CONFESSIONS

Buying a car at Carmax
Is not much fun.
Their stores are blue and yellow
And Cavernous, just like IKEA
Except their car park…

Is mostly cars for sale.
Late model, freshly washed
Respectable cars 
All above Market price.
Because: the Carmax experience.

Which is haggle free and friendly.
But I don’t like it, because it is where
I am exposed to people 
I don’t know…
And people I don’t want to know.

They are the inscrutable, the unfathomable
The generalized mass of people…
From which I protect myself:
Living in a little enclave
Of people of similar proclivities…

And living backed up to
A wilderness where I am more
Likely to interact with wildlife
Than other people. Living the life
Of a privileged elitist.

Thrust into the morass
When walking through a mall
Or buying a car
At Carmax the armor I have so 
Carefully cultivated is pierced…

Those moments outside 
My zone maybe salutary.
But I eschew Life
As it is generally Lived 
Preferring my Sanctuary.

AFTERNOON DOGGEREL

Relative Truths deal with the world as
It is, expressed in Space and Time. 
Ultimate Truth is spaceless
And therefore Infinite
Timeless and therefore Eternal.

Ken Wilber

I settled down
After my Midday feed
With my nose in a book
For a long afternoon’s read.

As I slumped in the chair 
Burdens vanished as a cloud
And my thoughts roamed freely
Shed of their oppressive shroud. 

Then into my mind
There arose such a clatter
Of things far beyond
The prosaics of matter.

Engrossed in reading
Ken Wilber’s new book
Waking-Up to the Infinite
As my feeble mind shook.

Then I sprang from the chair
 In a flash of Satori
 Overcome with Oneness
 In the Power and the Glory. 

ANTIQUARIAN

Fragments of this short stack
Were first discovered in
The forgotten notebooks
Of an unknown antiquarian…

One hundred and twenty-four
Light years from planet Earth
The chemical fingerprints of
Alien biological activity

Were first discovered ‘midst
The pullulating constellations
Of the known Universe: Dimethyl
Sulfide and Dimethyl Disulfide.

Phantom fragments, or building
Blocks adventitiously disposed
On Planet K2–18b
As surreptitious signs of Life.

Chemicals associated on Earth
With viridian marine plankton
Which nourishes crustaceans
Cetaceans and jellyfish too.

Ever in search of Signs of Life
Ever disdainful of the signifiers all around
Lost in the detritus of our ghosted planet:
Plumskin, Ploshskin, Pelican jill.

MORE THAN HUMAN

All is darkness
All is Silence
Of which there is no knowing.
Quickened by an ineffable spirit
It becomes shadow and light.
Its sounds both clamorous and plangent.

We swim in these ambiguities
Only resolved
By an unwavering consciousness
That transcends understanding.
Then, we are at peace
And In communion with…

A divine love that
Flows through the Heavens
Through the rock, soil and dust
Of the Universe. 
With open hearts
It flows through us.

Our world is shared
By all that is.
Our Real, their real
Our Place, their place.
All bound in the web
That binds all things. 

To conceive
Of the heavenly flow
As ours alone
Is to deny it.
It is Embraceable only 
In the more-than-human World.

EENY MEENY MINY ... ME

It matters which stories tell stories,
which concepts think concepts …
which systems systematize systems.
Donna Haraway

On first waking
There was a moment of experiencing
Something outside of ‘Self’.
Then, the abyssal strangeness
Of it all: the loss, this floating free.

This feeling: Of non-categorization
Of non-speciation.
Escape from Entanglement.
The dissolution
Of all those metaphors

We use to stitch our Selves
Together.
This floating free of Self.
This drift into the Void of Being
Beyond the capsule.

The capsule I call
ME.

PROFOUND OPPROBRIUM

Words lose their meaning:
Their original meaning that is -
And over time, all the permutations 
Of their primal semantic inferences
Are befuddled, and words
Come to mean something else.

