HUNGER 24 POEMS®

WILL CROW

BrotherWill Crow resides in Sarangkot, Pokhara, Nepal, as well as in San

Francisco and Grass Valley, California. With appreciation and an internet

connection, he lives the simple, natural, sustainable lifestyle of rural Nepal. He is

a prize-winning San Francisco poet. Profits from this book are donated to The

Prem Rawat Foundation’s Food for People in Bantoli, Nepal.

Website: brotherwillcrow.com Communicate: crowkawskaws@gmail.com Volume 3 in the 24 poems series® Version 2.1

Bite mouth bite,

Crush teeth crush,

Swallow tongue swallow…

Eat mouth eat… eat voraciously of this world.

For time eats greedily of me.

I give heartily…

And callously this world swallows insatiably.

I have grown to a weight…

Grown to muscles that flex hard against the rough this world is.

For the vigor in me does not stop.

Once my innocent mouth fed upon a mother’s warm nipple.

Yes, a woman’s flesh is a kindness.

And the comfort of a mother

Blankets and pillows… softens.

Softens time and the pitilessness of space.

Once my lips unsullied sucked upon such sweetness.

Milk overflowed; over me tenderness caressed.

O what have I become?

O what monster is this that in pride upright strides

What demon whose unfeeling teeth tear and grind?

What do you see when I approach?

The strength, the tension of a man, a person weathered like rock?

Can you see that the lips still soft still crave the taste of caring comfort?

And O how I care and how I don’t care!

Crow states, hurt “And O woman, lover how your words boiling have seared me.”

Ah finally

A friend with cigarettes.

Give me a drag.

Yes! smoke in my lungs.

Finally.

I exhale.

Feels so damn good.

I am such a fool,

A fool chasing foolishness.

For I am always

Chasing,

Chasing sensation.

Chasing the delights of this world

Chasing the plot,

Chasing down the paths.

My desire is like a dog,

Hunting, fixated, keen, barking…

Scents, glimpses, grunts, craves, tangles…

Chasing.

Sensation

Chasing imaginings,

Chasing fulfillment.

Chasing women.

My soul urges.

I run, I hope,

Maneuver,

Crave.

I crave the beauty,

The pleasure,

Joy,

The delight.

My heart cries.

The answer is always waiting around the corner.

Will I ever finally really reach,

Reach what I know is my resolution?

Time to do some drugs.

Coffee with bourbon, oh dear Jim boy Beam,

Do some smoke, some Spirit rolled with the green hashish.

Maybe call ole Bob-from-Beyond and see if he’s got something fun to sell.

The Rainbow Warrior he sold me last month when I got itchy

Kept me flying high and partying for two days.

What a day.

Jessie called me whining

Said I’d racked his Triumph bike.

The dude needs to stop obsessing about the fucking bike.

Sure it’s an antique, but I think

The ole girl enjoyed her hour with me on top cranking her full throttle in the fast lane.

He owes me.

Didn’t I stop and let him out around the corner

When the cops started chasing us in that cherried-out convertible-red Caddie I had hotwired.

I got pinched because of it.

Two months in County.

And fuck, now I think I got head lice.

My scalp itches with bites.

That skank I met in that Inner Mission bar

O did I have a time being screwed by her.

She gave a pill she called “Dick Riser’

Kept me hard for hours.

Boy she had the body of a pubescent girl, tight o so tight she made me weep.

Salt of the earth, dog face filthy, with the nasty smiling know-how sexy in her dangerous eyes.

Boy what a ride, what a cocaine rodeo, she saddled me like a queen on a horse for so long

I fell asleep in her rank bed.

Against my rules

And now I got lice.

Shit.

Tine to do some drugs.

Life is too short to get bogged down in the bullshit and boredom.

Up at last,

Rounding low over the ridge, rising,

The sun heats the world again.

I continue along in the rotation,

Sitting in the sun’s delight, warming.

The sun’s yellow rays stream upon the Autumn ground littered and forlorn.

Calm is the wind that thru the night, empty of charm, pushed rough and cold ,

Pushed into my caravan home with the broken door…

The duct-taped door which flaps.

Breath continues, rises, rotates

Animates this world of motion.

