Flats

Start with the Hand Jive:

Slap both hands twice on your knees.
Raise your hands chest high, spread your fingers apart.
Hold the left hand above and parallel to the right hand.
Slide the left hand over the right hand and then reverse the process.
Pound your left fist twice on your right fist.
Pound your right fist on your left fist.
Touch your left elbow twice with your right hand.
Touch your right elbow twice with your left hand.

And so I say:

Been moving too long and not far enough
Behind there is a vacuous angle of an arbitrary turn
Close to the bone my senses are attuned to changes
Crawling into my own original space, I cannot remember any of the places I have been through
Distinctions pile up and run over each other
Effect has long since been separated from cause
Fatigue strangles my concentration
Hearing a joke I laugh with the downtown side of my mouth
I accept my words without attachment
I am here now and that’s where I’m looking, straight ahead, standing here, at this time
I am on top of my own collapse, riding it down like a freight elevator
I am thrown into a solitude of numbers
I distrust emotions that come directly from words
I don't want to become involved in priorities
I don’t pay attention
I feel the urge to create signals and signs
I have no intentions
I have no questions or thoughts, only the momentum braced and conditioned by a future turn
I have no sense of having come from somewhere or that I am, indeed, going anywhere
I have to keep these words moving to hide the emptiness

Overhead a blue light. Blinked twice.
An engine droned.

I haven’t gazed at the sky in years
I hear voices but don’t have the curiosity to distinguish individual words, preferring the hum
I need a haven to ensure myself a static interlude, a place where I won’t have to talk to myself
I need a task to give a focus, to prevent distractions 
I would have preferred not to get into this
I would rather forget about time, wrapping myself into oblivion, if need be
I would rather maneuver among the politics of displacement
I'm open to a greater line
I’m not too well wrapped
I’m not trying to retrace my steps or find a guide
I’m played out
I’m trying to realize a focus before everything fades  or changes too fast
In front there is the same proposition
It doesn’t matter that I have become inaccessible
It is a relief not to know where I have to go
Listen, I’m just trying to get through the night
Motives are hard to come by when the issues have discintigrated
Names and places move around me as well as inside of me
Never mind the map. The terrain doesn’t matter. You take what you can get
Not for relief, for balance, I need to state a resolution

Overhead a blue light. Blinked twice.
An engine droned.

Nothing picks up, nothing rushes forward toward an exclamation or conclusion
On top of my own collapse, I ride it down like a freight elevator
Perhaps this prepares me for the murder of my own solutions
Somewhere, in one of us, control lurks
Surely I know how to move through space without attaching myself to local definitions
The horizon is limited
There are moments when I’ve lost control, when I became too oblique even to myself
There are no more voices
There are no reminders, no hidden move with which to trip me back into the past
There is an emptiness I am unable to fill
There is no problem so there is no solution
There is no transition, beginnings having happened somewhere else
These last moments hint toward consequences
They comfort me when comfort is impossible 
This is my own stumble through the night
To invent a problem is quite a shuck
When you come to the end of it you come to the end of it
Yet there is danger
You go as far as you can and then you don’t go anymore

And so it begins again…

Phrases found and collected from Flats by Rudolph Wurlitzer

How to Find the Sacred

Space is the place.
	-Sun Ra


Enter into
	this thing,
	this place
	this gesture.

Words get in the way.

Mute the mind
	with a silent explosion 
	of all-encompassing wholeness.

Shhhhh.

In the dark, on the edge of the ocean
sense rather than see situations
of flux and uncertainty;
caress the illumination.

Neither look for 
nor attempt to make anything happen.
You cannot manufacture serendipity.
Merely be open to its happening.

Liberate yourself wholly
from the amplification 
of this modern world.
Defend against ugly cacophony,
ennui and stagnation by
putting your faith in the belief that
things are not what they seem.

In a state beyond texture and temperature;
Drop all expectations given by others. 

We carry our home with us
wherever we go,
so no need to hurry.

Go in peace and grace - 
unfold all eight right prescriptions
And let them be your map.

Wholly presence,
Obscured by the aura of noise
That has become our gross survival.

