An Old Poet Blesses The Young Poets Of The World
God Speaking: Adjana Brought HIS Words To Me From a Mountain In My Dream
Now, it all comes to me:
The fear, the pain,
the confusion, the doubt,
the misery.
I haven’t given myself to you.
Though I said I lived for you,
I used your name in vain.
I ran from you.
I rebelled against you.
I tried to take over Heaven
and sit upon your throne.
When I said "God",
I really meant me.
When I said "I serve God,"
I really meant
let me
get what I want.
I was like the moneychangers
in your temple,
desecrating your
holiness with my ego.
I wanted to be the
flag at the head of your army,
but I wanted that army to obey me,
not you,
to fight my battle,
not yours.
And every day
I was so afraid to die,
thinking
that my death would be like yours.
And that fear kept
me from doing your work.
I had to protect
the sun and moon and stars
as though it was I who
held them in their place.
I refused to accept the fact that I
was
expendable.
Now, suddenly, ashamed, I realize:
I haven’t given myself to you.
I am still hanging back.
You are on my lips, but not in my heart.
Like a man on the beach
who has just stepped into the thin foam
of a dying wave,
at the end of its power,
I have barely wet my feet in you.
I haven’t give myself to you.
Like a woman - charming and clever,
with a low-cut dress,
flirting in the night,
with eyes like a waiting bed,
who suddenly says "NO" -
I haven’t given myself to you.
Like a man who tells a
disconsolate friend, who calls him at midnight,
"Let’s talk tomorrow",
I haven’t given myself to you.
Behold the warriors of Islam,
who bow down to you,
and say, "For you, I’ll die!
Right now! Today!"
Behold the Christian Crusaders,
who say, "I will fight my way
into Jerusalem,
or may my body rot
on the road that
leads there!"
Warring fools
believe in you
enough to die.
But they don’t know you.
I know you,
but I hang back.
Do the fires of the world
come from my lack of fire?
I haven’t given myself to you.
All my prayers
were like letters
never written.
"O, I should write to _____";
but the paper stayed in the drawer,
the ink in the bottle,
until the days passed,
finally making what was needed
seem too awkward
to proceed with.
I haven’t given myself to you.
And my deeds -
in my life, I did more hiding
than fighting,
though my hiding adorned itself
with bold colors,
pretenses,
and self-inflicted wounds
to give me an excuse
for failing.
I haven’t given myself to you.
Great God,
can you ever forgive me
for my insincerity?
I swear, I didn’t know -
I was fooled by my own act!
For my whole life.
I believed in my lie,
which is why I did
not change,
even as the world began to die,
calling out to me
with its disasters.
I thought you were my everything,
but I always kept you
at arm’s length:
I was never ready.
I haven’t given myself to you.
Dear God.
Is there still time?
Will you still take me,
even though I waited so long?
OK.
Fine.
Carry me where
You want to.
Show me what
You want.
It wasn’t what I was
planning,
but I’m beginning to see
that the controls
don’t
belong to me.
I was always told
"it’s in your hands",
"want it, and get it",
like you were some kind of
failure
if your fairy tale
didn’t come true.
But now I see,
the power they say we have
is really Yours,
and nothing’s in our hands
that’s not in Your mind.
And so,
I’ll stop crying
and working over the controls
that don’t respond.
I see it’s You
who’s doing the driving,
and there’s no button
or switch
that can reach You
at this moment.
And so, I’ll just sit back
and stop screaming "No!"
I’ll sit back
and let You take me where you
need me (or don’t need me)
- to the top of Olympus,
or straight to the garbage dump.
I’ll sit back,
and take it all in,
through the window:
the slums You give me,
and the ghosts;
the bayonet dripping with blood (my own, I think),
and the endless good-bye;
the upside-down flag,
and the stolen statue.
The lost book
and the child, beyond the earth,
saying, "Why wouldn’t
you be my father?"
The great vision
wearing chains,
spit upon by blind rodents,
smelling only their
sewers.
The cold maze
of locked doors.
The pyramid that lied;
and the pharaoh still waiting
to be more than rotting flesh
and bandages.
The moon that can’t be reached,
that always falls through one’s hands,
whenever one tries to lift it
out of the water.
The song that cannot pass
between the secret ear,
and the instrument it needs.
The stone above the treasure,
that can’t be lifted.
The photograph of the beautiful woman
that you look at,
like a prisoner
looking at green hills
outside his window.
The happiness of others,
that you feel guilty for
resenting
(but you can’t help yourself).
