A Birthday Greeting, from Berlin to San Anselmo

An' if I do reach eight-score in Years

as is my Will, God will't e'en so,

on thy Breast I'll shed no less the Tears

for Love, which stay'th undiminish'd – know,

that if thou likewise give no Way to Time,

Sporana's flow unbroken through our very Limbs:

this very Lingam shall that very Mouth sublime

and that graced Yoni, still service with Light undimm'd.

Thy Birthday sacred in my Heart's Rememb'ring,

with Vigor's own Wisdom shall many more yet be;

e'er green, the Sap in this Tree for Lovemaking

shall e'er firm and whole indeed be spared for thee.

No Time's Ravage, no Years laid waste, but rather:

increaseth ever new this Love conscious, Tina-Benson . . .

to timeless' bathe with you, and cover you in Lather

by Light of countless Birthday-Candles, fulfill this Passion!

Krishna's Boon

ODE TO LAKSHMI (REDDY) RADHE - 26 Jan 93

I have seen Maha-Lakshmi
in the soft brown form of a young woman.
Her dark generous eyes hold a wild glowing beauty,
sparkling with moist effervescence,
catching the glint of her dangling earrings
and diamond-studded gold chain which graces her neck.
Straight and even and white the teeth which line
the coyly benevolent, gracious smile;
Her lovely face is the picture of India's womanhood.
Long and elegant her fingers, slight and nimble her body.

I encountered her for a brief hour.
Could this be that Lakshmi of ecstatic wealth to whom I've sung,
holder of the keys to fulfillment in all the three worlds,
the lotus-bearing spouse of Rudra
(Lord Shiva's own spontaneously liberating persona)?

And from this dear woman there pierced my heart
yet one other heady image, that of
my Lord Krishna's eternally beloved Radha.
As we spoke, her richly Indian accent striking my ears
(so long unused to receiving its timbre)
as I bent to hear her soft tones,
I recognized indeed the Gopi Radha --
and that radiant energy of the Gopinath,
that sweet laughter of Gopal,
that dance of Govinda's flute, Narayana's joy,
responded from my heart.
The world calls this petite and charming woman, Lakshmi (Reddy),
knowing nothing of the name.
I call her by Radhe, knowing both intimately.

How fitting, to meet her at the end of my Army service!
For it was Lord Krishna whose words to Arjuna at Kurukshetra
prompted me to enlist, now seven years hence.
Seven richly blessed years, since which day
I have in-joyed Krishna's boon -
and whose Ras Lila still charges and delights
my atmosphere - when it pleases him.
When last I'd departed Ft. Dix at the close of a seven-week cycle,
I'd found on a bookshelf the life-story of his famous
Bhakti servant in America.
Now leaving Ft. Dix at the close of a seven year cycle,
I have met Krishna's beloved.
That joy and delight are ever with me,
and no earthly power can ever steal it.

Lakshmi Radhe! May God go with you all ways,
and may His light ever shine within your heart
even as you shine within mine.

THE CAT WOMAN JOSIE of the Durango Quanset Huts, '81

(sort of a rambling story, every bit of it true;

intended after Em'ly Dickenson, who never rambled – but I do)

As I approached my ex-wife's hut

(For separate we were)

I chanced to meet the cat woman

– No, she hadn't any fur.

Her hair disheveled, nose drawn out –

She looked the "gypsy hag" –

I knew the children taunted her

And neighbors' tongues would wag.

A paranoic case this one –

'Twas obvious to see

She smelled – lived 'mongst a dozen cats –

And rambled, quite lonely.

So I befriended her that day,

We took her out to eat.

And later on inside the hut

I had her stay for tea.

The two of us and no one else –

(The kids were off at school –

The little one was with her mum.)

She spokeof ghostly ghouls

Who spied upon her day and night,

Left her with naught to think –

'Mid curses thrown from kitchenware,

From oven, stove and sink.