I do exist, I am now ready,

Stirred by the low fire of the sun’s far fervor,

Ready to continue this brave self of mine,

Ready for this creature-hood,

Ready to stride about in the bullying chill,

And confront the winding of time.

What will happen today?

Only that I breathe.

Only that I hunger for the satisfaction that may come within me.

Only does this matter in the profound scheme of things.

All else I accomplish

In this day

Will die,

Die back in the past.

And when I breathe no more

Will be fully forgotten.

I as well…

I too am led by fate…

I too am simply a creature…

A creature like a cow,

Like a cow with a mouth and an anus…

And out into the pasture of this world I go…

To consume and shit.

At first, I roamed, eager.

But now I am herded…

Hobbled by that which I must feed upon…

By that which once promised freedom…

By that which once looked so easily attainable…

By that which now corrals…

By that which seems now so caustic and unnecessary.

Now I work hard.

I am loaded heavily.

I attempt to move ahead.

Why did I want all this?

My life is heavy footed.

Now I work without cessation

Here against gravity.

Dark of void

Cold of emptiness

Lost in an eddy of the unformed…

Lost

Alone, unfound

Nothing but,

Nothing moving but…

But awareness hungering.

From some source the shooting of thoughts,

Arch and dissipate

Impotent and meaningless

Alone

Anxious,

Needlessly alive.

Neurons fire.

Who can exist as such?

All take shelter…

Family, friends

Purpose, livelihood

Information, imagination

Identity, importance…

All bind themselves

Ah, Crow reiterates what the wise have said:

Those who would surpass bondage and suffering

Those who would overcome limitations and death

Must find that refuge that

Does not flounder in the cold dark ocean of emptiness.

O Crow is so completely grateful

O his Masterpilot who is steering him steadily across.

Upon a thousand fingers

The Red Starfish glides…

Glides on a cushion of suction-cups…

Glides on mini-feet by the many-hundreds…

Feet on five arms which are fearsomely

Adapted to pry apart shells like bunkers…

Pry open the armored homes of the Green Muscles…

The Green Muscles which so effectively anchor…

Anchor to the tidal rocks in colonies tight and sieve the currents…

Sieve the raging currents which contain the creatures…

The millions of micro-organisms which are continuously born in clouds…

Clouds thick and ever-present in sea water.

Hunger is the drive.

Food is the platform.

Success shapes.

For eating is evolution

And DNA is the adaptor.

Here on this world of water

The dynasties of genomes

Feed upon one another other,

Change and gain.

Here the evolution of flesh has attained an awesomeness…

Has attained an organism that thrives beyond hunger…

Has attained a genome that builds a nervous system…

A genome with a nervous system which composes language.

For within us, the map of language comprises the whole of creation.

The iridescent sleek-black scissor-tail

Migrates into the foothills in late winter.

Here hatching are fat early flies.

Deft, agile, and acrobatic,

The Drongo scissor-tail speeds

Eating their weight in a day.

Above in the sky, two eagles circle slowly,

Eyeing for an opportunity

For maybe in a moment the scissor-tail will err

And become the meat of prey.

Hunger is the dictator.

Life in its march must be fed.

All obey; their plasticity evolves to feed upon opportunity.

How fortunate are we,

We who comprehend and appreciate,

We who are shaped to be omnivorously curious and ever clever?

The living float upon a river jumbled, tumbling with chance.

Like a plume pulled out into an unstoppable current

The green presence of the biosphere has no permanence.

This river of existence is a river of hunger.

On a path perched against the drop of a cliff,

The law of the belly, the unceasing need of flesh

Has set the bear on the narrow trek down.

With no mercy above and with destruction looming below,

A misstep can end the bear…

And the bear is starving.

The bear has been following the smell of the ocean, following the strengthening saltiness.

His nerves know that there, there is food.

The familiar scents of pine duff, of sun-heated Manzanita are gone.

Where is this? This where his nose pains…

Pains with the acrid repulsive smells of human dwelling?

He is overwhelmed, distraught, disoriented.

The thickness of odor and noise, the roaring and jarring,

The chaos of momentous movements, the chaos of objects,

Of objects alien to his familiar forest know-how frighten him.

The breeze born aroma of heated fat, of fresh dead flesh strike him.

He moves carefully.

It comes from an opening bright and busy. He hears humans within.

His fear is strong. He waits, watching from his bower of bushes.

