Genesis: God made man in his image; he made them both male and female

PRAYING FOR GRACE

You don't know but,

I dreamt of you last night,

Again.

 

The memory of you takes hold,

The breath shifts, deepening and,

Acid burns my sternum.

 

Quiet and strong beneath this inner activity,

Emptiness is felt.

 

This is the taste of regret.

 

You are gone.

And apologies,

Are appropriate but,

I don't see them putting me near to you.

 

You dream of an angel with whom, you could project a clean life.

Angels are safe,

They don't make mistakes, knowing only how to obey.

They observe us, absent of free will, error and regret.

 

I am a man,

Closer to a devil than an angel,

For I have fed the fires that now burn me,

And now wish to drink of that cup all the more fully.

(To burn through my mistakes and foolishness until I am pure.)

 

But in my recent stupidity, impulsivity and emotionality,

I burned down the bridge leading to you.

A bridge I wish to repair.

 

I would extend myself greatly,

To have your company again,

For your gaze might be softened,

Your dream forgotten,

And you might recognize that you are a woman, not an angel,

And, that your cosmic place is with a man.

 

Then this "kind and honest man",

Who so wholly and regrettably disappointed you,

Might be forgiven.

 

The Angel

She thinks she's an angel but she's not,

Her thick hips and ass awaken the man to his impulses.

He wants to rob her of her illusion,

To show her that she is sensual, cunning and powerful.

 

But she would reject the messenger with the message,

So, he waits in anticipation for their goodbye'

And wonders if he will be remembered

When time teaches her otherwise.

 

Anger as Experienced

I am! (It always begins with this).

I am ANGER!

I am ABUSED!

So, I become invincible.

The body full of destruction that needs to be released upon the world like an orgasm.

 

I want to smash and break,

Primal scream and war.

To get back what I had;

My dignity!

Those fuckers, they did me wrong.

 

It Happens This Way

Full of hope like foolish first love,

He crafts a dream - extending her into his life.

He has always been sentimental for such indulgent lies of fantasy.

A distasteful habit for one who aspires to be a Christian

 

He calls her only to be shocked out of his dream,

Her voice didn't mirror his warmth or enthusiasm

So like a hurt puppy,

He vows to never call her again.

 

AM Lovers

My hands are rough but honest,

Reaching up your shirt toward tender flesh,

Guiding this sweet unexpected seduction.

 

My tongue, your hips,

Through closed eyes I see you

But don't know you.

 

I am here lover, with you

And this is clean.

What happens when an animal dies? Does an animal have a soul? My great aunt's cat bites her almost weekly, is it going to hell for being a bad kitty? Why don't we baptize our pets so that they won't go to hell if they are run over in the street before they accept Jesus into their hearts? While such questions don't correspond with to any real sentiment about the condition of our pets afterlife, they do place our attitude of personal entitlement to an afterlife in relief. However,  life after death is not certain.

     Actually, the idea of life after death may be incorrect as well. Why? Well, because they are simply ideas and we don't know how to verify them. If we are a Christian for example, we may find that the Christian form of worship and relating to the world feels right to us so, when confronting ideas that we cannot verify like heaven and hell we accept them on faith. And the big question; does God exist? CS Lewis would likely argue that people across cultures feel good when they are in religous states and that those feelings are for the universal God who embodies the Christian cosmology. His idea offers a decent summary but it doesn't go deep enough, it is only an idea. I prefer reading the wisdom of the East even though I have a Christian temperment and feelings because, my sense is that Christianity has become flat. It is stuck in the material world. I like the writtings of Rene Guenon, Shwaller De, Lubitz and PD Ouspensky.

     The bible says nothing of Jesus's life between his boyhood and the start of his ministries in his thirites. I read that the current thought of historians is that Jesus was likely in a school in the dead sea during this time. The idea of a school is very interesting to me. Jesus must not have thought that the masses could comprehend the knowledge he learned in this school because, when he spoke to the masses, he spoke in parables and reserved their hidden meaning for his disciples who were to later spread the teaching. In Corinthians 2, Paul identifies that there was a hidden wisdom but that people were essentially spiritual infants and unfit to eat spiritual meat. So at least initially, there were two teachings, the teaching for the masses and the teaching for the initiated. We are at a time spiritually where the Christian church seems to have forgotten entirely it's hidden wisdom and the significance of it's early rituals. 

Plato wrote that 'it is impossible for what has been written not to be lost' and, it appears that much over 2000 years has been lost. For this reason Guenon and others went searching. Guenon wrote that the teachings of the East can help us westerners discover the meaning and signifance of our own traditions. I recommend we all go find a real book and study it.

What will happen when I die? Does my cat have a soul? For most of us such questions will remain just mind games within a religous/philosophical context because we are assume that ideas equate real self-knowledge. We won't know if we die like dogs, dust to dust, because we don't don't recognize the need for seeking. (I read that the Hindu version of Satan loves God more than all other beings so, he protects God by tempting seekers with deeper and deeper levels of distractions. Only the sincere will by their own resolve seek to perfect themselves to the degree that they cannot get caught again).  

If I could verify the question of my own looming death what good would it do you? Go out and seek for yourselves. The above authors I mentioned seem to have a tone of authority that doesn't stem from just ideas but from knowledge. It may be a good place to start.

HIGHLIGHTS AND INTERSTICES

We think of lifetimes as mostly the exceptional
and sorrows. Marriage we remember as the children,
vacations, and emergencies. The uncommon parts.
But the best is often when nothing is happening.
The way a mother picks up the child almost without
noticing and carries her across Waller Street
while talking with the other woman. What if she
could keep all of that? Our lives happen between
the memorable. I have lost two thousand habitual
breakfasts with Michiko. What I miss most about
her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.

THE CONTAINER FOR THE THING CONTAINED

What is the man searching for inside her blouse?
He has been with her body for seven years
and still is surprised by the arches of her
slender feet. He still traces her spine
with careful attention, feeling for the bones
of her pelvic girdle when he arrives there.
Her flesh is bright in sunlight and then not
as he leans forward and back. Picasso in his later
prints shows himself as a grotesque painter
watching closely a young Spanish woman on the bed
with her legs open and the old duenna in black
to the side. He had known nakedness every day
for sixty years. What could there be in it still
to find? But he was happy even then to get
close to the distant, distant intermittency.
Like a piano playing faintly on a second floor
in a back room. The music seems familiar, but is not.

TRYING TO HAVE SOMETHING LEFT OVER

   There was a great tenderness to the sadness

   when I would go there. She knew how much 

   I loved my wife and that we had no future.

   We were like casualties helping each other 

   as we waited for the end. Now I wonder

   if we understood how happy those Danish

   afternoons were. Most of the time we did not talk. 

   Often I took care of the baby while she did

   housework. Changing him and making him laugh. 

   I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before 

   throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with   

   my mouth against the tiny ear and throw

   him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up.

   The only way to leave even the smallest trace.

   So that all his life her son would feel gladness

   unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined

   city of steel in America. Each time almost

   remembering something maybe important that got lost

Arranged Marriage

A Christian name and a Hindi soul;

Skin slowly baked into a creamy hazel by the eastern sun,

5,000 years of civilization live between the surface of her skin and her marrow.

I am jealous and fascinated.

I look upon my white colorlessness and imagine

What the blistering cold of Northern Europe could reveal for me?

But she is lost like the rest of us.

Identified with her skin but not experiencing it.

She settles for tradition, her way out of the madness of modernity