There is

There is
I can feel it
when she lets me
get close
a little piece
when she lets me
if she, she is
of god
she's god
in each of us.

On the face of it

Why are you stuck
on the face? She asks.
She says. I say,
I like faces. No,
she says. I mean the face
you draw. That turnip
of a face, she says.
I say, Maybe
it's my face.
It's my face I draw,
I say. I ask. She says,
yes, I'd guessed that.

At the root of the tree of life is the jellyfish

My struggle to know

"We are the universe knowing itself." I keep coming back to this idea. I first heard it spoken by a man at a meeting many might call a gathering of godless Communists. I'm not sure where he'd heard it, but I'm sure it wasn't original. He may have even mentioned the source, but I've forgotten it. It doesn't really matter. What matters is, every conversation needs a starting point, and every feeble attempt to sum up this life needs a framework, however faulty, and this is the one I've chosen.

To know: It's our strongest impulse. It's what pushed our species, from the moment we could put one foot in front of the other, to search every corner of the globe and beyond. And those things which we don't know, and can't discover the meaning of, no matter how hard we try, are the one's that drive us to do the craziest things. Like invent a religion. That's where all our mysteries get stuck. It's the closet where we keep the worn but oh so warm and comfortable blankets to wrap ourselves against the cold of doubt.

The ideas of purpose and synchronicity are two of the fuzziest blankets we pull from that same closet. They give our lives a sense of inter-connectedness, of direction, of worth.

What is our purpose in life? Why were we put here? Are the things that happen to us in the course of our various journeys — some long, some short, each with their own measures of joy and pain — completely random, or do they happen for a reason? Is there something bigger than ourselves that guides us, or watches over us, or rewards and punishes us?

Etude

How could he paint
a flower some wisdom,
but no god

he could believe in,
designed so perfectly? Don't
borrow its periwinkle

or its vermillion. Don' t
borrow its curve,
or its line. Take them!

Break them up!
Mix them, move them,
and build them back up.

What was there that was
flat, what was there that was
white, it was what

a wisdom, but no god
he could believe in, told him
couldn't remain untouched.

To My Dear Friend, George

It's easier to admit to
a higher power, when you're higher
than the clouds. Something does it,

easily throwing a bulls eye of light
against their white caps below. My eyes
don't dart to it, they settle softly

into its faded blue center. Who
questions it, what you can't
know? I knew the snow of his hair

that's now ash. I knew it, but I can't
know the why, or the how of its
sudden change. Or the when I'll follow.

From and to

From isn't always. To is,
and it comes with a blue
bucket sporting red letters.
It comes in a blue bucket hung
upon a wing. OD is an ending,
the ending of that red,
and of that reading,
but I don't know
what it ends. It's not

ODD. Even odder, it's not
where I'll keep this secret.
I'll leave it, not in a bucket,
but where I always do, where
I left it before, in the internal
ear you'll listen to it with
while you read it. It's not
really a secret. Have I
told you? Have I ever

told you, each time
the plane's wheels lift up,
it feels only slightly,
only slightly less
miraculous
than the beating of your heart.
Then the beating of your heart
lifts me. It takes me
from and to.

Come on in, vent the moon

"Come on in,
vent the moon."

He looks like David Byrne. I don't
know David Byrne.

"It's filled with eye balls,"
he says. All those stares
must generate heat.

I'm sitting in a room
filled with other talkers.

In a room filled
with other talkers,
you have to stand up
to stand out.

"Come on in,
vent the moon."

She says it too. She looks
like Laurie Anderson,
and I don't know her either.

It's an idea
that's time
must have come.

It's an idea,
and when you come to it,
come to it
in a rocket ship
engineered
with new eyes,
and a strong voice.

Others will.

At least two
others, it seems,
have.