Pushcart

He lets time elapse, returning to the past. Stacking plans vaguely and haphazardly on a makeshift cart with faulty wheels, he pushes tentatively over smooth paths, half-expecting disaster as he averts his gaze from what lies before him. Sometimes the front two wheels align, and the past dissipates in a steady forward advance. But often enough these wheels turn crooked and the cart jolts and stalls, leaving him reorganizing the carts’ uneven contents and choosing which ambitions to pick up or leave behind, fallen by the wayside. Though no one is watching and the world does not wait on the delivery of the cartload, he wonders sometimes about life off the path…sitting eyes closed under the cool shade of a banyan tree with no illusions of a determined journey. And there are moments when he lets go and leaves the cart where it stands, for hours and days even. Always coming back, though, he goes back to piddling away in the pursuit of a destination which never comes, never in fact existed, but whose romance keeps him plodding along with aimless inspiration and steadfast, maddening fervor.

Where have I been all this time?

        What do people need? Food, water, shelter? What do people need? You mean like human beings? That’s a big question. Too general. But somewhere near the beginning of all the questions I need to ask.

A warm glance, a welcoming handshake, an invitation into the home of another. The moments that strangers become friends. To feel ourselves sharing the struggle of existence, the wonderful and terrifying momentousness of life, the universality hauntings of death. To breathe, to feel, to be, to learn, to know, to appreciate the moment remembering the ones who’ve lost themselves to unconsciousness, vegetation, coma- and worse.

So while I’m here, I count my blessings. The glory to have the opportunity to feel lonely, the chance to waste time. The ability to hope, this reminder to dream beyond. The power to act, the leisure to laze. To grieve my own losses, to imagine others’ pain, others’ anger, frustration, and calm, too, while I’m at it. To imagine the coolness, poise, mastery coming from the acres of skill and the miles of experience I have never grazed. And to know that their are sheer cliff-drops of shock and thousand pound weights of suffering that I just can’t understand.

But in looking into another and trying to really see them- know them- I adjust a lens that sharpens my sight, crossing distances of unfamiliarity, opening portals with each attempt. How far I am willing to go, how much am I willing to show up and how much am I open to accepting, how expert am I in this moment in being a lover of humanity? And the next time, and the time after that?

I’ve heard the advice to love yourself, but to love others makes a lot more sense to me. To deepen that groove so each return is easier, to transform an unfeeling stone into a carving smiling with life, to polish a rough exterior into a gentle, yet powerful, everlasting glow. To not allow bodily encasement have the last word in trapping the force of spirit’s expanse.

Probabilities are imprisoned by numbers, but I feel an infinity in the outpouring of possibilities of the heart. The shortness of time becomes an irrelevant thought as I realize my self, who I am, and how inseparable I am from You. The way of compassion, it’s good to meet again. Where have I been all this time?

Talking to You

Talking to you

I stumble

Upwards

Feeling my head rising into

Evaporated ether

Leaning closer in spirit

If standing upright much the same

Not conscious of heartbeat or breath

Holding a paper cup filled with

Water keeping

Level

Words exchanging

Expanses 

At ease

With new possibility

Lessons arising

Seeping in

To be revisited later?

Annotated and cited

In new times revised

Built upon

Smashed apart

Reworked and made fresh-

Maybe, maybe not-

For now, though

Forgetting place, time, situation, person

Thoughts renewing

Mind elevating with each alternation of

Back and forth

Body and senses erased

I understand myself again

In what is before me

With all that is behind me

And the periphery of all

That lies ahead

Returning with the rhythm of a beat

I’ve never played before

Never heard

Like all rhythms 

Initiated by coming home

And leaving home

Traveling and sojourning

Through the manifold regions of reaching

I remember the inexhaustibility of

Love of learning

And learning of 

Love

Will happen again, has happened before

Some days flow freely like the words of an orator

Some days hold intrigue like the work of a coroner

Suspiciously suddenly dead and decomposing

Plans poisoned by excessive reposing

Some years creep on us like a silent trespasser

Some years all we remember are the disasters

Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods

Famines, fires, and the spilling of blood

Some moments last forever, to be cliche

Some moments we mold with our fingers in the clay

To live life seriously or sincerely to play

What matters to you at the end of the day?

Some lifetimes we see snuffed out at their start

Some lifetimes we admire as great works of art

Life we try to understand looking backwards

But what if we’re colorfully expanding fractals?

Some times we imagine, distant dreams from where we are

Some times we search the sky for a beloved star

Opening and closing a series of eternal doors

All of this will happen again, has happened before

Blank Page Oracle

Blank page, work your wonder!

