three rivers. one ocean

I speak in three tongues,

from one heart,
a single fire.

The first is Poetry;
the lost art of interior design,
where the poem is a prayer, a plaint,
an echo of our deep calling for deep.
It is a catabasis romance with the soul,
catching reflections just right,
so a gleam of recognition
might fluoresce in another's eyes.

The second is Jyotisha;
the tongue of the Rishis,
where stars are the pulse of karma,
the breath of ancestors, the measure
of a soul's long vow.
Here I read the threads of fate,
not to bind, but to show the knot
that longs to loosen,
to turn the elegy of woe
into a place of exceptional Peace.

The third is Hellenistic;
where myths rise from forgotten seas
and planets are gods still speaking.
Here I restore the ancient stories,
so a seeker might remember
the hero's journey is their own—
to find the courage to change their world
from inside out.

Three rivers, one ocean.

This work is simple:
to reveal by symbol,
to heal by vision,
to show that the chart is not a prison,
but a mirror for the Great Work—
the sacred art of becoming
the meaning-maker of your own life.

Poems to the God that is you

🎤 (The performer steps forward, silence stretching. A long inhale. The first words drop soft, almost hesitant, like a secret confession.)


You used to scare me…
with your torrid schemes.
My mind—
a parcel for your unravelling.

(pauses, looks left, then right as if suspicious)

There was a time you played in its shadows…
and then you said,
"I never take sides.
Not in War.
Not in Love."

(leans closer to mic, voice cutting through)

I believed you then.
Now—
I know I was wrong.

(voice grows louder, more rhythmic, arms wide)

You are not to be believed—
but sung!
When my eyes drown in this turgid heart,
when my soul swells with you—
that day,
I know.

(Beat. Change of pace—voice shifts into awe, almost scientific chant.)

A mass is a Higgs/Boson equation…
Deifying your principle of attraction!
You keep the stars steady in their course,
while my mind is smoothed with your Peace,
while my heart swells with your Love—
and in this swelling,
I am created.

(sharp, staccato, pounding the chest)

This day mattered!
To one swayed by your hammer of fate!
I have hung from remorse too often—
but you beckoned me,
with tears,
with laughter,
with those twinkling eyes—
at the very moment of death.

(a whisper, sliding low, conspiratorial)

No human innuendo survives you.
No thought is free from the particles you’ve shattered.
And no tear—
not one—
is without your infinite,
recycled,
Love affair.

(slow chant, melodic)

My heart is an elixir of prayers.
OM…
OM I…
Oh my soul, humming you.

(pause. Then softly, tenderly, like a lover’s lullaby)

Waiting…
is a lover’s kiss—
just before the eyes close,
just before two hearts merge in crescendo.

(the rhythm picks up, words tumble, ecstatic)

In your presence, no differences.
No stubbornness.
No me, no you, no we—
only particles whispering…
You.

(voice thins, fragile, trembling)

Like an empty boat,
carried by your sea without end…
this heart forever voyages,
its compass always trembling,
always going home.

(gentle, reverent)

And You—
You are Home to me.

(long silence. Then, with rising strength, almost a chant the audience can echo.)

Love is the mirror!
Where two flames
see their source as One!

To kiss the Beloved—
with the same kiss the Beloved kisses me…
that kiss—
is eternity.

Love is the mirror!
Where two flames
see their source as One!

Oh… the heart knows this.
Love attracts Love.
This is the secret of the kiss.

(crescendo—hands rise as if planting a garden)

In the Garden of Hearts,
where Love grows—
you,
and I,
and we…
become unnecessary distinctions.

(slows, returns to whisper)

Let us be
this empty yearning together.
This ancient ache of longing.
This heart… a compass,
pointing to where.
Love is the goal.

(steps back, breath catches, voice drops to a final intimate murmur)

I’ll meet you there.

(Silence. Performer places hand on chest. Lights fade.)

Scouting the derp

(The poet steps to the mic, leans in, voice is a low, confidential whisper.)

We need a scout.
Someone with eyes for the derp.
Someone to run the arc of this rolling whirl’d,
looking hither and thither,
with eyes that switch-back from the blind spot…

(Leans in closer)

…you know the one.
The one that confabulates.
The looking-hole that our brain fills in with what we think we know.
It just… makes stuff up. Fills in the blanks.
So you have to send someone askew.
Someone off the beaten path who can simply-see
through that scotoma-hole we all call home.
Someone who can detect the glitch in the system.
The truth in the blind spot.

(Pulls back, voice becomes declarative, stronger.)

