Ishta: A Collection of Spirituals

I. As

As I wrap my self

around you, behind you,

giving to you my warmth,

my love, my love, so does

God wrap Her Self

around us, giving She,

for She is love loving love.

“How does He do that,”

you ask. He is the beauty

in the lilies and the breeze

from off the seas, the sun

from our horizon, the moon

silhouetting trees, the life

that whirs our belovéd fur childs,

the ground that steadies our seats,

the food that makes our tummies purr,

the teas that help us sleep — these,

the caresses, Her Majesty’s,

even as I, in you, caress Thee.

II. Leap Frog

Leap frog is such a fun game.

“Here. Yea, here. Here, here,” I say.
“Yea, come here. Yea, yea, yea,
come here. Yea. Okay. Okay. Okay.”

So, yea.
Yea, yea, just like that.
Yea, so I’m going to kneel.
Yea, just like so. Like so.
On my hands. On my knees.

So I’ll kneel down and
you’ll go up,
up on top of me.
On my back. See?
Leverage! To
get on top. Of that.

“On top of that?”

On top of that! That
you couldn’t top from flat,
hence me giving you my back.

Leap from me.
Leave from me.
I go in front of you
so you go ahead of me.

Leap, frog. Leap!
Then ...

I know!

You know?

I know!

What do you know?

I know I’ll be ahead of you,
from where you were once ahead of me.

Ahhh. That’s true. You’ll be ahead of me.

We’ve turned spaces.

Traded places.

Swapped our faces.
(We swapped our faces.)

Mixed our paces,
different bases.

A different basis.

So I knelt down for
you to get ahead?

No. I think in this game
of your leap frog, you
kneel down so you
can get ahead.

But you use me
to get ahead of me?

Only so I can use you
to get ahead of you.

You see?

I see.

So you’re ahead of me.

And I’m ahead of you.

And I can’t leap from here,
so from here I'll leap from you.

Then I can kneel for you,
and you can leap from me.

Leaping.

Leaping.

Leaping till we're free.

III. I Have the Ground

You wreck yourself on poison things,

lick led, or so they say. The brain

it rots it splits itself, withstanding

only pain.

The people there make sympathies,

but deft you are no more. The hate

you have now for yourself

has brought you to abhor.

You lose your mind, your skill, your will.

You think yourself so poor. You wonder

if you’ve lost it all, but no, you have the floor.

Pushing up upon yourself

is earth with all her might.

Yet you curse, she’s damning thee,

that gravity doth fight.

You sag, you age, you lose your sound,

you’re hardly worth your bones.

Your friends are dead and passed you on,

no good of you is known. You wonder

how you even breathe, you struggle just to stand.

You don’t, you fall, you’ve lost it all.

Just days till you disband.

But always then and always now

you won’t have lost your ease,

for even when you’re lost not found

and crying on your knees, you

cannot lose the mat of life,

the home to all your seeds.

“At last,” you say,

“I have the ground.

I sit, I stand, I till the earth.

The ground is all I need.”

IV. I Love I

Deplete of love,
Asphyxiating from the noise
Of my past wrong actions,
Drowning in the debt of purchased goods,
Fettered to the compulsive whims of SaaS subs,
I am caught this morning in a human spun web.

Somehow I have mummified myself
In my own silk,
Preparation for
My own envenomation and
Extraoral digestion.
For it does feel,
Like the spider awaiting
The intestines of its prey,
That I am liquidated in
My own webbed casket
From where I have caught myself,
Awaiting to eat myself
At a future date,
My exoskeleton
Turned into pudding
So my pharynx
Can slurp myself up,
My old liquefied carcass
Nourishing my new self —
It all forever caught in
This orbicular webscape.
Netscape. Dream. 'Scape.

My eyes betray me and
Obsess on the beauties
Fleeting in my periphery.

A woman, perhaps,
Wearing antifit jeans,
Converse, a blazer.
Powerclash. So cool,
Yet professional. Confident,
Yet chill. Damn. Desire.
Casually in front of me.
I overtake thee. “Get behind me, Satan.”
Laughing. You fool.
What am I but also these things?

