confusion enough

dear everyone

how are you?
the trip and i are both fine

emails are nice
skype is fancy
but a postcard is guaranteed to
maximally warm your heart
and a poetical postcard
doubly so

i found this postcard
in a tea-shop
which sits in front of a trash pile
three miles high
but behind the most beautiful luminous garden
i have ever seen.

on the front it
is a picture of the great wall china
except for one thing
(-maybe you’ve heard about this-)
the wall has been plucked from the ground by cosmic forces,
shrunken & twisted into a crown,
transported to egypt
and now sits stately on the sphinx’s head

the new york times called this an unprecedented
desecration of our global cultural heritage

but it sure is photogenic

i am writing postcards from the future
and they are addressed to the now
and my head is spinning in terror
of yet another abyss
i have found g-d and i have lost g-d
and i worry incessantly that taking a train
from almaty to beijing will show me
nothing but the hollow specter
of time

i worry, yes, but i celebrate.
i celebrate the coming simmering cauldron of moments
in which i must bathe to fulfill some
obscure prophecy intoned by a smirking younger me
whose knowledge of the stock market was total
but useless
for he spoke only in babbles
and the sign language of pacifiers

in the mirror, i see his wise young face telling me
that each day’s sky-smeared horizon is a gift
clouds sun unrecognizable birds
the warm mystery set to repeat
blaring out of cosmic speakers
at a frequency most of us have not yet learned to hear

so it turns out that this quest
is a cochlear one
training of the inner ear
asking street musicians
if they have heard IT
or even of IT
receiving laughing non-responses
for they who know do not speak
do nothing at all
but point at the moon
keeping the fingers unadorned, plain, ringless
so that the foolish seeker
has even a sliver of chance
of noticing the pale silver smile in the sky
that hums over and over
the only song there is

i will be home soon.

please keep oiling my congas
as regularly as possible

love

sergey

russians. o well
halva which is not russian
is russian
as well as a variety
of georgian breads stuffed with deliciousness
not russian
but russian because when stalin
sez “nashii” (ours) he means mine
and the former soyuz sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik
took took took and made
its own

and here it all is
on brighton beach
an outpost of the empire
in sprawling brooklyn
in which my notion
of home drowns in the
contentless eyes of ex-sailors
wearing leather jackets
and scraggly violence-jowls

up and down the boardwalk
the gaits the clothes
the very faces
all cohere and scream at me
with a rude familiarity & ease/
unease not
unlike riding a squarewheeled
bike again
after 15 years
clank clank
clank

i played percussion with a group of poets, musicians, and dancers at the hugo house on thursday feb 4th. i also read a poem, which is below. it was lots of fun!

in the still
mornings (which manage pinkness
even in the dark 7 ams)
there are hidden joys
that flow ungraspably
in slanted spirals
across
the kitchen ceiling
mysteriously deflating
all distresses

but how this happens
or why is hidden
from us, hidden
by expert hiders –
us

us – world shifters, us – soul
eaters with tremendous
undulating egos
that dread anything
at all -
each little dread requiring
a hefty force to dislodge it
and endlessly we lodge and unlodge
for reasons unclear, progress
in any direction
taken for granted as GOOD
and goodness
becoming confused,
shadowed by the endless moment where there
is nothing to fight and no one to fight
it except ghosts passing through one
another – congested noses,
back pains, spectacles,
itchy woolen blankets, alarm
clocks, saunas, teapots

o we stumble
but
nowness hereness are
always open doors
and these doors (like all doors)
are made for us and only us to walk
through because there is no suffering
that is not the price of admission to
our congenital divinity -

i know this because
at times
i just have to
go outside
find a tree
put my hand on it
and go empty
feeling it
leaning onto the trunk
allowing my weight to rest
on it, in repose
and then if it’s a good day
i look up and see
the stars hanging, pincushioned,
LEDs blazing small from
head-shaking distances
glinting light falling hard and fast
on us, as
we orbit one another
pulled along in whirlpools
of questions goals ideas -
self-wrestlers in search
of new and better disguises
as if all existence
depended on it
and it does
but effortlessly
requiring no striving
requiring only the deep
knowledge that
that suffering is
something to sing about
to jump dance whirl about
even when we are
anxiously half-buried
in the luminous ditch
at rest with weary
bones leaning up against
soft dark dirt,
burning tears soothed
by the deep thrum of life
all around

in the walking of a spiritual path
one must inevitably ask
what is a spiritual path?

i have faith about the nature
of the world, of the cosmos
and this faith
implies a way of life
one that i can only sometimes live

a spiritual path
is the continual effort
in study
in practice
in thought
in speech
in action
to live my life
in accordance with what i feel is true

and what do i feel is true?
what is god?
what is man?
i don’t know but
here is what i believe.

consider the sea
and the waves on it
the waves are discrete
they arise as towers of water
and move through space in time
and eventually vanish
return to the sea

as a wave travels
the water composing it
changes
only the form is preserved
and even that alters subtly
froth at the peak chaotically
becoming and unbecoming
the peaks themselves changing heights
the width and speed all
in procession

we are the waves
and god is the sea
not separate, but one
our very cells continue
to change guard, as the water does within
the wave

we feel separate
alone
but aren’t
for even though
we have poked our heads above
the surface of the ocean
we are still in the midst of it

a man petitioning god
is as silly as the wave petitioning the sea

real prayer is the continual reminder
of the falsehood
of loneliness
a reminder that
sea and wave are one
unindividuated majestic mystery