"Don't make me come down there"

signed god on some sponsor's billboard 

                           

I cursed at what I'd seen:

the failure of eyes to see Presence all-around

exciting ev'ry molecule and atom and sound

I could have wept but pitied instead

the blind believers framing God so frightfully mean

hatred hot in his eyes for what he sees

poised to rip his beauteous creation apart

tearing us to shreds for our few or many sins

But sighs rose from my mouth instead

watching light fill the foggy morning sky

It felt like the other side of the Deluge

and I was Noah, holding the messenger dove

   *Could it happen that with the shrinkage of the planet Earth distances but also differences between countries grow smaller and smaller?

-Czeslaw  Milosz

*Perhaps a loss of harmony with the surrounding space, the inability to feel at home in the world, so oppressing to an expatriate, a refuge, an immigrant, however we call him, paradoxically integrates him in contemporary society and makes him, if he is an artist, understood by all.

-Czeslaw Milosz

*The past of every individual undergoes constant transformations in his or her memory, and more often than not it acquires the features of an irretrievable land made more and more strange by the flow of time.  

-Czeslaw Milosz            

the tender touch of war

i.

i was mad, mad, mad
seeing the damaged body of a naked child
his feet eaten as if by a hungry mine

by a war machine greedy for whatever's at hand
the flesh of persons or the mechanics of things
satisfying its thirst for the blood of prey

the image i beheld disturbed me
the shattered feet, the clotted blood
the grimacing face of the chocolate child

watching a medic's cradling arms
bearing the wounded like a technician defusing a bomb
i witnessed the tender touch of war first-hand

an awakening compassion surrounded me
soothing the anger boiling in my heart
feeling empathy for innocents, victims in the hostile land


ii.

new eyes turned my sights to another war
the one not far but in my bodily home
the one of madness feeding all other wars

iii.

when dead images hold their grip
about the feelings succoring us
our envisioned end is not our end

for somewhere in the encumbering fog
in the night-time parliament of fears
a fire blazes, shining through the night

and the vision rising before our sight
is our creed, bearing public witness
our joy placed in bas-relief



*...many poems and novels have been written in this [20th] century by exiles who describe a region of the world from where they have come as more beautiful than it had been in reality, simply because now it is lost forever.
-Czeslaw Milsoz


*The past of every individual undergoes constant transformations in his or her memory, and more often than not it acquires the features of an irretrievable land made more and more strange by the flow of time.
-Czeslaw Milsoz

you think it's a simple matter for me to sit next to you
listening to your accusations, my muffled mouth struggling to speak.
for you, i don't exit.  i'm your mind made up
as invisible nuisance from the body politic.
i'm a barricaded problem kept safe from your righteous brew
a statistical nuance, an image frozen in your block of sin.

i'm a hymen-plated person ever struggling to be born
gagged and bound behind veils used to cloak your faults
holding back the flood of freedom pushing at your door
wanting to grow where your desires intend to hold.

how  long will your chains contain me, how long will they hold?
till my skinny arms slip between them and the strength in me is bold.




*Could it happen that with the shrinkage of  the planet Earth distances but also differences between particular countries grow smaller and smaller?
-Czeslaw Milosz


*Perhaps a lost of harmony with the surrounding space, the inability to feel at home in the world, so oppressing to an expatriate, a refugee, an immigrant, however we call him, paradoxically integrates him in contemporary society and makes him, if he is an artist, understood by all.  Even more, to express the existential situation of modern man, one must live in exile of some sort.
-Czeslaw Milosz

naked i came forth from God
wearing nothing but my skin
with Hanes i return to God
the mortician declaring nudity sin

the Lord giveth all
but the mortician demandeth more
in case while awaiting judgement
my bowels begin to pour

the u-haul will remain behind
'cause you can't drag it into the gave
but your Jockeys will surround you
to make sure that you behave



if i could flee where the wise ones roam
i'd run to their understanding arms
accepting loved implied in their sighs

my lips would cradle tears
curve into a smile of peace
held in the delight of their love