Take ‘Democracy’ (please!).
In Ancient Greece it was much 
Disparaged as rule by The Mob
And much later as some kind of
Janky representational farce
Founded on either The Mob

(In its best, purest form)
Or on wealthy land-owning 
Classes as in America
And other oligarchic states.
The Representatives, debouched 
By necessarily attendant ‘elections’

Then arranged themselves
In some sort of power-sharing melee
That eventually devolved
Post Eighteenth Century
Into a primarily binary and
Sometimes tertiary arrangement

Of a vaguely oppositional character.
This made for excellent theater
Reveled in by The Mob
And countenanced by the
Oligarchy as evidence that
Their ‘System’ was working -

That ‘System’ being the equivalent
Of the circuses promised by 
Roman Emperors to placate The Mob
Or, in contemporary parlance, The Street.
Given its reeking dubiety, as it is
Promoted by our Harlequin-like media 

Can we please enact a moratorium 
On the use of ‘Democracy’
At least until we shed ourselves
Of the tawdry illusions that surround it
And like the Greeks, accept it again
As a word of profound opprobrium?

IN MY BACKYARD

Never has this oak
Been more manifest.
It moves softly
In the Spring breeze
Its catkins writhing
With saffron pollen.

Beneath is
A holly leafed cherry
The canvas upon which
Its shadows play. Alongside
Are rocks, their lichened faces
Washed clean in sunlight…

Or plunged into abyssal shadow.
High above, there is the rumble of
A wide-bodied jet. It looks
Like an etiolated shark cleaving
The wide blue empyrean
As it arrows towards LAX…

There to disgorge People
Or Product into the gaping
Maw of Los Angeles.
A counterpoint to my natural
Idyll. An aerial interloper
Into my backyard wilderness.

These: oak and plane
Are different modes of Beingness.
Both manifest this afternoon
As a conundrum set to tease
My aesthetic and philosophic
Senses.

ON THE ROAD

The arty types were all over America
Sucking up its blood.
They were mad drunken Americans
In the mighty land…

Feeding on the hypocrisies
Of a deeply corrupted Federal
Government overseen by
Fabulously venal presidents:

Looking at you, Clinton
Obama and Biden. 
They were on the roof of America
Looking over the Plains.

Flyover country.
Land of the Deplorables.
Of no account
Hicks. 

The Arty Types (Archaic)
Have their Reward: (Ironic)
Another Fabulously
Venal president…

After Jack Kerouac

FOR RAVI

Grass bends to the weight
Of a foot.
Even mine, aged eight
In a brown lace-up shoe
By Stride Rite.

Repeated ten times a week
Along the same meadow route
The grass will die
But in its place a path
Will be born. 

My first path:
A very literally constructed
Short cut between house 
And school in a small
English village.

It is tempting to write
(Under the sway of poesy)
That I have been making purposeful
Paths ever since. I wish:
Only like a mad woman’s knitting.

Random, tangential
And often without purpose
Metaphorical, not Literal Paths.
Wayward ways through Life
In Space and Time. 

Towards the end
There is the inevitable
Tangle, which at first one
Attempts to organize
Into some coherence.

Sometimes, a friend 
Will suggest throwing out
The unruly mess - one’s
Constructed Self - and perhaps
There is a discovery.

Under that tangled skein
There remains a vestige of
One’s Birthright:
The Soul that rises with us
Our Life’s Star. 

William Wordsworth

MR. T

Is America’s President
An Anarchist?
I only ask because
His management style
Appears unstructured

His mind
Randomized.
Let me be clear:
I favor 
Anarchy.

His Affect is Neanderthal
And I mean that
As a Compliment:
His Bearing is both preternatural
And of primeval force. 

This is not 
An impersonal Enquiry.
I am deeply invested
In a positive answer
To my rhetorical question. 

Ironically, it would give order
To a disordered human being:
His being Categorized
A kind of Triumph of  
Linnaean Organization. 

Anarchy is a philosophy
Of the Unpredictable. 
It is an Order
Without Rules:
Intrinsically paradoxical. 

Yet, as David Graeber claims
It is a Foundational 
Means of Social Organization. 
Means without meaning:
Of Fluidity not Stasis. 

David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything

WOODPECKER SIMPLE

The foxes have holes
And the birds of the air
Have nests
But the Son of Man
Has nowhere to lay His head.
St. Matthew, 8:20

Woodpeckers work
On the excavation of wood.
Their bills are their tools.
Unlike modern humans
They are autonomous.

Property Relations among
Woodpeckers are impossible.
They have everything they need.
Most of us are subject to
Those few who control our means.