A man whose arms like trunks
Are toned. Swoll. A tattoo:
Poignant, somehow of nature.
He works out and I wonder,
“That’s a lot of reps. Where do you, good sir, find the motivation and time to carry-on with so much body building while my puny self is satisfied with a mere push-up here, pull-up there?”

A child sits
Knees-tucked-to-the-chest
On a gate chair by terminal two.
So nimble. So casually flexible.
Desire even this.

A sparrow swoops in
To feed on the insects
By the door. So swift.
So stress free
Despite my worrying about
How I’d ever be the one
To catch an insect
In my mouth while
Swooning through
Tight quarters.

At twenty-eight thousand
The pilot takes us down
To smoother air
Between the outflow boundary
Of neighboring incus clouds,
Left and right, where we bounce
Hundreds of feet at a time,
A silent prayer:
“If this is death, thank you, Lord, for this good privilege to be a human; and better, a human who has remembered Thee somewhat. Follow me in this next life. Don’t keep me from Me as you did for so long in the middle years of this life, a decade’s drought between confirmation and psychiatry of vowing ‘God is dead.’ I can’t bare the moments where I have forgotten Thee. Even now is shambles, but thank you, Lord, for this chance to appreciate life as we tumble through the skies contemplating death. I don’t think we’re going to die, but if we do, what a ride. What a ride.”

Out there to the west,
The sun is giving paradise.
All we see from our angle
Through the fuselage port
Is an orange-melon gradient
Spilling across faraway clouds.

You know — you think you know —
That those pilots are getting high
On the beauty of that sky,
The rest of us,
Shades down
To stop the glare
On our seatback displays,
Watching the news,
The Masters, or
The show that ends for us
Before The End for us,
Having prematurely
Reached our gate.

Beauty, beauty everywhere.
I’m doing it again,
Walking through
The infinite thoroughfare of
The world’s busiest airport,
Surreptitiously spying
Eyes, that furtive glance
With a beautiful stranger.
My eyes betray me
Looking for beauty
Out there
When
The joy
I crave
Is in here.

Channel, channel, channel
That you once have been
The woman whose body curves,
The man whose muscles bulge,
The bird whose wings glide,
The sky whose clouds
Are wondrously effervescent blush,
Simultaneously caustic gray,
Violent pangs of Tron-green lightning,
Dun as far as the horizon sees.

Channel, channel, channel
That you have once been
What it’s been like
To have been
The bend in the river,
The leaf upon the tree,
The tree,
The chair beneath the bower,
The shade and the light,
The chiaroscuro,
The canvas,
The art and
The artist.
How much longer
Must I long
For what I am
No longer
But still am?

It pains my eyes,
My ears,
My hands
To only caress
My love,
To only admire
My love,
To only listen
My love. I the feeling
Is never satisfactorily
Close enough. I am not
Close enough. I am not.

The recognition that
I am not. Only I am.
Only I. I love I.

V. Determinance

It, it-it-it,
it is determinance,
an unshakable, infallible
certainty of occurrence—
that it not only has been decided
but that in deciding it has been determined
that it would be, and not only would it be
but it be, has been, and always has it been.
All there is left to be is its experience,
yet its experience requires your determinance.

You ask about the sportsman
who trains, who competes,
who rivals their adversaries.

“Who is the one to win
over the other when the other
can also be the one who won?
Is winning happenstance
or circumstance?”

It, it-it-it,
it is an illusion.
It is unreal and unseen.
It is unknown until known.

You stand there on
the field of competitors and
you take up your arms,
you dual,
you strike,
you are dealt blows,
you whinny with the horses and
grimace with the pain, but
as much as the sport is a game
with its set trials and set times,
you set your place and ready your mark
no different than the projectionist
loading the next canister of film,
rolling the reels of which were directed
without you. This is how it is for exactly
as long as it is.

