Ours is joy

Ours is the world, we have no fear

Ours is heaven, we have no destination

Ours is the whole, where are we lost?

Ours is joy

Revised Kagyu Prayer

The Kagyu Prayer

Great Vajradhara, Tilo, Naro,

Marpa, Mila, Lord of Dharma Gampopa,

Dusum Chenpa, totally aware Karmapa,

Holders of the four great and lesser lineages,

Masters of the profound path of Mahamudra,

Incomparable protectors of beings, the Dakpo Kagyu,

I supplicate you, the Kagyu Gurus, I hold your lineage,

Grange the grace of complete freedom

The habitual ways are sour and bitter

We see they are fruit of their seed

They drive us into prayer and meditation,

and escape from ease and money and power and place

Your generosity is our door to prayer and mediation

Your holy grace opens those instructions

We are led by you into freedom

May we return a shadow of your grace and generosity

We rest all movement of mind in meditation

Fresh and open, without work

No beginning, no end, nothing to change

Grant us now this grace of no effort

Our thoughts arise with the play of life,

Nothing in themselves, arising as the full display

Heaven and Earth are dissolved in meditation

leaving us to know the grace of union and freedom

                                                                                    Revised Kagyu Prayer 11.25.2011

I came to the end of thinking finally

I came to the edge of thinking, finally
to save my sould from ever wandering in a circle

I looked outside the window of my cave
and saw there was an outside
but no inside
A dark inside, but no outside
And nothing containing it all

The edge was the middle
The emptiness was the support
The giving up was the getting
and the thoughts were there,
but not the thinking

There is no leap, for there is no leaper
There is only the falling toward the no-ground
(or away from it)

Expanding now with the time since the beginningless
Thrust with the rocks of space ever further toward
the non-boundary

And the pen and the puzzle here
I the puzzle looking up at the pen

The emptiness is empty, an instruction

The emptiness is empty, an instruction 

The emptiness is empty
The listening is compassion and longing
The relaxation is trust and equanimity
The breathing is the endless arising
The heart of awakening mind is here and now
It is all that is, it is complete,

simple beyond comparison

The emptiness is empty

The emptiness is empty
The listening is compassion and longing
The relaxation is trust and equanimity
The breathing is the endless arising
The heart of awakening mind is here and now
It is all that is,
and it is complete and simple beyond comparison

The breath of now sweeps out the mind

The breath of now
sweeps out the mind
its clutter scattered
into its confusion
as dust into the sun
to dance in eerie clarity

The sound of here
makes echoes of the past
and shadows of the future
and stills this pen
to scratch to more
for we are...

Broken Sculpture II

composed around a solemn and sorrowful reverie
nearly completed in worshipful detail
the paparazzi were coming over the wall

a Madonna (no, not Madonna, a Madonna)
quiet and alone and accepting of grief
Helicopters flying in the gawking rich kids

the bill:  "She who needs no name"
a triumph, it was to be a ... it smiled.  Impossible!
The sculptor's trowel fell on his foot

the shell of plaster broke away, a mess of
confusion and stammering and secret wishes
his work!! not spoiled ... exactly

it's over for you, too, you know.
no more simple solitude of a broken heart
no more leaden habit of betrayal or loss

no more eternal corridor of false hope,
as the master says,"suffering is the
dream of the death of your child."

yet you should keep your jewel
the glistening emptiness within your chest
that sees rightly the futility of this chase

it opens another, a holy world
it sees into the hearts of every soul.
awakening, you may carry up your grief,

but will find me here, knowing you
as beautiful and wise, a dream too,
perhaps, but not more or less

It is a dark world behind your door

It's a dark world behind your door
You are the mechanic of a mysterious machine
You are the complete story
You are the most capable
You are the graceful and strong

But even the mountain needs the mist
to sweeten its lips in the morning
And where does it go at night
that the moon does not find it?

So you need me, or my brother
to find you on the edge of time
and carry you to the
softness behind your strength

You have your poems from me

You have your poems from me.
More is not better.
Let us not overstate our case,
or script our future meetings

Please don't find me dull
I have never been here before
I am not familiar even to myself
in this place

How odd I must seem to you.

Amen

Splitting Wood

It's the simple splitting of the wood
The axe prepared, the stick selected
The arc, the mark
the heart of the matter
From one, now two?

