Category Archives: lost beauty

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Ginsberg Theology

Needless to say, a gay Jewish man on acid comes to the conclusion that there is God in everything.  If you haven’t ever read the Paris Review 8 “Art of Poetry” interview….

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4389/the-art-of-poetry-no-8-allen-ginsberg

Anyway my first thought was this was what I was born for, and second thought, never forget—never forget, never renege, never deny. Never deny the voice no, never forget it, don’t get lost mentally wandering in other spirit worlds or American or job worlds or advertising worlds or war worlds or earth worlds. But the spirit of the universe was what I was born to realize. What I was speaking about visually was, immediately, that the cornices in the old tenement building in Harlem across the backyard court had been carved very finely in 1890 or 1910. And were like the solidification of a great deal of intelligence and care and love also. So that I began noticing in every corner where I looked evidence of a living hand, even in the bricks, in the arrangement of each brick. Some hand placed them there—that some hand had placed the whole universe in front of me. That some hand had placed the sky. No, that’s exaggerating—not that some hand had placed the sky but that the sky was the living blue hand itself. Or that God was in front of my eyes—existence itself was God. Well, the formulations are like that—I didn’t formulate it in exactly those terms, what I was seeing was a visionary thing, it was a lightness in my body … my body suddenly felt light, and a sense of cosmic consciousness, vibrations, understanding, awe, and wonder and surprise. And it was a sudden awakening into a totally deeper real universe than I’d been existing in. So, I’m trying to avoid generalizations about that sudden deeper real universe and keep it strictly to observations of phenomenal data, or a voice with a certain sound, the appearance of cornices, the appearance of the sky say, of the great blue hand, the living hand—to keep to images.

So then, the other poem that brought this on in the same day was The Little Girl Lost, where there was a repeated refrain,

Do father, mother, weep,
Where can Lyca sleep?

How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?

“If her heart does ache
 Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.”

It’s that hypnotic thing—and I suddenly realized that Lyca was me, or Lyca was the self; father, mother seeking Lyca, was God seeking, Father, the Creator; and “If her heart does ache / Then let Lyca wake”—wake to what? Wake meaning wake to the same awakeness I was just talking about—of existence in the entire universe. The total consciousness then, of the complete universe. Which is what Blake was talking about. In other words a breakthrough from ordinary habitual quotidian consciousness into consciousness that was really seeing all of heaven in a flower. Or what was it, eternity in a flower … heaven in a grain of sand. As I was seeing heaven in the cornice of the building. By heaven here I mean this imprint or concretization or living form, of an intelligent hand—the work of an intelligent hand, which still had the intelligence molded into it. The gargoyles on the Harlem cornices. What was interesting about the cornice was that there’s cornices like that on every building, but I never noticed them before. And I never realized that they meant spiritual labor, to anyone—that somebody had labored to make a curve in a piece of tin—to make a cornucopia out of a piece of industrial tin. Not only that man, the workman, the artisan, but the architect had thought of it, the builder had paid for it, the smelter had smelt it, the miner had dug it up out of the earth, the earth had gone through eons preparing it. So the little molecules had slumbered for … for kalpas. So out of all of these kalpas it all got together in a great succession of impulses, to be frozen finally in that one form of a cornucopia cornice on the building front. And God knows how many people made the moon. Or what spirits labored … to set fire to the sun. As Blake says, “When I look in the sun I don’t see the rising sun I see a band of angels singing holy, holy, holy.” Well, his perception of the field of the sun is different from that of a man who just sees the sun sun, without any emotional relationship to it.

 

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gave up the ghost

May 20th

A Year With Hafiz
“Asking for the Hand of Marriage”

When someone becomes quiet in this world,
really quiet, those who aren’t may turn to
them, even from behind a wall or from a great
distance.

It is like a touch they, the unstill, wanted…
a touch that can come from the invisible, come
from an intimate region of the benevolent spirit
in someone in true peace.

Unknown to most, one asks for the hand of
marriage wherever their gaze falls.

I have to stop myself here; sometimes I just
cannot help but to cheer something that
has never quite been put in words before, as
that last line…about a “marriage” we always
seek.

That is all I can say now. If there is something
in your mind obstructing your vision, let
someone who can see…read all this to you.

The sunflower’s heart is not detectable to most,
but you know what it does. It so gladly turns,
offering its body toward its lover–the sun
all day long.

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the wind of the sea

“Wind of the Sea” – by Kameron Cole

inspired by Canción de Granada y el mar, por Pablo Antonio Cuadra

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if you see a beggar in your dreams,

carrying a tin lantern, it is me.

in the wind of the lake,

I long for the wind of the sea.

the hand is concealed, the lantern seems

to float, at the sleeve’s cuff.

as though there were no hand, had been torn off,

trying to cling to the sea.

to this sea, which now occupies my mind, night

and day.  the conversation has become intimate

in a way that is not really joyous, but intense.

the hold your gaze has upon me, I almost long for you

to speak, to break

the intensity of our silent intimacy.

there. I meant to kiss you again, but

sometimes

your sound

your most sustained whispering,

reminds me of the sadness I feel

when you go out, seem to go away.

and when you come back,

you have changed.

 

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I burn incense at your feet

in deep devotion I cry out to you, who visited my earth once, when I was barely awake.  whatever others make think of me, I know there is value in persistence.  and this is not pursuance – because it comes to me what is meant for me. persistence and acceptance – these are the words my God hears in my prayers. and these prayers have been answered before.


