A poem I wrote for my then-love, Kathy, after my meeting with HHDL, in Pasadena, few years back...Terrorist threat to HHDL was real; I talked with Secret Service/Dept. of State people there, a suspicious package had been recovered from under the stage, the Rinpoches seat...I was fortunate enough to be a guest rinpoche, just as I have been fortunate enough to have been deeply in love with several women in my life )okay, 6, but for several years each, i.e., Im a serial monogamist)...No joking, after the conference, I was walking back to the apartment of Kathys son, teaching in Pasadena through AmeriCorp, and the cops on Harleys, official vehicles and a limo passed me; down rolled the window, and there was HHDL, glass of Cabernet in hand, giggling (its HIS giggle, very distinctive), saying, Viva Tamo! Nobody, despite all their intentional pain and suffering inflicted, can ever take that moment from me... The Fullness of Time “Vow to Take Advantage of All Idle Hours”ii [subtitle: In Praise of Manjushri’s Holy Name ] An announcement from the little box airport speakers in the honeycomb overhead— that my flight was to be forty minutes delayed, the voice practiced though strained, made me think of you... Our time we’d thought might be nice together having been postponed three times running... Breathless before me you’d appeared, in one hand a valise, student paper stuffed, in the other a pair of tall-heeled platform shoes… Here, looking out through the airport windows, I see a lone gull flap to the tarmac— some mashed morsel at which it pecks a long beak before flying off— away from the vortex of flashing silver blades housed in gray aluminum, the whining engines of my jet... Sitting over the massive turbine with its incredible thrust, I feel the low insistent mumbling of the wheels gather the plane to its leap... Years ago, I remember gazing through library glass at the tall evergreens nearby— high atop one, bending with peril, was a squirrel, tail swishing in pre-flight... Then four limbs out reaching for the other top so high above... Just days ago, another squirrel merely a foot from earth claws deeply dug into cedar bark— though upside down, perpendicular to the ground—the gap to the next tree trunk, though merely two feet or so, too far to go... Eyes frozen (sometimes, like yours)… The weekend before my trip we watched the sun dip behind Mount Tamalpais, heard the row of tall trees lining your marina pier come alive with deep, gutteral wok, wok, wok’s as this rookery of the black-crowned night herons tucked necks into stocky bodies, and— apparently not knowing they’re endangered— flapped off in search of fish... Earlier we were with your son and friends putting in a small skiff, past a gull sitting like a sentinel on an easeway pole (the birdhouse beneath long abandoned). Wide-eyed sea lions on the weathered dock— sunbathing, astounded at our sudden apparition— rolled lethargic bulk into sudden grace, nimbly slipping into the safety of the cool deep sea… Choppy swells in the bay— the big yachts nearly swamping us— we watched the four Blue Angels jets, precise in the bright sky above… Later, alone, our lovemaking as tender and delicate as those inquisitive whiskers on each sweet-faced seal… As I pulled you closer in embrace, some ancient power (like a bear’s?) surged, arcing protectively over my strong back… As the sweetness of our orgasm filled us with light, grief like lightning flashed across my dandien… Or dandeenie as you call that area so vital to my martial arts—center of powerful chi, between navel and secret place, poles of being (perhaps?), umbilical cord and penis… Of itself my breath caught—something I know I’m past hope of ever explaining to you… “And manhood is called foolery when it stands Against a falling fabric.”iii Cleopatra, already famed for her enchanting ways, met Marc Anthony in a chamber redolent with 2,000 red rose petals... Another legend has Aphrodite torn by thorns in her haste to comfort her lover Adonis—gored by a rampaging cutty black sow... her divine blood adding the flush of beauty to the roses formerly just white. As a man I share too the fretted fortunes that made Marc Antony, by turn, valiant and dejected...giving him hope and fear of what he has, and has not...iv I too have faced the inevitable prosecution of disgrace and horror, the