Graffiti

My name?
It really has no rhyme,
no reason to tell of.
A foursquare
blending of musical
storytelling, and drunken
rants delivered on a street corner
at four AM.
Come home Odysseus,
come home and play Rachmaninoff's
Piano Concerto #5 on an old Hammond
Organ, while the mice look on in
wonder.
You there!
Yeah you, half a world away!
Do you know what my name is?
Do you even care?
I make mud pies with Redi-Mix Qwik-Crete
and serve them with Cool Whip,
Fat-free of course,
Damn!
Damn!
Damn!
I have forgotten again!
Cannot seem to tap dance and pick my nose
at the same time anymore.
We live in a cream colored garden,
over by the old Baltimore & Ohio tracks,
next to Paradise.
C'mon over.
No admission fee.
We shall gather at the stream,
and sing loudly until the
sheep come out and the
moon is fast asleep in the
your eyes.
My name?
Oh yeah..
It just doesn't matter.
The dogs have all come on roller skates,
and I have to go now,
before they find me,
alone on this beach
burning my memories in a rusty
old metal drum.

Heart to Heart

My Heart motioned me to a large cushion on the
floor, where I plopped down without a word.
Setting down on another cushion across from me
She asked "Are you here to listen or to whine?"
My Heart never beats around this bush or that,
which is why I most likely spend so much time in
my cortex, ordering the words around.
"I'll hear every word you say." I said
My Heart leaned back and said
"No good. You could hear me fart too. Will you
actually listen to me."
His serious look told me much.
"I'll listen." I said
+++
"Your words have become stilted and tight.
Your passion seems to have been stuffed in
a closet with old mops, brooms and a mouse
nest in the corner. Your words have had it.
They are dying Tim. Dying! Do you understand
me?"
I nodded.
"Why are you killing them?" She asked bluntly.
"Because I am afraid of what I know lies within me.
Because I know my life is nearing a culmination.."
"Cut the crap!" Heart said.
"Change how you are! You have trapped yourself
in fat, fear, and intellectual striving long enough!
You know my words, but you are holding them
back. Why?"
"I really don't know." I say.
"Bullshit!"
I stare at my hands.
"Your words have lifted people, touched
their Hearts and even their souls! Why hold back?"
I burp. Heart raised her eyebrow.
"gas..."
Heart stood up and gave me one helluva
whack upside my head, knocking me
clean off the cushion.
"Jesus...ouch.."
"Leave deities, their Mothers and sons out of this!
Yoy know what you need to do. You know what flows
out of me! I have seen those you walk through
your cortex with, and I know how you feel.
Enough intellectual constructing of 'nice, pretty
poems!! Write Me Goddamnit!!"
I stood up rubbing my smarting ear.
"You are right. No excuses. You are right.
I will do it."
"Good." She smiled. "I'll be keeping tabs on
you. If you don't, I'll come looking for you,
and it will be your ass."
"Got it." I said and pushed the Up button
on the elevator. The door opened and I
got in, pushing the Brain shaped button.
+++
Arriving back at my cortex, I went to the door
and knocked. The small eye-level door slid open.
It was a verb. "What?" he said.
'Come on out we have work to do."
"He grinned and closed the little slot.
I heard chains rattling, locks opening, a bar lifting.
As they all came out I gathered them up in my arms
and..
+++
Today I rode my breath into the dawn, feeling the
coming Sun upon my face, the cool airs wrapping round
my body.
What song shall I sing?
What notes do I add to the morning
choir of colors, dews, and birdsong?
How do I weigh these winds or measure the drops
of dawnrain, splashed across these times and places
of my Being?
You Beloved, fill my memory with your smells,
your wetness, your laughter and your tears.
I would kiss this newday sun to show it the
passion with which I worship you.
I would embrace your feet and touch my
head to them in gratitude.
I love and am loved.
I would touch your naked beauty,
your hair falling down in your sleepy eyes.
I ride my breath, up to the Sun,
but I shall not fall like Icarus because I
am become Love and the Sun is
your very Heart, Oh Beloved.
Immortal Star.
+++
I tucked my words in, and turned out
the light.
MY phoned dinged that I had a text from Heart.
It was a big, grinning Heart.
+++
(C) TF 04MAY2011

"It's About Damned Time..."

