Image: Created by Grok inspired by “Summer God”
Summer God
Spring lilacs hint at your arrival
As does rain on blades of grass.
All summer you play hide & seek
In the moss rose.
Fall, you play your game of colors
Dazzling me with harvest.
Winter finds you tempering me for the thaw
As the nights grow longer and colder—
Let me make my life a soft, sweet spring
That flows into you, O Divine Beloved Summer!
Image: Created by Grok inspired by “My Soul in Search of Divine Romance“
My Soul in Search of Divine Romance
I looked in the river & the river just kept rolling on out to the sea.
I looked in the ocean & the ocean was just too big to see across.
I looked in your eyes & saw nothing but the blues. I looked in the sky
& the stars got caught in my corneas. I looked in a book
& the words just snaked across the page. I looked in men’s hearts
& saw bottomless pits of darkness. I listened to the wind
& heard not one word that sounded like a lover’s confession,
so I listened to music pounded out on a piano, flowing out of a guitar
& men’s throats & women’s throats & found no lovers.
I listened to liars who made love as useful as a moth-eaten sweater,
whose affection was just slick, swollen sticks of flesh
& I pushed & sucked until I realized this is not love, this is friction.
I stop listening today, now I will wait.
Only You know how to love me
but I don’t yet know how to understand—
the mud of this world sticks to my thighs
& the slime of lovers who have tricked me
for over half a century—
but today I renounce it all—
I will no longer look for You
in the disappointing automatons
who inhabit this world.
I will not listen to the tacky voices
that pollute the hallways of my ears.
Let them all grab & squabble & grow fat & drunk
on the blood of desire.
I renounce it all—
I cut out my eyeballs,
& hack my eardrums to pieces, & flay my skin,
& chop out my tongue, & snuffle my nose,
because my soul has no need to carry such baggage
traveling in search of Divine Romance.
Image: Created by Grok inspired by “Song of Silence“
Song of Silence
Your silence has begun to sing to me again
in the voice of my old poem, “To Love Pain”:
“I can lose You again and again / And my heart will beat back stronger / As it is lashed by the whip of Your absence.”
I did not recognize You in April:
I mistook You for a young lover
come to swim in my eyes, touch my lips,
and part the warm sea flesh that opens for lovers.
And I slid down and down into that primal ooze
that has kept me hide-bound.
But now that You have hidden that body of mud
and have silenced his voice that lured my lust,
I see Your body of light dancing
on rivers of words meandering through my soul.
I hear Your astral singing
in every silver syllable of pure vibration.
O Divine Singer, I come to You alone
to sing my song and to devote
every last ounce of flesh and bone.
Image: Created by Grok inspired by “On the Brim of the Day“
On the Brim of the Day
This day I drink in the possibility of warmth—
Sending a letter to the snow, kissing the nose of the pup,
Eating honey in divine rain, singing with the bird.
I was ashamed and hid myself until this blood had cooled—
Then petals fell from these eyes, and I saw his face again.
Now on the brim of this new day
I grow on the morning
Like the sun climbing the sky.
And I will sail across sunset
Like the cloud hiding his eye.
I will yoke myself to my faith
And climb again
Like the moon saddling the earth,
Riding like the horseman against the sea.
Image: Created by Perplexity inspired by “Seized by the Moment“
Seized by the Moment
The betrayer cannot hold,
Grasps you but an instant.
He traveled slowly through my eye
But now, finally, has quit
My field of vision.
His voice is a tree falling alone
Except for the other trees.
My memory is full of trees
Trees full of birds
Birds whose throats cannot get enough of singing.
I take it back: the betrayer is singing
Has a mighty snare
Has held me there
Thirty years:
My ears
Are Judas.
Image: Created by Grok inspired by “This Salt Sea“
This Salt Sea
Because my mother bore me, I navigate this salt sea
that pulsates under my skin, this blood sea the moon urges.
In the push and flow, I still my eyeballs
and listen to the ocean in my ears,
but I can never find the boundary they call skin.
I never know where I should end and you might begin:
I feel you are a wave and I am the sand.
Or you are a long strand of kelp and I am the forest.
Maybe you are a school of fish and I am the food they toss
from the glass-bottom boat.
Maybe I am a crab and you are a gull,
though I suspect you’re a shark—
but you’re probably just a slippery dolphin
whose language I wish I could learn.
Image: Created by Grok inspired by “River of Soul Love“
River of Soul Love
A saint hears her soul singing silence deep.
She listens and lusts no more for a man.
She hands her Divine Friend her heart to keep.
She sings glad hymns His Sacred love to reap—
Her heart rises above its human span.
A saint hears her soul singing silence deep.
Her eyes of devotion no longer weep—
She needs no mortal to complete her plan.
She hands her Divine Friend her heart to keep.
Her blood flames cool with the vow she does keep.
None can end what her Holy Friend began—
A saint hears her soul singing silence deep.
The river of soul love flows then to sweep
From her body all debris now to ban.
She hands her Divine Friend her heart to keep.
She rests in silence—is blissful in sleep.
She races and beats every clock that ran:
A saint hears her soul singing silence deep.
She hands her Divine Friend her heart to keep.
Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by “A Raindrop in the Palm“
A Raindrop in the Palm
for Brother Achalananda
Before you became my polestar,
I was diverted by the one who boasts
Deep fish and salt-crusted waves.
The one who puffs our pride that all rivers
Rush to embrace his power.
I listened to the moist murmur
Of his promises of exoticisms,
As I sat close beside him on the beaches
Of Encinitas, Pensacola, and Virginia.
Oh! I stood dumbfounded at how big his waters were—
Without an inkling of your infinite vastness,
I could never have guessed
That he is much less than a raindrop
In the palm of your hand.
Image: Sesshu Style Painting – Enhanced by Grok (see below)
A Quiet Security
I wish I could feel peace as a warm glow
In the brain—
Fears falling away
Leaving no scars—
A quiet security that my soul is blessed.
I wish I could feel gentle pulse-beats—
Reminders of the Lord’s knocking
At the door of my heart—
Fears falling away
Leaving no scars—
A quiet security that my soul is blessed.
I wish I could fill my life with self-realized people—
People who are souls wearing bodies.
People whose fears have fallen away
Leaving no scars—
A quiet security that their souls are blessed.
Image: Created by ChatGPT
My Fleeting Dreams
My fleeting dreams do float through dark waters.
Mortal visions melt into deep silence.
My mind then cowers from earthly slaughters.
My heart beats hard in fearing violence.
Still, I wander from dream to starless dream.
I undergo birth and then death again.
My journey moves on through a storm-tossed stream—
I face meaningless bouts of grief and pain.
Yet my soul rests beneath Thy sacred wing.
Thy mercy shelters me from constant fright.
Thou bring’st me peace no fleeting dream can bring.
My soul grows bright in Thy flame of pure light.
Thou dost guard my life on this stormy sea.
Thou dost keep my soul forever with Thee.
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