i am not afraid
to be a lover of strangers
the electric danger is all
there is
and how do i know what is
if i cannot run to it
and how do i love
if i cannot love it
and how do i know you
if i do not know the stranger in you
and then
how can we stop from being strangers?

in the end there is only you
and you
and you
and the few of us
we are not a large community
those who have shared life and love
and tasted skin
and what is man
who is made from a spurt of water?
and what is man so prone to sin
and what is man
made of a clot
and clotted together again?
man is the joy of me
and me and all i see
and man is you

i keep losing you and finding you
to lose you again
i would love
this time
to find you for good
the magic furry brown bag
the eartny satin of your skin
i want again
your elfin smallness
and your allness
and the loveliness of you
the little you
in this bed

i used to sing of the bridal chamber
i will not sing of things i cannot see
he brought me to the desert
and that is fine
i used to sing of the festival
and the bright season
these days i don't write about wine
i endure
i live, i learn not to pine
equilibrium
or something like it
is his gift

at five am i may remember the key to life
and at five thirty i will start to remember
its source
cold as the north
and sluggish as the south
tired of surprises
i blink my eyes
gummy faced and freazy i shut my
eyelids
you hid so much from me
yesterday i was so proud of everything i had done
make me proud of no doing
make me a being
make me less than the earth
and more than believing

don't be so gaurded
be flesh, not stone
not terrified to moan
lay on your back
open yourself
be a whore
sunday school was wrong
love's not so precious, its abundant
if you lose it, go and bum it,
you can always get some more

someone has scorched the earth and
split the world with fire
and it does not matter who
the fire lies in you and so does
unquenchable dryness
i want to love my brothers
i want to love jesus
i want to be my brother, i want to live in
jesus, but not now

not with unpaid bills and toothache

but with unpaid bills and toothache is the only
now there is
and the only revelation i give

what the priest has said
what the prophey said
the prophey, breathing visions of god
screamed out loud and shook us
the priest said go to bed
and men spur out talks from true vision
and call it religion
an organized monster
don't let him eat you
they say jesus died to free us
but i know that he lived to be us
they say jesus died to save us
don't believe in them
don't believe in him
become him

infinite grace

i spent ten years dreaming of dreaming
and ten dreaming of love
another ten that the lover would be you
and now i don't dream and i don't
wait
for the other half
content yourself
like it or not you are
the better half
and you are the worst
and in the first and fine invisible line
between this and that face
is infinite grace

in the rain i'll walk a little farther
in the downpour i walked faraway
from you and went to places you would not
follow
and i do not despise you for your weakness
only
when you see me
all windswept and bedraggled
all wet and bedazzled by jewel drops of dew
do you see the ghost of someone who in my company
you once wished to be?

visiting the retreat house

we are here because
we are all desperate
we are all lonely
we are all in need

if we were a little more desperate
alittle more lonely or a little
more aware of the acute need
then love might replace selfishness
and the greed you make like leaves
make oxygen could save you from
your sin again

and the irony of it is that
he is sad because he has taken faith
in the new spirituality
where he has put himself at the heart of the
universe
and trading in some jewish, muslim, calvinistic
worn of spooky Catholic old jehovah he has
whistled and has made a new God
who runs by names of source
and spirit and anything else
vague enough to make us sitters in the old
regime wonder
and so the creed runs that
the lord if my djinni and this that i
want i deserve
and by a whole hundred other witchcrafts
and the positiveness of all my thinking
i will be drinking in all those gifts
and your bible comes to build up self esteem
ah, but don't be mean
the truth is this is one thing you never needed help in
and in the new spirituality
you have everything because its all about you
and the new--here's the thing about it--
spirituality
is just the same old silly things dressed up
and cooked up and put on a plate
for the foolish
and ghoulishly dressed and decorated
for the greedy

i want to be resolved to my irresolution
i want to have the saint's acceptance
deep inside my heart
so deep i cannot see
i believe this life right now is God's
broken jagged gift
and i stand here,
looking at him as if
he were some stupid child
trying not to cut my
fingers as you press
it to my hands and
wonder what is
the holy protocol
and through it all
do i say thank you?