*Rhythm is at the core of human life.
-Czelaw Milosz

*Repetition enables us to form habits and to accept the world as familiar.  Perhaps the need of routine is deeply rooted in the very structure of our bodies.
-Czelaw Milosz

*...to express the existential situation of modern, one must live in exile of some sort.
-Czelaw Milosz

On Watching a Cloud in the Wind

how unlike

a cloud

in the wind

am I

when

what I

use

to shape

my world

my self

my god

ceases

to blow

in

the wind

*Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

Hatch

what

winged life

wants

is

to be

outside

in the open

commerce

of hearts

where 

nothing

is bought

or sold

*Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*...the world has too much paradox in it to let the heart be one place at a time; the heart is always dreaming of someplace else.  In a foreign land, it dreams of home.  At home, it dreams of the other side of the world.  It is a haunted face.

-Janet Heyneman

*Life here in the "real world" is more complicated: work, money, danger, growing older, making peace with family.  But then I remember the profound loneliness of living as a foreigned, I'm reminded of why I came back.

*Janet Heyneman

accused

who will hear me?
who will listen
will you?

dig the wax from your ears
drill through the complacent rock
blocking the drum that catches my voice

can't you hear a piece of my pain
sense me standing next to you
desirous of justice demanded by you?

am i guilty because you can't face yourself?
is your negligence reason to imprison me?
are you God as to speak my truth?

see then the truth igniting my eyes
scorching my fever
circling my pain



*...our thinking is imprisoned in language categories and fixed definitions that become so habitual that we fail to recognize the freshness of ever-changing life.
-Robert Lawlor



*I'm spending this last year in Kyoto letting the city imprint its shape and colors in my inner landscape, so I'll have a memory of this place.  I'm spending this time like one who knows she is dying; everything is precious because everything is disappearing.
-Janet Heyneman

I said in my youth
"I want to be a saint"
dress like Mary
curse like Paul
pierced like Francis
flogged like Drew

An old man now
hurled into the muck of life
I curse and dress
flog and pierce
fashion saints in my image and grace

But what have I done with God?
Where have I chased God's face?

I'm a child, ageing
recalling years repressed
now sitting long distant
along the path I walk
in need of mercy
and halos about my feet



*Flannery O'Connor once revealed that her "gravest concern" was "the conflict between and attraction for the Holy and the disbelief in it that we breathe in with the air of the times."  I feel that attraction for the holy, and my throat, too, burns with the air of disbelief.  It is hard to be a storyteller in an age that prefers statements and statistics, O'Connor admitted, and yet "in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells."  By what stories shall we be known?
-Scott Russell Sanders

i.

i used to believe i could write

now i know i can't

i scribble notes of nonsense

to make sense of insanity

i scribble as the smoke rises

stand on the path bearing miasma

to be torched or scorched

by the streaming heat

recording feelings that life encodes

through steam and flashes

that are revealing some truth

here or there, meaning arises

some nugget shines, attracting attention

an invitation to enter the water

pan a treasure, silently, in hope

ii.

never break your pen

this would be death, against life

Fire dwells therein 

soliloquy on the edge of despair

If I could create a day of colored leaves aware of winter
vertical rage would blow across some beardless face

In the decision that brings forth tears
tears of joy for a self reclaimed
the thought of selling out a thousand times
rushes to the center of my mind
but with open arms I embrace the orphaned self
found at the door, dreading the form before me

When you beat the humanity out of someone
their pain is coated with demonic spite
A neanderthalian stench rises from their troubled past
and darkness smells of hog manure in an open field
the filthy secrets of parents hid in its breasts

I find myself among demons plying their dark trade
or on the verge of suicide or some unholy act
like strangling infants formulating terror
on prostrate victims pathetic in their boredom
or anguished bodies groaning before the tellie

It frightens me some, believing suicide's on my mind
I write for myself and for their disturbed convictions
with the hope that these words might coax them to listen
to poems about relief and public destruction
It's death I speak of ghost-writing the wand'rings of despair
puppy poop to those avoiding  the implications

