Beneath Thought

1/1/19

Before meditation:

Close my mouth and know that all

Unfolds into whatever bend is meant

For that moment is a lifetime, a year

Only a blink in the cosmos

Yet we think holding on and exposing

Chewing up and regorging

Making witness and performing

Taking tissue and reboarding, planes

Pints and vixens dance in sentences

Before

Even the known has come

So keep the mouth closed when you thinking

What you have to say is know, and always all knowing

The light that passed through passess through and has passed

For 70,000 years, this brain has fled from lions

This brain has been led to bones, to the carcass

To the marrow, for only in the recent past has this brain

Seemed to contain the multitudes of Whitman or the

Platitudes of Deion Sanders or the laughter of the impractical jokers

Never known. Always rehearsed, if then, what then

The scourge, the pain that comes with trying to make

Thinking: the impulse behind a concept album

And all know about those, how they make us feel

Yet somewhere inside of one year was one beginning

One witness of a new year and cruelty when disturbed

When the dog sits on the wrong couch, when you let all of this flow out

And all that you know is what continues to come: wake up

Breathe

Chop wood

Carry water

The wood is what is beneath your feet

The edges of the path that

Once logs become strands of hyphae

And blessings of mycelium

And to help the children, first consider the fungi

Go first to what you call dirt

Concern yourself with waste and warranty, the latter being

A euphemism for what you get back when returning what you use

I’ll spell it out: you do not need bath salts to wake up, but

As deMello says, “You do not want to be awake”.

The pain is not reality, yet it is like an amniotic fluid

A net inside which a baby rots within the womb

Only to be pried and pulled and split into pieces

Like fried chicken on a side street or intestines

Splayed on the roadside.

Hello 2019. Bless you.

Let everything spill out in this twenty minutes

Find what is always there: dedication to sit and type

Was her name Julia? The one of The Artist’s Way?

Did she imagine what might become, how dozens of trees might drop leaves

And only this will be the only use of the word only

Used almost twenty times already on this morning of the new year

Constructed: time

Illusion: definition

Condition: twist

Bread and breadless, home and homeless

Gifts and gifted

Words and wordless. Not named and nameless

The pain of thinking decisions create results

The pain that comes with craving whether

This be a hot sausage from Gene’s or the desired quiet from thirteen year olds.

Take not so seriously what you are about to become

For you have always been this.

Bend not to the whims of the canopy.

Bend rather back to the split of sun slipping through

While embracing the clouds, for you know the value of rain

And give us our day this daily bread

For there is no other save for give us

Our crumbs these many moments

And let satiation be attended by praise for whatever weather.

Type not as an outlet for power.

Type not to change the breadth of the hour

Or take Cornish game hens and the way words connect. There

Is no reason to try to figure out what is next except Eminem

And this witness that sits gives this boiled egg reason to sip

Coffee is no different when the year flips.

Perspective is thinking that you have learned

Thinking is the very problem. Thinking that you thought up way

Thinking that you figured it out is only another cat and mouse

Trap like the quicksand in comic books or the quick laugh

Of old timey crooks where they drive from banks and shoot machine guns.

This was 1936 when they said, let’s wait.

Things will be so much better in ‘37.

Did they then make a Chevy? Did they then forge new metal

Or create a cure for cancer?

Always never sometimes forever we will be setting

The table for the company that makes us feel better

Is not the company that comes for Christmas or for

The holidays should you want to be political or for

The ones that collect the garbage and deliver the mail

Another year is only

A drop in the bucket, is only, another chance to use the word

Only

is only

The laughter of the medicine, rather than the trumpet, whether the one comes

Seeking first

To see the soil, seek first to see the gift of dust on your jeans

Know worms will devour denim

Before your body is resurrected

So think first which came: 2019 or the egg.