in my rage against the way things are,
in my utter forsakenness
in my goddamn tiredness i know,
in my heart of hearts that this irritation
this things that sets me crying is the taste,
is the gift of the pain inside the pain
this is the thing that makes everything real
to feel, at all times, like a limp, a little
bit of the hurt that makes the world go round
do not resist the midnight tears that
burn as they fall down your face
do not wonder to much at rage
and at this new and punishing disgrace
this is the wound of heaven
the mystery of answerlessness
standing mute witness to the
holiness of not knowing
on the lip of despair

if i am a saint then i don't now what i'll
be the patron saint for, cause every
morning i wake up with a new belief
and a new unbelief and a new
submission and a new refusal
and i think i still believe in jesus though
i couldn't tell you who he is
and i still believe the world
is good and full of purpose
but i've got to reach deep down to find it
and i don't know why this life is filled
with exasperation
or why in masturbation i keep
seeing my best friend
and we are twisting and we are
kissing, then we're rising
then past orgasming i
am waking up alone

i am all out of rhyme and reason and full of fury
and lust, craziness, something that will not alow itself
to delve into depression. in short i am totally
ready for poetry
i am ready for the inside of me to be slowly
spooned out like bad butter from a dish, here the heart,
here the lungs, here the imaptience

and the other night i watched a film on mother teresa,
and she gave herself to jesus, and she kised the
rings of holy fathers, and catholicism was so
real to her, and jesus spok so clear to her
that no matter what she did she could do anything.
but it doesn't take calcutta to drive me
crasy and less than starving children
make my long night of te soul
i am a person of short
thresholds

walk away from the party
whatever the party
and draw the curtain and
put out the noise
for a little white turn off
music and don't be taunted
by all the noises you hear
all the chatter you hear
experience with out fear
what all the loud and laughing
banging, shouting radio
playing people are haunted by
that
in the end
this is us
and no noise in the world
can change the fact
you are alone

all of you
twenty somethings, happy studnets in your house
having parties, shouting laughing, down the road.
all of you too old to be so foolish,
hillbillies in winkles,
in ignorance playing loud
gospel music, driving me cazy,
cutting away my peace, all of you,
driving your loud cars that make my
house shake, all of you who are about
to drive me to drink, and some of you who
palce me on the brink of worry, all of
you in a hurry, who don't give a damn,
every single one of you
will be sitting her, tired and exhausted, having
let go of the dreams that matter
and quietly working on the ones that do,
feeling as flustered as i,
frazzled and ready to burn
but will you handle it as well as me
when it is your turn?

i don't mind being poor and needy as long as i don't
have to need too much. as long as you provide
for me what i cannot provide myself
what i do demand isthat you do not
leave me an orphan
these days, thr truth is,
you really seem to leave me
fending for myself a little too much,
you leave me a little too tired, and all i want
is a little bit of quiet, and you
drive me crazy everytime i look
for a palce to rest my head
and all i want to do is lay
down my head, and you keep
sending me Amalak, at my doorstep
i don't mind a little suffering
in the living room, provided,
and this s key,
you show me a way out,
through the back door
and what is more,
you don't lead me
into false hope

i think in light of some of the shit that's been going on
it would be wisest to readjust our expectations
no matter what information we have received,
if, in this life, we attempt to do anything involving
a little bit of quiet and a touch of finding soul,
then we may be in for a struggle
i am tugging tomorrow on a barge of hundred horrid yesterdays
and part of me still believes that we'll be okay,
and most of my believes that will be okay
and you say, behold the power of postivie thinking,
and you say, gods wants us to be rich kings,
and you say, that life will always be this way,
as happy as you know, but i think that you've
been drinking and my only
suggestion for you
is to readjust
your expectations

A MEDITATION.... ON LAURA LOSING HER MIND

and she said, this is the way it is. and i thought
why can't you just shut the fuck up
and you told me, well that's the price you pay
and i thought
go to hell, to hell with you too
and she found hrself in the booby hatch, after ten eyars
of trying to be insane
and i think that soon i may be there with her
and he foudn himself not finding anything,
scratchign doodles
all theda,y brain fried on drugs,
having consumed marijauna
sandwiches and i think this is what i think
that everythign in the world is a drug
and dope to shield you
from the world of hte world of the world that you made
and this is what i think, that the entire world is crazy,
stretching out in mazes of commercial and oprah and cosby
sweater MTV caramel facebook myspace NPR oblivion and
all the time, from the time you enter inots school ,
especially those god schools that want to get you
already for the world, shiny for the fuck you up
the assable for theworld they say, this is how you
do it, this is how you do it and they offer a ball
of shit wrapped and gold and you say, ain't that a bal
of shit wraped in golod? and thye tell you, uh huh honey,
it's jesus,. and this is the ball of shit that frees us.
Well, and that's what this world offers you

all the fresh and pink white world is a
dance club, and your sanity is the price
of admission

and if all the little ways, lying to yourself,
being someone else, marrying a shadow,
making a shadow, eating marshmallows till
your ass is as wide as a marshmallow,
boobed out on the tube out don't get you there,
thenthere is only one sure protest i can see,
one appropriate response to this insanity

