first calendar<br />with ten thousand days of wanting yet to fill in.<br />Begin, oh begin again, little life.<br />Begin again.<br /><br />XVII<br />Dark time, hungry time, devouring time that swallows whole all stories,<br />all beginnings and endings and in-betweens,<br />that dims the camera'd eye and forever shutters it closed.<br /><br />And time is a lie told so slowly it somehow passes for truth.<br /><br />Dark time, unlovely time that ages a child in grief and prods him<br />through the days, apart and alone, whose neck will never know<br />the encircling arms of an adoring woman and whose shadow<br />will hug him closest of all.<br /><br />Dark time, constant time, soundless clock of infinity, man had to invent<br />the tick-tock to hear your centuried voice speaking, this clock with no gears<br />that grinds each of us clear away.<br /><br />And time is the great pretender, pretending always to be standing still,<br />like the revolving earth.<br />And time is a lie told by a tongue that takes a millennium to craft<br />a single consonant and another to finish speaking it.<br /><br />And time is God's shadow that trails creation like a robe that can be worn<br />but brings no comfort.<br /><br />And time began its soundless ticking when God opened his eyes and will end<br />when the eyes of God close to sleep.<br /><br />And time treads the universe in old and heavy shoes.<br /><br />XVIII<br />The ache and pass of time,<br />the forward press of its backward hand,<br />the taut muscles of memory<br />stretched to the tearing point<br />over some word or scene<br />so long forgotten, capsized by incident,<br />by the six-o-clock news.<br />Time bends but never breaks.<br />We try to outbreathe the moment,<br />until the moment passes us by.<br /><br />XIX<br />How can that which has so much substance:<br />a house, a city, an entire day<br />have so little substance in time?<br />Just a moment ago<br />the weight of sunlight<br />the shape of laughter<br />the heft of sorrow.<br />A world can vanish in the same moment<br />as a sigh.<br />A house of cards falls and rises in concrete.<br />A volcano vomits but an island remains.<br />A life goes out upon a breath<br />and is reborn as an infant’s cries.<br /><br />XX<br />Time it was that stole my beloved from my straining sight,<br />ripped her cruelly from my encircling arms and flung her into that region<br />where I could not follow, breaking the rhythm of two lives with the theft<br />of one breath.<br /><br />And time is a lie we tell ourselves to bear the weight of days.<br />For which one of us could endure even a single day fully alive<br />to the knowledge that on a certain day at a certain time (a certain moment)<br />we will die, take our last breath (does not a first imply a last?),<br />that time would place on the shelf of our lives that other bookend?<br />Which one of us has not girded on the illusion that we will somehow<br />get out of life alive?<br /><br />Time is a lie we tell ourselves with the eagerness of children;<br />we are as faithful to it as lovers, as protective of it as she-lions her cubs.<br /><br />Time is a lie whose falsity becomes visible in the sunken eyes and skeleton jaw<br />of the cancered and condemned, in the last spiraling breath of the dying<br />and the first exploded scream of the newly born.<br /><br />God's breathing in is time beginning and God's breathing out is time<br />passing away.<br /><br />And time is a shadow that lengthens itself to any height, immeasurable as God.<br /><br />O time untempered by tears and a thousand wayward griefs beats on.<br />The tear dropp'd ocean of mankind's sorrows has not worn away<br />one whit of You.<br />Unlike water that drop by drop dissolves the hardest stone,<br />Your vast foreign surface remains strangely unmarked.<br />Pelted by prayers, assaulted by every variety of anguish,<br />Your centuries-long robe sweeps by, unruffled as dreamless sleep.<br /><br />Sleep and time, time and sleep, twin shadows of a single life.<br />We drift toward one and walk blindly with the other.<br />Sleep, a death before waking; death, a sleep before waking.<br />We incline toward one and flee the other,<br />though both are nothing more than the kindest of interruptions.<br />When one or the other knocks we rise stiffly from our well worn chairs,<br />shuffle forward in our tired robe and slippers,<br />and greet the Old Man at the door.<br /><br />The sleep of time, the timeless sleep, each forever bound to each<br />in our little tenured keep.<br /><br />Time is deep, time is long.<br />What began as dream shall end as song.</div><br /><strong>Time Rhymes</strong><br /><br /><em>Time Sweeps it All Away<br /></em><br />The stratagems and plans of life<br />That succeed or go astray,<br />The triumphs and the failures, all --<br />Time sweeps it all away.