I belong
             to no God
             no nation
             no creed
             no section

but to Spirit that
is home as much in man
as in the dumb and the meek

say brother, I have
                                no religion

but that of love that animates
the fabric of all existence.

and no deed as holy
as to love fellow folk
as I do myself, however
unlike me they be,
though pure of the heart.

Back in the days when
my friend Grisham John
started as a teenage artist,  he was poor
and had but onions and yogurt for meals;
and once he stole some paint
from the local corner shop

"Aha, caught you red-handed,"
said the cliche-infested store-owner
"Give me a reason
why I should not call the police"

"Well," said John Grisham
****-sure of his talent
"I can immortalize you as 'Scrooge in Red'
or 'Generosity in Psychedelic'
You choose..."

----------------------------------------------------­-----
so when Grisham John comes to
your town,  look out for,
amongst his exhibits:
*"Generosity in Psychedelic
with inset of Scrooge in Red"

Forlorn sheets fluttering in the winds
splattered in smoke and ruination,
empty the streets where she'd played lost:

Haunting her now among
shadows in the cell she's chained
to slavery
of the religious kind.

Beast more than beast these men that
stare in hubris awaiting their turn
to partake of infidel flesh.

Behold! The holy empire of God is here.

That morning she'd grown up -
blood between her thighs had
stopped her play,
and her chastity was proclaimed.
Selima must learn to respect men
and the ways of God and His
rules of modesty.

Now, as he grunts and groans
in holy pleasure as he mounts
her by turns, ******* at the altar
to be an example of how ******
the lot of the pagan and faithless be.

Mother, is this the modesty that
God commands of infidel women?

How merciful indeed is He that
He creates in faithful men a beastly craving
and provides too for them
uncircumcised ***** in pillage.

A raga of another time, from another day,
plays in the head:
grime of the day, stuck on my hands.

You shot an arrow across the eastern skies.
Senora, a hundred cries you carry
in your womb, yet I never
found you in the peasant woman
in whose arms I fell asleep, when
at noon you disappear at the horizon.

Maiden of the moons, at dusk I lost you
to the trail of lotuses blooming westward.

It is raining in gusts but this storm
cannot wash it away:
Guilt, like turmeric, stains the soul.

Danger! There is - no end - to this tunnel.
Listen           to the voice...            it ends...            in light.
Hallucination! Just stay put -
darkness is what we were born to serve.
**** on!           This voice....            is true.
Those that go, they never return.
They           return not       as they          walked into light.
Prove it!              Then....             walk with me.
Any other way!          Then         search your heart.
Those voices are illusory, meant to lure and **** us.
Freedom              exists. I can            see its glow
as I          walk  closer.   You are hallucinating.
Voice competing with voice: you you you are are
hal-hal-luci-  li -luci-  ght  - li-  nating-nating-  ght  -nating

Sometimes you pick a pair of fish and bread
and feed thousands, and at others
master flautist, make umbrellas of hills
protecting us from deluges of wrath.
I have walked to the lonely peaks where
stones have become animated bearing witness
to the nights of wonder, when you poured forth
your love, and drank of the poisoned chalice.
Yea, even by the well where burdened of sin
I sat down, and drank of the springs of Grace.
And I do not wish to hear anything,
but relive the awe seeing you speak,
as one with authority, passion of the heavens!

My menorah is three-branched:
three the lamps that light my firmament
one, ineffable, more ancient than time
the other immanent,
and the third, the Lamb, incarnate love.
I drank of the them in a drop
of the tears the autumn sky shed.
Yea, I held a camphor to the skies.
An eternal flame, that
burns in the chamber of the heart
where I stand anointing the beloved's
feet in perfumed oil. This crimson eve
when the shadows return,
I kneel lost in the light of his love.
A silken stream from the unknown
that gushes silent in the creeks
of the heart, where I sit in gratitude
feeling the warmth in my palms.