So. The Poet is a mutation.
A necessary one.
They pitter-patter between the bicameral,
in cyber-words both alive and clinging to irony,
because they see the binary conflict we’re in.

And the choice is this:
We are on the brink of falling-fatal to a heartless machine,
doing our duty as an ordinary-drone has-been…
OR…
we can be rising-raptured in an organic-mutation,
and in a few natural generations
we’d speak in a language of light,
of shadow sculpting time,
moving to a music only the heart can hear,
simply-sublime,
risen from the slime,
dancing without any fear.

(Tone becomes wondrous, almost reverent.)

Poets are imminently real-EYE-sed… and under-understood.
They look as if they remembered they’re partly surrounding Sky,
and partly the curvature of Sea,
and partly the silent, glittering tears of night in the stars that we see.
They’ve discovered the way of the whirl’d,
going ‘round and ‘round on the edge of space,
with the law of falling and the law of catching up,
outward-bound by an infinite-in grace.
They’re swelling in their hearts ‘til their eyes gleam
with new rays of possibility,
bent by their individuality.

A Poet is like a sphere…
his centre everywhere,
her circumference nowhere.

(Rhythm builds, becoming a cascade of images.)

The sound a poet makes is the frisson,
the viscereality where heart and mind meet,
where inner sonics and ironics burst into song,
where all her miseries and desires belong,
but incomplete.
It’s a rhyme beyond reason,
the master of absurdity,
while truth and beauty spontaneously run around him in nudity.

(Voice rises to a crescendo, powerful and clear.)

And when a Poet lifts the veil, revealing reality,
we are ALL made greater by this feat!
Nature always sends us Visionaries, Poets, Mystics!
Mutations!
They take us to the next evolutionary level!
They are our visionaries… headed in a back-words direction.

(The poet pauses. The energy shifts. The final lines are delivered softly, with intense intimacy and clarity.)

But a Poet writes-hard… with soft-eyes.
To swell from the cocoon of his words so they fly
as moths… to your flame.

Listen.
We don’t light the fire.
We lift up a mirror…
and show you the coals-glowing in your eyes.
Yes, Love is the mirror in which two flames 
see their source as One.

(Holds the silence. Steps back from the mic.)

"in a looking-glass that sees both ways"

 

*(The poet approaches the mic, leans in, voice is a low hum.)*

A poem is a mirror.
A **ɹoɹɹıɯ**.
A yes-I-can with crayons the color of Tachyons,
rushing out of whirl’ds where past-meets-future,
reaching **for-words**…
yet going **back-words** for some more.

It makes reflections, like a ripple,
but you’re at zero-point too,
where the puddle tessellates to a past in the future *you*,
and you reflect it back-words and for-words
'til it reverberates…
right there.
Now.
Here.
Like an invertendo-innuendo that’s an in-your-face…
**ɹoɹɹıɯ**.

*(Pace picks up, a hint of paranoia, a conspiratorial whisper.)*

And this mirror-Kah… it *rackles* with the spirit of the times.
This mirror… reciprocates.
And everything recorded is written everywhere for anyone to see—
a hit-list for the insurgents,
a collapse scenario for the empire,
as the top one-percent feed the roots of alien, alternative… cycles.

But listen.
‘I see you, you see me’
and maybe together we’re spied-upon in an irony
of what it’s like not to be truly free.
So we carry on.
In a more human innuendo,
a more momento-mori story,
mirroring each other… more merrily.

*(Rhythm becomes a slow, rolling, cyclical chant.)*

Another cycle of the Sun,
rollin’ ’round the earth ‘yer on,
then in cycles turned your way,
yes, another day…
where cycles in the Sun are glimmerings on the Sea,
making many reflections,
and sympathetic tessellations vibrate in our oceanic-brain,
where the orbits perigee,
where we learn the lessons of leaving behind
and faltering forward,
where we would-if-I-could be the king who would be a man,
riding these cycles of the Sun by the Sea,
going on this way…
over and over…
mirrorly.

*(Voice turns sharp, staccato, aggressive.)*

And we become these just-in-time
**poet-ninJa assassins,**
recycling those one-percenters who wannabe left alone
with all of the crayons.
We reflect their creme-de-la-creme in our extra hot latte,
and with every word we missed the mark with,
we feed the roots of further cycles
than ever they bloomed before.
Splash.
Of.
Color.

*(Tone shifts to gratitude, warmth, a big-hearted exhale.)*

So thank-you, Poets.
For the many reflections.
For the big-hearted yawp of freedom to be who you want to be.
Thank you for sharing your wrought-out ramblings
where my meaning-making takes a rest
and instead, with great exaltation, I surrender
to how you all ‘fess-up and down and around
and always… with a wry wit in it.

