Less Poem Than Truth

Last night I lay face down in a fallow field
Beneath the waxing crescent moon,
And I kissed the ground as I would kiss a woman:
The still odor of caves in my nostrils,
A leaf of grass on my cheek,
Walt Whitman on my tongue,
The dust of mountains on my teeth.

Sum

At midnight in March,
Go out on your front lawn
Under the New Moon,
And on a cloudless night,
Look up at the skies.

Take off your shoes,
And barefooted,
Step upon the unmown grass
That pokes trough the spaces
Between your toes.

Listen to the wind
As it ruffles the new-budded leaves,
Or blows through yet undressed branches,
Feel it on your face,
And in the roots of your hair.

Gaze upon the red planet
That rises over the eastern horizon,
93 million miles
From the tip of your nose
To its rocky, barren face.

Fall upon your knees,
Digging your fingers into the soil,
Dirty your nails with clay,
Rip out her hair
In fistfulls.

Lie upon her belly,
A newborn babe,
Inhaling honeysuckle
And cow manure,
And speak not about belief.

Kiss the Buddha

Can it be said more plainly than this,
That when you come to draw your final breath,
Stretched out upon your bed,
Toothless and translucent,
Pale-eyed and moon-weary
From a lifetime of heavy sobbing
In bathtubs, holding razor blades
That cut not too deeply for visible scars,
I will be holding you in my arms,
If with my body, then with my body,
If with my ghost, then with my ghost,
Until the end of Time and Space?

My Yoga: Krisna's Dance

This is a translation of a translation of a section Jayadeva's "Gita Govinda," translated by Monika Varma in 1968. I found Varma's translation excerpted in Ram Dass's Be Love Now (2010) on p. 52. The poem spoke so directly to me that I wanted to join it, joining together with Jayadeva, Varma, Krisna, George Harrison, and My Beloved by uniting my voice with The Song:

Oh, darling, your eyes send me into ecstasy,
Like just enough Jack Daniels.

Your face, moonbeams, reflecting the light of the Sun,
Whose glory is made perfect upon your delicate lips.

The length of your legs, the play of your hips,
Make my heart beat strong.

All of Creation longs for union
Within your womb.

Your perfection, your shape, your form, Beloved,
Mingles with love and passion,

As you seize beauty in your fingertips, and on the tips of your toes
Dance adeptly in the Game of Love.

Even the 476 hairs of your eyebrows, untouched by mascara,
Unite in two perfect lines of beauty.

Though you stroll upon the fields in singular voluptuousness,
Within your emptiness do we all find refuge.

Oenathera

A day or two ago, the world was filled with color
Of Eastern Redbuds magenta-pink in bloom
And Purple Nettles carpeting the emerald pastures
Of Illinois in springtime.

Explosions of tree tops
Assembled as bridesmaids
Along roadsides, holding bouquets
Of Plum, Lavender, and Magnolia.

Daffodil, Lily, and Dandelion
Shot through the winter sedge
Amidst sprigs of Chartreuse
And a million Stars of Bethlehem.

Oh Primrose, your bright eyes
First to melt the snow,
First to melt my heart,
Do you fade so fast,

Just two days passed?
Do these petals, now brown and translucent from the Spring rains,
Strew the sidewalk with memory,
Drowned in green, green, green, green, green?

Oh, my darling, how I love you,
Delication of petals,
Soft and tender
In the last winds of Winter.

Here, in the melting sod,
You bloomed for two brief moments,
Surrendering your nectar to Wasp
And Mourning Cloak.

Ravaged by Time,
Choked by Surge of Life,
Passing unnoticed
Under the dark light of the New Moon.

Trampled under hoof of White Tailed Deer,
Who search for black and white and button-topped Morels
That rise silently
Through the detritus of you.

Erinyes

Emmalee, my girlfriend,
Full of sass and gaga,
Wearing mismatched socks and mini-skirts,
Pushing Bitsy in baby stroller,
In pink, plastic Barbie heels.

Evelyn, my sister,
Full of wonder and emotion,
Pulling paper rolls and two-liter bottles
From garbage cans
To rebuild the Universe inside her soul.

Elanor, my redemption,
Full of righteousness and indignation,
Retreating within her infinite mind
To books and loneliness of swingset,
In persistent contemplation of Truth.

Tree of Knowledge

For my father and my sister and my brother, who teach Chemistry:

In measuring grams and liters, there were two

Numbers at the end of my equation.

The first was measured out to just one place,

The other went to three. My father said,

Ignore those two that don't mean anything:

They'll rob your calculation of the Truth,

And when you come to to put your answer down,

You'll find you've proven nothing reasonable.

But there is still some truth there, I replied.

The numbers are not certain, but they do not lie:

Apples and parts of apples are not apples and oranges.

Ah, yes, he said, but apples and parts of apples are

Still only parts of apples. And when we come to give account,

Apples, not their parts, will give us reckoning. 

How to Tell the Future

"Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead. And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness." -- Goodbye Blue Monday

I learned a skill from Kurt Vonnegut:

1. Consider your present situation, and imagine that situation as a point in space-time.
2. Imagine a point in space-time that represents any moment in the past.
3. Draw a line between the two points, then extend the line forward into the future.

