the goatherd's crooked staff

Tuesday Lobsang Rampa made
tea so his Third Eye could open
to see dreams fortifying in aspiring hearts
as they reach for the next beat in their comings and goings

Socrates played the lyre by
banging on the strings while
humming and hawing about the trouble of
always stressing and straining against the chains
though he loved Phaedrus in the Symposium
it was Xanthippe that made him a muse

Hermann Hesse spoke in tongues
while translating the synapses of a goatherd
who arranged new ideas like glass beads
which almost always came undone
except when Siddartha played the lute
in exchange for his crooked staff

Nietzsche saw the cunning linguist
would never solve the puzzle of the dead body
which Zarathustra carried to his bed like a wolf
where he lay dying of syphilis wrapped
in the wool of many sleeping sheep

for many restless nights they looked up at the
stars in the same Elysian fields where
the goatherd lay asleep
dreaming

Reviews

[Pema Dorje]

I've always looked at the flame ascending to my inner eye, then to the back of the head, overflowed through all the channels of the central nervous system, spilling into the knots, granthas or chakras, flowers of the flame, sear'd in the flight of transcendent ions, lights, flare aware, again 'n again! My goatherds crooked staff, my spine, my visceral-tunnels filled with light, sets this motif to an operetta, with each strophe one of the 5 main chakras over-flowing, flow-e-ring, without agenda, beyond wrong or right.

[Emily B]

amazing work as always

I love those last lines:
for many restless nights they looked up at the
stars in the same Elysian fields where
the goatherd lay asleep
dreaming