“But how shall we bury you?”
“Any way you like,” said Socrates, “that is if you can catch me and I don’t slip through your fingers.”
–PHAEDO, The Last Days of Socrates
The Pomegranate
Once when I was living in the heart of a pomegranate, I heard a seed saying, “Someday I shall become a tree, and the wind will sing in my branches, and the sun will dance on my leaves, and I shall be strong and beautiful through all the seasons.”
Then another seed spoke and said, Read More
The Madman
You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen — the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives — I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, Read More
I said to my soul
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
T.S. Eliot
from Four Quartets: Quartet No. 2: East Coker
From A Thousand Chinese Dinners
From a thousand Chinese dinners, one cookie:
Good fortune in love, also a better position.
So much for both. Too many humorless people
Who can’t believe that God could have made the cunt.
Maybe he didn’t make it. Maybe hydrogen
Made nitrogen and one thing led to another.
Some hold that early man stumbled upon it
While dreaming of the perfect end to a long day’s hunt.
But I say only Italians, with their flavor for drama,
Could have invented this fragrant envelope.
Let’s drink to the Italians, especially Catullus,
Who knew it was no joke but couldn’t help laughing.
– ROBERT MEZEY
Where Everything is Music
Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole worlds harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a peice of flint, and a spark.
The singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a
pearl somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!
They that we can’t see derive from a slow
and powerful root.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the centre of your
chest, and let the spirit fly in and out.
This Be The Verse ~ Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you. Read More
Blossom -Mary Oliver
In April
the ponds
open
like black blossoms,
the moon
swims in every one;
there’s fire
everywhere: frogs shouting
their desire,
their satisfaction. What
we know: that time
chops at us all like an iron
hoe, that death
is a state of paralysis. What
we long for: joy
before death, nights
in the swale – everything else
can wait but not
this thrust
from the root
of the body. What
we know: we are more
than blood – we are more
than our hunger and yet
we belong
to the moon and when the ponds
open, when the burning
begins the most
thoughtful among us dreams
of hurrying down
into the black petals,
into the fire,
into the night where time lies shattered,
into the body of another.
Letters from a fool
Feb 06: Baja California Sur: El Pescadero: Pacific: Desert: Brief ramblings of a fool:
I wake just before dawn, waves crashing in the distance.
Lilting cricket’s chirrup near by, slowing to a mesmerizing rhythm, beckoning the day.
Meditation.
Unzippa de tent and hop out into the ecstatic morning.
Atlanta comes to say hello, rub rubadee rub.
I take care of business at the bamboo palace of poo.
Ah. Coffee this morning me thinks, take a slug, a moment of reflection… and then,
in a blinding flash of inspiration – put the fucking banana in the fucking pancake mix!!
Oh baby, it’s a great day. Papaya and honey. More coffee.
I am alone.
In the middle of a verdant oasis.
Palm trees and mangoes stretching into the hills, and in the distance the sun is just gilding the crest of the tallest peaks beyond. And She rises (may transition to He when higher and hotter.)
Big swoopy owls last night, and now a big brown eagle is turning overhead, and there’s hawks, kestrels, ospreys and magnificent frigate birds and golden orioles and great egrets flapping in lilting arcs of white and turtle doves and all the cool song birds an’ stuff. I like it here… the last frontier (in transition)
hold up, power’s low, time to pop up the panel – get some sun juice into this here powerbook…
Had a dream. Just before new moon.
I’m aware of a resonant echo… a distant chord being struck, reverberating through me. It is Consciousness – God feeling the pulse of the Earth. Measuring. It is apparent. Time for the saviour to be born. This thundering heralds the birth-reincarnation. It is good – a good omen – a good time.
I awake to a thunderstorm moving in. Flashes and vast booming echoes panning across the heavens. Rain. 4am. Hmm. Didn’t set up for rain.
Lots of other cool dreams, mostly about sex…
Anyway, look busy, the Messiah is coming.
