The ceilings are too low

on earth to stand as tall as we truly are.

Yet, bumping your head on a chandelier from time to time keeps us bowed low
Enough to stand tall.



A translation of a monk’s prayer I was working on today. I like translating prayers!

“May I not lead a fraudulent life-regardless of supposed success or failure!
May there be no phoniness around me
That is—may I be what I seem to be.
May my heart align with my actions—my hands and feet align
With My Guide, and
With The Way set before me to be my path,
May My inner and my outer self unite!
May who I am and what I do, be the same thing.”
Amen.

I will never write a great poem
So I write this
Birds dropped out from cloud cover today
And startled me awake
We played in light
Breeze til evening came
And we all hid ourselves again
Like Adam and Eve
Trying to disguise ourselves
In the clouds.

We climbed together until we couldn’t
Then we just sat and looked out…
From just where we were then.
And it all came back to us—everywhere we had been
And every face we’d seen. And suddenly
We were on top of a gorgeous mountain together, eating together
in thanks.

What’s in a Name?

But our names, even before birth,

What were they. Someone named us

Before we knew our own. Parents, or whomever cared. How is that?

Did we then invent them (later in life), or were they already there?

Each bird has her name, and a family name. How

Is that, said an owl to me last night.

Or, Did Love name us all, she whispered as she left.

Why not, a loving kind Father, I mentioned in her wake….

Yes, what tyrant would name a child without caring,

The Wind responded. And who do you know who is unnamed?

But our names, even before birth
What were they? Someone named us
Before we knew our own. Parents, or whomever cared. How is that?
Did we then invent them (later in life), or were they already there?
Each bird has her name, and a family name. How
Is that, said an owl to me last night.
Or, Did Love name us all, she whispered as she left.
Why not, a loving kind Father, I mentioned in her wake….
Yes, what tyrant would name a child without caring,
The Wind responded.

My friend are mostly elsewhere now
Dead or living far away
But I have One friend who
Has chosen to stay close all these years
Perhaps we only need One Good Friend.
//
He never finished his cigarettes
He always left the room before the party was over
But made the party swing.
//
We want to leave marks on the earth
We want to leave clues for those to come
So they can follow us where we now are
In the great cloud already and yet still here
Making marks on sand.
The old lady across the alley rakes her leaves in silence
And looks occasionally up with a kind wink
And is thankful for today’s weather.
That’s enough I suppose.
The huge Texas clouds pass over
Like the ocean does fish.
I am still here. Most of my friends
Are elsewhere now. But there is still one
Who lives nearby.
My art is scattered
Across the world
On bathroom walls
And rest stop signs
My heart is with so many
And no one is here, but this trucker
Who just pulled in complaining about weather and the road.
I met so many who were famous actors, singers, artist dreamers…
They are clouds now
But there marks are inside me
As I pray I see them light up
Like graffiti on my heart
Which is half broken
And still wanting to travel.
As I muse on everywhere I’ve loved and been
This lady next door comes over to her fence
And tells me I look good today
And asks me what I am reading.
Today the old prophets, I tell her
And mostly poetry.
I love poetry, she says
I always wanted to be a poet.
But she is the poem that they all
Write about. And we are just here to observe
Each poem we see. And we
Are clouds already passing overhead
In an enormous Sky—a room big enough
For us all to be. And
I still have one friend
Who is alive, and we read
Poems together
And think of the old prophets
And wonder together
When we will meet in the Sky
By and by, He whispers
By and by.
But are their roads in heaven
I asked, and adventures to be had
Are there old ladies raking their leaves-
That is,
Are there more poems to be written?
//

Another prayer:

Another city burns down
Another building tumbles
While another is built
Another war starts
While one temporarily ends.
Planes fly over and now drones
And satellites and Lord knows what else,
But are there still poems to be written?
With all these wars and shortages of everything
And since it’s gotten too expensive and exposed to live anywhere
And since every meal is photographed
And everyone says everything all day and night
With no silence, are there more poems to be written?
When will the great border collie start herding us into place
When will we be quiet enough to be herded into our real names.
In the meantime, put our hearts in order
The eclipse has already begun, I’m sure
But what a mess the surface is these days
And are there any more poems to be written?

//
When you think you’ve seen it all…
At least 16 wars
9/11
A thousand stars
Written 10,000 poems about everything you saw
Lived with great artists everywhere
Loved many cities by name
When you think you’ve seen it all….
Best friends die
New friends arrive daily,
Babies and old folks
Rockets and drones
Computers and typewriters
Strange lands and home
So many types of birds and trees you
Haven’t met yet. So many books
Worth reading still. So many
Prayers yet to be given
So much suffering left
To be endured in Love.
That’s what you think about most
When you think you’ve seen it all….
A little girl walks up at the bus stop, hands you a recently picked white daisy
Laughs and says-this is for you today.
//
What we really want
Is to know our names
No, intimacy
No to be cherished
And cherish others
Or to make good
Art as a prayer
Of thanks for everything’s
Real names.
//
I knew them all by name, at least that.
I cared to get to know them all
I kept going
Until I had loved
Everything I really met
And I didn’t grow cynical
Despite knowing myself and them.
//
I escaped religion to find God
And then just loved everything I met.
//