<br /><br />The last hurrahs of soldiers brave<br />Sung out amidst the fray;<br />Bright medals pinned to skeletal chests;<br />Time sweeps it all away.<br /><br />Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall,<br />Each captain has his day;<br />And though the trumpet loudly sounds,<br />Time sweeps it all away.<br /><br />Though weddings, births and funerals<br />Hosannas and Kyrie<br />Divide the years with joy and grief,<br />Time sweeps it all away.<br /> <br />Girlish curls and boyish locks<br />One day will turn to gray;<br />Though tints and dyes are oft employed,<br />Time sweeps it all away.<br /><br />The saints you pray to on your knees<br />Were the sinners of yesterday;<br />Their sins have all been long forgiven;<br />Time swept them all away.<br /><br />Friend and foe have their rendezvous<br />And lovers their trysting-day;<br />But each a final engagement keeps<br />Though time sweeps it all away.<br /><br /><em>Delay<br /></em><br />We delay our ultimate sacrifice<br />and postpone our final surrender.<br />We casually forget to take Your Name;<br />trusting in time to help us remember.<br /><br />But time it will be that steals Your Name<br />and mixes it with the dust,<br />where we've let it lie like a fallen flower;<br />a heart-wheel gone to rust.<br /><br />We live for some other moment<br />in the future or the past,<br />instead of living each present moment<br />as if each one were our last.Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5376510346470520775.post-18402198390178416232009-07-22T08:22:00.000-07:002009-09-30T08:28:39.802-07:00"Time and Its Passing," a Ten-Part Prose Poem: Parts One and TwoWelcome to my Poetry Page...and thanks for visiting.<br /><br /><a href="http://ambdc.net/site_images/baba_back.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 322px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 454px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="http://ambdc.net/site_images/baba_back.jpg" /></a><em>Foreward <strong></strong></em><br /><br />It's taken me 61 years to squirm up and out of the 19th and 20th Centuries, and here I am with my own blog (God, how self-serving that sounds...ouch). The idea was suggested to me by my very good friends at the Meher Baba Lovers of Tampa Bay, who said that having a personal blog would be an excellent forum to post my way-too-long (174 pages...whew!), ten-part prose poem, "Time and Its Passing."<br /><br />I'll try to be brief (yeah, Mick, you do that)...<br /><br />The poem is in free verse. Each of the ten parts, however, are interspersed with short "Time Rhymes." (Parts One and Two follow.)<br /><br />"Time and Its Passing" is essentially a meditation on that inexplicable and endlessly fascinating dimension: time: its irrevocability and impregnability, its seeming ruthlessness and cruelty, and conversely its majesty and mercy, poignancy and pathos.<br /><br />It is also about the journey of the soul, imagined through the creation of fictional characters' experiences, throughout innumerable lifetimes, from a kind of ignorant darkness to a kind of knowing light. If it was a musical composition, it could be called a "tone poem," or, as I see it, a kind of novel in free verse.<br /><br />As most of you who know me, or read/heard me read this work aloud, the poem was inspired by the life and work of Avatar Meher Baba. It also springs from a life-long obsession with time, the ultimate captivator or all audiences, willing <em>and</em> unwilling. But God, or the Oversoul, as Emerson liked to term the Deity, is timeless, and in His personal manifestations throughout history, continually holds out to suffering and time-weary humanity the timeless touch of His love and transfigurative compassion, which ultimately, and thankfully everlastingly, frees us from time once and for all time.<br /><br />A quick (and this time I mean it), a word of thanks to Pam Rubenstein and the great group of folks in the Tampa Bay group, without whose weekly encouragement over a very long year of readings over phone and webcam, this fifteen-year-work-in-progress would definitely NOT have progressed to its completion.<br /><br />Below are Parts One and Two of "Time and Its Passing," preceded by some wonderfully apt quotations from Meher Baba, each of which is duly referenced; the references appear at the end of the poem. I'll be posting succeeding stanzas in a few days.<br /><br />Thanks, whoever you are and whatever you may be doing at this particular moment in time, for taking the time to read this work. It goes (corny as the saying is, but true nonetheless), from my heart to yours.<br /><br /><em>Introductory</em><br /><br />From the words of Avatar Meher Baba:<br /><br />"The drama of the continued life of the individual soul has many acts.<br />From the standpoint of the worldly existence of the soul, a curtain may be said<br />to be drawn over its life after the closing of each act.