ASPEN HOLYFUNK

Thought for the Day

2012-02-02T05:14:00.000-08:00

You have wakened not out of sleep,

but into a prior dream,

and that dream lies within another, and so on,

to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand.

The path that you are to take is endless,

and you will die before you have truly awakened.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

god's country

2012-02-01T19:42:00.000-08:00

I saw a god

and the god

I saw was not the god

I was told to see

or call upon.

The god I saw

was steam and late afternoon light.

The god I saw was

gleaming spray,

simmer and foam,

in the deep, deep world.

I saw a god who was

water, stone and sand.

I saw a god whirling

in a million atoms.

And resurrection

was the sky.

Song of the Day

2012-02-01T08:31:00.001-08:00

Thought for the Day

2012-02-01T04:17:00.000-08:00

"What is to give light must endure burning."

— Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.

And Time Began

2012-01-31T22:13:00.000-08:00

The arc of our risky

Dynamic transports me.

We almost merged when we fell.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-31T04:32:00.000-08:00

"Where the Mystery is present, joy is infinite; where the Mystery has departed, efficacy is exhausted and the spirit disappears."

Ge Hong (284 - 364)

Inward Sight

2012-01-30T16:19:00.000-08:00

we dared under stars reverberating

to divine together

it purifies to

think of how we luminesced

as we emptied ourselves

Thought for the Day

2012-01-30T04:27:00.000-08:00

In ancient times, in the "time of inspiration." the poet flew from

one world to another, "riding on dragons," as the Chinese said.

Isaiah rode on those dragons, so did Li Po and Pindar. They

dragged behind them long tails of dragon smoke. Some of that

dragon smoke still boils out of Beowulf. ...This dragon smoke

means that a leap has taken place in the poem.

The associative paths... allow us to leap from one part of the brain

to another and lay out their contraries. Moreover it's possible that

what we call "mythology" deals precisely with these abrupt juxtapositions...

using what Joseph Campbell called "mythological thinking,"

it moves the energy along a spectrum - either up or down.

It can awaken the "lost music," walk on the sea, cross the

river from instinct to spirit.

It is in the interval of the leap that "so much happens when no one is watching" and this is related to Richard Schechner's idea that certain rituals require "selective inattention." He says: "Selective inattention allows patterns of the whole to be visible, patterns that otherwise would be burned out of the consciousness by a too intense concentration.

Robert Bly, In This World

A Promise

2012-01-29T21:27:00.000-08:00

The Peep show

of the Moonlight Milkshake Stars

and the Bubble of Eternity in the Unborn Void

of Everything we love

means nothing but more and more

spicy, mind over matter surprises.

Don’t be fooled.

The milky juice of everything

is spilling over, door to door,

up and down, a madplay

of promise, spinning all of us

into one song of soft breathing.

And it’s very sunny

this snowy morning.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-29T04:51:00.000-08:00

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."

— Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Space Conjured

2012-01-28T18:45:00.000-08:00

I wanted blue loops that heal,

like language, like love going everywhere

to be with you on a wide path bending

around an open center.

I wanted others to feel the radiant heat

when you pressed your head to mine.

But they only recalled us

and my diamond belief. They wept

when our emptiness had its own energy.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-28T03:56:00.000-08:00

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said
"one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.
"When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

(Through the Looking Glass)

Lovingly Forever

2012-01-27T20:46:00.000-08:00

We take the journey in the flesh

But fire burns us into here and now,

with the unlikely and impossible

toward a milkier life,

in the smallest things we do.

It’s all I have today.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-27T05:34:00.000-08:00

"There are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end."

—

Tree of Life

Knowing Full Well

2012-01-26T20:53:00.000-08:00

I was actually snow this year,

for a while,

gray and blood cold.

Then like a wonder hunter

found the grand aerial

superstructure again.

Came back to praise

the vaster side of things:

aspens in the dreamfields

prayers in the snowfields

not a sorrow in the heart

Home

to the moonlight internal

like a soft winged bird

in rapture

falling out of time, out of time.