He understands that out in the flat of the lifeless hard field in front of him

There is food. That the building has food. That food is behind the building in containers.

The oily scent wafts.

Finally, the place goes still. The humans have gone.

No dogs, no other bears, and no roaring stinking quick-moving monsters.

Jerry has been on The Force for little over a year.

He has the Sunday morning cleanup shift, The newbie shift.

His task is to deal with the debris of Saturday night.

There are the usual few incidents to sort out.

With dawn breaking, the undead, the inebriated,

Hoping for hot coffee and even better a beer to chase it with,

Are about… the usual suspects in the usual haunts,

He books them or drives them home.

The dispatcher relays reports of vandalism, minor thefts.

The natives have been restless, as usual.

The end of his shift is spent sorting it all out and writing the reports,

He writes as luridly as permissible. He likes writing the stories. He likes being a cop.

He likes controlling the playing field. He likes control.

He liked playing high school football.

Made varsity junior year. He was a little too short and slow and heavy to be a great linebacker.

But he was good. He liked tackling.

He liked how the game was played…

How the team with physical resolve stopped the opponent’s onslaught.

He knows policing as a scrimmage against the perverse and the renegade.

The soul of him hungers for propriety, to shape society, to have all be right.

And he likes being a cop because of the gun.

He feels satisfaction when he hefts the density of his revolver.

The hard energy of the sure steel, the profundity of pulling the trigger

Puts him square and tall in the saddle: Good against Evil.

The call comes in from the Mall about the bear.

He drives rapidly without the siren.

He remembers what his trainers had told him.

With a bear or a critter like a cougar stand your ground. Wave your arms, yell…

Have your gun ready. It might be rabid.

It’ll hightail away if you stand your ground.

Call for backup… and call for Animal Control.

If a bear doesn’t turn and move away…

If the bear confronts you, fire your gun in the air.

And if it runs towards you

Be ready to empty your revolver until it drops.

Jerry sees the brown bear down back near the rear door of the Jack in the Box

The bear has turned the dumpster on its side. It is rummaging inside head first.

Jerry drives to within shouting distance.

He is nervous. He has never seen a real bear before.

He shouts, “Hey, Hey, Hey Asshole”

He gets no response. He flicks on the siren for a second.

The bear stops and looks at him.

“GET, Get, Get, GET”.

The bear studies him.

Jerry waves his revolver.

Should he fire in the air?

It is early Sunday morning and for sure if he fired, he’d upset a lot of folks.

The calls would come in. He’d have to justify it with too many forms.

He decides to drive the squad car towards the bear with the siren going.

But first he calls Carl the dispatcher to have him try to roust someone from Animal Control.

He really doesn’t need backup he thinks. Too embarrassing. The bear is not being aggressive.

He turns the siren on, he drives with lights flashing.

The bear lunges out of the dumpster, bolts out of the loading area

And runs, runs into the brush and up onto the hill above.

Jerry tracks him until there was no more movement in the brush.

He gives Animal Control the coordinates and signs off.

Disoriented, distraught, tense

The bear lays low and away,

Lays under an outcrop where once he had slept safely.

He is still hungry… and he knows now where there is food to be found.

The world stills smells distressingly unfamiliar.

This place remains frightening and chaotic. The ocean no longer attracts.

He wants home, wants to be on the river.

But what he really wants is to eat more of the fragrant food.

And what he has smelled is worth another try.

Life is an endeavor pulled as a plume out into the great current of the cosmos.

Hunger propels.

Do you know what you’re doing?

What life do your secrets live?

Do you know where you hide your child-like heart when you arise from your bed and

go forth out into the manufacturing of this world?

If I followed you about all day

How much of it would make sense?

How much would make sense in a bio-evolutionary efficient way?

How much of it would make a bit of sense to an Orangutan?

To an elephant?...

To a Neolithic pygmy?

To a Han Chinese patty farmer, to an Inuit Cariboo herder?

Does money send you daily scurrying up onto the caustic electric scorch of some strange

outcrop… Or down into a stifling wasteland of a cave of

monotonous grey rock-scape? Does it lead you by the

nose-ring And

harness you to a grist mill round and round, hour by hour?

What in every minute ties you to the fulfillment beyond the impermanence of things…

Ties you to the fulfillment that this Universe is alive with, does birth from enthusiastically?