<br />But no act yields its real significance if it is regarded as complete in itself.<br />It has to be viewed from its wider context as being a link between the acts<br />already performed and the acts still to come.<br />Its meaning is entwined with the theme of the whole drama of which<br />it is a part.<br />The end of the act is not the end of the progressive theme.<br />The actors disappear from the stage of earth only to reappear again in new<br />capacities and new contexts.<br />The actors are so engrossed in their respective roles that they treat them<br />as the be-all and end-all of all existence.<br />For the major part of their continued lives (running into innumerable<br />incarnations), they are unconscious of the closely guarded truth --<br />that the Author of the drama, in His imaginative production,<br />Himself became all the actors and played the game of hide and seek<br />in order to come into full and conscious possession of His own creative<br />infinity.<br />Infinity has to go through the illusion of finitehood to know itself<br />as infinity; and the Author has to play the parts of all the actors to know<br />Himself as the Author of this greatest detective story, worked out through<br />the cycles of creation."1<br /><br />"We thus have God, as infinite Love, first limiting Himself in the forms<br />of creation and then recovering His infinity through the different stages<br />of creation.<br />All the stages of God's experience of being a finite lover ultimately culminate<br />in His experiencing Himself as the sole Beloved.<br />The sojourn of the soul is a thrilling divine romance in which the lover<br />who in the beginning is conscious of nothing but emptiness, frustration,<br />superficiality, and the gnawing chains of bondage gradually attains<br />an increasingly fuller and freer expression of love,<br />and ultimately disappears and merges in the divine Beloved<br />to realize the unity of the lover and the Beloved in the supreme and eternal<br />fact of God as infinite Love."2<br /><br />"By divine law you are shielded from remembrance of past lives, for it would<br />not help you in living your present life but would make it infinitely more<br />complicated and confusing."3<br /><br />"You are first a child.<br />Then you grow old and drop the body, but you never die and never were born.<br />In the East, Vedantists believe in reincarnation, and in a number of births<br />and deaths until one attains Godhood.<br />The Muslims believe in one birth only and one death only.<br />The Christians and the Zoroastrians hold the same belief.<br />All are right.<br />But Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Zoroaster, all meant what I mean by real birth<br />and real death.<br />I say you are born once and die once.<br />All the so-called births and deaths are only sleeps and wakings.<br />The difference between sleep and death is that after you sleep you awake<br />and find yourself in the same body; but after death you awake in a different body.<br />You never die.<br />Only the blessed ones die and become one with God."4<br /><br />"The wheel of births and deaths ceaselessly turns.<br />You are born as a male, as a female; rich, poor; brilliant, dull; healthy, weak;<br />black, white; of different nationalities and of different creeds,<br />in accordance with your inherent and imperative need to have all that<br />richness of experience which helps transcend all forms of duality.<br />Side by side with the experience, the paying and receiving of karmic debts<br />go on ad infinitum.<br />How can you clear the account?<br />The Avatar, or Sadguru, having universal Mind, literally embodies<br />universal life.<br />It is through Him that you become free from this business of karma.<br />The life of everything and everyone is an open book to me.<br />It is like a film show that I enjoy at my own cost.<br />I am the sole Producer of this ever-changing and never-ending film<br />called the universe, wherein I become you in your awake dream state<br />in order to awaken you to the Real Awake State.<br />When you experience this state you will realize the nothingness<br />of what was your awake dream state which you experience now.<br />This needs my Grace.<br />When my Grace descends it makes you Me."5<br /><br />"When the goal of life is attained one achieves:<br />the reparation of all wrongs.<br />the healing of all wounds,<br />the righting of all failures,<br />the sweetening of all sufferings,<br />the relaxation of all strivings,<br />the harmonizing of all strife,<br />the unraveling of all enigmas,<br />and the real and full meaning of all life --<br />past, present and future."6<br /><br />"I am the Divine Beloved who loves you more than you can ever<br />love yourself."7<br /><br /><em>Parts One and Two<br />Long Time, Brief Time</em><br /><br />I<br />Long time, dark time, thick with sunlight and stars and a thousand dreamings<br />flows on, its tide of remembrances and ebb of forgetfulness washing away<br />the footprints of each just-passed lifetime, leaving no footprints behind.