Winds of Fire

Citation preview

WINDS OF FIRE

IV

Winds of Fire

Chinnamasta with Shiva

Winds of Fire N

gnOme

WINDS OF FIRE © the author and gnOme books 2019 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0. gnOme books gnomebooks.wordpress.com Please address inquiries to: [email protected] ISBN: 9781798031001 Cover image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinnama sta_with_Shiva.jpg

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Contents

The River

All and/or Nothing

1

23

I

Diamond light of most desire, whole world dreaming Whatever the God wants, crystal fire burning Gold and green your soul-body white in the river. Boulders sick with love sigh to feel this nearby Doing nothing, not seeking or concealing, here Like on time’s first day as if that means something. Will anyone ever say anything again? Language lost its only tongue to a secret flame I saw singing in waters now drowning our heads. Waters no one saw, nor earth or sky anywhere No location or witness, solely the pure hook Of life piercing itself with blood needing the sea. And there was everything also, infinities Of infinitesimal truths shrouded in petals Like the tiniest hairs of one’s skin, whispering. In paradise, in that empyrean garden Where now still we lie counting the stars in our veins I will remember the diamond light, my hunger. Watch the galaxies spinning beyond themselves, feel The winds of fire blowing wherever they will. Far beyond their storm you are, your own lovely form.

1

II

Voracious dancing cephalophore of my dreams, How many dawns will find you singing in this blood, Waking life in fern labyrinths drawn home by your hand? Our tomb was born a long time ago, and I died Well before that. So why is this body floating, Still kissing the invisible slice of your neck? Take me into the mountains, flying over ice Forbidden to men. Bury my slowest soul-death In your favorite secret fountain untouched by time. Hopelessness says three new suns will sprout there, flowers To light the triple worlds of a new universe With enough matter, life, and thought for one today. A day longer and shorter than all other days Is that day, the same as this one: billions Of useless death-rays decaying into our bliss. Where did this whole game begin, the one only one Will ever win? I want to be with you there now, Tearing tiny selves apart in utopia. Never for a moment stop drinking and dancing, Never once slip into despair. With each sweet beat My own trunkless head takes one more last endless sip.

2

III

See how tiny this cosmos is, that which we thought So vast now melting fast like a colored marble Dropping into the empty summit of Mount Etna. In the middle of the room I stand gazing where No one knows, inside out on fire with thoughts of you Thinking nothing, my limbs only an edge of flames. Zero is the meaning of life now, the fullest Possible hive of love buzzing with a billion Stinging honey drops of hyper-busy sweetness. God lift your life off the earth any hour you want And drop it down softly on every perfect spot. Space-time is just your navel’s tickle so have fun! I will be somewhere wandering around, neither Here nor there and both since the world which I am from And the one I am going to never exist. The plan is to keep walking right down the middle Of every line, to stay swimming in the center Of all veins your eyes, mouth, and hands might ever count. There is no reason to be happy. But to see Nothing burning everything in the void—maybe That is why you are smiling all the rainbows.

3

IV

Who is leading whom through this desert of beauty, This dry fountain of dreams more crystal and more wet Than all the rivers of our homesick planet Earth? Above the valley where goldest gold was planted The hilltops blaze day and night with cremation fires Joyful and bodiless. None die in this abode. I close my eyes to the music of clouds at dawn And feel a snake tie my hair over the hole-crown Through which seven seas one morning wept light for you. And please do not mind me as mind loses itself To tongues of unspeakableness. Now is the time To grind us to dust while a jaguar guards the tree. What others might see as two or three hungry dogs Munching human heads is in real reality The sound of being now your sweet happiness seat. How delightful it must be to be the goddess Of this plight, to reflect the universe smiling In a wine-cup filled so full from your own split neck! No one is making love—love is. Blood will be blood, Spilling like some desert river into a place For one to bathe who alone gives birth to herself.

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V

Love, to get a glimpse of the monster who loves you, Live every moment remembering that this whole Black and beautiful universe is his shadow. Imagine! Is there anyone anywhere who Might here see what it must be like to be that one Whose being is drowning all being in its sea? An eye sharper than that is the lance of fire Whose poison tongue makes soul or body weep dancing With slaying desire of going now for a swim. Being is dying by loving. One can say that Diving with you would be like being swallowed up By lips kissing the depth speaking silent these words. All at once better, worse, the same, and far sweeter Than the cockroach is its salty taste, our horror Of the love whose passing shadow is all we see. Yet whatever reality might be, I am Really only really happy to glimpse that light And see the color of your eyes when I close mine. Do not be shocked if the heart on fire explodes In waves beyond the shore of cosmos. Can you think Another way for this ocean to drown itself?

5

VI

Rivers do not move forward but fall unfolding, Losing themselves in self-holding, finding their way Feeling never knowing the fate of water’s sway. Listen to me rest like you, spreading-gathering Little by little more and more into and of The liquid gravity washing all things away. The weight carries each where love wants to go, and I Need no unique insight or special instrument To see your real silence thousands of miles away. The heart is a telescope bringing all manner Of distant stars and anemones into view, And a canoe from which explorers best not stray. So deep are the waters of life that no one knows What to do nor ever will. Everyone just goes Along with whatever someone thinks is the way. Protect me from all thoughts and words which will never Reach the ocean home designed by all lines ever Traced in three worlds by your hand at work or at play. The stream of me and the stream of you are going Somewhere. May their flowing together and apart Forever meet in the one and only today.

