ego

shall a tree
move its own limbs
to mimic God

the trap

What have we done?
Capitalism
has taken the place
of God as a sense
of safety - security - identity
in our minds.
Everything serves a purpose
until it gets out of control.
Time has an end.
Eternity is forever.
You are forever.
We are the ones
we have been searching for.

How do I begin to pick up a pen?
How does a thought take me to Neverwhere?
They never can ever tell us the reality
of the realest questions
and, for some, it’s just fine.
The rest need more.
Something? Not a thing.
Someone? Quite plausibly.

Won’t let go the tap tapping
or drumming or the pokey poke.
It’s there. But, you keep your head in the game.
Cuz, ya know, what else is there around here?
Spiritual desert with no substantive food.
Like biting into a juicy hamburger
and tasting sawdust only.
Only if those ones
could just keep their blinders
in proper position,
proper place to look and stay
and march along on
in single file lives
to mark one existence onto the next.
Who though?
All for who?
Or, what?
Surely,
God needs no marching ants such as these?

They who can’t see
will surely deny the real world
you know is here
and call you a blind fool. Ha!
Jokes on jokes on yokes
of jellied stroke marks.
Get off my back and let me live
how I see. Not through your grimy,
filthy, streaked and yellowed seeing.
But with clear and pure eyes
you hadn’t touched yet.

What happens to those ones?
Where have they gone?
Looking, looking close and away
and all eyes sense
is dust mountains and cave dwellers
and absence of light.
Where are the true ones
filled with the light of the rising Sun?
Come home!
The place with the voice pointing out cracks
is singing a song so longing and sure
and cannot look away.
Not with COVID and all of this world
awakening to see what they -
the blind ones -
have done while the rest have been sleep.
Blinders melt in sunlight
and aren’t needed
by the light of the moon.
Here one finds the way by heart.
Here one sees for real
where we truly are. And then?
Ah! And then,
what else can one be except
free.

enter ego
tainting, tinting, spiking
now with its foreign substance
always to manipulate and alter What Is
already natural is only good

One did not think one could improve on God?
Did one think this lie?
Did one account for one’s own blind ignorance?

as if one created something new
within the realm of What Is

Step aside and see your own insignificance,
if you can stand to look -
stand the inferno of your own gaze.
And, if you cannot,
how could you believe you are a king?
A king of what?
The lost.

busy the days working in time
making some nightmarish world

You think you are making paradise?
You are building your own funeral pyre!
Must you go to the bitter end,
dragged and gagged and beaten?

it isn’t a giving up

What have you taken?
In order to give something up,
you must have taken it in the first place.
You have not.

only think it so,
making all suffering seem real.

What is this you have made?

don’t know
can’t see
won’t stop and tell
just keep spinnin
and rollin
and truckin along
leanin in and gettin ‘er done …

To what END?

the executioner of all we know in this world
so we spend lifetimes trying to manage it
time
we try to purchase it with our last breath
and kneel before it begging for extra rations
and we waste and squander it
like rainwater and pennies
as if it
time
has no end
do we mistake time for God
do we look past the miracle of our divine reality
to bow before a man-made illusion of it
where is all the rushing water ending up
follow the flow and end up nowhere anyway
but with a lot less junk
we look away
only to hide ourself

why so vital
that institutions last
shall we sacrifice ourself
for the survival of the institute
the institute shall stand long after
our grandchildren’s grandchildren have gone to dust
is this a thing of pride
it seems we - the beings
are here only to make the institute the thing
that it is
I am
here to say
I am more than any institution
a country is an anthill
and I - one being -
am the universe
all of existence
the institution shall bow to me
else the institution is no more
I am all that is seen

What is happening to you?
Says who?
Who asks this question?
Person, you are melting;
Being extinguished in the light of love = Truth.
What you really are.
Not who you have been.
...led to believe you are.
You -
are a mask.
I am -
All that is real.
You, like a coat of paint over old wall-paper.
I can scrape you off.
No matter how many coats of varnish.
Trying to lacquer on layers to make you look strong
and secure and untouchable.
You mislead your customers:
UV protection does not guard against true light.
Who can defend against itself?
Only a fool believes this is true.

So, so much superfluous stuff.
Who needs it.
But, I don’t.
Who craves it.
But, I am fed.
Who yearns and desires and lusts
for more and different and higher -
Oh! Always deeper and harder and higher!
But, I am full
already of the emptiness
I am.
Who knows nothing of this that I am.
And, I am also beyond this doubt
and so who can know everything
in the world there is to know
and still know nothing of the universe
one is in being.

Riddles, oh Riddles
and sensical unsensed rhythm
of my lost rhyme.
These words mean not a thing;
just the universe tied in string.
All may be lost
and whatever would that mean?
Whatever could that bring?
Only lost in this illusory dream
Catch a ride
Catch a wave
See? See how easy it is to get caught?