Oh yes. Work. Working. Herding cats – trying to learn a new cultural language and tongue. Hey, my Spanish is OK, but what these local folk speak is beyond me – and then trying to read between the lines of the words and vernacular to interpret the thinking – few logical correlations – herding cats, trying to get permissions from local (Ejido) council of water – gotta let go I realize. Trust – it will come to me! It will come!
And what an immense relief to be out of the inescapable (whilst there) consumer frenzy of N. California life.
Time. and Space. Ah.
It will come.
Meanwhile, softly softly pursuing, studying sacred geometry and the genius loci. The night sky. The crescent moon. My life. Love…
And love is a yearning of the one for the one
And beauty a sweet difference of the same
And oneness is the soul of the multitude
That 1st line (Sri Aurobindo – far out dude) – the yearning. That’s it. That’s what I’ve been missing the last years. Lost contact with that visceral draw. Been wound up in everyday living for so long – dueling dualities, material manifestations.
A yearning of the one for the One.
Imperfect human love, searching for perfect Christ love. Connection with the divine. Ratios of phi in squaring the circle, stages of evolution, the flower of life – have to say, this sacred geometry is really very, very cool!
Gotta go. Measure contours, get pipe, find some folks, fish tacos. Beach. Dog. Ya know.
More soon if elicited
Love always
Nik
“Do not adjust your mind- it is reality that is malfunctioning”
– Robert Anton Wilson-
The Vitruvian Man… Vitruvius – Leonardo’s 1400 year elder mentor
an echoe from the shore
Pescadero. Baja California Sur.
All she wants is for me to give her my love
and she will give me the Moon.
How could she not become the Radiant Goddess.
Aphrodite.
The Ocean and tides.
How could any woman not bloom, in Love
like a cactus flower, under the desert moon
their beauty born the moment beheld
by the undivided self.
And I don’t know how to let go.
I find myself clinging fiercely to the rocks, indignant
And the waves are lapping at my shores
let me carry you my love
and I will rise and fall with you,
like the pulsing of your soul,
like the rhythms of your heart
the sun and the moon
come with me my love
be free.
I hold tighter! Terrified of (my) life
Love’s dazzling light.
let go a whisper of the night
be free an echo from the shore
I love you the sirens in the mist
become fainter
as the years go sailing by.
Letters from a fool: Part 2: Baja Blues and Poems, or: How migration fucks with your seasons
March 2006. Pescadero BCS:
Well fuck it.
How long have I been here? 3 months? and every single mother fucker is still gonna show up mañana. And like an idiot (read ‘cunt’ if you’re English), I’ve been holding my breath. I’m sick as a parrot, ate something I shouldn’a,
and they stole all my stuff (sorry no more pictures ‘cept from phone), and my baby done gone an’ left me (back North) … and I still can’t lay out the water pipe and mark out the driveways or plant my trees or build my eathbag bodega till the swales are in but the tractor driver didn’t show up yet again this morning, because:
a) he had to go pick up medication for his mother / had a gearbox problem / forgot
b) “mañana temprano a las siete” means maybe some time next month if your still around.
c) he needed a lobotomy / got abducted by aliens and anally probed (actually that’s more an american condition, but you get my drift)
d) he’s just a cunt. They’re all cunts. Every single jive assed turkey mother fucking cocksucking one of them is a cunt. OK.
I’m going to meditate for an hour.
I walk on this infinite beach of deeply rippled velvet sunset sky, purple sea and vermillion sands and the day dissolves into void…
All she wants is for me to give her my love
and she will give me the Moon.
How could she not become the Radiant Goddess.
Aphrodite.
The Ocean and tides.
How could any woman not bloom in Love
like a cactus flower in the desert moon light
it’s beauty born the moment beheld
by the undivided self.
And I don’t know how to let go.
I find myself clinging fiercely to the rocks, indignant.
