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Transcript of Poems of The Complete Apocalypse
POEMS of The Complete Apocalypse
Michael Bolerjack
Poems of The Complete Apocalypse © 2012 Michael Bolerjack
For MARINELA We kept making love as the house burned down MB
.
“Say that Jerusalem is”
Perhaps my words disturb your prayer. Perhaps you, the mystic, need no points for meditation.
But I speak of him to Him for you, while you simply pray. Eternity bounds, does not hem, limit
us, rule us, give direction, up, then, into His storm, His eye, His calm interference in the
mundane. With and without words: we must choose, be chosen. Both. To say little with so much,
or speaking, innumerable, yet still say one thing necessary. Out of the many complexes,
neuroses, psychoses, metastases, sees, out of all disease and disaster, stands one to come. And
standing points above. I think I feel, feel something inside me, bower or brain, coming, about the
turn, ever turning to, in myriads, ways without whys, lines drawn over our ignorances, hidden in,
neither obscure nor occult, light rather, in light. Him. He is.
You know it. A story has begun.
You know, now, things fade, colors on cloth, even evenings fail into night, which is coming, still
stars branch, and in the skull-cap of a thousand year we enroot our seed, between never-endings
lay the middle, plications, sin, sun, son sing, song signed, not to fail or fade, would be story,
would be tolled, full, filled, meant. Not to fail, not to fade, truth we know, for we are known, are
stretched, fixed by means. If we mean to. But you, you did not, did both mean to fall but not to
fail, and in falling your way, we but succeed you, without second.
He did not really speak, did you, you saw and shone, bright, dark, hiding, back-minded, ear-
lodged, thought-lost, hest just but standing, no jest, no pose, no to impose, but you were the
exposed. You stood out from. Time. Is.
The wound you were did not heal. Signatories. Numbers. Out of time. You appropriated, all, for
but one thing. Making. Truth. Is. And you said, ever. Knowledge, knotted-hopes, full striven, in
your arms storming, learn.
They say you had no foundation in essence, but traces, echoes, parts only, assemblers, without
wholes, spirited words, yet spirit is, is that not a word? Problem of near-belief, teachers had not a
key. Versions, only. Foundation riven, you, reft, logical, truthed, passed words, un-pasted, un-
posted, past juxtaposed. Cut. Words cut through you. Destroyed description and explanation,
neither declared, but disclosed your wound, the wound of the word himself. Discard, forfeit.
Utter. You behind the words. The logic bit. You bit back. Grapplers. You took our place.
For in all logic, if you can say that Jerusalem is, if we can say, still that Jerusalem is, the place
required by logic is yet, and can be found, the assertion of faith, eternity of concern.
You, truth and logic became, stripped, meaning. Not to say I have grasped, but in the struggle
with truth, your victory was to be grasped. That this too is, is beyond doubt. Proven, in borders
of scripture, commentaries, that do not explain the words, but enact them exactly, by being
exposed. This is. If this is, subsist, without which truth-less, for accidentals, for appearances, no
place to hide. A snow of illegibility, ran the wound, rain wind, ward, cover your words, sposed,
desire as if to say the text itself, we only fall from a height, and now we are falling, and have
become so profound, because without foundation, catch us pall as we fall. Poems are snow,
whiter words, virgins, martyrs, gentle, contoured by holiness, by logos, by logic without demand
but to be true, faithful, snow-part of time, winter answer, dead, wait. The logic that strips away
all but what is, strips seeming and opinion, even the nothing, to be the one, immovable, it is. Is it.
Is it eternity. Is it snow set bounds in winter. Innumerable snow, unrepeatable words. Universal,
singular, unparticular snows, how do you interpret snow or simplify the place. Snow did not
extend, but bound, the form, by sheer material, prime, stuff of dreams. You. Glory of the snows,
high reflectivity, light without heat, sheer blinding, purity, as if God to Abraham in winter, yours
will be as the snows on highest ridged mountains, always. Will be, Jerusalem is. If you wake,
wake to this. Snow regal, snow regard, but be regaled. In pieces of paper whiter witness not
blank a testimony text, you found you, and said it. Is. Sheer holiness, is. Present, a heart-word, is.
We, snow-parts, perhaps, holding places, scattered yet gathered, drifted, yet still for a time,
temporary words, tempting snows, we fell, like you, measurable by adversity, verses, that this is,
still is for you, neither symbol nor transport, neither hidden nor shown, but snown, north of the
future, where snow ever is. You offered often, eternity, a turn, a word with six sides, snowed,
like stars of David, like Jerusalem is. Is, was, will be, has been, will have been, to be. Snowed,
starred, scarred, worded, sonned, deepened. Depend. Deeper in snow is he to be. Yea. Not to be,
never to be, but always still, is. Pall of snow.
An Icon for the Church on the Mercy of God You be like you ever, my beautiful one, my beloved, my Sabbath, my peace, my way to break the circle of God and Church and World, icon makers not iconoclasts, not idol worshippers, but in the twilight of the idols at high noon, in the midst of an error, we stood single, you and I, and did break it, did break the text, did step back, not out of the word, but out of all implication, by the prayer of the supplicate, the tare torn, debt cancelled, the call of tessera, pieces of a sweet life we loved it crazy, but not so: we did but live it. You were ripe and I was ready and we arrived, later. We heard our callings and we responded, choose us Lord, yes be taken. O my peace, yet you could not rest, and looked beyond, while I, a solitaire, a promontory, looked at you and saw the sadness of late tales, of tombs, of toil, of the undone. You were the passage, not the goal of it, and I passed through you, like the poet said, and I saw through you, not with you, and did arrive beside you, not as if to be. The icons came down, so that one could be built, strange, I did not know. I did not destroy them, but despite the theory of contradiction, when the thing denied itself, I denied it too. An icon now is, and you in it, and others too, if they will break the deadlock, and allow in their gratuity a freedom to God, to affirm all. Effracting God-Church-World, a system made on the bones of the infinite, by limit stand, ever, and be like you, come the Sabbath. I speak to you and to the world and to God all at the same time, and so make no sense to anyone, I ever the incomprehensible. And yes, not yet, even you, you did not understand, and the world I contradicted must not understand, or else I was wrong, but as long as God alone understands, the icon was not in vain, and I did not falter, pulled down vanity in myself first of all, and put back more than I took. God gave all, all must be returned. I give you all, for all of you.
At Harvest Time
I lay down my weary tune beside you sleeping
As you stirred and turned and almost not quite
Opened your eyes and almost not quite heard
Me whisper:
I finished, I finished.
By the banks of Marinela, by the sound of many
Sleeping, I did not hang up my heart, but sang it.
In memory of a forgotten Pope That God can thunder, And that God can whisper, That God can speak as a friend, Or as a stern Father, But that the beatific vision Is not so much the vision of God, That we see Him, But that He sees us, Always and everywhere, We may draw the deduction That we must go and do likewise, Which means not in reciprocity As one might think, With God or with each other, But speak to myself, View myself, As God does, And care.
All Souls Day My Lord, I would sing Thee, Of Your grace I would sing, Of mercy and love and kindness, And of the chastisement that Heals after correction. Of Thee I sing. Corrected, completed, Of Thee I sing. My Love, My Life, Yes, I did sing Thee. There was be-bop and hip-hop, And rock and soul between, And country and blues and gospel, All along the way, And many who sang, And many who knew not the words, Without sometimes a tune at all, Yet in the end You were sung, By one and all, Even when we knew it not. And amazing to me, Was the grace I found, Not only, that while I sang of Thee, yet, Lord, yes, You sang me.
Moral Epilogue
It is better to feel a desolation than a false consolation, but to receive
true consolation is the mercy and grace of God.
Remains:
The Perfect Number
God Alone Is Good.
God Alone Is.
God Alone.
God.
Fame of the Frame
We became en-framed by an other writtenness,
but in the tradition of the same, we became the frame-breakers.
This witness of the time of the King, was not counterfeited,
But counter-fitted, to join, to unite, to marry, to one.
If we suffer into truth, and if this frame is the cadaver of France,
Then over graves and over men and over lords we triumphed.
It is not the value for life which decides, nor death instincts,
But love alone, the body of God, what matters, His form.
The gibberish and jibbers of the solicitation of delights remind
Me of the conversion of Odilon Redon and his signatures,
Which dispersed darkness into light, and scattered light into
My darkness, so that at the point of no return, I turned.
Therefore, gold, yet silver, and every precious stone throne,
Cannot take the place of the dear little ones growing in you;
Words and things do not suffice, and we fall back on feeling,
And guess our way to freedom’s opening, gracious and given.
Nietzschean
The more we masked ourselves,
the less we mastered,
and enslaved,
Became an indefinable role,
The ones given lines
To stand in, not for
Recitation.
Brother Jacques
His:
Entombing,
Engraving,
Enframing
Enflaming:
Derrida did not die in vain,
For I remain: In session.
The Difference Between
Judgment and Criticism
If we will stand,
We’ll stand corrected.
Recovery
They asked my father, then, if your son kills,
will you cover for him?
And my Father replied, not only cover, but recover,
I for him.
Therefore, love is my alibi.
Critique
Epicriticism was not the separation of sheep from goats
Among the writers,
But the discernment of the touch of truth
In the feel of words and the heat of intent.
PM
Meta and Para made a map
Of all we could have been,
But for the territory.
The Seer
Little things to say,
Little time to say them,
No great thing left undone.
Thrown
That,
nothing will have taken place
but the place
(itself)
is the good of the tomb
that fell to Derrida.
Noble Truths
That,
things fall apart is
Gravity’s Law,
not mine,
for I have sakes
yet, and suns
to come.
The Path
Realization is, then, to make real?
No.
It is to be made real.
So,
You cannot realize yourself.
If you realize that,
You may yet be realized.
Liturgicam Authenticam
Kings kept keys,
Keepers kindly kept,
Keeping-in and
Keeping-out,
While Peter yet recoiled.
Where are you going?
he still asked.
To take your place,
God still replied.
Bunches
Views and reviews, visions and revisions,
And all you did for me:
Flowers,
for the asking never entered my mind.
Therese
A thousand violins,
No thing left to say:
Music in our minds,
Hearts I hear today.
Abstract French
He said,
And therefore there was one flower left unseen,
One flower yet to see,
That can never be seen
By any eye
Which still remains,
The still,
Life’s abstract
Florid bouquet,
Which was not,
Is not,
Will never have been,
But ideally,
Which was your reality and the nothingness,
Which yet said yes to thee.
Starred
Perhaps,
A constellation,
A scattered pattern,
Of lights and sighs,
A million-million miles away,
Perceived they say by our deception,
Yet revealed at night,
Alone,
Without celebrity,
In utter clarity,
Higher than known,
God’s poetic utterance,
A throwing and a throne
Shone.
Roman Holiday
God gives us saints
And they give us Him.
In the catholic economy,
Institutes rise and fall,
Rates fluctuate,
And coin becomes debased,
Yet His light reign
Gives us increase,
As Himself bestowed.
Scripture
Words and blows,
Less even lines,
Cried utterance
To the uttermost,
Deliberation
Liberating,
Delimitation
Known.
Confessors
Deconstruction dispelled
The incantatory escheatment of the
Versus, like:
In Freud’s lingered error,
Where it was, there I shall be:
Where it was, where will I be?
But to get to God,
Alone.
It mattered.
Did we think the act a stolen show?
Did we think it but a pair of dice thrown?
Back, back, back!
Our witness was a whiteness,
Testified,
Fired, smoked, ashed,
Cinders sent.
Yes!
Taints unsecreted,
Religion did not become us,
But the tomb.
Gift of Knowledge
Love of God and love for neighbor.
Life and all we meant.
To do, to be, to have, to make,
Was still but to be lent.
Kid
Boiled in his mother’s milk,
Broiled by his father’s sun,
The child took arms against.
Never, never, never:
Go back again.
Sisters resume, consume, exhume, exhale.
Brothers beheld, belied.
Be: trails, happy trials, be:
Let be: Yes, yet, still we will be:
Silence was not the rest,
Nor yet the play,
But the thing that works
Between.
The Virgin Martyrs
To do more than one can do
Is a flat contradiction,
So it must not be I that did.
While you smoke the cigarette,
The cigarette smokes you,
Almost not without a fire.
Joan of Arc amid her voices,
Telling her what to do; yet
It was Joan, Joan, ever Joaned,
Ever sainted, ever crowned,
Every girl who ever was,
A virgin to her wedded day.
Peace
God did not start,
God did not cease,
Yet the work is done.
Ye bastards:
Save it for your wives.
Rough bests the worst,
And to sea would I ride.
I have not yet begun,
I have already done,
For God in me still hides.
The birds will sing,
The night will chant,
As you and I abide.
Oppositions
The opposite of illumination
Is not darkness
But opinion.
The opposite of enlightenment
Is not ignorance
But insincerity.
The opposite of the good
Is not evil
But hypocrisy.
The opposite of being
Is not nothingness
But seeming-to-be.
The opposite of the finite
Is not the infinite
But the indeterminate.
The opposite of theism
Is not atheism
But money.
The opposite of life
Is not death
But sleep.
Be or not be.
Do not seem to be.
Because of the triangularity
Of existence, the way is not clear.
Lost in the delusion,
We see neither light nor dark.
Desire is delusion,
Delusion desires itself.
