High School Basketball*

Basketball's a curious sport.
Seen with its stands and roomy arena,
It's no wonder we witness many hyena.
There should be drama, action in this court,
But what we see is civil tort!

Fans

Basketball's a curious game.
'Cause when we see one,
We're not the same.
While players are gentle men,
Or ladies on the floor,
We allow the fans to leave
Their angelic frocks at the door.
The nicest kid on the other side,
We want to tan his lousy hide.
Or some hot shot kid we don't know
Becomes the enemy:
His skill--he's not supposed to show!
And if he does
And gives our team a bath
All he gets is thankless wrath.

Refs

And I think the refs are curious folk.
They run, sweat, soak and get excited.
You'd think that they' been invited.
Why do they come every Saturday eve?
Our praises for them never get old.
You'd think them some tickets we'd readily sold!
In service they call all the calls the same.
And we repeat so religiously
What they've always been told:
"Hey, ref, yer missin' a good game."

Basketball's a sport that's tough,
Not for sissies afraid of ruff.
But how hard you fight
With all your gristle
Will ne'er change the open mind
Of the man with the whistle.

Coaches

Basketball is finesse and grace,
Executed as battle,
Not a pretty face.
A shot or position so well taken,
'Times you'd think he'd stole the bacon.
But some coach pops--
He always does--with stern grimace,
"Hey, pick up your socks.
Get in his face!"

Players

And you on defense,
In earnest you get set.
Innocent you look
Without a growl.
The offense runs you over with insistence:
And all you hear up in the distance:
"How many steps does he get
Before you call a foul?"

And amid a growing sob,
Not for you but the call,
Another standside coach yells,
"Hey ref, get a job!"

And amid the win and loss
And all that holler,
It's up to you to care
And to bother
About how much you score
And whether it counts
and more.

Remember, the game's for you,
Those who play it.
But like life and the world,
It ain't perfect.
Do your best each and together,
Feel the spirit, fun and flair,
And hope the ref--he hasn't lied.
Hope his call's on your side.
Hope for you sake he's more than fair.

The Game

Basketball--win or losses--
It's the same frustration.
Like life all 'round you,
There are jackasses.
And smart ones, too,
In consternation:
"Hey, ref, wanna borrow my eye glasses?"

And when all is said and done,
The game decides,
The final gun,
Remember, players, of both sides:
You or they are not to blame.
It takes at least two to play the game.

___
*Composed in the mid '80s.

January 1984

It may be early yet,
But the winter's light is changing;
And thoughts generous of the immediate
And the past past
Well up and bring me to:

Whether near or far,
Let not geography
Nor time mar
The memories we share.

May the closeness now we feel
N'er diminish from what we felt
When last we were together.

(There are no endings.)

Health and happiness the new year bring
To those at peace and those who sing,
From winter's dark to next it falls,
As well and fresh through summer's promise,

Spring.

Step One*

for Maggie

Find a quiet place,
aside the human race.

You will need little care,
just a straight-backed chair.

Settle comfortably in, realizing
Realizing Self is no sin.

Breathe in and out,
and all else rout.

Let your body go.
So there you are . . . just so.

Close now your eyes not to see.
NOW--ready? Just be.

Recite your words
till they end.
Ever, so, slow.
Then again. Go.

No one's perfect.
Ego's mind will wander.
Stay awake for best effect.
Work is hard there--beyond yonder.

Demons may appear.
Watch them, do not fear.
Let them also go.

Slow. Again.
For twenty min!

(You can afford the time.
Where you're going--
No need for silly rhymes!)

There you did it.
And on the morrow,
You will come and sit.
Same time and place,
to let ego go a pace.
Not self but Self,
the safest, treasured space.

Rewards aplenty,
those minutes twenty.
Peace and One--
The goal that is no goal.
What better spent to awaken?
yours and my and our immortal soul.

_____
* Refer to the works of Eknath Easwaran.

[Not so obvious. You have to experience it, not read or talk about it. Or bother yourself with silly rhymes like this one. What you are after but not after (the goal that is no goal) is more important and powerful than words can express. The ineffable.]