And the waves are lapping at my shores
let me carry you my love
and I will rise and fall with you,
like the pulsing of your soul,
like the rhythms of your heart
the sun and the moon
come with me my love
be free.
I hold tighter, terrified of (my) life
Love’s dazzling light.
let go – a whisper of the night
be free – an echo from the shore
I love you – the sirens in the mist
become fainter
as the years go sailing by.
All of a sudden I feel alone.
What happened to the sense of pioneering independence?
My mind was occupied and my heart was closed I suppose.
And then she came and I remained an island for a while
But slowly the tide came in and lapped at my shores and I yielded, remembered.
And now I’m alone again and feel it this time.
My Garden ~
Mehdi Akhavan-e Salis (M. Omid). Tehran- Khordad 1335, May 1956:
Holding its sky tightly in its arms, the cloud,
wrapped in its cold, damp sheepskin.
The garden of leaflessness, is alone,
day and night, with its pure, forlorn silence.
Its instrument the rain, its anthem the wind.
Its clothe is the cloak of nakedness.
And should it need a garment other than this,
the wind has woven many a flame of gold warp and weft.
Let it grow, or not, whatever wherever it wants,
or does not, there is no gardener or a passer by.
The garden of the downhearted,
does not await the arrival of any Spring.
If no warm beam of light emanates from its eyes,
and if no leaf of a smile grows on its face,
who says that the garden of leaflessness is not beautiful?
It foretells of conifers touching the sky,
now asleep in the coffin beneath the earth.
The garden of leaflessness, its laughter is tear-tinged blood.
Eternal, aloft his wild-mane yellow horse,
swaggers therein the king of the seasons, the Autumn.
I would like to leave now. Have had enough this time round, dancing for the neighbours of the Ejido, but to leave now is not an option. Roll with it. It is for a reason that we landed here and I have this work to do and when the time is right we’ll move forward to the next pasture (whether it turns out to be here or Chile!? or the Elysian fields?)
I love Big Sur, yet I am tired of being bound in a lifestyle that remains dependent on exhausting consumer society. It wasn’t like this for me before the United States of Anomie. Or perhaps I should blame the times. Or myself? Or you and your daddy, or who he voted for. Of course, I jest, its way beyond the personal, it’s the rapacious soulless corporate mind, but I digress.
I want to talk to my baby bout these things but she’s in transit now for a week or two, and I must orient my feelings and perceptions. I’m living in a large walled house in Todos Santos and the sun is bright outside the window and the hummingbirds and bougainvillea brilliant in the sunlight, but I actually miss camping out on the land, feet in the ground. Time to move back and get back in the dirt.
Gonna see another man about plowing the swales tonight.
Maybe I’ll get lucky now and there will be an unfolding.
Say yes to the universe!?
Zi Ye (6th-3rd C. BC):
All night I could not sleep
because of the moonlight on my bed.
I kept hearing a voice calling: Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered “yes”
And in spite of trouble and anguish, it feels something has shifted and maybe the seven year itch got scratched. I would like to drink a glass off champagne with all of you my friends and lovers of madness and love itself. I really would. But you’re not here. I shall just have to celebrate on my own instead.
This is what happens when you sit here listening to the dissonant harmonies of Arvo Part (Tabula Rassa) and the Tosca Tango Orchestra (Waking Life soundtrack) on random loop.
Abrazos muy fuerte.
Nik
PS. Didn’t get part 1 of the ramblers rantings? Don’t care. No problemo.
Otherwise drop me a line or deterrent.
Lova ya jus the same.