How he joined the Crossword table

It turned out, that what they really had in common was crossword puzzles. That wasn’t the only thing, but the most consistent over the years.
Every great talk they’d ever had was while doing a puzzle.
Life and death, weddings and funerals, stresses and releases all got discussed while coming up with words.
And somehow they had gotten very close. It probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise. But they found themselves in a place of life—somewhere near the middle they hoped-where they both needed to do a puzzle a day to make it all work.
On this day, the puzzle had a world war’s theme. They got this one, they knew most of the dates of the greatest atrocities in twentieth century history. And he knew all the battle stories as well, as his uncles and later his brother had been in serious combat, and had the messed up life afterwards to prove it.
One day his brother arrived as the two were playing their puzzle.
“How can you sit around doing that mind shit, when people are dying” he said just as he sat down at their table. The table itself had become something sacred to them, and to break its silent concentration, that the locals guarded, caught both of them off guard, especially with such a strong accusation of moral idleness.
Neither responded immediately, but slowly looked at each other, sort of to see if that could be true of the other person. Both silently decided it was not. They agreed without a word that this was a reasonable response to a troubled world, and somehow even a sign that life still mattered. It was not like dada or surrealism, it was a response not a reaction, they agreed silently.
And yet, they understood how a soldier might see them as frivolous, or as having moral apathy or even complacency. But, both decided to keep playing.
Well, said the other brother, after a bit. “We are building a friendship here, and isn’t that what you soldiers have to form on the battlefield. And by the way do you know the date when the battle of the bulge actually ended?”
“Of course.” His brother said loudly!
And from that day on his brother joined them daily at the crossword table.

Art invites us into the impossible possible around us daily:

I had a dream that I was taken, what seemed like upwards, but may have been through a huge lateral gold curtain, into what my guide called, “The Realm of Impossible things”. It was filled, in addition to every sort of art supply, old umbrellas, top hats, bowling balls, huge canes and almost anything you would ever want to make art from. Theater props, piles of purple feathers, huge and small glass balls and every other sort of impossible object that only an artist could see a purpose for. Like my old mentor, who I’m sure had a little hut there, as ikt seemed like a village of artisans, with his two headed brooms he used to make-“Just in case you need to sweep both corners at once,” he used to say to me.
When he died, we used those two headed brooms at his funeral (true story!).
Anyway, in the dream, I felt that every object has a potential other use than what it was originally intended for. A coat, as with kids, could become a tent. A hat, a bowl for confetti. A whale bone, a cane and so forth. Everything had potential or possibilities.
This is exactly how I see things daily. And I think is a common “curse” blessing for all artist. In that it makes it difficult to go pick up the mail, or do grocery shopping, as one is always seeing the symbolic level of meaning around them.
So we get bored with assigning something only to its primary function. A book is also a doorstop, or a potential stairwell for cats. Aren’t we always just opening up the “other” possibilities of the daily things around us.
Yesterday, a fork became a scalpel in making my painting.
Comedy works similarly, I think—“What else could this subway be?”
Artist work by symbolic associations. And this realm I was guided in, was filled with ellipses, or things which would also be used for….
I love those sort of dreams. I felt right at home in that part of The Kingdom.
It is said that artist invent, but I think they just see what else something could bee seen as-what else is a broom or a rose. For, as we know, a rose is not just a rose!
And that we dream at all, proves it.
Artist are seers, meaning we see more layer of meaning to everything. Or we see things more in the larger context.
Art just makes us aware that there is more than meets the eye to life around us! Kids of course, already know that. But we forget that Reality isn’t flat. It’s dimensional. Elijah saw heavenly armies around the earthly ones.
And we tend to make studios which are filled with objects of possibilities—impossible possibilities. As life itself is. That we breath, sleep and wake up, and even that we make art, is a sort of common daily miracle. But art reminds us that we live inside a miracle.
The Kingdom is like the realm of the impossible that permeates and came into the realm of the possible. I think that was what that dream was about.

How he joined the Crossword table

It turned out, that what they really had in common was crossword puzzles. That wasn’t the only thing, but the most consistent over the years.
Every great talk they’d ever had was while doing a puzzle.
Life and death, weddings and funerals, stresses and releases all got discussed while coming up with words.
And somehow they had gotten very close. It probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise. But they found themselves in a place of life—somewhere near the middle they hoped-where they both needed to do a puzzle a day to make it all work.
On this day, the puzzle had a world war’s theme. They got this one, they knew most of the dates of the greatest atrocities in twentieth century history. And he knew all the battle stories as well, as his uncles and later his brother had been in serious combat, and had the messed up life afterwards to prove it.
One day his brother arrived as the two were playing their puzzle.
“How can you sit around doing that mind shit, when people are dying” he said just as he sat down at their table. The table itself had become something sacred to them, and to break its silent concentration, that the locals guarded, caught both of them off guard, especially with such a strong accusation of moral idleness.
Neither responded immediately, but slowly looked at each other, sort of to see if that could be true of the other person. Both silently decided it was not. They agreed without a word that this was a reasonable response to a troubled world, and somehow even a sign that life still mattered. It was not like dada or surrealism, it was a response not a reaction, they agreed silently.
And yet, they understood how a soldier might see them as frivolous, or as having moral apathy or even complacency. But, both decided to keep playing.
Well, said the other brother, after a bit. “We are building a friendship here, and isn’t that what you soldiers have to form on the battlefield. And by the way do you know the date when the battle of the bulge actually ended?”
“Of course.” His brother said loudly!
And from that day on his brother joined them daily at the crossword table.
//