6

VII

In moth-form fluttering inside a dream I found you, Ash pale with eyespots red and black, a flurry of White hungry sweetness biting my hand and back. No one knows who you are or what you are doing Here. Reality itself affirms that it is Ever more and more beautiful to see you near. Above, golden constellations fringed in pink light Animate themselves against the setting sunrise, Permuting all of the forms of eternal night. Do not wait for me in Venice or anywhere At all. Place of the whole universe is sinking Into the swamp from which no angel will not fall. Creatures of the black lagoon we are, our vast sighs Know how to draw water’s shape, healing every wound With sea-green poisons welling in rainbows of eyes. I will find you and hold you and do everything That one will ever do. This is the mad promise Of your own special no one eternally true. Whatever being you become or ever are In the dream of me, fate promises that fate will Follow the salt of our tears into the same sea.

7

VIII

Point so secret and open, moving everywhere, Sewing souls out and in, through new centers placeless, Escaping every moment all preposition. Thus dizzy one is, trying to put a finger On this as if floating dimensionless spark, still Here and not, wherever life and thought will linger. Something happened to my gaze that day, leaving world To become lost nowhere or waiting to be born Among follicles glowing golden never grey. Place exists in the mind alone. So here is where To follow the point flowing in all directions, Leave by staying what moving bodies leave behind. Ahead of me two lights hang nearby in the air. Headless our feet’s slow following leads none knows where Into some paradise edge of all days and nights. It does not have to make sense, seeing that nothing Ever will from where one stands. This belvedere Is simply one of the green ocean’s grains of sand. Still how beautiful it was to see all beauty Gather for a moment in one specific place, Then vanish making everything else its trace.

8

IX

It all depends upon a hummingbird, the one Whose free will swallows oceans, feeds jungles hunger, And causes deserts to be jealous of our thirst. Life being itself an infinite folly, whose Whim other than the dear wish of its sovereign fool May point beyond blue the flame of this dilemma? Nobody really knows what they want, much less what One needs. All pray: Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, A cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! So waves of sphere-piercing sighs fly into heaven’s Eye, moving dark skies to tears sweetening the pain Of hearts sucking them in like wine to green again. All is error, the whole universe upside down, And therefore superior to perfect, no way To make a mistake or accidentally drown. This impossible is love: that if anyone Did not love, they would love far more than they do now, Truly, exactly to this fire’s same degree. Backwards and forwards, both at once the hummingbird Flies. Wherefore the more life falls apart, leaves of me Nothing left, the more I know all is for the best.

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X

Truth is the heart is a total monstrous mess, My nuclear war of ideals and desires, A self-eating floating tomb of oceans of fire. Nowhere I live—wherever heart is—all places In limbo. Is there another spinning spiral For evaporating bewilderment to go? Since I saw you my severed head has never stopped Leaping into flames. What crazy love-form infects Both living bodies and corpses without a name? No doubt I will die from joy trying to show you The shape of it. As if there is anything else In all existence except that infinite bliss! Wanting to be Dante, a friend of mine became Nearly the worst follower of Petrarch—at least Not some lazy slavish tool constructing an ark. Still I worry about the dangers of thoughts, words, And deeds—a mad imaginary beast babbling That it might not exactly be what true love needs. Hear how to its sweet hunger a lost monster prays: Save me forever from wisdom and folly, point My heart to kissing each day your temple in peace.

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XI

Climb me high like a mountain, fly me through your hair, Sky-bury this skull so deep into time’s fountain That omniscience also forgets I am there. Today in glaciers I hear how ice creaks and moans, The elemental lament of life unable To silence the silence of fire melting bone. Now tell me, on that ocean planet far below, Can you spy any islands at all, any new Orogeny where things green and moving might grow? Paralyzed I am, spiked at the cosmic center, Suspended for all time in a void space only Nothing knows how to exit or where to enter. At least there is nothing unique about this. That Alone stands supreme above each and every what, Calling all to its unforeseeable summit. Life forever splits into life’s deadly mirror, A soul-sword, blade of its own being, severing Itself into crystal cuts clearer and clearer. Yet one floating body among all the others Appears, a beauty whitely dark and blackly light, Lovely rainbow secret of the eternal spark.

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XII

Held down by the hands of the moon, entranced in beams Beginning endless, I am searching for a place To dwell, simultaneously here and deathless. Not in knowledge is there one location like this, Not in seeing or feeling. Experience knows Nothing of that thing into which it is reeling. No labyrinth is lost. And this whole vast cosmic Conundrum humans ignore and pretend to be Life’s sole reality is a shadow of ghosts. Bound to a soul-body whose love of hunger feels Like drowning seas and flying mountains, I perceive Worlds through prison walls ever subtler and stronger. All my thoughts are known more wisely elsewhere than me. Another infinite reason for gravity To play marbles with planets of every hue. Let us invite ourselves like clowns that come and go At the court of life’s teenage empress, causing her To laugh and blush and forget outside her power. Here is gone, there is gone, lost all pain and pleasure. Yet day and night I am here still speaking with you, Dizzy in silver streams dreaming golden treasure.

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XIII

Dizziness that makes the world stop, sends gravity Into spin, evaporating in spiral drops All universes thought likes to think it is in. Can you feel this ground on the other side of time, This day under all yonder spheres of space, a place Where birth and death are born and die before our eyes? I reach for it with my body, my heart, my mind, Falling falling falling further away into The lap of one whom I will always never find. Whose is this lightning-spear on which the heart cannot Not live? From and into what reality is It flying us like a new destiny of God? Whatever we see it is—it is that and not. And this is only the simplest method it knows To keep the soul spinning off new heads like a top. If beauty had a name no one would ever fall In love. And none will not meet the silence, the fire Of which all things are syllable or lambent flame. Every second one directs the whole cinema, Telling space-time to roll and bounce and fall. Right here Is the playground where our cosmos is your ball.

