2023
To bring the spirit into your life - not to cling
to it desperately or with subtle motions, not to
run away from what I cannot face. Accepting everything
around me calmly and with compassion sourced
from emptiness. I'll stare into the void not to
blow my own mind with its wonders and dally in
fascination, but to be able to look away and
come back into my life with perspective. Using
this perspective to find my balance, do what
I need to with love and joy, and with the calmness
required to take a peek under the veil once
more. Find your center in the balance of
apparitions!
Sonoric event between noise and silence
Structure and order to the audible world
You're not me.
You always need to be perfect.
The scars from playing outside as a kid,
The broken sound of campfire smoke.
Two small dots, six straight lines (three on each side),
encased in a measured circle, with two triangles
on top, spaced neatly.
This poetry needs a certain number
of items to fit inside a pineaplle.
You're not me
For gravity does not exist on my Earth.
And I suppose, it wasn't on my mind, I didn't have
the time at all
And I admit, it wasn't hard to find, I just
didn't care at all
{35-40,000 years ago, bone flutes}
Recognition that the trip I'm on is of getting
caught up in trips. Realize this and let go of
that tightness of breath. Am I doing the right
thing? Am I okay? Stop asking and welcome
an answer from the silence. He who talks
does not know. He who knows does not talk.
A whole astral trip just in writing Ram... (let go of that one, too)
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram...
In Orchestration class, I practiced drums for a
while. I got an iced coffee. I went to my first
training as Karma Yogi at Asana Soul. Last
night I got high and realized many concepts
and fought off (or, let pass through me) some
paranoia. All these things this body does! All these
things make up who I am.
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram...
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram...
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram...
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram... (4 pages)
The Heron
I saw the heron while I was walking with a
destination in mind - a destination forgotten entirely.
The heron stood in the center of the lake atop
a small stone structure jutting out of the water,
foreground to two looming mountains. The air was
hazy and blurred the pine trees that covered the
mountains into a stroke of green paint. A light rain
was falling and dotted the water's surface. My attention
fixed immediately onto the stoic bird, standing poised
and strong amidst the rain. I sat cross-legged and
began breathing through one nostril and covering
the other, breathing out, and switching nostrils
with every out breath. My eyes were closed and
I began to send energy out to the heron in an
attempt to connect with its willpower and
essence. The thought arose, "let me be like this bird".
And I became the bird. Breathing exercises turned
into mantra and chanting and finally singing. I was
filled with warmth and absolute surety, a feeling
of home. As the skies suddenly opened up and
rain began slamming into the river and Earth around
me I was giddy with joy. I was warm, so
warm and somehow so dry. I laughed and sand
and prayed and danced all while still cross-legged.
I opened my eyes for a second and saw the river
like an ocean with no distinction between rainfall
and surface. It was a deluge! And there I was-
there, the bird - totally dry and vibrating and
there were thoughts but they weren't mine, there
was a body but it didn't matter, I was home inside
inside inside in a place where it is dry and I'm
searching for a fish to eat in the river and this
deluge is of no concern to me I have no preferences.
A while later the rain began to clear and I rose
from my seat. I thought to myself, "I feel like
I've been through a trial" and looking down I
saw that thought in the dry space where I had sat
beside the railroad track. That thought become a
body and it was me and it was nice to look into
my eyes and to recognize myself. Turning, I
left him there by the heron in the rain.
On Saturdays
On Saturdays he'd sit by the river in the rain
Staring intently at something stoic
Like a rock formation or a patient heron
& write poems for me to read
When he came back home. His
loping letters curved into wet paper
like ancient scripture and spoke to me,
dreams from the past: "Remember,
let go, look again, be still" - I recognized
the words, old friends
But each week he'd be back on his knees
Painting a new picture.
I guess I never got the memo. And I know
how much he loves to walk along the edge of the water
without a shirt, with empty pockets, with hands free.
But his notebook always filled the space.
I wonder if it bothered him,
if he hates me for it.
But his poems spoke of stillness, gentle rain,
the sloping of mountains, and the calls of birds.
I can hear a deep love reaching out, yearning
for my embrace. I know someday
when the poems don't come, he'll be walking
with empty pockets,
and I'll finally understand his words.
