GAME OF DICE

Genii live amongst us.
Very few:
Like Comets
That Enlighten or Endarken us
They streak across the Centuries …

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms
 Of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night. 

… Benjamin Labatut
Writes of them in
When We Cease to Understand the World:
Of Karl Schwarzschild
Who introduced us to Black Holes. 

Of Shinichi Mochizuki
And Alexander Gotherdieck:
Convincing us that Mathematical
Equations Underpin the Structure
 Of the Universe.

Of Erwin Schrödinger
And Werner Heisenberg:
Who established the Uncertainty Principal
As a fundamental dictum
 Of Quantum Mechanics.

Streaking across the Centuries
Decoding a Sacred Knowledge
That turns us toward Creatureliness
Or Spirit
In a Game of Dice.

(Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold)

NOTES FROM A CAVE-DWELLER

Plato thought
That the world of Ideas
Is a lithic reality
Of which our Human existence
Is but a flickering shadow.

Valentin Tomberg
Russian mystic, polyglot scholar
And Hermeticist
Suggested that Ideas reside
Purely in Human Consciousness.

It is thus that Ideas are
Subject to Evolution
And, on a good day
Orthogenesis:
Some better directed than others.

One of his is that
Gardens can be a living
Library of salvation:
Plants a manual
Of practical Hermeticism.

One of mine is that
The act of material Creativity
Is an overt Expression
Of this Notion:
The Evolution of Ideas laid bare.

In the pre-modern era
Humankind was very good
At Spirituality
And very bad
At keeping Germs at bay.

Post Enlightenment
Humankind is very good
At Hygiene
And very bad
At accessing the world of Spirit.

Perhaps it is only Artists
(And Gardeners)
Who can kick the can
Down the road:
Toward the Immanent.

DEATH BY WEEDING

The pre-Socratic philosopher
Empedocles
Wished to conflate
His Death
With his total Disappearance
From the planet.

This was four Centuries
Before Jesus is reputed
To have achieved that same goal.
But Empedocles Failed.
An errant sandal Survived
His plunge into a Volcano.

The philosopher was attempting
His mystical Union with
The Divine
In an extreme act
Of engagement with
Elemental Fire.

Do I throw myself
Into the Tocalote patch
Expecting some Heavenly
Revelation? No, I am there
To restore order to a little
Patch of the planet.

Yet by removing
The residuum of Vegetative
Colonization, I am enfolded
Into a Nature where shed snakeskins
May be gently Plucked
From prey-animal burrows.

Translucent
And delicately imbricated
The flaccid skins of
Nameless writhing snakes
Invite a strange
And vertiginous Rapture.

A.S.K.

I am Asking
I am Seeking
I am Knock
Knock, Knockin’
On Heaven’s Door.

And did those Feet
In Ancient Time
Walk upon Englands Mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

Yes…
I was there:
Bob Dylan arrived in 1962
Welcomed 
By the ancient prophets.

The Beatles and the Stones
Made way for the Messiah
Donovan wept
At His feet
And we all Harkened.

For he was Asking.
And he was Seeking.
Then in 1973
He was Knock-knock-knockin’
On Heaven’s door. 

 For He was Singing:

How many Roads
Must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
…That cold black cloud is comin' down
Feels like I'm knockin' on Heaven's door.

And He was Saying:

Ask.
Seek.
Knock.
To Experience the Divine
And Awaken to One’s True Self. 

THE TREE OF LIFE

In Renaissance Italy
Amidst an emerging
Scientific Enlightenment
Tarot cards became placeholders
At the heart of the Old World
Of Enchantment.

Ancient Truths
Distilled to their
Essence were
Encoded in the Deck
Providing Meditations
On the Hermetic Tradition. 

First Card:
The Magician
Symbolizing the Transposition
Of Consciousness From the Skull
To the Thoracic Cavity
Where thoughts are Silenced. 

In the quenching of Desires
Of Preoccupations, of Memory
Of Imagination
Of Discursive Thought
Is born Mystical Concentration 
Without Effort.

Second Card:
The High Priestess
Symbolizing a Contemplation
That uncovers 
The Profundity
of Gnosis:

Where Memory 
Serves not the Past 
But renders Consciousness
As a Mirror
To Reflect
That which is Above. 

Pure Memory
Is a Manifestation
Of this Sacred Duality:
Revealed to the empirical self
From the Domain 
Of the Transcendent. 

Third Card:
The Empress
Is the Arcanum of Sacred Magic
The instrument of Divine power.
She demonstrates the sublimation
Of Nature. 

Sacred Magic
Is the Tree of Life
Regenerative and Eternal
Rooted in the Above
Its fruit manifested
In Harmony Below.

Nature is Wounded
Not Destroyed.
The Tree of Life
Is its Synthesis
Of Consciousness
Force and Matter. 

It is Implicit to Life
Contrary to its Dissection
And Domination
Implicit in Science.

It is Celestial Light
Not Darkness.

JULY FOURTH - A RECKONING

In these United States
Only those People
Dismissed from the tax rolls
Because of an income that falls
below the ‘Poverty Line’
May live with integrity and honor.