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XIV

Sink the ship of metaphor, blast the spire of form, No other sense or knowledge or faith I desire Than to run and leap like a child into your arms. Whose arms these are I have no idea—they are yours, And that is more than enough thought for me tonight, For one who only wants to die and laugh and drink. The hands I dream and the hands I held and the hands I will hold again are the selfsame hands whether Sweetly pouring wine down or strangling my throat. Hang me in the noose of your sighs, let me flutter Like a butterfly in winds of fire burning Where suns are swallowed in the blackness of your eyes. Given all that has been felt, spoken, and conceived Or will ever be, it seems most wise also to Recall love’s sublime infinite stupidity. So idiot is the heart that it alone knows What is truly true. No intellect is a match Against an animal sensing the real perfume. Walking in void am I, any moment to fall, Secure in mysterious chance my ears and limbs Recognize forever the echo of your call.

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XV

Purposeless is the goal of life, therefore love’s game Is to spiral way beyond all that would bind it, To dance into the fire every drive and aim. Once the mind conceived that something may come of this, And most certainly everything will, but to be Is a verb of paradise that first zero kills. Nothing comes of nothing—that is how it gives all, Filling void to overflowing until one swims As one in secret omnipresent waterfall. This morning the smell of burning life is water To my ears, a flowing sweet sound, with golden sparks Flying, dying to glow like the hairs on your skin. Bound to this stake by the wind, heat tying one’s hands, No cord is needed to hold any heart blinded By a light which blackens the sun lighting this land. Like two moons of Jupiter we transit, entranced As twin pupils of the god’s great tornado eye, Glimpsing all there is to feel below-above sky. Home is homeless, therefore we will always return There—here to the first ever-living forever Known within, unmasking inside the fire we are.

15

XVI

Be not troubled if I speak of bodies—spirit, Flesh, and mind—if I imagine entangling Tentacles the way I am entangled in mine. Everyone knows the corpse will fade, is already Dead, that this lamely walking grave has no business Ever conceiving of itself as its own head. Everyone feels how the heart comes and goes, flowing Far beyond oneself, flying further than it can, At once failing from and planting seeds in the sun. Everyone sees how the mind knows and not, the way Auras of its auto-eclipse light all paths Between invisible summits and the abyss. Who cares what happens to these three strange bedfellows, Stooges of the so-called soul? All the comedy They provide is worth delay of the divine goal. Still it is terrible, to be chained thus to sky, Bound hand and foot in headlessness with cords of fire Braided from feathers of wings that forever fly. As long as nothing prevents breath from burning up All that seems between you and me, as long as life Learns quickly how to die—then happy I may be.

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XVII

Please do not be upset if the only thing I Can ever do is stay a total fool in love, Losing everything (nothing) to possess the void. You know how much your happiness is the one thing Worth living for and so do I. Only no one Would ever once intrude upon that whyless why. So violent is fire, so inconsiderate! Likewise the only caring thing, all flames saying, Anytime you need to burn I am here to help. Last night I fell and fell and never stopped flying Further into the impossible forever Where beings can actually be together. Until dawn my monster’s arms flew me everywhere Like a paper eagle looking for the golden Sun whose all-consuming light is seen in her skin. I do not care anymore how long the road is From wanting to not wanting—as long as it winds Along the ancient wall where your name is written. If these words pass through your pupils into the heart, I hope you will see who wrote them nesting there too, Happy among all lovely things that truly are.

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XVIII

A million moonlight kisses leading nowhere Except here—the place reality first saw you That one night no one will ever remember where. Waking from this kind of dream is the worst sorrow And next to best joy, the kind of past tomorrow Worth unliving for as many days are in store. Where the universal knot of all this comes from Nobody can say. Neither inside nor outside Entanglement does my pupil spy any space. You are there and I am there—is anyone here? Bodies within bodies abound at every scale Becoming ever more invisible than air. Like a candle you are, shining the universe, Lighting all labyrinths this long moment I will reach Out to hold you becoming so blindly more lost. Hear the dawn begin inside you (rose), then appear On the horizon, that same line of color I Photograph not knowing how else to feel you near. If this is not union it is separation, At least to a mind not seeing past yes and no Into the place without room for lamentation.

18

XIX

Infinite solution to infinite problem, Everything taken care of before origin And after end. No anxiety as to when. In this singular drama of lost life, constant Remembrance has a way of creeping in, taking Over the entire show from too deep within. A tree overgrows the whole labyrinth, vaulting Roots over walls, tunneling new earths where not Even nothing was—banyan of the great beyond. Each breath is remembering, each beat recording. I am the footprint of a heart along the way To finding where it is walking inside your home. Follow me because I am following you, see Me because I am looking at you, turn never Away because I am ever in love with you. The mother of all bombs is memory, bigger Than the universe, like a sky and earth and sea Unfolding from who knows what weird reality. The more unreal the more real—such are all these worlds Swirling like stars in our pupils, in the perfect Night where all things (not once lost) are forever found.

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XX

Who is seeing whom in all these faces, dreaming In every direction new mirrors for itself, A place to keep looking somewhere other than here? This morning the one playing-replaying within My mind’s eye resembles a pearl moon guarded by A mischievous sea anemone bold and shy. No one recalls signing up to be in this play, For a part in the theatre of signs. What strange Kind of spirit needs a person to speak and breathe? Seeing you cancels all of these questions of course, And that is why I ask them, to feel the mask fall And kiss the feet which are kicking it off the stage. It was my head until you cut it off. Now I Cannot drop or hold this thing unless your hand draw My blood into straighter lines spelling paradise. Pronounce again the letter of your gaze upon These eyes and time’s whole wall, alpha to omega, Will split in two or fold into a tiny ball. All for nothing is the face, dead marbles the stars Of our eyes, until that moment all is refilled With the true black of love, this invisible light.