They're cursed! She wailed and rambled on

In circular degrees,

Of untrue cousins, brothers, friends –

Of voices and decrees.

A schizo! Was all I could think,

A hopeless one at that –

What could my Space provide in words

To Josie and her cats?

From her the name of Jesus! and Lord!

Kept coming up anon,

So I responded right away

The second she slowed down.

Look Josie – when the demons shout

And you are but their game –

Don't let them prey – resort to prayer

And loudly praise the Name!

She got it for a second there –

Her glimpse a moment clear –

And then she cranked right up again

– She really couldn't hear.

So to her hut I walked with her –

'Twas locked, she kept no key.

I helped her through the side window –

'Twas her reasoning, you see.

I went back to the front doorstep

To check what'd caught my eye:

A mud-bespattered Bible there –

Full open it did lie!

No further did I need to look,

I knew what it would say:

I lifted it and let the phrase

Choose me in its own way.

And there confirmed by Psalmist's hand,

It said, "When trouble's near

And trembling sets upon my bones,

My mind beset wtih fear,

I call upon teh Lord's dear Name

And once again am cheered."

I laughed aside and shook my head –

The irony was clear:

We all crawl though our side windows

Shaking our butts in the air –

When simply on our doorstep sits

The answer, opened there.

Nursing Home Night Shift Reflections, late '70s

Shiva's Nursing Hum

Between flabby buttocks and pungeant wilted thighs

ancient forgotten breasts and an old woman's sighs:

there is space, yes – there too am I.

Only 3:30 a.m. (she's at it again)

Flooding her sheets and coughing up phlegm;

I've changed every thread on her bed just the same . . .

Ah, glorious decay! This too I am.

But let me once forget her arthritic hip -

Later on she “reminds“ me by the knee I wincing, grip.

And sitting her up in a gerry-chair

I pass this comb through her passing hair.

See if this water carressing her throat

       doesn't affirm “I Am You“ -

transformed to urine or a single tear:

no matter which, it still holds true.

And in her tear, her pulse, her glance -

there indeed behold my dance!

Pan-Handling Trilogy

I. My Backs

Slender limbs rising from twin trunks

Tenfold and labored peering back like weary elders

From knuckle to ruddy knuckle

      hanging skin like a pachyderm joint in runny nylons

Slender but uneven

Patterns intricately woven through and through.

II. My Fronts

Bare side open-palmed smooth and stoic

The lines etched into sturdy fingers are as telling

As the creases dividingthe palms by sections

      and intersections

Less diturbing more reassuring of work offered

      with both hands.

III. These Hands

Leaning over siderail

    dim light

         radiator's hum.

These hands push and roll

      a bony thin-skinned body

             to the left    to the right;

Tugging out drenched   cotton square and drawsheet

                   with one hand

Slipping fresh dry    and smooth    one under

               with the other hand.

These hands   swiftly settle   tired    sagging   form

                                                        into pillowed comfort

                             and I kiss the brow

                   and the cheek          and the eyes

of that smooth withered face     with faint wrinkles     faint smile -

        Shallow staccato breath channels through that nose . . .

Three hours later these nostrils inhale deeply

      as I step out  . . .

                 into morning  . . .  air;

their membrane holds the odor of a hundred bedpans.

MIDNITE SHUNYATA (Bed-toven)

I think that I shall never see
A po'm so pungeant as bedpan pee;
Nor malcontent toward bowel's content -
There's nothing wrong, just incontinent.
For after all you must agree:
These bodies here are no less sentient
Than either one of you or me.

An Old Friend Revisited

(mid-to-late '80s Collection)

Bedrail in a dim room room, one wall-lamp reveals an array

of sundry things from home: . . . a tin of wheat crackers ...

      a photo of couple smiling in commercial matting  …  a brush

           for thinning hair  . . .   two turquoise-color barrettes

a note from Ruth - requesting some individual attention paid

      to those functional dresses bought over the past few

                of mom's 102 years … a box of kleenex …

                            . . . all scattered randomly on a nightstand.

