soy la cascada.
soy la gota de agua cayendo.
soy todo: el principio, sí
y la conclusión también.

soy la muerte y la vida.
no tengo fin; continúo.
siempre he estado aquí.
y aunque no me veas,
todavía estoy.

soy la cascada,
dando saltos mortales hasta el desenlace
del universo.

Ancient Tongue

All persons
Familiar or otherwise
Are now winds.
Their faces appearing intermittently
Between gaps of voidness
As thin fragile films
On invisible Air.
How can such unreal manifestations be permanent?
They change, these insubstantial happenings,
So I call them winds.

Flowers!
Only you seem to remain fairly loyal
To my past perceptions,
However deceptive.
It can be expected
Since you are the closest
Of all natural expressions
To ultimate Natures
Of that, I have accepted

The immaculate jasmine that lasts but for a day,
The leaves of the Kopsia aged red,
Butterflies and moths,
Dragonflies and moths,
Dragonflies levitate,
These are thoughts,
But whose thoughts?

The language of Man
Too has vanished with the winds,
I’ve lost all words my teacher drilled me.
May I borrow your tongue to communicate,
O plants of the world,
Your lips to speak?
And safe-keep my memories between your layers of leaves?
O Mother Earth, O Father Sky!
Only with your words can I talk to you,
And I can do so only when I’m no different from
A showy hibiscus,
Or the moon, the mirror of the sun,
Or the sun, the discus of life.

7 November 1994
The Venerable Sujiva
The Buddhist Wisdom Center

I have, for some time, been talking to plants. Not in the way some people talk to themselves. It’s more of a communication, but not like what the mediums do during seances. When you develop keen awareness while working with and among plants, you can sense their unique characteristics, not just their external morphology but qualities which seem to tell you about the nature of life, the ways of the world and so forth. It enlivens and inspires my spiritual life as well as contributing to good health. Everyone should learn the ancient language Nature speaks. This reminds me of a short poem I wrote long ago:

Nature speaks in symbols and signs
Catch them while they fly
Let her tell you what’s in her heart
– The Truth that never dies!

thrive on and thrive out while you still can,
for the cosmos is expanding like a memory that fades

a memory like
your lover being yanked out of your hands by a forward-clanging train
you choke on puked out smoke and steam and hold back dirtied tears
while a painful hasty nothing grows between what once was One
felt unsure if you could ever catch again the outstretched fingers
they once were yours…

look up!
the rockets flying right past stars nearly at light-speed
are struggling to connect anything
much less merge the species of far-flung galaxies
scoop up eons of light to go and eons more coming back
after all this travel time will we be any closer?
the lover also wants to know…

sometimes i wonder whether we should sit and wait for ansible
or other instant protocols for instant message needs
to talk not just to future times that won’t know who we are
but to every living crawling swimming flying walking thing
not the least of which is all the forms that we will take someday
i’m afraid that if we wait too long even we humans won’t be one,
we’ll be humans A and humans B,
or worse, at this rate,
humans A and humans Z
and one will sign and one will talk
and one will smell what you mean and the other just baulk
at the way those other guys try to communicate with their noses and their complex pheromones
and if we stay spread apart in time and space it won’t be long till everything
is a universe apart

oh, being apart…
even to you today your other half is half-alien
not even two continents away
the alien beeps and groans still sputter out down from your speakers
despite such wicked throughput, the quickest ping, and best intentions
skype is just not true to life
and it’s looking like what’s not so close is far too far away
what’s a man to do?
can we keep the light years at bay?

some will say to multiply in people and in rockets,
to exponentialize our meager efforts and
to try to reach the stars that are breaking off and slipstreaming away

it seems it comes down to this notion that we must always grow
and be the beings that end up being all and everything
lest we find ourselves stuck entropically
on some lonely swimming rock in space
crumbling till our final grain of sand
becomes the finest mote of dust on hand
to be exhaled in the universe’s
final tiny breath.

but how much force can the soul withstand while plastered to the sky?
and can we learn how to drench with love the distant planets’ hearts and minds?
to join, unite, and conquer this darkness
the forced separation a lover feels
can it be made right?
will we find a way to create light?