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XXI

Ground is ground because it is falling too, as fast As forever, as silently as that pure fact, The one making sure there is me and there is you. Is there anything to say, or anywhere? This Place they call experience is not exactly What comes to mind when thinking lays its first thought bare. Whatever happens, wherever worlds float or drown, I feel underfoot and overhead a question— The question all the way up and all the way down. To be where we are is impossible, for there Is simply no we. Unless someone can separate All drops from the ocean for all eternity. Become the question that is swallowing you whole, Become yourself! That sounds like very good advice For beings blessed-doomed to live with no way or goal. No one is prepared for this, the sheer infinite Specificity of being here now oneself: Today’s total paradise and most perfect hell. Love the ground holding up these crosses, kiss the wood And embrace the sky. Truly no fate is better Than to be nailed together for no reason why.

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XXII

Love is waiting for the day after time, when now And here there will be somehow to be, one new way To hear and see what was there in the beginning. Meanwhile—just the thought of beginning with that word Is a thought most unjust. Please keep me forever From its sway, the air of gardens where none can play. And never ever waiting, not for one instant, But always leaping ahead too fast for living To breathe even one atom of the air of life. Time is atomic devotion, of elements, Of dust, this cosmos a swirling recollection Carrying back all nothing beings to that rest. All thoughts die in thoughts of you, finding nowhere else, Burnt to death in bright sparks of birth, born swirling Into the void of their very own spiral fire. Now the world’s whole horizon is one pale dark point, A tiny flame tip with just enough space for me To bleed into a name whose sound burns crystal blue. What am I saying? Nowhere in reality Will it ever matter what happens, nor in dreams Shall one I am always dreaming ever be found.

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All and/or Nothing

Infinite falling alive | Higher and higher | Ever less to strive | Flying in fire.

A hungry jaguar guards the tree | Where buried is our gold | Nest of this paradise to be | Neither young nor old.

Memory stronger than life | A truth more than true | First-last earthly paradise | Ever here with you.

Known unknown pearl of my heart | A vast tiny moon | Roundest light tearing apart | The now and the soon.

Daughter of the earth and sky | Eternal true friend | Love’s best lover beyond why | Beauty without end.

Your body is like a soul | And vice versa | A hypersingular whole | One universal.

Tu cuerpo como alma | Y viceversa | Tu mirada balsamo | Por universo.

Eviscerated by joy | Fulfilled in hunger | A lost singing mountain boy | Weakest and stronger.

24

Pearl maiden of the river | White rose bathed in green | Gift of the gladdest giver | Soul’s body unseen.

Maybe there’s no describing | Anything at all | Only the hand transcribing | Echoes on a wall.

As if anyone might find | Less than forever | As if the absolute bind | Will one day sever.

O waking dream now wake up | Unto the one day | Where reflecting in this cup | Love’s star leads the way.

Time as tear in eye of Truth | Releasing the pain | A drop dripping from Love’s tooth | Pulled from God’s neck vein.

In tornado of all love | Twisting past repair | Lost below and lost above | Being who knows where.

Not from a lack of desire | Do I self-restrain | But from that excess of fire | Burning up this pain.

Paradise-spice of our hearts | Makes one want it more | As if love’s sweet game of darts | Is something else for.

25

I plunge into green alpine pools | Reflecting your heart | Finding there the fire that cools | Image of all art.

As all things are infinite | Eternally one | As no line is the limit | As each star the sun.

Following this one way out | To where no one knows | Burning to dust every doubt | Where the wild wind blows.

To sacrifice in one breath | Both zero and all | To preempt every death | In one tiny fall.

God in middle of your heart | Face staring to face | Playing none and every part | Tracing without trace.

I am singing the river | Where my pearl is seen | Life’s overflowing giver | This undying green.

Point when one is pure monster | As if not before | The moment birth’s imposter | Breaks down our home’s door.

26

Life eclipsed by seeing you | Nowhere now to turn | Only way is being you | To in darkness burn.

Drown life in the fire that sings | Where I first saw you | In the eye of light that brings | Bliss to the night’s dew.

This silence wherein I live | Silence where I die | That space to receive and give | Without knowing why.

Hot air balloon of the heart | Acosmic inflation | Blowing space-time all apart | Well past separation.

Birth implosion of the sphere | Egg original | Leaking all place from the here | Perfect void so full.

Secret bigger than the skies | Nothing more more true | Black hole gravity of eyes | Ancient, now, and new.

Impossible to explain | Do not even try | The joy, the fire, the pain | Not passing me by.

To be deleted by grace | Deseparated | In that allreflecting face | By no one hated.

27

Falling me or mountain flying | And both it may be | In this deep chiasmus dying | Somewhere in the sea.

Already dead not dead yet | Still here for a while | Paying off forever’s debt | To the cosmic smile.

Utterly ridiculous | Existential being | Human from Latin humus | Like earth earth fleeing.

Everyone knows everything | Just don’t want to say | As if to bury the sting | Is better that way.

Inhale me with your heart-mouth | Speak me with a sigh | Water with one tear all drought | And kiss me to die.

Since I am going to die | And was never born | There will not be a goodbye | And no one to mourn.

Holding on to my hunger | As a boy his doll | And old tree growing stronger | By a waterfall.

My hunger is an artist | Hollowing life out | A genius aphairesist | Or blood-sculpting spout.

28

Everything is never ours | Because we are it | Blooming mirror of blind flowers | Paradise unlit.

As I am the one problem | And nobody else | Please cut this corpse limb from limb | Watch me rise from hell.

The impossibility | Written in your face | The strongest fragility | Anyone might trace.

Hunger is a rainbow flame | More myself than me | A moth burning in your name | Almost patiently.