All self-direction,
All other-direction,
Is polarized, misses the mark.
Yet, one must shoot.
Flores de Monterrey Once I said, I knew not why, Petals to dirt, Stem to sky.
Pi Critic is Me We, wilderness-wed, wail-rode, form-finding, neither deferred nor deterred, denying death, and dying to desire, a way kings realized, along aside a brides production…she, all innocence, all absolutes, all wise, in relativity, he but blinded in the still blessing, allowing conscience’s benediction, she altogether really real and he but idealized, in the nihilistics, came the ring of grace, came death knells and kneeling at altars, given temptation, given grace, the mystery not known yet not to be denied, under the procession of the triumph of life, became the precession, the return, the shift of an axis or axle, bedded, abetted, but we connected, all in the whirl of turnings time, that is, of times stand still, still standing as the time arrived.
If he crowned you
If he crowned you,
If he made you an
Everlasting imperishable sign,
I would still read to you
And need you as I do,
Speaking poverty
To holiness,
Artless,
Poetic.
Praise
Praising God
And finding you.
When I Look Into Your Eyes
When I look into your eyes I see glaciers falling, light sparring, momentum gathered, earth at her zenith,
no dejection. The fire in you rises, your clothes loose in the wind, a breath of God on your hair, and stars
around to abet your half-smiling lips, now serious, now laughing. In your transitions is abiding, a
certainty next to durable unknowns, that make the thorns of the heart easier to bleed, the tears not
awkward to drop.
You, knowing the place Of my demise, the sending And the dismissal, Look to the North and find the Unexpected future is. Here, out of nowhere, The place that poets, roaming Where the time is right, In true north they have concurred. Anselm and Ancel agree. Eternity is, And cannot be taken from Poets and others Who find in the writtenness Witness for the Lord of Hosts. He and I, we write, Truth to tell, in prophecy, Neither pale nor glare, Not to pass, but shatter on, To decontrol the light is.
If you are catching, Catch me in the way you can, Pray as you can and Not as you can’t, as you said. Find the door and knock, keeping To the path we will be found. We will but found it, Our arrival is assured, At least we hope. But He cannot be untrue. Yet Between the yes and the no There is nothing there, That between, that waiting, The space, the place of The apocalypse is come. There is that word yet to come. What logic reigns here? He said seven times, To the church, to churches go, Send a message, write it down, You must change and do it now.
Seven times, he asked. No, seven times seventy. The abundance is clear. The life we live is no life, Still we have that abundance. Beauty and truth are, And are convertible, yet Not the same at all. Ancel mistrusts beauty, others Mistrust truth, but we seek life, One who was always And is and always will be. He is beautiful and true And good, and cannot not be. He is simply forever. In apocalypse The great salvation is come, To not be misled By those who say he will come Only for those who are good.
Do not let the good Keep you from perfection. Do not let settle. Going for the one is more, An effortless grace is come. Do not let the bad Keep you from what you will be And are already, Despite the things done to sin In your name, though you know not. Do not let knowing Not keep you too from loving. Without knowing much, Much is accomplished to be The “you” you will be as you. Do not hurry. Bless. At times we come, and we will Not wait in vain for Vanity, for there is age In that wound you call your name.
That name of yours is Nothing but a wound, bound tight To keep you, free you. Yet yes be free: sign the name. But know the meaning it has. It may be you there Not known secretly As futurity, Or futility, or sign That cannot be converted. Meaning explicate By experience, so that In what you find out As living in your name is The sign of the times we live. What are we really? Language and time, signatures Apocalypse is. We mean more than we can know. Find the time in who you are.
Here on advent’s eve, With the evening of my life, I still look forward To the time of his coming, Neither impatient, nor with Any hope but of him. The one who is comes At an hour unexpected: Be ready sober. I cannot remember things To say, but say only him. He is all in all. His agony provokes our “Agon” with the Antichrist he is today. Do we struggle with ourselves? For now we must stop. Deny, renounce and Lift the crosses following, It is the path he made us. No, there is no other way.
If he becomes me And I leave all for loving, What becomes of this? Do not count the cost, crossing The way, surrender it all. Abandonment feared, The attachments call me back, But he gave me this. On trial, hoping acquittal, No one left to accuse me now. Not because I am Innocent, but that He rescued me, raised me up, Lifted me from the abyss To this place I may be yet Someday at home, and Even now I, least I sense, a turning promised, The breaking of the closure, End of the indefinite.
The white is not just Nor is merely erasure, The space without name, But in his strong bright truth he Erased for us all the whites, And every space was Annihilation, meaning Apocalypse is. Finding you white on white on White you did not let it fade, But came on the one, Eternal virginity, That is most proper. In the white of snows and of Sheets and of the kingdom come, She will be light by The one light without a lamp And without a sun, Her colors will shine in that Light made pure by excellence, The perfection of Hymens enfolded by The clarity of That name of glory, white ones, Her glory is all other.
Ages of sages And of suffering ones still, Yet we will abide The horrors of the time and Know a riper time for love. The time is now, right With little left to foretell, With common heartbreaks And the compound fractures Of bodies on life’s wheel, Yet we would love, yes, As so many have done, yes, Loving in the tolled, To rings sometime, but once, as We’ll know, since it was our lives. O tell me, of times And where they go when they’re done, And how the wheel of Life keeps turning, as we learn Out of control and out of Time we would love, yes, And without ceasing turn the Wheel over again For us and for those we love, As the house we once lived in. You, so high above, Do you wander as we call? Wonder at the praise? Tremble at your turning too? I perish the thought of it.
Oh, the little ones, To be called away from tasks, To play at loves and Follow in the way of truth, And the one which is not play, For finding our love We saw at last not playing But living, not just Pleasing, as if we could, But some thankful promised end That life on earth is To pretend and more than that, To more than actors Given again, and to More than comprehend.
Marinela song, Intoxicating song of Bright dark eyes, truthful And dearer by their darkness, Stronger than lightning, her eyes, Her song, her mind’s hum, To ecstasies tune belong, Bring, gather not to scatter, Finding singing her music, Rhyming, wanting, and waiting. O Marinela, That soul of music may be, And you, yet you know It not, yes you will sing as A woman they’ll wonder at. O my little one, Sing your song to the one in Me but more in God And most of all in her, who Waiting for you is pure patience, An immaculate And true white graceful space of Possibility, So that where she is we may Sing too the songs pure, Lose the sin, and in Her love is relief, as I Who composed himself For you, found relief in my Wish to foretell our Heaven.
She was my one true Sentinel, my guardian, Love’s embodiment Of duty and faith and work With out end, world without end, Words without end, but enough! She became my one Limit and limitation, And in her precincts I did thrive and grow in truth, Grow in Christ and him in me. What else is there but To thank and bless her in her Uncomplicated, Graceful, simple, entire, Perfectly, completely, and Without a stammer The complete that I have found And without which I Would have been incomplete, and God does not like incompletes. She has more than one Name and her number unknown Yet knowable, still She is not a summation, She is not a citation, A little one, she, And more to me by what she Made here in words that Seem to be mine, but are in The sovereignties she is.
Meaning and Experience,
Part 1
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; and I am greatly pleased with my inheritance.
Psalm 16: 6
I dedicated
Myself to God though I did
Delay: Lord forgive.
I dedicate this
Work to the priests I have known
And to another:
This book is for a
Teacher: A sister in God:
Paula Jean Miller.
In the end I did
Not avoid the truth you taught
And you still believe.
I believed: Therefore
I spoke: Tell all the truth but
Tell it slant: in this
I could tell all my
Truth and nothing but the Truth:
As you helped me God.
Texts are woven things:
This was a coat of many
Colors: as given.
So be thankful for
The colors given and His
Light by which we see.
Pure mind and pure heart:
An old man limping laughing
Sees the tree at dusk.
Four sisters and I
Standing in the lake alone:
What is covenant?
Neither monk nor lay
A man went this way living
Life in His presence.
Flowers drooping heads
In dryness await the rain
Without meaning to.
Meaning is absent
But experience is known
By presence itself.
The experience
And the meaning come apart
In silence not known.
Interpretations
Always miss the mark; always
Miss experience.
The fact of the light:
More than words can say: empties
Me of self and sense.
Silence and meaning
Are not part of a system
But are not opposed.
The mystic moment
Misunderstood passed me by
As I read a book.
[envois] and heavy [envois]
Men in cities avoid truth
In their neighbors’ eyes.
Around the table
We discussed meaning and life
Despite our heartbeats.
The pain of living
And the joy of finding out
Push and pull again.
I could not keep it
But silence knew what to do
And this bubbled up.
No reconstruction
As I stand beneath the sky:
Just the light in air.
No birds trace the way:
Trackless expanse of Heaven
Unstained and unfeigned.
Quiet nights and peace:
Afternoons playing at sums:
Balance in my hand.
Young men chase each thing
Across the green yard of life:
Feeling faces lit.
Without knowing how
And without meaning to know
Yet life too chose me.
Under stars without
I stood and pointed to one
Inventing meaning.
The reinvention
That happens naturally
Is the best of all.
Supernatural
The battle for the faith:
Wrinkles in my flesh.
Look over and see
Beyond yonder wall the man
Who died just to be.
Gracious and godly
The opening in me yawned
But did not swallow.
They gauge the outcome
But all matter is a way
To experience.
Without leaving: still
The distant married lands came
And shone silent love.
The tree itself void
Of meaning offers endless views
For watching sunset.
At night without art
Without catching a thing I
Turn to you in sleep.
The leaf seeks not ground
Nor attachment to the tree branch
But simply abides.
Who am i? I ask
Not knowing the master plan:
The really Real.
Separate from me
Reality dwells apart
But within me yet.
Men and women cross
Themselves in hope of finding
A child between them.
The mountain abides
Yet there is peace in the vale
And heights cause a fall.
Stumbling level ground:
Step after step following:
The walker crosses.
Neither height nor depth
Nor any other thing stands
Between You and I.
Behind us nothing:
Between us everything else:
We communicate.
Summer Autumn Spring
All delight but bare Winter
Lies secret within.
The emptiness here
Where I once was: now not I
But peace perfect peace.
If you choose or not
Yet you are chosen: Abide
In Him and be It.
To be free of this:
To this be free here and now:
There is no secret.
Words about words fail
But the peace of light reaches
Filling the darkness.
Light itself empties
Yet fills all things not knowing
And without intent.
Simply breathing air
Is what he did: also this:
Some rose and some fell.
The impossible
Is the only thing worth our
Attempt: Yes we can.
Forget all structure
Because form is not the One:
When you as you are.
If the tree could see
He would see not light but the
Other trees nearby.
Lacking sight not light
The blindness of men is this:
They looked away.
They say peace someday:
But I say peace if you will:
Be yourself right now.
Shadows do not hide
But we hide in them because
We want to forget.
When you awake
Everything is beautiful:
Even homely words.
Too much instruction:
We sign and we sign without
Our feet on the ground.
Universities
Created the meaning but
For a mundane love.
If you could touch me
I would neither indicate
Nor express meaning.
After the heart breaks
We learn to sing the blues out
Yet the wound remains.
Almost out of breath
I ran to meet you smiling
With disheveled hair.
Cross yourself again
And find your directions in
The silent imprint.
Neither cold nor wet
I am yet the hungry dog
Standing at your door.
I met you at church
And what we became was more
Than that: Life itself.
Yesterday I drank
And you filled me with travel
Taking me away.
In joyful wisdom
Neither rational nor not:
Whiskey and Women.
If music were words
It would lose its emptiness
And begin to mean.
The heart must empty
Before it can fill with blood:
In rhythms we live.
Crossing the river
I saw an island in mist
Without being there.
The dry: The empty:
The desert full of wisdom:
The place of testing.
It doesn’t matter
What color her eyes or skin:
But can she forget?
If I stayed longer
It would be to love you more:
Without fear or care.
If I care too much
I will not let you ascend
To where you must be.
He showed me the way
And we placed our crosses
In Jerusalem.
A city I see
Unlike any other one:
If only love builds.
Remember me then
Once or twice in the wake
Till we meet again.
Not understanding
I loved I knew not what yet
Love itself was true.
I loved you without
Concepts ideas or things
But in the living.
Meaningful research
Does not combine others’ words
In new arrangements.
My father appeared:
Traveled everywhere he went:
In ashes he blew.
My wife came so far:
So far from her home seeking
For something somewhere.
Our city ruined
We rebuilt with trowel and
Sword: our two arms full.
I always loved you
For you were with me before
In the dream I had.
Only yesterday
I had a glimpse of life and knew
Without meaning.
To carry something
For somebody: Charity
Brings unending Grace.
What is past is past
And yet without forgetting
We invent our life.
In discovery
Without searching or meaning
We will love again.
Too much straitening
Causes order to structure
Chaos completely.
If I could sing you
Without words or intention
Then you would love me.
Lived experience
Escapes meaning giving thanks
Morning and evening.
Lovers and deamers
And madmen like I speak
No image: one Word.
Without cognition:
To be the substance itself
Is finding Truth.
Without losing hope
Yet without expectation:
Wait and wait again.
Nothing behind us:
Nothing is what it seems and
You already are.
I fell into Grace
The only way I knew how:
By being broken.
Light absolutely
Breaks and scatters the darkness
We are despite love.
If I try to be
I am not: but sitting still
He found me alone.