When we look at things in retrospect, where we are today really makes a ton of sense. Consider, for example, how Gutenberg's invention of the printing press around 1450 CE led to Luther's publication in German of the 95 Theses in 1518, which led to Henry VIII's dissolution of ties with the Roman Catholic Church in 1534, which led to King James's Authorized Version of the Bible in 1611, which led to the publication of essays like Paine's Common Sense in 1776, and the subsequent Declaration of Independence the same year. Looking back, it is easy to see how the dominoes could not help but to fall as they did: the course of events seems inevitable.

When we stop to consider the most basic principles that drive history forward, these developments should come as no surprise to us. The printing press transformed one of the most fundamental functions of the human experience by changing how we communicate with each other--which is huge. Of all the qualities of homo sapiens, our development of languages as a form of communication is perhaps the most unique, and the printing press moved communication from a process that occurs among a limited group of people in a limited time and space to a process that can occur among an unlimited audience over an unlimited time and space. It is no wonder that the Romantics of the 18th and 19th Centuries were such idealists: ideas, thanks to Gutenberg, had become the new currency.

Considering the events of the past in proportional perspective can be useful as we look to the future, and everybody understands this on some level. For example, in Illinois we expect cold weather in February because we have usually experienced cold weather in previous Februaries, and we expect to experience it in future Februaries as well. Likewise, some of us can remember filling up our gas tanks for under $10 at some point in the past, so while we stand beside our vehicles watching the numbers surpass $75, we cringe, but not so much because of the outrageous effect of inflation upon our wallets today, but because we know that all too soon the average cost of a fill-up will exceed $200.

I imagine that reading the previous sentence created the following reaction among most readers: Initial disbelief, followed by measured but reluctant acceptance, followed by defiant disbelief fueled by a vague hope that something (hybrids?) will change the game and ease our pocketbooks. Unfortunately, though, history has also taught us that the more things change, the more they tend to stay the same.

This March the world has taken notice of a documentary film that calls for "justice" to be brought to a man who has created heinous acts. Insofar as the film stirs people in support of a cause, it appears to be very effective. While there are a variety of legitimate issues raised by the film, there is a much broader, more fundamental aspect of the film that really terrifies me:

The film calls for the death of a man: It asks our children to register their vote in support of this action on the Internet, asks them to wear a bracelet with the targeted man's name on it, and asks them to proselytize others in support of this cause.

If we look back through history, as far back as we can see, as far back as literature and recorded communications exist, we see a long line of struggle, after struggle, after struggle, after struggle of one people who fight another people. Let's not get bogged down in worrying about who deserves to die or not die--that isn't really the point that I am trying to make, and focusing too closely on the details of a particular case does a really good job of distracting people from the more fundamental principle presented by this video. The filmmaker himself asserts that "the rules have changed," and to some extent that is true, but to another, it is not true at all.

Yes, the rules have changed in that the way in which we choose to fight each other are continually evolving. Once upon a time we fought each other over banana leaves, now we fight each other over oil. Once we fought each other because the king told us to fight each other, now we fight each other because Facebook tells us to fight each other. Sure the rules of the game change a little (my Grandpa Estes never did get over his distrust of forward passing in American football), but the game itself never fundamentally changes.

And that is what bothers me so much about this "new" movement. The idea that all the voices of the world will finally unite in a common voice to call out for "justice" is a very, very, very scary idea. And I really wish that Grandpa Vonnegut were here to guide us through this fiasco. But the fact is, he's not here any more, except for the pieces of himself that he left inside of you, and inside of me, and maybe if we listen really closely, we might be able to hear him speak to us:

"What's this I hear about you guys deciding to kill all those poor bastards in Africa?"

"Can I have your autograph?"

"Write it yourself. I'm dead. And while you are at it, tell that new president of yours to stop trying to quit smoking cigarettes."

"But Mr. Vonnegut! Cigarettes cause cancer. They kill you!"

"They won't kill me. I'm dead. And besides, it's not the cancer that kills you: it's the being alive that kills you. Figure that out first, then smoking cigarettes stops being so much of a problem."

"I'm confused."

"Tell you what. I'll make it short and to the point. They got shuffle-board over here, and I'm up next--be there in a month or two, Adolf."

"Hitler is in Heaven?!"

"Who said I was in Heaven? What was I saying  . . . "

"About the cigarettes."

"Yeah, cancer. Listen, get this through your head quick because every moment I spend talking to you is another century I'm losing face time with Beatrice, and I gotta tell you, Dante ain't much of a player. I'm thinking with another few thousand millennia, I can win her over. The thing is, kid, you're gonna live that life for 60 or 80 years (60, if you're lucky), and then you're gonna die. And you can either spend your time chasing rat bastards under a rock every minute, or you can spend your time protecting the only thing that's worth holding on to."

"Right: Life itself."

"No, dumb-ass. Love!"

"But I do hold onto love! That's why I want to live. That's why I want to protect my family. That's why I want to keep them safe from bad guys. Without life, you can't really have love."

"Listen, you seem like a nice kid, but I can tell that this is going to take a while, so I'm gonna get back to my game--Stop kicking my biscuit, Genghis! Here's the thing, kid. You need to go out and find two people. First, go find the person who found love and held onto it. When you find him, ask him how he did it. Then, if you still need answers, go look for the guy that held onto life, and when you find him, offer him a cigarette.

"Gotta go, it's been real fun."

The Truth

Metaphors get in the way,
But there's no other way to get there,
(At least not between you and me)
Except for the way,
Which is really difficult for so many to find.
Once you get there, though,
It becomes much more obvious.
Put yourself in the way, instead.