<br />Long time, dark and wide and deep sings its quiet music in the hidden recesses<br />of the heart, sings its one long note of infinite forever singing<br />whose beginning was before all things were and whose end will be<br />after all things have passed away.<br />Long time and its brief music singing softly but clearly of grief and lost love,<br />of hopes unhoped by trials and disillusion, of tendernesses hardened,<br />of kindnesses rejected,<br />of the long dull ache of an empty life lived for no one, uncluttered<br />and unrevealed,<br />of songs unsung and words unspoken,<br />of bigness in little things and littleness in big things.<br />Long time of long ago, remembered at the oddest moments:<br />a sudden memory of rooms long ago vacated, the echoes of doors closing<br />and laughter behind walls, the ends of sentences lost in tears or rage,<br />of music played on a summer night long, long ago,<br />of hands held and fingers intertwined and perfume rising from a strong<br />and shapely neck,<br />of starshine and moonplay and cloudbursts and showers of comets<br />that surprised the sky with its brightness, now faded, fading, so dimly felt,<br />far faint echoes heard just barely above the noise of living, as in a dream.<br />Long time and the vaulting arch of memory:<br />of a waltz played on a Viennese balcony on New Year's Eve at the turn<br />of the century, the fireworks bursting in your heart,<br />of coming home from a war broken but not whole and almost fainting<br />in the embrace of your wife, her hair still smelling of roses.<br />Long time and the crushing weight of remembrance:<br />of the lie you told simply by keeping silence,<br />of the truth you told that ruined a reputation and a life,<br />of promises made but never kept,<br />of transgressions avenged instead of forgiven,<br />of help withheld and pity too,<br />of mea culpas murmured on weakened knees in a dank and empty church,<br />of too many sins that even long time in all its width and depth can never<br />fully erase.<br />Long time and the long reach of retribution:<br />every action having its consequences, each thought and word and deed<br />either credited or debited, but payment somehow exacted, sooner or later.<br /><br />II<br />Which one of us does not hear time singing in our hearts?<br />Which one of us does not feel the pull and tug of the tide of memory?<br />And which one of us is strong enough to resist it, or would resist it if we could?<br />Long time dark in its flowing and terrible in its pull, our chests aching<br />with remembrance.<br />Long time wide and dark and kind, a huge shadowing hand that wipes away<br />pain and joy and singing and laughter too and the thronging memories<br />of a thousand lifetimes, washing each one away but leaving the shore clean<br />and unmarked for the next one.<br />Long time and the still sad music, each life a single unbroken note in the long wide symphony of time, its strains coming resoundingly to life in the<br />crowded moments of a day's hour or minute.<br />This crowded hour, this teeming hour, filled with hurrahs and huzzahs! so soon<br />fading, fading, limp sounds in a slowly closing ear.<br /><br />Thus do we fade from our scenes, like poor actors from their lines,<br />the stage growing slowly dark, the seats empty, the curtain coming down;<br />yet behind the wings a brand new play is being rehearsed,<br />with new lines to be spoken, new parts to be played, and new lessons learnt.<br /><br />And in one moment a whole life may change, be unhinged from its past:<br />a word, a phrase, a message delivered with a hammer stroke or a kiss,<br />or a sudden collision with an idea heavier and weightier than thought itself,<br />a collision whose course's end had its beginning at the very beginning of time.<br /><br />III<br />The country of remembrance is a little one; its season short; we pass through it,<br />sleeping.<br />We sleepers wake in the folded arms of sleep, wake in a cool shaded nursery<br />where the soft gray light of a rainy afternoon late in August is stealing<br />in between the blinds, the drone and whir of an electric fan<br />pulsing the warm, moist air.<br />We wake on a bed of beast-fragrant straw spread over a cow dung floor,<br />the air thick with wood smoke and ghee;<br />wake in swaddling clothes coarse and homespun or in clothes soft<br />and finely embroidered by hands untouched by sunlight,<br />hands groomed from birth to tirelessly tend the ceaseless looms of the rich.<br /><br />IV<br />And dying.