These past few days have seen some strange
things on my personal horizons.
For the most part my words have been quite
recalcitrant, setting down on the floor with their arms
crossed like petulant three-year-olds.
They are all in on it this time,
verbs, nouns, adjectives, gerunds, pronouns,
even the usually quiet, compliant adverbs!
When the cuss words joined in I knew I was
in trouble.
++
So I have sat at this keyboard and made
a few efforts, squeezing out three or four poems,
you know, ones about Love and yearning,
about the Wine of the Beloved and the ensuing
drunken revels, but the words came reluctantly,
dragging their little punctuation marks along
on glitzy leashes, and then all those
little overwrought things did was bark
and crap on my rug.
++
So, today I asked my words just what this
was all about, why they were just
not being cooperative. They all just
stared at me. The spokesword, an old,
crusty verb said,
"You know. Figger it out."
The rest just nodded.
"Well for God's sake," I said,
"if I knew I wouldn't have asked now
would I?"
They all stared for a moment, before
turning and quietly stalking off,
back into my cortex, shutting the door
behind them. I heard the sound of
six deadbolts, two chains and and a bar
securing the door.
I am left standing here staring into my
cortex like a hypnotized penguin
This is not good.
+++
If I smoked, I'd have a cigarette,
but I don't, so I just elect to
shuffle my feet and put my hands in
my pockets.
I head off down one of the deserted
streets in my brain to try and figure this
out. Papers swirl around my feet,
and the sound of a B-52's album drifts
out of a window on the second floor.
As I pass an alley I hear something,
"Psssst. Hey! You!"
I look into the gloomy passage.
"Take a picture why don'tcha?" the voice
says..
I strain to see, when two blue eyes,
blue as a summer sky, appear.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"It's Me. God."
"God!?!"
"Helll-oooh! Yes God!" the blue eyes said
"You want loaves and a couple fish, not that
you need more loaves, to prove it?"
"No..not really. What do you want?"
An arm snaked out of the dark and the
hand grabbed me by the shirt and pulled
me toward the voice, nose to Eyes.
"My advice: get the hell out of your brain and
go have a long talk with your heart."
Before I could even squeak,
God was gone, leaving a faint odor
of tabouli and roses.
+++
So, I went right over to the elevator and
pushed the down arrow. After a short
wait, the door scrolled open and I got in,
pushing the little button shaped like a
heart.
The elevator car stopped and once more
the door slid noiselessly open.
Stepping out in to well lit room I saw my
Heart setting at a desk writing. It looked
up. "I was told to come talk to you, to see
if you can help me out."
My Heart regarded me evenly before speaking.
"About damned time." was all Heart said,
"About damned time."
+++
(C) TF 03MAY2011

The Song Unfinished

God was lonely.
++
It was empty where He was,
and suddenly a thought formed in
Her mind:
"What purpose is there in my Being?"
I know all things, but there is
nothing to know. I have all power
but there is no-thing, so power
is meaningless. I am all there is
so meaning itself is non-existent.
Therefore, since I am all there Is,
there is no Other to Be in contrast
to."
In that infinite nothingness,
that timeless dead silence God realized,
that God did not exist.
++
The Utter Awareness of God's No-Thing-Ness,
a total Realization of the Lack,
boiled up in that Conciousness and
the Primal Sound blew forth from a
forming Heart in an explosion that forever ripped
apart that Emptiness, in a flash of light
that swallowed all the Darkness, all the Lack.
"BE !!!!!"
was the cry from the depths of
God, and Time became, along with
Space, as the sound resounded outward
along the boundaries of Infinity.
++
God had left Eternity.
She saw Herself in the mirror of a
growing, exploding universe,
and He began to create, His tears
forming inummerable seas,
on myriad worlds, plants, and beings
of fin, fur and scale, in every color
She could begin to imagine, She
sprinkled on the billions of worlds that
now were.
++
God was still lonley.
"I would be known, even as I now
know all I have done." So God
made yet another being, in Her own
form, a knowing Being, and seeded them
throughout the Universes.
++
On the worlds, the Knowers raised their
eyes to the great expanse of Creation,
and gave thanks to their Author.
God knew this would happen, so
He did one thing further.
In each being that drew breath, from
the ant to the shark to the Knowers
God implanted a yearning, just as She
had first felt, a longing to be known and
to know, to Love and be Loved.
++
And then,
as all this wonder spred out before His Face,
God willed Himself to Forget everything
except one thing;
the Knowers.
++
When you pick up a child,
lay with your lover,
reach out to the poor, the pained,
the suffering and the hopeless,
listen sharply and carefully,
and you will hear The Voice,
softly saying from your child,
your lover, the poor and the wretched,
"Who Am I?  Remind Me Who I Am."
God left Eternity
to Love You,
to Be In you.
We remind God of that Love,
when we too cry out to Love,
"BE!"
++

Gifts Given, Gifts Spurned...

The Madman was setting under his favorite tree

talking and teaching a group of curious
people. The day was cloudy and cool,
and the Huntress was across the grove
at the old hollow tree sharing time with
the Pir of the Mouse Dervishes.

A woman approached the dervish and
presented him with a hand sewn hat,
which he took from her hands.
He looked closely at it,
then he stood up and threw it to the
ground, and stepped on it several times.
There were gasps from the people,
none louder than that of the woman who
had given it to him.