[inspired by: the story of dark energy and the joys of being wrong]

If only I could type it in a crisper way than this
to spell out why I try and play
a buffer-role and sit
guessing at the aspirations,
how to curb chance-machinations
of our absurd, undeterred techno-globalization.

This age for cheap is offering
to keep open the gate
the flood of infotainment
acting less like food than bait
only certain spaces in which we can feed and wait.

A storm gathers just off horizon
its soundless thunder rumbles
its dark clouds heavy glint of gold,
but what rocks it holds would care
to serenely come and tumble down
on heads that do not glance around?
From this we will need shelter or at least a wary mind…

So it is that I and accompanying allies strain and scrutinize,
future-wise puzzle-piecing new maps to help us navigate a world
brimming full of bullshit and apparently-free crap.
A legacy we hope to leave
(my part albeit incomplete)
to guide those unborn future flocks of man and
the info-shocked, sadly-vision-blocked souls living
who may yet know to use discretion sometimes
in keeping open for too long their minds for just a dime.

All of us, don’t we need sound notification on the nature of
our own bloating meta-predatory creation?
It seems something is waiting to snatch up idle ripe minds
to be its bio-platforms, do its ghostly calculations,
become its meme-arrays and unknowing-slaves…
The risk is if we end up biting every byte we see
(we think this data-lunch is free)
effectively lambs feeding from its trap we will be!

Digitally-versed, the buffers’ and shepherds’ work
is to clear a path wide enough for sheep to skirt temptation,
to keep them away from the ever-swelling impulse-inertia,
their desire for satiation
that leads them to trough in underheated isolated chambers
from which all but pre-made thought can escape un-rearranged.

Beware these rains inside will fall
black stones straight through the roof,
and the sheep who do not hear the call,
those too media-jacked-in and enthralled,
will be submerged and drown aloof.

OPENING STATEMENTS

Technology needs a soul injection.
Who’s gonna pay the price?

Technology needs a soul installation.
Who’s gonna pay with their life?

If we’re gonna talk about planting chips into our brains,
then first we’d really better talk about who’s using who…
’cause to me it seems an awful lot like tech is using you.

QUERIES AND QUESTIONS

→ → → → → → → → ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒
Fast Forward and we can see our souls being diluted…
⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ⇐ ← ← ← ← ← ← ← ←
Which way are we really moving? Everything has been distorted.
↔ ↔ ↔ ↔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ⇔ ↔ ↔ ↔ ↔

SUMMATION

I’ve heard technology referred to as the 7th Kingdom of Life, read a book called “What Technology Wants”, and it got me thinking that we’d better ask ourselves what we want.

Because even though inventions beg and beg and beg to be invented, we’re the ones that decide in the end how it will be. And just like, say, with an Empire or a Nation, with any Kingdom we must always ask whether it’s got any soul, or even one bit or strand of moral fiber at all. So, does it? — Is this kingdom not lacking in soul?

And this we must continue to ask, because the (empty) Kingdom will, lacking any noble purpose, crumble from trying too quickly to build itself up to greater heights. And if it is truly a Kingdom of Life, then we probably don’t want it to fall at all…

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
Perfection of divinity
is everyone’s duty
Perfection of divinity
is everyone’s duty
♫
Don’t waste your time
livin’ for the vanity
We are creatures of faith
victims of destiny
which we create
♫
Now we living on a higher vibration
’cause we take it to the heights of creation
Now we living on a higher vibration
but we take it to the heights of creation, yeah…

You know what I’m talking ’bout
don’t tell me no
Baby I could scream and shout
But I won’t
♫
Listen to me now
Now we livin’ on a higher vibration
Then we take it to the heights of creation
♫
Let me take you little higher
And then you take me little higher
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Poems on activist hypocrisy.
From a book called “Burning the Anarchist Bible: Cynical poetry for those fed up with dogma”

RACIST

he was a big guy, chicano, bisexual
nice as folks come
didn’t smoke but bummed for his friends,
kill whitey patch on his knee.

he chuckled at a rape joke once
and has been raped himself
but people don’t disclaim that
when they painfully laugh.

so a white woman turns on him
there is nothing funny about rape.

she calls him a straight white male
who would therefore never have to deal with rape.
the only word she got right was male.
he calls her sexist.

she learns that he is chicano
and her story changes.
she explains that in the same way
that he, chicano, couldn’t be racist
against her, white
she, woman, couldn’t be sexist against him,
male.