We run, we lose, we eddy down
into the currents of mundanity
with no set direction but the wind,
until we ship our rudder, till
the chord of our life is struck,
the heart is sound and
the plane of our undetermined infinitude
involutes into the tunnel of our determinance.

From our aimlessness draws forth
a fixity of mind, cannon fodder,
shooting us down the barrel of
our dogged certainty that grows
in its own determinance as the chute
closes in towards the singularity of truth,

the truth that determinance
is the plow of God that
when readied can open any heart
for the harvest of our dreams.

But drive we must to spur these oxen.
Furrow our brows and our fields
that our tarheels not retreat
into complacent sand.

Instead, roil every ember
in the firebox of your soul
that your determinance
be found, be felt, be realized.

VI. Dignity

For as long as you take breath
from the breath I breathe,
that your God’s balloons
do breathe your breath,
this body of some body’s womb
from another body’s womb,
from eons back,
from tomb-to-tomb,
till the time when we
were same body,
for as long as you are feeling
of this world, as long as you are
knowing of this place,
as long as you are erect,
flesh and blood, so we shall see
Thee in Thee, giving our good
Dignity. That dignity be good,
our remembrance of why—
which is not merely to live,
but to celebrate life.

Dignity is to see all as dignified,
that why not the sewage pumps of
Earth be as regal as the thrown?
Yet we bow before one and
bowel before the other.

Our brother is
trashed working
the slop house,
forsaken our adornments,
our finest pigments
and perfumes. We stripped
ourselves our dignity.

Worse, the theft
from one is fear
of theft for all.

So to all, dignify.
To all roles, all lives,
all circumstance. Give to all
our highest decorum, gilding
equally the engine room and
the captain’s bridge, saluting
equally the privates and
the majors. Else, in time,
we bow to none. For all
must be for one and
one must be for all or
none will be for all for
none will be for one.

In end,
to give dignity is
to know dignity, and
to know dignity is first
to have been given.

So for as long as you take breath
from the breath I breathe,
I give to you my heirs,
my dignity.

VII. Nostalgia

No - stal - gia.
nóstos, to return home.
álgos, to pain.

This is not quite fear,
not quite love,
not quite the quivering
from nerves above,
no, not is it known
till it is known,
cannot be known till it is felt,
cannot be felt till it occurs,

cannot occur until you go,
till, till you go away,
till you are away, away,
From your Self,
far enough away from self
to feel your self
when you are gone,
when you go on,
God not one: gone, gone.

Your duty now is the duty that. That.
That has taken you away,
and the duties from
that which you came
are duties for another day,
duties of another play,
and queerly, now,
what was then banal
is remembered, now,
as the grandest ball.

The re-memory of a chore at home,
the reverie of a friend once known,
the sun it shines on every day but
on the days you leave,
you leave this place,
the sun will shine,
the shine will say,
“Here, here, look at me
casting shadows, lights,
lights on streets, up, up,
up on walls,
on the traveling to town’s
abandoned malls.

“Stick out your head from
the corridor where my rays
will splay your boredom more
than the warmth I shine
ever has before,

“for now that you are all alone,
the traveling circus of this show,
you’ll see all life,
and then you’ll moan,
‘I cannot keep
what I’ve been shown.’”

Every place you’ve ever been
is gone, is gone, is now el fin,
just pits upon your abdomen,
the sunken loss of what has been,
that aching sense to clasp it all
to hug the earth, to curl,
to ball, to wheel, to whine,
to scream aloud, “I love, I love,
I love it all.”

Your knees are weak, you fall, you fall,
you grasp at wind to freeze, to stall,
you slow your steps to spare the scene,

your heart keeps weeping miserably
till then at once it is revealed, all
there is is there is to be.

Nostalgia returns. Nostalgia leaves.
Leave, it returns. Return, it leaves.
The teacher of equinimity:
cease seizing the seven seas,
up and down,
so-so the waves,
the ebb and flows,
the merri-gos,
sailing, sailing
this carousel,
at once it’s heaven,
at once it’s hell,
till all has been,
you go again,
you call it pain,
you call it sin
when all it is
is You, my friend.