The needlemarks of illusions
all up and down the arm of the tired earth.
The city lights
whose light no longer reaches
your heart,
shining like make-up
that is coming off of an
aging woman,
who you never met
outside of the shadows.
The sense of end,
without completion;
unscrewing the inner light bulb
that has burned out
only to find
there is not another bulb
to take its place.
The empty street filled with litter
after the parade.
The silent stadium
where your team lost,
and your effort
to become somebody else
only left you stranded as you.
The pen without ink.
The pen with ink,
but nothing left to say.
The paper’s hurt face looking back at you,
saying,
"I used to be a beautiful tree."
Suddenly awakening in the middle of the night,
realizing that nothing matters,
it’s all about what game you play
before you die;
and the overwhelming urge to jump out of a window,
except that you know
you don’t deserve that drama.
Yes, why torment yourself,
any longer,
with the desperation to go where you’re not going?
Sit back,
go where you’re taken.
Finally, let yourself be carried away.
Go on.
Take me where You want to.
Show me what You want.
I’ll sit back and watch
the landscapes of Your choice
roll by,
I’ll wear the clothes You give me,
and read the lines
of Your script.
All my life,
I tried to reach something beautiful,
and to get there by
myself.
But Your voice was always
there, like a closed door,
telling me: "Come with me, instead.
We’re going for a ride."
All right, then. Fine!
Let’s go!
You drive,
and I’ll stop trying to wrest
the steering wheel
from Your hands.
I’ll be the passenger
and we’ll go for that ride.
I’m sure disappointment
is far more interesting than I imagined,
and even death
must be beautiful
once you stop running,
and just look into its eyes.
[Note: No offense to seniors! I’ll be coming your way soon enough, if I make it that far. Besides, the essence of being a "fogie" goes way beyond years. You know what I mean. - JRS.]
It’s a bad sign
when a fogie’s
in the passing lane.
All that open road ahead
going right towards the sun.
You know if you could
only step on the gas,
and
get clear of all the
slow ideas,
and people who are just staring
at the lines on the road,
you could drive right into
those golden rays
before they disappear.
But here, the traffic
defines your life,
not the vision of the sky.
You have to go their speed,
and you can only get off
where they’ve put an Exit sign.
You honk,
and they don’t know it’s because
you’re a poet,
or an ambulance driver
rushing a patient
to the hospital
(and they don’t recognize the
dying person inside:
it’s them!)
Instead, they are offended.
They say, ‘Do you think you’re
better than us? If
we can do it,
so can you.’
They don’t understand, at all,
how their slowness
is the most terrible form
of honking in the world,
how every inch of the road
your head is filled
with the sound of the silent honking
of them going nowhere,
forcing you to go nowhere,
too.
They don’t understand
how the darkening sky,
as the sun begins to outrun
your dreams,
is like the wailing of
a fire truck,
screaming
‘Move over!
Clear the way!
Make room for someone
who wants to live!’
Instead, they continue
to clutter the road,
driving slowly to nowhere,
forever blocking out the
somewhere that you see.
It’s a bad sign
when a fogie’s
in the passing lane,
and night is falling.
Did you ever hear
about the man
who ran around and around
in circles
because he had
nowhere to go,
but still,
felt like he must
do something.
So motion
became his way
of tricking himself:
motion,
rooted to
the same spot.
‘How busy he is,
how active he is!’
all the neighbors exclaimed,
never realizing
that his
journey
was just a way
of staying at home,
behind a locked door;
and that the man
who spent his whole life
sitting in a chair
just looking at the street,
had gone just as far
when the day was done -
even farther,
because in his stillness
he saw someone else.
Why cover
your paralysis
with motion?
Why disguise your lostness,
with a destination
that does not matter?
Why spend all your energy
running in circles?
Some circles
are like looking into a trick mirror,
they distort themselves,
until they seem to be straight lines.
In this way,
some people who think
they have gone all the way to the moon,
end up coming back
to the same childhood night
in their hearts,
and are swallowed up by the same sad loneliness
of the beginning.
Escaping takes courage.
Most escapes are only
ways of staying.
The familiar is more precious
than gold.
We don’t want to leave.
We want to live it over and over again
until it comes out right,
even though it won’t,
even though it can’t.
We would rather be in the car crash
that killed us,
and survive it,
than take another route,
or leave a minute earlier
or a minute later.
But each night
we’ll die again.
I hear
a wizard came to a man, once, to say,
‘Here is life.’
