Back From Dust and Fire

Hundred and Fifty Nine 9.6.16 (Back From Dust and Fire)

I know you know that I have written about burning man and I will talk about it, but maybe just not today. First day back at work, first day looking at the laptop screen, and my mind, body, my eyes, and finger tips are screaming “Don’t do this to us” but you know how these things go, the same old end of an era blues song. Anyway, today instead of sending a new poem, I will send a few shorter poems that were my pilgrim’s staffs in darkest of hours, and longest of the days. I took more than 200 poems with me to the desert and read so many of them, to myself, to others late at night sitting on a dusty couch, and to “public” over the mic, but these few… these were my blood, my eyes, ears! There’s a weird loneliness to all this (All this traveling, burning, riding mi bike alone in desert, and living alone) and I love every moment of it.. I could ride through the lonesome empty desert for hours and think of me, you, and all the things you and I have been through. “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination”. oh the blues, ah the space, ah the breeze! I think I can sit here and write for hours, I wish I could give you my eyes so you could see the beauty and sorrow that covers everything I am looking at. Anyway, I do not make much sense nor care to, so why don’t I stop here and send you the poems and I’ll send you my BM piece later on when the mood is write and when angles are not crying anymore, I told them to not kiss the sun’s mouth. I am in Cali post burning man, and boy don’t I feel all the emotions! Listen to this track and remember that I love you even if we are not together now, ah damn poets and their dramatic eyes!

1)

Walt Whitman

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

2)

Rilke

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! –
powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

3)

Rilke

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.
The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.
Fear not suffering, the sadness—
Give it back to the weight of the earth.
The mountains are heavy, heavy the oceans.
Ah, but the breezes, ah, but the spaces—

4)
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.