Here your shoes touch Earth…

What else in you is touched by the truth that is dirt?

What else in you is touched by that keenness which has made all from dirt?

What touches the jubilance in your secret child’s-heart?

What touches the secret which connects you into the silent brotherhood of bliss?

The impeccable sky, the flow of water, the rising heat of sunlight, the symphony of twilight, the

living pageant, the smile of a baby…

What does your heart’s eye wrap around and draw subtle sustenance from

And make you laugh with joy?

You are given; you give yourself to a master.

Like me.

Within, you have found a flame.

Like me.

Your living wants, your thirst longs for the liquor of elation…

You pursue the wine that inebriates the heart… pursue the kiss in the brain that unites the soul

with the profound exquisiteness…

Like me.

But the path you walk seems perilous.

Unlike me.

You were one of the holy at twenty, so willing, you had left the common world of the common

goals, refused the suffering of the straight-jacketed.

Left like me.

Dangling, damaged, dancing, stoned, sensual, seductive, discerning, ecstatic, fearless, a pilgrim

of the road, on the road…

Like me.

Your master is of smoke, is ganja’s stone, is to let THC take you to a release.

Somewhat like me.

You inhale your prayer, and you beseech the chemical to carry you to a heavenly sedation.

Not at all like me.

O living with you, your heart was my heart, and to know you, your love, your desire, your

female lips, your sexual mouth, your breath toke it up, to offer yourself up to the wings, to the

soaring of sinsemilla, and take holy flight

Stoned me too.

But my path has made me the most fortunate of beggars. Into my bowl the Beloved Essence

sometimes downpours. I need, my heart begs… I want to accept what is given. Clear and clean.

My gratitude is bottomless.

I was humbled, my pride cut. Then the secret was supplied. The unnamable name names within

me. The same such syllable, unsayable, sounds by itself. O the inner beloved feeling. Here I

arrive at the primal joy.

This is my Beloved.

My Master.

There is something higher than fucking,

Something somewhat higher than that sweaty ecstasy…

Higher than kissing the lips, holding the hips you love to rock…

Better is travelling just beyond the temporary…

Is hugging to the edge of the other side…

The other side where stillness enfolds, and time dissolves.

Here the singular beckons with brightness.

Yes, to be moved, to feel life’s frail heart beating bravely…

To have the improbability of one’s heat warm in the void…

Is to know the miracle…

Is to be the gratitude of the incredible kindness…

Is to realize the most tender of embraces.

The ultimate orgasm is to be loved shining amid the nothingness.

O the divine passion, wonder, joy …

Breathing…

Is fucking with the awesome absolute.

You give and give and give

Pitiful lover

And the greedy motherfucker takes and takes.

His, such self-centered insecure control is merciless…

The maw of unrequitedness is relentless.

Where is your subtly, your suppleness?

Is your inner truth still so unexplored?

You can conceive of only an unquestioning obedience?

You are so badly used.

Is this really the road to your heart’s solution?

There is no applause amid the darkness,

No relief as you blindly fumble

Bruised by depravation.

You know there is a crown,

You know there is a throne,

You know there is a kingdom of appreciation.

And the lover you are,

You should know you should be celebrated,

Should be served.

For the enthusiasm you are

You know, should be as a freedom of joy.

Please lover, your inner intimacy is an enduring bud of a flower…

Is a fragrant sustenance.

Know, watered, your private heart will feed and free you.

See that washin machine. Well Des bought me that washin machine when he got out of court-

mandated rehab, and been hired by HomeDepot doin stocking. He’d got it as a mark down.

He’d been hired cause of a Corr Community Placement Program. Well this sweet heart of a

washin machine is my pride and joy. It works as hard as I do. It hangs in there like I do. And

Des wasn’t even a father of neither of my children. Oh, it keeps working like nothing else in this

mother fucking world around me.

Des had gone off to party…party with some low-life drug-fiend friends…and had never come

back. Likely locked up again. Poor Des. Fucking Des. The man was smart sharp like no-one

else. That much smart was too much trouble for a ghetto-assed, hyped-up slick nigger like him

to handle.