Mount Eerie said,
"The possibility that if I stopped clapping
my hands in the void
I would notice that I can't hold on to things
And the possibility that if I stopped using my
voice I would notice songs that, all around me, sing
Looms in weather
Lives buried in my days
With all my songs and rhythms going like
The darkness surrounding a flame
It's what I don't say with my mouth
It's my mouth open, to breathe in
It's open windows
Still, I go on and on describing the shape
around the thing I want to but can not name
In song
And, though my long life feels busy
And full of usefulness and drive
I will sleep through every single dawn
And those I see I will not understand
Though I try
I will sing through every single song
About the spaces left when we stop singing
And I will sing this
With longing"
Now III
As soon as I realized everything
I have been chasing is in fact
everything...
It is not hidden in a song,
chords to be ripped out by my teeth
It is not a rhyme that eludes me
It is not a flickering moment
enticed by patient creativity or
ecstatic performance.
It's all that!
All of it!
Every whisper on my lips, every motion of my hand,
every minute detail
All of it encompasses this moment and is pervaded
by it. And I find that
There is nothing to do.
Nowhere to go. The anxiety of creation,
waning earth, waxing moon, the urge to make,
work, do! do! do! Do something!
It all melts away.
It all melts away.
And here I am writing but I am not writing.
Here I am thinking but I am not thinking.
Here I am doing but I am not doing.
I am sitting on a lotus flower,
staring out at the calmness of a still lake.
I am a still lake,
reflecting the image of a lotus flower.
Here, I rest
in a space that is filled with the wonder of
my most intimate experiences. Thousands and
thousands of times over.
Here, I rest. And I realize
I have no questions for a God that cannot
answer me, because one does not exist.
I am answered by the steady rhythm emanating
from my heart, which beats without me
telling it to.
I am answered by the slow decay of the world
around me, and its valiant rebirth. I am answered
by the intricacies of a blooming flower. I am
answered by my own quiet solitude. I am answered
by the fact that I have never once missed a sunrise.
Though I wake with the light in my eyes.
Memorable lines
Memorable lines from Zach:
Who will come sweep me away? The dawn.
What if the warm orange and yellow never comes?
I am alone without my friends.
Perpetual twilight. Air hangs with stillness.
Memorable lines from Rian:
Now I am a ghost of who I was, the primordial
ocean, God, I seek you, to uncloud the lies that
embody me. God, I call out to you, valley of truth
I wonder where to place my bets
I wonder where to place my bets -
in the people around me, who have often been wrong?
or in my own intuition, which has often been wrong?
The adults are still hellbent on my becoming somebody.
They are so obsessed and
it shows in all their love. Meanwhile
My intuition is rebellious and
always goes against the grain. Here,
I am learning to write one good song. As I hone my skills and intellectual ability so that when I finally touch inspiration
I will be ready - but!
Insidious soul inside says:
I do not want to practice guitar so I may play guitar.
I wish to play guitar.
I wish to write 1,000 bad songs and play them for
my friends.
I wish to play the good ones to the trees at night and watch their stretching faces lean in close and kiss my cheek.
I wish to walk among the evergreens and think about nothing.
Am I wrong to have no ambitions?
Of course I do but they’re empty. I’d be just as happy
to lose my hearing as I would to become a legend.
Or just somebody.
I am not particularly interested in end results.
I only wish to be where I can write
poems about the stars and I
haven’t seen the moon since it was full in
Connecticut three weeks ago.
It was the harvest moon, second of the month
but now it is September and I have forgotten the taste of milk.
I have forgotten so many things. Except I haven’t
because those memories do not belong to me
anymore.
I gave all that up to the Mother.
I said,
“Here, ma, you take it”
And I gave her my life from before as well as what is to come
in October.
I was young but now I can navigate all of the subways in the city
I was young but now I can navigate all of the subways in the city
I was young but now I can see
how things were not all so golden
And that those who know how to navigate Can no longer break my heart.
all of the subways in the city
Sometimes I think I am still there
And I can see it so clearly
But I am not there because I have grown past the age that is sung about with nostalgia
and malice
I am now 19
Which is the age that is sung about in a whole other manner. Like how crows
sing differently in the fall
While they watch from bare branches and the little birds eat up all the seeds
of lettuce that will be too tough to eat anyways
come November.
Sometimes I think He is still there
Enshrined in memories that no longer serve me
tea in the evenings. But he will be hurt
and he will learn and then it will be like gum stuck to the side of my camera
I don’t quite know how it got there but it must have been old because I don’t chew gum anymore
and it is really no big deal
I am 19 and I can clean my camera.