VIII. Once

Heavenly Father,
Once upon a time
there was a man
named God.

Once upon a time
there was a man.

Once upon a time there was
a boy named Quentin.

Once upon a time there was
nobody who laid in bed.
No. Lied in bed. No. Nobody
laid noself down in bed where
no lies, caressing noself’s nipple,
comforting noself, lying with
noself, lying to noself about noself’s
beliefs of noself that noself
is somebody, or maybe that noself
is nobody. No’s not quite sure about
noself, where no’s not to be.

Once upon a time is an easy beginning,
some mantric melody, sweet as birdsong,
windchime, riverrock, the rustling of leaves
from wind, from rain, and the sound of
asphalt on a hot summer day.

Once, once, once, once, once. Just
this once upon a time a boy
curls—
to a boy’s left side
—up
in bed because his mother said this is the
side one lies on when in abdominal distress,
and she should know, being a woman an’ all.

Boy knew well the hardships of womanhood
taught to boy by woman mother that boy
found woman to be of lore, supernal,
walking sacrifice to the gods that
once upon a time boy dreamt of woman
not erotically. Perhaps, perchance,
reverently, as much deference as boys
had earned in respect to give.
Boy cashes out boy’s worth,
homage to girl.

Once upon a time, this time,
there be a woman whose image of
which the boy cannot materialize
but whose aura of which is rising
yellow, green, blue.

Once upon a time
there was, and was easy,
the summer equinox at dawn,
nothing was wrong for no
search was there for right.
Habits past shed from the
lining of inner births
to be. Free. Empty. Free.
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
Tone atone me not save
not injury to me but me.

Once, once, once. Once.
Once upon a time,
man be. Be free.

IX. All My Skin

Nature, beauty, ugly not,
perfect chaos, tranquil rot,
the bug, the beetle, cicada, bee,
the cricket, the wren, the fly, the tree,
the crow, the squirrel, the frog, the toad,
the wind, the stick,
the distant, distant, distant moan,
high, high highway drone,
the car, the train, the concrete path,
the pavement on the globe that hath,
the bap, the bap of pickle ball,
the paddles, the paddles, the paddles, them all,
the warm air rising in the sun,
the breath, the nostril, the double lung,
the shallow thrum of a de-pressed heart,
the one that sung the law of one,
the soil, the rust, the grate,
the bench, the seat, the park,
the city stench.
But no, it's just the park trash can,
serviced by the male park hand,
paid by residents, paid by me,
paid by the ones who birthed my need.
Paid to the city. The city. I see.
The city. The city. Sandy Springs.

Nature, nature, nature. Is.
Nature. Is. Nature. Is.
A car that won't car no more.
A stick no longer a tree.
A pot, a crack, the water won't hold,
the leak, the mildew, the mold.
A folder folded past its fold.
A river dry. A sun gone cold.
A dog burrowing its final hole.
The roots in knots.
This is not my route.
The root of the knot.
The battery no charge.
The wrinkled balloon.
Gravity won. Helium undone.
Party all gone.
The dull knife. The rusted spring.
The pressure none.
Man. Me. This tired thing.
This destined bum.

This dead man. This fire.
This firing. This fire ring.
This kiln. This clay.
The damn D-Day. Day. Day.
This sacrifice. This sacrilege.
The funeral. The dirt.
The ground. The seed.

The spring. The sod. Anew.
The breeze. The seize.
The plea, "Thy God, Thy God,
Thy wrest from Thee,"
to take my name, my name,
Thy pain, my pain is Thine
and Thine my name.

History gone. Future blank.
Anew. I knew.
A new, new dawn.
Do. Over.
No regret. No shame,
no guilt, no name, no fret.
A fresh clutch. A fresh page.
A canvas white.
Become the sage.
Fresh rain. A new day.