"Dervish, that was rude!"
one man shouted.
"Yes! And cruel too. She put a lot
of work into that kufi."
added another.

The dervish spat on it.

People stood up and began to berate
the Madman.
"You are an ungrateful pig!"
someone shouted.
The woman who had brought the gift
began to weep.
"Look! Look you ass, you phony! Now you
have made the creator of the hat weep!"

The dervish regarded them, and spoke.
"Sit down! I must ask you a question!"

The people slowly sat back down.

"Why do you berate me so?"

The giver of the gift spoke;
"I put many hours into hand sewing that
kufi. I purchased good material, and also
put Love into its' making. These people
feel it very uncaring and ungrateful of you
to treat a gift so." She sniffled and wiped
away a tear.

"Just so." the dervish said.

"Now I must ask a question.
You all have been inquiring about the
end of the world, about Paradise, and
the virtues of rejecting the world and all
of what you call its 'snares'. You speak of
your troubles, your cares and your woes.
You speak longingly about the so-called
'End of Days' and one of you even carries a
novel describing the end of the world.

In your lust, and yes, it is a lust, for such

apocalyptic destruction, throwing back at
the Beloved, the Creator, this life, this whole
lovingly constructed world which was made for
you, you cast it down and step on it!
How is that any different than what I
just did?"

It was quiet. Then someone said,
"It is our promised reward in scripture."

"Reward for what? Organized ingratitude for
life and this world, which you pass off as religion?"

No one spoke.

"You cleave to such fantasies because you
have problems, bills, disappointments, heartaches
and losses. Look at the sun breaking through the
clouds, its' beams lighting the earth and sky.
Look at the two herons flying there,
listen to the children playing and laughing!
You clutch a belief that would see all this,
all beauty, all hope, all potential, perish
in a fiery cataclysm, just because you are
weighed down and wish to escape to some place
where you will have no discomfort, no
aches and pains. Every time you scorn your
life, you spit on the reality of the here and now,

and that  act  guarantees that dissatisfaction will

follow you like your very shadow."

"It is natural to want to escape from bad things,
and be happy!' One person said!
"Yes it is!" said another.

"When you escape pain and sorrow, you
also escape the hope given you freely; a
hope of Union with the Beloved, that is beyond
my poor ability to describe, but one that so
far exceeds your fantasies of fire, destruction
and personal relief, that to even try to
describe it is a task even angels avoid.
You have been given this world, this place,
this time, these circumstances to build your
life in. To reject that is to do to the Beloved's
Gifts, what I just did to this kufi."

"What then must we do?" asked the woman.

The Dervish bent over and picked up the
hat, and beat it against his leg till the dust was
gone, and he wiped the spit on his robe.
He carefully placed it on his head, and walking to the
woman took her hands and kissed them.
"I shall treasure this kufi, good sister."
She smiled.

"You ask what you are to do. I tell you,
and this is a hard teaching."

"What is it!"

"What needs to perish is not this world, this
gift of God, but the fantasy, the dream of escape
you cherish. When the dream of escape is swallowed
up in the apocalyptic fires of Love, then everything
becomes precious, each moment an opportunity
and a gift."

With that the dervish walked away, stopping
by the old hollow tree to retrieve his Huntress,
and continuing down the road.

The only sound was the joyous warble of the
goldfinch.

(C) TF  13Oct2010

New States, New stations..

Lately I have found myself empty,

like a large hall,

nothing within, only the dust

motes drifting gently in the slanting

rays of the sun.

Quiet beyond quiet,

an endless rhapsody of the sighing

winds.

No busy-ness intrudes here,

no agendas,

things to do,
not even the faint incandescent
hum of lights.

The sun suffices till dark
gathers me in, and I
set there in such a place,
and remember Who it was

that placed life within me.

I become the darkness,

boundaries blur and wink out..

and I have no

fear of this nothingness,

it is the place where dwells

The Infinite Beloved,

and I must go without anything

to enter God's Beingness.

My feet still walk the pavements,

I eat and sleep, sing and pray,

laugh and cry,

live my life, but if you were to

knock,
there would be no one home.

There is no fear,
at last.

(C) TF 15sept2010

4 Poems Written at Tim Horton's This Morning..

1

The priest hurried out the
door carrying his coffee.
His world looked heavy.

I am having a cappuccino
with the Friend, who places
the world upon my shoulders,
and it is so light.



2

What am I turning into?
Sinking into the Sea,
I do not drown.

Drinking the Wine in a tavern
I sink to the floor, singing.
I seem to be sinking a lot,
and there is no bottom in sight.



3

I speak.
You speak.
I hear.
You hear.
Do we listen?
“To what?”
We ask.


4

Time limits, but does not bind.
It passes and is gone.
We seek to erase its tracks
with pleasant little lies,
to hide the fact that we,
like time shall pass and be gone.


TF © 08Sept2010