Been a watch’ng all the Presidential election coverages. One of them was saying he’d fund up

education. And especially for the likes of us no-count left-behinders. The other said he would

too, but that mean-assed grinning cracker racist said, come end of the school year, only the

cream(y white cream) of the crop could get vouchers if they wanted to go on to the likes of the

Charter Schools. Nice. Promises. Promises from the fancy world of those who have

goddamned grabbed everything for themselves. From those motha fuckers that hold the gun and

never let us forget it. From those self-satisfied motha fuckers whose mouths talk up a motha

fuckun stream of unending happy white bullshit, and then they go ahead and make the laws that

makes this world, that makes them king of this motha fuckun mountain. These slick-assed lying

presidential men.

No siree, the world that is people never changes. It is the jungle; it is the same stuff. The same

stupid shit the, the motha fuckun Baboon Dudes, those red-assed, dog-toothed, jungle mother-

fuckers, those gangsta monkeys play on each other and on every chump on down under them.

Seen that plain as day on the Nature Channel. You think any of them presidential men in charge

can change what we really are?

My sweet mother gave me life. My loving suffering mother gave me a home here in South

Central. And I suffer, I struggle mightily to give my children a home here in Long Beach…A

home with love and hope they might do better. What’s a person but a heart, a hope, and a try for

the heaven they can almost touch on the inside of themselves?

The fetus as it floats,

The fetus as it floats in the womb’s wealth of warmth,

As it nestles, rides amid muscle…

The fetus knows the brilliance of glow.

Here daylight crosses membrane…

Glows pink, glows bright with the promise.

Here amid the lifting and the release of lung,

Here in the heart’s intimate rhythm…

Here growing from blood…

Here the purr of life, here the pleasure of light… here existence’s symphony

Travels through.

Here is the simple state of union. Here is the peace of certainty. Here is heaven.

Here is human consciousness’s resting point, is the bliss, is the default.

So, the night was as dark as the lack of light could be. Through the open door of the cabin,

through the open door out into the forest’s cold wild, there was only a blindness of black. The

crescent moon had set soon after sunset. Within him, his animal feared, feared what the dark is.

For a mammal’s womb is a warm, bright place.

Birth is a terror, is a terror that irrevocably bullies a soul out into the cruelty of cold dimension.

Birth is an unwelcome battle, is an attack. Birth evicts into a world haunted by separation, and

terror.

But here in this night he understood, he accepted. For here was a state of union. For what was

within him, was what was without him, was the dark void… and he was simply life breathing

within it. The cavern within had become the cavern without.

He whose life had been a play to an audience on the stage of a theater… he had suffered, had

become disoriented… become dizzy in the spotlight. Here now in the dark, the person he

played… the character he acted had no consequence… here he was but his pilgrim, here he was

but his hermit solitary in his cave.

Again, he was as a fetus, but a fetus from the womb’s sereneness long ago lost. Here in the

simplicity of stillness, here he was life’s simplicity. He was breath. Breath sounding in the

volume of the void… his breath… just breath and heartbeat. He embraced this, his life’s

essence. A unity flowed. Ah, he had come seeking and here he was finding.

Yes, daylight will come again. Yes, his role will resume. Here away in the woods, he is a

chopper of kindling, a composer of words, is a want-to-be writer of memorable literature. He

had come, sick with fatigue from the congestion of city… came vacationing from the weariness

of performing as a teacher… from the act of commanding a classroom… from playing as a

purveyor of bookish esoteric information. His effort had come to make little sense to him… his

dismay had grown. He longed to be a celebrated author, to become renown. Long ago, his

child’s mind had dreamed of acclaim. If the world of literature loved him, he would triumphant

as a human. But he felt paralyzed, his aspiration seemed unobtainable.

But yes, here in the darkness, life’s spark was true, tenacious, a treasure. Here now safe, his

heart spoke.

His heart was a wanting of love. He was a wanting of acceptance… was a wanting of certainty.

Here in the cabin, here secure within him… here was lit the harmonious peace of the womb…

here he was as breath’s rhythm, and his breath a wealth of feeling. He understood that here

upon life’s stage… in the intimacy of each moment… he should act to cultivate more and more

of peace’s inner relaxation. And he said to

himself, “Why not?”

I stand here amid this city street,

Stand with the traffic surging by me.

Today is but another day, but a day of my days.

I stand and within me poignantly

The thirst for truth bites in my throat.