A dark night ordeal
I could not count the [envois] so
Black in my own mind.
Salvation saw me
Sitting still beneath a tree
And He called to me.
He empties Himself
And shows a way that cannot
Make sense to the world.
He sang his own song
Yet given from above In-
Comprehensible.
Touch me in pity:
Find a heart beneath my mind:
Now: without passion.
In breathing I am
In all things respiring in
Him and He in me.
When not if He comes
He will find faith in cities
That we did not burn.
When not if He comes
Only His words will matter:
Not our constructions.
When not if He comes
Every Buddha will clap hands
While sinners rejoice.
Mindful without thought
Children play and old men dream:
Life itself goes on.
Victory is not
Simple assertion and yet
It must be disclosed.
I learned despite not
Knowing and I gained more than
An education.
After I was shot
It took 20 years to die
But now I can live.
A man all in black
Said very well and fine but
What do you do now?
The compass caught north
And despite direction lost
The future beyond.
Put your right shoe on
First and the rest will follow
Of its own accord.
She found the water
Without a bucket or well:
Life itself happened.
He said keep dancing
To your own drummer so
I went on my way.
If you can’t sit still
You must run until you walk:
Then you will allow.
Allowance found me
Alone on my bed without
Expecting a thing.
I lived on sheer faith
Climbing the cliff face without
Any skill but hope.
O little children
If I could only free you:
But you must free yourselves.
O men of eighty
If I could restore your life:
You would not let me.
Women O Women:
You and you and you: without
Your knowing I died.
Keep alive the dream
Especially while awake:
Let your feet not stray.
Will your love survive
Without understanding why?
I say better yet.
The double-edge sword
Cuts this way and that slicing
The knot of knowledge.
If I could be you
I would still be me only
Without the desire.
Language fails because
It means too much: the Truth is
Still and in stillness.
I had a feeling
There was literature here
But could not find it.
Without a purpose
The tradition is taught you
While you inform it.
Educationless
To the nth degree I read
Life backwards fading.
Some people work in
The Church while others pray for
A Kingdom to come.
I will come with you:
Wherever you go I will
Be there before you.
Without certainty
Universities will fail:
Yet You are the Truth.
The light that breaks us
Is more than we could have hoped:
Every knee will bend.
I have spent more time
I have wasted more money
Than [envois].
Forgive me for this
It is not to be allowed:
I almost told you.
Out of the depths cry
Words that indicate without
Expressing the truth.
All we can do is
All we can do and not much:
Will it be enough?
With fear and trembling
And in joy and hope we live:
With what will we die?
Is bad love better
Than no love at all? It seems
That time of season.
I was always wrong
But turning left one more time
I arrived at peace.
Vain is all seeking
And yet when He finds you then
You are truly found.
Look not here nor there
Still less within: if He knocks
Do not be afraid.
Stranger in the night
Announced again and again:
Still He surprised me.
Pierced to the marrow:
My heart was ready for death
And even for Him.
The sun will come up
On us tomorrow always:
God willing it so.
I saw an old friend
And exclaimed at the species:
One in a million.
All are lost but so
That all may be found: we are
One in salvation.
Good and evil were
My limits but without them
I reached out to you.
Without meaning to
Means I cannot make a claim:
I am what I am.
I intend no thing:
Neither play nor purpose nor
Approximation.
Becoming simpler
Is not simple but involves
A winding detour.
In our labyrinths
In our selves we lose the way
Till it shows itself.
The Revelation
Who God is and who you are:
Inseparable.
Nobody knows why
But we stumble trip fall and
Find it anyway.
Felix culpa is
The great truth of life because
Humility is.
Pure mind and pure heart:
To love the Good without guile:
How simple: How hard:
Pure mind and pure heart:
To forget yourself for love:
How necessary.
Unbecoming mind:
Mindfulness without grasping:
Hard the narrow way.
My wife and I climbed
Kilimanjaro today
And touched butterflies.
After the poem
Has been interpreted what
Remains of silence?
Structurality
Must be grounded in something
Autrement: Freedom.
Meaning plus music
Allows freedom that mere play
Can never afford.
The deconstruction
Cannot deconstruct silence:
Mystic effraction.
Circular meanings
Implicate endlessly but
The silence escapes.
Neither expression
Nor indication: music
And silence vibrate.
The crisis passes:
Minds allow each other more
Than bodies can know.
Without conventions:
Neither seize nor know the day:
Simply release it.
Poets cannot know
Anything but write their verses
Any way to live.
Writers write: fish swim:
Some people cook their food and
Some eat their food raw.
To get at the thing
You must uncover it and
In this words can help.
The blue butterfly
(for instance) in his pathless
Flight lit on my hand.
I eternally hold
A hand at no striving [envois]
And yet it happens.
It did not mean to
And I did not know meaning
Itself afterwards.
Angela the saint
Suffered me in the holy
Creativity.
To be there with it
Beneath sky-high waterfalls
Was without meaning.
But it had event
Written in it and a hand
Greeting not grasping.
Explanation
Will not do and description
Never tells the truth.
Alain Badiou
Wrote the truth is like saying
“Keep going forward!”
To adequate Christ
And Buddha: Empty within:
Everything is grace.
The way is of Christ
And we all walk on that way
Though some walk away.
Dharma way also
Is Christian: Buddha made no
Claim against the Truth.
One way all [envois]
But no one is the actor:
Deny yourself: Yes.
He did not mean you
Must suffer but meant you must
Die: Unless a seed…
But we suffer though
We need not: because of love.
Compassionate One!
Christ nailed to the tree:
Buddha meditating on
Suffering beneath.
Both take on and put
Off perishibility:
Both arise awake.
Buddha in glory:
Jesus ran His race well:
In both completion.
Resurrection is:
I must decrease: He is here:
No actor: All: All.
God is all in all
So He had to die to be
Completed in us.
Not that God Himself
Needed to be completed:
It was for our sakes.
Subjectless without
Object there is no is-ness
But simply presence.
I am not present
Nor can I be shown in your
Representations.
What is not present
Cannot be shown to you in
Representations.
Representations
Are not: images are not:
You and I are not.
God is all in all:
Without structure or being:
He is this movement.
It is a hard thing
To deny yourself for Him:
Yes: He is: not I.
I am not I AM:
I am does not anymore:
He abundantly.
The cross is in this:
Realization consists
Of denying self.
I mean that I am:
Experience is other:
I AM does not mean.
Meaningful research
Into self reveals nothing
At bottom but God.
I am illusion:
Whatever depends is not:
He is in my hand.
I cannot be me
But there is nothing else but
To be me here now.
What is here and how
In denying self empties
Itself into Him.
Neither I am nor
That thou art: but even less
Solipsistic sense.
Meaning always means
I am but in self denied
Experience is.
The cleavage is real:
Paradoxically real:
Reality IS.
God is not only
The Most Real but the only
One Who IS: despite:
Despite language games:
Philosophizing reasons:
Desires: Lusts: Pleasures.
Sense is not non-sense:
Reality exceeds both:
The absolute IS.
Awareness is real:
Jesus as man felt the pain
For our pain was His.
He was at the point
And broke through all suffering
In contradiction.
Buddhas in ascent:
Christ descended into hell:
All is redemption.
The teacher instructs
By various ways and means
To light up our minds.
Lamps unto our feet
Guides to our paths: meaningful
To the moral faith.
But experience
Of Buddha and Christ is not
Found in their meanings.
God is undefined:
No propositions in God:
De-limit the mind.
Find the beginning:
Where I end is where He is:
I must decrease.
Words are not yet Him
And writers neither lose Him nor
Find His meaning.
The writer seeks not
Meaning not expression but
An experience.
The trap of writing
Is that it is illusion
And does not mirror.
Referring to self
It fails: but we are not it:
The Lord uses us.
On the battleground
Minds are lost and won and more
Won in the losing.
When you fail you know:
You know you do not know and
Must stop trying to.
Desks are poor things full
Of papers and ambition:
Here I sit not-I.
Old boy what seek ye?
Truth is not illusion but
Knowing is just that.
Truth cannot be known:
Truth is then when I am not:
How can it be known?
I allow (let’s say)
By emptiness a space for
Truth to emerge in.
Detached: dismantled:
Words are the last delusion:
He did not SAY it.
He did not tell us
Repeat after me but this:
Deny: and: Follow.
Following does not
Mean anything: it is the
Act of walking with.
In walking with Him
We have sympathy and in
This is understanding.
Many have told us
What He meant: What did He do?
He emptied Himself.
Vessels of light are
Not full but empty so that
The light may fill them.
The blind do not know
The light despite accurate
Explanation: Because:
The experience
Of light itself acts like light:
Light has no meaning.
What makes meaning is
The thing that is like the sun:
Was Derrida right?
Poverty dumbstruck:
Meaninglessness rather than
All these useless words.
Abide: dwell: silent:
Avoid speaking vanity
Of all the vain things.
We are: already:
Useful words are words that use
Themselves for climbing.
Do not rebuild it:
Let it lie: release it; Gone:
Lovers: in love forgetting.
Reconcile yourself
To Him in forgetting that
Once I was I AM.
HE WHO IS is that
Absolutely: vanity
To replace His place.
Literature is
Still the tower of babble:
Brick on brick on brick.
God did not do it:
He does not but is beyond
Our little towers.
Not analogy:
But He will substantiate:
Transcendent in us.
Not even being:
That is interpretation:
Withdrawal of self.
Meaning is order:
To experience again
My meaninglessness.
However much I
I seem to persist: My will
Meaning intention.
At some point the thing
Approaches in silent notes
And music happens.
We walked up and down:
We roamed the butterfly fields
At the mountain’s edge.
The butterflies seem
Erratic: wandering: not
Lost: but Bliss is Bliss.
No point than to live:
Till then my hand there appeared:
Another moment.
I meant nothing: say
It was not my intention:
Say something happened.
It was as she wished:
We went somewhere and we did
Something: yet did not.
We believe all things:
We rejoice in the day of
The Lord: we are glad.
That night I awoke:
I said there is something that
Is outside of me.
[envois]
There is something there
Outside of me and allowing
Myself the stillness.
The butterfly IS:
A hand was extended and
Then something happened.
What? I cannot say
Because it cannot be said
Without a meaning.
If I seem to say
It is only an illusion:
I have not said IT.
Buddha and Jesus
Lived IT: said words to be heard
More real by witness.
Light and all shadow
Approximate the seasons:
Jesus died in Spring.
I trust in this fact:
The Promise: He will come take
Us soon to Heaven.
We too with Buddhas
In glory and Christ in light
To resound in song.
God sings Himself in
Us: through us: for us: and we
Give Him instruments.
Truth asks nothing more
Than that it be sung: I say
Even these stones sing.
Even my mountain
Cries out and will not let still:
Harmony allows.
Allow Jesus to
Sing His song in you: never
A song of myself.
In absolute peace
The greatest songs are silent:
Becoming seemless.
Jesus died in Spring:
Look at the flowers around
And see Him growing.
Without deception
Following butterflies
Will also lead you.
They sing the same song
Without words without knowing
Without notation.
The meaning (again)
Impose suppose interpret:
The butterfly IS.
It is we who mean
And we who sing but not the
Butterflies who fly.
Each blue dash and dart
Simply was and I was not:
And yet I may be.
A billion writers
With their streaming meanings still
Cannot make you fly.
If you do you will
Do so by your love: a
Love without knowing.
Neither hand will know
The exchange of self for God
Or when you took flight.
The dignity of
Us is in our willing not
Our own but others.
To take flight cannot
Mean anything until you
Fly: less even then.
Stable but shifting:
The words mean something but a
Butterfly wants more.
Simple clarity
And words about what happened:
Discernment required.
The paradox IS:
We efface ourselves when we
Realize ourselves.
Never imitate:
Don’t just sit there and stare at Him:
See the truth: He IS.
Never imitate:
Be: when you are yourselves then
You no longer are.
One above behind
Us all behind all signs and
Things makes us: Believe.
In belief hearts are
In sacrifice of self torn
That we give the gift.
All I have is yours:
When you give yourself to Him
How can you remain?
Neither “I and I”
Nor “Every Other” even
But beyond all that.
I will never know:
When I know I will then cease
To exist as I.
No mystery: Then
Why so few reach for knowledge
Knowing they will cease.
We will destruction
Of the world rather than this:
Let God be you now.
And we would rather
Speak a streaming discourse:
I: than not be I.
Yet I will not be:
Why not now? Why not by Him?
We say by His grace.
Even without [envois]
Or effort at the right time
It simply happens.
Though trials there to be
And the fight of ceaseless war
The peace is: still IS.
And the war is won
Not by surrender but [envois]
By coming onslaught.
Just be the peace and
See: no will: no mind: no one:
Radiant presence.
Still dismantle me
As talk continues to be:
Continues to see.
Talk now less and less
As monks learn to teach an all
Through whelming silence.
Poor butterflies: rich
In poverty taking no
Thing but simple flight.
I saw them make love:
In natural attraction
With us by their side.
But they (who can say
Why) flew away leaving us
To interpret them.
Butterfly lovers:
Us and them: in all we are:
And in love finding.
For compassion IS:
To give a home and blessing:
To find the right time.
To not dwell alone:
Neither dwell without meaning:
We finding outside.
When I am not-I
Then suddenly there is THIS:
A world surrounding.