He showed it to the man
he was talking to,
so he would know
it was not a lie.
But the man would
have to break the enchantment
of his circle-walking
in order to reach it;
he would have to turn his back
on the circle center,
that was priceless
for its meaninglessness.
And so he told the wizard,
‘That’s not life’,
even though he could see it sparkling:
‘that’s not real,
what I have, here,
is life.’
And the wizard’s gift
was deflected,
like a weapon of life,
by the shield of death’s power,
which was the blood
that ran through the man’s veins,
and the vision
that his eyes
could not break;
for his eyes were captured by his fear,
and gazed
like a blind man’s out into the world,
seeing nothing
but what was within,
which had already been
stolen.
And so, the running in circles
went on and on,
until the runner finally convinced himself
that what he was doing
mattered,
which convinced others.
They even named a town
after him;
which drew
another generation
into the circle, running to try
to catch up with him.
Of course, it wasn’t the sacred circle
I’m talking about.
It was the one
below that.
The one with the square’s
spirit, but the circle’s
usefulness.
Didn’t you ever hear
this story?
Is this the first time?
Will it be the last?
The mule broke down.
You think:
She wasn’t a mule.
She was a glass butterfly.
Because you’re still standing.
But believe me,
she was so much stronger than you.
You never knew
what a mule she was,
because you could only see her carrying the things
that you carry:
a job, a problem,
something broken,
perhaps a missing man.
You never saw the
hundreds of pounds of sensitivity
loaded onto her back,
wounded by so many tiny injustices,
beyond your comprehension;
you never saw the shadows and
the ghosts
loaded onto her back,
and the sins of her courage
which were never able to grow
in your soil of fear;
and the weight of the guilt,
that came from having such powerful wings.
Like a priest without red blood,
who could not fathom
Macbeth’s crime,
or Lear’s madness,
or Othello’s jealousy,
or Oedipus’ overpowering desire
to be righteous,
surrounded by inadvertent misdeeds,
so her whole drama
was beyond your perception;
like ultraviolet light,
you could not see it,
so when you saw her fall,
you thought it was from nothing.
You thought ‘weakness’
instead of ‘heroic death’, like
Leonidas
holding the pass of life against the army of
the never-born,
until numbers finally overcame
beauty,
and courage broke
under the weight of all the world’s
cowardice.
I wonder:
did you ever feel Atlas’ shoulders
holding up the world?
You hold up your own little
unfeeling piece of the world,
and think that that is
what it is like for everyone.
‘What is Atlas complaining about?’
you ask,
feeling resentful and superior.
Do not think that everyone
travels as lightly through the universe
as you.
And did you ever know:
you were one part of the world
that she was carrying?
Like a mother tucking in a
sleeping child in the night,
she put you in her prayers,
always.
You were one more worry that she bore,
one more battle she had to
fight.
The mule broke down.
Yesterday, they bought the coffin
and said good-bye
without tears.
"So sad!" they said (still no tears).
"So young!
Maybe it was genetic.
She let things get to her."
Nobody knows
how strong she was,
how far she went
carrying the burden of her wildness,
the burden of our tameness,
the burden of the world’s shut eye
and her longing heart.
Nobody ever found the cuts,
deep in her flanks,
where the whip
of what we call "normal days"
had fallen, over and over,
trying to win her loyalty
to dreamlessness.
When you dream,
in chains,
it kills.
When you look at a star,
the mud you are standing in
becomes twice as deep.
When you have somewhere to go,
the road to nowhere
seems twice as long.
Your Disney World was her Dachau.
Your joys did nothing for her.
Your rewards were
like dry wells.
Hers was a delicate fairy’s soul
placed inside a
beast of burden.
(The world made no compensation for her beauty.)
For her, the packs put on top of her
weighed less
than the dreams taken from her,
which she carried with her
everywhere she went,
like a dead baby
still cradled by
a dazed mother,
whose love
cannot be ended by reality.
You, my friend, were born
to be a mule.
Feeling nothing, you
can take pride
in all the useless weight
you carry
to nowhere.
But never say she was not as
strong as you.
For you never knew the weight
she bore,
the world she carried
upon her back.
She was a mule.
No -
a queen, trapped
inside a mule’s body,
carrying back-breaking
emptiness
every day,
past the throne
you would not
let her
sit in.
She was a mule.
Not a mule,
but a mule…
You’ll never understand…
Dreamers go with dreamers,
the attraction is irresistible.
Dreamers go with dreamers
until they both begin to fall.