It’s bright.
It echoes the numinous in-us.
The euphoric-eunoia.
The bright language of connecting,
an authentic friending in a lightning look…
in intertextual-fugues,
invertendo-innuendos,
or mirrorly… by-the-book.

*(Voice drops to a final, intimate, questioning whisper.)*

So is that it then?
This eunoia-euphoria…
this urge-to-merge?
Is that it?
Expressed in longing waves,
swelling in each other as sister and brother?
Is that it?
When you’ve engaged both sides of the brain…
the scholar and the minstrel…
is that the euphoria we’re after?

*(Poet holds the silence for a beat, then steps back.)*

unfortunate heaven

(The stage is bare. The poet steps to the mic.)

(Begin calm, deliberate)

They tell you prayer is soft hands,
is waiting for a sign.
They tell you it’s a useless, romantic kind of whine
that only grows your doubt.
But I say prayer is a shout.
My prayer is a dare:
May love grow in the hearts of men,
and may believers learn to think again.

They show you quotes about commitment,
about how the moment you begin, Providence moves too.
How a whole stream of events you never knew
will rise up to meet you.
How boldness has magic.
Power.
Genius.
And they say, “Begin it now.”

(Pace quickens, voice fills with anxiety)

And that…
that scares the shit out of me.
You see?
It’s the finality. The end of the mystery.
It’s the sweeping swings of a promised Spring
withheld from my wild purpose.
It’s the dead forms, the placid rituals,
the mantra-mullah songs that kill the Truth in me
the moment I sink in.

One night, God came to me in a dream.
Said, "I’m taking you to the brighter-world, Jerry."
And that’s it.
Heaven.
Game. Over.

(Frantic, pleading)

WTF.
What if I want to take my body-of-cycles with me?
What if I want the sweat-of-passion and the blisters of unfulfillment?
What if everyone has to come?
The monsters of the night, the broken, the lost—
can it be so? No one left behind?
Isn’t a Bodhisattva a gem that keeps coming back for more?

So I choose this edge.
I choose to slice the night with the light I find on the dark side.
I choose this persistent imminence.
This place where death limns us all.

(Angry, hitting a rhythm, like fists on a table)

They give you the wish-fulfilling gem!
The power to change it all!
The holy fire! The timeless abode!
And you turn your back?
You turn your back on splendour
for the simple, sweet redolent smell of another human?
For the pain? For the failure? For the wounded misery?

YES.
Because without it, we’re not human.
We’d be like those fuKin’ Angels,
no pleasure, no pain,
just taking some sick satisfaction
in fuKin’ with people’s heads
because we’re so easily deceived by hope.

It’d be like being King of the Hill.
An alpha-grin, spitting down at the world,
“I’VE WON.”
And then you’re done.
Except for the fun of rolling a few Sisyphean rocks
down on all the other wanna-be’s.

(Shifts tone, becomes wondrous, philosophical)

There’s something wonderful in the cloud-of-unknowing
that heaven or hell cannot glean.
It’s the unfinished.
The undone.
It’s the potential that makes infinity trivial.
We are better at being the process, not the finished product.
Knowing is the end of curiosity.
So I’d rather be on a Sisyphean roll.
Really.

(Softer, finding the core truth)

Because if memory is a lie, then so am I.
A story I tell myself.
A fiction and a reality, hopelessly intertwined.
An act of remembering that changes me,
so I sing my songs as they come,
right now,
making myself in my own image…

(Voice drops, each word deliberate, a quiet anthem)

unbecoming,
unfettered,
unfinished,
undone…

(Building to a final, fierce climax)

Because when an inner situation is not made conscious,
it appears outside as FATE.
So I wrestle my demons. I like the contact.
I like the fire.
Like Prometheus, running from the perfection of the Gods,
ranting about the lack of darkness in their light.
He brought us these revelatory wings.
He brought us this truth:
That the burning of the Eagle’s Talons
is a misery required
when enamouring Fire.

(Silence.) 

Cantata of Wonder

I. Cosmos — Adagio maestoso

What was it Einstein mused…
when he spoke in a kind of mathematical show ’n tell?

“If I rode on a beam of light…
through the deep dark reach of space…
what would I see?
what would I be?
would I be anyplace?”

Then he chuckled,
stuck out his tongue,
made his eyes go wide —

“I’d be everywhere at once…
bent toward the infinite…
really deep inside.”

Beauty echoes…
through all things.

Like Nature’s laughter
inside a flower.

And a communion…
of the Eternal Present exists.

As if no past ever compelled.
As if no future beckoned.