How can you love a bird more than an ocean?

How can you love a bird more than an ocean?
The colored flash across the window
The not-sweet song out of sight
The glimpse in the tree, on the edge of the tree

We see each other and you fly
But only a limb away
If I do not pursue
And if I am happy about my own work
I soon see you chipping at the sill

Were I to rush my whole full heart
into the light of day
I am certain I would never see
you again

And what do I know of who you are?
Much easier to love a beautiful bird
if you do not see it too closely

The flitting and flirting and sweet song
they are more of the thing than the thing
in its blood and dust and feathers and eyes
and lips and smile and song and ...

Where are you, my love?
Why do you hide from me?
Here I am closing my heart again.
Here, I am busy about my work.

Here, a poem for you to taste
Good nourishment
Don't be frightened.
See?  I will not ....

I listen

Are you, the jackal from the edge of the night
who darts and tears at my heart as I sleep?
No, the teeth of the beautiful night
are in my own breast
and are my own desires ...
For absent, you dance in darkness
a shadow of nothing, invisible but to my dreams

Ranann

We settle easily in a camp by the river
Our voices crackled and sparked
like the fire, sending up comets of laughter
or dropping into dim and solemn intimacy


What do we do when we cannot sleep together?
How do I show you I love you?
Prevented by the injury to hearts that once
beat in our own breasts, and by sullen


knowing that the desire for that is trust
in tissue paper scenery, here by the fire
where the world is more mysterious, somewhere
in the cauldron of coals at the center of the night.

Broken Sculpture

The sculpting was nearly completed
the paparazzi were coming over the wall
she was breathtaking, composed around
her solemn and sorrowful reverie

The Madonna (no, not Madonna, the Madonna)
quiet and alone and accepting of grief
Helicopters were flying over
rich kids were gawking out the sides

It was you, of course, under the bill
"She who needs no name" ...
Then you smiled.  Impossible!
The sculptor's trowel fell on his foot

The shell of plaster broke away
the woman was alive and here
His work!! Not spoiled.  Exactly
But surely not what we had in mind.

It's over for you, too, you know.
No more simple solitude of a broken heart
No more leaden habit of betrayal or loss
No more eternal corridor of false hope

We saw you alive, and yes, we regret
our confusion and stammering and secret wishes
But we tell you, as the master says
"suffering is dreaming of the death of your child."

You should keep your jewel
the glistening emptiness within your chest
It sees rightly the futility of this chase
and opens another, a holy world

And on awakening, you may carry up your grief,
But I am standing here to say
That you are beautiful and wise
A dream, too? Perhaps.  But not more or less.

Carolyn

In the stream of this life, the turbulent stream
A mote from top to bottom swims
being nothing in himself, and seeing only
that which is brought to his eyes

You are who you are, beautiful, bright,
awake, in this place with me, for a moment,
then gone, and now I swim in the memory
and the fantasy and the illusion and the end.

Yes, the end, of you who did not know
      there was a beginning
Whom I protected from my heart's opening

Is that how we are in this world
Alive only in the fragrance of blossoming?
Can we not also be alive in the coolness of the moonlight
Or in the richness of the soil and roots

Must we dance across the cilia of desire
and carry it as memory until we are engorged
and digested in the routine of pretending memory is fresh
and new and alive is in devotion to faded words?

You who are most worthy, and most desirable
were protected to be alive in this moment,
      and protected by me,
so that in the flow of this molten stream

the one who dives and dies and longs for
that stream to turn at his own prescription
will not carry you in with him
and far away from the here and now

I will know your scent in the moonlight
And I will know your tendrils in the loam
And I will keep the knowing of you
from the bitter breath of blossoming

We tripped across each other
and stumbled into that warm smile
at the distance of nose to lips
  to deep into the eyes
    to sould expanding
      and grasping

And when we grasped we fell away
   I saw you far above, reaching,
      then yhou were gone
         and here I was
              with my fear
                  again

All that I wanted was to hold that love
   that broke so sponteneously to the surface
and hold us in the "we were open"

I wanted
I grasped
I clung
I separated

You were an object
We lost what we had
In the moment of having it

Here, I give you this breath
    and I love your smile
May I hold it safely in everything we do
    and may we do everything.