Kissing The Leper

Kiss the lepers that you meet,

as the spirit moves you;

embrace the uncomfortable in your life,

to grow in your light, as it behoves you.

Love, serve and remember,

instructed that beloved Swami –

who else had once said that and altered history?

This lends itself to no ideology.

One has washed the feet of transients

in the public parks or elsewhere;

hugged drunks, beggars, all regarded as sentient –

free of any trip about it, just showing care.

If you'd ever lain next to a dying AIDS-stricken,

body skeletal, sweaty, his mourning partner sickened,

and there hugged him together, held him close and tight,

then you've been there, you've known such nights.

If you'd been up to your knuckles in piss and crap,

or changed clothing on severely handicapped

with the same joy and aplomb with which you once wrung cotton diapers,

then you know what I mean, you know to adapt.

If you'd wiped spittle while feeding adults,

or felt love toward a huge bellowing, now quiet

psychotic in messed shorts, whose nails and beard you'd been trimming –

you know very well what I am talking about.

If your spirituality's too refined, you are only pious –

bring that refinement into the messy world and put it to use;

let no body be foreign to you, let the mess test the mettle

of that refinement, so that spirit has some gut and hooves.

Kissing the lepers is an internal acceptance

of forms as they are, not forced or imaginary "tolerance"!

It is most natural and native when about nothing

but loving, and serving, and remembering.

Am I Being Un-patriotic?

No fallen American soldier in my lifetime
has ever died for my freedom.
It is but a lie, an untruth, and an affront
propagated by interests ruling our governing body,
as a cancer drives a body, cell by cell, toward
eventual capitulation of all moral force and integrity.

It does not matter which president sits, the die is cast;
profit at all cost in the unrelenting contest of greed,
cynicism, hypocrisy, incompetence and intrigue.
Young countrymen and women, with ever darkening futures
or none left to see at all, trained and indoctrinated, sent abroad,
trained but unprepared, schooled but not matured,
heroized with propaganda which respects not one of
their precious lives now fallen – not for my freedom, nor for yours.

It is a lie as a matter of policy, an untruth as a matter of duty,
an affront toward every soldier sent and fallen, and toward the families
they have left to mourn. But those who form the policies do not mourn,
so don't listen to them; don't attend their parades, don't buy their memoirs,
don't support their platforms or their calls, the ground is thin ice breaking.
Strike at the polls, vote them out, vote them out if you can – but can you?

No fallen American soldier in my lifetime
has ever died for my freedom or for yours.
Democracy is as precious as those fallen lives,
for it too is fallen, its cadaver carried high
in a frenzy of propaganda.

To love Democracy one has to first imagine it,
not play to its travesty, it is to embrace it within
where heart and mind might learn and mature –
this would be patriotic, but not politically correct.
The naiveté of my people does not excuse the ineptitude
of principle-challenged psychopaths who begin wars on a lie.

When free speech and critical opinion fall to the mainstream culture
of arrogance, ignorance and aggression, Democracy falls
and my freedom is at perile as is yours; patriotism,
a beautiful and a noble feeling in the heart,
becomes a whacked-out cocaine high when it is
toyed with, manipulated to justify cover-ups of crimes
no American can bear to be apprised of.

May I be pardoned in this, for being so un-poetic,
may I be pardoned for sounding so un-patriotic.
But do not pardon me for being politically un-correct.
Arrest me, charge me, throw me in jail – for there I will sleep no worse
than I do many many nights, far removed here from my home shores,
here on a continent being dragged into the American Dream of delusion.

I am no stranger to mourning the dead and the fallen,
I have learned to mourn the dismemberment of
differential analysis in favor of deference to
demonic ideological wills abroad and at home.
If the truth is slow to come to the surface
I will be around as long as it takes; if my deep concerns
are called irrelevant by the relativists of the day, then
let the Orks of Islam prove me out at the end of that day.

Am I saying something new, of course not,
but I will not court silence or appeasement, I will not behave.
I will not submit to the poison of insipid correctness,
I will stand corrected by historical evidence but I will stand
on my own two feet and strive to perceive with a heart immersed
in my very private love for Democracy and for patriotic values.

I remain an expatriate, but will never be an expatriot.
My weapon is prayer, my shield as well, the barricades I mount
are internal, and should I be called to the barricades on my own street
I will be there. In the meantime I burn this candle here,
unextinguished, for the fallen, for my freedom and for yours.

Love Is Most Great!

The night’s vigil ended at break of dawn.
After breaking fast together over wine, pork, and song,
the Mad Fool of God left my presence;
he told me he’d now climb naked
the minaret of the Spheres,
and proclaim there a better Calling:

"Love is most great, Love is most great!
Love is most great, Love is most great!
I bear witness that there is no reality but Love,
I bear witness that there is no reality but Love!
I bear witness that Love is its own Prophet,
I bear witness that Love is its own Messenger!
Come to celebrate, come to surrender!
Come to consciousness, come to completion!
Love is most great, Love is most great!
There is no reality but Love!"

I told him he was mad, he answered,

No, he wasn’t angry at all, and we laughed, and he left.

But like that Great Woman of Basra

he’d carry torch and water pail,

to burn down paradise and put out hell’s fire – so that

Muslims might just once find something better to do

in the Name of God, than sparing themselves no effort

in erasing the "competition," and to reflect for once,

try loving God – without hope or fear, but for Love –

and after 14 centuries finally learn to dominate

themselves rather than "everyone else."