A dream I had of shedding skin.
Calloused. Thick. Sick. Sick. Sick.
To tear away my outer flesh,
I fear of blood, of pain, of death.
I peel, I peel, I peel away.
My heel exposed. No blood. I pray.
But there it was. Skin under skin.
A fresh pink sole. Healed. Under sin.
Trapped. My soul.
In overcoats. Overdue.
The time. I was.
The time I was.
To be renewed.
Dead. I crave.
To be. To be. To be. To be.
I thought by now that I'd been freed.
But then I woke. I woke. Again.

There I was.
In all my skin.

X. On Going Deaf

When little,
real little,
earliest memories little,
bedwetting little,
biting humans (when mad) little,
Dino Nugget dinner little,

it would come upon me,
what I would learn to be
tinnitus. Pronounced tinnitus.
Though till college I called it ten-uh-tuss,
not ten-eye-tuss. It would come upon me
in my right ear. Loud,
but not loud.
Deafening,
but not damaging,
like stepping into a waterfall,
ringing. Washing over you,
overcoming you, but one long ring,
not bells. A hum. A high hum.
A high hum so loud not loud
the world around fades away, recedes,
a dimming dial dialing down.
Your own new world enveloping you,
protecting you.

Scary. Not scary. It passes in seconds.
You call it ... God. So you say to your child self,
"God, every time you come to me,
it is your promise to love me
for one more year."

But these were the days of Cingular Jack:
rollover minutes, rollover deals—
not unlimited. Scarcity world.
AT&T blasting commercials.
No more use it or lose it.
Save it. For later. So,

being a child, I ask God if we can have
rollover rings, rollover love. Save it.
For later. That for every time tinnitus
would come over me, I would add
one more year to God loving me.
Cumulative.

After a while, a year or so,
I hit that critical threshold:
one-hundred.

God will love me for certainly
longer than I will be alive. I'm saved.
(Nevermind reincarnation.)

So I no longer count. Just,
"Hello. Thank you. I love you too."

But now I wake—just yesterday—
to a new reality. The ringing
won't stop. Loud. Always. There.
A companion forever in my ear.
So much peace. "Could it be, God?
Will I go deaf?"

This pressure mounting,
hazy over life. Free. "God, please.
May I go deaf? Will you save me
from this engrossment.
My addiction to sound?"
Nevermind.

For at least, right now,
we are found. Ring. Ring.
Sweet, sweet, love.

Infinity.

XI. No Time

Time unending is
time un-begun,
is the twilight of Her mid-day sun,
your sabbatical in a clockless land,
beneath the lapping leaves
of trees that fan.

“Say,” you say to the you who walks by,
“What shall I now that there’s no night?
What will we with unending light?
Take me star, sun, burn me bright.
Take me star, sun, make me right.
Take me star, sun, spare my fight
that with might be, might be all right
on this shoreless shore of space, not time,
can I relax, alas, my knot in spine
where moments move but do not pass,
unending sand, Thine hour glass.

I stand upon the water’s edge
and brush my hands upon the hedge
beneath a lovely shade of green,
tall pines of southern canopies
eating skies of air so blue and
plucking tunes in minor thirds
the chirping verse of nature’s birds
rescinds this curse that I be born
undoing me that came alive
for what became must surely die,
but what’s not birthed
cannot decease, and
hence I shall
ever shall be free

in the place of
occupancy none
you celebrate the
one that’s one,
where there is
nothing ever done,
none due but to
pass the time
of time unending,
no death, no birth,
no day from night,
though sons do change
from time-to-time,
you never really ever mind,
but play, and dance, and laugh
the same, all with yourself
all that is sane
to make your worlds
and change your views,
returning now
to neverland,
to be alone,
to rest your hands,
to hug yourself,
and bid adieu,
to you and You
and all you knew,

to drink the milk
upon mom’s breast
recalling your
eternal rest
where time unfurls
from scrolls of dreams
how things were never
what they seemed and
knowing this
the thieves relieve,
returning you
your bliss,
reprieve.

