~Sparse Frivolity

Notes to oneself, to the other, are endless with (k)nots.
Hum of the drum, beats us all down, even now.
And then, comes Rumi's white miracle of round,
when just like a beautiful spring day, new is found.

There's one sure promise here in so many miles
paved with broken hearts, love's recompense.
Long riders learn how to bite their tongues
for risk of missing opportunity to exit (here)with.

Longer and farther one treads, rot settles in.
Close to the start, is where to find surest bow.
There, knarly pain controls mind spasm totality
just as before - God created Universe - this time.

We're simple and sparse in any grand comparison.
Tragic misfortunates, suffering the mystery unseen.
Our stories are all, little more than Potter's Daubie,
sure fire failures forsooth as profit rushes to defend.

Truth is not narrative, while narrative claims what is.
We claim narratives our own, and then stop asking.
Our erudite moral thinkers persuade how valuable
the story told must be, identity's fashionable package.

Nice and tidy they say, providing continuity with past,
a frivolity which defines our spirituality, our essence.
I bite my tongue, and choose to close in on the start.
It hurts most when I forget how really meaningless...

But at times like this, burning intent at my ready,
the challenge to untell is at once all I perceive.
So far as that maintains the inquiry, will I return.
Straight lines and circles, my digital age narration.

2/28/08, rjduberg

~def Challenge II

Of 3 positions, none offered
your life rests there, each moment
Beginning, Inbewteen, and Endding.

Why no one remembers dynamic
denies many rights and genius.
This past, genius, for endding?

This little set is our beginning
and this middle plays healing
on the start of a mystery ending.

Mystery, Inbetween, Endding.
Could it be a verse of Karma?
Better yet, final recurrence?

Well, simplicity must act now.
Beginning, swings a middle process
to middle that ends to roll of end.

rj 2/2008

~Where You Is

Before you went
to inhaling insist
was effervescent

OK some roost
around a nest,
some scoot scatter
fly founder fume.
Everything poops
their own place.

Why your poop
left me so sad?
My little mask
is now offhanded.

I know better (the)
where you go
is the miracle (of)
where you are.

Rose Peddles/sun

Why do roses suffer the liquid of our being
so much we've grown yet so little sown
regarding nature's story of pain.

And the beauty of the thorn seen in water
is made by the sight of its crown in blood.
The color is a match, hook, and tackle.

My liquid rose over the lips and was free
what I don't drink runs down my face
this better be where you find solace
after you stop deifying words peddled.

rjd, 2/2008

~words of wisdom

The reason anything gets done begins and ends...

The other side becomes general in their answer
just as the sunset with its beauty draws down.
Remember there’s power when adversity nears.
Knowing the positive still prevails, brings benefit.

What is to gain by standing out in the open may...
Beyond a change of season, they’re all the same.
There’s another idea being focused on, I’m saying
that -- of what’s beyond recycling, just because...

Agreeing the present is bad risk management;
In truth, only pure stupid egomania cuts it.
You figure, converting to solar, solves everything;
And why the hell haven’t we began to live that?

The reason is once again about management...

~She Was

Longing built on the greatest loss
fading, I can barely name names
for the one I regret, cannot forget.

Falling so hard like that
defies belief and explanation -
even the story is ridiculous.

And yet, that first lover persists
as a gift to which I was blessed
and have longed for ever since.

2/2008, rjduberg

~Shock of my Family

Keeping track of numerosity, the defiance of chaos
meticulous and precise, it comes with a price.
Make a list, and notice somewhere fog disappear.
Include a mistake as a shockwave, like tsunami
against your thatchy, unrooted, shallow, indwelling.

The mistake we find is the mistake we project
the error our true self freely enjoys to a fault,
and forgeting origin, doom makes misc a lie,
returning chaos to the side of our enemies.
Hail the man with a reverence for such shock.

His humility and true incompetence laid bare
while his reverence is a design to embrace.
Most don't conceive the value of awakening
as victims and slaves, they protect their sleeps
with illusions of purpose, quite felonious skits.

In catching what lies we find how hot the steam,
the pressure which friction will invariably release.
We get good at stepping over it all for sleep,
preferring an unfocused, non-intended state;
to the work, designed to put shock in our way.

Biggest shock for me is change in my women.
I chase the projection, because love was great.
I suffer an imagination scorched by the friction
of a time producing zenith in all my attachments.
Attachment fuels illumination, shock ignites it.

