Love is letting go

                              Love is letting go,
                              that's what it's all about.
                              It's seed you have to sow
                              in furrows of your doubt.

                              It's wheat you go to reap
                              and harvest hundred-fold,
                              that while you were asleep
                              transfigured dust to gold.
x

Whenever I see you

                            Whenever I see you,
                            it's like sweet light falls on my eyes,
                            fresh and new.
                            Gladness swells my heart
                            like the sunrise.

                            Day or night, it's the same,
                            or when I only hear your name,
                            and I can't explain away
                            this feeling inside,
                            that you feel the same way
                            when you're by my side.
x

There was a boy

                                There was a boy
                                sent off to war
                                who fell in love
                                with everyone he saw,

                                went up well-armed,
                                helm, sword and shield,
                                himself to fight
                                on the body's field.
x

The flesh rebelling

The Serpent in the Wilderness by Edward Knippers
2007, oil on panel, 32" x 24"

                       The flesh rebelling
                       and the spirit unwilling
                       as gradually the soul
                       all lethal loves is killing,
                       a miniature of my life’s full bent,
                       this forty days of fast, 
                       this monstrous Lent!

                       Temptations prying
                       and pretentious praying
                       attacking and adorning
                       the ceremonious slaying,
                       and images and idols risen
                       or deeply sunk,
                       ground up and mixed with blood
                       or water, and drunk,
                       and desert,
                       unremitting sunlight under
                       dark cloud (somehow above!)
                       and thunder pounding,
                       pounding hammerlike and loud
                       on door and wall 
                       and window of the proud,
                       and pagan shower 
                       of wishful floral fêtes,
                       ideals, presumptions,
                       vanities, and bets,
                       illusions, boasts,
                       illogic, lies, and ghosts,
                       all headlong fall
                       before the heavenly hosts.

Spiritual energies and vital

         Spiritual energies and vital, long pent up!
         How they would
         with unmanageable vigor surge
         to sieze their longed for consummation
         and erupt
         in one flaming liberation
         of the carnal urge!

         I know what you are thinking,
         you who read this poem,
         but you are wrong.

         And even I,
         who write what I can hardly see
         with all my concentration vexed,
         must too concede,

         my conqured nature
         is not truth nor lie,
         nothing would commit,
         nor will, nor fall
         against the Rock that it is built upon
         to be dashed and damned
         rather than stand,

         and not my thought, but what it hinges on,
         must only matter
         now, and to the bitter end.
x

Cross, do not fail me

            Cross, do not fail me

            when it comes my hour

            to bleed. As to a strong-masted vessel,

            let me be bound to you to share your power.

            Hug me close as the wind we together wrestle.

           
            Lost, let them nail me

            as my ransomed soul

            a steed of spirit mounts and my hungers hang.

            Let me inherit what the jailer stole

            and hidden, as I thirst, what prophets sang.

Oh, for the sighing of the flesh

Samantha Romano, sketch

Oh, for the sighing of the flesh after its own kind,
for the seeking of the eye after other eyes
which, as itself, see form and beauty, 
and must prize
a comeliness to which it must be blind.

Oh, for the wanderings of the mirrored mind
in memory’s research
after its past allies,
for the hungerings of the heart
that tantalize unsullied souls
that have withstood the wind.

This song I fastened
to an earless banner
waving unseen in the night
while scattering the weight
of unnumbered mournings over a life caressless,

and shared what shone through an enshrouded craving
with them who likewise lamented their thankless fate
as criminals awaiting
Someone to arrest us.
x

Kabbalah

Blessing of the Sun, Yoram Raanan

These mysteries —
oh, how they are
but of a friendship truly begun
and gratefully the connecting signs! —
that help us to see
unfolded by stages the Beloved and the Lover
(in all around us as in the one within)
revealed to each other,
and the trailing steps of the first
to travel freely to the depths,
who now becomes the last,
who never must begin.

Let them be to me,
timeless, your embraces
as these few words of mine to you
would clasp
you long and warmly
and firmer than the flesh,
so spirits unhindered by haves and naughts
may mesh,
and hearts in heavy harmony
may grasp
the best and brightest
in each other’s faces.
x

What do I mean by these words

                        What do I mean by these words
                        which contradict each other?                        
                        What is this course I am counseling
                        that seems to lead nowhere sound?
                        
                        These words,                        
                        like sparks spraying                        
                        from the sharpening wheel,                        
                        while what really is the matter                        
                        is shaped and sharpened,
                        they only indicate,                        
                        not the direction of my soul                        
                        nor advice to any,                        
                        but there is a wheel turning,                        
                        and one fashioning a tool somewhere.
                        
                        Again, seek,                        
                        stopping to undo your shoes,                        
                        the holy mountain,                        
                        and then cease,                        
                        dropping to your knees                        
                        beside the stream                        
                        that issues from the root                        
                        of an enormous tree,                        
                        flowering and bearing fruit                        
                        like a luscious fountain,                        
                        and know this — unlike my poems,
                        this is no dream,                        
                        only attainable ingress                        
                        into living eternity.

                        Leave behind all the talk                        
                        lavishing your spirit.                        
                        Approach the source of song,                        
                        more searing as you near it.
                        
                        After words,                        
                        return to your proper place and peel
                        the skin from your eyes                        
                        that were so draped and darkened.
                        They only vindicate,                        
                        not the inspection of your soul                        
                        nor the price of plenty,                        
                        but Wisdom is wild,                        
                        learning does not languish in its lair.
                        