I am so young but now I can navigate all of the subways in the city
What else is easier now that the lenses are clean?
No forms and no no-forms
I wonder why I am so obsessed then I
remember how it felt to jump straight into
the flame with eyes wide open. I said
"let it burn me up, let it pass through
me, let the fire purify my soul and may I
come out clean and good" I didn't come
out at all, I burnt up to ashes which were
blown away and scattered, white white nothing.
Only I remain, and the boy who was consumed
is all particles in the wind. He always was,
he never really existed at all. Attached to
no forms and no No-forms, I float in the
gentle embrace of the universe, becoming where
I need to and unbecoming where I'm asked.
I do not exist in space or time, I am not
limited to one pair of eyes. Everything around me
is in me and I am in everything. I float,
I fly, I fit into, I relax in the wind. I stand
nowhere.
So don't speak. Let him!
Don't listen. Let him listen.
Give space to the universe, you'll appreciate it.
I really want to go home.
I wish to be in the trees but
of course
I don't wish for what I wish for...
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi swhaha!
I mean, think about it, soon enough I'll be wrapped
up in some whole other life and I'll love a
whole new set of friends and family so don't be
afraid of loving them like the beautiful incarnates
we are. Assigning roles to them is captivating
and it is limiting. I'll love you forever and ever.
Nothing's gonna change cause nothing's ever happening!
In the next life, the fire will burn even brighter,
because I will have chosen it to be that way. And
I will burn and burn until I recognize the ones I love
everywhere in the world and inside of me too. And
this life will fall away and so will the next and next
until we are all together in love. Once I'm there...
but where could I go? It's right here in front of me.
Through illusions, through the intimacy. There's nothing
that can be dodged or avoided. Embrace it all, love
it all! Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.
And I will continue to be scared - embrace it.
Who is scared? And who is still water? Relax.
Everything is going exactly as planned.
Shatter!
I scurry to look upon the hasty doorknob
which switches its lessons to lock out my mind
Patterned and prodded
soft metal clicks cushions and I,
tweaking,
aximone my products.
I axe my phone, shatter!
Gruesome nobility of fluttered fraxioms that
dangle and dazzle me with their many colored
auras.
Like butterfly wings, cushiony, mellow
thousands of them truncate my eyes!
Floundering in dreek transmissions
I hold my ground and my cello and shout:
Sickle, O, penetrating creatures!
Pierce my porcelain head no more!
Let me stink and ooze
eliminate glassy perspective, I am trash now
And you are the diver.
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram...
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram...
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram...
I think a lot about the stillness of bare bark in winter
What is this, yearning?
I know I can't but I wish to resolve old memories
of stepping on frozen lakes and gently
letting my heart break
Maybe I'm scared of moving on because I left more
than my footprints in the powdery trails of snow.
I left her there and
I can't go back to see if she's okay
or frozen in memories.
I have a crush on an Adorable One
I think every crush I've had
isn't spontaneous or even
sourced from this world.
I have these dreams...
We decorated the room
and stayed up till sunrise
just hanging out in the astral plane
is such a joy!
But knowing every realm is
just another realm
I take a deep breath
and hold onto nothing
Every truth is only partial truth
Every reality is only relatively so
And don't forget
planes move horizontally.
Standing nowhere
I am not flung or tossed
I step lightly forward
Between this world and the next
keeping my eyes fixed on
the Adorable One
right in front of me.
Scribbles
Farther and further away and farther. Horse-bottle surface. Costco of terrain, snuggied under their caps. Hot, hot daylight. Sun passing quickly past the balloon. Grungy, gangly girlhood. Every tree I have counted and I lost its number. A treaty is a canopy. I come from the wood. No more apples in 2035. Castles upon castles, hoarding the snickle-snackle.
We are dry under the balcony
As simple as that,
I don't wish for anything, and here I am
exactly who I've always wanted to be
in the company of souls who only add
so much richness
and growth to a stable center.
We expand outwards
and inwards
Blooming mums in the rain
in this city of living poetry
Our art becomes our lives and our lives become each other's
Taking gentle care of the whole
And moving forward in loving harmony.
It's a light rain and it is pretty to look at
But we are dry under the balcony
Holding in an easy breath
And letting it out in wonder.
Essex Green
Their room and the drawings on the wall. The nautulus women. The Star Wars poster, that's tangible. The band posters, have you stepped out of your body today?