I do not know what women think or feel, thou.
Not for lack of effort to discover and correct
mistakes, to restore the intimate renewing,
which characterizes my fading impression.
Interpretations abound, some keep shaking.

They could not own me, nor bitch their way in.
I have my mom, beyond bitchy, who I so love
to thank on this particular catastrophic fault.
In fact, I believe my entire family plays a role
through their mass exodous to far off fringes.

Not hard to see how little stock I'd have, to put,
after the primary carriers of that experience
ostracized, abandoned, rejected, left, forgot
me; each and every one. Aha my family is
no worse than women, that stand left empty.

Not women but brothers and in laws, mom.
Those who've passed before setting it right.
Mostly, the turning away and leaving behind.
Thus I live this core felt relation to women
they always bring recognition back to missing.

In the beginning, before the cruelty, there was
such frivolous distraction, and love. Still love,
today quite mature however, compassionate.
Not their fault, I see that, can't change this,
but only focus on source in all of this, family.

Egads, and there's the rub, I'm quite sure
I lack any standing, nor have any favor to call.
Oh well, such are the facts, and I can't believe
there aren't others who've passed beyond this.
The bleak blanket sleep brings, is a monster.

(c) rjduberg, 2008, Jan

~The Good Chase

Forget about any thoughts, I might have
for those who might know or imagine
how this poem found words and context
to begin with what surely started, parted.

And this has nothing to do with talented
beautiful voices, singing harmony, love.
Though chasing those performances may,
shouldn't they? Say the closer the better!

How exciting when you can almost touch
what you've been striving so hard to reach.
Yet can anyone answer why that touch
brings such sorrow over our hearts, won?

Even understanding this horrible truth
and passing on instead of chasing one
is not satisfaction, by simply refusing
to engage success, a turning paradox.

The good chase catches a path upwards
opens opportunities and possibilities
never before known or imagined, real.
This mystery of paradox of finding more

is perhaps the ultimate convolution.
Time spent chasing a true mystery
caught revealing wealth of unknown
preserving mystery in well's depth.

If the chase was good from the start
preserving those stakes is stalwart
a pure result from one's actions
an outcome due to forgetting self.

A vision of mystery, chasing eternity.

© 2008, rjduberg

~Liquid Rose

As the liquid rose
the brim of surprise
enjoyed full release,

stuck up so high
what came around
never dove in
nor took flight
but hung a-round
at a distance,

for what in passing
is hard choked
in its stream,
its proximity
distorts,

no retort,
just a hard surface,
a real bore
of hollow end
to open.

© rjduberg, 1/2008

~Next to Next

The hairs on my neck stood up
with the breath a world stirred up
no tweet to meet, or sets' full lull
yet desire wants to breathe in fear.

All this time spent working nights
to find nothing but an elderly pace
to create whatever fades as mine

*
The rewrite calmed a fluttering utterance
the edition, a first this time
in an info age filling in
what once stayed stained
under weight of addendums
is the same but new today
at the speed of digital light.

The influence of art is a beautiful thing
where one can indicate briefly a thing
letting imagination form its substance
in turn, an immeasurably finer appearance.

What ills can now be corrected
properly so, beautiful that way
happened just now as virtual reality,
more ocean than place for waves traced,
revises in ripples having a human face.

As revisions are next, next to next
is a new definition of what's final.


RJDuberg, 12/2007

~Back to Back

When thinking about Shelley, this popped out tonight. No doubt it will read as rubbish to most, and I can appreciate that. Explaining it would be shameful, so my understanding must remain left behind for the moment.

Back to Back

Were that you were there,
where here was its future,
I would read you, not you, I.

That not that, was that that
has found yet, that this that
not, that at all, still is, that.

The expansion of a moment
in our being empty to it
is the substance of paradox.

You brought me to this.
I risk my life to write it,
inbetween, life and death.

© rjduberg, 2007

~Nadir or Zenith?

A singular annual period
of the bourgeois parade
is here again
pulling the new year,
hiding befuddled
behind it.

Nadir or Zenith?
The nativity scene, its logo.
I have no interest in the melee,
not a profiteer;
I sigh over the slime
faithful suffer.

(c) 2007, RJDuberg

~About This

The time is taken only about this
when conflict allies with its fate
the time taken to determine that
allows one's being such impasse.

Or is waiting for the next halting
no way to be, where not proceed?
Surely, we suffer what's ongoing
needing severe shocks for stopping.

The injustice from squinty eyes
clad and righteous, dogma hard
reminds no better, of how blind
ironic pretense, masks what's soft.

