Do I Have To?

for T.S.

Do I have to do the assignment?
Do I have to do all of the assignment?
Do I have to show an interest in something outside of myself?
Do I have to put out actual effort for my own benefit?
Do I have to develop my inherent talent by improving my skills?
Do I have to expand my awareness and appreciation of the world around me?
Do I have to transcend my self-imposed limitations?
Do I have to achieve true ownership of my body, mind and will?
Do I have to have complete freedom to act for the best in every situation?
Do I have to attain everything my heart truly desires?
Do I have to be a blessing to everyone and everything around me?
Do I have to realize my full potential as a human being in this world?
Do I have to fulfill my ultimate destiny as a soul?
Do I have to?

Fully Named

“Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien

My name is written on pages and pages, turning and turning, being read as they are written
My name is a secret that I tell to everyone I meet
My name is a temporary permanence, always the same and ever-changing
My name is brother, son, uncle, friend, lover, student, teacher, gurubhai
My name is artist, writer, musician, dancer, singer, yogi
My name is monk, and not a monk, and perhaps both, or neither
My name is inscribed on the side of a mysterious tollbooth
My name is the drips and blooms and splashes of a watercolor in D major
My name is a jig with brown hair and blue eyes
My name is a mandolin calling to a fiddle singing to a guitar
My name is a G9 suspended chord, capo three
My name is the ubiquitous underlying hum of a harmonium
My name is a silly saga of sibling Christmas letters
My name is I don’t dance becoming May I have the next waltz?
My name is I love you, and As you wish, and Don’t panic
My name is the sound of Muppets dancing the Big Apple on Erin’s Shore
My name is the sound of Shiva’s footfalls pirouetting across galaxies
My name is Anachoron, Nataraja, Lord of the Dance
My name is two miles long in waltz time, 160 beats per minute
My name is Expecto Patronum and Felix Felicis
My name is employee number eight hundred and thirty one
My name is scattered across nine translations of Cyrano de Bergerac
My name is the complete works of Shakespeare as adapted by Gilbert & Sullivan
My name is the steps of a clandestine polka ringing through an empty church
My name is a serious parody of a silly song
My name is chocolate chip cookies and chai ice cream
My name is a rhyme for silver, ninth, purple, month, and wolf
My name is alternating feasts and famines of poetry
My name is Aum Namo Bhagavate and Aum Namah Shivaya
My name is Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me
My name is a pilgrimage through holy lands, within and without
My name is a tiny bubble of laughter joining the sea of mirth
My name is an inhalation, and an exhalation
My name is a mantra repeated exactly once, forever

What I really want to say is

that I have nothing to say
     but everything to feel
that I do know
     what I can’t say
that it is in me
     as it is in you
that my soul can talk
     to yours without words
that the earth itself is my poem
     a tiny collocation in the language
     of stars and galaxies and planets
that all the secrets of the universe
     can be expressed
     in a single line
if only I could say it.

If I Could Express

If I could express myself on a vision board, then the magazines we’re cutting up would be less Better Homes and Gardens and more Better Souls Enheartened.

If I could express myself in watercolor, then Winsor & Newton would have paints with names like B-flat major and Diminished Fifth.

If I could express myself in music, then each note would crystallize into a gem of pure experience for you to hold and treasure.

If I could express myself in sculpture, then solid stone would leap and dance in great, jagged, mazurkas, chiseling their rhythms into the earth.

If I could express myself in dance, then every movement I make would rhyme with the world.

If I could express myself in poetry, then… I’d probably have written something else!

Scattered

My mind is a poem that doesn’t exist.
My mind is two banjo-mandolins, tuned a semitone apart.
My mind is three monkeys climbing one tree.
My mind is four trees clambering up one beleaguered monkey.
My mind is five zoom meetings shoving each other around my calendar.
My mind is six feet of social distance away from any useful ideas.
My mind is seven ropes, looking for something to tie them together.

I Got the Blues

I got the blues.

I got the blues of Krishna, Shiva, and Rama.

I got the blues of sapphire, turquoise, aquamarine, and topaz.

I got the blues of a pair of eyes falling in love.

I got the blues of a forget-me-not’s memory.

I got the blues of a bluebird’s trill practicing the piccolo part to the world’s symphony of joy.

I got the blues of a doppler-shifted star rushing through space to make a new friend.

I got the blues of a child’s laughter at a ba-lue balloon sailing into a sky filled with infinity.

I got the blues of an ocean singing to the sky.

I got the blues, and I’ll keep ’em.

Second Wind

When you’ve wrung out your brain for the umpteenth time,
and can no longer stand the glare of the screen—
When nothing remotely resembles a rhyme,
and your imagination is stuck in the Pleistocene—

When you’re up way to late and you just need to sleep,
and your eyelids drag on the floor,
but the deadlines continue, like pumas, to creep
up upon you (there’s always one more!)—

When you realize you just can’t do this yourself
and yet you decide to carry on through—
then you’ll find that you’re carried by Something Else,
and the poems start writing you.

Yang-Yig

[Inspired by Tibetan Yang-Yig musical notation.]

This is your line.
It is a line in the red of your blood, the black of your eyes.
It is a line tracing one edge of the invisible space of your soul.
It is a line that maps your route from earth to heaven.
It is a line of grace.

Sing it like the moon crouching behind a cloud.
Sing it like a cloud filling the shape of a conch.
Sing it like a conch shell shouting the wind.
Sing it like the wind touching all the intimate earth.
Sing it like the part of the earth that became you.
Sing it like the piece of heaven you will become when you sing it.

What Is Left

What is left when my hair turns gray, falls out?
          when my skin wrinkles?
          when my eyesight dims,
          and hearing fades?

What is left when the poems,
          the songs, the melodies
          no longer come to me?
          are no longer needed from me?

What is left when memory blurs?
          when I’ve forgotten even my youthful body?
          my sparkling mind?
          my loved ones’ names?

What is left when I can no more remember
          what upset me?
          what delighted me?
          what I allowed to define me?

What is left when all that was not me
          is gone?
          and all that I thought was me
          has followed?

What is left when that single remaining
          point of consciousness
          is surrounded by nothing
          but the universe?

What is left is
          Everything.