And then, there’s no one
standing in the real world
to look out for them.
They’re like twins,
both blind,
none of them can see the blows
as they begin to come,
they just get hit.
They’re like hermits
joined at the hip.
And no one will let them on
the Ark.
Their mad music
is like the walls of their own home
torn down to make a fire
in the night
of rejection.
They didn’t
fly high enough
to be offered
a chance to sell out.
And their hearts can’t
go back.
Can’t go back
to childhood,
when everyone still said,
"Good Boy",
"Good Girl."
Dreamers go with dreamers,
and it’s like poison.
She should have danced into the
middle of the boredom of a rich man.
She shouldn’t have
run away from his empty castle,
she could have filled it with herself.
Who needs a relationship,
when you can hear so many voices
in your head?
And he should have gone it alone.
Like a guerrilla
with no one else to bleed
for him,
just him and the bullets.
Now they’re tangled up in love,
and their dreams are
banging on the walls of a prison
they can’t escape from;
and they are each other’s
prison.
The acid of visions
is burning through the container
of their love.
Their arms are
like murder weapons,
and they know it
each time they kiss.
You’ve got to get out,
you’ve got to get out,
the night whispers,
while they sleep together,
separately.
Who would have ever
thought that love could
lose?
That the dreams
that nobody else wants,
could split apart two lovers,
who went so far?
Dreamers go with dreamers,
the attraction is irresistible.
Dreamers go with dreamers,
until the real world catches up.
And then, the dream dies,
or the love dies.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter which.
Either way,
it’s the end.
My whole life
my head has been under
the guillotine of time.
I have been running
with something beautiful
from the shadow
of the clock
of my dreams running out.
Like a tree
with a beautiful blossoming
of cherries to give,
I have been struggling
to bloom
before the winter;
and for me,
the winter has always come early,
one day after the warmth
of my mind’s sun.
I conceive a jewel -
and suddenly I am running
for my life,
from the robber
who wants to steal it.
Nobody sees the robber,
they call him
"just an average day";
but if they could see
the jewel
that’s swallowed up
by his harmlessness,
then they would join me
in my lament.
Look! Look! I want to scream.
Look at what they are doing to me!
Look at what they are doing to us!
But they see nothing,
because it is all still inside me.
All my life,
I have been running
because I have been trying to give birth;
but you can’t give birth
while you’re running,
and so
the crime seems to be
nothing but a figment of my imagination.
And time is closing in.
Every day, closing in.
These words
are like bubbles
coming up from the bottom of
a lake
in which a man
is drowning.
They’re just a tiny trace of what is going on.
Can’t anyone see?
Won’t anybody
lend a hand?
Wherever I go
I’m like UNDERCOVER.
If they knew who I was
they’d throw me out
in one minute.
Nobody wants someone
who’s so different.
That’s fine for a crazy artist
dying on the street,
or a homeless bum
you throw a coin to,
just to hold him off.
That’s fine for somebody
you read about in the newspaper,
whose strangeness
helps you to endure
your own normality
for a few minutes more.
But to have someone like that
working in your store,
right beside you,
or teaching your kids,
that’s something
too close to home;
that’s where you want to
have someone just like you.
And so,
you’ll never know
who’s really here,
going along with the game,
working UNDERCOVER,
pretending to be your shadow,
making sure
no trace of light
escapes from his soul,
to give him away.
Hello.
Good morning.
How are you?
Good, and you?
Good, thanks.
Another day
he’s slipped past
your guard.
He is his ID card
and his wasted life,
seeming not to know
that it’s being wasted.
Another day -
another deception -
before he returns home,
to report to God,
and tell Him
what’s really going on
in His world.
Blow your own horn.
This is how it’s done here.
If you’re quiet, you die.
If you’re humble,
they think it’s because you’re
nothing,
inside or out.
Blow your own horn.
Forget about your dignity.
Sell yourself
like a circus freak.
Build a ring of seats
around your soul
and hand out tickets.
Otherwise,
you’ll vanish
into the shadows.
Blow your own horn.
Here, genius and mediocrity
are determined
by the volume control,
hype is
the only substance
that they know.
This empty space
can be filled with gold
or mud,
so don’t waste your time
begging the rivers for a few grains of gold
at a time,
or dig your way into
the side of the mountain
for the secret.
That’s time lost you could be
blowing your horn.
Tell them your mud is gold
a thousand times,
and you won’t need to dig
for more than a minute.
Blow your own horn.