The veil lifted.

Grace descended.

I saw myself

as I stood

looking skyward

watching everything leave

just to arrive.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-26T05:13:00.000-08:00

Happy are those who know:

Behind all words, the Unsayable stands;

And from that source alone, the Infinite

Crosses over to gladness, and us -

Free of our bridges

Built with the stone of distinctions;

So that always, within each delight,

We gaze at what is purely single and joined.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Finish the Dream

2012-01-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

Now
open crazy
between nothing and light
I say love.
Now, on the wild
divine chance
I say love.
Now, hearted by
mind over matter,
holding fast
to whatever happens,
Now, conceived in
wonder, reborn
in glittergold
brilliance
I say love.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-25T03:41:00.000-08:00

There is something inside me. What is it?

Vincent Van Gogh

At Your Service

2012-01-24T20:20:00.000-08:00

A poem

is never just a poem.

This one's a sky

where the heart explodes.

It does not seek shelter

from a distance.

It's scarred all over

with the sweetest music.

It doesn't exist

without you,

from a read

to a key.

A heavy dawn,

a fall; it has no place to be,

no way to leave.

It's everything in transition,

nothing of permanence,

flicker and flame,

center of the circle.

It was then

but is still now.

When the writer's gone

it reconstructs itself

into a fable, a rhythm

and a hunger.

An expanding inside

as we tumble;

carries us further

and farther than

we've ever gone;

it's the breath of

what's already blowing.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-24T04:20:00.000-08:00

Unsophisticated teachers say that God is pure

being. He is as high above being as the highest

angel is above a gnat. I would be speaking as incorrectly

in calling God a being as if I called the sun pale or black.

God is neither this or that.

~ Meister Eckhart

Original Language

2012-01-23T19:07:00.000-08:00

It was poetry and then

it was a thousand blessings

but it was poetry

bestowed the many treasures.

It was faith and then

well, it was harmonized in you

but it was poetry

and birthlessness.

It was death and then

mind over matter?

in the morning—

in open doors—

imaginary blossoms

of—and then it was blue air,

clouds passing through words,

angels in disguise,

a holy hidingplace,

oh holy day of life, it was life

but it was poetry, bright dream

of eternal childhood's inner light,

all directions in and out.

Everyone invited.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

"There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls."

— Howard Thurman

All Right Now

2012-01-22T18:43:00.000-08:00

Looking west at snow comforted hills.

He is challenged not to disappear.

Wild geese bless the sky.

Seeds of passage and escape with nothing to show but an edge.

Little dreams being prayed.

To be. Embodied. Until through the wind.

Song of the Day

2012-01-22T08:19:00.001-08:00

Thought for the Day

2012-01-22T04:58:00.000-08:00

"Practice is allowing everything in your life to wake you up."

Mirabai Bush

Fully In Light

2012-01-21T21:36:00.000-08:00

nothing in your place

sometimes less too

full bloom in my heart

perfectly glad

I am now here

sky the only thing

Thought for the Day

2012-01-21T03:23:00.000-08:00

Being tired of people who come with words, but no speech,

I made my way to the snow-covered island.

The wild does not have words.

The pages free of handwriting stretched out on all sides!

I came upon the tracks of reindeer in the snow.

Speech but no words.

~ Tomas Transtromer

translation by Robert Bly

from The Half-Finished Heaven

Heavenly Places

2012-01-20T19:53:00.000-08:00

O Lord

Behind weed and bird at dawn

Let me not roam falsely

In the mirror of my mind

And not block my ears

From hearing inside

How deep my ignorance

On this poof called earth

In the presence of breathing things

Illumined like a child again

My lonely words be held

In the vast envelope of sky

Outside a thousand laws of men

Thought for the Day

2012-01-20T04:24:00.000-08:00

"Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled –
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing –
that the light is everything… And I do."

— from The Ponds by Mary Oliver.