Jacques said the context
Is the meaning: Nothing can
Carry it: but be.
We absent ourselves
[envois]
Until transformation.
Stepping outward bound
We are almost are that Glory:
Yet not us alone.
Glory means nothing
If I glorify myself:
Give glory to God!
He the essential:
I the passing: memories
Will not be mounting.
On the one mountain
There is but glory alone:
Let it be: enough.
Versification
Is the conversion of I
Into the not-I.
Experience is
Not this: Experience is
Forgetting to mean.
Buddha on his side
And Jesus on the cross died:
Yet they did not die.
Buddha’s mindfulness
And Christian suffering are
Not polarities.
Experience first
After suffering before
Teaching us the way.
Experience last
Through suffering in order
To teach us the way.
Truth is the only
Thing left to see: Whatever
Is not is not real.
Life is a vector
Moving in a direction
Without [envois].
Associations:
Come together fall apart:
Particularly words.
Mirrors of the real
They are not real but seem:
True propositions.
Neither description
Nor explanation will do:
I am not an “I”.
If language distorts:
Vehicles of metaphor:
Words are not useless.
Convey your belief:
We are separate and so
We still try to say.
Just this separateness
Falls into the signs of what
Plato called the Gap.
Between the ideal
And the real is the shadow
Which cannot be said.
We lovers till then:
Love us by separation:
To jump the abyss.
Love is our meaning
Yet in our experience
We find what love is.
Not only feeling
But in the ground of being:
Love creates our need.
Pounding out the hours
We would set sail out of love:
For love: toward love.
And we stand still
Stranded on the shore waiting
For better relief.
There is one to come
And He wipes away all tears
In our dark sainthood.
And we climb the steps:
We shake off the need of pride
For the one virtue.
What IS simply IS:
When you become you will be:
But we always wait.
The kingdom is now:
When we realize it we
Show ourselves kingship.
He is still within:
Find after your “I am” the
I AM THAT I AM.
I am not: He IS:
My “I am” is an echo
Of the great I AM.
Imagination
Is the fool of time [envois]
To good and evil.
Knowledge must be: Yet
In the Phantasm we know
Nothing but ourselves.
Don’t let me be proud:
Lord make me an instrument
Steady in your hand.
Death will not hold us
If we submit to Your will:
Lord make me humble.
God is my shepherd:
I have wanted nothing but
Needed discipline.
My Lord and My God!
I did it all for God and
For her: for she IS.
For God and for her:
For in perfect wisdom the
Virgins know God best.
In my unknowing
I wandered from the way and
Almost lost my faith.
Yet God’s gifts and His
Call are irrevocable:
He did not let me.
These shards of meaning
Professing experience
Miss the mark of Him.
He is the Most High:
Where others thought ideas
Of infinity:
Indefinitely
Exposing the word to their
Criticism-shame.
The truth about that thing
Called deconstruction is the
Fact men loved a lie.
They loved a lie and
Worshipped themselves rather than
The creator God.
Glory is but sight
Cleansed of what I cannot be:
The “I” I am not.
In perfect vision
Behold the man where He stands
Bleeding in judgment.
Then He gave glory:
Crucified and Glorified:
Him who died for you.
Overcome evil with
Good in peace with great patience:
Despite the mind’s thoughts.
Do not be afraid:
All beings attend on you:
Salvation is near.
He saved me drowning:
Some rise and some fall: amazed
The abyss buoys.
Buddha walked a lot
As did Christ to His crossing:
Their words still travel.
By example they
Set out the better truths like
Plato immortal.
On one above we
Depend: return to the source:
Be not dismantled.
For surely He comes:
Be neither afraid nor doubt
His voice calling you.
Once again build up:
Let yourself in uprightness
Bow low before Him.
When you came apart
You still saw the meanings that
Were meant to save you.
They were not words to
The deaf but eyesight to the
Blind in His Blessing.
[envois]
Both stand in the truth:
One speaks IT the other IS:
Christ thy name is Love.
I am not my own
Light and I cannot see you
Without Him my lamp.
If we could see Him
In one another how could
We cease believing?
There are directions
And if you follow them you
Will not fall away.
Stay on the path and
Walk more surely than before
And gospel yourself.
They once said that we
Un do: let go: that truth is
Always already.
But I say hold on
And never give up nor yet
Give in to release.
Atonement is not
Imagination which
Is but I the Fool.
If I had known the
Truth sooner I would have must
Have written elsewhere.
The really Real can
Be seen in the weather: But
Experience Him.
Find the one you know
Who opens the clouds without
Any force but light.
Buddha said look past
Me: but Pilate said Behold
The Man: Jesus Christ.
Truth will never stray:
Truth returns to the place of
Illumination.
There is but one light:
We all see by that one fire:
We all shine with it.
Words take on the dark:
But how white the pages and
Smooth their reception.
You must be that page:
Allow the inscrutable
To inscribe itself.
Pages of marvel
That turn to ash easily:
Yet His words remain.
[envois]
Persist! Then: Persist!
There is no happiness but
In overcoming.
Since He opened you
You cannot close again but
Sometimes you still try.
God is the one who
Teaches: His reign is rain: Soak
Me with all Your Truth.
Once I sat still and
Waited on the arrival:
It seemed forever.
More! More butterflies!
More mountains to climb! Without
Memory to see them.
Words are more and less
And the truth is in meaning
But we lack the means.
Or do we? He gives
His Word unfailing and He
Must be spoken through.
Do not see me write:
Do not imagine the scene:
You already write.
You are my event
And I am your pretext for
Good criticism.
Dissolution is
The acid word of the man
Who deconstructs you.
Let yourself shine then:
By the light: not in a dark
Night of this writing
But in the dark night
Of the soul embraced by God
Who is your Author.
You are not the thing
Itself and cannot know it:
But it has always
Known you and me in
Our medicine and artless:
Our pretty sinning.
Alone to alone:
But never alone I heard
Him call me by name.
Relationship is
Not false in itself because
We are all in Him.
Did you think that you
Could lose yourself without then
Losing Him as well?
Mortal blindness! Fool!
I am that very man that
You are without Him.
Once I did seem real
But got over it after
The enlightenment.
Enlightenment is
Without a doubt and yet
Not what people think.
Patience (the great thing)
Means only you hold what you
Have been given: Gifts
From above because
Despite what you have been told:
You cannot save you.
The gift of presence
Simply is experience:
The meaning of life.
For instance I say:
Birds sing despite our sighing
And do not let up.
After your heart breaks
You must still sing like the birds:
Never letting up.
There is no middle
Way but a narrow one that
Hurts: still you must sing!
I once sang a song
Knowing not what but it was
Noise and weariness.
What you are you are
But do not ignore the law
Written “thou shall not.”
Know thyself it’s said
And it is still good to learn:
But only in Him.
After descent to
Your vilest depth look up and
See Christ in Glory.
Only by knowing
The difference will I know
The truth of my world.
There is an ancient
Enemy without and one
Within: Guard yourself!
I was never for
Hire and did not earn a day’s
Wage: may God forgive.
I hope: I hope He
Will forgive my ignorance
Thinking that I knew.
Jesus went into
The desert in order to
Be tempted! And win!
You have been given
Temptations in order to
Secure victory.
Not for fun nor for
Punishment are you tempted
But to overcome.
The experience
Or meaning of the “waste land”
Is not metaphor.
You must live it for
Yourself if you will conquer
The evil and sin.
As well as that of
Living without the knowledge
Of the truth He is.
Like anyone else
I must climb from ignorance
To understanding.
I must learn to fight:
Myself and all that stands in
The way of my goal.
If the world writes me
Badly I will rewrite the
Script and improvise.
Truth is His stillness
But also truth calls to me
From the very storm.
Truth does not cease in
Pursuit of me though I still
Run the other way.
It is a good thing
God loves us so much and that
He never gives up.
Abandon ourselves
To God and we will not fail
To arrive on time.
It was not in vain
I once read of the Buddha
Because [envois].
My journey to the
East was over and I came
Around to my truth.
Do not mistake the
Finger pointing at the moon
For the moon itself.
But neither should i
Fail to read the signs of the
Times I am living.
There is something loose
In the world the world does not
Know: the antichrist.
We think we know it
But we have no idea of
What it means to do.
I said it once
And I will say it again:
Yet Christ will abide.
If I may return:
The argument of the text
Is: just simply be.
Coming to be and
Passing away are the truth
Buddha would escape.
Do not fight your own
Suffering but do not look
Away to avoid.
In poverty I
Found meaning did not mean to:
I am not empty.
But only Francis
And a few others loved Her;
Lady Poverty.
The kingdom is not
Of meaning nor is it a
Senselessness: it IS.
The word means more than
Meaning as a concept contains;
A Sheer Abundance
That chose poverty
Instead in order to be
With us forever.
To live as we live:
To take our meaninglessness
And give us what IS.
But we stick with a
Meaning that amounts to our
Own deconstruction.
There is more to say
But what IS always takes time:
Even the eternal.
I won’t look into
The abyss too long since
I looked into you.
The book lay open:
No one there to read the signs:
The means fell away.
Trees grow toward light
But find in the black earth the
Other half of life.
I grew toward Him
Out of sinful soil and love
For the Autrement.
But turning away
From my bad beginning, I
Look toward what I found.
Waterfall above:
Butterfly at hand: You stood
Too: essentially ajar.
Neither this nor that
Life is not [envois]
Nor is it a thing itself.
To descry meaning
Once more in the name of life
Is simply senseless.
The scatter pattern:
Butterflies and the little
Flower remind me.
Is enlightenment
Life without meaning or the
Experience of
Meaninglessness that
Is still a reason to believe
Despite the nonsense?
God still gives to us
Meanings never lost again
But asks our catching.
If I look for that
I will never find that:
Thou art not That when
That is the lie of
Eden: that you are Gods and
That I made myself.
Through enlightenment
The darkest deconstruction!
Am I the measure?
I think I will yet
Empty myself of conceit
And write for the Lord.
Then without knowing:
With a hand trained to obey
Discover His truth.
Anticipation
And His fullness may yet be
My own completion.
The Buddha said he
Was always at beginning
And so too am I
He would save the worlds
From suffering by killing
Passions and desires.
Whether there is an
End to suffering or not
Is not the issue:
I risk pain for love:
I must affirm life as IS
And love it anyway.
The experience
Of pain may not have meaning
But accessing love.
An experience
Buddha thought was meaningless
Is the means to love.
Christ chose it Himself
Out of love, not to buy back,
But drink it all down.
And to show me how
I can love too both because
And despite the pain.
Even though the Buddha
Did not die and stopped the wheel
Yet the world still turns.
And churches come and
Churches go in the name of Christ
But no kingdom come.
They did not live in
Vain but their lives are not yet
Understood by me.
Perhaps so I might
Someday understand when I
Have learned how to love.
I suffer to love
And almost love to suffer
As priests tell us to.
Forget not Buddha
Neither Christ nor what was their
One experience:
Complete emptiness:
The way up and the way down
Are one and the same.
The obedience
Of love is greater than faith
And love can also
Empty you of self:
Only empty of self can I
Carry the abyss.
If I could love you
I would find in you the way
To experience.
And yes: the meaning:
The one word of harmony:
My reason to be.
Something more I see
In the truth of the person
That you are likely:
Another Buddha,
Beneath the tree: or asking
Christ the cross relieve
Our sins so we may love
To forget our meaningless
Lived experience.
I think I too thirst
Like Christ though I am no saint
And need not freedom:
For freedom is not
The one thing necessary:
So then why not love?
Judgment in the way
Of the way we would love to:
Choice desire indicts.
All religions are
One: to choose between them is
Admission of guilt.
Guilty of the lack
Of love based on judging truth
Without acceptance.
Do not choose what to
Believe: election requires
Your being chosen.
Just try not to hurt
People on the way to where
You are going to.
Am I bothersome?
I am too full of advice:
But I think I know.
The impossible
God does the impossible:
Made me so poor rich.
That I would give Him:
Paying attention is my
Way to pray in thanks.
To write the meaning
Of meaninglessness is
To exemplify.
In paradox I write:
For I cannot say what the
Butterfly would say:
If wings were words and
She traced sentences in the
Air instead of beauty.
Meaning is judgment
But experience beauty
Without copula.
If you have much to
Give then give it all away
From exuberance.
May God help me speak
Without judgment though I think
I have seen the worst.
Let no false love nor
Parody of Catholic
Theology reign.
I wrote poetry
Thinking I was in [envois]
But love was not yet there
For otherwise why
Not stay on the mountain with
The blue butterfly?
Searching: possessing
Lies I thought were truth I was
Leading her away.
I could not say I
Experimented with her
Beauty as Nietzsche
Did with the old truths:
And at least experience
Called out a warning.
The life is passing:
For a moment it is there and
then it is forever:
Gone: a memory:
Is that what butterflies are
To become for you?
But I did not know how
To love the blue butterfly:
She could have been God.
Missing the meaning
I held to experience
Trapped in my own self.
Contradictions are
Sometimes true but why did I
Make it my arche?
I was but a text
And caught in my own writing
Effortlessly drowned.
Until He called halt!
I turned and became aware
Of what I was not.
Which is simply put
Everything: everything else:
The world I am not.
My dream of something
Outside of me was just the
Leading vision seen.
