thanks yet again for letting me take shelter with you under the writhing and erotic beams of Los Colanchos. I don't think I have the name of this most recent castle quite down yet. I think you two must be related to Kubla Khan.
Wherever you are, I find you living in a "Sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice" each house a temple, each room a shrine, each object a sacramental vessel.
Did I ever have a choice about becoming an ecstatic??? I think not. Immersed
from the day of my birth in your joyous celebration of beauty and courage, I
began my fitful dance....skipping and running....a lifelong battle with enchantment...dreaming dreams of the awakened one...
Here now in this present moment I find myself incarnate at the heart of the abyss offering lotus blossoms to those who dream of fire and smoke. In this dragon fight I am clothed in beauty like the night.
Love Aldog
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Glory of The Wounded Body
My friend, your wounded body has become for me an ark a vessel
To cross the imaginal seas of this phenomenal and fantastic world.
As Shankara said in his prayer to Lord Shiva 1500 years ago
“ how shall I cross the ocean of the world?
Here late at night now I know...now I know!
I shall cross the ocean of the world in the bark, the vessel of my friend’s wounded body.
His body, cut and open, bleeding, torn, returned to and remembered
Sings the great song of the soul’s dance...the soul’s feast here on the surface of the earth,
Here in the great forest of forms which we call the world.
I have found my friend singing of his wounded body
Like a pagan priest chanting in the night before a great fire.
Chanting the names and the deeds...the beauty and speed of the animal
Which in the light of day the hunters will catch and cut, wound and kill.
Your limping and your lost hip have carried me back to Oedipus
And further still to Osiris, mangled , lost , mutilated and finally remembered by Isis who would
not give him up....though he was invisible and dead.
She remembered him so well that he became a
Bridge between the worlds.
Your cut flesh, your body’s insistent song , the lost bones of your left hip
Drag me, summon me to the sacramental table, to the inescapable presence of the soul’s food
to remind me that I have been invited to a feast.
There is only one way to leave this table hungry.
And that is simply not to eat.
A.T. Wood April 17th, 2000
To cross the imaginal seas of this phenomenal and fantastic world.
As Shankara said in his prayer to Lord Shiva 1500 years ago
“ how shall I cross the ocean of the world?
Here late at night now I know...now I know!
I shall cross the ocean of the world in the bark, the vessel of my friend’s wounded body.
His body, cut and open, bleeding, torn, returned to and remembered
Sings the great song of the soul’s dance...the soul’s feast here on the surface of the earth,
Here in the great forest of forms which we call the world.
I have found my friend singing of his wounded body
Like a pagan priest chanting in the night before a great fire.
Chanting the names and the deeds...the beauty and speed of the animal
Which in the light of day the hunters will catch and cut, wound and kill.
Your limping and your lost hip have carried me back to Oedipus
And further still to Osiris, mangled , lost , mutilated and finally remembered by Isis who would
not give him up....though he was invisible and dead.
She remembered him so well that he became a
Bridge between the worlds.
Your cut flesh, your body’s insistent song , the lost bones of your left hip
Drag me, summon me to the sacramental table, to the inescapable presence of the soul’s food
to remind me that I have been invited to a feast.
There is only one way to leave this table hungry.
And that is simply not to eat.
A.T. Wood April 17th, 2000
The Eater of Hearts
I know the King of hearts.
He has silver hair
He's a Czech from out West
He lives down stairs.
He loves Aphrodite on the run and all her daughters.
Sprung from her loins
They have become prodigal,
Like the galaxies Quickly moving away
From the moment of conception.
The Eater of hearts gathers them up.
He finds them on the street,
Just around the corner, behind the counter,
On the bus.
His devotion is not diluted by plans.
Bathing in beauty, Courageous and merciful
He delivers each one back to her Self.
He takes great risks. He heaves convention out of the boat.
He leaps dolphin -like into the tide.
With one hand he has subdued the muse
With the other he commands the wind.
From these two he fashions a mirror.
Then through Her grace
He illuminates and heats the vast caverns
Of a beating heart.
January 1998
He has silver hair
He's a Czech from out West
He lives down stairs.
He loves Aphrodite on the run and all her daughters.
Sprung from her loins
They have become prodigal,
Like the galaxies Quickly moving away
From the moment of conception.
The Eater of hearts gathers them up.
He finds them on the street,
Just around the corner, behind the counter,
On the bus.
His devotion is not diluted by plans.
Bathing in beauty, Courageous and merciful
He delivers each one back to her Self.
He takes great risks. He heaves convention out of the boat.
He leaps dolphin -like into the tide.
With one hand he has subdued the muse
With the other he commands the wind.
From these two he fashions a mirror.
Then through Her grace
He illuminates and heats the vast caverns
Of a beating heart.