After:

Beneath the thought is digging

Through the recesses of clay

And weight and wait

And bubbles of air

Once unknown

Then the only time

Was once before

When the words come

Accept them

For this is what is

When the way is unknown

Beneath thought is the muse

Writing in silence

God’s only language

Writing while silent

The fire is made

When the coals come first

The end is not what is done

The end is never

Even the ash

Phosphorus

Flowers

How is that?

Questions need not be asked

Let surprise rise and rain

Let wonder sustain

Whatever comes

Consider without considering

All of this is difficult

To explain there is no explanation

Yet this must be understood:

Beneath the thought is digging

Beneath the thought is the core

Being is in the middle

Receiving silence is the answer

Prayer is not talking

Meditation is not listening

Yet they are

Not the way you might thinking:

Meaning: the talk is silent;

What is heard is silence

This is where the answers are

In silence

In now

In fire

In presence

Beneath the thought

Is the great reality

Sprung from the trap.

Take driving, for instance.

The way steering becomes second nature

Only happening

You are no longer the driver

For you are lost in a future you cannot

Possibly plan

Experience has taught you this

And yet you still consider

Why the words yet and only

Are so often used.

Perhaps in the mind of man and

The chronic typing

There must be proclamations:

The knowing that feeds

The thought beneath thinking

This witnessed condition

Of how the witness

Witnesses

To figure out the stacking of logs

Is enough

For this day

To watch rain become snow

To drive through the neighborhood

Where you once lived

As a boy

Where you rolled down hills

Where you tore your pants

Where you wanted to sing

When you didn’t know

You didn’t know everything

When your parents were wrong

No matter what they said

When you used others to make you

Feel better

Today

By seeing love

By reversing first thoughts.

Beneath thought is the notion

There is such a thing

As neuroplasticity and the ability

To rewire what has been wrought

For seventy thousand years

The mind has been trained to fight or flee

So see imminent danger in all situations

So a woman pops in

A man pops in

Children pop into

Your screen of reality and first

Thought is worst thought

For beneath thought is a digging

Pause to sidestep what you think

Spin to

Allow a different vision:

You have just rewired your brain.

Rain is a seed sprouting

Traffic an opportunity

For patience

Come what may in the middle of all of this:

Blisters are relief when seen as the beginning

And where did this thought come

From: sitting

And letting the gods in

Who are you to say

You know what you need to type

Look at the way you tried

To run your life

Through thinking

Through trying to figure things out.

The answers will not come in this manner

The answer is that there are no answers

And there is every answer

And there is no contradiction

In the speed at which the fingers move

Never taught self

Taught

Beneath thought

Beneath shelf is a self leading

To another shelf and another gain

Not lost before first thought is worst thought

Let the sitting bring what ought to come

Forgetting what you first thought

When sitting down

Release all you think you know

Listen not to confirm but to learn

Take turns when speaking

Sit quiet when filled with desire

Take tape and refrain

Take trains to reclaim

Take the station

Switch the telling from vision

The creation of wishing

And get rid of all of this

Time will not create change

Time will not ease pain

There is no need

You are right in everything

Right where you are

You need not keep digging

Thinking that beneath thought you will find

The right thought

For beneath thought is digging

In the core is silence

In the beginning was not the word.

You got that one wrong.

In the beginning the carpenter made a sound

A hammer coming down

And there was no need to make sense

Of what was heard

A dove flew and did not

Try to get through

An alleyway of design

The mind a lost spot in the hotbox

Of baseless creative thought and when

Is it you and when

Is the muse coming through

You won’t know unless you keep typing

Mind is not an ocean,

But Billy is

A Squire to: this that came just now:

Not the Muse

Or if so, then goddamn,

That muse sure do

Have a sense of humor

Playing you like a hula hoop twisted

This thought takes you to the bin

Where they sedate you because too much thought

Is sickness

A value that fidgets

And toys made by children

By nephews for kids

With too much energy

Kids that should be staring into screens

Kids that want to move and talk and create

These kids are the kids that I want to witness

These kids are the inventors

These kids are me

And I look forward to meeting myself.