(This poem is an excerpt of the epic-in-progress entitled, Ten Thousand Lines Project For World Peace. It is currently at 7,000 lines.)
Humble the work of my hands,
Let me see clearly with unpolluted heart,
Understand fellow humans in truth.
Everything recognizes a humble heart,
Everyone knows the height of humanity
is humility,
Humble the hand that writes these words,
The voice that reads these symbols
of expression,
Let the proud fall from his or her sky,
Surprise evil-wishers with love upon their lips,
Let the needy taste the abundance of the human heart,
The greedy see the wealth of love he or she may share,
Let the murderer see that to kill is to take his or her own life,
To murder a thousand is to kill himself or herself a thousand times more,
Washing the dishes so the tired wife may rest
Is the way of an enlightened heart,
The child who tries to do good in school
To please his or her parents manifests love and understanding,
The accused who admits his or her wrong-doing
And hates his or her old ways
By beginning to do the opposite exhibits true seeing.
Let my sins now melt in the ink,
Meld into the work of my heart
In an act of sharing my mortality,
The world knows it’s coming to an end someday,
But, the self shall continue,
Having vibrated in space
Self in pure self vibrating
Along the elliptical course of its existence,
It will survive even after all the histories,
The faults, the pains, the forgiveness,
After all it has been through,
After the fears, the boundaries of one’s construct
It will continue self to self
With the memories it wants to remember.
Eastern-ward as the sun
Must make a pause,
A long pause before declaring itself the sun,
The love that holds everything together
Must also pause, pray for reasons,
To dawn, explain, save the scream
From waking a world so used to its own dream,
Pray for light to un-cease its flow
Through the bends and turns of space,
To reach a dark corner,
To touch the hand that has hidden itself
For so long now, to caress the face
Bombarded with miseries and silence,
To evade the name given
And at last just to be human, feeling the brutal pains.
I have chosen you among the many,
I shall hold your hand and walk through your door,
Enter the house, home of your humble hopes,
Sit on a wooden chair, strong and heavy,
Once in a list of things to be covered by the next paycheck,
Taste the coffee you offer,
Light a cigarette and listen to your
casual expressions,
And listen, too, to the silence there,
To the dreams that hounded you,
Why you missed your assigned room
By one floor, yes, I shall listen to those dreams
That have tortured you, and the kindness
Appropriated to your age and achievements,
The heartaches that your poet’s heart
Needed to bear, you shall walk me
To your memories, I shall dine with
your friends,
Oh, they shall see my crooked smile
And whisper about it, you have my attention.
I am here.
Muse you have followed all this lifetime,
Brilliant star in your waking hours,
Romancing, blessing your solitude with warm light,
I salute her, adore her in so many ways
For accompanying a poor poet in his
many journeys,
Guiding his strides to the many good life can offer,
To the many wisdom such pen holds,
Brightest in the midnight the angel-muse
Gives you that terrific kiss,
That first and last kiss you treasure forever,
Like a surgeon the hands of my mind
Extra careful, gentle and precise
As I summon the images with the scalpel of the word,
Visit hidden corners for traces of pain,
Endure the sadistic world you have memorized by touch,
There I create a wound upon the wound,
Part the tall leaves of grass where
Once you’ve found yourself lost,
Smell the scent of your footprints in the cold earth,
You’ve been here alright, your shadow directs
Me towards the city, your scent still alive in the air,
Your words still in the wind,
Your voice still violently shattering
the silence,
While the silver moon borrows the city lights,
The fog thick and hideous concealing
The mouth of a cave so hidden from view,
Yet always there with minotaur
So defeated and destroyed, its greed
Reduced to shades of dreams,
Beneath the microscope of verses
I see the skies my father has followed
As a young man, saw glimpses
Through his youthful eyes,
Sending me back to the place and time
Beyond my hour of birth,
There, beneath the borrowed light,
The city lost its heroes.