The rest of life is over | Former part undone | Lying down in this clover | Underneath the sun.

That thing most dear to my heart | That hole in my head | That singular missing part | This letter unread.

Remember that pure contract | You signed before time? | This eternal perfect fact | Sublimest sublime.

To make love all day with joy | Whatever you do | Like a child who needs no toy | Other than the true.

29

To follow the path of love | Beyond desire | To touch in the spark above | Higher and higher.

Write the name of this hunger | In blood-happiness | Truth’s green sign ever stronger | Within my right wrist.

Everything I say is true | I’m the only lie | Like a breath of wind that blew | Just now through your eye.

Yes it is here in my bones | Yes here in my breath | In the sky and in the stones | Yes and yes and yes!

Singing to the headless head | That sprung you from it | Dancing on the deathless dead | In the fire you lit.

Extraordinary being | Anything at all | And weirder yet one’s seeing | Takes it for a fall.

Smile forever in my blood | Smile upon my skin | Smile the universal flood | That we both are in.

Body at least I am not | Nor this energy | Or this mind— only a drop | Soul infinity.

30

As all place is Mother’s lap | And we are right here | Let’s side by side take a nap | In love without fear.

I sink and fly in the light | Never once the same | Thinking only of the night | And its hidden flame.

I say goodbye to this life | Long before we met | And marry it like a wife | Whom I have not yet.

Time slows down to fastest speed | Wondering where it went | Space implodes itself to bleed | Without an event.

These veins from a life untied | Floating in the void | Or sea of tears ever cried | For love undestroyed.

As reality is true | & infinitely | So there is both me & you | Spontaneously.

Maybe not too bad to be | Despite the sorrow | Flying sky and swimming sea | With no tomorrow.

Vector in all directions | That one I follow | Kissing feet of inflections | Showing earth hollow.

31

Me a monstrous mass of veins | Flowing everywhere | A maze-nest of joys and pains | Becoming your hair.

To love and suffer and live | Little else to do | To find something real to give | Beautiful and true.

Soul of love swims in the river | Forgetting she is she | Self-gift of forever’s giver | Still flowing to the sea.

All things hanging by this thread | Without start or end | A vine both alive and dead | Ascend or descend.

To be searching out somewhere | For this blood to go | A new wine cup from the air | Wherein all things flow.

Embarking end of this journey | Light lighter than light | That total significance sea | Only wedding night.

This wedding day no one knows | Between you and me | Our fear will never propose | And love is too free.

And yes if I were alive | Someone might say yes | But who would wed a death drive | Is anyone’s guess.

32

Roots and branches splitting me | Totally apart | All from the tiniest seed | Planted in the heart.

The life we think we possess | This swift passing show | Before and after the rest | Is the first to go.

To forget the universe | With one labyrinth-sigh | Bewildering best and worst | In love’s silent sky.

No one knows where we now are | Here in this clear night | Far is near and near is far | Lit by sourceless light.

Why not suffer all one must | With a joyous heart | Letting the whole turn to dust | Any separate part?

A labyrinth is not lost | The wind not blowing | A sea storm is never tossed | Nor river flowing.

I kiss its song in your throat | Before the bird sings | I feel your whole body float | Before she takes wings.

Time leaked out of my navel | Trickled from your eyes | As your pale hands so agile | Unfolded the skies.

33

In creation’s starry pit | Missing life’s true love | Overwhelming fact of it | As below above.

Nothing to lose, all to gain | In this sphere of dreams | Where every joy, every pain | Is not what it seems.

O miraculous actual | The real way you are | Far-nearest mirror factual | With dust of each star.

See the hollow of your hand | Where life’s secret lives | Possessed by this zero land | That all treasure gives.

Hear cool tears streaming from my eyes | Like crystal fountain pens | Or baroque organs from the skies | Of the heart’s silent lens.

Twenty-four-hour threshold | Born and died on it | Begging who knows who might hold | That one forehead kiss.

Contract of true desire | Make it to the end | Falling in summit fire | Enflaming your friend.

34

Crystal flame of summit fire | Violet fount of tears | Love’s distilling of desire | Vanishing your fears.

Master never too busy | More never enough | A glance makes the world dizzy | One tap sparks all stuff.

Not solely for this one life | A life of one soul | Ever alive as God’s wife | Vice versa whole.

There is no competition | In the war of love | Only total submission | To the will above.

One human impermanent | And way beyond more | O depths of the firmament | Finding you in store!

Always better to suffer | Than cause suffering | To be oneself the buffer | Between skin and sting.

Failed to think, to feel, to do | Failed to live, to be | Failed the false and failed the true | Failed both you and me.

Beheaded by ego-mob | Doppelgänger gang | Lynched by jelly-selfish blob | Under sea to hang.

35

Maybe best to drop this ball | Carried round the earth | Many times caused me to fall | Next to nothing worth.

To be content with nothing | And happy with less | Until then always something | Will cause you distress.

Remember the day you died? | Nothing happened at all | No one laughed and no one cried | You did not even fall.

I want to be inside you | And you inside me | To hide someone to find who | Ever is this sea.

The severed head keeps rolling | Spilling out more speech | To dislodge its ensouling | Slippery little leech.

I close my eyes to see you | Forgetting the world | And open them to be you | Here in this dream hurled.

The rose color of life’s heart | Matches her fair skin | That’s why she likes such green art | To fly around in.

Body cries out for the sea | Burning from its tips | Dives through itself hopelessly | Seeking the pearl’s lips.

36

Welcome home to the problem | Where all things began | Our first all-desiring m-m-m | That itself outran.

On pilgrimage to a cloud | Void-peak of unknowing | Where silence forms like a shroud | Of pure crystals growing.

No one to go anywhere | And nothing to see | Only a freezing despair | Who cannot stay me.