Yes…
deep calls to deep.

II. Mind — Fuga scherzando

The relative dance…
is to the frequencies of scale.

Planet to Planet.
Star to Star.

Galaxies and dark matter
revolving in the slipperiness
of deep and dark space.

Keeping pace…
to their own law…
of falling into each other
in time and space —
matter into matter.

I’d imagine dear Wittgenstein…
with a black hole in his head.

Bending the light
with his insight.

Gödel, Escher ’n Bach —
playing with the infinite-in.

Where all that’s left of the Cheshire cat
is the grin.

Canons and fugues
with Shepard scales.
The white whale…
of Information Theory.

The Eternal Golden Braid —
in quantum tessellations made.

It’s Higgy dust.

Where from nothing…
to everything you see,
a quantum fluctuation
made you… and me.

III. Love — Cantabile con tenerezza

Ontology…
as path-dependence.

Poetry… writing…
is an act of actualizing self.

Individuating with each write…
that flows out of the lowest
we did fall and crawl,
to the highest
we dared dream —

inside the eyes…
of a lover’s gleam.

This ’lektrick muse let loose.
Plugged into the warmth in your chest.
Or the chill in your bone.

To become words that tinker
in the antics-of-semantics.

And linger in the poetics-of-noetics.

Rhythm’d in time.

Words that smash and blush.
Flash and hush.
Dash and duck.

In the neuro-linguistics of your mind.

IV. Prayer — Lamentoso e misterioso

Sometimes the poem is a prayer.
Sometimes the prayer — the plaint —
is a diminutive echo…

of our deep
calling for deep.

Our slippery-sloped
separation anxiety.

Sometimes…
feeling this is all I can do.

And this — this…
is a catabasis romance.

And yet… a duality dirge too.
An elegy of woe.

And a place of exceptional Peace —
where the quantum frequencies of bliss
are released.

V. Wonder — Andante luminoso

In the phenomenology of Love,
coupled with the visceral reality
of joyousness —
that frissons up the spine…

What remains…
is our own courage to change the world
from the inside out.

Withoutta’ doubt.

That lost art…
of interior design.

It starts with wonder.
Imbued in awe.

Unbound by the language of reason.
Nor by the fatal skin we’re in.

Uncluttered by the pitter-patter of patterns,
promulgated by bad education.

Nor spoilt by the cliché…
of tribal mediocrity.

VI. Coda: Illumination — Finale con fuoco

From stars we come
to stars we shall return,
this ancient ache of longing
that’s urging us to burn.

To shine on and on
from inside out,
where illumination is a fire
without any doubt.

Romanticism

The Romantics —
Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats —
move us with the rhythms of the numinous.

The Poet is often a Romantic.
The vision of Romanticism echoes the Devotional Bhakti Yoga of the East.

Novalis, the German Romantic poet, once wrote:
“We read poetry to heal the wounds that reason makes.”

I garden for the same reason.
Writing, for me, has been a balm against
the endless demand to
please be reasonable.

The Poem is never finished.
The writer is always writing —
grasping at the numinous,
at the unreasonable —
guided by a pen dipped in laughter and tears,
hopes and fears.

Aspired or enthused,
drunk or merely called
to a task that cannot be finished —
for truth and beauty have
no beginning,
no end.

The writer is the pen.
The words are what he has caught in the wind.
A speaking heart,
singing a longing tale —
for there is only one Poem,
one Story,
one Song.

A deeply conflicted Romanticism:
a plaint of beauty that cannot be captured,
that knows no fear,
yet is never consummated in passionate embrace.

A kissless kiss.
A touchless face.

And so,
sHe goes to that longing Love
that shall never be won,
peregrinating to follow an ancient aching heart —
until life is done.

In Romantic Mysticism,
this longing is an allusion
to the ever-seeking heart —
yearning for the Beloved,
the goal being Love —
experienced,
but never sated.

Oh,
to kiss the Beloved
with the same kiss
the Beloved kisses me —
and in that kiss,
live an eternity.

Oh, our hearts know this.
Love attracts Love —
this is the secret of the kiss.

The law of attraction is a sympathetic vibration:
as above, so in you.

And as you are moved from wonder into awe,
your eyes glitter
with the beauty you saw.

All Lovers invent the Beloved.
And then the Music,
the Poem,
the Story
is always about that.

The Lover makes the music,
the Poem,
the Story
as a texture of that ancient ache —
a reality-play,
changing in innumerable revisions and realizations,
forever voyaging with the heart as compass.

Always going.
Never arrived.

For Love has no opposite.
The opposite of hate
is discriminating wisdom.