The greatest sin is

omission, not evitable neglect:
To not do freely what one can and one ought.
Magnitude's measure is deliberation's delay.
Lest thou transgress, waken to never forget.
(No omission without commission.)
That same damned panhandler asks for my money
as he checks his Rolls Rolex up a long sleeve.
It is not easy or safe to juggle and judge.
Can you spare him a dime, his nose all runny?
My life's excuses beget the same guilt.
Plea ignorance or insanity,
it's our dirty all same. To the books then,
or whatever you can, to work through the silt.
Heighten awareness of things surface beyond;
deep or distant, it's an eternal game.
You have no choice nor do I.
Give me a cup then, bring the beggars on.
The double bind me-thou is thou-me.
Subjects and situations more heinous?
Who's to decide the degree, or agree?
Except we're all damned, 'n me most of all.

Evolution 101

Zuska had a botfly
living in her leg.
(In truth, I do not lie.)
Came a little egg,
rolled off a 'quito's back,
down the little snout
into the hole its sack.
There twould not come out.
It had a little tube,
where it got its air;
and blew it in a fugue--
raising Zuska's hair!
Came out a worm one day,
color of slick white.
From then we cannot say.
Except when it's night,
a new egg is begot,
waiting for a ride--
plus some of Zuska's lot--
to now in you reside!

There is no other

Imagine a point here and another far and a third to the left of the sun about an inch but distant five light years.

Each and all of these or other points are at the center of an infinite surround ever expanding towards eternity but never getting there where there is no there.

Which means you or other and all are at the center of a universe so timeless and boundless each is inconceivable and minuscule.

Pass the wine and give me a bit of cheese (while I get my head around all of that in my timeless moment at the center of nowhere).

Trite repetitions such as this console us not, we of those documentary children left on our own but recipients of ready made insights and shakable conclusions.

If every point is a center, then there is none and neither bringing rights, lofty expansive descriptions, or morose morsels that need concern us.

Yes, I'll have another, thanks.

No one can leave it like that, insignificant beings in immense seeings. What of the meanings inside and great deeds done in the immediate surround?

They have a measure of difference among like kinds just as galaxies among billions collide and we hardly notice, but they are momentous moments too.

Yes I'll have another, thanks.

Then I'm done here. No one will notice except the humor and my long suffering partner, the star, at the other center of my universe where there is no other.

Come this spring

A windowless wooden door
with hand-hewn lintel, stone,
a window as wide and half as tall,
above, ivy curtained,

the silent portal framed,
a seldom entry
at the end of a gravel path
scrunching each approaching step,

neither discloses nor invites
one to knock or inquire;

the door and window and foliage
impose such as to hide
building or dwelling
of which they are all one.

And I to Italy
to see if 'round the back
a garden needs a tender,
or an olive needs cicadae

to sing it's present there,
or sit-admire fruit awaiting.

Spirit's sweet peace*

Feeling spirit 's not spirit, no such rot.
Awareness is of these, yes, and the not.
Your feelings and thoughts both to float free by,
awareness as clouds in an empty sky.

Conflate empty with feelings, spirit's done--
then the regressive slide's your first born son,
then unending worlds of clones your small self,
subject's fascination right off the shelf.

Spirit is transcending beyond just me.
(This is a bit of a mess, can't you see?)
Witness the witness here and deep inside.
There pure being 's where our spirits reside.

Declarations aside, we would be where
our view would be stuck in an outside stare.
Externals are not where true spirit's at,
nor is a label-name to fix the that.

Spirit is being, not something about
by those that make noise and ceaselessly tout.
(Yet they too are part and whole manifest
that comprise and permeate this our nest.)

Would that being our essence our practice
and not such stuff we invite and entice.
Thus we'd realize as is our bequest.
We'd come to sweet peace as such is our rest.

__________
* Inspired by Shambhala Publication's Interview with Ken Wilber,
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/interviews/Shambhala_interview.cfm/wsdindex.html

Meme in a Kosmos

[A short gloss. Memes are _structures_ we can perceive of recurrent _mutual understandings_ along side of _science_ and _art_. The quartet is a Kosmic description, which is also not the whole but part. Our participation is required. But this piece will be the last of merely naming, therefore claiming. It does not do what it says it should.]

Strophe

Have you seen a meme?
It is like a theme.

_Seen one I've never.
I'm not so clever._

It's like what we do,
needs one, maybe two.

_Can you eat it, yumm?
Something cooked by Mum?_

More like over time,
things we eat, or rhyme.

_Made then they are.
Memes are not so far._

Close at hand we see.
Out of sight they be.

_Are they fixed on land,
timeless as the sand?_

No, they sometimes shift.
We must through them sift.