Holy Surprise

2012-01-19T18:22:00.000-08:00

always we are faces of heaven

so light

in the sky of today

beams of sun in the morning

to the divine dream

which reflects

our tender dust

we do not know what to do

with the great free treasure

Have we closed our eyes

Buddha says:

'All is possible'

enigmas everywhere

turn to the sky

wake up

again and again

Thought for the Day

2012-01-19T02:38:00.001-08:00

"The world - whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world - it is astonishing."

- Wisława Szymborska
from her Nobel lecture The Poet and the World

Ever Plainer

2012-01-18T19:15:00.000-08:00

I lived your heart of light

your space inside.

Beyond you and me

nostalgia of all

the paths secretly sought.

From the flowing through walls of the word

we will speak in other tongues,

of darkness and distance.

See beyond the last horizon

of fragile twilight

to hidden forms and shapes.

I lived your heart of light

and your space inside

and the rhythm we felt

between our souls

that leads towards

wordless joys

we dream

until the thin wall falls.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-18T04:03:00.000-08:00

TO PRAISE IS THE WHOLE THING!

Rainer Maria Rilke

Saved By Something Or Other

2012-01-17T19:40:00.000-08:00

Only a primitive map of intuition to guide him,

all acknowledged certainties and signs

from the edge of the universe abandoned.

Word secrets from the sky tied around his neck,

a bird mask because he does not know.

An unknown voice softens his sorrow.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-17T03:14:00.000-08:00

Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted brethren, whom, tyrant, he calls free: lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity, that wishes but acts not!
For every thing that lives is Holy.

Chorus, William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Specks Leaving

2012-01-16T19:04:00.000-08:00

Before the invisible hand splits the word like a piece of wood

Then will be the time to take flight

here in the silence of a winter afternoon

to the enigma of the meadow’s true weight,

to the immaculate covenant of the imaginable,

to the affirmation of what the signs mean,

with the shaped wings of the heron

who knows how in that moment

to align with the space of air

so as to turn away

become one with the gusts.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-16T04:56:00.001-08:00

Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver

Sky Ceaselessly Flowing

2012-01-15T20:29:00.000-08:00

Where thoughts flow to the edge of space,

blending with clouds,

where inside my deep place, my mystic child revels,

I breathe through debris—

made of bird language and grass,

the distance, letting go,

and loops of wakefulness.

I stand still, and feel its burn.

With my open arms,

asking third eye questions,

I no longer bargain.

I know that I don’t know.

I realize the immense array of possibilities,

and my separateness is gone--

Thought for the Day

2012-01-15T04:10:00.000-08:00

"...the substance of poetry does not lie in the sound of the word, nor in its color, nor in the poetic line, nor in the complex sensations, but in the depths of the spirits and this deep pulse is what the soul contributes, if it contributes anything, with a voice appropriate to itself, in a courageous answer to the touch of the world."

Antonio Machado 1875-1939

The Least Distance

2012-01-14T21:03:00.000-08:00

Joy hereandnow in the shape of a dream.

I am a child again.

I see my milky longings like body music,

inexpressible delight.

In the crystal silence tiny heavens

tilt into blue.

The child picks up a crayon

draws a colorful future.

On a rooftop, under a forever sky

he climbs a tower where a princess sleeps.

Holy is the place

where her desire lies.

Weaving strands of Milky Way into a net

of stars he lowers her into his tabernacle of words.

In the blissful night

Here is the magic and deep devotion

that has not a shore.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-14T03:41:00.000-08:00

A Master once described the journey to enlightenment as ‘like filling a sieve with water’. When a woman questioned this Master on his meaning, he gave her a sieve and a cup, and they went to the sea, where he asked her to fill the sieve with water. She poured a cupful of water into the sieve . It was instantly gone . ‘Spiritual practice is the same,’ the Master explained, ‘if we stand on the rock of I, and try to ladle the divine realization in. That’s not the way to fill the sieve with water, nor the self with divine life.’ He took the sieve and threw it into the sea, where it sank. ‘Now it’s full of water, and will remain so. That’s spiritual practice. It is not ladling cupfuls into the individuality, but becoming totally immersed in the sea of divine life.

