Where God is

Don't talk about God.
If you're in the western world and you are of that
old class, still dealing with dogma and doctrine,
let me tell you,
it's over.

I'm quite prepared to speak for
all time.
It's over.

It's better to be real than right,
and every night terrifies me with new messages.

There are many stories,
and in how many of them am I?

And then there's the crucial one,
of the cross before which
all must come.

Well, I've waited there all  my life,
seriously looking for something real.

Let me tell you something:
you will find a voice of which
you could not dream.

Don't talk to me of God,
and about being right.

I have never been right,
nothing in my childhood knew about
right.

I am sorry for being right
every time I thought I was.

It's like springtide, rising, real,
spreading over things you thought
you knew.

If you have an idea of
where God is,
have a look into your early years,
and what was spoken to you
and what you received so much that it
echoes always in your knowing soul.

That will sort out your knowing quickly
when the first leaf of real autumn
falls slowly onto the skin of the sunset
you've always watched.

There's something really wicked about
being alive.

That's where you might feel
something much too big to be known
nudging your door's doubt.

Decision

It's difficult not to get wet when you're in the path of
pouring water,
yet I've known someone who decided
against the
heart.
What a surprise this was.
To stand not against but up to
everything you know and have the strength to
sense what carries on beyond that
decision.
I know water, and have swum every current and cross
that flows.
Is our decision real?
If I don't see it in the water's way
how would I know?

This is something that stops and thinks at the tectonic
edge.
If we love, does fire just below
know?
From where is the fire?

I have searched everywhere and
found you
yet you have not wanted to be found.

Well, water will pour down,
perfecting you body, no matter how
ignorantly I seek your
heart.

But hear, or feel, for a moment
how the thunder of inescapability
roars into us.

When light sleeps

The cosmos is normally a tumultous place
full of furious exchange,
Stars are truthful,
perhaps galaxies are gracious.
One living planet promises
nothing.
I don't know if there's another one;
it's not likely.

I have the sense that fire in the belly of
our birth is merely a brief reminder of
moving memories.
Not of the sentimental kind, no;
the finger points always to somewhere
I dread. Again and again in dreams,
light wakens, and the body tries to sleep
with certainties that slope towards those really
awkward places.

I live in ships that try to sail, on planes circling
impossible landings, and in faces I know that have
forgotten me.

I should remember that sometimes
light sleeps.

I've walked often between midnight and morning.
What I've heard then tells me that sometmes
light sleeps.

And in the quietness of whispered messages in
mornings to come, there's a story of how
light sleeps.

It's not a secret, nothing ever is.
It's just that in the quietest earth of all,
in special places, one of which I know,
light sleeps.

Path

They told me about a path,
somehow I've forgotten it,
it was strict and didn't feel
real.
There were so many rules, concepts and
cruel requirements.
I couldn't meet them, and have worried about being a
failure ever since.
An arrow of light often comes to
penetrate my heart. It
hurtles up and down my neck
and stirs something unpredictable in the
body.
I'm not sure about this idea they call my
body.
It's a rich and amazing experience,
but what of the path?
I wonder where it goes.
I also wonder why
each step slows me down.
There are many paths, I'm sure,
some slow in winter others sure in
summer.
Where I am,
it's one step at a time,
and the leaves are falling,
and growing.
I can't tell the difference
although I know seasons well.
Some of my friends have
died, and some of my
family, too. 

I ask:
speak to me.
Perhaps then,
I will recognize
what I should.

Which path opens?
Tomorrow morning when the first bird
sings, and someone is
executed
I know my path.

I have every sword known to man,
also the two-edged one known only to
God.

I don't know if there's time to take in
smells and seekings of plants that
grow along the pathway.

That will help when we are
wounded, maybe dying.

Perhaps the path grows the way,
maybe the undergrowth
knows more.

For myself, I put the scalpal into
langauge.
When I see blood I know I am on the right
path. 
How it grows when we least expect anything,
and how the heart shouts out words that have
nothing to do with wisdom.
And the silence that surrounds every word:
what does it reveal?
Pick a stone and keep it somewhere
in its own
silent path.
You will begin to know
if the fishing is good.