_So to say they're there,
memes are when we stare._

Yes, and more with some,
before you say, "Done!"

_Why we themes do sew,
if memes come and go?_

Occupy our time--
till we wax sublime.

_Trees are one with ground,
if Truth is never found._

Antistrophe

That may be for you.
Some massage the goo.

_Thus they form a pense
to avert the rends?_

Yes, tears and more, say,
to effect what may.

_Some things we create
science cannot sate._

Ideas finely posed,
are our history's prose.

_Without good and new,
little would be true._

A poor life we'd lead
without ideas' good steed.

_That along with text
we can forge what's next._

Nature, time and space
include thoughts apace.

_Silly rhyme is this.
Beauty's part we miss._

Let not us deceive.
Kosmos can conceive.

_Truth is science 'main.
Structure not disdain . . ._

Words our meanings make.
No poems forsake.

_Thank you gentle god.
We'd be more than clod._

Finished or not

Nights race round and pass faster than they used.
So many daylight dreams and projects had. . . .
Now they're past nothings, or memories fused.
No time left for half and more to feel glad.
I would the past the brilliant building be.
But it is not so; final payment's nigh.
Quick nights tell the darkness to make me see:
not much time nor enough, as I would lie.
Anticipate and race toward all your life
then find you your self that cold ember's glow.
Future's consolation is now less strife,
but the race we would have, it is not so.
Things learned and practiced have a life their own.
Terms' endings close the interest only loan.

A sonnet this

A sonnet is a little love lyric,
just to pass the time, or punctuate it,
or both of these, if we are much adept.
Thus this not-what-may-seem is the subject.
As with miracles, it is also so,
an expression of and a call to sow.
The everyday hides or hails love bespoke,
yea, not just miracles the naught does cloak.
The moments so sure and simple gifted,
up to action from the mud we're lifted.
Compare the opposite, I would have you.
Isn't that a song that still sings how true?
Love or longing for it, a call not low:
This sonnet does punctuate, don't you know.

You got what you (will) pay for

Public transport transports you, say, a bus;
private means you conveniently port--
difference being whisked away with no fuss,
versus sending self via umbilical pre-sort.
Where one makes room for possibilities,
(although the case could be another way)
the other gives predictablities.
Neither/none's preferable, who can say?
Except passenger intent and fare charged.
Although hidden forces often us move,
where we would go may only be revealed
in fullness' end--we hope the way is smooth.
Appearances not to the contrary,
we all arrive else, and pay plus unwary.

Paradoxy's trial

Love increases in pure simplicity,
then dreams of murder and complicity.
Jung explains my guilt as balanced psychcal--
thoughts, violations but archetypal.
And so this fool experiment I tried.
To me myself I kind of . . . no, I lied.
Stop night wakings and marish-driven screams.
Cease they did by thinking ill, so it seems.
Does love then manifest from harm or good?
We such stuff as dreams are made of, or should.
So behold I evil in my waking;
I thus manage this day's deeds, though quaking.
If dreams are countered in my daylight state,
Goodness still the burden is 'gainst this weight.

Big waiting room

What do you do when you must sit and wait?

Is it boring? and do you look about?

I see it as an opening, a gate

through which I go and choose a carefree route

to imagined or remembered places,

or to events in offing--to prepare.

I never see exactly, or faces,

just vaguely images and thoughts quite spare.

But I believe I'm truly there, not here,

and occupy as much or little time

as I am allowed until it is clear

I must break off and leave what is sublime.

But I prefer my non-waits also zoom,

to freely soar to heights beyond this room.

Till the next revelation

[This prior to reading Heidegger's "What is Metaphysics." If one looks around and experiences, physical and immaterial, and considers, not even contemplates, one can come up with paradoxes philosophical. I celebrate the capacity of ordinary people to speak of extraordinary things and have others ponder life's greatest questions. Thus also, not that I am in any way special. Each is and is worthy of embrace.]

There is _is_,
then everything else.
The latter colonizes fully
such that we forget,


or we are confused
thinking _what is not_
also _is_ and a what.
But that is not so.


The opposite of _is_ is
_is not_, or _is-not_, _non-is_,
an inconceivable no-thing,
paradoxically a named void.


Everything else seems clear
or practically so,
but also without _is_ itself--
that's so hard to imagine.


In fact we can't.
The _non-is_ isn't,
without even a word
as name or to point with.


How can you capture
this whatever _non-is_?
_It_ is not even an _is_,
not abstraction nor subtraction.