~ author unknown

from 1001 Pearls of Buddhist Wisdom

Gentle Branches

2012-01-13T20:17:00.000-08:00

If we touch
they say we'll flow,
weave a fabulous song,
open new lands,
calculate mysterious formulas,
speak to lost gods.
Our lives will be the last
of an endangered season.

The winds of absence still blow.
A language of an opposite direction
passes through the landscape of contemplation,
riddles and poems,
a bright furious blue, an edible sky.

If time heals all wounds,
enter the days of miracles,
elegantly, randomly.
Everything
is already written.

Let's take the shape of an  immaculate
meadow, an empty cloud and
a flock of birds,
the endless space of sweet grace.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-13T03:43:00.001-08:00

"I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers.
The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."

- Ken Kesey

Awakening Wonder

2012-01-12T12:22:00.000-08:00

Since the age of reason

my thirst for you has increased.

Today my hands bring you blue

and a jeweled heart inside a red box

with your name on it from the moon's womb to deliver you home.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

Your love should never be offered to the mouth of a stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

~ Hafiz

Pitaa Hamaraa

2012-01-11T19:31:00.000-08:00

The wind is blowing new ways to love. Somewhere over the garden walls heavenly rivers flow like blood flows through our bodies, a miraculous healing everywhere, everywhere, of wounds we didn't even know we suffered. When matter meets matter, a cold eye of the moon. When an answer meets an answer, lips across my bones. When matter meets an answer, only a few miles from home. And that's because we don't only live in the world. We make it up.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-11T04:02:00.000-08:00

The cold made them clasp each other the tighter; their sighs seemed more profound; their eyes, though they could scarcely discern them in the gloom, seemed bigger; and in the stillness that enfolded them a word, softly murmured, would fall upon their hearts like the note of a crystal bell and pass, trembling with infinite vibrations, into silence.

Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Ch. 19

Non-doing

2012-01-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

Promise surrounds the word silence.

The Angel of Dreams undertakes the impossible.

Forever within me and outside of time.

This space is a road to some other place.

All the more all and everlasting deep glory.

a dream

entwines

more than

anything

each day

a mysterious

incarnation

...

all words

are

the

present

....

great symphony

beyond

desire

Thought for the Day

2012-01-10T04:47:00.000-08:00

The existential psychologist Rollo May observed that while repressed sexuality was the neurosis of Freud's age, it is hardly the neurosis of our age. The neurosis of our age, May suggests, is the fear of being all that we are. Afraid of being all that we are, we pretend to be less than we are. But because, at some level, we know we are pretending, we experience anxiety that our charade will be discovered and we will have to stand up and become all that we really are and are called to be.

James Finley, The Contemplative Heart

Unforseeable Ways

2012-01-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

...Once
I got lost in the grace of your resting place
Among the orange blossoms and saints
Contemplating the bonfires of the heart
In love with the thresholds.

You of the open wound.
Your different rhythms and warm, blue stars.
Your hands of night rain in the desert.
You sculpted by imagination
Your communion essence. Eyes full of moons.

Friend
We clung together, drifted, entered
The Palace of Fire.

Skylike.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-09T04:22:00.000-08:00

The Dominican tradition is to pass on to others, what you have received in meditation. I sense that is what is happening here. So just confirm this for us--you say it is all right to know nothing? For many, it might seem like a lack.

Meister Eckhart: Your unknowing is not a lack but rather, your highest perfection, and passively to receive is your highest action.

from Conversations with Meister Eckhart

Subtle Wonders

2012-01-08T20:02:00.000-08:00

Raw wind and drifting snow

Somewhere here within us

a belief in something

like a bless-ed, unhinged door

in the fabric of the mind

In calm, unadulterated

worship, a shine

of pure, communion light

connects the unconnected

in falling dark

against the cold and winter

night

Thought for the Day

2012-01-08T03:59:00.000-08:00

My soul was a light blue gown, sky-coloured,
I left it on a cliff by the sea
And naked I came to you, resembling a woman

Edith Sodergran

Dissolved Walls Between Souls

2012-01-07T17:37:00.000-08:00

Straight pathway lost.