Otherwise, as a Tax paying Citizen
One is fully complicit
In the management
Of the American Empire
And all of the Global devastation
It venally Mandates.

Too accustomed
To the comforts
Of a Middle Class income
I shall continue to pay Taxes:
Selfishly wanting to avoid participation
In this country’s penal system.

In lieu of Imprisonment
I remain ‘Free’ and merely
Pay the price of a Conscience
Pitted by cluster bombs
Poisoned by spent Uranium and
Pervaded by the stench of rotting flesh.

AFTER THE FLY

Our Species
(At least in the West)
Has long since
(Adam was a boy)
Renounced All Accommodation
Of the Other-than-Human-World.

Its spirits denied
That world is subsumed
By Human desire:
Made a thing
That enables us all
But is denied a soul.

Its Agency ignored
By a reductive
Consciousness
That channels Only
Its own hollow
Manifestations.

This proprietary
Attitude
Does not make it so.
Just lessens us
As we wallow in
Our beleaguered Humanity:

A virtue made
Of our extirpation
From that Garden
Long Ago.
Mammon exalted.
Eden desecrated.   

The Fly, William Blake,
Songs of Experience, 1794

MASK

We are born
Of a creative sentience
Radiant within us
And all about us.
It makes us
And beguiles us.

We arrive enlightened.
But slowly
We are shaded
From the enchanting light
By the edifice
Of our constructed lives.

In old age
We struggle
To emerge from this shaded place
And be vulnerable again
To the piercing radiance
Of Being.

REAGENT

Born on a Northern Isle
Amidst the confluence
Of the Atlantic, the North Sea
And Bathed
In the Gulf Stream

Calved
From its Mother landmass
Less than 10,000 years ago
As melt water filled
The Channel:

I am a Weather Sensitive
Extant in this era
Of rapid climate change
But I’m OK with that:
For it is our Salvation.

Carbon Effluvia
Fills the skies.
Our Lithic footprints
Destroy habitat
And devastate natural drainage.

Yet within the sad desecration
Of the Anthropocene, the Species
Has Devised an Antidote:
Sea Level
Rise…

THE FUTURE PAST

My Grandparent’s Lives
Reached back
To the last decades
Of the nineteenth century.

My Parents were born
On the eve of WWI.
Both my Grandfathers
Fought in the trenches.

My Father
Fought behind the lines in ‘39
My Mother
Nursed the wounded in WWII.

The World Wars
That shadowed
Them
Darkened my childhood too.

We are People of the West.
Conquerors of the World:
Practiced in never ending
Wars of Subjection.

As the World awaits WWIII
My two Grandchildren
Have been born into
This Warrior tribe.

But the Subject Peoples
Are at last Arisen
To follow their Path of Truth
Into the Future.

The long line of
Their Ancestors
And Descendants
Yet to come

Will be their Becoming.
Of my People
There will be an Ending.
Its long line

Can only shuffle back
Into the Past.
My Children and Theirs to find
Some Accommodation there.

INTO THE WEEDS

I weed this
Native Garden
Aware of metaphors
Unfolding as I decide
What stays and what goes.

There are historical
And value judgements
Entangled in the roots
Of the forbs and grasses
That present themselves.

Not so long ago
The lowlands
Of what we now call
Southern California
Were pristine Chaparral.

The plant community
Emerged as dominant
At the end of the Ice Age
When erstwhile pine forests
Moved to higher elevations.

Spanish Colonization
Then introduced
European plants, weeds
And domestic animals
That Challenged the indigenous.

The true Chaparral self
And the historically constructed
Settler-colonist Chaparral coexist.
Their negotiation is mediated
By climate.

As a gardener
Of Chaparral, I privilege
The True over the Constructed.
Should I do any less
For myself…

Nurturing, into old age
My true self
As it emerges from the thicket
Of ego and experience
That has smothered it?

VENICE BEACH

This Edge-Land
Of sand dunes
Estuaries
Marsh
And sage scrub.

Of marine layers
Sea breezes
Heat inversions
And Santa Ana winds:
This Land of Smokes.

Built in the first half
Of the twentieth century
With dredged sand
Florida-like beaches
Now span the Coastal Ecotone.

This disturbed land.
These alien landscapes.
Where the endless desert sands
Are daily groomed
And fringed with exotic palms.

Where Dreams
Are Born
Lives planned
Hopes dashed.
Oh, this Unhappy Land.

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

Beyond Lyricism
There is Psychedelia
Where the brain ignores
Customary input
In the direct production
Of sensory Experiences.

So it was
After a day grubbing out
Deerweed and Tocalote
 A hot bath had me staring
At orange vegetal shapes
Extruded from the tub’s overflow.

Later that evening a frieze
Of acanthus-like leaves
Undulated across the edge
Of a painted, Chinoiserie desk
While its central carved shell motif
Appeared to flutter in a breeze.

The Chumash used deerweed
To thatch their semi-subterranean
Sweat lodges:
Dense and Fire resilient
They may have also relished
It’s mild Psychotropic effects.

