The First Monday in September

The world is always past 

appearing in the present—

it’s as if we stop 

a river with our names. 

It’s Labor Day and leaves 

already begin to turn 

in trees with lesser makeup. 

Over at Half Moon Lake, 

say forty-seven years ago, 

the summer of our love 

is pulled in from the water 

left to sit upon 

the shore and slowly dry. 

The school of pointless knowledge 

waited for our fall. 

But look! A butterfly 

is playing like a crazy 

leaf right now. Oh, time 

is nothing of the essence 

but an emptiness 

divided by imagi-

nation. When this body 

dies, its universe 

of space and time goes with it.

But. Not. I.

Song of Yourself

Abandon all center

for you are the universal.

There’s not a leaf on a tree

by a river that’s flowing

past hills and through cities

of mills that you aren’t.

There’s not a scene

in a list by Walt Whitman

you don’t inhabit.

Nothing you do is done

by some encapsulated

you—in your manifest

intent on knowing

you’re unmanifest.

the nondoer fallacy pseutra

there’s a key misunderstanding of nondoing teaching of Nisargadatta

which originates in its misinterpretation by final teachings of Balsekar.

Nisargadatta points to doing as phenomenal and there is no individual—

Balsekar mis-points to doing as noumenal thru an individual phenomenon.

Nisargadatta points to Nondoing as universal-consciousness doing—

Balsekar mis-points to an individual Nondoer as the absolute doing.

relatively speaking this results in the error of doing on an individual level

with the (mis)understanding it’s not responsible for its doing—

but all doing from the viewpoint of an individual is false.

i see Balsekar’s fallacy resulting from the difficulty of students grasping

there’s no individual to grasp—so teaching was adapted to them—

as nondual teaching of Nisargadatta degenerates to a religion of nonduality

by a prosaic teacher’s inability to transmit the subtle teaching.

the trickster pseutra

every time one calls it sage, 

trickster calls it parsley. 

tricksters never pay for what they say, 

but want some hypothetical other to. 

love and hate are just two sides of coyote's coin.

raven spreads its deconstruction ridge to ridge.

the merciless mother for the motherless child.

tricksters are generally thin-skinned 

in order to get under yours.

every time one calls it thyme, 

trickster calls it rosemary.

god story

my headless tale: 

i'm like deep sleep, 

that nothingness 

which isn’t even nothing, 

a pure subjective stateless state 

without an object to be known 

i’m absolutely pure awareness 

that unknowably unknown—

and out of nowhere is this

great spontaneous intent

to know i am, to know
i am that i unknown.

there is no madeleine of a cause,

no almond to begin some cracking of a nut,

no lemon tree so pretty to invoke this avocation,

nor a bowl of cherries to banana some absurdist apricot of plot.

there’s just this casablanca of the absolute

and its original intent

to know itself,

myself,

i.

what follows is a universal
consciousness of such 
complete imagination

conjuring the where,
when, what and who—

interspatial and

omnichronous,

transmanifesting and

panincarnational,

powered by a shot
of total love.

nuclear magicians
make an object out of nothing—

the rockbound salt of earth appears.

a genesis of wizards
sparks an evolutionary
process out of timelessness—

the central nervous system amplifies itself.

psychedelic sorcerers
convince the sharpest objects
to appropriate the subject—

people cut themselves to pieces.

knowing shamans show the mending way—

i am

this ‘i am’

that is absolutely i—

nothing but the known unknown,
nothing but pure natural awareness now...

unbelievable signs pseutra

apparently true, but

mind makes

synchronicity out of timelessness,

reincarnation out of birthlessness,

and manifestation out of omnipresence.

synchronicity is only as true as time—

reincarnation is only as true as birth—

manifestation is only as true as doing.

the world is only as true as me.

out of nonduality

the mind creates duality

and marvels at those unbelievable signs of unity

appearing in its make-believe conception.

in other words,

synchronicity, reincarnation, and manifestation are

as true as the world and me appear to be.

moreover,

in the shaman wisdom play of universal consciousness,

one synchronizes, reincarnates and manifests…

when, who and what one renders.

Moptop Meditation

I close my eyes and feel an energy 

incommensurate with last night’s pizza 

or this morning’s English muffin. 

It’s like nineteen sixty-four is listening 

to real top forty radio and number one 

and two and three are Beatles tunes,

‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’

‘She Loves You,’ ‘Please Please Me,’

and nothing that one knew before

consisted of such power and such glory

or such nuclear explosion

like those mushroom clouds in photographs

explaining why we practice duck and cover

in event of catastrophic war

but this is rock and roll,

this Shiva Shakti consciousness.

One knows no radio can generate

that burst of pure uncensurable radiance

but yes it’s all incoming waves instead.

They saturate the space around me

and this little lime-green plastic box

is just receiving them and amplifying

all-encompassing collective bliss itself:

“it's such a feeling that my love

I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hide.”

Call it spirit, being, presence,

Krishna, Christ, this universal love

that makes the body and receives the song

it’s always singing you yourself are love,

"yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Epistle to Myself

Dear Son,

before knowing what you really are,

you need to know just who you think you are.

I thought I was a person.

I had a headful of beliefs and one of them was me.

That me was re-formulated in the Sixties,

so a lot it was anti-war, pro-human rights,

and wondered when it all went wrong in my America.

I studied post-graduate American history

and found it never was exactly right.

In one important way, this was my spiritual beginning;

deconstruction needs to start at home.

In time I saw that war and all injustices are not

a matter of my being right

and someone else’s being wrong,

but essentially the fact I think there is a me and my

and someone else in opposition as another.

This personal assumption I’m a person is

the one original division from which all

division finds its origin.

Every little thing a person does

to get ahead, assert itself, insinuate its way

to some position of importance is

the primal swamp of war and all injustice.

So as long as I am thinking I’m a person,

there are hostilities and their infringements.

But being on the never hand,

love, Aum.

The River, a Road, and I

Every day I walk the road along the river, 

I want to walk the road along the river every day. 

Twenty years I’ve lived along this spacious river, 

in a less than thousand dollar rental 

in the middle of half-million dollar properties 

amid this precious priceless panorama.

Walking on this road I see a luminous mile of river,

and a mile of river is like ten thousand miles of heaven.

Ten thousand miles of heaven is something

no one ever knows and I see it every day.

What hand inserted me within this jeweled setting?

Across the river is an eastern white pine wilderness,

and in my heart is similar wilderness. Spirit talks to spirit.

There’s not a useless word within that conversation.

Here’s a road and there’s the river, and I’m the source of both,

although I’m never either. Not two, we say. Not two.

An Emotional Poem

Never fight a riptide;

heedfully observe it.

Then swim across and away,

returning to the ground.

Being isn’t rocket science.

Filtered by assorted lenses

of conditioned perpetuating

always transforming thought,

a spectrum of emotions

irradiates like a neon sign—

the heartbreak hotel.

Hence emotions are the light

of being, disturbed.

Accordingly emotions are existent

and undeniable.

Thus it’s just the thoughts

before emotions which are false.

In conceptual conceit,

it could be said

the absolute unknowable subjective

spontaneously intends

to know it is—

and this is that.

Don’t think about it.

This unfiltered energetic

raw existence is that knowing

and the only knowledge there is,

therapeutic, loving, wise or likewise.

This pure intensity 

'i am' is ground—

be