Her feet set upon a cushy stool she leans into soft armchair

        talking vaguely       to the homespun Wichita self

                           who stopped listening

                                          ages ago.

Small frame can't seem to keep breakfast down she gags like a lady

                        holding back from the disgrace of frothing sputum trickling

                                 from her trembling chin

                                      her dentures clacking a little.

The discharge, not remembered or not noticed     is not held accountable

               as she frets     over the mystery   of her soiled knit afghan,

                              the one given her by someone not recalled.

But if this environment is strange, where brown-skinned ghosts

                         in pastel blouses    pass in and out with mops

                                     and spray bottles

         and youngsters swiftly change the bed-linen    misplacing memoirs

     amid the daily dressings and undressings -

so was her own little house strange to her     after inhabiting that

                         for the better part of a century.

Limbs and bowels move slowly    so with time   uneasily comes   release

                       of moment into moment. 

The track of awareness is fixed      like a lonely train station

             on some missing link to the present.      Her dear little eyes

                                  blink through black-rimmed lenses.
                                     An hour has passed without her knowing.

 

Tears Of Love

Sufism says, “God is your lover, not your jailer“ - and means it and practices it. Islam has proven time and again to prefer it the other way around. Religion is in every other case I know of - more or less, yet quite frankly when you look at its core: about freedom, not dictatorship. The Muslim mentality tends strongly toward subjection to the latter, coupled most unfortunately with that peculiar combination of projected victim-status with delusions-of-supremacy, and with subterfuge to boot, such as was exceptionally witnessed in the Germany of the '30s and '40s. It pains me most severely to even put this into so many words, but it has to be done, come what may. Is there another religion I haven't heard of in our generation, in this century, where you can be murdered with impunity for merely leaving it, or converting to another, or satirizing or exercising critical analysis of it?

The darkness of so much Church history had entirely inhibited my early life from trustingly approaching the New Testament. The light of Swamis had made it not only approachable but readable, sparklingly clear. I cannot open the Gospels or the Epistles without being choked with tears of rejoicing at the clarity of what I see presented. How that escapes others I no longer know, I guess they were out when the Swamis came by. When Suras from the Qur'an were recited during ceremonies of those lovers of God and of Hu-man-kind, the same tug at my chest occurred, the same tears flowed, the mind became also still. I guess the Sufis know something Muslims don't – it causes them to sing, it moves them to turn about, it makes them wild with a fiercely fine light in their eyes, their hearts soaked with love, not dried up with clichéed theo-ideology.

Tears of Love

There is a movement, and a rest -
something like a cough suppressed,
a wringing, wrenching sensation in my chest.

Old tissue proves all too worn,
a breaking through this, and it's torn,
breaking forth from the heart, and born

like a dervish in the Sema room -
this itself so like a rose in bloom -
opening into the Turn, consumed

by that which words cannot express:
but tears which on these cheeks so press
like water in the wilderness

do Love justice as no other.
Sovereign love for one another
draws warmest smile from that Divine Mother.

Sometimes I Drink Water

Sometimes I drink water from a brook, a stream,
sometimes I drink from a river, a fresh pond or a lake,
sometimes I may drink from the sweetwaters of an ocean -
after all, it's just a notion.

So it is with religion(s), as water is for all its variation, one:
religion is one, and truth is one.
Where you draw your water from is your own concern, not mine -
if it makes of you a lover, then alone is it divine.

Best expressed through Sufism, accepting all, all waters -
this is no sales pitch, dear Friend, merely a fact -
Sufism is not the "mystical side of Islam" as you've read,
Islam has none, Sufism has covered for that, let it be said:

Of others, they do indeed, for Jews the Kabbala and Zohar,
Christians a long tradition of it, Hindus and Buddhists needn't
bother, theirs are overflowing with the inner Teaching!
Without the waters of Sufism, Islam is so much dead preaching.