Native Landscapes are Psychoactive.
The sacred plants of the Chaparral
Contain hallucinogens
Traditionally used by Shamen
In their Vision Quests
And Initiation Ceremonies.

Those whose lives entwine
These plants
Expand their brain Chemistry
It seems, beyond the Prosaic 
To the realm
Of the Psychedelic.

DRY BONES

To Read:
Any page
In Evelyn Underwood’s
 Magisterial ‘Mysticism’
Is to fall under 
The spell of Her Lyricism:

…In that Abyss 
Where selfhood ceases to have meaning
St. Teresa observed
God in a point
What the German mystics call
The Still Wilderness.

Or, 
The Lonely Desert of Deity:
The limitless Divine Abyss
Forever Hid in the Cloud of Unknowing
And yet
The True Country of the Soul. 

Partly Bricolage
Partly Analogy
In shadow of the Mystic Triad
Partly Theological Reportage
All Intensely
Evocative

And, for the time Being
Reading her
Is as close as I get
To the Glorious Frisson
Of a Truly
A Religious Experience…

Of Brahma the Creator
Shiva the Destroyer
Krishna the Repairer
Or the Christian Trinity:
Dry Bones that await
A Heavenly Breath. 

FRANCIS

Free from the cloister.
Free from the World.   
‘To descend into the abyss
Of the Godhead
Where intelligence must rest without’.

Thus Ruysbroeck defines
The Willful Francis
Who abandoned his Bloviated self
In stages of Abnegation
Poverty and Fasting.

Wrapped in brown fustian
His skeletal arms
Beckon still to his acolytes
To go ever deeper
In search of self-denial.

To retreat within
Creation
Where man and beast
Reside with Nature
In Holy Sanctuary.

MOTHER'S DAY

Somewhere
Up in the weedy Chaparral
A mother grieves. 
On the edge of a Gulch
A baby Bobcat lays
Decapitated.

Likely a Great Horned Owl
Is, even now, savoring its breakfast 
Of still quivering Brains. 
Bobcat mother pondering
Perhaps, that Precarity 
Is coextensive with Birth. 

An awareness bestowed
By her soft dead baby
Whose brief tenure on Earth
Was nevertheless lived
And died
As a fully grievable Being. 

It is Judith Butler who notes
That grievability makes possible
The apprehension of Life.
Without it there is not even
An acknowledgement 
Of Precarity. 

Both are necessary
For the Presupposition
That Life matters. 
Without them there is no Life
There is something Living
That is other than Life.

J.B., Frames of War:
When is Life Grievable? 2016

A: T.O.

A Gothic City
Rises out of the Mist
Struggling
In this Grey Dawn
To emerge
From the Nineteenth century.

A northeast breeze
Ruffles bright leaves
In the filigree
Of winter’s branches.
It’s Springtime for a New York
Deep in autumnal Decay.

In this Clamorous center
Of Empire
The Great City
Manifests its Progress
In denial of a Spirit
Mired in a Gilded Age.

Manhattan’s Spires
Now shadowed
By Pencil Towers
Like Obelisks
Celebrating an Imperious Elite
Long practiced in Oppression;

Like Stelae subtly inscribing
The morals of the Rich;
Towers sunk deep on an Island
Where old Fortresses Remain
Once used to Quell the Masses.
Always: The Oligarchs.

A PRAYER FOR PALESTINE

To Judge
To Compare
To Evaluate:
No More.

Critique Abandoned
Acceptance of what is
Forgiveness of all:
Love simply Lived.

But Can We
Accept and Forgive
The Genocidal Criminality
Of Biden and Bibi?

The Violence
Of a Dying Western Empire
Bringers of Death to
Its Far Flung World?

Yes.
In Forgiveness
Acceptance and Love
Peace Arises.

LOST HORIZON

Magic is the primordial
Source for Spirituality.
The dark, Rambunctious
Older cousin to Religion.

It remains relevant as
The genetic source code
For our integration
Within the Cosmic Womb.

Profoundly pre-modern
It may be the antidote
To our specious Scientism;
Our naive Literalness.

It still offers a way
To the Absolute
Along a well trampled
Path in the Natural World

Where artifice is no more.
Where the Real
Impinges on the Spiritual
And the World recedes

Beyond Time:
The eternal now
Palpable, Enveloping us
In its Lost Horizon.

APRIL RAIN

It began raining around eleven
Then rained all day.
But by evening the weather
Had cleared, and to the North
Remnant clouds glowed a pink orange
Over the snow frosted Topas.

Living in their foothills: Aware
Of weather, water, wildlife and weeds
All churning to the seasons
All oblivious to the contained rhythms
Of this Observing Human
Within their Frame.

Sounding but a worn-out
Heartbeat to the swelling base
Of their geologic foundations;
To their wind and rain battered
Faces; their eroded soils
And the Febrile Biome at their feet.

Of consequence only
As an Apex Consciousness
Within the teeming life
That enfolds it:
Now Watching a Dawn
Of clouds and mist, strewn
Across a still rain-heavy sky.