A Dream is a Mandala

Drawn Down by the Soul

Recalling a dream

as if it were

a hit & run, 

I’m unable

to identify

the driver 

behind 

the wheel;

whether 

it’s me

or not.

Every night

I explore

another 

mandala

knowing

the soul

is made

entirely 

out of

it's own

attentiveness.

I begin

by leaving

my self portrait

out on

the street

in the dark,

watching as

passersby

mistake me

for us both.

Last night

I watched

as a tornado

whose circular 

funnel

can cause only

abstraction

further obliterate

my logic

like so much

scattered

bric a brac.

Now it will take

an art

to call out to

others 

without appearing

desperate.

Yet

I go on

searching for

the center,

unsure whether

it lie in 

the mind,

the heart, 

or even

the hands,

let alone

one's liver.

08/18/21

 

A

Botany 

for 

Silk 

Blossoms 

Half of me lives 

on its own now,

tired of being shaped

by what the other 

half might give. 

In fact, we 

no longer

use the word “I”

without irony.

We’re both too

full of ourselves.

Ours is 

a gardener’s ethic,

rising early 

to work 

with the light.

I weed my mind

using imaginary tools

because I know that

Hope is a garden

and attention, 

a spade.

Between us 

we are both 

botanist and flower;

planter and blade.

But the other half

is vaguely narcoleptic,

prone to bouts of sleep,

with his hidden blueprint;

a negative of roots

beneath ground

whose receptivity

leave passageways 

open

so that anything

might arrive.

That said,

the dark brings out

its dead, a village

roused by plague.

So much death

is sure to make 

things grow

in spades.

If daylight’s

a natural disinfectant, 

I am my own medicine.

Just as lavender 

needs contact

for its sap 

to reach out

through needles

into thin air,

we feel with fingers

a lingering bent;

unlike silk

what is alive

can flower

and write

our name

in it's scent.

All plants

take the weather 

personally,

as if simpatico.

Perhaps they practice 

hearing clouds

arriving often

as they do

without fanfare,

marching softly

in their cotton parade.

Then hear them 

disassemble

into rain,

they themselves

made as much

for blue 

as chalk 

for slate.

For better or worse

like us, clouds

carry their lives 

with them

wherever they go,

even if no sky is ever

the same as another,

they never question

the motives of 

the other.

Maybe if we could

in time

stop needing to make

everything our own,

with no right 

to ownership,

everything on loan,

we might shape

what we give

from even thinner air,

our memories

more than

mere merchandise

abandoned at the fair. 

Nor is it fair to others

to be carting around

our recollections 

like so much

bric-a-brac

at the church bazaar,

when for some,

art is no more

than silk flowers

in a jar.

08/10/21

 

Last Boat Out of Lilliput

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell

 that encloses your understanding. 

It is the bitter potion by which the

 physician within you heals your sick

 self. And so I trust the physician and

 drink his remedy.”

                        ~Kahlil Gibran

I’m grateful for gray skies,

I can’t lie;

the sun reeks of privilege

and I’m nothing if not

prodigal. 

What else are we

to make of 

a sun worshiper

who comes to prefer

the rain

and chooses chalk

over slate?

I’m trying 

to be willing

to be vulnerable, 

a ghost plotting 

to raise the living

rap by tap. 

Whose mind

is a spookhouse

that haunts

itself.

My better

thoughts

appear out of 

nowhere;

an art

for want of

a billowing sheet

to act as a sail.

Without me my dreams

can’t exist.

So they’ll do anything

to keep me here.

Like another

Gulliver

I catch

their arrows tethered

to threads 

whizzing nightly

over my head.

I’d like to hang 

onto nothing

but am

unable to let go.

I close my eyes 

yet continue

to see,

my memory clinging

like muscle 

to a bone.

I step over 

myself.

We pin our hopes 

on something new

except that

all new things

become old 

the moment 

we claim them.

Why trudge through 

life as if it 

weren’t a poem?

Why tread on lilies?

My diary says

the day I fell 

in love

I fell ill.

My symptoms

more than

apparent,

were nothing

if not devastating;

I was afraid I

wouldn’t survive.

That I would grow

small by osmosis

in the Beloved's

presence.

At the same time

ordinary things

were imbued

heretofore by

chimeras.

Though slammed

to the ground,

my head yanked

up by my hair

and dust kicked

into my eyes,

inside my chest

a cacophony 

of fireflies

lit up my

insides.

I grappled

with the possibility

of escape even

as I realized

my own 

ground zero;

I was no longer

of the slightest 

importance.

I had been

subsumed,

one sole

emotion

eclipsing

every

feeling.

If green were life

and red were death,

I reached for blue.

But the ones

who know not 

what they do

are never porous.

What they want is

of no importance.

Complaining is

an empty gesture 

signifying nothing.

Crowning me 

a makeshift King,

utterly pointless.

All I can do

is pry myself open

in search

of more patience.

This is how I will 

come to terms 

with

solitude.

Discarding myself

along with all 

the other things

I thought would

save me.

What use is innocence

that begins in mourning?

Everyone steps over it,

a dead beetle unmourned

on the garden path.

So I try 

to wring truth

from yet

another dream.

The bed a relief map,

I am the demarcation 

between night and day.

I slowly remember 

my body

even as I savor 

its nightmares

unspooling like a negative 

of un-capturable

phantoms.

I regain my bearings.

clenching my feet,

stretching out my legs,

as if I were chained 

to a rack in some light-

deprived dungeon.

On return, 

safe in my room,

I pour my wine

back into its bottle

and wonder how

after all I’ve done, 

the arc of age

has returned me

to this

innocence.

8/3/21

 

Making the Most

of the Notion

That at Any Moment

I May Drop Down Dead

When I was young I loved

pretending I was about to die.

Nothing appealed more

to my sense of adventure.

I would practice falling

down the stairs

when company came over.

If I found myself

fortunate enough

to be out in a storm,

I would trudge

against the wind

shielding my eyes

from the stinging snow

as though my life

were in utmost danger.

When I got sick

with a mild cold,

I became a veritable

damsel in distress,

(despite being a boy).

And did I tell you?

I’d have given

anything for

a broken leg.

Just imagine learning

to walk again,

struggling up from the wheelchair

in a sand blasted beach house

by the sea.

Now, in mid-life,

the thought of suddenly dying

arouses

a wish to work on myself.

Mind you, its not a thought

I think with my brain,

I simply receive it

as from a distance,

as if I were letting myself

agree to go on

being invented.

With no need

to cling to furniture

to hold this moment 

in place,

I manage to inhabit

more than my body

with absolute authority.

After all, so much of us

exists in a state

of frozen amputation;

upside-down

icebergs

afloat in an

all-consuming

 sky.

Who else has ever

wondered whether

there were too many stars

for our own good?

How better to get

to the bottom 

of myself than

by disintegrating

every night

in order to move 

more freely?

Now that time

resides inside me,

I reserve the right

to consider my life

an entire world

in itself.

But if true, 

it may

prove imperative 

to accept everything

that has happened

(or will happen)

as integral to

one’s own particular

nature. 

As for me,

the mark of

a great adventure

has always been

a matter of life 

and certain death.

7/7/21