I am here and you are here | This is the one place | Of that which is everywhere | Seeing its own face.

Yesterday, today, tomorrow | Being, becoming | Ecstasy, boredom, sorrow | Speech, silence, humming.

Take my heart out with your hands | Place it in the stream | Do not worry where it lands | Love is not a dream.

Pain of love swims this lagoon | A lump of living lead | Feeling shadows of the moon | In golden sunlight dead.

37

Against every seemingly | Impossible pain | I burn myself willingly | In joy of love’s name.

Poisoned by the worst poison | You have ever seen | From seeing you in that one | Paradise so green.

Six six trillion here scream for you | In my cells of blood | Each tiny monk a new faith true | Hid in silent hood.

Please don’t make me be someone | Cries each boy and girl | So mom and dad get their gun | Loaded with this world.

As my spirit leaves this form | Breath re-enters breath | Remember that one is born | From not into death.

Since no one knows what to do | Never ever will | Let me burn inside this blue | Crystal fire still.

She takes care of everything | I see to the rest | Not taking my mouth to sing | From her perfect breast.

Please no more experience | I can’t stand the thrill | All these waves whither and whence | Are making me ill.

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One passes through all suffering | The total pain of you | Being only this buffering | Between truth and the true.

This spirit is not thirsty | Itself is its thirst | My lovehunger most lusty | Heart drowning to burst.

Chopped into these small segments | Each now a fresh root | Awaiting new arrangement | By your passing foot.

Everything works perfectly | That’s why we object | Cornered by the stone you see | The builders reject.

No time to the end of time | From time’s beginning | Nothing passes through that line | Experiencing.

Never me until we meet | When I took your hand | Tomorrow on this new street | Our final first and.

In the center of this sphere | Without place or time | Asking no one who is here | When will you be mine?

This small fold of body and soul | Where I carry you | Very center of the vast whole | Like a drop of dew.

39

Crushing hearts and severing heads | Here is the way of love | Leaving us all alive for dead | Walking nowhere above.

Forearms nauseous with fire | Of this volcano | Destroying mind in desire | Whereby mountains flow.

Shot everywhere by no one | Arrow became heart | Dripping wine of one | Who tears all apart.

Billion seed-fountains of bliss | Planted into heart | Becoming light-streams to kiss | One’s true secret dark.

Give it all up and be free | That’s the only way | Whoever wants to see me | More than one more day.

Today no one talk to me | No one to talk to | Ears are the sound of the sea | Mouths the color blue.

Total force trauma of love | Joy before the blow | Cutting down all heads above | In perfect sorrow.

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To bind the pull of all I feel | And kick it off a cliff | Finding thereby nothing more real | Than this absolute if.

Of course we can’t survive this | Why why not come down | Suffer lower angle bliss | Enjoy harder drown.

One more thought and heart will die | Abandon its breath | In one everlasting sigh | Killing life and death.

My life dead I am still here | Waiting for your love | Hanging between hope and fear | Below and above.

My life dead I am still here | Waiting for this love | Hanging between hope and fear | Below and above.

Grow forever in gladness | Knowing that our gold | Rests secure beyond sadness | Near the tree most old.

Look no saints and no sinners | Only sicknesses | No losers and no winners | Only witnesses.

Life burning life to ashes | Only life is left | Kissing the sun’s eyelashes | Living flaming death.

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Thank God all souls are truly one | Else I would surely die | From wondering what’s to be done | About this whyless why.

Missing you and missing me | In life’s monstrous maze | Of ancient fires marine | Sunken golden rays.

This sea monster never seen | From far beyond the spheres | With golden wings, feathers green | And eyes of crystal tears.

Become thyself this monstrous mess | Vaster than the sea | A comet-birth breaking all nets | Eternally free.

Infinite phoenixes one | Setting fire on fire | This world’s final sun | Mahapralaya.

Who will swallow the mess of me? | Hell has spat me out | And of climbing beyond this sea | I am full of doubt.

So long ago we set sail | Across time’s black skies | That our homeland now we fail | Here to recognize.

42

Tomb of life and tomb of death | Flying nowhere known | Embracing one fate of breath | Soul, mind, heart, and bone.

Problem is we want something | Something more than all | Some monstrous paradise thing | Abyss spiral fall.

There is nowhere else to go | None other to be | Than one whom no one will know | Drowning in this sea.

All honey becomes poison | All pollen will rot | On the day mi corazón | Love’s own love forgot.

I sell you what you now are | To keep you from it | Possessing the near with far | Paradise with pit.

Dying from a life that lives | Without love’s sweet joy | Because love commands to give | And not to destroy.

Between angel guardians | Physicist and wife | God-lit eyes and golden hands | Guiding past this life.

My life thought life existed | Until it met love | Found itself a vine twisted | Round the fire above.

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My head is full of flowers | My hand holds one too | Abandoning all powers | In the thought of you.

Body aflame as heart drowns | Remembering your form | Sinking up and flying down | In eternal storm.

Hide my tears in the mirror | Windows of your eyes | To reflect there all clearer | Colors of sunrise.

This crux or criss-cross crisis | Soul-intersection | Of pathless paths to oneness | Via dissection.

Visions of fiery light | Dancing in my head | Soul-bodies of most pure white | Most dangerous red.

This war of reason and heart | We know who will win | The one who tears all apart | Without the least sin.

Split life in one forever | Let we fly away | Within beyond this never | That no hand can stay.

She my song of night mountains | World’s darkest flower | She the light of life’s fountain | Our sun’s own power.

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I sit with me, with no one | Wondering what to do | When all the time all is done | That day I met you.

This body the floating tomb | Of some dead lover | The adamant heart’s dark womb | Wherein I hover.