Tastes of popcorn and the texture is the rippling cloth of weird stuffed animal, like some sort of platypus. The place is then,
there, in that time that is all I remember. It's a sunrise before school, something beautiful before
it dissolves into hate and isolation. The memory is the memory of them.
South Beach
This smells like the beach in Norwalk skipping stones waiting for my friend.
It tastes like melting ice cream and sticky fingers. It feels like infinitely small pebbles. It's an open sky
in Maine by the harbor and tall, tall trees. The mood is a deep breath and freedom. The memory is ongoing.
Synesthesia Poem
Have you stepped outside of your body today?
Deep green unquenchable memory demands
the texture of rippling cloth on
an old, dirty stuffed animal. Wide open and
immoral
You are thrown into a drunken sunrise
Something so beautiful it hurts, and leaves you
slipping and hungry.
It's a violin bow drawn sul ponticello, dangling
on the bridge of a haunting past, echoes
transported beyond time
Deep green unquenchable memory makes
demands for its own perpetual existence.
Molded into this moment like the petrichor of a nasal
swab, you are entranced.
A dog's white fur, but the dog is diseased.
Old bread, not stale but almost
A flag fluttering in the wind
A passionate love that turns to hate
and isolation.
The only way out is through.
9/27/23 - Free-write after listening:
Walking on hot nights, New York in rain. I am thinking
of what it means to have emotions and also not be
attached to them or identify w/ them. How can I offer
you all of my love? How can I explain my life to you? I write
a lot, I like music, I'm fond of flowers... The last father's day on the
ocean when dad finally let me drive. It's a good poem.
They're all fantastic poems! Lilacs you can smell from the driveway
Rattle snake's tail. All its own. All the stars I can't see
I want to go inside but all the doors are locked. Stale
city air, lethargic shuffle of feet.
Edit from Sep. 2025: I think I stole some of the above lines, by the way. What's a "reference" only I understand?
I'm so bored! of all these consistencies!
Is it such an epiphone that mutually exclusive truths
can exist simultaneously?
Allow me to be naive for a moment!
I get it! I get it! Let me go!
Continually cross-referencing my visions
I think I'm playing with space and time
a little too
lightly, I am irresponsible
Sticking my hands in the potter's wheel
without any shape in mind or
reason for doing so. I am at whims
with nature
Living life uncontrollably
Does this make inhuman?
"I am inadequate at being a human
I am inadequate at being inhuman"
But doubts continue to
flicker
and disappear
under light of the full September moon.
P.S. a day later: Look how wonderfully things fell into place! Are you so surprised?
If I claim to be more than a man, I must prove it.
Without inner struggle where is growth? The spark of my friction will become a flame that rises to heaven.
Bus to New York
Bus to New York
Catch a train going east
Gotta see my friends
In the land where they sleep
knowing land is temporary
And true distance is traveled
Through memories and essence
And time is unraveled
we meet in this moment
Totally free
Hair soggy, unclean
Got some stubble growing in
I'm a traveler through time
To catch up with before
But what, of course, is before?
I might wish to be there
But, of course
I don't wish for what I wish for.
A dream
I had a dream and I woke up on the side of the Ganges River in Varanasi and the water was rapid and rushing and orange like rust.
I was kneeling and to my right standing tall was Jesus Christ and he said to me, "go ahead, put your hand in." I reached my left hand
into the Ganges and felt the cool water rush past through anf around my skin. Sunddenly my hand became rooted
like the center of gravity of everything became focused onto my hand and my awareness extricated itself from the center of my body and began orbiting
my hand in a disorienting, almost nauseating way but I felt wildly free yet still tethered sharply
to my hand. Flaying and loose like a flag in the wind my body was at the mercy of a new center. I looked up
at Jesus Christ and he said, "pretty cool right?" and I looked past him to the other side of the river where
Buddha and Maharj-ji and Krishna and countless others stood with folded arms and I was filled with a lightness
and joy and I was crying and just muttering like a baby beneath my breath "Baba, Baba, Babaji!"
I woke up and my hand was constricted and tight - absolutely paralyzed. I gently held my left hand with my right until the constriction released.
I think my karmic center of gravity lies here - in the tightness of my left hand...