I am overcome by a confusion.

My psyche stalls choked by my futility.

Know, I drive my days thru the turmoil of troublesome streets.

My days are attempts at maneuvering towards an open road of sun and bliss.

Standing here I am halted again by a lack of direction.

My young woman’s world was of men.

My virginal lips drank the flirtation of men.

Young men I could drive into happy pleasurable laughter.

My simple young world worked easily. I was a beauty.

But my biology grew to be a hunger for the substance of babies.

I married a man who cared.

Married a man who fabricated a ship of family.

Piloted a ship through seas not always friendly.

And now he is gone, family grown, done with me.

Gone wanting to assist Africa…

Gone, the dear busy doctor without borders.

Now time, time’s empty volume, I must sit within.

My days, as they arrive, I must walk through,

These demanding companions,

I must walk my confused way through.

Wine, gin slake the burden, awaken relief.

I find I thirst. The relief begins to orient me.

But my evenings become sad, regretful.

I find I am lost… become sickened, drunk, dim, alone.

Mornings a monster within me I sometimes must encounter.

So I take my Z pill, I fill with coffee.

And again, in another day, in but another day of my days,

I navigate into time… point my vehicle onto a road…

Point toward a beckoning horizon.

And again I drive, hungry, searching for this city’s street of contentment.

Flight AK 3300

Into a city of clouds… lifted… I, we have arrived.

This airliner is our privilege… is my wonder… is the privilege of being modern.

At altitude, clouds, floating clouds, perfections of clouds,

Sculptured water, wind, sun, clouds of

Moisture up, up from the ocean's tropics condensed.

Below, plowed white, paved smooth by a line of container ships, the blue water.

Into the distance along the oddity of shipping lanes civilization's materials move.

I am as if a god beholding, detached, beholding the curved vastness of blue and the green below.

Beholding as this plane of people…

of Malaysian couples, of Chinese businessmen, of Muslim families, of Hindu brides to be with

brothers… this plane propels.

What is Arabia, what is India, Malaysia, Macedonia?

What is a country but hundreds of tribes, tribes made of hundreds of clans,

Of clans made of thousands of families.

Now modern, we are also one.

We all love ice cream. Ice cream is marketed to us all.

We all see the similarities amid the differences.

Black hair, blond hair, ear buds, burkas, sunglasses, saris, buttoned-down shirts, dreadlocks,

jeans, blue eyes, two eyes, one breath, one love…

Seven billion hearts amid a creation of common pleasures.

But lo… the ideas, our ideas…your ideas… the insane fantastic ideas…

Fed and digested tribe by tribe.

Ideas of why we people are in this world, of who is in charge, of what should be done…

Is wasting, killing, destroying…

Ignorance… Imagination… Superstition.

The artic tern, the sea turtle, the humped back whale,

The Siberian fox, the red ruffled lemur, the blood pheasant, the waterfall tree frog

Can not be rid of you, alien, greedy you, soon enough.

Understand you too, like them, are awareness simply surviving…

Awareness blessed with keenness, gratitude, empathy.

Why live small, greedily, embattled…

Live struggling up slopes of ideas…of delusions…

Live by assembling self-definitions… with yet more uncertainty coming soon after the last?

Here, at altitude, I see…

I see that from one source, from one energy, from the one divine essence

(the awesome divinity embedded in the workings of DNA) Life comes… the one natural essence embraces all… gives to all fully

And will kindly give the way forward.

(As it gives the inner secret joy)

Crow says, “A magical staff of Marathos is a tall flowered stalk of Fennel, Fennel tipped in a burst of an umbel.”

Do you understand what this palace you occupy is?

Do you realize the garden you wander about is walled?

This space which sometimes delights you

With its flowers and breezes sometimes cooks and freezes you,

This real estate is a fortification.

Have you come to find that you are behind barriers of confusion, frustrations?

Have you experienced your thoughts as a cage?

How dangerous it is to see yourself as a prisoner?

Are you still a hero, a cunning warrior…

A guerilla fighter bent on winning freedom?

Or are you without weapons, weak in resolve, reduced to whining?

Myself, I know my walls well.

I too have outfitted my palace,

Painted scenes of infinite horizons,

Painted scenes of exotica, beauty.

I too do dress myself in royal robes

While I cunningly calculated my own overthrow.