                        Where have you been by your own words,
                        my sister or my brother?                        
                        Take your resourcefulness querying
                        beyond me to holy ground.

David and Jonathan

Two Men, Gayatri Manchanda

Two scholars meet by night on the Temple steps.
The shadows, cold and moistness, and the moon,
no stars in sight, clouds gray and high, and soon
to sing, to study Torah, and to commune
as soul to soul will go the two adepts.

The one has waited but not long,
for they had planned the time beforehand.
Calmly does he lean against a wall,
his hands and face are clean, his head is covered,
in the dark is barely seen his outlined figure
by his yearning friend.

The other having long one like the first expected
sees, blinded by his hope, him standing there,
the brother and the lover of his prayer
to God, with whom to mount the sacred stair
of pure devotion, which by himself
he had neglected.

They meet.
The one his hand his comrade’s shoulder presses,
the other greets him,
on his neck he shapes a kiss, and then as arms embrace
they speak of this fond partnership in Torah,
song, and bliss,
while walking to the Temple’s stark recesses.

The two, for warmth reclining close and under
one heavy blanket like a looming prayer shawl,
cite scriptures, feeding on the beauty of it all,
and praise their Lord for his restraining call,
now and again touch eyes or hands in wonder.

Oh, for the true, redeeming message that comes through
such witnesses in his victorious love
as in his word so said or sung can move!

Oh, for the ecstasies that one cannot tell of
that might arise in lovers like these two!

Get thee a comrade: This teaches that a man should get a comrade for himself, to eat with him, drink with him, study Scripture with him, study Mishna with him, sleep with him, and reveal to him all his secrets, the secrets of the Torah and the secrets of worldly things.

— Abot de Rabbi Natan, Version A
x

The enemy's inroads through the forests of my flesh go deep

The enemy's inroads
through the forests of my flesh
go deep.

He seeks not open country.
See how he hides between
rows of manicured foliage where he works unseen
or by night,
insinuating out of sight
subtle trappings, seductions, and thoughts unclean,
while watchmen and woodsman are away, or sleep.

Many they be who stand along the march and fend,
many on the roads aware, beating the bush to find

the fever feeding on the shadows there
— oh, and the woodsman,

helpless one brandishing one axe against the ambush,
— all on the Day depend.

Deep in the darkest and thickest ravine, or high
in the narrowest, windiest pass, where trees

rise so close beside the trail one can scarcely squeeze by,
there comes the enemy out from his covert nigh,
uncomfortable, mean — oh, how he taunts,
afraid of one woodsman's axe even then,
— by mere suggestion, how he plies his victories.

Hand-bound and toe-nailed in a death-dusty heap,
would man were not jailed so, in such misery weep,

— but oh, at the summit, skirting the tree line
the first whispering of warmth, rumor of radiance divine,
and in streams gravitating to the gullies below
the same lustre of healing in the animate flow,
— but watchmen and woodsman most certainly know

also hidden a ransoming fire does not sleep, though
the enemy's inroads
through the forests of my flesh
go deep.

The Word is mighty

The word is mighty,
of this I have no doubt,
though it is but the sound

of the immortal spring that flows with life only,

not with life and death,

to which, when thirsting,

I repair and drink.

The mind has ears

for what it cannot think

as it would join its syllables to breath.

I quiet sit

astride its wanderings

in restoration

never reasoned out.

Some the word as weapon,

some as spade apply,

or verbal idol lavished with applause,

or bait the trap

between themselves and fate.

Some weaken what is strong,
some fortify the feeble or manipulate the laws,

and I,

I listen,

slake my thirst, and wait.

His mercy is severe

His mercy is severe
who arms the Pleiades with light
and girds the soul through conscience
for the moral fight.

His love is far too strong,
His eye too piercing bright
for man, who only can
endure through many veils His sight.

His judgment orders messengers
to us deprived of might,
and stands our sin before us
as we hurry into night.

His purity, His truth, His beauty
empty out of white,
swords flashing, cymbals crashing,
music, multiplicity, delight.

His promise is unhedged
and hangs persuasive at our right,
whose mercy is severe
and arms the Pleiades with light.
x

Grow Godward

Another winter weathered,
the outcome of a dream goes onward,
grows Godward, stretches starward.

When but a half-idea,
the seed that bore a world fell earthward,
found womb in mother wonder,

first thrust its being downward,
root worming water, sun unwanting,
first nature tied to shadow,

—ah, there the capsule rested,
unknowing, silent, maybe growing
sight unseen into the world!—

stirred secondly with sunlust,
a stream of white burst out and upward,
pulled capsule sunward with it,

broke surface taciturnly,
drank in the lighter water quickly,
green heavy graced its journey,

first nature tied to shadow,
its second nature stirred in sunshine,
grew daily closer, homeward.

Another winter weathered,
the outcome of a dream drives higher,
grows greener, strives skyward,

cannot recall beginnings—
too many roots crowd out the seeking,
eyes dimming, mind precluding—

can hardly know the living—
too many branches, leaves, withholding
pure knowledge, shroud being—

cannot know where it’s going—
too many woodsmen threaten asking—
but hoping, stretches sunward.

Continue, silent, homeward,
the heaven waits your journey upward.

Grow Godward, stretch starward.