Rest your worries, silence your doubts
Take my hand and follow
I will guide you to where you wouldn't go
When you fight, you don't see nothing
Don't throw your life away
Let go and follow

Listen to the rain for truth about the Light
Stand beneath the wind for the Spirit of the Divine



*We know there is order somewhere deep within but we have trouble hearing the cues that could lead us back to what we knew in the beginning.
-Parabola/Place and Space


*We live as separate beings, especially in western culture, separate from each other and separate from the earth.
-Parabola/Place and Space


*Where did I begin? Where do I end? Where do I belong?
-Parabola/Place and Space

Ethi-opium

we are smiling actors
shifty sources of truth's confinement
we were fucked and rarely cared about
screwed white to reshape us black

facing reality in each other we can't stand
we are tainted niggaz with naked minds
illiterati ripe for rituals of repetition
ethi-opium binding our bag of denials

will we ever be black so as to face our story
so that when booker t returns we might be surer
we deny the aberrations and return perverted
blind to history's suicidal solutions

niggaz seduced, our thinking done by others
we bleed green like virgins raped by our masters
the accumulated  wealth of our creative musings
turns blue with each song and struggle we muster

shooting blacks, our sad lives wallow in death
with a promise of chicken, we dance and sing alot
it's no shame since money's the name of the game
we'll make it through the next brother's fall

jesus is hooted yet many perish in his name
in our segregated parcels, our fragile integrations
church and state supposedly improve our lot
we are good jim crowist, lynching one another

and the niggaz who succeed, jealously slay one another
our minds being mined with minimal compensation
"git back, nigga, git back", we demand
"git back where you belong, nigga; get back"

our hatreds are covered 'neath sheets of sex
our slaughters continue with knives and words
our skin yet threatens both us and them
damage control brings out the national guard

we've been white so long that we can't be lost
with little improvements over forty years
so don't be surprised when you look down the street
and spot ghosts of the past rising up in view



*How do you tell Christ that he is Christ?  You don't.  You just consider the times you have been Christ yourself in the past and will be in the future.
-Marvin Barrett

toast

when the gun spoke, many paused
raised their hands to their and mouths and gasped:
it was their anguish rising
their expression of horror and surprise.

i, numb and shocked
lost blood and went faint.
laying wounded on the ground
i wandered through some pain
rushed through sins fused within my mind.

"who'll escort me through death?", i asked.
"is God angry with me?"
"whom must i forgive?"
"will my passage be swift?"

all stared when the medics arrived
looking at me as a filthy spot.
needled and drugged
they shoved me onto their cart
rushing off, talking about butterscotch.

life goes on, the shock subsides;
buses caught, cars engaged.
chatter returns to the level of fear:
"i'm lucky it wasn't me";
"he must've deserved it", they say.
dying or getting well
i ask the question, "why?";
"did i know i had this coming?"
stripped and bleeding in my head.

no one saw me as martyr nor victim of crime
but one of the decorations life demands at times;
ancient, pervasive and chilling at most
daily bread in a nation where violence is toast.



*These shamans know how to enter and interpret the world of dreams where the ways of magic and healing derived their power.  They were called "powwows" (pauwaus) - "dreamers" in the Algonquin language.  Powwowing could heal an ailment or an injury, but it could not heal human relations.
-Richard E. Wentz


*...healing is a cosmic affair, that life is worth living where  you know how to use words and actions that otherwise seem to have no utilization or functional value whatever.
-Richard E. Wentz



*After spending the night in the intense intimacy of the healing dance, the people will speak of how good it is to be together.  The Kung refer to the healing dance as num chxi.  The sense of chxi is "to gather together to sing and dance." "A good dance makes our hearts happy", they say.  And a "happy heart" - the expression of spiritual balance - is what heals the people.
-Richard Katz


















































des;
buses caught, cars enggge

rain fell, a sooth-sayer

after the twister ripped through my gut

she stepped gently into my flesh

entering me as a healing force

for she arrived as grace

pitter-pattering from the moonless sky

and like nature marking her territorial space

claimed me as her resting place

i drank her like a vintner's sample

savoring the nectar of her vine

getting drunk on the bouquet of her flavors

mating upon my welcoming lips

ah! blessed nanny of nature

nursing me at her liquid breasts

blessed having drunk her soothing milk

flowing free like hot-honey from bees

she hummed a song in the night's abandoned light

rocking me dear 'neath her mothering breasts

cuddling me into refreshing sleep

safe from the madness of inner strife

i've been given peace and bliss

a taste of Love's rich Eucharist

*The healing of ourselves is the healing of the whole nation.