Myself and Glad of It

I am so glad to be me,

no – make that overjoyed,

by God I am glad of it!

I don't wish to be anyone else

for better or worse, a blessing or curse,

I have so much to do, there's much to be done;

time is a luxury, and so am I.

I've but one wish toward

all those others about me –

extending to still more others –

a horde of them, a city, a continent:

I want each one, each and every one

of you to stop and love yourself,

rejoice with me in being you –

for as there's no other me,

there can be no other you.

When you have this, really –

when you have this, only then

will you have ground, the earth

will bless your feet, the air

will refresh your mental and physical wealth.

Only then will you grasp equality, basic sanity,

giving and receiving, becoming Human.

When you have this – only then will you

finally be in the position to ask:

What is this “I“ all about?

No one else can do that but you.

No Pets Allah'd

"Nothing is more unclean in My sight
than the obsessive fastidiousness of the self-righteous,
nor more loathsome in My sight than their loathing piety."

So dogs are out, cats as well no doubt!
You cannot have a prayerful house
where prayers are answered – if pets run about!
You'd best keep timid and resigned, stay quiet as a mouse!

You may mistreat animals and ignore them,
sexually abuse them and abhor them,
you may slaughter them en masse at tradition's whim
to cleanse yourselves of supposed sins!

But neither own nor keep a pet,
not in your house, befriend no vet;
and for the sake of heaven and of paradise,
never ever invite one to prayer – they're worse than lice!

Piously hate all others who are not of yours,
you'll wind up hating some of yours as well;
Smile sweetly with dagger clenched, concealed of course –
while you in pet-free paradise dwell, we gladly reside in hell.

I ran with my dawg in the park, got arrested,
Iran, being Muslim, ran off with my pet – it's haram;
"In the Name of God, the Compassionate!" I protested,
(Ayatollahs know better than the Creator about Creation.)

"Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,
you clean yourselves outwardly, but within
you're like open reeking sepulchres...
for not what goes into your mouths will contaminate you
but what comes forth from there!"

( http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/06/iran-cracks-down-on-dogs.html# )

Not a Sparrow Falleth...

How often do I hear demanded
with the same easy umbrage and scorn –
sometimes quite poignant, often quite banal –
always easy, because to drop anchor in deep waters
and to wait it out requires work – and character:
how often have I heard demanded,
"Where was God?" or "What kind of 'God' would allow...?"

The real despair is entirely understandable,
the righteous indignation behind it makes a lousy argument
for self-styled atheists and agnostics or followers of
a materialistic gospel leading ultimately nowhere.

The Question begs an answer, for it assumes an intellect,
yet is intellectually weak and wanting a breath of life –
I will try to give it that, a goose in the ass, a jump start.

Putting aside any chat of "predestination" or joining the chorus
of misusers of the term karma, consider for one moment:
if I get in my car right now and someone else climbs in one,
and each of us has a preconstructed plan for the day
based on habits and wants and needs and routine – clueless,
neither of us plans in an accident, but we arrive
at the same intersection and it happens.
Someone wasn't paying attention. God always does.
(But we shell out dough for "navigators,"
and we ask, What kind of God would allow this!)

A child is murdered, a pet is run over, an elderly woman
is mugged, a homeless man is beaten half-dead, a girl is raped.
There are so many persons all at once, whose person-selves
are each planning an agenda without knowing everything,
mostly without a clue because you cannot know everything –
people crash, slip on the ice, commit suicide, shoot their mates.
Where is God? On the breath, but we aren't.

There are mass atrocities, all ideological, committed with religious fervor,
the latter unspeakably committed in the ever-abused name of that "God"
of whom we are now demanding, How can He! How dare He!
The natural world is being laid waste, greed and crass consumerism rule,
construction and de-construction and destruction – millions of egos
carrying out their grand or petty agenda simultaneously over lifetimes.
With such odds, something's bound to occur.

Ah, "God" – that laughing, scorning Psychopath with a sadistic sense of humor,
infantile and pathologically narcissistic, surely a Deity with issues.

There is one very unpopular and uncomfortable reason
for all this: we are free to choose, we are not machines.
It is a characteristic of that same God, that we are born
with this very freedom, that we came here of our own free will,
to be and to become human, to dis-cover Him as our own true nature.

It does not mean we are born conscious, nor that it will make us so.
But we are free to wake up at one time or another, and when we do,
we may also choose to stay awake and live in an awakened state.
This requires of us the most intelligent responsibility.

So where is God now, and what is it that He appears to allow?
He didn't give us ISIS, ISIS gave us ISIS. We gave ourselves
all the shit we see before us, from the most intimately personal
to the most regional or global – everything which causes some to
ask ceaselessly: WTF was God thinking! In short:

"God" will not solve your problems, remembering Him might –
that would be to mindfully and with devotion stay in the breath –
But God will not "solve" your problem.
We are given the freedom to responsibly pay attention.

And there is being with each other and for each other.
And staying really close, and really loving.

A poor woman came to Buddha,
wept over her dead son,
begged Buddha to bring the boy
back to life.
Buddha said, fine, okay, I'll do it.
First bring me a mustard seed from a
household which had never
lost a member and mourned.
She went out, she sought all over, she returned empty handed.
And she got it, and she took the Path of Dharma.
And she began to pay attention.

"For a few pennies ye buy yourselves a sparrow,
but I tell you: not a sparrow falleth, but the Father knoweth."

Not a sparrow falleth.