Without the support of the person
any and all criticism lacks a core
like media platitudes, a pablum
attractive only as a degradation.

Sure to annoy, this false alarm.

12/2007 RJD

~In The Land of Sigh

How a little of anything can matter
takes more of it than we can handle
and in between nothing we sigh
a sign the rough landing done.

One screw loose is a blessing,
still the mission is to hide
what people can't grasp,
the reverse expectation.

Same effort, just less of it
sighs when twist is out,
yet all our expectations
fit on the tight turn's end.

For freedom I grew less
and hiding expectation
looking goofy and some,
made my sighs an address.

One piece of candy
for the eye who spies,
who sees mystery unraveling
as I address the inconceivable sky.

Beggars here are mistaken.
They want the zoo of forgotten,
the void of unconscious,
the illusion of order inside.

Here inside is a twistless
flame kept alive, on purpose,
the friction, a pain of heat
what less known grows

in this land of sigh.

12/08 RJDuberg

Eventuality, a call for response

What if some relationships were free
sources of what is beyond the events
the horizons of relativity
makers of eventuality
the hum of the ho
the twist we'll always tell
has no reach but this question.

Science and religion are caught
but is art? The perception begs us
as that which cannot be thought.
Intuition and spirituality are spots
like pink elephants, flying anywhere.

Where is there? If it cannot be heard?
What comes of this transcedentalness
or any mystery eventually? Certainly,
what can make claims on it take aim
and are eventually sent along in force.

This mystery defies the entropic event
demands philosophical resolution
if not spiritual evolution or renewal.
And, all truth, is owing to this
which turns but itself is unturned.

Necessary, not eventual, can this much be said?
Is there any more to the puzzle of one's being?
Let this call be heard for all to submit theirs
Come give precision to this question, I ask.

Give us an empowering answer on eventuality, sir!?

~Once is Enough

When doing the dance again,
have your sole on the planet
in time to begin now instead.
Where you step to spin
illusion is but a friend
easing an imprisoned mind.

Harmony is the feeling
when we begin dancing
and find it’s always been
this dance never stopping.
Music that sings like Niagra
some mistake for the roar,
while the power whisks
like nothing else before.

And all that noise, all that sound
All those places to be found
Birds there, fly at the speed of sound
To show how it all began
they come from underground.

Isn’t the next natural disaster
just as likely a matter formed
not from a pesky butterfly
but from a move in behind
a noise at the speed of sound?

Around every corner
another chance there
not to the status quo
but to puzzle the mind.

Who knows what we’ll find
how much of our world
do we miss in the hiss
of our ignorant minds?

You’ll never get there from here,
if turning that corner
becomes a habit you like.
Right or wrong, logic sticks
like a ball and chain of prison.

Letting go must persist
if we are to be fully aware
of everything out there
in the perfect harmony.

To show how it all began
Birds came flying from underground
If you could see it then you’d understand
Oh, when you see it then you’ll understand.

2007, RJDuberg

There is some very close language in this to Coldplay's song, The Speed of Sound, which I wish to acknowledge. In fact, I wrote this poem with the purpose of it harmonizing with the lyrics of that song.

The Turn

Real heroism found in a consumer's package
is turned consumable by friction's heat
perfectly designed to hold its spin in balance.

What we eat, passes...
standards insuring health and taste
so the turn takes us from what degrades
leaving purity of the essence, a theory.

Spin will purposefully conceal the negative
in order to accentuate the positive.
So like racing into a fire is justice
when the child of innocence is there.

Those stories like the fastest vehicles
don't come without dangerous potentials
capable of putting one directly in harms way.
When justice cheats, anything is possible.

Unlike the flow of ordinary social life
the turns of justice are paradoxical challenges
under the radar of most understandings'
looking to validate judgement as righteous.

For the true heroes, how could their actions,
without doubt, awesome for being just,
ever be understood by interpretive mind?
Citations of precedence support illusion,
finite versions designed into legal rhetoric,
numbs precision of open curiosity
by substituting status and power, for choice,
reinforcing conformity and effective control.

Add humility to blindness, over the flames
of courage and heart. Justice comes
when acts appear as points of paradox, control spin
before it derails, and land injury before impact.

Making the turn of paradox happy
has no precedence
when by definition, anything is possible
so that man in his weakest condition
calls the shots without selfishness
precisely when selfishness precedes.
Justice knows no limit
able to stop all comers
who would rule the world.

