Spiritual Stuff

                   Spiritual Reality

The less attention

a person pays

to emotional or cultural or political reality,

or to intellectual or social or psychological reality,

or to financial or economic or mass-media reality,

the more likely that person is

to catch a glimpse of spiritual reality.

That rules religion out.

Maybe sensual and visceral reality could help,

depending,

but I’m not sure.

A windowless room at night

with no lights on

and the door closed

and only a fan whirring 

or some other white noise –

like rain on the roof if I’m lucky –

and limitless red and silver

dots dancing before lightly closed eyes –

stripping away all the bullshit

of day-to-day existence –

that’s the key

to experiencing spiritual reality,

for me.

                       Who Is Anybody?

It was the sixties,

and I was working a Mothers of Invention show

at a club in Philadelphia,

representing Herb Cohen,

Frank Zappa’s manager,

by, among other activities,

keeping an eye on the takings at the entrance

to make sure that the club employees

weren’t engaging in any jiggery-pokery.

One of those club employees

– or maybe he was just a hanger-on –

was a large and pompously self-confident young fellow

who pontificated loudly about matters astrological.

I couldn’t believe it.

This was a Mothers of Invention show,

not some airy-fairy Age-of-Aquarius crap.

I told him to get outta my face with that superstitious bullshit.

He let his voice slip into a patronising tone:

‘Who are you to argue with the stars, brother?’

The only reply that occurred to me was,

‘Who are you to tell me what, if anything, the stars are saying?’

I don’t think he was accustomed to dissent.

    Only Seen In Paintings

Frozen in time,

Quaquidudl doesn’t rest,

perpetually playing out the role

of being continuously

simultaneously both

dangerous and endangered

and

threatening and threatened.

Some may consider Quaquidudl to be sacred,

despite being imaginary,

sorta like God.

                  Mystic Love

He’d already fallen in love with her months before

she told him that she was a psychic.

He took her to the races the next day,

but she couldn’t pick a single winner.

He still loved her anyway, though.

          Testament

Take my photos

Take my LPs

Take my verses

Take my ceviche

Take my perceptions

Take ’em anywhere you feel like.

Take my drawings

Take my CDs

Take my writings

Take my gumbo

Take my reflections

Take ’em anywhere you feel like.

Take my paintings

Take my VCRs

Take my blogposts

Take my gazpacho

Take my emotions

Take ’em anywhere you feel like.

Take my digital imagery

Take my home-made sampler cassettes

Take my unsold and unread novels

Take my buttons and bows

Take my soul-spirit,

if it’s not too slippery

Take ’em anywhere you feel like.

Hide ’em or sell ’em

or hang ’em in my face just beyond my reach:

It’s your decision, not mine

once you’ve taken ’em away.

  Knowledge Of A Sort, I Guess

Those mediaeval kabbalists

who also dabbled in alchemy

might’ve been, well, intelligent men,

but they were also as warped

as plywood left out in the rain

and pathetically deluded as well.

               My Karma, If Any

A mosquito landed on my forearm.

I swatted it.

I guess I’m just not ready

for ahimsa,

but then, neither was it.

                  Pareidolia

I thought I saw Brazil’s flag

in the foliage of the agapanthus

on my front patio.

When I looked again

I could follow

how the play of light and shadow

and the curving of certain leaves

had created the illusion,

and considered the sources

of superstitious people’s

religious visions.

The Spiritual Accuracy of Sacred Texts

The late-spring trees in the park

are dozens of different colours,

but all of them are green,

and none of them the same colour

as the green lawns and playing fields,

the colours of which shift

with the play of sunshine and shadow –

or neon lime fizzy drinks or hair.

Peaches and persimmons,

watermelons and strawberry jam,

pastries and puddings,

chocolate bars and butterscotch-chip cookies,

aspartame and honeycakes,

every commercial flavour of ice cream

all taste different and all are sweet,

just like an infant reaching out, eyes open wide,

for someone to pick her up and hold her,

the heart of a lover,

and exacting revenge over a malicious bully.

People think that their pet sacred books

explain everything about life

and transcendent universal spirituality,

even though they’re all written

in human languages.

                 Sacred Text

When I was 13 or 14 years old,

it struck me that what excerpts I’d read

of the Bible and the Koran,

as people spelt it back then,

were really formulaically simple stuff,

as were such prayers

as those of which I was aware,

and that it’d be no sweat to write something

along those lines myself,

so I decided that it’d be cool

to write my own sacred scriptures,

with accompanying prayerbook,

and become the founder of a great religion.

Never got around to finishing the job, though.

I guess that at that age

I really didn’t know

how much money there’d be in it.