unmaking of oneself into mere scuttlebutt for the imperial bureaucrats like the boy tyrant Augustus, left by default to describe for all history a scene of foolery— though a painful warrior famoused for fight, though no fool for fancy, nonetheless from the books of honour razed quite, and all the rest forgot for which he toiled .v So, did you plant the bomb? I turn to see some schmarmy-faced Chinese man— little boy giggling, with squinty beads of eyes pounding the back of a pony-tailed, aging hippie who, vacant-eyed, shit-eats his grin… We’re on break from my conference— in the cool tiled lobby, my thoughts are with the Dalai Lama’s remark, earlier—about some dwellers of Hell Bardos being afflicted with jackass ears. Though he laughed when discussing, special diplomatic security stand all about, looking nervous (rumors of a bomb threat). I find myself scowling, admonishing, “You shouldn’t joke around that way.” Not ten feet away, An irate woman has hunch-shouldered a breach through the velvet event robes and is arguing with the diplomatic security. This woman’s mumbling condescension making her, too, look more pig-headed by the moment… Groovy Baby and Schmarmy Face remark, “Ooo-ooh, how heavy!” With a faint smile I find myself defending the safeguarding, “…because of terrorism” “Hey, it’s all karma, man” chimes Groovy Baby—his pal Schmarmy Face—little beads of spittle flying—adds, “Yeah, just takes time to ripen…” Seated again I listen to the Dalai that afternoon—my mind meditatively wanders through deep-seated fatigue. When we wrap, I pass the sun-cystalline`d fountain and board a bus for downtown L.A. Copper-hued, chromed windows of the cooling canyons about me deepen; I’m awaiting the Big Blue Santa Monica. Brooks Brother grey, an armor-plated Humvee skids squealing around the corner. Greasy food wrappers swirl, resettle. At the Getty Center my fascination with the blue and green hues of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Irises” is interrupted by my remembering the younger Getty’s ear, severed, sent in a box, by brigands, to a seemingly unconcerned Getty patriarch… On another level is a painting once commissioned by a Renaissance Italian judge to hang behind him in court: Titled “Divine Retribution,” the work features sweetly-souled large-eyed Divine Vengeance, holding a blazing torch, and Divine Justice, brandishing sword and scales… below a man, caught in moonlit surprise, eyes choked with the cold pale fires of betrayal, frozen muscles unable to flee from the lifeless form of a fallen brethern… The next morning I walk a city park— back in Pasadena, before my flight; in its center a massive oak, beneath are branches— knotted and encrusted, upwards entangling (dark as Buddha’s hair) into open space— leaves having dropped as an autumn blanket… lambent, still, with last night’s big round harvest moon… Red, gold, aureate, now sun-bleached ochre and mocha-tan— the leaves dried sweetness rustling softly as breeze… Again the jet turbines power up to speed— yet for this, my return, the deep sonorous rumbling is like the Dalai, chanting sutras… We nose up into a dunnish mass of early morning fog, water-pregnant and thick… Later, as we bank over a sea scalloped and glistening like molten lava I will gaze down at the foothills below, saffron mountains, basking in the immutable sunlight; jack pines and cypress dotting just the weatherly slope (like the mold coming to rest on the hollow concrete platforms giving rise to your marina’s houseboats). At 33,000 feet, the flight’s arc a tiny dot gliding over the low mountains, those rugged convolutions of time… Like ridges I made for you— tracing my fingers in your sand tray to form a mandala, placing sail boats, feathers, crystals, the books you gave me, one of erotic poetry, the other glockenspiel in Munich, the Dachau concentration camp in the sands, too, around a smiling Buddha… But for now the fog streaks like tears down my window; finally like that gull, we break free into the stillness of flight... The bright orange globe of an awakening sun appears—a universal monarch ruling over the fog bank—whorled, ridged, convoluted as a conch shell, milky-white, combed as flaxen wool so gentle… So far below.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 03:01:16 +0000
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