-Thinh Nath Hanh

*War is in our souls.

-Thinh Nath Hanh

*When  we learn from our own suffering, then all the flowers will be smiling at us.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

song of a thousand addicts

mercy, mercy

i'm sorry

please forgive me

help me

i need your help

why do i do this

here i go again

thank you

i want to change

before i die

*Our society is full of violence, hatred and fear and we are influenced by that.  Young people growing up today receive many seeds of unhappiness.  Why are we so violent?  Why is there so much fear and hatred in us?  It is because there is so much violence, hatred and fear in society, in our collective consciousness.  A society like ours will always produce police like the ones who beat up Rodney King.  If we fire policemen or lock them in prison, we will not solve the problem, because the roots of the problem are in society.  A policeman knows he has to take care of himself, because he can be killed by anyone on the street.

-Thich Ngat Hanh

*A regular human being cannot kill another human being.  To be able to kill, you have to become a beast.

-Thich Ngat Hanh

felix culpa quickly suppressed

we'd like to save ourselves

but can't

we trip deeper into the human-hole

dug while fleeing the first

when our first-cause was blame

we blind ourselves 

to our escapades in life

escaping, if possible 

our original disgrace

it's tragedy we long

responsibility set aside

felix culpa we sing

at the year's high point

yet quickly suppress

the message wrapped in its tones

with difficulty we accept

the state of our kind

and know that we're loved

by our neglected God

forever now 

and ever more

sex is for relating:

for touching with words

and palpitations in our heart

for offering our anxious hands 

and stealing a hopeful glance 

perhaps our disjointed focus

is an awkward, fumbling attempt

to be in love with the other

to be in love with God

my hand, my me

reaches for you

however distant

i seem

or close

you are

it's our nature

your gift

On  the road traveled often

On the road traveled often

but blindly, as it were

zooming by what waits to be seen

the beauty of life simply being

like oneself being zoomed by

like God being zoomed by

like many of ev'rything being zoomed by

just stop one day and notice

stoop to the ground and peek

unwind ones rushing

view flowers upon the moss

or twigs on ice

ones hand on bark

Flights from the obvious poke you like a pesky fly

bouncing 'gainst the window pane

yearning for the sun

the air, the freedom

eager to pull the transparent into yourself

to be the pane exposing you

What's being filled is that hole in your soul

gasping for life and an open escape

that dodges neglect

and is alive again

*After I had been sick for several months, it became clear to me that I was changing in fundamental ways and that I would never go back to my "old self".

-Kat Duff

*Like many sick people, I had begun to realize that my illness was not do much a state of being as a process of transformation.

Kat Duff

*Paracelsus...wrote: "Decay is the beginning of all birth...the midwife of very great things!" adding  that this is "the deepest mystery and miracle that He [God] has revealed to mortal man."  People who have endured great physical trauma - car accidents, war injuries, surgery, or torture - occasionally bear witness to this mystery with stories of tunnels of light, angelic presences, and religious conversions.  Physical pain cancels the claims of the world and the hold of ordinary consciousness, opening us to the unworldly forces of the metaphysical.  No wonder the image of Jesus suffering on the cross is the central symbol of spiritual rebirth in Christianity.

-Kat Duff

It's ME back there 

Why do I look at you

knowing I'll never meet you

or speak you?

I look 'cause I've searched for some likeness

some flashback of myself lost in imaginings

some flesh-investing union

a wish

some hope or dream

some treasure worth probing for.

Mine's a focused glance.