That is doing justice,
the opportunity is an eternal choice.
Some are better at it than others,
they are the deified, the hero.
For the rest who feed and benefit
from their achievements,
dancing in the bend is a bumpy grind
as we stumble in the curve.

~D

Savin Gestaltin

What really amuses me
is the confusion, my best
friends take it from me
let me talk endlessly, I will.
Chatting by their confusion
on it, over it, through it, under-
standing but a_part of it all
fantasizing of my princess
named gestaltin, beauty
the ideal I adore.

Everything stops however
comes to an end exhausted.
still, remaining best friends
and; I, left solidly a part.
What pieces are these
then and now
if ever?

rj, 2007
in response to Nickelback's Savin Me, Susie's choice

With a Smile

Who came today while I was standing
surrounded by a garden, a playground
fun, beauty, and the green opportunity
it's my job to serve without deserving.

The reality of this existence pays me
lets my meanial work suffer an ecstasy
where life conforming to the mediocre
is traded a time for waggling paradise.

My job cleans away what travels along
coming in, going, coming out, I find
my purpose to separate what sticks
at the time, a sludge I love to hide.

Picking up what my mates let slide
somehow expands what only satisfies
a dance in harmony with cultivation
between the best in man with nature.

The planet came today with a smile.

(C) 2007, RJDuberg

Stream of Consciousness Poem - Lonely Press of Mine

Love to write of love,
to pen on absentia
proxy more than poetry
falls as cloud of feathers.

Words all pointing to being
from which they grew
and together somehow
plucked to fall and scatter.

Rapture or heartbreak
healing or celebration
conscious love is willing,
the core of music, who knew?

Before this aboding ends
some anathema arises
in fact two intervals occur
to divert or detour the love.

Self centered love ends
turning around sadness of loss
our one sacred gift, the sacrafice
an eternal scar remains for us.

(Writing for love is not
what is higher, pure feelt.
Standards and all rules
surround token in logic.)

As such, the copy feelt
usually defies the common,
negating understanding,
moving not but stranding.

The pain involved finds us
intrinsically absentia by proxy
the rise of human spirit
tests precisely one persistence.

When failing to make the turn
learning to expect future abyss
forgetting and calculating comfort
limitations and finite time to come.

Darkness grows ever more just then
If there is persistent opposing
painful proof of the old adage
shakes as dark, being worse when last.

We love and fail to communicate
while communicating is essential
and despite our understanding
we discover a bizarre incompetence.

Born of habituated need to judge
based on the edifice built by self
our capacity to love remains pain
until we end self-love's knowing reign.

The prick of this imprisoned existence
comes at the moment we forget not
that such higher states are given
to surrender, not achieved by plot.

This remembering of one's self
supported by separating knowing
from what is purely feelt
passes as space in a needle-eye.

To forget this and one's self
and to never quit accepting help
designed to wake one to not sleep
paradoxically succeeds just as well.

There are paths and ways to evolve
despite this poem's chaotic revelation
one cannot deny in closing with verse
ending as just adoring beautiful source.

If beauty takes a beholding eye, then
ugly basically is what passes us by
such that any notice recognizes justly
the consequence of our weak existence.

In truth, ugliness seen is beyond notice
like perceiving astrophysicist's black holes,
what in fact isn't seen is beyond seeing
and will never be seen, it's beauty no more.

Thus to write about love has equal footing
while love no more would spell our demise
our particular defect of sleep is mechanical
mental, emotional, physical, and instinctual.

Freedom from that known requires an edge
sharp enough, to cut through Gordian's knot
and a place to start as mentioned above
the sacred sorrow and death to self-edifice.

Realized as a possibility, the real work begins
for that moment of grace when gift is made
the glory for all those awake to accept it,
we prepare by increasing consciousness.

So it goes... this much I remember at least.
It helps not to judge anything, recognizing
role of logic in sustaining a safe beingness.
Uncorrupted, reason isn't feeling, as thought.

Ethically, proper reason is mediated by theory
the boundary between known and unknown
where limits express orders of chaos
the sine qua non encapsulated in roll of dice
which begs the most important spiritual issue,
being the work involved in reducing our evolution
based on luck, when lucky enough is not.

So, this is neither balanced composition
or in any rigorous measure, poetry.
Here are merely the ramblings of mine
looking even less prose for the stumbling.

Question remains of value about nature,
to suffice on extract and to cohere
into a concise statement for elucidation?
Or, like more useful bandages in general
ought the receptacle for these words
likewise be the same, including its hazards?


-rjd, 2007