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Hafiz – Why You Stare at the Mountain

Why You Stare at the Mountain

What does real love do? It stills the longing, for real
love is crowned, and then all become its willing slave.

Love creates a home wherever it is. Love is really
never in want. True love is always in a state of found.

Homeless one is, whenever the heart is not alive.
Realizing that, I sing the way I do. A bird’s melody
can grant a pardon to vision that is obstructed.

I know why you stare at the mountain’s beauty,
for she reminds you of something vital in your self.
And natural desires to explore her heights are just
there to help you reach your own summit.

Once, while I was looking at the sky, it spoke, saying,
“Hafiz, I am surprised at your admiration for me,
for dear you are my root. With a ruby in your purse
why wish to hold a clay coin?”

I like this poem, its weave. It is a basket where
something has been placed for you. Read this again,
slowly, it may become more revealed.

A problem has arisen. I can’t leave right now, you
feel too close. Do you mind if we kiss for an hour?

—Hafiz, trans. Daniel Ladinsky, or Daniel Ladinsky, trans. Hafiz
(source: Suj & Google Books)

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Hafiz – Wish You Were Here

WISHING YOU WERE HERE

Those kisses you sent, I found them wandering
around the house. They were acting a little
lost, not knowing exactly where I was.

I was busy upstairs. But now we are all having
tea and talking about you, and wishing you were here.

And they imparted all you intended. They did
well.

One more thing: I have seen you at your best and at your worst; still you are always welcome near me.

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so I give up

in the end, fear won over love. the desire to do something out of the ordinary, no matter how strong the desire, cannot infiltrate, cannot escape from, the happily ever after – which allows love to be a kind of feature, something manifested by words, and perhaps gestures, but it is not spiritual food.

I am looking for someone who wants to actually succeed at letting love rule their lives.  someone who is confident that this is entirely possible, indeed difficult, but difficult in the sense of mountain climbing. not the difficulty inherent in the tragedy of the failure of humans to hold on to love no matter what, and the petty anger that we direct toward one another, when we see how tragic that failure is. tragic because we see ourselves just letting go so easily. so weak. our commitments to other humans are paper thin.

and how is it that you read Rumi?  how do you come to Hafiz?  Jesus? do you know that you MUST take those words and live by them and die by them?  that saying the words to one another, sending the words – is nothing. interesting reading.  provocative literature. no!  not meant for consumption but rather regurgitation.

don’t you see the end? the tapering tunnel? your words will be swallowed.  all of them. the portal will close, all of a sudden, and you will regret all the moments you spent apart from the one you love.  and you will know who that is.  there will be no one to listen to your brilliant life plan. you will move your lips, and our mouth with speak into a funnel.  this is what we all fear.  silent and lonely, we witness the things we KNEW we should have done.  we knew it. we knew it.  we can’t get out of it.  but in the end, getting out of it is clearly irrelevant. doesn’t that worry you? or, don’t you know that from your 30s on, it will be the hour hand ticking. the minute hand for your childhood fantasies.

on this day, I accept defeat.  I waged the war, carried the standard onto the field in valor, and brought it back from the field shredded and dirty.  mocked by the poets and balladeers, who all have said, at least once, you will lose this battle every time, and yours will be the fatal wounds.

so I give up.

and here, we stop.

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you see, there IS such a thing as mojo

I mean, the words are just a means to skirt the real issue: love, infatuation, obsession, devotion, or, mo jo! the least divisible common denominator among all the words, all these lengthy, wordy attempts to describe the same thing is that the the thing they will describe is a thing beyond our control.  this feeling – again, “feeling” is only the tangible part of this thing – you feel something that you did not instigate.  right, you may have instigated the relationship or the sex, but that does not make you the outcome’s owner. because when you least expect it, there is this thing looking right back at you.  and it is substantial, it is a part of you, but you sense the its power does not emanate from you, or her, or him, alone. not an elephant, but a snow leopard in the room.

maybe we’re not talking  about the same thing. I’m talking about the thing that puts healthy people into the emotional state of suicide contemplation.  know that one? wherein a breaking occurs, as part of a break up.  for some others, it’s this bizarre glowing light – the circumference of a small pot of gold – that you see glowing on the nightstand in paintings of people  accompanying their loved ones along the final stretch of life, into death.  they sit there, hold the hand of the person who charges that glowing light, and they imagine – or, let’s say, it enters their minds – imagine for a brief moment the possible sensation they might have when the light goes out of that hand they are holding.  and when that sensation flashes over them, they buck forward, only slightly, from this immense wrenching feeling in their core. this is what I am referring to when I talk about the magic core of love, as being something mystical, that lives with us, and in us.

and when this Tollhaus substance is passed, through mouths, from one to the other, it becomes stronger, and more independent. in this state, when you feel it, it is unimaginable to you that such a thick rope could ever be separated. when she tugs on this rope, you feel it attaching rom a very deep place in your abdomen.

and then, a wind comes along – a force that might not cause paper to move – and the strands fray and debraid. and off you go, with a single lo-fi photograph in your hand. and you show it to people. but it angers you that they don’t feel the power of that photo, as you do.  anyway, fine with me if it’s just me and my photo. a perfect balance.