Keep quiet about yourself,
and you’ll be like a goose
flying in the night
while they sleep.
They’ll never realize
you have wings.
Blow your own horn.
Or else get ready to die
offstage.
What they don’t hear,
they
don’t see.
What they’re not told to
cherish, they won’t cherish.
Try to trick just one person
into running your way, and
before you know it, they’ll
all come running
towards you,
like you were the glowing sun.
Blow your own horn.
Yes, that’s right,
being a sun has
very little to do with shining,
nowadays.
Say "Hello, I’m the sun."
It will do you a lot
more good than giving light.
Blow your own horn
(Roland, blow the horn).
Blow your own horn.
I say this
because I love you.
Otherwise, I would
never ask you
to give up such a
beautiful (but deadly)
part of who
you are.
You’re an angel to me
but a devil
to the mouse.
I see your sweetness,
like a small white cloud
appearing beside me
when I am lonely.
He sees a giant face,
a grimace of fangs,
and is overwhelmed by the smell
of his own death.
I see you sleeping,
then rising up to play
with a tiny ball.
He is that tiny ball,
a ball filled with feelings
and terror.
I see you jumping up
on the table, and
think ‘How agile,
my little kangaroo!’
He wildly tries to run straight up the wall,
and your jumping
is like a pitiless retort
dismissing his
feat.
His jump is like someone exclaiming,
"I see a UFO!",
and your jump is like the voice that says,
"No, those are only the lights
of an airplane."
I see you beautiful,
sleeping beside me on my pillow,
embracing me like a lover,
with your paw.
He sees a sudden shape,
and is engulfed in horrible pain.
How can it be?
My angel,
his devil?
My gentle friend,
his cruel tormentor?
Two faces?
Yes.
The two faces of the world.
Father
and soldier.
My Country ‘Tis of Thee,
and him.
My smile and
my gun.
My house with
laughter,
and your house
in flames.
Brothers of the world!
Don’t ever let your
power to love deceive you,
or console you -
for we, too,
have our mice.
Straight arrow.
I’m afraid to fly straight,
because I might land
in your heart.
Crooked arrow.
I always miss the target.
It’s my way of practicing
missing you.
Straight arrow.
I could leave everything behind
and just become pure flying.
I could eliminate all the distance
between me and my goal
by giving up the fears
and expectations
that turn yards into miles.
But what if my goal
became you?
Crooked arrow.
Like a bodyguard who leaps
between you and an assassin,
I leap between myself
and my dreams,
to save you.
I can’t be trusted
with that accuracy,
with that power.
Straight arrow.
I could fly past the stars
and land into the heart of anything,
I could reach the state
where fear vanishes
and everything is connected,
I could reach the time before
the arrow and the target were separate,
the time when the arrow
and the target were joined together
like ecstatic lovers.
And I would not even need
to pull the bowstring.
All in a flash,
I could compress eternity
into my will
by becoming the part of the universe
that is an arrow,
and is everywhere.
But then, could I
refrain from forcing you
to change?
Crooked arrow.
I want you to be happy,
more than I want
my tribe to live,
more than I want
to emerge
from the darkness.
What is it about you?
Straight arrow.
Voices are calling for me
to fly true.
The eagle who gave his feathers
to my shaft
is saying,
I will soar no more in the sky.
I have given my soaring to you.
Don’t let me down.
Crooked arrow.
But there, I missed - again!
Some say it is a curse.
"You must have made an enemy
of some witch,"
they say.
But I know it’s not that.
I know that it’s you.
My need for you is the curse.
It’s what keeps my arrow
missing the mark,
which guarantees
I could never hurt you,
by striking you,
or flying into the heart of something
you tried to reach
but never could.
Straight arrow.
What I want.
Crooked arrow.
What you want.
Crooked arrow.
What I want.
(I am sorry, eagle!
I am sorry, sky!)
Now I know the truth:
I would kill the universe
to defend you.
It’s what I’m doing
right now.
Years of my life’ve
been taken away,
while you were just sitting around
thinking you were the king
of the world,
wanting my problems to end, like wiping a piece of dirt
off of your crown;
wanting me to disappear
like an insect
into the ground,
whose bizarre life,
down where no one could see,
wouldn’t get in the way
of who you were pretending to be.
And all your triumphs
just made me laugh:
they couldn’t compare
to my singing
in the slave fields
that only the cotton heard.
And don’t put it down
to sour grapes,
don’t let yourself off that easy.
