eThoughts : Divergence: Stream of Consciousness as Poetry

God’s Aplomb

Like fireflies,
My thoughts dart
Across the dark spaces of awareness,
Illuminating mere fragments of wholeness,
And deceiving me with partial realities.

Like moth to a flame,
My consciousness explores only what is lit
And notices in the contrast,
Dark forbidding holes.

Is awareness so insensitive
That it cannot feel God’s touch with an atom
Or taste God without the heavy seasoning of hellfire and brimstone,
Or smell God without the sweet blast of salvation?

Is awareness so dim
That it cannot see God in the dark,
Or so mute
That it cannot hear God in the silence?

The dancing fireflies call me back
To tasks undone and longings unfulfilled,
Leaving God to wait,
Which God does with such aplomb.

Communication

She was speaking to me
Across a great divide,
Her mouth moving,
Mirroring an animated face,
Points made in her mind
Even as the words
Tumbled like sticks over a waterfall
And splintered upon the rocks below,
Only to reach me as nature’s splendor.

Later, she insisted
I was told to take out the trash.

The Moon Knows

There are a lot of lights on the road I drive,
Announcing one thing or another.

There are a lot of voices where I go,
Filling the air with this message or that.

There’s a dog barking behind that fence.
He’s been at it for an hour,
Looking over his shoulder for a master who never comes,
Barking at me who hasn’t moved.

Perhaps he’s just lonely in his cage,
His ancestral wires
Twisted by his owner’s need for a knick-knack.

Who is really listening
To the glaring lights,
To the announcing voices,
To the barking dog?

The moon stares down from overhead
And knows exactly what it is doing.

Tribe of Talismans

Dancing with the skeletons of expectation,
Disconnected joints rattling messages of the past,
We try to move in perceptual forward,
While embracing perceptual pasts.

Our tribe of Talismans with their shouting shields,
We hoist heavenward in synchronized appeal,
And keep ourselves from realizing,
In too much safety, like too much light,
No space, no matter,
No learning, no present,
Is ever much revealed.

Reaching Out

It is funny to sit and scrawl
Word symbols across tree pulp
To be read by others
On the screens of their own experiences.

Oh, how the vestiges of old journeys
Leave a trail called remembrances,
Yet are presently interpreted.

Reaching out like beggar’s hands,
We try to touch,
Though it often seems like wanting.

To Slumber No More: The continuing series of Bad Poetry (copyright, 2008)

Through wrinkled eyes the world
Seems to pander
To niceness imagined,
But not yet realized,
As though to pretend
Will bring an end
To the stalking dark
And hidden jowls
Intent to devour
Being both humble and genuine.

But that is exactly
What is liberating
About old, old seeing—
To drop the pretense
And gain some
Sense,
Saving energy
From following
Such crooked paths.

And then the beauty comes
And darkness’s sharp teeth
Merely gleam
And light another way.

And the sight
Behind those
Wrinkled
Eyes
Smile
And
Wonder
What
Was
So
Difficult?

The Search
More from the series of Bad Poetry (copyright, 1991)

It began by drinking the waters which contained the Knowledge.
To be fair, the one in possession gave some to others, just to see.
But having possession, the less than pure of heart
Did not always measure the waters equally
For equal measure escaped comparison to the way already thought.

In the learning it was found that energy must be marshaled
And many old roads had to be retraced
So that the past could be shed—for it did not contain the proper lineage.

Eventually the cache of secret weapons was found,
The silver knife that announced the presence of power.

Thrown around a corner, it could pierce a steel post
Or split flesh while others watched, afraid,
Except for the wounded, who, bleeding badly, would asked to be healed.

The Searcher, though he did not deliberate the term
Or stand on word-meanings,
Danced on air, and drank the waters,
And moved through old, old journeys, and plucked the knife
From steel and flesh until neither post nor man
Possessed a mark—only a vague and uneasy sense
That escaped comparison to the way already thought.

Perfection

Perfect is calling in the midst of chatter
And I cannot tell one from the other,
Though it seems I should.

Perhaps perfect is not a place,
Or a thing,
Or a thought,
Or a being,
But a journey of ups and downs
Across a Conscious-scape.

Perhaps it is not
What has been
Won or lost,
But what has been
Let go that counts.