Oh to write truly
Of the plainest things I once
Did not care about
And not lose His love
In self-absorbed exhaustion
And in the ceaseless
Search to say what I
Could never say any way I
Might have tried: that is:
Let me not feign a
Meaning while at the same time
Saying there is none.
Why not become Light?
There is only one story:
It is not about me.
The clever boy is
Lost in the meaning of his
Meaning not knowing.
The clever boy is
Obscured by the brilliance that
Others meant to say.
Another boy would
Wait and not forget: patient
Longing yet without
Rushing past the signs
Of love which all have meaning
To Him who made them.
God is good: God alone
Is good: what does this mean now
Seen from another
Point of view? It means:
At least I can say this much:
I know God is Good.
To know something is
Different from not knowing:
I said I did not
And I really did
Not: but I thought that I did:
I was a burden.
I am not the light
That I must experience
In order to know.
I said light does not
Mean anything and yet by
It we know all things.
But I know that light
Is good: I know it: that light
Is the light of men.
The darkness cannot
Comprehend it and I was
In complete darkness
Yet I was writing
Of my own enlightenment:
Could I be more wrong?
The light is glory:
The very thing called into
Question by darkness.
I did not know how
Complicit was my blindness
With what I held true.
The glory of God:
Deconstruction and roman
Deconsecration seek
Their own glory in
An anticipation of
Antichrists to come.
They will use any
Means to erase meaning: the
Simulation of.
I did not see that
Meaning and experience
Are not opposed but
Complement: they are
Not absence against presence
But ways of knowing
Truth: by their fruits you
Shall know them: the meaning
Of experience
For a catholic
Is simply the sacraments:
But does God need them?
Who benefits from the
Catholic economy?
Only Catholics.
I loved that little
Blue butterfly that landed
On my fingertip
And had the very
Experience in itself
But missed the meaning.
He was a signal:
A messenger: the way that
God said “I love you.”
I turned his sign of
Love inside-out and said it
Had no meaning as such:
That the event did
Not respire with a meaning
Because there is none:
No meaning as such
But that the butterfly IS
And to be is not
To mean but to be
Another kind of higher
Emptiness: the Void.
And now the Roman
Church is to be made void and
With it the world too.
Both of these abysses
Of the deconstruction and
The deconsecration
Are places that light will
Not reach: deepest darkest
Hell: black but on fire.
These terrible things
Still mean something: they are rich:
Because they ruin truth.
Without truth there will
Be no more spiritual
World, and without it:
No more world of the
Material either: for
[envois]
Not just the world that
Followed the deconstruction
And deconsecration:
But no more worlds to
Follow: more void than Buddha’s
Realm: kingdom undone.
So I look back on
The world of the time I touched
The blue butterfly.
How much I did not
Know of things to come when that
World would seem a dream
And dwell with the God
In unapproachable light:
While the context of
The blue butterfly
That gives to experience
The meaning divine
Was to be torn in
Two and beauty truth love all
Lost in delusion.
I had thought my own
Error so damnable in
Not giving meaning:
But they do far worse:
They will say the fine thing but
They will not mean it.
Neither Buddha nor
The catholic line satisfies
But the Christ alone.
Seventeen in a
Stanza stands in the Q and
Strikes against antichrist.
A spanner in the
Works between the sixteen and
The eighteen so that
John Paul II and his
False prophet cannot connect
The magic number.
Call me in the queue:
Call me edge of seventeen:
Continuum called
Q: as a question:
As a philosophical
Response to dogma.
Independence is
Not in error because the
Pope isn’t honest.
More catholic than
The Pope is the church of Q:
Sans benediction.
The independent
Thinker in freedom and in
Isolation from
The one and only
Lie that hinders salvation:
The papal blessing.
He has not any
Idea of God: but the
Person of God is
True and the Pope may
Not even know what he is
In compensation:
For in the spirit
Of psychology the mind
Contains both sides of
The coin: Icons
Of Christ and the debased on
The dark side of Him:
Benedict in His
Shadow completes the Christ but
Woe to the man who
Misunderstands Him:
Who chooses judgment when love
Was the wheat to find:
And judgment the tare
To be torn: leave them not till
The end but remove:
Remove: tear judgment
Up by its roots and let it
Begin in Peter.
The wolves and the sheep:
Meaning and experience:
The wheat and the tares:
Buddha and the Christ:
Benighted Benedict
Blesses in reverse.
Let Shostakovitch
Lead my quartet by a string
From peace to war and
Back again: to the
Time of the blue butterfly:
Neither bought nor sold.
I said (for instance)
That truth is spoken despite
Us: yet it is said.
In irony our
Words echo back to us as
Derrida’s laughter.
I will offend then
A selection of the work
In question below:
No gain: ever lose:
Further fall: flower she fell:
[envois]
They would have us turn
To chase it up ahead or
Look into the past:
Do neither: be here:
Discern: in the timeliness:
A temporal shut:
Use your illusion:
Yet you are that though: to be:
Weary spectacles:
And so on and so
Forth: we are witnesses to
The truth not against:
Yet truth must be the
Thing against itself to be
True to itself: so:
The pope (God bless him):
Benighted Benedict:
Enlightened no one:
And over him rose
The thorn of contradiction:
The nobody rose:
O care of the soul:
Benediction petrified:
Peter’s blessing stone:
To the prophecy
Of Celan and in dialogue
With Derrida and
Two infinities:
That the poet saw the pope
And the end of him.
Rams: beasts: petrified:
He would raise the rock to strike
The flock and scatter:
Uninterrupted:
Derrida too foresaw the
One to come but hidden in
His text were the keys
Of the abyss: as always
Already he said:
Such is the law of
The text: to hide the hest from
Every first comer:
However oblique
In approach: even from the
Envois on he came
To re veal the lamb
Not quite as serious as
The pope: for the text
Would ever contain
The evil which was the real
Reason for writing.
As the mind in two
The janus faced coin of an
Exergue to come:
Psyche and spirit:
Inseparable: heaven
Is in your mind and
The simulacrum
Of the text is a way to
Decontaminate.
My life will therefore
Have been a scandal to them
Who judge it to be:
But Christ himself was
So and a sign to contradict
The acting pope said.
The acting pope of
The coup, as the church rolled dice
At the foot of the
Cross and gambled for His
Vestments and investiture:
Antinomians.
And in mystic fashion
Described fascist projection:
A transmutation
Of the sacred to
The transubstantiation
Of the golden Christ
Into basest coin:
Defaced the icons: profaned
The sanctuary:
If life is Christ then
Sacramental grace is here
When we truly live:
Sacraments give life:
Presence: God amid His Church:
Now surely elsewhere:
Where grace is lasting:
Arise: trust in the Lord: take
Up your mat and walk:
Your faith will save you:
Leave the church and sin no more:
Do not look back but
Carry light salt seed
In order to scatter the
Others in: to God.
Late have I left thee
O Ecclesia: but not
Too late I still pray.
One startling serene
Still one remained just for me
Among the roses.
She I say but one:
No other: neither word nor
Fragment: She: Woman:
Say untouched by time
Until a small voice whispered
Get and go: See.
Destiny in it:
She went and me she continued
In what we didn’t say.
If they say she wore
Black and I wore red they’d be
Half-right: we revolt.
She will always be
Further than the East, like
Sins flung far away:
He knows me better
But she could not help but sign
The blank I left blank:
I waited and she
Came: out of time: without the
Least direction: straight:
A rebel though she
Knew it not and ready to
Build back the torn down.
Almost not quite just
Barely yonder: the way come
Passing over all:
When you find me say
He did not know his way yet
Arrived after all.
In the dialectic
Of fascism are three moments:
Nietzsche: Hitler: and
Joseph Ratzinger:
His name says it all: O rats!
The Thesis of the
Nietzschean seemed to
Reach fruition in the reich:
But antithesis
Is never enough:
The synthetic matrix in
Deconsecration
Suspends the body
Of Christ in an illusion
Of the pious fraud:
And Jewish rapture
Left behind only the Church
Militant to blame.
The weird news is this:
Closure is trying to take
Place: with only Q
Between: the hated
Number of Pythagoras:
The most random one:
Between the added
Two of the beast and the false
Prophet’s sixteen stands
The seventeenth to
Keep closure from occurring
As Ulysses said:
For the point is yet:
And indicated: where? Here:
Just before MB
And the nightlong song
That may yet end in a Yes:
Yet not affirmation:
For after the yes
What took place in the text of
Joyce but the wake that
Is the funeral
Of the world: in the text mind
You: every word counts:
Ultrastructure is:
And there is nothing else but:
The Ultrastructure.
The Q if you would
Describes a circle effracted:
A line laid across:
The economy
Must be broken: the meaning
Of the catholic
Church exposed inside
And out for revelation:
It will be released.
To be said: a new
Direction when I spoke of
Augustine: Arrive.
The circle as such
Cannot arrive as it is
Forever turning:
But if it closes
It will trap those in it in an
Economic Hell.
Effraction is now.
Disclosure of the fact is
Enough in theory:
Symbolic therefore
Real: the ideality
of literature:
The line being laid
Against the antichrist ties
The sovereignties.
To save the Church will
Require true discernment for
This we pray O Lord.
I broke the Church
Open and exposed its heart:
Now let me repair:
Let is not be dashed
Against the cornerstone but
Built upon the rock:
A new and better
Than Peter is in ruins
Of a truth I loved.
O Christ you are true
And faithful and so I write
The line that must be
The sole arbiter
Of meaning: my fixed point of
Reference: my all.
By crossing his orb
With a line of reference
I shatter the globe:
The impossible:
If the pope refuses to stand
In the queue like the
Rest of us, then he
Will find certain Q and A:
A question for the
Antichrist: Answer:
Where are the miracles Ben?
Are they yet hidden?
Something in the bread
And wine? Show me miracles
Benedict: Show me.
A church without truth:
A church without miracles:
So a line is laid.
For it knows of me
And what I am doing since
The archive has no
Corner in which to
Hide: so: if the circle of
circular letters:
The encyclical
Of the Marian Dogma
Has been prevented
By prevenient
Grace: the circle at eighteen
Is inachevee:
The antichrist is
Incomplete: on the other
Hand he may force it:
And attempt closure
At any rate: But truth stands
In the way of it.
Truth stands in the Q:
Bataille’s “story of rats” and
Deconsecration:
The impossible:
God works in mysterious
Ways: The text abides.
Heraclitus said
The most beautiful thing is
Just this pile of junk.
Peter opposed
His hierarchy to it:
But Peter will fall:
To democracy:
To the freedom of the text:
To the witnesses:
Only by keeping
Everything out of his pure
Fraud could he succeed.
Even denying
The words of the Lord by
Interpretation.
The salt has lost its
Savor though: and the savior
Tramples under foot.
The secret archive
Of the Vatican opens
To disclose nothing.
Ashes to ashes
And dust to dust: they forged the
Claim: Usurpation.
They cannot forge the
Blue butterfly or take the
Hand I held away.
For there is in the
Chance occurrence a sign of
The one mind; One Face:
Types and symbols of
Eternity: as we cross
The circle and break
The chain that would bind
The sovereignties:
All moving as one.
We are already past
The point of the watershed:
Down the mountain then:
For she awaits us:
Shall I say Jerusalem?
She is no Roman:
We will all descend
Together now to the vale
Of the decision:
Armagiddeon
Time is not told by the clock
But tolled in a text.
Meaning and Experience,
Part 2
The story of the
Blue butterfly and my search
Has been a twisted path.
It has been about
Meaning and experience,
But a whole lot more.
To make sense of my
Place in the world and what I
Believe to be real,
What I call really
Real, God, or the ultimate,
Is not easy.
I have tried to say
It is an event, like the
Moment of contact
Between my finger
And the butterfly, which was
A sort of lucky
Break, or else it was
A predestined moment known
In eternity.
It was either chance,
Or part of God’s plan and how
Is one to discern?
Is it possible?
Does it matter why or how
The beauty happens?
Is that to look for
The dreaded meaning behind
Sheer experience,
An unwarranted
Posit or explanation
That actually
Hinders living life
To the full, trapping me in
My own opinion?
And yet I feel that
Experience without
Meaning is lacking,
Something animals
Have, for instance, so humans
To play their part must,
Though it is a task,
Not simply erase their minds
Like a good Buddha.
Neither do I feel
I should become entangled
In endless moral
Wrangling about the
Theological and the
Metaphysical.
Neither consciousness
Nor conscience are sufficient
For my paradigm.
On the same page of
My dictionary appears
Along with these words
“Connectivity.”
The blue butterfly and I
Made a connection.
This simple insight
Matches so much in the world
You already know.
But it’s been said, don’t
Overlook the obvious.
If in what comes next,
I make connections
Between many different
Things, it’s in order
To say something not
About connectivity,
But what it connotes.
There is the one mind
And there is the mind of Christ.
They are not the same.
There is another
Which is evident in the
History of thought,
The conceptual
Itself, you might say, or the
Philosophic mind.
It is so widely
Distributed throughout our
World it seems to be
Necessary, but
It is only one way of
Thinking, not without
Its adherents and
Proofs of utility in
Argumentations,
Such as making war,
Making money, buying votes
And condemning sinners.
However, the one
To come, in apocalypse,
Will displace the mind
Of mammon with the
Mind of Christ, a thinking so
Different from the way
It is commonly
Conceived, because it resists
The concept as such.
