Dogma

Sorting through faith is worse
than losing socks in the laundry.
the whirlpool gods often demand
argyle sacrifices; yet I am mismatched:

saints and karmas,
riddle-mysteries, songs and foreign
mystical prostrations. How long
does it do any good to fight the holy ones

that bless you in the periphery, unexpected?

who say with kind words,
at my embarrassment, and my
surprising attachment of unworthiness,
why are you here?
only to be answered with :
but I named you,
as if this is explanation enough.

I bow (to collect the honey) my
third visionary inward spell,
which the single eye of light, pools
into the center
like any proper spring blossom,
looking for the right cross-pollination.
I stand up straight. I can carry

my own weight, but  maybe that's the problem.

I don't ask for it,
even when I could use the help. When the mass

of my valentine-shaped musical organ,
could easily be crushed by the dark cruelness
of worldly misinterpretation;
when the man said Light, He meant Light,
and no other substance.

a Guru is like a match lit
during a power outage; it means:
the one who dispels the darkness, but still
there is the risen ones. the incorruptibles in Bologna
the places of the skull, and you arrow throwers,
who know the knots and their paths already, you
who have one half of a holey-toed gold-heeled
cotton stocking and the other missing.
Oh well then: sandals it is.

I am open. I have been open
for spiritual business for as long
as I can dream or remember. I can parse
ego and devils both, I was born fruited,
fleet-footed, free and forgot
what it meant, building foundations
in a soft but disciplined bed of advaita, nadis
streaming up like backwards waterfalls and
auroras; (knowledge they said,
was structured in consciousness). and I

have been walking with the sun ever since,

followed it, like the star it is,

all the way to the west.
the Divine Mind, (they said,) never gifts
gifts to those who would not use them.
But grace is free and flowing
like Jordan and cerebral crosses;
like Ganges. Like mead, like spinal fluid.

Reviews

[W.k.kortas]

It's a curious mix of the ethereal and the very corporeal, and the piece has a little more dirt under its fingernails than most of your work, if that makes any sense at all. It's wonderfully spun together, as the wise Emily notes: it effortlessly establishes and returns to the odd, yet effective, juxtaposition of faith and footwear, and there are saints and spinal fluid here and there and everywhere, and all where they should be. This is top-shelf, first-rank writing.

[Emily B]

I stumbled on this line:

and Ihave been walking with the sun ever since followed it,

that may be intentional. Just wanted to make a note.

I get lost in your words sometimes. You spin a web so lovely. So intricate-- that I often find myself in the sticky weavings.

[Ed Hart]

it's all just posturing until you stumble upon a massive humbling... not many are looking forward to that... hope you're having a nice day...