Cause Because

 

I don’t know how it all began

A flash of lightning in pond-pocked lands

In an ocean floating like a child in a womb

Biomolecules woven on a nucleotide loom

 

Maybe there is nothing magical mystical or holy

Undone when it is done, in a future no one is controlling

And the Universe will leave no trail of love, hate, no mist

No bones, no trace, no record written like this

 

But, maybe there is some cause, that itself is also its own

That sees what is seen as it knows what is known

All of this occurring in an instant the same

As consciousness is conscious, speech speaks its own name

 

And here is my belief, or hope or faith

Because that’s the way I roll

Raised without much notion of a God

I found It in a furious hole

Saw a light or a dark or rainbow, or a grey

Chased it all down through the years

I cannot prove it beyond my own heart

But it’s empirical to me – it’s a miracle I’m here

Anansi's Story Collection

all these arachnaic fables

sticky, stringy, text woven round

globules of encased enchantment

 

creation myths, tragedies, dramas, tragicomedies, epics

 

a world of spoken and subliminal messages

meanings meander streams of knowing

we sit in silence, where you can hear an awful lot

of what arises in the moment, unheeded by most

 

spider insider boasts news of the now

holy cow, a Universe in a dusty corner

of the ceiling of a dream, whispers all that may be

 

listen...

 

the past flows through the present to beyond

fields where we may meet or fail to

in futures uncertain that pale to

the woozily unstructured story of here and wow

all you have dreamed and been driven to do

 

libraries without copyright

free as the sky

sharing of documents

between sympathetic minds

knowledge and wisdom

become one and the same

the names of all things

and the thing without name

 

a writer's Kaddish

 Whoever transforms himself, transforms the world.

-- Sofie Stril-Rever, translator for the Dalai Lama

I feel it in my nerves

in my breath

the sense of touch

that links feeling of flesh

to feeling emotions

I am okay, and so I know

the world is too, somehow

"We are the world," it's been said

the song is you

touch that pen 

let it feel the paper

watch as it writes

touches you, too

re-rights the world

infuses peace of heart

balance of just

source of light 

stars, eyes, mind

one shared thought

it must

adoption

I

 

the baby knows 

when it is the mother who is holding it

half conscious of this world

one inner eye straining back

peering into the world it came from

 

II

 

nothing was the same

no one was to blame

I must have been

the seal was broken

the vow, the bond

oxytocin, to be replaced

by glucose and orgasm

 

 

III

 

life is dis connection

non-intersection

the simplest things -- vexed

seeking outward

like some crazed fly

or an addict in a sober sky

something I cannot find

even after I find her,

hear her voice

 

IV

 

the inner 

is the August

of summer

beyond the bummer of all

that could go wrong,

that did –

a new kind of song

 

I shouldn't care, b/c

whoever else needed to be,

I am here

breathing

 the cloister of breathing

the only thing

I take refuge in now

dried leaves on sidewalk

dirt between cracks, a cigarette butt

I know its much more impossible for you

where there is no recourse

from the ugly words, the threats, the fists

between a rock

and a rock

and a leap of faith

that feels more like

a leap from a fifth-floor apartment

but take Her hand

that breathing might be

an oasis in the burning forest

believe me, soon

there will be ashes around you

grotesque, yes, but quiet

now-cathedral

future-glimmer

past, fuel and fertilizer

the quiet one

 

they say it takes

more muscles to frown

than to smile

how many does it take

to leave your face

alone?

salient features of a roaring breakdown

 the salient features

of a roaring breakdown --

loss of footing (a metaphor)

floating somewhere between

the ceiling and floor (a sensation)

the terror of not knowing

where my next thought

will come from, if it will come

at all, I am unsettled

in the unsettling, cling

to a nurse, to a mental health tech

to a fellow patient, find myself

drawing with crayon, do not understand 

where the table came from

the chair feels like the blessed savior

I scratch out a picture

of Hocking Hills park from a pamphlet

am gratified to wake

the next day and find

a masterpiece, of sorts

by the breakfast trays

and scattered citizens

of the psychiatric institute