Survival is not enough.

Prepare yourself wholly,
with patience and presence,
quietly aware that everything
you need to know is present.

Lie down in crabgrass and daffodils.
Sing the body electric.
Allow time and tide to pass
without comment,
while wholly waiting out the turmoil.

Catch your breath and wholly embrace 
the entirety of now,
finding compensation 
for what you have lost.

Wholly allow the world to be itself-
winning the moment,
in the boundless sky
of patience.

Wholly waiting.

Be vigilant of temptations 
whispering sweet nothings
in your ear;
this seductive noise of promise
for something better,
which you will discover
isn’t.

Know your heartbreak,
with confidence that it will pass
like a flash of lightning,
illuminating the immeasurable midnight sky.

Know the depths of uncertainty,
cancel your junk time subscription,
decommission your pinwheel of anticipation,
wholly distance yourself from the
antics of your mind.

The sacred is a reset
towards boundless mystery;
Be with that which is -
Wholly,
Wholly,
Wholly.

Hole Theory

Absences speak volumes:
Cut-outs, pin-pricks, voids-
All full of potential.

Imagining nothing
Instead of something,
Leaving space for projections,
Forwards and backwards
In time.

There is the paradox
Of the hole,
From absence to importance.
But ask yourself:
Is the hole 
something,
Or nothing
At all?

Sashaying to the Holey alter:
The hipster sez:
Lack is where it’s at.

And did the guy who postulated:
In the hole,
The Universe
Drew itself,
Earn a Ph. D?

The philosopher inquires:
With holes, 
when does nothing
Become something?

How about something from an
Obscure law book in an imaginary land:
The hole is meant to obliterate,
But instead
It draws attention
Like water down
The
Drain.

And the rest of us might wonder:
When does lack
Lose its negative
Connotation to become
An affront?

Or maybe not.

Fullness 
and 
Emptiness

Through these holes flows
The air we breathe.

Possibilities

I prefer movies.

I prefer dogs.

I prefer On Being Blue.

I prefer to share one secret over a bushel of truths.

I prefer downtowns.

I prefer the company of just one other.

I prefer cheesy organ fills and Fender Rhodes riffs.

I prefer pulling the plug on what no longer serves.

I prefer Tri X to Kodachrome.

I prefer what works without knowing why.

I prefer never having to ask or to answer why.

I prefer replacing things, knowing that all beings are irreplaceable.

I prefer the conviction of guilty pleasures.

I prefer ambivalence and not knowing.

I prefer the tarot to the news.

I prefer living in vertical time. 

I prefer donuts to dollars.

I prefer visiting the dead in my dreams.

I prefer curves and shadows.

I prefer big eyed beans from Venus to black eyed peas.

I prefer intentionality.

I prefer one true note over a symphony.

I prefer The world is all that is the case to It’s all good.

I prefer kindness to crazy wisdom.

I prefer scribbling to chattering.

I prefer noir in all its manifestations.

I prefer stillness and silence.

I prefer fountain pens.

I prefer sacred mornings, scheduled afternoons, and anticipatory nights.

I prefer being at home.

I prefer getting got, with being appreciated a close second.

I prefer the road to the destination.

I prefer the inscrutable calculus of being and doing.

I prefer the source of all sadness.

I prefer the idea of children, and their absence.

I prefer synchronicity and serendipity as portals to the Divine.

I prefer “Close the door and the light stays on.”

I prefer a cocktail of passion and equanimity.

I prefer preference to soul.

I prefer the magnificent illusion of the moon.

I prefer rooting for the underdog, while enjoying a healthy relationship to chance.

I prefer all that is gained through accumulating years.

I prefer levity and gravitas walking hand in hand.

__________________________________________________________________________________

* This poem is inspired by the popular poem “Possibilities” which was written by the Nobel Prize winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska. The poem explains the nature of mankind that every human is different, and so are their preferences. Therefore, one should not try to follow the prevailing trends. Instead, they should create a difference in life, tracking their distinct yet exciting choices.
I invite you to write your own “Possibilities.”
Please feel free to post what you have written