AND THAT IS TO SIMPLY BREAK DOWN
AND LOSE YOUR MOTHERFUCKING MIND!

bowing down requires no words, though it made mean i have
to clip my fingers, and there is nothing in this world without
it.
at six am i stretch and stretch and bow forward, bend forward,
knowing, at last
after all the stiffness of sunday praying that the body is
the ehart and the heart is the mind and the mind is the life
and if i can't stretch out my arm, then the soul stas frozen
and i had chosen, years ago,
to believe that bowing to divine will was simply
of matter of sitting at the
hill of the mountain of
the great dictorial godliness and
saying, yessum, yessum
what if had not known and barely
know is the blessed reiverlyiness
of things, the way of the flow of things and
the bowing down of things and the bowing down to things
ant at this moment you are god and she is god
and the way of the world is god an the golden calf,
ground into silt and ground ito ashes and mashed
into water to drink is god and sumbmission,
nd bowing down, is stretching,
and loving
is bending.

IT IS DANGEROUS TO KEEP ON WRITING FOR, IF I HAVE NOT COME TO THE END OF TRUTH, THN THE TRUHS I HAVE CERTAINLY COME TO THE END OF

it is dangerout t keep on writing
for
if i have not come to the end of truth, then, the truth is i have certainly come to the end of my ability to perceive it
and like rain all heavy in the cloud i do believe i am
on the very edge of belief
i don't fdare speak another word for that last word
would be the word and in it is all the light
and truth i have spent thirty years trying to learn to dance by
though it slay me i shall trust it, though he slay me i
shall
though he slay me i will trust him
and the truth is the trusting and the slaying
are all one
and the starting of the deed is how you know
the love is done.

every line i've typed here has been bad
because over and again i thought i had to imitate what canot come back
because you know how much we lack even the seed of the kernel of the beginning
of the desire to begin
circle afte circle and here we go again
and everyone i've known is walking in circles and all my life has been spent making them sprials and the truth is we say we want to change. we take the ball of thread in hand and rearragange and untangle
and mangle until we arenearly at the labyrinth door and then, enarly approachngfreedom wonder
what the fuck we wanted it for
and, with the grace of denial, turn around and on the stone ground smooth by a thousad thousand feet like ours, head back to the dark for the familiar minotaur
for it is better to be devoured by the beast you know, with his bording horns and his dull snorts, then to step into the ariadnew freedom you can no longer understand

the whole thing is i've been trying to do the same old thing new again
don't be fooled by postmodernism
the new is just what it says
don't be fooled by odern logic when
the old philosophy was better
you cannot step into the same river again
and then wait for saint john to batize you
you cannot hypnotize even yourself
into believing you haven't been here
or that this last river will do for the next blessing
prepare to bind your heart in the prayers of those before you
dare t not deny the misery all around you
do not be afraid to dance the dervish twirl of despaire
nor run from rage
do not be afraid to taste your
awful portion
and every age of your life was born from ths abortion
of the fetus frozen with cold

thrills go through me all the time
dragons trot like evil children
i still haven't learned to
be fearless
i am still addicted to suffering
there is still a piece of me that
cannot survive without being
afraid
i need to be dazzled by the terror
need to be frazzled by the fear
of falling
and after all this time
i still drink the crazy wine
and fall down fainting.

there is only one thing to do with him
face the dragon
well then there are only two things
you can do with him
ride the dragon
well then there are three
breathe the dragon
well, then i guess a fourth
be the dragon
so mouth puckered like i'd been drinking wine
i opened my lips and sipped him in
i ate him like communion
you never know how strong the wind is
then you bow against him

there is only one thing to do with him
face the dragon
well then there are only two things
you can do with him
ride the dragon
well then there are three
breathe the dragon
well, then i guess a fourth
be the dragon

worrying will not add a black hair
but it will make them grey
what jesus said isn't strictly true
and i am not strictly over you
and over fear
and i am not strictly doing all i
should
or all i can
it seems like every progress i have made
is washed back like the sand
and after all this time
still covered in grime
i am left here trembling

thrills go through me all the time
dragons trot like evil children
i still haven't learned to
be fearless
i am still addicted to suffering.