and then there was nothing

    and then there was no one


    and there was you


and then there were lies

    and betrayal


    and then i saw truth


and then i found freedom

    and clarity


    and called it love


and then i fought

    and then i cried


    and then push turned into shove


and then you left

    and i was alone


    and then you moved on


and then there was nothing

    and then there was no one


    and then you were gone




6/19/09

Whether the silent elation
exists in your day to day
is irrelevant
to your idle hands
and flickering gaze.
Whether happiness exists in the rustling leaves
or a primitive, driving beat -
Should matter,
but it shouldn't decide.
The sparkling realm,
the beautiful assertion
that you ARE.

It is very strange
when you realise
that, once and for all
they are gone.

They are no final words,
no goodbyes,
just a blank space:
no chance of filling it.

And the poets continue
attempting to put the word
down, but they miss
the point.

Every sentence
has been blown
straight out of my head.
Everything has evaporated
in just a few words;

That one phone call
'he is gone'

and he is.

And so,
to my father
who is no longer anything,
just a few things i can remember:
Rest
in
peace.

There's Chamfort. He's a sample.
Locked himself in his library with a gun,
Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye.
And this Chamfort knew how to write
And thousands read his books on how to live,
But he himself didn't know
How to die by force of his own hand--see?
They found him a red pool on the carpet
Cool as an April forenoon,
Talking and talking gay maxims and grim epigrams.
Well, he wore bandages over his nose and right eye,
Drank coffee and chatted many years
With men and women who loved him
Because he laughed and daily dared Death:
"Come and take me."

Birds tend to think the ideal morning raga is
             a mathematical formula, an idea
which will describe ancient silk petals, say,
or nascent flowers in deep movement—  
     objects whose proof lies in open comparison to
            sunlight. The birds, when they
listen to this old raga, played by these
old hands, still say that it’s a language which might be
a new language, and not the same old drumming sound
       played next to their gold and silver cages.
                Birds truly are sensate beings.

True thought consists in singing chords that seem
a repetition of this new language
            —even in pain, even at death—
even though this cannot be. Imagine
each bird singing a thousand songs at each
advent of thought. Think about it—
a thousand songs before the sun moves one degree,
a thousand songs before each bird
         can take a breath,  
a thousand songs against that one moment,
against the passing of that moment…
It is impossible. It has to be.
Of course this too is why I play raga.

So morning’s first raga should not just wake
the sleepers, it should first disturb their dreams.
It should with open eyes bend over their
shut eyes, and watch them come to consciousness.
It should pause at the edge of its destruction,
for soon its vast body will fill the air.
The day is now upon the land. The cage-
bell-flute-beauty, this breath,
is now an abstraction and powerful.
For each day the morning raga finds its way
to garden walls, to destroy those walls.
And for the birds that can fly off,
who are at least alive in the wind,
the morning raga plays a thousand times
in that wind. And then the day begins.

(March 28 2001)