Your accidental mountain
turned you into a blind man,
while something a lot more beautiful
lay rotting at your feet,
the fruit the whole world wanted to eat;
but you left it there
to rot,
because your position
was too high
in the place that doesn’t matter,
(but feels so good),
to ever stoop down and pick it up;
you were always busy, anyway,
for you one interruption
was like a knife stab,
so what chance did
a whole chaotic life
and all its despair
and stolen light
have,
knocking on your door?
No, the alchemist
was too busy transmuting lead
into lead,
to feel the pain
of the gold
that wanted
to come into the world.
And I wonder
if you ever felt,
in the moments you were so happy,
how I was being cut
into pieces.
And I ask myself:
Did you never once hear
the duet of our lives?
Your joy
and my pain,
your success
and my disaster,
your contentment
and my frustration,
your vacation
and my cage,
your fulfilled obsession
and my murdered dream,
your life
and my death?
What a fierce and tragic concert!
But I’m sure
you never heard it.
Your life always
insulated you
from the world’s cries.
And you turned everything off that wasn’t you,
like a TV
that didn’t have
any good shows on.
Yes, I’m angry.
They say at the end
you should let it go,
but I leave the earth
knowing you were supposed to be me,
just like you always
wanted me to be you.
But you threw away
the chance I never got,
and worst of all,
you never cried once for me.
And even now,
when you think you’re crying for me,
you’ll still only be crying
for yourself…
Father, forgive them.
They know not
what they do.
You were the best
and there you were,
hanging from a cross
and coming up with those
lines.
How did you do it?
I don’t think I can.
Even the little nails
of my life
hurt too much.
Isn’t it their job to know
what they’re doing?
"Ignorance of the law
is no excuse."
Isn’t a heart supposed
to be able to see in the dark?
Father, forgive them.
They know not
what they do.
Oh great!
Now what am I supposed
to do with my anger?
Just let it
burn a hole in me
from the inside,
while they make a hole in me
from the outside?
Or do you really think
I can just send it away
like opening a bird cage
in a field?
Well, my anger
doesn’t want to fly away.
It wants
to stay.
Father, forgive them.
They know not
what they do.
What an example you’ve set!
You climb up an impossible mountain,
and now
I’m supposed to follow?
I’m not a mountain goat.
No, not me!
I’m used to the valleys -
the valleys where you bleed
when you’re cut,
and anger is the soul’s answer
to injustice,
and forgiveness
has a price - tears at least.
What kind of payment is it
to just be left
hanging on the cross?
Father, forgive them.
They know not
what they do.
Father, I know it’s from weakness.
I know it’s from blindness: their sins.
They’re handicapped.
I should be sympathetic.
But how can I be
when I’m in so much pain?
Why don’t you take my pain away?
Why these
hot coals to walk over
on the way to forgiveness?
Father, forgive them.
They know not
what they do.
No, I’m sorry -
I can’t!
I just can’t!
Down here, on the earth,
in our language,
forgiveness translates into
"weakness."
They’ll look at me,
dying sweetly, and say,
"Hey, this is easier
than we thought!";
and then, they’ll
do it to someone else.
No, they have to take out the nails, first,
and at least say they’re sorry.
Otherwise,
I’ll curse them to the end.
Father, forgive them.
They know not
what they do.
Well - no - I can’t -
I can’t go that far -
not as far as you.
But maybe -
if I look -
if I see the scars of the
nails that went through their hands,
on another day -
I’ll understand -
just a little.
Forgive them? - no -
or maybe.
Yes, maybe
I’ll forgive them
by not becoming
like them.
I won’t pass it on.
I won’t let these nails turn me into
the center of the universe.
I won’t forget
that other people have feelings
in their hands,
the next time
I see a hammer and nails lying around.
Father, forgive them.
They know not
what they do.
No. I won’t.
I won’t forgive them.
But I’ll let a little
pity enter my fury.
I’ll look into the mirror
of their souls,
until I can’t see me.
I’ll let them
save me
from becoming them;
I’ll mix a little
gratitude into my
rage,
like sugar into
black coffee…
Don’t you see?
You’re too great for me.
But this will be
one step in your direction,
at least,
my way of saying,
"I want to be like you,
but can’t."
Father, forgive them.
They know not
what they do.
Father, please forgive me, too.
They don’t know what it is they’re doing,
but I do know.
And I just can’t forgive them.
Please, forgive me,
even though I can’t
forgive them.
The road to Love and Peace
is a road of thorns,
a road of darkness,
a road of pain
that drives you to the truth.
