Sharing . . .
A few month’s ago an old friend from my college days sent me some poetry that I had sent to her in the time after I had graduated from college. I was editor of the yearbook and she had been my assistant editor, so we shared a lot with each other during and after those years. I do not remember writing any of these poems at all. I wrote back to her: “I’m not sure I remember that person who wrote those lines and expressed his emotions so freely.”
I suspect that this was the time when I was searching for the path . . . I needed to find more meaning in life than what I was experiencing. I found it in Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi.” He opened the door to a whole new way of seeing, experiencing and being in this world.
The poems that my friend sent me, I think, in some degree a crying out for a new path of understanding, a new way of being and an anchor of sanity in a world that seemed to be losing it’s balance.
I thought I would share them here for anyone else who is experiencing some of these feeling and emotions.
Untitled #1
What was that you said?
There’s a cross sinking in the sand
A man is eating soup with chopsticks
Sitting backwards on a rock
And laughing, laughing
Dripping soup in my face.
The floating clouds make
Patch work designs
On the deserted land
As a pygmy jumps
From sun patch to sun patch
Praising the ancient orbe.
It’s hot in Calcutta today
Tel Aviv is frozen over
The Dead Sea is running clear and fresh
Revived by new spilt blood
That soon would ferment
Intoxicating the lusting hills.
The Calvary Tree is swaying
In the cold wintery breeze
And frozen huddled masses
Think they’ll cut it down
And use its leaves for food
It’s wood for fire.
The old Italian guru
Is chanting for the dead
And singing hymns to the state
While children sit
Fondling salicybic sunshine
And esoteric rainbows.
Ascetics in sagging skin
With saffron faces
Beseech their atomic god
In meditative psychocybernetics
And Freudian slips.
While Jesus and Buddha
Play poker
With the magi’s Tarot cards
Making bets on the futurej
And collecting souls
From the past.
And so you think you’ll
Join the jumping pygmy
For a game of hopscotch in the the sun
While I join the chopstick man
And pick mushrooms from his bowl
While his back is turned.
And we’ll pass the night
Drinking new laced wine
Ravishing our loves
And watching the fire in the hills
Surrounded by the sweet smoke
Of the smoldering Calvary Tree.