<br />Passing away on palanquins or in an elegantly carved four-poster bed whose<br />ancient canopy has itself witnessed births, deaths and couplings<br />that would produce new births and deaths;<br />passing away in the arms of lovers and friends, husbands and wives,<br />on battlefields and playing fields, in darkness and in light,<br />in the iron-webbed machinery of ships and planes,<br />under trees and stars and under ground,<br />in every imaginable pose and position, most of them embarrassing;<br />dying and sleeping again and waking again, as woman and man,<br />as villain and hero, as saint and sinner, as rich and poor,<br />as famous and unknown, short and tall, fit and lame, whole and divided,<br />pampered and abused, alone and never alone, drowning in a sea of siblings.<br />Coming and going, coming and going, endlessly tired of the game<br />but endlessly coming back for more and more and still yet more,<br />each new play dissolving into the next,<br />plays whose entrances and exits are endless, each act ringing with fresh hellos and goodbyes, with promises pledged and apologies screamed,<br />with pleas for forgiveness uttered in the last seconds of a last desperate hour.<br />And each lifetime the set changes: now a house deep with rooms,<br />now a hut or hovel through whose gaping spaces the winds<br />of every season blow, now a dweller in a concrete box<br />rising thousands of feet into the air.<br /><br />V<br />Long time and the starless dreams of a thousand between-life sleeps.<br />Sleep me now my tired soul, sleep me now a dreamless sleep but fill it with ships<br />and stars and a swaying mast;<br />sleep me now a sleep to last a thousand years, and do not let me wake again,<br />at least not too soon.<br />But all too soon is untroubled sleep awakened to the dream of a new life,<br />the echo of the last one fading in an infant's ear.<br />Long time, kind time that wipes the slate clean each time, that smoothes<br />the sad wrinkles and sagging flesh of age into the taut pink flesh<br />of the newly born.<br />And so we fall out of one lifetime and into another, as easy as falling asleep,<br />as easy as waking, as easy as time passing.<br /><br />VI<br />Now dive deep into the well of memory, old one, plunder its vault,<br />excavate its ruins, blow away the settled dust of centuries with the breath<br />of your desire, that breath that breathes out on one life and breathes<br />in on another,<br />the white haired chest collapsing on its last breath,<br />the hairless infant's chest swelling up with its first breath,<br />but all one great breathing, one long breath forever breathing out on the old<br />and breathing in on the new, held and suspended during that interval<br />between systole and diastole,<br />between one birth and the next,<br />a pair of old eyes closing on a completed life and opening upon a new one.<br />And the breath of your desire bore you up through the kingdoms of vegetable<br />and worm and fish and bird and animal until eons passed and your breath sang<br />in a human cage, mingling its song with other songs, and each song was unique:<br />some louder or more dissonant than others, some soft simple melodies<br />that a child could remember easily, some staccato breathed,<br />others simply sung screams, all colliding with one another in a lunatic symphony lead by no conductor and no one is listening except to his or her own little song.<br /><br />VII<br />But once every seven hundred-to-fourteen-hundred years or so<br />comes One whose singing is unlike any other, whose singing<br />once sang the stars into existence and whose song is so powerful and so beautiful<br />that we forget for a moment or so our own singing and listen to this singing,<br />its melody so simple yet so seductive, heard so deeply it echoes within<br />the chambers of our hearts.<br />And suddenly our mouths stop talking and our hands stop working<br />and our heads turn ever so slightly to one side and we ask,<br />Where have I heard this melody before?<br />Somewhere, somewhere, a long time ago.<br />And then it's lost and we go back to working and busyness.<br />How easily this symphony is drowned out by the single insistent clamoring note<br />of ourselves.<br />Yet when that note joins with that singing there is such chording as would make<br />a thousand pianos seem as insubstantial as ice cream sticks in the damp<br />and wayward fingers of children.<br /><br />VIII<br />This aching melody, heard and forgotten a thousand times over, is playing<br />even now in chords of ancient sunlight, a coda sung for stars.<br />Because we are as children who hunger for our parents’ call, this melody<br />is once again entombed in flesh and blood and bone to sing as breath and sighs<br />and that most lovely instrument, the human voice.<br />Yet this time the singing was silent, and this silent singing proved to be<br />the most beautiful of all, for its music could only be heard deep within<br />the human heart.