“I was raised a racist,” he replies,
“by militant chicano seperatists.”
with her choice anti-racist views
she had denied the struggles he had
against his own internalized racial
bigotry.

but that’s okay, because later he became
too racist against us good white folks
or something
and we had to kick him out.

FEMINIST

she gave three men, crusty punks, a ride
six hundred miles.

of course, she bought all of the gas.
of course, they didn’t know how to drive.

“why do you own a car?” it was their refrain.

she played the radio and drove them
most of the way up the west coast
to their green anarchist gathering.

on the stereo, political rap.
“if a woman ain’t down, she can never
really be your wife.”

“turn that sexist shit off.” it was their chorus.

“look, I am a woman, and it doesn’t offend me.”

sitting shotgun, one took the opportunity of
turning that sexist shit off for her.

“just because I am a man, doesn’t mean
I can’t be a feminist.”

HOMOPHOBE

years ago in high school
I was no anarchist.
I thought laws could solve the problems of oppression
and I thought rules should curtail improper behavior.

we formed the gay-straight alliance
to let everyone know that homophobia was going to stop.

one day a teacher taught us that fanny packs were for fags
and I used to respect that teacher
but I told him I didn’t appreciate gay jokes.
three other memebers of the gay-straight alliance
who were in the class with me
tried to turn invisible.

he told me that it wasn’t serious.

I told him the law against queer discrimination
in the public schools of our county.

his eyebrows dropped in anger
his old broken hands wrung themselves
“if you want someone to understand you
or comply, the worst possible way is
to quote law at them, to tell them
what they can and cannot do.”

I was silent and self-righteous at the time
but he was right about law.

I still don’t appreciate gay jokes.

SPECIESIST

there was a campfire in the woods, of course
and we soberly plotted authority’s demise. Read the rest of this entry »

a life of pure poetry is not so poetic,
not so romantic when romanticized completely.
turn up the master volume,
and soon you can’t hear anything but
static interference,
noise,
and un-poetry.
best pause the overeager program
and find yourself absurdly stuck.
it may not be poetic, but at least it will be true, so
pause the static and take in the empty

space — it will be good for you.

Yes, I know corrosivity is not a word as far as you’ve heard. It is a novel combination of corrosive and acidity to me. Because I didn’t want to write ‘an ocean of acidity’ — it’s not right, not P.C., err, I mean it’s not P.H.! (Gee…) Simply equip and tip in a ton of tums to neutralize the acidic H-2-O blip; not the right video-clip. So, corrosivity it is…

And let’s get it clear: I’m here not to neutralize the seas by puffin’ calcium into the breeze. Creating a ton of anything is hard work for me, being a crab astrologically. So, what to do in a corrosive ocean? What’s the potion?

I see my buddy Pisces afloat and adrift, aloft and aloof in a fantasy of idea thrift. I know not to follow so as not to get lost. And I also can’t abandon my aqueous ship there, boss. The depths being so well-equipped to my elusive style of image-shift.

And a playful warping of the story verbosely is not the essence of this poetic trip. So I digress — unless… No. The real question is not how to rhyme this session, but how to stay solid in a corrosive ocean where you know-not-what-means-stolid.

When you live underwater, the world is heavy. Ideas are tempting but can drag you down fishy rabbit-holes quick. Mystery and deception, image and self-defense protection not a problem for the clawed-crawling-shelled-crusty creatures like me-myself and a few other watery-signed-types on the shelf. But with an ocean of emotive ideas at my finger-claw-tips, and the schools of benign-looking hook-hidden pips, the challenge remains to open-shell with the proper currents and down comrades at my hip.

Open too much and pure-essence is leaked.
Too little and neurotic claws begin to auto-collapse on the allied-peeps.

So, to flow or to swim is the question to let sink in. To roll in the under-tow or no?

And the best way for us, these crustaceans, not-to-crack, is to never let this very question stab us in the back.