Monday, August 17, 2020

Words for the Lion's Gate

I.
The crows are bringing codes
     In a rhythm of a breathing 
Earth that takes in light,
     Returning form 
                                 that glows as 
Prelude to an unknowable 
                                 growth—

The stillness of the Sphinx 
     Before the unrecorded 
                                pounce, 
For the prowl is only synapse 
           crackling,
Something to be heard,
     Like a soft meow
That says what you desire
           and nothing more.

Herr Ear, is there 
                              some wax 
     Of what you hear, 
Or is it in the realm 
     Of the invisible
                              —what we 
Have called silence?

The breathing resumes
     Without a trace
As the mind continues
     Without source 
                       or destination.

The dense form has lifted 
                             away
     But still that's all we see,
Albeit waving
     Like the frequency
Where it exists as something 
                             living.

     You can chase it 
Like a cat that flees,
     Forever hiding
So that we won't see
     It is an image only.

II.
Beautiful debris
Collects independently
                  of the hand
That gathers the thoughts
                     of shape
With pruner shears—

Patterns begat patterns,
                nature and man
Entwined in the same labyrinth
     Of ornate frame
                'round every thing
That seemingly must earn
                            its keep
     By being interesting,
Worthy of a position
                  in the living 
                            painting.

Somewhere in the barrens of the Nile
     An observatory of sorts
Awaits the desiccate mind
     To return like rain
To this child gone wild
                            with play,
And the caretakers overwhelmed
     With possibility,
Their being mere mesh
                   for more vine,

As the thought continues to move
                   further away
     From whatever has become
                   a center
                                temporarily 
In the pattern whose circumference is
     As wide as an eye.

Is it any wonder that the lion,
    Like anything of value,
                                          hides?

III.
A glitch in the forgiveness or permission
                                                simulation
And we are all as lions
     Taking what we desire
                            innocent of conscience
     As like a lover the universe yields 
                      
To the purity of our heart,
     The persistence 
                           of our play,
As if there was no distance
     Between what we love
                      and what is there.

But the bird only temporarily stands still
                                                 in mid-air.
Soon enough it flies again
     Like we believe it always will
And life goes on with merely a glimpse
                      of what might be

And we question, at a new remove,
                      who we are,
     What we are doing,
             what do they want,
These impossible, non-existent 
                      other humans.

The pharaohs have become blue and gold,
     Their faces immortal
              as they hold with a smile
                      their crosses to their heart.
But it's no longer possible
     To learn how to live from sarcophagi 

So we float from tome to tomb, 
                      roaming the rooms
     That stretch on
             it seems
                      to infinity
As part of an unrelenting plan

That the cat finds openings in
            with an instinct like creation,
Holes that are always there, seemingly part of
                       the fortification,
     Escape intrinsic
             to any control.

IV.
The belt of Giza, look up, is in the sky,
     Releasing from its points
Like a magnifying glass
                     on the faith
That held us
                                so completely that
When the paper conflagrated 
     And its words vaporized 
We thought we'd lost
                    who we were,

That thing apart and protected
                    by belief,
Our own individual universal
     That couldn't outlast
The lion's gaze, from its outline
                                in the sky
Across the night of the brightest star,
When what was ours
                    turned out not to be
                               what we are.

There's no courage, 
      The Lyran says,
                   in wisdom,
But in knowing there is none.
When the old ways 
                   are gone,
     The paths overgrown,
                  and none but brambles
                                 to home,
Who is fool enough to choose?

How deep are the roots to be pulled?
                                Which seeds
                  can be sown?
     What hands hold the magic
                  of the eye?
The energy of destruction
     Is the energy of love.
The light is blinding.
     The paw is soft.
                  Are you fearless enough?

V.
I suppose you'd want, right about now
                                                an example?
There's one right above
                                                comes to mind:
How the hieroglyphs said
                       it was the sun 
                                               that was worshiped
And it went down like an ancient game
                       of telephone
To the Babel of Religions we know
                                               and don't understand
                       today ...

When, in fact, the sun worships us! For we are
      The makers of sense,
                                              the keepers of law,
The consciousness of life,
                                              who still stayed
Like sprouts inside a jar, within the parameters
                      of the small.
How could light be denied
                                              to such souls,
How could the flow back and forth be disputed?
One keels, the other tacks,
     One digs in dirt to plant—

Thus Homo Luminous becomes love,
                                             growing wings
                      at each abyss he is connecting
In a tapestry that shines in the sun
     As an offering of what
                                             came from him.
But the sun has someone else,
     The blue Sirian
                       known by Alexandrian priests.
He leaves us with the moon
     So we may know him by his absence,
                      unrepentant darkness.