The sky of Love and Peace
is a sky of black clouds
hiding the sun.
The sun won’t come out
till the hail falls,
till the lightning lashes out,
till the thunder
shakes the earth,
and makes everything run inside
except the seed.
Love and Peace.
Love and Peace.
Love and Peace.
Love and Peace
won’t get here
till you’ve walked through
the fields of anger,
red with rage,
and fallen into the pit
of sorrow,
black as night;
till you’ve cried away
your pride and hate,
and felt as empty
as the millions of miles
between two stars,
whose light takes years
to even say a word
that has no warmth.
Love and Peace
don’t live on the surface.
They live deep inside,
and you have to fall
through endless
black universes
to reach them.
I’ve seen men smile
and offer their hand,
then, the next day,
creep up from behind to
kill their own brother.
And the words on their lips
were Love and Peace.
I did it
for Love and Peace.
That’s because they were impatient.
They wanted to possess the buried treasure
called Peace as fast as they could,
and dug everywhere for it
except in themselves.
They used the wrong map.
They brought their shovels to the
wrong "X."
And love - they couldn’t
endure the sight of themselves
as they were, so they called their
lovelessness "love": and then,
there was nothing left to
look for.
And the Darkness laughed.
He wore the mask of their "love and peace"
as he burned the world
down.
Love and Peace.
You don’t find them in a minute.
Like a fisherman,
you have to sit by the deep waters
for hours,
waiting for the truth to bite.
Like the doctor who wants to heal,
you must be prepared to see
the ruined face that’s pulled out of the wreck,
and you must be able to love
its terrible disfigurement
enough to bring it back from the dead.
Even if it’s your own face,
don’t look away!
Like the loner
writing poems
outside the happiness
of the world,
you must have the courage
not to put on a mask,
just so you will be invited
to the party.
In the darkness,
you must light a candle
to the poison you have within,
and say, "Thank You for not being my God."
Love and peace.
Love and peace.
How many wanted them in a single day,
and lost them forever?
How many fooled themselves
with one act of kindness,
under which they tried to sweep
all the dust of their soul?
How many let blind men and thieves
become their guides,
and tell them they were right
when they knew they were wrong?
How many made the pact
to live on the surface,
and let others live on the surface,
while the depths
used them all
like pawns?
How many refused to believe
who they really were,
dismissing the hard offerings
of the truth
like a ghost story?
How many were asphyxiated
on the shore,
because they were afraid of drowning
in the sea? (They didn’t know
they were fish.)
Love and peace.
Love and peace.
Don’t think they are
easy to reach.
You’re all born with them,
but they lie across the inner sea
between your two hearts.
They’re surrounded by giant snakes,
and guarded by dragons:
locked up inside the tower
of self-knowledge.
You’ll find them at the end of a long, hard
journey,
not at the
fingertips of a whim.
And this, my friend, is why I write
so many dark poems.
This is why I burn my bitterness
and rage
into pieces of paper,
leaving it, like the semen
of everything I do not want to sire,
in the body of
my awareness.
This is why, in my writing,
I am sometimes like a
hermaphrodite,
raping myself with words
to produce
the monster child
that holds the key
to my beauty.
And this is why I sometimes seem to be
so angry at the ones who I love,
and so unforgiving.
I need to know that part of me.
I need to know it
so I don’t become it.
I need to put it down where I can see it
and can’t escape it.
I need to know where I am,
so I will know
where I have to go.
I need to reach the real
Love and Peace,
beyond the fake
Love and Peace.
Fake Love and Peace
is what is destroying the world.
And one more time, I say to those
I love:
it is because I love you
that I am angry at you.
It is because I love you
that your every insignificant act of cruelty,
or simple oversight,
has been felt like the ferocity of
a war.
These poems are
my way of saying
Why do you only love me
as you can?
Why can’t you love me
the way I want to be loved?
Or is that only my own form of cruelty?
Love and peace.
Today,
I release you from my anger.
But only because I’ve felt it.
May God guide you and protect you,
always,
and heal your soul
from the wounds
of my excessive need.
Love and Peace.
Love and Peace.
And now, to the world
(for you and I come from
the same place):
Brothers!
Love and Peace are born
out of darkness.
You won’t find them in the light:
not in that pale light
where you’re looking for them;
only in the burning bright light
that lies on the other side of
darkness.
Look for light in the darkness.
In your darkness.
In your sorrow.
In your faults.
In your sins.
In your wounds.
In their wounds.
Take your little boat out
upon the stormy inner waves.