This flirtation with your face

a scene exciting to view

to want

to touch

cause it's Me back there

quizzical and quiv'ring

a fractured wisp

an exhausted effort

a nagging perception

a quester filling empty

with the Why behind past moments

to find a reason for them all

to find the repressed truth

slipping past awakening

some fragment from it all.

It's the missed experience

returning for its due

as nature predestined

always predestines

pursuing the absent

via shadows in our lives.

For I'm there somewhere

somewhere

and I want to be found. 

*"Stories we tell ourselves about what is happening to us are dangerous because they are powerful," he [Arthur Frank] has written.  "We have to choose carefully which stories to live with, which to use to answer the question of what is happening to us."

In Genesis Jacob wrestles with the stranger, whom Frank imagines to be Jacob's own nature, his divided self.  "Jacob has to decide which side of him will prevail, the servant of God or his dark twin, the trickster."  In the struggle "Jacob wins not by defeating his darker side, but by realizing that the other he is contesting shares the face of God.  Jacob does not overcome his opponent: instead, he finds divinity in him."  The struggle ends as "the sun rose upon him and he halted upon his thigh." The end of the struggle, but not the end of the story.  Wounded, Jacob becomes whole.  Whole, he is renamed. For Arthur, "this is what it is to be ill: to wrestle through the long night, injured, and if you prevail until the sun rises to receive a blessing."

-Bill Moyers  

i'm old enough

i'm old enough

to say Yes to sin

not stuck in blame

as my game

i'm it

the one 

my sin shines before me

and Thee

no cheap release from responsibility

for sin is mine

and mine to repent

for the wicked are healed by good

if i but do it

and die

and keep dying

till what is seen 

is You

the day we acknowledge God fears us not

is the day we'll know God's love

we'll own ourselves for who we are

be set free to breathe the air

watch a bee and touch a wave

bury the gods that hold us bound

we'll hear the welcome hymn

we'll sing the welcome song

*It has been said that all medicines are poison and that the difference lies in dose. 

-Richard S. Sandor, M.D.

tensioned silence

silence

at once arrogant and shrill

speaks truth about relationships

louder than words could say

as they stand at the threshold of looking

staring blank past their eyes pleading

their lips sealed 'gainst the knowledge

that would free the caged Bird

silence

like God is silent

yet slaying

like God can slay

by speaking

holds them tensioned

attending to each other's absence

and presence

brushing each other

like whispered hope

a fermenting dream

believing that one day

someday

forgiveness will blossom

embrace and kiss

and wonder why

it took so long

to speak

*The Storyteller

from beginning

to end

I become

the story

I tell myself

to be

myself

others

want to tell my story

too

but

when I listen well

to myself

with a friend

I am

the story

meant to be

told

only once

without

end

*Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*One reason people are so creative in relation to disease is because it is there that they face elementary forces that both constitute and decompose them.

-Lawrence E. Sullivan

*...medicine is always miraculous. It makes visible, for all to see, the powers that otherwise remain invisible outside of the critical context of sickness and suffering.

-Lawrence e. Sullivan

we look at danger and we laugh our heads off

-saying on a Congolese t-shirt

crawl through your cross

wait for Easter

a poem will greet you on the Way

listen to its music

dance like a baby

Adam will catch you

when you fall

don't panic

it's been entered before

hug it like a favored toy

*So much of the creativity of a culture is a response to the reality of sickness, whether this is in the realm of oral tradition, written literature, music, dance, visual art, or the festival mobilizations of communities.  Healing always points toward a renewal of creative powers, toward a condition that is vital, stirring, strong and whole, as befits a creative beginning.  Art embodies and expresses these creative virtues, which link art inextricably to healing.

-Lawrence E. Sullivan 

A cadre of liars:

is this the mode of politics?

Is it possible to live forever lying

ever blushing behind a facade of truth?

Though I think not

life goes on

 election and selections take place

and we applaud the fakirs

who pulled it off

got rich with the deal

smiling broadly for the press.

It's the way life is.

Does God see 

then turn his back

sit on a stool and shit

flushing the toilet again and again? 