Life, life, life…

Consciousness is a vertical rope,

A rope hanging from heaven.

Heaven is a light up within you.

The One-Love is a heaven high within you.

Heaven has no walls.

Now my eye like a bird soars in the sky

My shadow I watch as it maneuvers across the ground.

This palace of mine, unwalled, has become very comfortable.

Crow says, “Without my Masterpilot, I am but a clucking bird in a cage.”

Ok I will finally admit to you I am lazy.

You have seen me work, and how much I have built.

Seen how much I organize, how clean I keep things.

And yes like a crow I do caw busily about my business.

But I have become lazy.

I have learned to be easy.

I have been taught how to let go.

Within me there is little struggle.

Within me there is little that is unsettled.

What should I run after?

What should I become?

How sweet things are here relaxed

The sweetness of this world now seeks me out

And comes to play at my door.

I need make no effort to enjoy.

I do not rise up out of my comfort.

Before me pleasure smiles, smiles like the smile of a woman delighted.

Joy swings within me.

The essence of life wants to carry me away in its bliss.

And lazily, I laugh and do not resist.

Crow says, “I am spoiled, I have been ruined by the truth. I am not racked upon the wheel. It is simple, stillness is

accessible. My heart does not lack. From the realm whence breath is furnished, I indulge in a sure feast.”

The lay of my intestine

The winding up of my gut

From the sphincter of my anus to my stomach,

This bulky heap

Tucked tidily upon my hips,

This belly I handily chauffer about…

This lay of intestine is a farm yard,

Is a wetlands, a swamp, an estuary which the fodder of this world flows

through.

Is a fertility that feeds me

That provides the fuel

That I carefully cultivate.

That my brain depends upon.

That I must feed with discrimination.

Notice that Old Poet is a frog sitting in the sun

Sitting over his big round belly

Full and satisfied as he digests,

Always hungry, always feeding.

O hero

Here I go battling.

Here I go subjugating.

There I must go and overcome.

Alongside of me stand a few monuments to victories.

And behind me lay graveyards of losses.

O hero of mine, what is ahead?

Why do you just keep charging out…

Obsessively, reactively, unconsciously.

How can I forget what is within…

Forget the innocence I always am,

Forget the sincerity that stirs within me,

Forget the simple child watching from within?

Why have I stopped sucking joy from the divine teat?

Where is my contentment?

Yes, much of my satisfaction I win by battling.

But the peace of the intimate within is won by quietly being.

There, I have found…

There, there is no effort, no effort needed to win.

Within what watches,

what listens,

What does not get hot,

does not get cold,

What does not become defeated,

does not ever triumph.

What is steady,

what has always been as the enthusiasm in me,

What in me is primary,

what is solitary,

the solitude…

Has always been but in an embrace.

Here what is awake has always been held in the molten flow that is life.

To know that specific location

To be the silence that perfectly watches, listens,

Is to know the joy underlaying,

the force that is life.

This is the cherished Self-Knowledge,

this is your heart’s Beloved.

Do not be fooled

Steady

You are never hot nor ever cold

though your flesh suffers heat and chill.

Steady you can never be defeated nor will you ever need to triumph,

solitary you are always but something belonging to the entirety,

something that embraces like a baby.

And the enthusiasm that is you

is primary,

is life’s primal force perfect, steady and true.

Ok I will finally admit to you I am lazy.

You have seen me work, and how much I have built.

Seen how much I organize… how clean I keep things.

And yes like a crow I do caw busily about my business.

But I have become lazy.

I have learned to be easy.

I have been taught how to let go.

Within me there is little struggle.

Within me there is little that is unsettled.

What should I run after?

What should I become?

How sweet things are here relaxed

The sweet of this world now seeks me out

And comes to play at my door.

I need make no effort to enjoy.

I do not rise up out of my comfort.

Before me pleasure smiles, smiles like the smile of a woman delighted.

Joy swings within me.

The essence of life wants to carry me away in its bliss.

And lazily, I laugh and do not resist.

Crow says, “Sometimes I become spoiled. Then the control I am is ruined. I am released from the rack of the

wheel. I become a simpleton. Here, heart does not lack. In the realm of effortlessness, the pleasure of divine

food.is fed to me.”

The tiger

Sets sure paw.