<br />A time remembered, only a moment's time, less than a second, really,<br />but enough to make our ears perk up and turn toward the direction<br />of the music's coming.<br />A silent music this time.<br />A silent, unforgettable singing.<br /><br />IX<br />I am the great Rememberer and Forgetter.<br />In one life I slay you in childhood, in another I grow you into an old man;<br />in both, before the beginning of each, I wipe the memory away.<br />I dream my dreams in you, and breathe my longing into your breath.<br />I am the bright singing in your eyes.<br />I am the last thought you have before you fall asleep.<br />I am the hunger in your heart, the thirst in your soul for something more .<br />I am the weight of days and the great wide arc of memory.<br />I am the diaphanous membrane of memory which only longing can pierce.<br />I am that sigh heard and remembered across the centuries.<br />I am the long thoughts, the long memories, the long hopes.<br />I am that which is forever lost, found and wasted.<br />I am that wordless poetry struck into verse by the wind and metered<br />by the stars.<br />I am the stiffly spoken speech of indignation.<br />I am the wordless speech of eye gazing when you love.<br />I am the burning and the coolness.<br />I am the ocean and the eye drop of water trembling on a leaf.<br />I am that hand you hold throughout a thousand lifetimes, never letting go,<br />not even for a moment.<br />And, could you but feel it, I am holding your hand even now,<br />and will continue to hold it until you yourself pass away in Me.<br /><br />X<br />Now time in its turning is turning once more, its long slow hand<br />turning the leaf over and over, blowing down the ages,<br />turning one side up in the west, turning the other side up in the east,<br />settling it calmly on land or tossing it stormily out to sea.<br />You the leaf and time the turner, you the seed and time the sower,<br />you the dust and time the sweeper.<br />Each leaf a boat, each seed a swimmer.<br />Frail craft borne along by the merest breath, overturned by the most casual wind.<br />It is the breath and wind of your desire that bears you along and sails you<br />into so many strange ports of call, where you stop, drop anchor and stay,<br />sometimes for a short time, sometimes for two or three lifetimes.<br />Then one day all that you have been and felt and done will swiftly and strongly<br />blow you clean away from this long dwelt-in place, will lift you high above<br />this setting for so many scenes played out in grief or joy,<br />and will carry you to a new place where new scenes will be enacted<br />with new players who are but old players from your last play<br />but who are now wearing new costumes and new names.<br />Those whom you played love scenes with you will greet quickly and with<br />much affection.<br />Those whom you murdered with words spoken or unspoken will seek<br />to revenge themselves upon you and these you will greet with instant distrust and reasonless fear.<br />And you will wonder why this should perplex you so,<br />with no apparent justification on either side.<br />And this is a mystery you will never solve, except through love.<br /><br />XI<br />The faces pass before your between-sleep eyes in a steady stream:<br />the wives, children, husbands, the interminable line of parents and friends;<br />sometimes the best friend of one life becoming the father of another;<br />a sister becoming a brother; the combinations endless, amusing, tragic.<br />And each costume and role change is rung by our own actions, our own<br />unharnessed words.<br /><br />So many faces in so many photographs in so many carefully wrought frames<br />on so many mantles and desks and walls, faces sepia smiling in black<br />and white staring, the faces coming and going and changing in their frames,<br />first in wood and now in metal and now in plastic,<br />not on intricately sewn doilies anymore but on long sleek desks<br />under halogen lighting in a sterile office thousands of feet in the air.<br />The next time you gaze into those beloved eyes, fathomless with time,<br />know that the lost and forgotten eyes of other beloveds lie just beneath<br />the surface.<br /><br />XII<br />Have I told you lately that I love you?<br />I will love you forever, forever.<br />Remember me too, my darling.<br />Do you remember the warm continent of our bed on a frigid night<br />in late January, the windows steamed over with our panting<br />and outside the air so cold it hurt and the stars like sharp diamonds<br />and the sky cloudless and huge as forever?<br />Do you remember the night in '41 when we went to hear Walter Damrosch conduct the Eroica and we sat huddled together on your mother's<br />merino wool blanket and you said If you sit in just the right spot you can hear<br />the concert twice and I said How can that be and you said Because of the echo<br />and we laughed into each other and held each other until it hurt<br />but did not move because moving would have broken the magic?