Transcribe the universe
Transcribe the universe with music and rhythm
My left hand holds the key
My right hand holds the knife
Erased ending
The hot gravel next to patches of green
under a highway overpass and the cars are rumbling
above, or
maybe the quarry at night as a freight train is passing
and the moon is full and quiet and it is cold
Moments that stole me from Time and keep me
alive, gruesomely immortal in eternal memory
was it a dream?
Did I wander off the trail aimless and drunk?
And come out into some open field
with tall grass that itches and
Myself and other ghosts take our try
at re-learning everything?
Riff Poem
This year's crop is tall and proud yes I still can't
crop my hair
The dogs all bark when the moon is dark, its light
too bright to bear.
So I bite my teeth
And my knife I sheath
And bark my commands to the air
Metaphor rewrite
It's like Ram Dass' metaphor of leaving early to beat the rush hour traffic, and it's 4:50 and you're going down the long stairwell
to the subway. You finally get down to the bottom and there's a sign that says, "This track is closed, go around the block."
So you turn and start heading back up the stairs and here is a rush of people everyone's going down and
you're nearly stuck in place by the rush and you say, "Hey, listen, the track's closed" but nobody listens of course, you're
the only one going up and they just think you're plain crazy. You keep going step by step, you might even go back down to check if you saw the sign correctly
but even so, you know, you know there's nothing down there at the bottom of the stairs. There's nothing to gain at the end of the trip.
Someone might believe you and that's really far out cause they believe your retelling of the story cause hey, why not, he seems honest.
Nothing's down there. No wealth or fame or love or anything.
It's all right here.
No where to go.
No thing to do.
Right here.
A curtain of awareness
Drape a curtain of awareness
over every instance of call and response
And objects of sense quickly fade away.
The strength of an object colluding with
my desires
weakens, and actually loses its grip entirely
when my identification is no longer attached
to who I think I am, and who I think I
am is no longer attached to my desires.
You can have desires, sure, but it's tricky
A slippery tantra
It is quite possible to transmute sense attachment
into pure essence but I am just not there yet.
The key is resistance through acceptance
Allowing the desire to pass through me until
Gah! I don't even want it anymore. But I haven't
pushed it away. You know where that trip goes.
It's like a toddler's love for candy
You get older and just kind of lose that feeling
You keep quieting your mind,
Not doing anything, not pushing away.
You keep quieting and quieting and eventually
it all just falls away.
This is it.
This will be a part of my life forever,
or, at least till I'm done thinkin'
And then,
This is it.
And now,
this is it.
Detached + analysis
Detached completely from organized systems I find it
so hard to take part in organized systems. But here I am now and...
of course, it's so hard for "me"
This is just happening! And nothing is going on.
I'm [EGO THOUGHT] only frustrated [VARIATION OF MIND] or concerned with things [OBJECTS OF MIND] because [ANALYTICAL MIND]...
Just let go. Keep quieting and quieting and quieting.
Now I'm waiting... dreaming... waiting on you again...
I'm waiting... so patient... waiting for you my friend.
I'd like to walk amongst the evergreen trees
And be in a place where the air is still
Think outside the box
You told me to
Think outside the box
In doing so you have created a box
And now I wish to stubbornly
explore all of its corners until I have
licked up all the dust and
then
I will sit contentedly for one million years
until the box and my body erode and
there I will be
Inside of nothing
which was certainly something at one point
when you were alive and condescending
And practicing your aim on the angels
with arrows forged of intellect.
Your arrows fly and then crash down to Earth
My angels never die.
even if their baby’s wings are
Pierced or torn up
My angels will cry and cry and cry
then repair their wings with their tears.
Try to hold my flesh
you’ll find a giggling infant covered in oil
slipping through your fingers
And there, look, you’ve gone and done it-
You dropped the baby on its head.
You told me to
Think outside the box
You may as well try telling a Sun-sized toddler to
stop playing with the Earth. Or tucking a stray cat
in to sleep. Or shaking the sky with your fist. Or
putting a name to God…
Another plan
I'm going to live on farms in Maine and Oregon and Washington and Iowa and work in the fields
and then write songs and study the Tao. Such a pretty endearment. It can happen! So... why not?
I have many thoughts and ideas and reasons... but none really matter too much. Just knowing where I'm going
and accepting it with joy is enough. I have plenty of reasons, but none as valid as my intuitive heart which grants me a legal authority
in matters of my own experience. I trust it, and when I truly quiet down and make things clear, I just know. And I will throw myself into it with wonder!
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram...
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram...
Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram... (through last page)