Without this one thought of you | Life is now no more | That is the most life can do | Living on its shore.

To lose all things never had | All over again | To have it— nothing—that bad | Nowhere and nowhen.

Please do not figure it out | There is nothing there | Zero it to be about | And no one to care.

Don’t worry the heart will find | A new way to live | Training the rest of the mind | How to give and give.

Today all things never be | Knowing the first whim | And all at once the whole sea | Will go for a swim.

The hardest thing in the world | Best to do it now | Before another breath curls | Into thoughts of how.

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Step out to this sphere’s center | Where the heart is one | Shining for all who enter | As both moon and sun.

There are no words to express | What these words now do | No human tongue to confess | How much I love you.

My brains now a bowl of dust | These bones merely air | Those veins flowing with love’s lust | Here were never there.

High-stepping on hills of green | Streaming waters blue | Roller-skating streets of dream | Under stars still true.

There is no real argument | Only two hearts’ pain | Separated by cement | Curing in the rain.

To embrace the final blow | Never turning back | To leap where no one will go | Losing loss and lack.

How to love without making love | Into one’s idol | To climb bearing below above | Into our smile?

No one unhappy apart | Happy together | Different kind of forecast chart | Exact same weather.

46

Happiness the real horror | The one your fears fear | Worry’s ultimate terror | Each tear’s secret tear.

Let’s meet where we were before | We were, before time | Divided one into your | I mirroring mine.

Just because I still exist | Does not mean I do | That which life crossed off her list | Ain’t exactly who.

May the world destroy itself | My love is not here | I mean, Godspeed us through hell | To where all are near.

I have no strength and need none | That is for the birds | Wings of love draw from the sun | Their deeds, thoughts, and words.

These arrows I shoot you with | Become not their bow | But let each explode my myth | Where no one will know.

Nobody wants anything | There is no one there | Just this love monster that clings | To all everywhere. To be at an utter loss | Day in and day out | And all for what? Just the cost | Nothing is about.

47

Vent this tomb and let me float | Far away from I | Escape nowhere in a boat | Made of sea and sky.

Just another tortured soul | Lovesick with desire | A flaming singular whole | Seeking rest in fire.

Is there nothing I can do | To relieve your pain? | Said a drop of morning dew | To a drop of rain.

Thanks for cutting off my head | It was too heavy | Now two sprout where one is dead | So keep the axe ready.

Maybe God wants to kill us | Making both exist | Or at minimum thrill us | Cross ink off the list.

In the heavens I see you | In the sea and earth | And one day I will be you | Give you myself birth.

Making everything clearer | Than the clearest skies | Two tears stream from the mirror | Straight into my eyes.

One by one they go to graves | Of earth, fire, water, air | Finding that whoever saves | Is someone free from care.

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Please leave me or destroy me | Don’t just hang around | Or refuse to deploy me | To the battleground.

Universe of everyone | Nowhere once the same | Vastest burning blackest sun | Place without a name.

Where this one who sees the heart? | Where one’s one true love? | Where the fact tearing apart | All nothing thereof?

Followed by my severed head | Wherever I go | Being both the living dead | And someone you know.

So totally confusing | All never the same | Life swallowing life oozing | Its whole aimless aim.

Worry not there is no cure | And will never be | For this poison rare and pure | Like blood is the sea.

Ever kissing my hunger | The one who knows all | This heart strong she is stronger | Fruit before the fall.

Eyes close where I can’t see you | Hiding in a night | Drowning somewhere to be you | Full of golden light.

49

You desire explanation | Because there is none | Only pure calculation | Of numberless one.

Keep on forgetting how to live | Since you never knew | Hanging round yourself like a kid | With zero to do.

No one ends up like anything | All are equally doomed | To fall to the peak of nothing | From which they will have bloomed.

You hold the sun in your hand | Counting up the rays | Measuring how its life span | Fits within our days.

Nothing wrong with being lost | Losing where to go | Bewilderment is the cost | Of wanting to know.

Swimming through tears floating in sighs | Dying inside a name | Wondering into what deeps or skies | Will lead this golden flame.

Pupil-cosmos of light’s eye | Darkest shade around | Zero frame of first-last why | Seven steps up-down.

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No stopping soul-gravity | No blocking heart’s thoughts | Just guiding feelings gently | Doing well, not not.

Wanting this and wanting that | Thinking it is all real | Never imagining what | Is the actual deal.

Whole black gravity of souls | Setting light on fire | Burning time in time’s own holes | Consuming desire.

If I were here you would be too | So where are we then | Save swimming in the perfect blue | Of never, here, when?

This impossibility | Swallowing the heart | More real than reality | Utter poison art.

Take these tears and take this blood | Take all my breath too | They are neither bad nor good | Nothing without you.

How it all comes down to this | None will ever know | There are no mouths for this kiss | No heads for this blow.

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Angel fallen from the skies | Body broke in two | Violet tears burning its eyes | Of golden green hue.

I sing to you without me | Sighing outside breath | Undrowning in endless seas | Beyond life and death.

Resting here inside your heart | For one endless night | With all stars no more apart | Than light touching light.

The drop is not the ocean | Only what it drips | And more, sea itself, motion | Kiss of its own lips.

Who am I to want something? | Who am I to care | Whether bodies, worlds, or dreams | Vanish into air?

Hold my love high in heaven | Naked like the sky | Floating with angels seven | Beyond where or why.

Having no clue what to do | Seeing this is it | Road to nowhere passing through | A bottomless pit.

We were there when all ended | It was no big deal | Where one and no one blended | Into only real.

52

Gold of dreams dreaming of gold | Mirroring the veil | Streaming treasures new and old | Glowing molten grail.