<br />And the stars overhead were diamonds again but the night air<br />was autumn-crisped and your hair smelled of lavender and your skin of talcum and when the symphony ended in time and space it continued forever<br />in our hearts; oh do you remember?<br />Please dear, say that you remember.<br />Time the great thief is even now stealing this precious moment, rushing it along,<br />dimming it with harsher sounds and vulgar lights, not sky-made or star-crafted<br />but metal-forged and rubber-belched and steel-screamed.<br />Somewhere in time Walter Damrosch is still bringing his baton down on the final<br />beat of the Eroica, the symphony's last chord still ringing the night air,<br />then a penumbra of sound before the crashing wave of applause;<br />somewhere even now that sound and heart-stopped silence is still a throbbing<br />pulse beat; it has been stilled by time's relentless flight, but our two hearts,<br />long since stopped, are still beating.<br />Ah, but do you remember?<br /><br /><em>Your love for me, my love for you<br />Will stretch the bounds of time.<br />My love for you, your love for me<br />Are poems in perfect rhyme.<br />Though each of us must one day pass<br />Beyond even memory’s reach,<br />Somewhere, somehow our love will speak<br />In silence, each to each.<br /></em><br />And he lay with his head on her lap feeling the earth beneath him<br />and he looked up at her with the awe and wonder of one who looks up<br />at a great statue and sees it etched proudly and timelessly against the sky<br />and he looked at her that way now.<br />And as he watched the day went to sleep and the night came awake above him<br />and he saw her face beautiful and grand and noble against the new-born stars<br />and his heart sang its silent song of joy and he pressed his palms to the earth<br />and thought he could feel it turning in space but it was only<br />the turning over of his heart.<br /><br /><em>The memory of your smile, my dear<br />Will outshine time and place.<br />The image, dear, is so engrained,<br />‘Tis impossible to erase.<br />The pools of love in your eyes alone<br />So warm, so deep, so kind,<br />Could not be penned by a poet’s hand<br />Or by an artist lined.<br />Even the sun’s vast eternal light<br />Could not dim thy image from my sight.</em><br /><br />And he remembered now all the times of his lying with her<br />and each remembrance was a pearl on an ever-expanding string<br />and their breath was the dawn breeze gentle as a lover’s sigh and he said<br />Will you always love me as I shall always love you?<br />Yes.<br />Promise?<br />I promise.<br />Not even when we die?<br />No, she said, not even then.<br />Forever, then?<br />Of course, you silly.<br />And then he sighed and said<br />Would that I had a thousand more lifetimes in which to love you,<br />and an ocean formed at the corner of his eye because he knew that they had<br />but this one lifetime to share and make rich with their loving and then<br />the ocean overflowed.<br />Then she held him fast and pressed his head against her breast<br />so that he could hear her heart beating and he remembered the words of the poet who had said:<br />I wish every man the love of a woman beautiful and tender,<br />Unless he has first died on her breast, he can never fully surrender.*<br />And his heart swelled within him.<br />And in the sky the stars burned with a steady fire and he knew<br />they would burn that way forever<br />like their love, like their love.<br /><br /><em>When shall we meet again, this you and I?<br />When this moment freezes, this tear, this sigh.<br />What hour will bring our hearts into rhyme?<br />When minutes embrace the hours, and burn in time.<br />Are ancient hearts such a certainty?<br />Yea, therein lies the pulse of Eternity.<br />Shall we know each other only by a tear or sigh?<br />That will be all that's left to tell us<br />It was once you and I.<br /></em><br />XIII<br />Time, you robber of hearts, you plunderer and waster of moments<br />so long yearned for; time, you marauder of memories, you thief of dreams,<br />wearing them away with your terrible distance;<br />time, you goddamned engine of God's dreaming.<br /><br />Long time and the long wide arc of memory.<br />Long time and the long hot breath of desire.<br />Long time and the too swiftly changing seasons.<br />Long time, unstoppable time.<br />Memory the engine.<br />Desire the fuel.<br />LOVE THE RELEASE.<br /><br />* From In Dust I Sing, by Francis Brabazon: Ghazal 57. Copyright 1974, Berkeley, California 94701.Mickey Kargerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784714226515405645noreply@blogger.com8