This othering of the many
For the benefit of the few is
Further compounded by the
Energy inputs demanded
In the production of those means.

The consumption of this
Energy is beyond
The control of the many
But it is they who suffer the
Consequences of its deployment.

In Times past
Human Life was simpler
Not Woodpecker simple
But the farmer and the artisan
Both owned and worked their tools

Before steam subverted
That relationship
And efficiency demanded
A scale of production no longer
Commensurate with the individual.

Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital -
The Rise of Steam Power
and the Roots of Global Warming

RETURN

It has been impressed upon me
Over the last two weeks
That I am a body.
As the Hindu dictum has it:
I am I, and therefore other than
Brahman: I have a body. 

Last week, according to the
Weighing chair, I gained
One pound.
An essential stasis was
Achieved despite the fairly
Miserable Hospital food. 

My corporeal mass
(Such as it is)
Stands 
In denial of
Brahman - the formless
Source of all…

One pound is neither here nor there
Nor the where which is
The unity of all things. 
(In any case
 It is but an accident 
Of my poisoned bowels).

Trapped in that human zoo
Of damaged specimens
Denied access that my
Privileged life affords
To an existence within
The urbanwildland…

Brahman is formless
But ‘tis the birthplace
Of all forms in visible reality
A reality that now sees
My return:
One pound heavier.

MY PLACE

Broken and fractured bones
Lurid bruising and internal bleeding
Have me lying in a hospital bed.
Fate chipping away
At an erstwhile indomitable ego.

For that I am grateful. 
My life stripped back to basics.
Emotional support from friends
And family, pain management
Laxatives morning and night. 

Opportunities that I wished for
Reading a book on Owls
And a biography of Ramakrishna:
Matters of Ojai - A land of Live Oak roosts
Possessed of a heavenly mantle. 

I am in my place, if not my home. 
Dawn’s early light, evenings soft glow
On the Santa Ynez range
To the North.
Courtyards of sun and citrus. 

THE MAN IN RED 1906 - 1993

Wrapped in a deep
Red-Orange Sadhu cloth
He appears serene
Looking out from
The cover of his book.

His face is framed in 
Shoulder length white hair and 
Full beard, hooded eyes 
Narrowed under the harsh sun
Of Tamil Nadu.

This is Bede Griffiths
Late of Oxford
And founder of the Ashram
Saccidananda, a Sanskrit word
Meaning ‘Knowledge, Being and Bliss’.

His consciousness
Remains available to us
As we contemplate his image.
His Holiness shapes
Our Inner Self 

As we reach towards the apotheosis 
Of our Spiritual Imaginations:
Faith in the One;
In that primordial island 
Of Being beyond Space and Time

Eternally presaged by
Such Blessed Avatars
As The Man in Red
In an image still suffused
With his journey into Bliss.

SEITIE MEANS SELFHOOD

This talk of universal consciousness:
Simply Anima.
The world is alive like a Being.
The wind is the world’s soul
Passing over me and its message is this:
It passes over us…
One day I will go with it and
Not wake up anymore. 

Kapka Kassabova

Or, as Frederico Faggin suggests
Plato, Pythagoras, Galileo and Newton  
Built a Classical understanding of the world:
Our world of tiny objects and computers.

After Einstein
Heisenberg intuited the Quantum world
At the beginning of the Twentieth Century
A world of living organisms that constitute
The Universe of Consciousness and Knowing
Expressed in the Quantum Seities. 

Reality is Alive, it lives in the Consciousness
Expressed in this physical world.
It is inherently unpredictable 
Allowing for the possibility of Free Will. 
There can be no algorithms that preclude 
The open evolution of the Universe:
In its Becoming, in its waxing as One.

When we die, we don’t die:
Death is a rebirth
Into the spiritual universe. We, as elements
Of Consciousness, are eternal.

CHAPARRAL GRIZZLY

Each morning
For twenty minutes
I offer myself the opportunity
To sink into
Universal Consciousness. 

There is a doorway
(I presume) through which
I will be transported
And which may, at first, be evidenced
By a faint tingling in the legs.

This much I have achieved. 
But am I carried to a Place
Of Divine Consciousness?
No: a faint tickle in my shins
Is not a melting into the Empyrean. 