I will approach its
Disclosure in an oblique
Way, through catholic
Theology, which
I have found conceals more than
It reveals of Christ.
Herewith a twisted
Path made straight for God’s glory,
And not for my own.
The butterfly does
Sometimes sit still, but never
Long. Arise and go.
I did not intend,
But attention came to be.
The mind at rest works.
There is a truth in
The gift of experience.
Receive the giving.
A “what does it mean?”
Always falls short of the thing
Which abides alone.
A person emerges
From out of nowhere like a
Sudden thunderclap.
He came and he saw
And he conquered sin and death
So that we might live.
Let us live for Him
In Spirit and in truth as
He said we’d worship.
Engaged to the groom
Who waits at the altar in
His supreme patience.
O the patience He’s
Shown in the centuries since
The time of the cross.
Repent and believe
Is what he said to us then.
We must turn around.
Before I am through
I will have described that turn,
And a further one.
Lord Jesus my truth
And the truth of these stanzas
Which desire but you,
Help me know and serve
Unceasingly the salvation
In your very Mind,
The wonderful things
You’ve done for all your creatures
Out of your one love.
Things new and old show
Forth, yet who am I to take
Truth upon my lips?
Cleanse me for your truth,
As a prophet would be cleansed
To be your vessel,
And let these words be
True but also sometimes let
Them be beautiful.
There is no greater
Word in the scriptures than
The word of your truth.
So, let us not be
Fearful of things present or
Past or things to come,
For all of these things
You have willed in the one act
Of the creation.
Let us be patient
Humble of mind and in heart
And wait on your Word,
Which your Spirit, I
Pray may reveal today for
Its accomplishment,
Your purpose in this
Work, which I hope you will bless
And accept. Amen.
Peppered with prayer,
Salted with fire: Grace and truth
Came by Jesus Christ.
Let me do no less
And yet no more than you will:
Not a mere poem
May this be, but in
Time and eternity, a
Way of your break through.
A witness to grace
And to the transformation,
The once and future.
May saints help me here
To allow you to take place
In me and the work.
May Mary your mother
Give birth to me and the mind
You want me to have.
For the time is now:
The night is advanced and day
Approaches. Salvation
Is more than the church
Can bear, so let the human
Mind itself bring forth.
So long awaited
And yet almost prevented
By Christianity,
Is it not time we
Die rather than not allow
The coming glory?
This all consuming
Renewal resurrection
Will no longer wait.
What would Jesus do?
You would show us how to be
The first to arrive.
Let me pick up bits
Of text, obeying not them, but
Whatever you will.
To have excluded
The academic middle
Is a very song.
The suffocation
Of the discursive need not
Limit mindfulness.
To pronounce a name
Is not to know a thing but
Perhaps to invoke
You, O Lord, my word
Which reaches all through language,
Though my selection
And reception of
The truth available lacks
The great attunement.
Perhaps our teachers
Warned us of this, of the trials
Attending knowledge.
It is in the names
Of things that they have their
Being, as defined,
And so it is with
Us, we exist in a net
Of fateful signing.
For revelation
Needs revealability.
Language is this and
Not this alone but
The mystical way that you
Contain all being
In a writing and
Reading, which is why we were
Given the scriptures.
Theology known
As the via negativa
Is not negative
But surrender to
That which is greater than our
Definitions stand.
Scripture cannot be
Set aside may mean not that
It is inerrant
In particulars
But that that the paradigm
Of the Bible is.
In this I would then
Be mistaken to erase
All meaningfulness,
To reach nirvana,
Which may yet be attained though
Despite contradiction.
The negative way
Says we really can’t know God,
While the example
Of scripture suggests
That God communicates God
To us, not just laws,
And the goal of the
Void, means erasure of self,
Individual
Identity, and
I think all of this coheres,
In the Mind of Christ.
As I am I will
Not know God, who contains all
Like the Bible does,
So excessive is
He that I must be changed to
Contain, not control,
Him. In decontrol
I will decontaminate,
And in connection,
The ensemble of
The immortals hitherto
Confined to Heaven,
At the limits of
Experience, will break
Forth not as madness,
Or as the reserve
Of saints, but as God With Us,
Divinization.
We have seen what this
Looks like in a few at times,
Now it will engulf
All, in the great
And terrible day, not of
Judgment but of peace.
War will end, that day,
No one will be able to
Think it anymore.
Swords will become plow
Shares and God will wipe away
Every tear and trace.
The transformation
Seen in the brain by science,
In technology,
In the connections
Between people, are signs of
What is taking place.
We will give up all
We know and have and are, so
That God may be here,
For He loves so much
That He wants us completely.
He brooks no rival.
Contemporary
Culture presents foreboding
Futures of our end.
And so it seems, to
That which has held sway in the
Mind, hitherto, now
Desperate at change
That it fought so long and hard,
But which must be pitched
Into the abyss
And chained for the coming of
The Kingdom of Christ.
The change I believe
In is not a candidate’s
Promise or slogan.
It will end power,
It will end world politics,
It will save our souls.
It will happen at
Once, at a day and hour we
Know not. Be ready.
The destruction of
The church is almost complete,
As Daniel foretold.
When it is total,
The end will not be long, and
The way to it clear.
Yet some will refuse,
As John says, saying they must
Go back for something.
When so much awaits,
What could possibly keep us
From our wedding day?
In the hour of the
Decision you must have then
Already lived it.
Meaning and Experience,
Part 3
The gifts of God are
All of them good, and so
She, too, came to me.
All human being
Absorbed in righteousness shines
With the Face of Christ.
O Little Flower,
You loved and worshipped the Child
And His Holy Face.
I Worship on a
Mountain that may yet pass.
Mountains pass slowly,
Though not all pass in
That way, and this mountain needs
Your flower: Remain.
There was a sister,
Teresa Benedicta
Of the Cross, a Saint.
Every flake of snow
Falls in one declination
Despite buffeting.
Saints are like snowflakes,
Unique, undefiled, falling
Into God’s embrace.
Mirrors in mirrors,
We shine from our origin:
Endless, trackless, light.
Snow mirrors light, white
On white on white, though sometimes
Saints are like sunsets,
Red, bathed in fire and
Having a purity wrought
In violence, yet
Inviolate, though
Murdered, still unprofaned, and
Having redemption.
Even as death takes
Us away, without shadow
Of semblance remained,
Why not far rather
The void or bliss in heaven
To lose oneself in?
If I realize
I am nothing already,
Without transition,
Then I need not the
Turn or reversal to come
As I approach her.
All in all, to be,
Lost in Him, for as long as
I am He is not.
Already naked,
She bows a little to hide
In beauty’s shadow,
Just as between the
Inside and the outside pure
Virginity reigns.
Nothing as humble
As a virgin made to stand
Awaiting darkness.
She let her love come
Unbound, and so did flourish.
Bridges of crossing,
To bridge the cross of
The see of troubles not yet
Seen in our ending,
To be our reproach
To the entanglement of
The imbroglio,
The imbrications
Of a time that did not seal
The concealment of.
Form itself is not,
Nor the merely assembled,
But beauty and want
Make these visions seem
The telos of destiny.
But what stands behind?
The unshaped shapes shape:
Which is why He must be In-
Comprehensible,
And why they who have
Not seen but believe are blessed,
As He said they’d be.
They thought they saw her,
But she was seen by God in
In eternity.
In His vision she
Was holy, but they did not
Recognize the Saint.
She fit with Him and
He drew with her a drawing
Divinely figured.
In a bracketing
Of the idea of
Sensuality,
Experience is,
And allows the vision seen
Not only by Him.
She became vision.
We can only accuse the
Owning in her light.
As she arrived, she
Not only told it so, but
Neither turning, showed.
Her means were not void,
Though her experience meant
Death, as if to mean
Almost more than she
Could mean, and almost more than
Meaning could allow.
She is not a text.
She interprets us, and shapes
Us to time to come,
Because grasped closer
And held more tightly, she is
Impressed with His skill
At making martyrs
Witness before and after
He has let them go,
In abandonment,
Not to providence, but to
A great emptiness,
A Christ in person,
Already breaking through veils
Then, now, everywhere.
Neither religious,
Nor political, nor yet
Philosophical,
But personally
Was the pain inflicted, as
She stood first in line.
Light and dark reject
Knowledge so bestowed on one
Who, having known them,
Was led to a place
Where they do not make sense and
Never will again.
Not in this life, or
In the next, where there are no
Need of sun or moon,
Nor will the gates be
Ever shut, as all light is
Like Hers, held within.
I do not think she
Had a quarrel with dying,
Or with the killers.
It is a question
Whether we do, or should, or
Whether to forgive.
What happened then is
Happening again, larger
In scope and hidden.
They do not kill our
Bodies now but steal our souls,
Or make as if to.
Already raptured,
The good is gone. We await
Appropriation,
The promised advent
Of what is said to be screened
By being is near.
And the Janus face
Of the gate of the Roman
God stands at the door.
But it is not his
Beginning, almost over,
That is occurring.
The fait accompli
Was thought to be a machine
To engulf the world.
The fateful meeting
Of man and technology,
Greatness inherent,
Now can just be heard,
In a very quiet place
Where we go to pray.
She did not know of
This, but was the first to go,
When the time had come.
How could she see the
Complicity of horror
With their holiness?
Five have reigned, one now
Is, and the one to come will
Last but a brief span.
The first of seven
Ascended as holocaust
Dawned in damnation.
Now by projection
From another time the last
Tiger regales.
The martyrs that were,
Pray for the martyrs to be.
And they witness them.
We recall the deaths
They endured but we do not
Feel it as we die.
Perhaps all is lost,
In a certain circle where
Things cannot be squared.
But God does the thing
That is impossible, like
Raise the dead to life.
Though our sins be as
Scarlet, yet they will be white
As wool, forgiven,
Even though the sin
Was doing what we were told,
Then looking away.
There are parallels
From history, not that
Long ago, not that
Far from the meaning
Of the death of Edith Stein,
Whom we remember.
An emptiness in
Heart has the clean fulfillment
Of wisdom in love.
Only vessels of
Devotion are already
So clean, so empty.
The Lord said to clean
The inside of the cup where
The filth lies hidden.
When He entered His
Capital, He first cleansed the
Temple of money.
Some say the world is
A mass of seething power,
Some see only sex,
And the desire that
Acquires pleasure, property,
And the skill of use.
Even beauty is priced,
And is a form of exchange,
Without penalty.
But the rewarding
To come is for the hidden,
Not open, beauty.
Could we find beauty
At Auschwitz? If we pray with
Edith Stein, we will.
It is said the Church
Is watered by the blood of
Martyrs, but the Blood
Of Christ was a fount
For cleansing, so Edith Stein’s
Blood, too serves the Church,
A prevenient
Witness to holy peril
And times of testing.
Meaning and Experience,
Part 4
STANZAS FOR MARINELA
We perhaps will play
Until our last breath, but we
Did something for Him.
We learned how to give:
How to Create: and how to
Find: The Gift of Love.
God is good: and He
Is the giver of good gifts:
You are one for me.
MB
THE ONE HUNDRED STANZAS
Mysterious is
The coming and going of
Life in all its parts.
The most beautiful
Part of my life was lived in
My embrace by grace.
The gifts of God are
All of them good as you are
For me: but we sought
Something more than love
Between a man and wife and
Found our end in Him.
He suffered in His
Waiting for us: We played like
Children and fought like
Wild ones against our
Calling: the vocation He
Intended: Our peace.
Mysterious was
The way God moved us in love:
Attraction did not
Become distraction:
The fate of many couples:
Ever we will love.
But we love because
Not despite virtue: because
Our affair joined His.
Stay: linger with me:
Tarry yet awhile: He calls
Us to meditate.
We are still hungry
For one another and for
Him: the source: the first
Principle of love:
We became a little less
Full and more empty
As time went on in
What we found to be the best
Part of our marriage.
We: no longer young:
And having loved in our great
Decade look back on
A gradual light
Ascending among us and
Within us: the Call.
We have not fully
Answered: yet we do not search
For more than meaning:
Our response is:
Yes Lord: simply that: Yes Lord:
Whatever You say.
Cease all your searching:
You have the secret in Him:
He is here with us.
I have seen you in
Desire: and with the eyes of
Peace: it is better.
Yet: I still love you:
Do not wish for freedom but
To serve: to arrive.
I have seen the fire
Rise and watched the incense burn
Trailing smoke like gifts
Sent up to Him in
Prayer: our love became more:
Holy: as He said:
Be you therefore like
Me for I am holy: if
We would love we must.
It is Him we will
Meet when we meet on our way:
To vigil we come.
Our love alone could
Not be sure if not for Him:
In Spirit we love.
Grace and truth must be:
Despite our bodies failing:
He is now our health.
Oh: my Bride: my Love:
Do not forget the path I
Took to reach this place.
I am getting nearer:
To you: to Him: completion
Of the race draws close.
There is no telling
What truth will take me away:
Where I go from here.
But I trust in Him:
It must be beautiful: for
I have the Promise.
We await alone:
Strip: strip: strip: meanings away:
God is so much more.
Our love past telling:
With each other: but for Him:
Not for us alone.
Our love foretelling:
If we could: how we reached this
Place of no return.
Please Lord protect the
Integrity of the work You
Are working in us.
We: when we work: must:
Work not for ourselves alone:
But for Your glory.