The lion, bored with explanation,
                      has slept all day
                                             in golden light,
Gaining life as he
                      became illuminated.
     He will come out at night
                                             so we'll know
Things are there
                      even if they can't be seen,
Like the galaxies that pour
                                             new ambrosia
                      in our souls. 

VI.
It's only when you are not 
                             can you be.
It's a paradox, 
                             like the way 
The wish to unify 
                             with the one 
Turns you into something 
     Separate. 

There is a me
     On a beach far from the Nile 
Who builds pyramids in the sand
     As a kind of third-eye location scout,
                             and whose craven descent
Into acquiescence has turned him to
                             a graven image for others
     In the harvest of late afternoon ...

                             And there is a not me
Who speaks of Pele and Brigid
     And the lotus plant that blossoms as fire 
                             to rise with the Nile
For the royal Sirian lions of sovereignty,
     And who paints the scene so thoroughly
The others come like children from his brain,
                             not even questioning.

The one screams, because there are no words,
     The other repeats, because there's only words
Until what is created and heard, heard and created
                            circles in an infinite loop:
     As one feels wounds, the other is wounded.
The centrifuge invariably returns 
     To anode void
                            or cathode stone.

So the hierophant in the inner chamber
     Lets the reed flute blow every note 
                            the higher light sent to hear,
But the hearers find it disappears
     In the echoes they create of it
As it weaves around each memory they have,
     And the melodies reduce to patterns, 
                            the rhythms arguments,

Until the lion finally grabs the flute and plays
     Like no one's ever blown on it it before,
                            free of time and space,
Completely unpredictable, to get them to the place
     Where their galactic families can appear.
                            Another manner of mirror. 
Is there something more to see than what we
                            know we are?

VII.
You don't have to know what the trauma was
                                       to release it
As you don't have to know who you'll meet
     When you reach a higher pitch.

                                       On the larger palette
Time and space are mere tools to manipulate,
     Like egg tempura or umber fire clay,
To get the desired effect,
                                        a resonance
     Of what begins as a shiver,
                                        a need to represent.
And now the canvas is grander
     To hold the temples of crystal, 
                      the living buildings of light 
And semi-transparent beings in a rainbow
                      of unimaginable colors.

They have come from the dreamtime, the Sirians,
                      to show us how it's done.
They were a little too meddlesome
                                         the last time around.
     Still they hate themselves for what they have done,
Having to break the show down, and start again,
     Giving us, this time, some say in our own
                                         evolution,
As hard to watch, having been through it themselves,
                                         as it must have been,
     And as hard to withhold correction, corrected
                      themselves in ways we can't imagine.

     And now that they've come again
At this time when we can finally grow beyond them,
     They want us to ask them for help?
                     When nobody knows 
                                          how long it will take
Before they pull the experiment from our hands,
                     punch up the hypothesis,
                                         do the math,
Draw the conclusions 
                     they all along had planned.
     They just can't help themselves
                     and that's why we love them.

We have met many times like this
                                         before—
     They were strangers though
                      at the dark end of the bar.
But now the lion roars
                                         and we shake hands
     As if we didn't know each other,
                      the one who raised us 
Unrecognized, for the pain of being abandoned
                                         was too hard,
    As the thing we become to them too similar, 
                      unrecognizable.

VIII.
Sirius stares at us,
     Dares me to choose
Which stars, which galaxies
     Form synchronicities,
Constellate into clusters, lines,
     Patterns, networks, meanings.
There is a meteor! 
                                   Anything I like.

When everything is absence
     Anything can be a presence,
Can serve the void within,
     Which is the same void
On the other side, as marionette,
      A stand-in,
For a hologram anyway.

     They wouldn't be there
If I didn't need the stars so much
     To show me the way,
Appearing and disappearing as if by will.
     And I wouldn't need them at all
If I hadn't already learned what I needed, 
     If they weren't, 
                         In other words, silent.

Ah how the stream believes 
     In what it does
When it thinks of its role as
     Speaking with stones 
And serving the moss, until
     It is the ocean
And the world is not quite
                                    large enough.