XII. Milk Tea

I had gotten distracted,
perhaps on matcha,
perhaps in the early peace
that is December mornings,
perhaps the love of
Christ consciousness
is upon our inhabitance again:

the sense of stillness;
the sense of patience;
the sense of connectedness;
the sense that all will be well
as a feeling in the air,
not a logic limited by mind.

It is a slight tickle of joy.
The joyed anticipation
awaiting the coming tomorrow, and
the joyed enjoyment of the here and now.

I was meditating in the basement,
on the ground. I enjoy the groundedness
of ground, to be grounded. To be ground.

Hips high and tight. Knee protruding
like a wart on the face, a knot on a tree.
Soon enough the body relaxes. Despite
my own skepticism, the knee slowly lowers
to the ground, unwinding my hips. Letting go.

I look to the you beside me
who is not present, is not here.
In your place I make you.
I imaginate your form. I giggle,
“Don’t you need a pillow?
Some billow bolster? No?”

Somewhere past my comprehension
is you, a perfect tripod
of coccyx, thigh, and knee,
supplanted: supine, splat, planted,
spread, the human “loaf” like cat,
at peace, to live and let be,
unmoving, rooted, Buddha-like,
reposed in pose, at one,
Ātman.

The thought is rising, “Good golly!
You’re going to reach God in this life.”

My rock heart cracked a little,
the molten within frothing forth.
“I am happy in your true happiness.”
Needn’t an embrace or a kiss.
This like bliss, my profound Patronus,
my memory image of love for you, for miss.

I think back on my favorite and maybe only desired remembrance of Harry Potter: the Expecto Patronum spell, Latin for “I await my protector.” The spell produces a Patronus, which is the protector, yet the “fuel” and energy for the spell requires a deep memory of love. In Harry’s case, the Patronus is both the fuel for the Patronus, and the Patronus itself.

It comes to pass that Harry has no memory of love strong enough. The dementors feed on his soul, killing him once for all. Yet not. A Patronus does appear, a dear, a wizard sending forth its spell. A Patronus so powerful, the light dispels Azkaban’s full stock of dementors.

Harry finds himself in the infirmary, recovering, wondering, “Who was the wizard who casts such a light?” Through a side quest thereafter they time-travel, finding themselves on the observing side of Harry’s near-death. They have traveled back to that point in time where Harry was once saved. Now Harry is in the company of Hermoine, insisting, “Any minute now. The Patronus is coming. The Patronus is coming. This is about when I remember the Patronus saving me.”

“Harry, no one is coming.”

It struck him then, the Self-realization that he is the wizard who casts the spell, and knowing he has already done it, does it for the first time per the memory beyond time of his doing it. His Patronus is fueled by the knowing of his own Patronus. So the Patronus is both the deliverance and the deliverer. It is one. Expecto Patronum: I await my protector, which is me. I await my self, who is both saved by my self and surrending to my self to be saved.

So it is that I seek out Patronuses of all kinds. What is the knowing embodied of the love that overcomes my suicide? What is the knowing embodied of the essence of deep meditation that returns me to my inner stillness? What is the knowing embodied of my love for friends, my love for all, my love for my love. This knowing embodiment is the Patronus.

So it comes to pass
a new Patronus, a new memory:
the sense of my fellow souls
floating upon miraculously
buoyant bobas, rising balls of light,
our Selves, floating through
the embryonic fluids of
our own earthly rebirth,
the air like milk as we glide
from scene to scene,
Her spirit blowing zephyrs,
the soothing stream
like woven silk,
a stream of milk
from Heaven’s tit,
luring our rise,
that we be fit,
the feeling that
feels of milk and tea,
of sweet honey —

all of life,
the effervescent dream,
both bubbling forth
individuality
and undulating
the soothing waves of sea,
the stream connected,
stretching at once across
the distance of A to Z,
the plenoptic view of
all the sea, the magnetic poles,
pulling me, drawing, drawing me,
to sing, singing that I sing
towards being towards being
to be towards you, towards love,

towards Me: the ever-conscious,
ever-lasting, ever-loving Thee.