Call to the sunlines

of lengthening luminescence.

See how they grow

tinged with the Spirit of

day’s last light.

Know they are the enchantments

of a kiss. You and your name

touching essence.

Are they my dream shining through your eyelashes?

Are they the year stretching into snow?

Thought for the Day

2012-01-07T04:20:00.000-08:00

"Some days, anything is wonderful. In its
detail, in its conception, in its chainlink leading
into the rest of the physical and conceptual cosmos, anything
is wonderful."

- Albert Goldbarth

Perfect Everything

2012-01-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

Ron Byers

Then when I found I did not know

I emerged from my begging hole

Singing for the song

Metaphysical stars exploding in my soul

My half of the sky with yours

That is a body filled with clouds and grace

Undivided

in a communion of matter

How can I be clearer about my intentions?

Thought for the Day

2012-01-06T05:44:00.000-08:00

“One purpose of poetry is to forget about what you know, and think about what you don’t know. There is an old idea that only by leaving the body can a man think. Such a leaving concerns the body of knowledge as well as the physical body. After all, as Montale says, if the purpose of poetry lay in making oneself understood, there would be no purpose in writing it.”…….

“The fundamental world of poetry…..is the inward world. The poem expresses what we are just beginning to think, thoughts we have not yet thought. The poem must catch these thoughts alive, holding them in language that is also alive, flexible and animal-alike as they.

The poem with images is therefore like a lion about to come into existence. A person meets the poem among trees at night. On the path in front of him, he sees a lion who does not know he is there. The lion is changing from his old ancient substance back into a visible body. So far the tip of the tail, the ears, the eyes, and perhaps a paw or two have come.”

Robert Bly

Summit of Emancipation

2012-01-05T18:55:00.000-08:00

A universe of flesh and bone,

Matter exploding with color.

The invisible illuminated,

The commonplace obliterated.

By awe we alpha and omega
Our way from the quakeshake deep
To the unmanifested within.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-05T04:35:00.000-08:00

There's a skin or a hide between ourselves and our inner being. And in the West that skin is very thick. Inside there's a sea and that sea is your inner life, your spiritual life, and your sexual impulses-everything you've gotten from the memory stores of evolution. Then there's the outside world made of buildings and automobiles. And these two worlds can't rub against each other. It's too painful. Therefore you develop a hide exactly like a cow develops a hide.You don't want her guts to rub against the barn.

Robert Bly

The Ecstatic

2012-01-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

Just to wake for a second
and to not ask anything.
Just to wake, why?

From this already beautiful
world full of parallels,
brightly colored silk stories

and a sky of all
that sun and blue and
the great holy heart’s rebirth

in various states of heaven,
singing between the words
in wild garbled ecstasy.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-04T05:39:00.000-08:00

Forever Oneness,
who sings to us in silence,
who teaches us through each other.
Guide my steps with strength and wisdom.
May I see the lessons as I walk,
honor the Purpose of all things.
Help me touch with respect,
always speak from behind my eyes.
Let me observe, not judge.
May I cause no harm,
and leave music and beauty after my visit.
When I return to forever
may the circle be closed
and the spiral be broader.

~ Bee Lake,
(an aboriginal woman)

Floating Spirit

2012-01-03T17:14:00.000-08:00

We can't excavate the soul, only touch her outer lips with the fearless heart of metaphor. The soul can't excavate herself, only in some kind of mantra of Light. Like the sun we can wake up from a dream to The Dream. And the divine expansive Dream leans on the grace of flesh. We're a flaming imperfection of lovely beauty, like flocks of small birds lost in a world of sky where anything is possible. A Mystical Maze. Our hope rests on the evolution of time, on the All we cannot see.

Sky Song of the Week

2012-01-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

Thought for the Day

2012-01-03T00:38:00.001-08:00

Late have I loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new, late have I loved you. For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things which you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called and cried to me to break open my deafness and you sent forth your beams and you shone upon me and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and now do pant for you...