You: I believe: Glory
In our poverty and find
Emptiness better
Than we imagine:
Where we would desire more You
Want us to have less.
But yet: no decrease:
Not of love: but of desire:
Which is all too rich.
You chose poverty
In order to give us so
Much more than mammon.
Let our striving cease
And rest: we have enough: let
Him decide our path.
All glory honor
Praise power: to Him: Our King:
Our religion is.
It is not the failed
Romance: it is fulfillment:
In Him we arrive
With each other: But
More: we have become His: His
Instruments of love.
Love is so much more:
More than the mind or heart can
Grasp: let Him hold us.
Cantos on chaos:
The love stories of our time:
We had something more.
To be poor in things:
Strip: strip: strip: make us naked:
Lovers in love.
No love outside Him:
Without Him we never were:
He brought us: as His.
I would not love you:
No: I could not: if you were
Not the one He sent.
The gift from God came:
I saw you and recognized
You: and His kindness.
Not without judgment:
But more in mercy for my
Weakness and my faults.
But God forgave me
And sent me you so we found
Life and lived: for Love.
Not just to survive
But to create something more
Than we could alone.
You are His not mine;
And I am more His than I
Know: Lord take me in.
Oh we little ones:
We played and took ourselves so
Seriously then.
In abandonment:
In surrender: in peaceful
Prayer we became.
We took on our lives
And lived for holiness and
For a kind of life
We had been too young
To realize at the start:
We looked to Heaven
And we found the saints:
How happy and serene they
Are after their lives.
They did not lose God
To gain their lives but lost their
Lives to gain the death
Of all desiring
But the desire which is Him:
He is theirs: deathless.
We have yet to die:
But we can begin for Him:
A small matter to
Choose life: but His life
Means our deaths and to give our
Lives in sacrifice.
You are like my God
In that you my Love live for
Others not yourself.
Lord protect my soul
And lead me on: a little
Further now: lead on.
The end of my life:
It is not death but life: my
End is my rebirth.
But to arrive there
I must die to self and be
Born anew today:
Not waiting for time
To pass: not just passing time.
All time is passing.
The past is all but
Gone and the mystic sages
They are telling us:
Get wisdom: seek her:
Find the woman of your dreams:
Her truth: fulfillment.
And You: You love her:
You show and tell the secret:
The moral beauty.
Beautiful lady!
She is: she is in Him: love
Of our God for us.
She led us to Him:
Each by our own path: with her:
But only for Him.
God is good. Never
Alone. He gave His life but
Death did not hold Him.
We will see Him then
And then we will arrive: yet
Life is eternal.
Is always in truth
And knowing truth eternal:
We have His life now.
The Teresas tell
Us so: told us in words and
Deeds: in a shower
Of roses: became
You those roses: in loving
We bloomed late: arrived.
We hope for so much:
And great the promises: great
The life together.
No: we did not let
The scattering of our time
Occur: we gathered.
Gathered together
In our little church: became
A church: but little.
Small sanctuary
Of a life: place of repose:
In the peace of Christ.
There was storm and stress:
Enough: but passing the rocks:
In harbor: we arrive.
I fought myself
Not you: you helped me win: win
The battle for love.
For love of Him is:
Will always be truth: our truth
In the church we made.
We made a little
World within the world: for Him
And for her wisdom.
Shower of roses
You received in our little
World: I prayed for you.
And you lived for me.
Grateful I watch you in your
Task of life: you hope:
You wait patiently:
For Him: for her: for what will
Come: hoped for heaven.
We were strangers when
We kissed: not now: I lost my
Strangeness out of love.
Love me still: little
One: pour on me your shouting:
Oh that I could hear!
There was no other:
No other one: no other
Way: but we for Him.
Follow then: follow:
And listen to me: follow
Him: where I may be.
Summer is over:
Day declines: we are older:
Yet we are still near:
Nearer to the one:
And dearer to each other:
Abiding awaiting
No greater love than
What we knew in our decade:
We lived and moved and
Had our being in
A marriage made by Him: yes
We were made by Him.
Believe all things: yes
Believe in love: believe in
Our arrival in Him.
Not for us alone
Did we become a city
On a hill: still love
Decides what we will
Be: we will let go later:
Loves say we remain:
And in remaining
Days of our love: making one
Perfect place for Him.
The Virgin She Was the Whitest Winter
1
By the way you hold yourself I see
Someone that comes to life simply,
Yet hard, the way you climb those
Mountains where butterflies dwell.
By the way you talk I hear wonder
And awe at the things that God did
For us from the beginning of Time,
And still does today, especially as
We know it not, His secrets of His
Grace hidden in the folds of a word
That means more than it can mean,
Means by number and not by mark,
Means by a fine articulation of your
Sensibility, by the differences you
Say and see and feel when things I
Do make you think of the Creation
That is His and we are just words
He says in the one pure act of His
Meaning, all love, all embrace, all
The time telling us He loves us all.
This world of ours is not what it is.
It is something else, something He
Knows and shares with us at times
When we see into the life of things
And sense some sublime wonder a
Little just beyond what we can see
Or grasp, think or say, but that we
Have known at times in our loving
And in conversations without end,
In the joy of being near each other
And in the peaceful fall of sleep:
Am I a dream you had once upon?
2
Brilliant in your shining eyes
Bright dark / unfathomed hue
By yourself you star-out skies
As moons ken and swim-awry.
Let us begin again little one,
I am but a writer, and you say
That I reach you from there to
There, but I say I cannot reach
You anywhere but elsewhere’s
Reality, the really Real, in God
You became more for me from
The way you prayed your word
Of simple prayer to Maria: The
Virgin fills your soul when you
Know it not, and knots your fine
Heart with mother’s love for the
Son we share but never had, but
Once at His coming we shared in
His love together forever: Let us
Stay a little while in our church’s
Afterthoughts of answers and the
Request for love never denied, as
We never turn away for once and
For all, but turn face to face from
The one embrace of Him to each
Other, finding ways to Him with
Our laughter and our ascensions
To tears and falls in our meeting
Half way across an angry pride’s
Scream or bitterness, He is nearer
Then when in pain we try the path
Of thorns and sharp rocks that cut
Us to each other and together feel
The pain of ones about to lose the
Thing we hold most dear: we two.
Are you ready to walk with Mary?
And with me to see Him face of his
Face, gaze of His gaze, hear voice’s
Assurance that you didn’t wither or
Didn’t turn back, but in trusting so
Like a little flower following Him?
He led you where you did not want
To go, closer to glory, but far from
Home, far from the thing you knew
To be the easier part of life, simple
Family with a simple way to gather
At holiday in a past prolonged, not
Yet the eternal present future time
Of Christ in Heaven. O wait longer,
Yet we would wait no longer from
Today to the Opening of the High
Gate of Heaven: swing wide doors
And touch the grace of His throne:
Longing for the pure glass and air
And water and light: then let us be
Clear in our disclosure. Love is too.
3
If I were to tell your story, with
What would I begin? Your birth
In Mexico, baptism at the basilica
Of the Virgin, with your ancestors
Or with your accomplishments for
A life lived in the country you took
For your home just before you met
Me and forever changed my song?
No, I think I would start with your
Great desire, your hope, your long
Awaited hope: for Justice, Mercy,
A dream of a better place than now
Where we live in the corruption of
The city of the falling and the felled.
Your dream is so big, very big, that
Nothing can hold it but the Heaven.
Heaven is that place you dream of
In love, in hopes that will never be
Denied, but how long you wait for
What you cannot know in this life.
Only Heaven can compare with
The dream of life you hold in a
Heart that too cannot be held by
This earthly life: and so you are
Suspended between one world and
The next, being at home neither in
This country nor your own, waiting
For your true home in Heaven high
Above, you almost float there by a
Force of habit, hardly touching the
Ground, one foot, barely, you are
Only just barely here with me now.
I hope you reach the aim, the goal,
The place where you over all others
I think must belong, for Him and
For Her, for Them you belong too.
I lived a love with you, and you
Gave me all of you, everyday of our
Lives together, telling me you’d do
It all over again. Perhaps we will.
4
Saints and angels adore you my
One little holy sweetheart, pure and
Filled with the light of no darkness,
Only hopes and dreams of the great
Things to come on that future day.
On that great day, day of eternity,
Day of your wedding with Him, I
Will say goodbye and give away
The one I loved without ever once
Stopping to ask why, I did not, not
Once, but took you as you were in
All simplicity and grace and truth.
All you are to me is my one world,
And there is no other world apart
From you, except flickering fading
Images on screens, and cars that fly
Past our window in the nighttime
On their way to some point off the
Map, because the map of my world
Has only one direction, homeward.
With you, simple one, who cooks
And cleans and makes me feel so
Ensconced in the places we have
Lived out our days, in patience and
In tribulation, you have blessed me
Time and time again, and bless me
Yet as you sleep, softly breathing
In the bed beside the writer writing
His few lines that seem to not and
Can never catch the meaning of so
Great a thing as a human being full
Of love and longing and littleness.
5
O the guardian of my feelings, O
The one guardian of the love I had
For you and you alone, O watcher
Of my skies, and kenning of my
Untrue art, O the sentinel of souls,
O the stayer of my staggering, my
One and sole support, O mistress
Of my heart, O the keeper of my
Trials and secrets, O the one who
Did not walk away, did not turn
From me, but came and came again
With full knowledge though I did
Not know, and could not know the
Passage to the place you dwell in,
O the littleness of the things you
Are, and O the terribleness of what
You are not, and O had I the time
And the words to tell, the soul to
Climb where you are, O so high so
Far beyond my mistakes and base
Fantasies, images and words without
A stopping, O you! You caught me!
You broke my fall, you never had a
Way to know, but it was you, you
Who kept me from the darkness of
The life I once called a life, but was
No life without you, for you gave
Me more than I had ever known or
Thought that I could know, some
Thing completely unexpected and
Utterly unimaginable: You gave me
You, in all of you, every single time.
6
If words could say it, we would
Say it once, and that once would be
Enough, we’d understand the thing
Itself that we had intended to say.
But words only point at it, what
We want to get at, that thing we
Know not what that will fulfill the
Desires we feel, the need for love.
If words were enough we would
Not need to touch each other in the
Way we do, or gaze upon another’s
Smile, or see the majesty of faces.
If words could only disclose and
Not just declare and describe, if
Words could be like light from the
Sun that not only illuminates the
Visible, but warms and gives us the
Pleasure of the heat of life, if my
Words could shine radiance on the
One I love, then words would do.
These things, these letters, sent to
My sentinel, they aim true but can
They find you in the place you live,
Far from any language but feeling?
7
You! You are my subject, but not
Mine, not mine. You are not my
Subject because you are not my
Object, you elude that binary gap
Of thought and en-own me with a
Love past telling, a love unrelated
To space and time and relativities,
That knows only one relation in
Life, a field of loves that spread on
The level way that the Lord makes
For you to call out and not finding,
Yet still you love to call love’s call.
The objects in my life consume me
Instead of me taking them, but you,
You do not take me but far rather
Give me a newer self than the one
That I had before, having made me
All over, in that you are what God
Intended, the love made flesh, the
Body of desire, neither subject nor
Object, but the desirability of the
Love itself seen in the shining of
The light, and in the quiet of silent
Night, most in the peaceful repose.
8
You are all these things but most of
All you are the salt that can never
Lose its “sabor,” that despite the
Labors of love does not lose itself,
Does not abandon the truth for a lie
And does not speak except as the
Voice of one in her own wilderness
And wildnesses, crying to be heard.
O! The worlds you could enlighten
And the grace you would bestow on
Men and women, who having their
Hearts hardened, can’t comprehend.
O! The fastness of your guard and
The sureness of your sentence, O!
The charm of your song and the
Voice of you, prophetess of love.
And in all the sweetness of your
Call, you also rail at the unjust and
Those in power, but do not see the
Corruption in those around you, too.
The lie is the way the people live, but
Not you, you who live a truth without
Telling, in the desire for a story and
The need for the epilogue, the action
Of the completion of the tale told.
Life is in this, you see, our story
Ends in Heaven, and God gives all
Other names in the end and you
Then become in truth what I said
You were to me, the princess of my
Passage, and in His eyes you are
Already the one that men speak of.
9
That women dream we all should
Know, but of what they dream no
Man can tell, and so it is here with
Me tonight, not knowing your very
Dreams, the place where you live
Free and still and enjoy yourself in
Complete care and regard, but also
In abandon and with a shout of Yes!
Yes! The victory over the things of
This world and the prescient hold
You take on the things to come as
You dream and sleep in the heart.
There is no better place for you
Than the center of your being, so
Remain a while in that better place
And let me imagine its goodness.
The good does not leave us if we
Do not wish for itt to go, and you,
Tenacious one, hold it with both of
Your hands and tightly you draw it.,
Even if you must let me go, even if
You have to, do not let go of that
Thing you hold in your heart past
All telling, wordless, truthful, real.
10
A love foretold past all telling, you
The prophetess of the dream I had,
You the truth in the night of false
Hopes, false starts, blind dates and
My miracle madness, you’re the one
That waited for me without knowing
Whom I might be, O! sure raceme of,
O! surety of the avalanche, I too in my
Way waiting wait-less for the coming
Perfection and what we now call grace,
Though of a time I only thought I knew
Not whence nor ever why but without
Warrant except your smile and
Your invitation to marry if we
Could but love, my life would
Never wait so long again, so long
As I am with you, my principal you
Said, or was it principle? Our reason
Or your all in all? In faith we hope,
In charity we find, and you giving,
Gave all to me and gave me a reason
And the princess storied, light for my
Nights, rest for my aching, sheltering
For my soul, in words without whys.