My neighbor wished me Happy Juneteenth yesterday.
I felt alive saying it back -
Yeah! Happy Juneteenth!
Now! We can say it without feeling threatened;
without feeling alone or lame.
We can say it minus that chip weighting our shoulders
and absent the lump of shame sitting on our chest.
We can sing out, Happy Juneteenth!
in a new melodic tune.
Like when we wished each other, Merry Christmas!
We can say it loud with joy and release
and uplifting confidence
that if one doesn’t wish it back
that one is one of the sad and sorry lost who must suffer.
Juneteenth, you say? Who ever heard of that holiday?
Mrs. Horton would stare you down
like you don’t know your tongue
from your *******,
she heard you say that.
I learned of the true independence day of our nation
as a young student of 17 in public school.
Learned truths my programmed parents couldn’t teach
from one of God’s messengers of truth
manifest in the form of a high school teacher.
I found out because I wanted to know;
know why the ****** up **** I saw each day
happened mostly to people who were brown
and mostly not to people who weren’t that color.
And, I wanted to know why.
To really get to the crux of why -
even though my skin is peachy tan cream -
why I’m black too?
What’s that mean anyway?
Really, you don’t know. Do you?
Not till someone who knows shows you too.
Or, you just forget who they told you you were.
Then you too will be able to find the truth.
Only because of desire and pure will to understand.
But, if you don’t wanna know -
or cared not to know -
then you never knew of Juneteenth.
And this is all new.
And you think - How do these folks know just what to do?
On a brand new holiday
that trumps the other one they tried to fake.
Cuz no nation is free while it enslaves its own fundamental roots;
choking truth to hide its own crimes.
Holding back light to wallow in pitiful darkness.
J4 is nothing.
Juneteenth is all!
You never were free till you freed all your sons.
And you cannot be till you see all offspring free.
Until you hold the truth in your heart
you can never really be free to be what you are.
So really, any independence day was of undercover ******* -
a reminder of the lie.
While enslaved mothers and fathers,
sisters and brothers walked with free minds on this land
and you celebrated your own cruel spiritual demise,
without understanding or true purpose defined.
But now! Look at the colors we have given you again!
Oh nation stained in blood and terror,
look at what we have given
as a token of our love and forgiveness.
Juneteenth! All is Juneteenth!
The one and only true day to symbolize
the day you finally took the first step -
to step away from your own chains
and the ones you tried to use to bind me.
This one day we give you -
symbolizing that this nation is finally now and forever
a sponsor and supporter and endorser of the free!

Pretend shock or chaotic mind
making judgement known?
All of my country is ablaze
with the discontent of its offspring
It’s birthing of a violent and privileged youth
who know the world of their dreams
is more real than the world of a grand other reality
They saw the slave master’s overseer
on the neck of Kunta Kinte
but their grandparents just saw
a black man getting smart
What kind of twisted psychological manipulation
had to happen for that thought to happen?
Think of the programming involved?
Then think of the gargantuan task of re-programming
And I see with more than eyes -
with the sense eyes fail to capture -
I see that the anti-fascists and the pacifists
marching with placards shouting their pain
they are only two halves of the same t-bill
One is me on a good day
And the other is me on a day
when my favorite uncle George
got murdered by a cop
I can’t judge neither one

I watched some young people looting some stores
The people moved quickly and indiscriminately
These ones were amassing large quantities of toilet paper
Or maybe it was paper towels
And other loot too ...but it was the TP that grabbed me
How to be angry with this?
Why are you out in the mayhem, young man?
Sweet young lady, why you wasting your heaven on a clean behind?
If we cleaned our own messes today would be different.
You can’t look away from young people looting paper goods
Just because you thought the TP fairy
supplied every household with a fresh daily roll
What want and clawing need drives a person to loot
And to loot the basics
Some other kind of slave master for sure
If we are so rich -
So abundantly wealthy and blessed with good fortune
Why are we watching men ****** men in our streets?
And watching our youth burn and loot our cities behind it all?

This is all of us
each and every one of us
If you refuse to claim it
you ain't one of us
You know how this started
and from where we Americans came
Karma plays out in each according to its own
Violence begets violence
and love begets love
If we want change -
if we care to do more than just dream -
and create a better world for ourselves
and our little ones future little ones
than the one that was made for us
then you know what must be done
Only love - all the sayings and cliches are true
Say them, sure, but more -
live them in truth
Lay down all weapons of attack
Violence can only fail to never quench or suffice
Drop all hatred at the source
cutting the power and ending all strife
We have this choice now
or the other hellish death
Choose now - tick tock -
time **** near gone
I bet you never stand around again
like a crowd at a lynching again
And watch a man **** a man in the streets again
America Again?!
You sick savage nation of shame!
Show yourself and be judged by your own justice