Pull me from my pondering

Tear the guts from out of me

Make a considered feast of the tales of entrails

Harvest what has long been growing in fertile soul

Each time I come to you

Record what my face does not expose

Make me feel again in subtle strokes

Sift the sediments of my sentiments

Show me who I am

Mirror opaque, I see now your reflection:

Greatly blessed it’s clear you are

Although distracted by thoughts afar

Well-fed, well-clothed, and at ease,

Still you toss upon the seas

Fury drives you from underneath

Lusty blows you wait for sword in sheath

As fighting stirs your blood and spirit

Calmness pleases you once you quit it

You search and seek and never tire

A questing mind fueled by desire

But make up your mind before the night gets late

Goals sharpen your aim and decrease your wait

For as much as you drift and dally and digress

You’d be less lonely further ahead with the rest

The power of the expansion of your mind

Requires the effort of an uphill climb

As you were told let it guide your mind’s fitness:

“Every step takes you closer to Mount Olympus”

Gods and Goddesses know what it means to never die

But you’ve yet to prove eternity beyond a lie

So slow it down and speed the pace

And when you do anticipate

For if you stretch the length of Reason

You’ll make seconds epochs and minutes aeons

And if and when you memorize all your roles

Remember to forget and be your Soul

Without saying much at all

Oh, to be alive
Warm gulp of coffee
Laid back, big comfy office chair
Sound of muzzled ghazals, dampened only by blurry sound quality, with the enduring, endearing broken promises of nostalgia
Writing my self
What events criss-cross to weave the moment?
What sequences of time will now unfold?
For now I’m happy to sit and sip
Sheltered from the tornadoes of world events
Selectively calling upon mystic utterances when it feels nice to try them on
Making invisible the stark reality perceptions
Dipping into the all-pervading hot bath of spiritual hope
I put the foreground of my thoughts, a puny identity, into a photo frame that now I peer into from above
Could I imagine living many other lives just the same?
No, not really- One has been enough
Making each move with the careful real-time deliberation of a person defusing a nuclear bomb
…gets tiring…
But sometimes there is no other way
Every letter typed
Every thought unleashed and then subdued
Better yet, with the superpower of word processing and an artful amnesia- undo undo undo.
Pretending retroactive causality is something I understand
Fitting the word into spaces
Verbs and nouns, nouns and verbs
Barely an adjective-
(Im)precise
But all this to say, I’ve borrowed your time
Collected your attention
Become indebted
Without saying much at all

Power Glass

I venture quiet deeply in all the halls of the beasts,

Plotting all my steps and the position of my feet,

The attitude of my eyes and the spirit underneath,

Determining the future behind my gritted teeth

On the surface you can see me floating placid, peaceful, calm,

Intoxicating slowly like the liquor of the palm,

Aware of all surroundings whatever may become,

I look to meet the master, Napoleon on the farm

My mission stretches backwards, catapulting me through time,

To fossilize the remnants of the essence of “You die,”

I meet every slaver, every tyrant and I’m not afraid to pry,

To understand the machinations of the murderous of mind,

I brandish my sharpest weapon, the simple question, “why?”

And I verify the answers as I look into their eyes

Among the living there is a menace,

Glorification of bad ideas,

The raising of the heinous,

Dictatorial policy.

So I go about my ways of capturing evil in a flask,

Of the millions of grains of sand that I turn into a glass,

The mummified remains of tombs and tombs of power,

I tilt them back and forth with the changing of the hours.

You and You (Ode to Shivaji's Maji) - Amma Donyanhi

Poetry commotion

engulfed in devotion

Thought slowing motion

Action the potion

Painting on dival

letters to the law

A yellow hatter calls

intoxication mauls

A plan unveils John Rawls-

the cherries in the drawers

not in fame but down the halls

To worldwide clarion calls

Not seen but heard in thrall

Whisper Jamaican falls

bat rests in shade of Fall

Trinidadian boring gone

"Don't be scary" of me song

when will you bowl your ball?

you've been running oh so long

here to Cal to Kol

Gardens light we built so tall

unorthodox forward fall

between each leg the wall

willow firm yet sweet in stall

Stands fiending silent awe

feeding not the weeds

but giving to the street

returning home with broken feet

the apple dropped beside the cleats

remaining in the ring,

As the ropes are meant to wring

the Freedom as you sing

so hit a four or hit a six

cross the boundary with a skip

so the kingdom that you rule,

as wise man preaches fool,

remains hidden from their view

known only to the two

You and You