N
benevolent poets
click play to listen this poem:
[audio:http://www.niksnexus.net/media/Poet’s Gold.mp3]
The balm of benevolent poets
soothes my throbbing fear
like meetings with bunny rabbits
in fields where men-are-not near
Yet how could he feel the earth
When his feet don’t meet with grief
lies buried in his trudging soul
gasping
panting shrouded screaming fleeing dreaming
drowsy, drifting, groaning,
moaning
muddy
dark sounds from the deep
heaving ocean floors
ache like ancient bones
And the octopus knows the colour
of the sounds that well-up from within
and bruise the loving hearts of men
and echo through the ground
and echoes through the ground
echoes through the women
echoes in the Earth
the stifled sound of grown men’s tears
comes roaring up to pound
iron flood gates forged
in childhood’s shame
Take these masks away from me
I need to feel my pain
and learn to love
and live to learn
and caress the little things
travel in the blue-green world
on sunlit pelican wings
and visit the soft places
where poets melt their gold
and visit the soft places
where poets melt their gold
into the dialectic
self portrait
. . . A little while,
a moment of rest upon the wind,
and another woman shall bear me.
~ The Prophet. Khalil Gibran
Drifting
through the formless void, darkness
all around.
there is a shimmer of sound
like the siren’s song
reaching through space and time.
And in an instant
in an ocean of seeing,
we agree to meet, on those distant
heaving shores.
And I am falling now,
falling through the font
swimming into Being,
into the dialectic,
the mythical, exquisite life
of Earth
The Maze – W.H. Auden
Anthropos apteros for days
Walked whistling round and round the maze,
Relying happily upon
His temperament for getting on.
The hundredth time he sighted, though,
A bush he left an hour ago,
He halted where four alleys crossed
And recognised that he was lost.
‘Where am I? Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so l can
Assume this maze has got a plan.
‘If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I’m sure,
The Universe in miniature.
‘Are data from the world of sense,
In that case, valid evidence?
What, in the universe I know,
Can give directions how to go?
‘All Mathematics would suggest
A steady straight line as the best,
But left and right alternately
Is consonant with History.
‘Aesthetics, though, believes all Art
Intends to gratify the heart:
Rejecting disciplines like these,
Must I, then, go which way I please?
Such reasoning is only true
If we accept the classic view,
Which we have no right to assert
According to the introvert.
‘His absolute presupposition
Is: Man creates his own condition.
This maze was not divinely built
But is secreted by my guilt.
‘The centre that I cannot find
Is known to my unconscious mind;
I have no reason to despair
Because I am already there.
‘My problem is how not to will;
They move most quickly who stand still:
I’m only lost until I see
I’m lost because I want to be.
‘If this should fail, perhaps I should,
As certain educators would,
Content myself with this conclusion:
In theory there is no solution.
‘All statements about what I feel
Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal:
My knowledge ends where it began;
A hedge is taller than a man.’
Anthropos apteros, perplexed
To know which turning to take next,
Looked up and wished he were a bird
To whom such doubts must seem absurd.
bitchin horoscopes
Aquarius (Jan 23 – Feb 22)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. You make the same mistakes repeatedly because you are stupid. Everyone thinks you are a fucking jerk.
Pisces (Feb 23 – Mar 22)
You are a pioneer type and think most people are dickheads. You are quick to reprimand, impatient and full of advice. You do nothing but piss-off everyone you come in contact with. You are a prick.
Aries (Mar 23 – April 22)
You have a wild imagination and often think you are being followed by the FBI or CIA. You have minor influence on your friends and people resent you for flaunting your power. You lack confidence and are a general dipshit.
Taurus (April 23 – May 22)
You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bullheaded. You are nothing but a goddamned communist.
Gemini (May 23 – June 22)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. You are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means your are a cheap bastard. Geminis are notorious for thriving on incest.
Cancer (June 23 – July 22)
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people’s problems, which makes you a sucker. You are always putting things off. That is why you will always be on welfare and won’t be worth a shit. Everyone in prison is a Cancer.
Leo (July 23 – Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are an idiot. Most leos are bullies. You are vain and cannot tolerate criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieving motherfuckers and enjoy masturbation more than sex.
Virgo (Aug 23 – Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder. Your shit-picking attitude is sickening to your friends and co-workers. You are cold and unemotional and often fall asleep while fucking. Virgos make good bus drivers and pimps.