Nothing I do, say, or feel | Will vanish the trace | The true image of the real | Living in your face.

Empty now of emptiness | And full of fullness | Breath remembering the tress | Of forgetfulness.

Beauty of a thousand forms | Amazing the heart | Bewildering rainbow storms | Absent end or start.

All that you want to happen | Never ever will | Only something now and then | Far far greater still.

World from this love too absent | World without this world | The real one where one is sent | Like a spiral curled.

How one is living like this | No one really knows | Full and empty of all bliss | Coming where none goes.

53

Dance lighting with me on my grave | Love me past the end | Embrace a heart who is your slave | Kiss the only friend.

Go extinct searching for you | Yourself the real source | Of that only perfume true | No one else of course.

To touch the wound of your face | Veil invisible | Turning separation’s trace | Into a smile.

Only thing to do is leave | Sooner the better | To know no longer believe | Exit this theater.

To find you inside of me | Only place to run | Unenclosing like a sea | Swallowing the sun.

Turn the monster inside out | See within its heart | Truth spilling beyond all doubt | Seeds of living art.

Sigh for me beyond the spheres | Let the whole dream rot | Of this asylum of years | World not even not.

Monster in the self-mirror | Narcissus voyeur | The more monstrous the clearer | That you never were.

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To meet Love at the corner | Of Nothing and Void | Near where hunger and horror | Are ever destroyed.

Nothing else to say really | Except all is well | Without sounding too silly | In heaven or hell.

Suspend mind for one long night | Melt body to air | Let me bathe blind in that light | Flowing everywhere.

This world is neither dream nor real | Only zero’s bite | A punctum or hole-point to feel | Filling space-time’s night.

Cosmic horror that one’s love | Is not love at all | Only sorrow far above | Before being’s fall.

Incurable soul illness | Of the very soul | Eating self into stillness | Devouring the hole.

Given that life has killed me | Nowhere here to meet | We hope it’s you who spilled me | On this bloody street.

This total soul-kiss from beyond | Opening the eye | That one my seed in your heart spawns | On the day we die.

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Two hearts caught within the net | Of a photograph | Taken on the movie set | Where the cosmos crashed.

Prepare me for another | World the same as this | Exactly like the other | Where I fell from bliss.

Now a whole new explosion | Leaves nothing destroyed | A cosmic dream implosion | Mushroom of the void.

Nothing is in love with void | And void with nothing | One paradise undestroyed | Endless opening.

Always here always will be | Awaiting the day | Time is the shallowest sea | Where we swim and play.

This absolute suspension | Heart inside its heart | Dreaming the one dimension | Where all fall apart.

All day I stop at the door | Threshold live and dead | Walking here without wherefore | Tripping on my head.

Bliss of nothing inside void | Void becoming place | Uncreated, undestroyed | Purest interface.

56

Let the whole world disappear | Since it is not there | Now that the heart heard my ear | Whispering your prayer.

Return everything to Him | Surrendering all | In flames of love’s first wild whim | Flying no one’s fall.

This is not my life or death | Neither dream nor real | These are not my words or breath | To think or to feel.

Eyes that swim the stars for you | Sighs that swallow earth | Plus one perfect drop of dew | Beyond death and birth.

Still only one thing to do | Melt and melt and melt | In the fire always new | First thing ever felt.

Yes my hands feel to be mine | Or so I once thought | Until they touched that dark line | Wherein I am caught.

No, love does not break one’s heart | It murders the soul | Slicing each infinite part | Into the whole whole.

57

To stand holding the boulder | Heaviest of all | In fires ever colder | And never once fall.

O river of life divine | Whom none can destroy | To my beloved bring wine | Flood your heart with joy.

Bodies we are swimming in | Only scuba gear | Mind mask, spirit tank, and fins | The flesh we hold dear.

Drowning in one kiss for you | Vaster than the sky | Dying prayer of bliss for you | Wasteland of a sigh.

If this all it is nothing | A shadow destroyed | Less than absence of something | A subzero void.

The need to sit in cave now | Mountain, sea, and moon | Fixed in one soul-body blow | Never here too soon.

Because there are no answers | Since there is no life | Let’s die and join the dancers | Abandon all strife.

Missing you is missing God | Is missing myself | One vast soul-desert worm bod- | y squirming through hell.

58

Unknown fire, fire unknowing | Consuming all blood | Til heart flows liquid glowing | In abyss of gold.

My love is as dumb as fire | Burning everything | For no reason or desire | Like a moth its wing.

What to say except that I | Know not where I am | Or how in this place to die | Once again am come.

Reality uncertain | Never here to be | Thinner and thinner curtain | Between you and me.

Separation enemy | Union an old friend | Longing one’s true go-between | Mediating end.

Two birds of prey free-falling | Trapped in one embrace | Neither mating nor fighting | Hunting love’s own face.

I found you in my navel | On the day we died | Someone who is the fable | Of every tear cried.

By you I have been swallowed | And can no longer | This lump that has me hollowed | Is far too stronger.

59

Distinguish love and desire | This is the command | And not extinguish the fire | Nor withdraw one’s hand.

To be crushed to death by a sigh | Of a secret kind | One breath-tomb burying alive | Heart, body, and mind.

Everything falling away | Into wherever | It will all appear today | Now and for never.

Nothing ever to be done | Everything confess | So abominably one | Monstrous selfish mess.

Resurrect I never will | Not until that day | Exactly like this one still | Always underway.

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gnOme is a secret press specializing in the publication of anonymous, pseudepigraphical, and apocryphal works from the past, present, and future. “He is content with the company of the wind, takes pleasure in conversing with the sky and loves trees as his own life” (Jnanesvar) gnOme is acephalic. GNOMEBOOKS.WORDPRESS.COM