batong misteryo
batong misteryo
balong malalim
—sino ba ako?
Preacher
—Truly righteous. But...
No better than a mystic
Ah, divine nature...
When will I meet,
The One I have long been waiting for?
Cries my aching soul like Lalon,
And as Jalaluddin Rumi becomes mystic therefore!
You are everywhere,
In the fragrance of the rose,
In the bountiful sky and seeking You,
Far and wide my heart goes!
Someday, somewhere when You I will encounter,
I will laugh like a mad man at each doubter!
How I remember you
My sacred Paha Sapa
A living breathing landscape
Mountains rising like towers
Rocky ridges the perfect altar
For solitary prayers and ritual
This divine earth evolving
Devolving, revolving
Always in a great majestic arc
The circle that marks everything
The circle symbolized by the moon
The sun
The earth
The planets
The stars
The seasons
Day, night, dawn, dusk
Birth, death and eternity
And your beautiful porcelain face
Your round eyes the shrine where I kneel
I rested quietly upon a stony ridge
Contemplating the meaning of life
Taking in the fragrant scent of pine
And listening to the rustling breeze
Stars glittered and flickered
Brittle in the distant heavens
The Milky Way finally rejoiced
As we were once again as one
Just beyond the firelight and glowing embers
Sparks flew gracefully like summer fireflies
A glorious ancient cadmium moon rose up
Ascending the quinacridone eastern horizon
Each passing cumulonimbus a brush stroke
The mercurial silver moon a masterpiece
And now just listen..
To the frigid rapids of tiny streams
And the placid surface of rocky pools
Reflecting a myriad of luminous ancestors
Roaming freely across the incandescent heavens
Rejoicing just before the first light of dawn
As morning burns away the blinding afterimage
Of translucent ephemeral dreams of love
The thawed earth cracked like brittle glass, beneath midnight footsteps, familiar strangers shattering such peaceful solitude. You were light years away. Gray cracked branches grappled like outstretched arms for the glittering March stars just outside the shadows of firelight. The crescent moon rested gracefully in a beautiful and brilliant arc across a haunted coyote howling landscape like a majestic unfinished painting. In this immense mercurial silence I thought about you and I, the hurt, the loss, the emptiness and everything in between. The frigid breath of a spirit hunter painted the blank canvas of the Illinois sky like the flickering remnants of effervescent daylight . The living night heaved it's regret, purging itself like weightless embers that float like shooting stars above the restless leafless valley below. She said it's so beautiful, every mesmerizing sound, ghostly sight, and fragrant scent, her longing awakening my soul to a lonesome quiet mystical epiphany. In the indigo shadows that remain of the waxing and waning night, I await the vermillion dawn, traumatized by this immortal coil, I unravel memories and thoughts, screaming at the decaying flames of the useless fires of the past. You see, I swam across cerulean oceans blue, only for you, and now I'm drowning in this decrepit defeat. In flowing golden fields under the half-light of late afternoon, I walk with you even though you are no longer here. I climb the mountains and hills, slide down these mud soaked cliffs just for you, but you'll never see. I'm here, I'm there, I'm everywhere, but never who you want me to be.
A crescent moon, through distant fields, it is finally the month of July. Marshall County, fragrant pine and lonesome summer. I miss my brother. Dreams ascend like spirits into the silver midnight. In the clearing, a séance among forgotten friends. Day-dreams, vermillion skies, and indigo could never be, as good as you. Why do you conceal, your thoughts like a distant shoreline, hidden among ghost-like mists. Shadows uncoil beneath your eyes, like a stranger I've never known, who are you, who will you be, who could you be? Do you recognize me, in the gathering filtered light of dawn. Dusk melts deceit from the scarlet horizon, sacred like the eastern sky. Love floods the mind like oblivion, drowning consciousness in the metamorphosis of the soul. I have known so many, so many to falter and fall, fade in misconception, deception, the perception of the unknowing. But I have learned to ride, let it fade, let it go like a kite, like a comet across the Milky Way sky like freedom on this amorphous mystical night.
The open heart, my brother
Is like a luminous glowing
Spring flower surrendering
To the majestic golden embrace
Of the glimmering Hindu sunrise
I kneel and pray, honoring you
Under brilliant morning rays....
Ah-Cum-Kin-I-Ma-Hut
I feel your ancient presence
Under starlit heavens and constellations
Beneath this enormous canopy of trees
As the crickets and frogs quietly chirp
Praising you without words, distantly
Thoughts ascending upwards like smoke
From shimmering glittering embers
Of some radiant forgotten fire in a forest
Along the shores of a misty pond
The flame of youth, now so elusive
The great spirit, the everything
All that was, all that will be
The elixir of alchemy, the soma of India
The scent of burning sage across
Native American prairie
I am you
And you are me
The sacred, the mountains, sea and sky
Rest within, a magnificent totality
In this mirror-like reflection
On the silver rippling surface
Of a shallow minnow filled spring
That haunts me even to this day
Suffocated by cattails, cottonwood and birch
I honor you with thoughts, paintings, melodies
The poetry of kindness and love
In this I speak honestly, the truth
From now on and forever more
Beneath the bark and the tree
Underneath the surface,
Of what was once this earthly me
She devours ancient poetry, singing gracefully in bathrooms and empty stalls
To the lonely ancient flickering periphery of deceased stars
That float unconsciously above suburban rooftop shingles
Calling upon formless spirits and the imprints of the dead
Her ancestors finely speaking through cracked sidewalks
And Milky Way Galaxies dissolved by thunder and wine
Upon flowering fields of goldenrod and indigo
In the peaceful grace and stillness of Midwestern midnight
She kneels amongst the silence of early morning mists
Whispering up prayers to clouds that pass like freight trains
Thoughts of tadpoles, minnows, rivers, ditches and streams
Filling up her days like shooting stars and winding paths
And the endless traces and footprints of forgotten saints