Intelligence hunts,

Is certain of the prey.

Through the jungle of the Kabbalah

Mind stalks liberation.

O how many have we seen…

Tigers on promontories

Overlooking wastelands

Cut off by pride

Isolated

Believing truth is theirs.

Manatee,

I am a Manatee

Among so many cousins

Swimming amid simple pleasures.

Joy is a warm soak

We all lay back in.

The Joy that is… elation…

Is there anything more than that we should be doing?

The slight dog slipped through the traffic of the hectic Chennai side-street like a fish weaving

through the turbulence of a mountain deluge…

Slides carefully, gingerly, for the ground in this Indian city is a patch work of territories. Are

territories warred over by males fierce with willing sidekicks. (Only pups, females in heat, and

old dogs (often infirmed) are allowed safe passage). She scents perhaps something edible. She

will try…

Such is the way of hunger. Such is the way of dogs. Such is the Way.

I too hunger, hunt, careful of the Way.

Belly, blood, feeling must be fed.

My nose cleaves not only to my well-trod trail…

But carefully to the outlaying, the subtle unseen…

Searches for the scent of that heavenly enthusiasm.

Scents for essence… scents for the sublime feeling, the Presence.

As if from behind a curtain moved by an unseen hand,

In no way anticipated,

The divine unveils.

Like a door appearing in a wall of a mountain where no door seemed to be,

I go within and find that which is Beloved… find that perfect natural perception.

When I am in the effortless effort of love.

The simple divine is just simply me, me being.

Weird is the doing…

The divine is not found by doing!

The Beloved is not something that can be captured.

Is not something to be won within a series of maneuvers, or conclusions.

The divine is not something achieved, arrived at, added onto, added into.

Not something other.

The divine is not a destination at the end of a journey.

What consciousness is, what awareness is,

What is finally me, what is the life within me,

Is the divine.

-Auroville, Tamil Nadu, Dec 2018

This world is lost.

Fear has swallowed it.

Yes, in the beginning,

There was the Word,

And it, with a Bang, continues inwards, outwards, onwards.

Continues as the expanding fire, of the fire of the fissions of innumerable passions.

Yes, what is, what is forever, is that syllable of enthusiasm.

The fire lives…

The conglomeration of gravity has not diminished the urge that coils within the blood.

And the Tao pours forth, unabashed, unabated. The passion bleeds.

But the mind of this crowded urban world has now determined truth is cold and aloof,

scientific…

Finds time precarious, monetary…

And death cruel.

This world is lost.

Fear has swallowed it.

It does not love.

Am I lost? I don’t know. I love.

Comprehension has swallowed my fear.

The pageant here brings to my heart gladness.

And death, what is death but what I am when I am not here…

Death waits unformed within me.

And me, the flame, will I not extinguish back into the surrounding fire?

And truth?... The truth of this world?

I am finding the fifteen-year-old girl across from me on this bus

Is the truth of this world.

O her truth.

O her flesh is a perfection- vivid, vital, radiant.

Her face is a gentleness- is adventurous, keen-eyed.

She is an apex- chromosomes have constructed intelligence, beauty.

She shines- the daughter of the kindness of a mother, a mother smiling nearby…

A daughter who will become the marvel of a mother of a wonder of a smiling daughter.

And me?

I request you to reconsider.

You who from your hunger within generates your world.

Bliss sits smoldering at your core.

Yes, you have been built to burn with the essential passion, with the transcendental fission.

Fearless.

But you need to know

You need to know how to entertain…

Sit and entertain the divine freedom.

Understand,

While I walk about,

While I make the motions

Of being real,

While I act solidly,

Understand,

I am still only an asking.

I am still but an unrequited heart

Begging for the presence

Of the inner blissful Beloved Essence.

Still a child, hungry,

Lost but for its mother.

Thanks

Endless thanks

to Prem Rawat

Who gave me the keys

to the room of inner joy

For more information about Prem Rawat: words of peace.org

premrawat.com

Within

Within life,

Roots enthusiasm….

Roots the enthusiastic Essence.

And beloved,

Life’s vital presence perceived

Brings me to a feeling of joyous belonging.

Brings a oneness.

Here within may this enthusiasm that is the Divine

Blossom.

And Crow wants to mention,

“Here is answer to a world of questions.”