St. Augustine, City of God

More Than Anything

2012-01-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

In the crazy world, the bubble of unknowing
is not the question, forgetting
transience, it's being in the joy of brilliance
and not the dry-edged hard.

Let dazzling wonder come today,
touching deep essence
seek one another, embrace
the flaming song.

If we could enter a wild garden,
if we could learn new words beyond the flowers.

Thought for the Day

2012-01-02T04:48:00.000-08:00

light made from nothing

I'll tell you what love of this life is.
It's looking up
through trees newly bare of leaves
and seeing there the oldest road.
a broken line of stars
stretching out across the sky.

It's thinking,
this could be enough.

Light Made From Nothing
Susan Elbe

Essential Satchidananda

2012-01-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

Days so brief when we realize
Looking inside ourselves
Everything is light passing

Someone opens a door inside the sky
Just what we're born for
Fire and roses

Come Shiva dance with us
In this blissful day
Keep us awake

Thought for the Day

2012-01-01T06:20:00.000-08:00

"So be it. I am
a wholeness I’ll never know.
Maybe that’s the best."

— Hayden Carruth, from “Five Short Shorts”

Saecula Saeculorum

2011-12-31T15:39:00.000-08:00

Every word lets you know
Every word is a dream of change
And you are the whispered word
We are everyday thoughts touching
Today, through cold wind
Lonely afternoon
Early darkness

I don’t walk alone
I climb with a meadow inside

I walk and walk. Having embraced the longing
I fall upward, a burning star, through a doorway
into the kingdom of stars

Every breath
a beating of wings

Your heat lives in me
the boy, the infant, the old, the strong, young
I see all forms of buoyancy
The sky changes
The winter crawls into us
We stay awake for our souls

Last Thought of the Day for 2011

2011-12-31T04:41:00.001-08:00

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

~Buddha

Inside Myself

2011-12-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

Sky’s humming glowing
lightshow grows god
in unknown stars
that don’t know me

With eyes shut
a door opens
to a galaxy
with no regrets

Thought for the Day

2011-12-30T08:49:00.001-08:00

It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.
— Daniel Handler’s Adverbs

Bright Now Moments

2011-12-29T21:36:00.000-08:00

Bright Now Moments is like seeing some very sunny fire in your life and you smile over tea but you know you are entirely in the moments, very Bright Now Moments. Bright Now Moments is like tasting some music in one another’s mouths. And if you hear the river’s blue and recognize that you’ve heard it all your life and just ached on it so. Now when you hear it and you start healing, popping your feet and jumping up and down others get mad because you're enjoying yourself but those are Bright Now Moments that they can't share with you because poetry lets you in and out and let’s you roam freely within it. When you try to tell others about it they don't know a damn thing about what you’re talking about because the flesh and matter of it is that poetry is an electrical thought impulse. Bright Now Moments explain nothing. You need to have a big hurt before you understand Bright Now Moments. Bright Now Moments will burn your mind up.

Thought for the Day

2011-12-29T04:24:00.001-08:00

I am not I
I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget...

Juan Jimenez

Clues

2011-12-28T23:39:00.000-08:00

Dreams, wild hallucinations of snow falling
through moonlight, empty meadows, an acheless sky,
forever inside us.

Say no to Time, let Mystery rise.

Mists of possibility not for sale.
Light spreading not for sale.
Imagination of clouds not for sale.
Blessed blood exchange not for sale.
Riddles of the sun not for sale.

Desire, delight, divine.
Not for sale.

Thought for the Day

2011-12-28T05:09:00.001-08:00

"We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are."

- Dean Koontz
Life Expectancy

Holy Lived

2011-12-27T19:50:00.000-08:00

ache of wonder
rare heron I loved
for his pure frontiers
flies the edges

brings to me
bouquets of light
of being, story
I’ve come to believe
is mine

any other
would not explain
the laws of a dream
how sunlight makes music
warming cold winter air

Thought for the Day

2011-12-27T04:07:00.001-08:00

And we: always and everywhere spectators,
turned not toward the Open
but to the stuff of our lives.
It downs us. We set it in order.
It falls apart. We order it again
and fall apart ourselves.