Now _it_ points to it,
but this it is no-thing,
related to but not the _it_
that does not exist.


How can all this be?
Just this: There is _is_
then everything else,
and that seems enough.


So we forget,
or in confusion give up.
Or posit a silence
so big that it bangs.


Was there no _is_ before bang?
Must have been, we say,
'cause silence that was so
was so deafening we hear it!


But this the same trap--
silence is a non-experienceable
and it to answer the questions
some void asks us to know.


God then to the rescue,
for those so inclined,
but s/he talks biblical bipolar,
or from our own bicameral mind.


Thus no salvation or knowing.
There is _is_ and everything else
and no-is or ising
or anything of the sort


till the next revelation.

Socratic calling

I quite acknowledge allegories nice,

but envy not those who do invent them.

Too much labor and ingenuity

to create a Hippocentaur and more--

chimeras dire, gorgons and wing'd steeds

and imagined personifications.

And if I am skeptical about them,

and then would fain reduce each one by one

to the rules of strict probability,

this sort of crude philosophy takes time.

I have no leisure for such enquiries.

Shall I tell you why? I must first know me,

my self, as the Delphian inscription says.

To be about that which concerns me not

is fruitless nonsense. I bid farewell to

mere talkers their common opinions made.

I want to know if I am a monster

with passion swollen like serpent Typho,

or a gentler and simpler creature that

Nature gave a divine and lower calling.

Diana in the woods

A new mown meadow--was wet lime green--framed
there an archer, posed as I stopped the path.
Her bow set on stand, she the last round aimed,
and put the target thus, precise as math.
Weapon in hand and arrow now ready,
next to draw, then release in measured grace.
Silent we held each our gazes steady.
She met mine, the Other set in its place.
She was tall in black, all with black bobbed hair,
she exposed just her bare white face and neck.
I thought then I was prey in that cold stare.
She herself would me, could some wanton wreck.
So to this Beauty I white surrender sent.
Marked me with "Just so"--so I and message went.

The greatest sin

Omission is a sin still,
mid inevitables,
twixt choices,
because of what we can
and what we can't.
It is grievous.
It'll send you to hell.
There is no redemption.
The lost opportunity can never,
gone ever to present itself again.
Consolation may be.
In what? a present, a word?
Not that either.
Because of ends.
Because of death.
Penance is knowing
that you have sinned,
that you live with it,
that people keep living,
or dying,
knowing and missing what you,
had you but.
Remorse there is none.
Not a pain--a luxury one could feel.
Guilt indeed in deed.
You know, and others, too.
Shame it all.
And I talk not
of just Darfur.

Reciprocal

(on the occasion of Marie's birthday, '05)

Mark this day.
Not with X,
As if done and gone;
Not with null,
As in no account.
But with exclamation.

Mark this day.
Not a point,
As if done and gone;
Not with sign,
As in past account.
But with exclamation.

Mark this day,
Not regret
As in things not gone;
Not with care,
As in things to do.
But with an exclamation.

Mark this day
With hope and joy;
Mark this day
With faith and love--
As you have done
In all our days
As we know you.

You are our best,
Even in uncertain times.
You are exclamation:
The hope and joy,
The faith and love
We all are bathed in
By your being you.

We mark this day.
You are our exclamation.
Bathe in the love
We have for you.
Mark this day,
As we know and love you.

Sum philosophy

My past passed before me
As I re-read my journals,
And distance though not distant
(Or was it age?)
Has given the gift, the light
Which is new and fresh and strong.

We are not the bad guys
Doing damage and wrecking ourselves,
But ordinary horsemen
Finding our ways through brush
Of our planting, tearing at us
As though strong comes of strength shown.

The good days were some bad
And glad, and sad
As scared we trampled
Ourselves to discover we learn.
Mere children, just larger.

Age and change shows in my mirror.
I must be about my business
And you
And yours as I pass this night
Alone and wanted
To the promise of dawn that
Only the reflective shall see
As I defined it for any this season.

Peace is
fulfilling those dreams of a lifetime
in incremental fashion
in their time:
to be who you are not
without apology
(as I release the anger and sadness inside me).

What counts is the solitary journey
and how well you travel and improve
against where you started.
They may pass you on the highway,
But they're not going where you are.

And too, every site has its solar application.

The didactic lives in the hearts of those who care,
And forgiveness two.

[Christmas 1988, originally titled Reflection]