A little bitty song a child might sing
While laughing on the see-saw or with a
Thin string across his finger holding taut
The quick, capricious flight of a cheap kite;
The jingle I remember from the clock
That sat atop the mantle at my mom's,
That once my sister whistled without thought
A set of harmonies right underneath;
It is as simple as a full balloon.
Two notes, or three, the birds sang up above
And I forgot to shape my mouth so that
I could articulate a word at all.
Quietly the ceiling fan revolves
As I forget what's music and what isn't.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
A simple Sufi song; and then the way
A simple Sufi song; and then the way
The narrative describes the coming Sun
In variant and gradient, the way
He longs in madness when she turns away--
As personal as breath or words between
Entangled lovers; when the "you" becomes
An "I" and then I am no self at all,
Dissolved beneath a whirling spectacle.
A no one in a nothing in a none;
I know there has to be another one
So formed within me yearning to come out.
The singing, pleading vehicle I am
Rings with the din of nearly ten-thousand
Other sutras wandering this place.
The narrative describes the coming Sun
In variant and gradient, the way
He longs in madness when she turns away--
As personal as breath or words between
Entangled lovers; when the "you" becomes
An "I" and then I am no self at all,
Dissolved beneath a whirling spectacle.
A no one in a nothing in a none;
I know there has to be another one
So formed within me yearning to come out.
The singing, pleading vehicle I am
Rings with the din of nearly ten-thousand
Other sutras wandering this place.
Now all the discourse seems a pointless game
Now all the discourse seems a pointless game
Between some factions flattering themselves,
Or using erudition to display
Or demonstrate their knowing above others.
I want to know how not to know. I find
My self a pointless Buddha when I wipe
The fog from the slight mirror that I am
Refusing to make any more distinctions.
Above? Below? Behind? Better or worse?
A name for what is properly nameless?
What is this foul and useless vanity
That I've supposed was useful poesy?
A trite distraction from the wordless Real
That sits eternal past the bounds of verse.
Between some factions flattering themselves,
Or using erudition to display
Or demonstrate their knowing above others.
I want to know how not to know. I find
My self a pointless Buddha when I wipe
The fog from the slight mirror that I am
Refusing to make any more distinctions.
Above? Below? Behind? Better or worse?
A name for what is properly nameless?
What is this foul and useless vanity
That I've supposed was useful poesy?
A trite distraction from the wordless Real
That sits eternal past the bounds of verse.
Sidereal the wanderers revolve
Sidereal the wanderers revolve
About the sphere that understands my feet
That's covered with an air I inspirate
And make a sound of with the instrument
That is my poor, impoverished body.
I vibrate like a reed or like a horn
That fills the room with overtones of sound
And changes timbre in a subtle movement.
Remember when the doors of houses faced
The east to meet the rising of the Sun?
Or churches built were oriented so
The solstice fell precisely at a point
Defined by its own architecture? I
Suppose I may have imagined all of this.
About the sphere that understands my feet
That's covered with an air I inspirate
And make a sound of with the instrument
That is my poor, impoverished body.
I vibrate like a reed or like a horn
That fills the room with overtones of sound
And changes timbre in a subtle movement.
Remember when the doors of houses faced
The east to meet the rising of the Sun?
Or churches built were oriented so
The solstice fell precisely at a point
Defined by its own architecture? I
Suppose I may have imagined all of this.
How is it that this light is everywhere
How is it that this light is everywhere?
It violates the strictures of our time
Quite like the sighs and cries of children so
The confines of a proper, formal sentence.
Ineffable! A word for when there are
No words for what we're trying to express;
Paralipsis in the rhetoric
Designs my god without without intelligence.
Rely on what? Spinoza's polished lens
Described Him as a set of propositions
Or arguments akin to geometry.
I hear the sound in any little song;
Accessible in the simplest of musics
Is all the wealth of His true effulgence.
It violates the strictures of our time
Quite like the sighs and cries of children so
The confines of a proper, formal sentence.
Ineffable! A word for when there are
No words for what we're trying to express;
Paralipsis in the rhetoric
Designs my god without without intelligence.
Rely on what? Spinoza's polished lens
Described Him as a set of propositions
Or arguments akin to geometry.
I hear the sound in any little song;
Accessible in the simplest of musics
Is all the wealth of His true effulgence.
To sweat and hide in the shadow of the Moon
To sweat and hide in the shadow of the Moon;
I counted cycles then the synod hit
Where Venus at her node traversed the point
Between a subtle Sun and gross Earth.
Imagine waves of music in not two
But three dimensions, expanding in spheres
About a central tonic that, as sovereign,
Authors every degree with a duty.
A mysticism clouds these simple poems;
The nonsense of an arbitrary zen
Divides the grammars and occults semantics.
A fifth is three to two, the stars revolve
About us in some diverse ratios
By which we orient ourselves in time.
I counted cycles then the synod hit
Where Venus at her node traversed the point
Between a subtle Sun and gross Earth.
Imagine waves of music in not two
But three dimensions, expanding in spheres
About a central tonic that, as sovereign,
Authors every degree with a duty.
A mysticism clouds these simple poems;
The nonsense of an arbitrary zen
Divides the grammars and occults semantics.
A fifth is three to two, the stars revolve
About us in some diverse ratios
By which we orient ourselves in time.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Illustrious and inconceivable
Illustrious and inconceivable!
Disasterous arrangements in the stars
Foretold the conflict of our situation,
Though instead I ignored their advice.
Determinism? Don't I have a choice
Of what I want to do with my own life?
The attributes and aspects I'll pursue
To reach a happiness or excellence?
Don't tell me that the noon is like the dusk
Or that the summer differs none from winter,
Because we both know that's just not the case.
A field of possibility extends
Beyond the purview of the astrologues,
Beyond these tools of name and rhetoric.
Disasterous arrangements in the stars
Foretold the conflict of our situation,
Though instead I ignored their advice.
Determinism? Don't I have a choice
Of what I want to do with my own life?
The attributes and aspects I'll pursue
To reach a happiness or excellence?
Don't tell me that the noon is like the dusk
Or that the summer differs none from winter,
Because we both know that's just not the case.
A field of possibility extends
Beyond the purview of the astrologues,
Beyond these tools of name and rhetoric.
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