*...how can we really get a fix on the efficacy of different kinds of therapies?  To a large extent every healing system is effective or it would not survive; each one has a satisfactory way of explaining how its operations are a success even if patients die.  All patients die and any system of treatment must establish its effectiveness in the face of this challenging reality.  Measuring efficacy is an especially acute problem in dealing with traditional societies in Africa, South America, Oceania, and different parts of Asia.  It is difficult enough to make sure that adequate health care is being provided, never mind "looking on" at the same time, in order to measure effectiveness in a reliable and controlled fashion in terms that might satisfy biomedical scientists.

One aim of healing practice that is often very effective in local terms is to create an operating "theater", a spectacular setting where the forces of affliction and powers of cure can be put on display in a dramatic way.  Cure almost always has a "miraculous" quality: setting on visible display  the forces that might otherwise remain hidden and illumined.  Medical practice is effective, then, because it is revelatory, disclosing and naming transformative powers that are active but unrecognized.

-Lawrence E. Sullivan 

exposed

what's this that's bared:

our whitened wall;

our graying shadow;

our fading light?

our window is curtained.

we dare not see.

our history's short:

a thousand years, a day,

the same;

not much, burned upon a disk.

it too will die by fire.

we'll pass un-famous,

unknown,

letters on a crumpled page

a soon discarded paragraph.

whats' read is who we are:

scarred and scared,

our walls left behind.

what's exposed is what matters:

naked

without props

no ifs, ands, or buts.

just one bare-ass among others

paging through excuses

shuffling toward the Light.

here stand our doubts, denials

the sufferings we bought

our injustice, mistakes

our betrayals, our pains.

what's bare is us

un-famous

yet forever known

bare-assed and loved

wanted for Whose we are.

the Unimagined will look for Hope.

the Must Be is Love.

it's the basket that carries God

and that basket is us.

*Our human bodies are shared, rented, or inhabited by being with lives and histories of their own.

-Lawrence E. Sullivan

*...the call to be mature is at the same time a call to run the risk of disorientation, of illness and sickness.

-Lawrence E. Sullivan

we see through filtering eyes

the world  of our making

milieus in which are shaped

the body of our thought

like photographs gradually appearing

we sift through absence awaiting light

to touch a richer night

than stars in a Nicaraguan sky

visions of fire-flies

hinting at our need

*...the healing of Christianity is not inherently future-oriented. Piero Camporesi has shown that the apothecary herbs and medicinal spices which arrived in Europe after the Crusades fit into a cosmology of salvation already articulated in folk beliefs and in the theology of Bonaventure's Tree of Life.  In this view, healing plants flowered in Eden before the fall, but the life-giving branches never ramified into history, for they were severed when humankind was banished from Paradise.  Through the cross, Christ regrafted humanity to the creative tree of life in Paradise.  The bodily fluids that flowed from him at the time of his salvific passion and death represent the reflowing of the vital resins and balms of Eden.  They gave rise to the medicinal plants, unguents and aromatics brought from the Holy Land to Europe.  Like incorruptible bodies of saints, which exuded the odor of sanctity, the apothecary was a sign of the healing powers of creation, now flowing through the branches of human history.

-Lawrence E. Sullivan

I lay nude upon my bed

list'ning to the raindrops fall

and thunder roil in the void 

not outside but herein

My head pulsates.  I am bodily tired

as the soothing rain taps my tears

The distant thunder roars out a call

drawing ears to its voice between the lulls

A train chugging through the falling drops

lays them aside with material ease

The window creaks nudged by a nosy breeze

A trickling stream strokes the window's pain

or is it mine as a cardinal lures its mate

and a filtered gray softens the sleeping-room

I stretch down a road toward a receding sky

my inner walls illumined by uncontrolled Light 

*Cure would be the elimination of the disease or of the state of illness in a community, where healing would focus on the individual who is suffering from sickness and bring him or her back to a state of health.

-Lawrence E. Sullivan

*The symptoms of illness become symbols of the state of our being.

-Lawrence E. Sullivan