If your ship is smashed to
pieces,
you’ll know you’re on the
right track.
Love and Peace.
Love and Peace.
They don’t come easy.
Only the fake Love and Peace come easy,
and they’re what is destroying the world.
"Kill him for love.
Kill him for peace."
The real Love and Peace
come only at the end of
a long, long night.
The real Love and Peace
are what the world is
waiting for.
And you could be the one to bring them…
Who says poems are just?
Who says poems are fair?
Poems scream whenever a soul
is stepped on.
It doesn’t matter if it was an
accident.
And it doesn’t matter if the screaming
makes the accident
seem as if it were a crime.
That’s unfair,
but it doesn’t matter.
Poems have no sense of morality,
they just scream.
"Fire! Fire!" screams the soul.
Again?
The fire trucks come racing in,
but it turns out it was
all about something invisible.
There’s no smoke,
except in the words.
Softer than a fly’s legs,
a moment
landed upon a heart,
but the poem said
"Atom Bomb!"
No, it’s not fair.
It’s a poem.
The poet sees a shadow in the darkness
and shouts, "It’s a monster!"
Then he sees
it’s only the clothes he hung up
to wear the next day.
But in the poem,
the monster remains.
The fear is too beautiful to banish.
He couldn’t bear to kill the magnificence of the mistake
by making a correction.
Like a perfectly-cut diamond,
it has to stay
just the way it came out.
Unfair?
Of course!
It’s a poem.
"Inexact," says the scientist.
"Unjust," says the politician.
"Unfair," says the priest.
The poem says,
who cares?
And the poet listens.
Because he is hopelessly in love
with the poem.
A captive of this most imprecise beauty,
he writes on and on,
no matter how much broken glass
his trance leaves behind.
He may not be fair.
He may not be just.
He may not know what he is doing.
But every once in a while,
he stumbles into
something
that justifies his callous irresponsibility:
the heart of who we are.
A lost piece of our dream.
And then, suddenly,
his delusions
become the oasis
of us all.
An Old Poet Blesses The Young Poets Of The World
They’re bleeding words.
Their visions are coming out
as words,
and they’re trying to bind
your wounds
with words.
They’re young poets
and the world wants to belong to them
as soon as it can.
I’ve been watching this egg
for a long time -
their egg,
the poetry egg -
wondering what will hatch out of it!
Maybe this generation
will be the one
we thought we were,
but found out that we weren’t.
Maybe it will carry us,
like wounded soldiers,
out of the line of fire
of the world we left them,
to its own place
in the sun.
It’s that time of life,
before impossibility
has seized the throne.
The time when
dreams
still have a chance!
Poets are the horses
that pull the chariot of dreams
across the earth.
They are the flag
of every generation,
and it is the poet,
more than the general
or the king,
who decides the fate
of the world.
Though no one believes it,
the poem has the power of the
tide that swallowed Pharaoh’s army,
and the power of the manna
that kept the dreamers alive
in the desert.
A time without poets
is dead.
And death, with a poem,
is life that
never ends.
That is why I stand,
today, and every day,
beside the poetry egg,
giving my prayers and thanks
to every new poet
who comes out of the shell
of silence’s safety,
into this wounded world
that needs a song.
GOD Speaking: Adjana Brought HIS Words To Me From A Mountain In My Dream
When you see the sunrise,
it is God saying, "Good morning."
When you see the moon in the sky,
it is God’s light shining on you
in the night.
When you hear the ocean’s waves
pounding on the shore,
it is God trying to reach you.
When you see the stars,
it is God’s way of giving small gifts to you,
even in the middle
of your darkness.
When you hear a bird sing,
it is God telling you
you can fly.
When you see a fish
swimming beneath the crystal-clear waters of the sea,
it is God’s way of saying,
Immerse yourself in me.
When the wind blows,
it is God’s way of saying,
Don’t be trapped in yourself,
listen to what is coming
from far away.
When you find a seed in a fruit,
don’t think it worthless,
it is God’s way of saying
it’s time for you
to give birth to something:
put it in the earth.
When you see a tear fall,
it’s God’s way of saying,
"Go there."
When you see a blind man
struggling to walk,
it’s God’s way of
showing you yourself:
but you are too blind to see!
When a fierce storm comes
and shakes the earth,
washing away people’s homes
and dreams,
it’s God’s way of saying
Look at what you’ve done!
When the spring comes,
it is God’s way of saying,
Isn’t it time?
You can do this, too,
with the heart I gave you!