untidy activity

 This is the way a life is is finished, not with a ribbon, but with sandpaper.

All the untidy activity continues,

awful but cheerful. 

(ending of poem “The Bight” by Elizabeth Bishop) 

 The suddenness of unexpected concluding completeness.

a savage servility / slides by on grease.

You might love Robert Lowell’s  poetry, and be right to do so, but you will come away with paper cuts from the reading.

Colonel Shaw

is riding on his bubble,

he waits

for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone.  Everywhere,

giant finned cars nose forward like fish;

a savage servility

slides by on grease.

(From Life Studies and For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell, c.1964)

Still,  such temporary annoyance abates as rain of an afternoon is no inconvenience, just good reason to read and nap and drink down leftover water in Bolthouse juice containers from suppers gone by across from Bald Mountain this third day of summer.

ante fáciem

Communio

Tu, puer, prophéta Altíssimi vocáberis :

     You, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High. 

 

præíbis enim ante fáciem Dómini

     For you will go before the Lord: 

 

paráre vias ejus.

     to prepare his ways.

(neumz https://app.neumz.com/listen/missa-tu-puer-propheta-2-27b58df4-27f7-4093-af78-2553c44091bb/24-06-2023)

last night robert lowell

 In conversation

Epilogue then Skunk Hour — 

Unscared, passing facts

what you say is what you get

 Words are important

Vehicles of consciousness

Pronounce them with care

in a big room

 Former ER Doc

Talks extraterrestrial 

Wears blue sport jacket no tie

ipse dixit

 Christ

Is emerging

As poetry

Is being written

If you are

Religious

Word is yours

If you

Are poet

World 

Comes to

Be

there was a guy

 born, baptizer, be-

headed — someone else, strange birth,

Preaching prophet cruc-

ified— the two of them as

one story, one telling, one

circling movement enormous nothingness

 Saturday morning 

practice, cat kneads claws sharp edged

I place blanket shield

Once there was formal rubric

Now cosmos within cosmos

earth takes over from here

 Now summer, no more

 seed in green feeder, nature’s

Flowering bursts out

allow to be transformed

In prison this morning, some words about source. As ever-present. If we wish to step into it. 

 As we surrender, we offer the whole of our life to the process of awakening. “In order to benefit sentient beings,” writes Pabongka Rinpoche in the Heruka Sadhana, “I offer myself immediately to all the Buddhas.” We offer ourselves as a vehicle for our Buddha-nature to manifest in the world for the welfare of others. We allow ourselves to be transformed. With this heartfelt attitude, one prostration performed at the right moment can touch us as deeply as one hundred thousand done without such commitment.   (—Rob Pierce, Tricycle, The Solace of Surrender, spring 2007)

Consciousness seeks grounding and expression.

We are the means.

The way for source to become voice. 

except to say thank you

 Sitting with

Two dying

People tonight

I learn

To keep

Quiet

the fact of it

In the deep

ocean

depths

human lives

are lost

brother can you spare a dim(e)wit

I watched the Republican congress censure Rep Adam Schiff (D.CA) for doing his job.

I watched former Justice Department special counsel John Durham testify before the Republican led judiciary committee which had trouble identifying their vacuity and the substance-less accounting of the four year investigation and report of Durham's efforts.

     “ If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.”  (Sir Thomas More, 1478-1535)

I'd drop a dime on these Republicans, but there's no place to call and nothing to report that anyone would believe.

“God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.” ― Sir Thomas More, in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons)

A mind is 

a terrible thing, 

(to wit),

to waste. 

ten cuidado

 prison cannot

enclose someone free

like insanity, complaint

of the insincere

I will fu*k you up, he

says, to no one

listening

no one cares

in an afternoon

patterned with no

keepable

promise

come si dice, what is, itself

 as you think

so you are

don't think

you're not

see clearly --

there you are

where?

present

love, come si dice,

present(s) itself

dust your self off

A theological summation of wisdom applicable for individual and communal practice in an inter-religious or pan-agnostic context suitable to encourage unity and concentration of meaningful focus and pragmatic action in a dark time or lonely stretch, namely:

Pick yourself up

Take a deep breath 

Dust yourself off

Start all over again 

  Perhaps a poster of these fragments could be hung on the wall where any prie-dieu or zafu resides.

“( pick yourself up, by Nat King Cole)” by Nat King Cole  was written by Jerome Kern & Dorothy Fields.  https://genius.com/Nat-king-cole-pick-yourself-up-lyrics

waiting

I keep waiting for the news people to say that the titanic submersible has been observed, approached, and unsealed, finding all aboard a bit shaken, but alive and happy to be found.

It’s hard to dance with my shadow in the yard on new moon with barn-light off.

what you feel is what you get

 We are evolving god

No need for logbook or tapes —

Feel it emerging

a correlational unearthing of an old misreading

 If you love me, keep

My correspondences as

They are all I am