Who has turned us around like this?
Whatever we do, we are in the posture
of one who is about to depart.
Like a person lingering
for a moment on the last hill
where he can see his whole valley—
that is how we live, forever
taking our leave.

-Rilke, from The Eighth Duino Elegy

Once Upon a Time of Angels

2011-12-26T19:45:00.000-08:00

Stars are shining great possibilities
*Like knights in white satin never reaching the end

It’s only by touch we know the way of angels
Yes, like flowers, like summer

Fold me who has been unfolded into the great blue paradise
Which does not resemble just any old desolate expanse

No need to ask what it means
Think of a small bone and what might become of it

When you scale the mountain of wakefulness
You open a bright eye and never blink

This mess on paper is not only an appetite
Here is an echo from a marvelous world

What if the poem were to end like this:
A woman leaves a man with a certain melancholy
Everything was new to them the night they disappeared

*Knights In White Satin, Moody Blues

Thought for the Day

2011-12-26T04:49:00.001-08:00

Love is the way messengers
from the mystery tell us things.

Love is the mother.
We are her children.

She shines inside us,
visible-invisible, as we trust
or lose trust, or feel it start to grow again.

Rumi

Bodies That Are Skies

2011-12-25T18:33:00.000-08:00

It would be easy to be lost here
Falling in and out of dream
Twisting into something more
Purple-black than night

In blind transformation
Healing begins in the words
That give birth to the voice
Never too late for a blessing

It’s why we’re alive
To feel the weightless way
Of the heart stretching into
The blue expanse where
Everything’s forever within reach

2011-12-25T01:01:00.001-08:00

"…And we pray, not for new
earth or heaven, but to be quiet
in heart, and in eye clear.
What we need is here.”

― Wendell Berry"

Anywhere, Wherever, Now

2011-12-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

Spirit is our house
Crux of so many of our matters

Hands spread open, palms up toward gate of sky
Prayers composed of little bones

Large blue-gray bird emerges from between the clouds
Beating out with wings a hymn of clarity above the wind

Cradle of words within protects us everywhere we go
Holy names written in Colorado snow

Vows of blossoming inside an open door

The Gate of Heaven is Everywhere

2011-12-24T07:28:00.000-08:00

Thought for the Day

2011-12-24T04:38:00.001-08:00

That which passes into everything is one thing.

Jack Kerouac

Loved World

2011-12-23T19:58:00.000-08:00

A redemption dream comes into its own.
Winter birds sing and inherit the earth.
We are saved in shadows at the edge of letting go
and inherit the real light just in time.

Bright mountain day. Heap of words.
Pecking crows break ice to drink, freeze-blue sky,
a cloud drifts alone, flow in all directions.
Rapture at hand, source almost visible.

Thought for the Day

2011-12-23T04:39:00.000-08:00

The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy. A writer or any artist has the sometimes joyful duty to transform all that into symbols. These symbols could be colors, forms or sounds. For a poet, the symbols are sounds and also words, fables, stories, poetry. The work of a poet never ends. It has nothing to do with working hours. Your are continuously receiving things from the external world. These must be transformed, and eventually will be transformed. This revelation can appear anytime. A poet never rests. He’s always working, even when he dreams. Besides, the life of a writer, is a lonely one. You think you are alone, and as the years go by, if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know but who love you. And that is an immense reward.

Jorge Luis Borges 1899-1986

The Endless Under Us

2011-12-22T19:54:00.000-08:00

And maybe you're wondering, day after day, about transformative phrases like the "blood at our feet" and the "tears of the heart", maybe the blood and the tears have already cost us so much, but one thing can be clear, the cold time awakens spring inside. Snow fields melt before the winter. Everything is going somewhere good. Everything is heading where it should.