Libra (Sept 23 – Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time dealing with reality. If you are a male you are probably queer. Chances for employment and monetary gain are nill. Most Libra women are whores. All Libras die of venereal disease.
Scorpio (Oct 23 – Nov 22)
You are the worst of the lot. You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You shall achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. You are the perfect son-of-a-bitch. Most Scorpios are murdered.
Sagittarius (Nov 23 – Dec 22)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to rely on your luck since you have no talent. The majority of Sagittarians are drunks. You are a worthless piece of shit.
Capricorn (Dec 23 – Jan 22)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You are basically chickenshit. There has never been a Capricorn of any importance. You should kill yourself.
The Mango
The Mango
is anything but innocent
it beckons with it’s fullness
it’s soft golden belly,
glowing from within,
it says…
sink your teeth
into my plump curvaceous skin,
suckle on my gorgeous ripe flesh
and let the sweet juices
trickle down your chin.
Revel in the rapture
of my glowing roundness
and feel the warmth
enter in.
for Judith, Medecine Woman, 2002
wise sand dune primrose bud
flowers innocent of this fools search,
speaks of youth and
eternal light
this
does not age or fade, it
just keeps moving through
like star songs resonant
beyond the Earth
Vega in the Lyre,
we remain ancient
and always new
what they say about age
is gravity’s conspiracy
there are no straight lines
in time
we dance
in lilting spheres
of luminescence looking
for shadows in the dunes
yet all the while the light comes from within
the incandescent whole
the wonder is
that we’re here on Earth at all.
for Keren, Koh Panghan, 1994
Velvet soft,
Fading petal,
Gently
…
…
Falls.
Lotus blossom’s
Golden heart
Gives, voluptuous petals
To the Air.
And sensuous stream sings
Its round song.
And autumn turns to spring
My love
Spring 1993, Japan
Would a thorny rose,
bitter sweet
As love lies bleeding
at her feet
Proffered in ecstasy of
loves desire
Fade away
in
vain ?
I was about to say
And I was about to say – the trouble
With intellectuals…
Is they skirt around emotion.
Then he gave me a hug
And stole my heart
From its retreat
Into the notion
Dare must we
Dare must I
DARE TO BE TRUE!
The Wild spirit of Lakeview
Percussive rain, drives hard and fast
Against the cold, window glass,
As hostile winds, howl through
The deserted buildings, at Lakeview.
So desolate, this place, in the night
Bearing under winter’s blight
And through the day, such animation
As Ilka and Karina, in confrontation.
Conflict of ego in angry conceit…
Oh, a peaceable place this would be,
Though tortured by so much fury
Sweet tempered souls, Impassioned animal spirit,
Oh, wild winter,
Where is your love hiding?
Animal Farm
Time seems suspended as I go to pass
Midst gray shadows, diffuse moonlight doth cast
Damp air hangs heavy in a haze
As still horses, from their boxes gaze
Then around the corner I am silently met
By Bolero’s, stony silhouette
Between his and Dallas’ box I tread
Toward my… waiting lover’s bed
When dawn comes round…
The dogs in circles play
And the girls still, on their soft pillows lay
Oblivious to the morning chorus…
The animals are all chanting for us!
Horses hang their heads in wait
While Trebol bangs his weary gate
And from my room again… I gently tread
Past Bolero’s nodding head.
Dusk over Valle del Sol
[My 1st poem. San Pedro de Alcantara, Spain.]
Peace pervades the clear evening air
As moonlight shadows lucidate there
Dark silhouettes of the trees new form
And faint stars call the night newborn
Sitting now, to meditate on, this
Tranquil scene of peace beyond…
my mind all the while perfused
By the …c a l m …fragrant breeze
Suffused of lavender, myrtle
And redolent resin, of the pine trees
And over yonder, distant woods report
The resounding sound of antlers retort
The last bird’s song
Echoes, through the night
The haunting sound
Of paradise respite