Am I discouraged?
It is not for nothing that I am
Both Consistent and Insistent:
Patient, Waiting, Prepared
For a Vision, a Sign.

Do I imagine the endless Chaparral 
Where somewhere an old man
With white hair is walking towards me
With the Word? No: what I see
Is a ten foot tall California Grizzly Bear

Barreling along a trail
Paws outstretched, willing me
To join the Planetary Chorus
Of Love, Universal Understanding
And Peace… 

This Bear is a phantasm 
Of Pullulating Qualia
Expressed as an abundance 
Of Free Will and Knowing:
It is an Offering of Consciousness.

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

WELCOME TO THE PYROCENE

(R.I.P. The Pacific Palisades)

Our Civilization began its Fatal
Metastasis
With the development of Fossil Capital
In the mid nineteenth century:
First Coal and Steam
Then Oil and Gasoline
And their inevitable Concomitants -
Cheap Food, Cheap Transport
Cheap Heating and Cooling
Cheap Things…and Plastic.
All reflected in
An Explosive growth of Population
Along with Urban, Suburban and Exurban Domestic
Commercial, Transport and Industrial Infrastructures.

Now:
It is the rampant development of
Combustible buildings and of
Civilizational fire sources –
Like lines carrying high voltage
Electricity, sparking mechanical equipment
Or Psychotic Arsonists
(And only occasionally Lightning)
At the Edge of fire prone natural environments
That turns Wildland Fires into Urban Fires.
That turns Wildland Fires into Destroyers
Of Neighborhoods, Suburbs and Cities -

Destroyers of Places that have lost their connection
To the Ancient Human Story
Through the relentless process of
Industrialization, hybridization, sedentarism
Homogenization, Commodification and Globalization.

While our homes Burn, or Flood
Or are Destroyed in Hurricanes
We are made vulnerable to Extinction.
Blame the Relentless Extraction of Cheap Energy.

Climate Change is a Secondary Symptom of
Our Civilizational Malaise - Not its Cause.

DESERT PROLOGUE FOR A WRITER

Our friend Heather
Is moving to Vegas.
She spent a couple of nights 
With us in Ojai
Before driving to Burbank

Where she boarded a flight
For Paradise, Nevada.
She has rented an Apartment
Close to the Strip
Sight unseen.

Heather and I
Are both fans of
Claire Vaye Watkins
Who teaches at U.C. Irvine
And lives in the Mojave Desert.

A few years ago CVW wrote 
A Futuristic Desert Epic
Called Gold Fame Citrus
Set in a schlerophytic and 
Fiery Los Angeles.

Her desert thrums
To a messianic beat:
A place of spiritual refuge
Where time is eternally filled
With the presence of the Now.  

Vegas projects this Divine Immanence.
Distantly shadowed by 
Lunar Crater volcanic field
It is a place Under a Volcano
Of Dissolution and Creativity.

Where once smoke and lava
Vented through over two hundred cones
Along the Reveille and Pancake ranges
Their vestigial whispers
Now batter the soul.

SHLOKA

The Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita
A poem of divine teachings
Is written in Shloka Meter
Or lines of eight syllables each.

It has oft occurred to me that
Shrinkage of means enhances meaning
Thus, Dear Reader, I choose to write
By the shores of Gitchee Gumee.

Vyasa the Compiler
Tells the story of Arjuna
Receiving Lord Krishna’s wisdom
On the eve of a Battle:

“Viewed by the Equanimous Eye
Success and failure are the same.
Grieve not for the Living or Dead
Dear One, neither will cease to be…”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Wrote his poem Hiawatha
In trochaic pentameter
Like the Gita, to be chanted!

COSMIC MONOCHROME

Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
To the Land of the Hereafter!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To journey up the switch-back grade
Half in moonlight and half in not
The evening star subtended
In crazy serendipity

Is to know a careening of
Our wild and watery planet
‘Midst the gyrations of the skies
In reversals of its dark night.

Now, Caught in those tight twists and turns
Flashing splashes of moonlight that
Recall all Life’s syncopations
Of good and evil, love and hate:

A vivid chiaroscuro
Of vast dichotomous reality
Laid bare at night or in full light
Ever thus and always will be.