Thoughts for the Day

2011-12-22T03:30:00.000-08:00

The paper I write on or you
write on, every word we write,
every cross and twirl of the
pen, and the curious way we
write what we think, yet very
faintly . . .
In them realities for you and
me -- in them poems for you
and me . . .
In them themes, hints, provokers.

- Walt Whitman

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

- Jalaluddin Rumi

A Thought Becomes A Whisper

2011-12-21T20:53:00.000-08:00

When my dream turns
to the sky
a surrender of knowing appears
in the orange torch of sun.
At the edge of the eye
an illumination of the ordinary now
burns through the distance.
A wild sign gleams
as fire takes hold and serotonin replenishes
brain and being.
Mystery creates new enigmas.
Angels with scorched wings wake up
and meaning keeps moving.

Thought for the Day

2011-12-21T04:32:00.001-08:00

The little river twittering in the twilight,
The wan, wondering look of the pale sky,
This is almost bliss.

And everything shut up and gone to sleep,
All the troubles and anxieties and pain
Gone under the twilight.

Only the twilight now, and the soft "Sh!" of the river
That will last forever.

And at last I know my love for you is here;
I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,
It is large, so large, I could not see it before,
Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,
Troubles, anxieties and pains.

You are the call and I am the answer,
You are the wish, and I the fullfilment,
You are the night, and I the day.
What else - it is perfect enough.
It is perfectly complete,
You and I,
What more--?

Strange, how we suffer in spite of this.

~ DH Lawrence
from Look! We Have Come Through!

When The Weight Is Lifted

2011-12-20T19:56:00.000-08:00

Your infinity meeting majesty
Your milky faith in the present
Your thankful immense possibility

All the strange angels knowing what we don’t

Liquid luminous landscapes
Fireworks of meteors
A spell of light

Freer than ever

Thought for the Day

2011-12-20T05:24:00.000-08:00

We are yet the bastard sons and daughters of an evolution not yet done with us, caught always between the fragments of yesterday and the unions of tomorrow, unions apparently destined to carry us far beyond anything we can possibly recognize today, and unions that, like all such births, are exquisitely painful and unbearably ecstatic. And with yet just the slightest look--once again, within--new marriages unfold, and the drama carries on.

Ken Wilber

Unfailing

2011-12-19T19:33:00.000-08:00

Metamorphosis

I woke
to see
my wonder
had been
restored
by you
I turned
and you
were gone

The embedded
light
I retained
The lovetale
altered
my soul
to overflow
ten thousand
walls

I long
I crave
all things
to be
sharp ecstasies
real enough
you are
fulfilled
in sun
behind them
again

Nothing
touches
save
the light
bringing
the soul
an endless
promise

Thought for the Day

2011-12-19T05:37:00.001-08:00

“Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers.”

—Pete Matthiessen r Muryo

The Sky Cries for It

2011-12-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

Snow-covered Japanese Quince blossoms

For the bridge, yes, there is always poetry.
Or the adore principle. Finding meaning by instinct
alone. Needing wonder. Not needing to know.
You imagine falling upwards. Lanes of blue.
That you deserve it. Even awakening. Even as you
fill with wounds of bliss, you do not ask what this means.
Like a shattered path, but traveling toward your desired point.
You are the name that’s being written but unfamiliar with
that which is writing it. Let it.

Thought for the Day

2011-12-18T05:11:00.001-08:00

"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken."
—

Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

The Eventual Outcome

2011-12-17T20:01:00.000-08:00

come into the center of my sweet

I’ll count however long I need to count the crow hours and days—

I like

the clarities that roll through the mountain nights—that beat of wings I bless

or

that flows through

the beauty we love—I see through the body

more

than not--come draw near me, long and deeply, carry us off

where

beyond breath we can call it

a gift

Thought for the Day

2011-12-17T07:31:00.001-08:00

“At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse—
at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident.”

― William Carlos Williams

A Room Inside

2011-12-16T21:09:00.000-08:00

In her buried skyness she crawls through the night
moonlight in her mouth, celebrating her soul

she slides into a vast room, full of mountains and stars
and translates blue-heron mysteries into her tears.