January 1998
TO SING YOUR NAME TO THE MOMENTS
This mind I point toward the Divine Mother
Oh Mother! Now that the mind's eye sees nothing but you,
Carry me across the ocean of this world
Or drown me in it's fierce waves.
The water that kills this body I will taste as milk from your breast.
The breezes blowing on the other shore are your breath.
Mother let me hold you and you alone
In thought word and deed.
Send me into battle or use me to feed the sparrows.
Crown me or send me to wash dishes in a flop house.
I am here only as an occasion for you to sing your name to the moments.
" I come to dance on the surface of your prayers,
A little girl playing hopscotch on warm flagstones
In a sea of grass in a back yard hemmed in by white birches."
Oh Mother! I will pave over the entire yard.
Dance! Dance!
As your bare feet polish the stones,
My prayers grow personal and conspiratorial.
Now you are the little sister who knows what she does not know.
"When you forget to pray, I can not dance.
I grow fickle and hide in the grass
Or behind the birches. And then I make you think that,
'Perhaps I only dreamed her'.
When you forget to pray
You leave me without warm stones upon which to dance.
When you forget to pray your mind goes blind
And your eyes see nothing but the world.
Open the lids of your mind's eye!
Pray!that I may dance."
Oh Mother! Now that the mind's eye sees nothing but you,
Carry me across the ocean of this world
Or drown me in it's fierce waves.
The water that kills this body I will taste as milk from your breast.
The breezes blowing on the other shore are your breath.
Mother let me hold you and you alone
In thought word and deed.
Send me into battle or use me to feed the sparrows.
Crown me or send me to wash dishes in a flop house.
I am here only as an occasion for you to sing your name to the moments.
" I come to dance on the surface of your prayers,
A little girl playing hopscotch on warm flagstones
In a sea of grass in a back yard hemmed in by white birches."
Oh Mother! I will pave over the entire yard.
Dance! Dance!
As your bare feet polish the stones,
My prayers grow personal and conspiratorial.
Now you are the little sister who knows what she does not know.
"When you forget to pray, I can not dance.
I grow fickle and hide in the grass
Or behind the birches. And then I make you think that,
'Perhaps I only dreamed her'.
When you forget to pray
You leave me without warm stones upon which to dance.
When you forget to pray your mind goes blind
And your eyes see nothing but the world.
Open the lids of your mind's eye!
Pray!that I may dance."
LITTLE GIRL AMY
Little girl Amy
I will wander you out of my mind
And leave you framed in a doorway in Calcutta.
In your rags you'll crawl the streets
And bind the feet of Brahmin rats
With tales of little dead dogs.
You'll hold your father's last cigarette
To their rodent mouths
And choke them with his dying smoke.
Fluttering enthusiasm's memory wings
You use your mind to spring a trap,
Extorting vision from living maps.
Tinkering among the folds of brother Al's malodorous mind,
You seize the hem of Shankara's cloak.
He tortures your mirror with infinite time.
He fills your eyes with equal grace.
He leaves Ishwara in his place.
Little girl Amy, I will wander you out of my mind
And leave you framed in a doorway in Calcutta.
There, in the Indies, hunger's gnawing teeth
Will eat your glossy wounds,
And words, your drowning swimmers, will be still.
And you twice born teeming with stars
Will step down from the mind's high promontory
To forge the weapons that your daughters will carry
Into distant battle.
OCTOBER 1980 & 1992
I will wander you out of my mind
And leave you framed in a doorway in Calcutta.
In your rags you'll crawl the streets
And bind the feet of Brahmin rats
With tales of little dead dogs.
You'll hold your father's last cigarette
To their rodent mouths
And choke them with his dying smoke.
Fluttering enthusiasm's memory wings
You use your mind to spring a trap,
Extorting vision from living maps.
Tinkering among the folds of brother Al's malodorous mind,
You seize the hem of Shankara's cloak.
He tortures your mirror with infinite time.
He fills your eyes with equal grace.
He leaves Ishwara in his place.
Little girl Amy, I will wander you out of my mind
And leave you framed in a doorway in Calcutta.
There, in the Indies, hunger's gnawing teeth
Will eat your glossy wounds,
And words, your drowning swimmers, will be still.
And you twice born teeming with stars
Will step down from the mind's high promontory
To forge the weapons that your daughters will carry
Into distant battle.
OCTOBER 1980 & 1992
Attempts At Immortality
While I in darkness slept
Playing host to death's brother,
My soul with joy leapt
Free from body, no longer a prisoner.
Many were my visions of life,
Though never one could I recall.
Endless meanders through molten streams of strife
Only add to my sensuous delight
FEBRUARY 1963
Playing host to death's brother,
My soul with joy leapt
Free from body, no longer a prisoner.
Many were my visions of life,
Though never one could I recall.
Endless meanders through molten streams of strife
Only add to my sensuous delight
FEBRUARY 1963
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