An Agnostic Defends Prayer

Those witch hunters,
Thirsting for enemy blood,
Crying to their heartless soulless gods of war and commerce,

They give it a bad name.

And thoughtsandprayers as a unit are a social bandaid
We solicitously apply to the wounds of strangers
As we cavort on with our lives.

When we feel spiritualimnotreallyreligious

We set intention
Mindfully meditate
Soulfully superior to the snake-dancers, tongue-speakers
Climate change deniers, gay-haters, finger-sandwiches-from-the-auxiliary eaters

But
prayer is a structure
for thought

prayer has us review our values,
tally them, bright beads on our
not-rosary

reflect on them
and then simplify what we are asking for
what resolution we seek
what help we need

having dressed the room for our best company,
we don't slouch on that sofa as we pray
we consider how our ask will look hanging on that wall facing the window

we judge our ask
weigh the solicitation we make
consider the bargains we will enter into

and then, satisfied, we throw it up, invite the universe in
sometimes we get an answer
sometimes we find it in the couch cushions
sometimes the tidy room is enough.

I went looking for Buddha (I thought)

I thought I went looking for Buddha
Settled into middle-class comfort now
A late midlife lull of mindfulness and peace
With my body
With my fortunes
With my soul's state
I was ready to meditate,
Align with my Western
Middle Class
Buddha-mind.

I thought I went looking for Buddha
But I found Shiva
Evil-destroyer
Transformer
Creator
Not one, but
One of --
Tripartite god
Batter my heart.

Shiva, who dances
Serpent-entwined,
Balances in
Dynamic power pose
Ascetic and
Demon-slayer

Shiva, holding counsel with
Vishnu and Brahma

Which aspect found me?
Parvati, some guidance?

Nataraja Shiva,
Parvati and Google tell me.
The dancer
The source of all movement
Creation and destruction
Release of the self

The restless energy within I had thought to quell
Whips and waves in a tidal dance
Demands release
Let go
Let come

Destroy the old to make way for the new
As cells do
As cities do

And as tarots do, my Shiva reveals an answer that was within me.
Let go
Let come
The fires of creation.

Of course.
Of course.

Red Room

In this red room I circle,
Wheedle the few
Words that break through,
Weave them, knead them, mold and massage them
Into meanings that might
Lift this leaden lumpen carapace.
Tracing the nautilus, thinking
Deeply, nerves pores senses open to
Quantum turbulence, to
Your intentions, to
My grace, essays, defeat.
In this red room
I wait.

Donald Trump's Favourite Ice Cream Flavour

Youtube told me,
Trump prefers vanilla.

The matrix is broken, I thought,
Thousands of us thought.
An elaborate joke that history will devote online chapters
To analysing.

What covfefe led us here.

As all things move relentlessly toward chaos,
This chaordic path is yours, America.
Race relations out of control
A schism through your soul
Poverty taking its toll
And as a president, you chose....
a troll.

Climate change is a hoax?
What people can he coax
That his tweets are not just
nonsense-soaked,
That he is smarter than the jokes.

The best words.

Ice caps melt, erratic weather,
A googleplex of variables beyond control,
Hate grows in the hearts of disenfranchised peoples
Fed by hate, fed by war, fed by poverty, by people not fed.
Beyond our ability to control
All the easy problems seem solved
Now we sadly circle a vexing tangle
Gordian knot
of explosive complexity

When everything else is impossible,
Perhaps only the sublimely absurb
Makes sense.

Mercy is not geometry

Even a circle has an edge
Draw it as wide as you want, there
Is still a line. A border. A wall.
Mercy is not geometry.
Love exists beyond the Cartesian plane.
What we do is biology.
Rhizomes, tentacles, porous cell walls.
Find symbiosis.
Unlike ecology, love has no limits.

Shoeless, in your mitred hat, approach
Crawl until the thorns are blunted,
Sketch your god in the sand, it
Always shifts.
Bring all the pocket messiahs in neckties
But we will wear no corsets here.

We must do it this way, squeeze,
Pile, stack the open space with all
The dense joy
The ecstasy of being,pull together till there
Is no outside
Inside no lines
All human,
All one.
All die so
All love.

27 Years Ago (Dec 6 Montreal Massacre Memorial)

Tina:
Engineering student,
Tall. Some boys called her
Amazon.

Trying to lose weight with Slimfast and water
Her body fine, though,
Her mind sharp,
Her emotions fraught by
19 years of being
a woman.

27 years ago.

I have lost her last name, but
I remember the lilt of her Newfoundland accent.

Her green hazel eyes, steadfastness,
Openness.

27 years ago.

She joined me, on the
Stained, aged gold-and-olive flowered sofa we
Dumpster-rescued,
Sprayed with vinegar, kept like the flea-ridden kitten we brought home,
The stray downtown boys who needed
a place to crash,
The stolen bar glasses that traced an evening.

The couch outlasted us - we couldn't get it back out again.
When we moved
It stayed.

We sat, clutching tissues, hunched
forward, eyes wide to absorb the flickering drama unfolding
Disbelieving.
Unprepared.
It could be us.
It could be you, Tina.
They were engineering students.
This is Canada.

Warm Diet Pepsi to swallow the salt tears. Why?

Why?

The news anchors' hush, their drawn brows a swelling movie score,
This is where you feel. This is what you feel.

It could be us.

Well, not me, I deal in words.
Girls are allowed to do that. They give us that.
What power in words?
But don't you dare don't you DARE don't you DREAM that you
girl amazon bitch hateful cunt whore woman
don't you
take my job my math my formulas my bridges to build, my world to
dominate.

27 years ago.

And now.

Betheda:
15 and given to 10 ISIS "warriors" to rape and rape
and rape
like a gift
like junk food
to be consumed and discarded and I wonder
when do we dare to dream? Why?
Why did I lose track of that perfectly good sofa
(Good bones, you know),
But I still have this. We still have this.

27 years ago.
27 seconds ago.

earthbound

Shirley McLaine flew
tethered by a silver string

I was 14, precipice pubescent
I ate the moon, swallowed,
Followed.

Why does adulthood leaden our feet?
The mind is a balloon.

I see you bob aloft, I almost feel myself rising to feel the warmth
that buoys you but you remain

out of reach.
I can grow weak wings.
Not enough.

I could have been a balloon but
I waited too long for someone to cut my string

There never was a string.



(dedicated to max who i haven't met)