11
The unity of truth and goodness
And beauty is a moral quality I find
In you: I told them so, if they’d but
Hear, of the thesis and theme of
My song, the tomb of it I build
And with you we dig it and we
Build it, the foundation sure and
The time full but almost never
Enough, we look to each other and
See Him in ourselves, where He
Does not hide, but can be seen by
The things he has made, our love,
Our home, and the works of love
That we hope one day will teach us
To hold truth more gently, touch
Beauty but grazing it just so and
See with eyes of peace and desire
Mingled the joys of life together,
Of our communing, of our summer
Late and winter near, of our snows
And the warmth we found despite
The cold of December the year I
Began again and answered His call,
Because he said become who I am.
12
In our little way we abide, stay
Close, wait, watch, become the
Ones who sentinel for others, I see
You keeping faith in Him and me.
If we but keep it, though, what will
Become of that faith, must not we
Make it grow? And so the stream
Of life would take our faith away.
Share it, give freely of your faith
And whatever else is asked of you,
As if the Beloved asks you Himself
For the things He knows you can.
There is no other truth to the world
Than our being obliged to love one
Another, to seek arrival, to shine
Light, to show beauty, to act well.
13
The flower she sent she sent for
You, because I asked, but it was
For you, because you are a one that
Is littler, very small and close to
The truth that God loves the little
Things in life, that He does not
Appreciate success, but sees us try
Despite our failures and gives the
Very things we cannot live without
Like love and light and the life of
Which we could not give ourselves
A day if it were not for His giving.
Turn then like a flower to that One
And find in Him what she found, a
Hope to bring her out of despair,
And a large, calm, bright pleasure.
14
O! How you look in your pale
Greens and pretty pinks and in
Your lazurous purples, in shades of
Red, and in the blacks and blues.
O! How you sound, so small, the
Little one, and yet how you can tell
Off the high and mighty and pull
The wrathful princes from thrones
That do not suit the men of great
Aggrandizement today, moneyed
And eyeful, driving desire ninety
Miles an hour to hell all in a hurry.
O! How you sleep the sleep of
White snows and princess beauties,
Of little girls, of fragility and deep,
Deep peace, as a world unto Him.
15
Sing the solemnity, sing the grace,
Sing the procession to the basilica
Of Guadalupe, the site of your dear
Baptism, singular moment of your
Consecration, of your en-ownment
By Him, of your making to Her
Your first profession, and knowing
Thereafter only what she wanted
You to know. O! Sing solemnity!
16
You added the salsa, you added the
Salt, you added the spice and “sabor”
To me, salted me in love and then
Peppered me with kisses and hope.
You put me up there in the stars
And did not let me fall to earth,
You said tell me the moon, so I told
You, and when you asked, I did it
Again, told the moon to you, but
Not for show but because you had
Said that if I told you the moon
You would tell me my own star.
That star you showed me a day
Ago, near your moon, which shines
Brighter, but by which it lays a line
Of constellation with all the Heaven.
17
O! Solemn the muse, but not too
Somber, death cannot hold us, and
There is joy in our solemnity with
Her, the one who brought us here.
O! If you would! Tell all and tell
All yet again and leave nothing that
Is unsaid, leave nothing to chance
And nothing to fate, but freely sing
Of the grace of ones above and
Even with us here as we speak and
Spell and tell the story of a love
That has no other, and thus has all.
If truth be told, it remains true, but
The truth untold is a fiction good
For nothing. So say what you can,
But sing the rest, singing for Her.
Sing to Her and of Her and do not
Worry what others think, for there
Are no others outside the circle of
The church which she is building for
Those who would kneel, nay, must
Kneel before crosses and altars and
Before the image of one whom God
Chose before time began to hold Him
Within Her womb and then give Him
To us, just as He gave Her to nations,
For the angels and for the saints, and
For the glories in a vessel of most pure
Devotion, of the ark which bore more
Than the manna and more than the law,
Of the throne of the wisdom of the One
Who is and Who still is coming today.
18
Beside still waters saints abide,
And we stay and remain in our task
Of life. O the poor, O the little
Ones who depend, O sentiments
Of sentinels alert in the word of
God, who have the mind of Christ
And suffer with and in and through,
For all the little ones. I am for you.
Sufferings of Job you read and
Find the mystery of sin and pain
And wonder, did God comprehend
Him? Did God cause the trouble in
Life that all of us Jobs feel today?
Let us say there is a higher reason
And we do not suffer in vain or in
Vanity but for His glory. Let it be.
Do not worry if God desires a pain
For us, do not worry about whether
God is good or the one all great
Embracing principle. All in all.
For this all in all is purely good
And does cause evil. That said,
He willed the suffering of His Son
And chastiseth all whom He calls..
Remember: God is LOVE, and is
For us, and with Him for us, who
Can be against us? No one, nada,
Nothing besides. Evil may afflict
And afflictions of life are real, yet
Our redeemer liveth, and the great
Glory waiting for us outweighs far
All the trouble of the world as it is.
19
The One to come would have us as
We are, in our need and pain and in
Our afflictions, for remember, He
Chose it for Himself. Thus, Life is
Good, and never to be forsaken.
Find the reason to go on living,
Not “as if” there is a purpose and
Goal, which is mere art for art’s
Sake, an aesthetic comfortableness
To keep us from the hell of known
And unknown fears and trials, the
Tribulations all must suffer for the
Glory of God, but rather find the
Real meaning of life, God and His
Plan for you personally, for He is
The reason for the way things are.
Despite sins and pain, we have our
Lives and we have one hope, and
One faith, and really our LOVE is
Just one, in Him. Understand Him.
He would be loved. He is needed,
Although most care not, know not,
What they do, still there is a lack,
Even when we have no task or no
Trials to endure, an emptiness that
We know only God fills. O My God!
If you would fill us with goodness,
That you are, so that in humility and
In patience and in perseverance we
May wait with joy and hope for the
Revelations to come, declared in the
Book, but soon to be disclosed for
All flesh to wonder, to fear, to awe
Over, to welcome or not, for that
Apocalypse we live, the unveiling
Of the reason for our faith, the true
Word, which comprehends us and
Wants to be understood. So, know
Little one, that in your sufferings
He and all His saints too endured.
20
You sit or recline, eyes almost
Closed, resting your frame for
Awhile, till the tasks of life call
You away to work, to run, to do.
But in your quiet moment of rest,
Beside the still waters of the one
Love that we share in, know I think
Of you, and I am with you always.
21
You have been on my mind this
Morning, and no bird sang, but you
Laughed when I called your name,
And no phone rang, but love bells
Knelled, no deep tone, no dearth or
Death, but a reminder to call us to
Greater appreciation of the way we
Love and what we may become.
What we are now we hardly know,
So how would we know what we
Will be? Yet we hope in the one
Promise of peace. O sender of the
One peace that surpasses all of our
Ability to understand, O, You, who
Sent us, send to Marinela Sentinela
A greater than hoped for blessing.
22
Oh my little one, wanting to go to
Some place and to do some thing,
You have found your miracle, you
Have found life in all our living.
But what then is life? The poets ask.
Happy are you if you are able to
Spell the question, if God grants
You the capacity for wonder at His
Great Gift of life itself, which has a
Glory of its own, which has a truth
Of its own, but for us, our lives are
Only what He makes us to be, for
The glory that you do not see or seek
Is what He will give, His own of His
Very Self, His very own peace, His
Very glory, the single love we live.
23
Little gifts all in a row, your words
And smiles bring me like signs and
The way to my home I hope to find,
With you a place of rest and peace.
Perhaps the points along the way
Are not so restful, not so filled with
That peace we desire, but God gives
Us this life as the way, not the goal.
The way itself is a gift, but the gift
Above all others is God Himself,
The Giver gives Himself, and we
Feel we know already this is true.
For religion is a kind of feeling of
Faith as much as an assent to truth,
And we depend on Jesus and Mary
As children on their very parents.
24
O! The one life within us and
Abroad! The poets cry, and find in
Our lives one love unbreakable, an
Unshattered, sheltering heart of
Being that is as much in the flesh
As in a word, as much in the bread
As in the light, as much in the true
Smile of a child as in any teacher.
25
Time to go they say and you get up
And make your way, but wait if
You will, stay with me awhile and
Hear the words I have for you,
Not so much have as do, as be or
Become, a net work of words made
Over by you, for you, inspiration of
My songs without music or rhyme.
26
You, you did not say, you did not
Say let me go, though I said that
Much, and you, you stayed, though
I might have wandered without.
Without you I am almost nothing,
Next to nothing, but with you I
Have a chance to win the light.
You are so much you don’t know.
27
O! Heavens above! The stars at
Night told of a great day to come,
But we saw beauty not futurity,
Not knowing that moral beauty is
Even in the stars at night, in sun
And moon and all God’s creation.
Tell all of His one love for all His
Creatures, His love for each and
Every star that he causes to burn in
Empty space, though not empty, for
There is the connection of star to
Star that he makes for our benefit,
That we obtained in our own place
That morning before dawn, that we
Did stand and we did see, and knew
That that was like the snowfall of
The day before, a Gift from God,
Faintly falling, still falling faintly,
White stars, whiter snow, words,
His words whitening the world.
On a brighter day we might have
Missed the meaning, though we
Lived it, might have missed our turn.
But today we knew without mistake.
28
Absolutely, there is no more abyss
That God did not cross for us in His
Own Crossing, no pit that was dug
That He has not filled for those
Whom He loves, Mountains He
Makes easy hills to climb, and
Beauty He sets on the pathways
For us to Amen! And Amen! In
Adoring adornments and entertain
And yet so great Truths placed for
Us along the way. O! the saving
Truth of grace, O! the one love He
Gives to those who gather the
Fruits of the Spirit, the joy and
Peace, in patience and self-control,
In love not with imitation but with
One initiation into the life of God.
We hold all dear: All things I hold
For you in this cup of words, from
Which I pour my heart toward you.
O! That the cup overflows right now
So that you will hear the word of love
He gave me to share, not to throw or
Scatter, but in these our reconciliation.
29
For anything bad there is
Something that is good, but in
Heaven there are goods without
Any bad, and good without end.
Almost. He said I AM the limit,
The beginning and the end of all.
We know our limits and to be with
Him we must complete our total.
We must live the numbers of the
Stations of our path and I went
From five to six to zero to one to
Three and then four, I could tell
You, every number has a meaning,
But only seven of them are most
Important to us, and in stability at
Our four square we will be taught
The truth of the Trinity and the all
In all and the apocalypse and the
Twelfth and the seventh Heaven,
And what we hope for, this will be.
What we hope for is not a number,
But the number is a sign standing
For our reality, and numbers are the
Structure of the world to come too.
We all want to make a name for
Ourselves, and some do, and no
One wants to be a number alone,
Like a computation in the scheme
Of a world system that denies our
Truth for a lie of its own making.
Nevertheless, everyone has both a
Name and a number. We are both.
The names may change and the
Numbers, too, but there is a reality
That is beside, underneath the signs
And that is the direction of them,
All pointing the way to assist us in
Our journey for arrival. The mere
Indefinite is not a number, so the
Deconstruction cannot be true
Truth is definite and can be
Numbered, obeys limits, and does
Not slip and slide, or grate, like
Words, but tells shapes of things
We will become as we realize all
The points at once, all the signs
Of names, places and things at One,
When we become in the all in all.
30
Words ring in your mind and you
Try to hold them fast, though the
Thoughts slip away and words do
Not hold like the feeling of you.
Yet go over the words again and
Find a truth that may be what I
Intended when I wrote them for
You, or may be something else
He would have you to know, for
He may well choose to convey
More than I could ever know or
Hope to know with my own words.
My own words? Like you, not
Mine, not mine, but only for a time,
As if they were mine, yet still in the
Giving of them made real for you.
O! Marinela Sentinela, watcher of
My life and of our life together, the
One life lived for Them, you are so
Much more than what you know
And so much more than words can
Say, but He said seek and find, and
In a way I have sought you all my
Life, and whatever else I found I
Found after finding Him at least in
All the seeking and finding I found
You, found you for your truth I say,
Your passion, complexity and grace.
And in all, your all in all, your great
Simplicity, littleness, held in a single
Compass, gathered all my feeling, as
the Virgin she was the whitest winter.
Your passion may tire and life
Itself seem too complex, but if you
Make the simple effort as I know
You always have and think you
Always will, then grace in your life
Will not be lacking, and you’ll find
The way, whether you know the
Time or the place, your name or
Your number, for grace defines us,
Perfects us and completes us, to be
With Him in embrace, not a total
Count in the making, the plus one.
Do not bother to add to your own
Simplicity and littleness, do not
Worry over issues or the problems
Of the world, yet remain in it with
Hope, my sentinel, my witness for
The witness, my Heaven sent in the
Midst of my Apocalypse, a sender,
An address, a destination, my little
All in all before the greater One to
Come, where we will be found and
Say no more, the work is done, the
Truth is claro, perfecto, complete.