Steve Abhaya (Brooks) – Poetry Prose & Art

March 20, 2009

Prepare to Dance

Filed under: Book,Poetry — Steve Abhaya @ 7:53 pm

Prepare to Dance Cover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prepare to Dance  is a small book of poems, written in 1993, a year after I got back from India, during which time I had seen myself surrender to myself, to Being Itself, and to the love of another. All of these surrenders mirror the same emptiness of intention. Recently, I thought to give a copy of Prepare to Dance to a woman friend, and, realizing that the poems are often addressed to a woman, I tried addressing them to a man, instead. The result is helpful, I think, in removing that gender hurdle for women who might want to read the poems as close to the heart as possible.  I include the two versions here.

 

Download here:

Prepare to Dance (She)

Prepare to Dance (He)

March 12, 2009

Savage Amusement

Filed under: Book,Non-fiction,Prose — Steve Abhaya @ 11:10 pm

Savage Amusement The Autobiography of a Semi-Unknown Semi-Genius - A Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist in San Francisco in 1975.

The Ocean in a Bottle

When I told you I was embarrassed

To know you so well as to become you,

I was confessing a terrible emptiness.

When I look down and see my cloudy

Transparency, I become afraid.

My yearning to be full doesn’t diminish you,

But makes you unbearably desirable.

I don’t see through you, like I said I did,

I can’t become you, I can’t fill myself with you.

If I alone ghost the space between us,

I will succeed only in vacating myself.

Sometimes, I’m lost outside my bones,

And I look so hard for them, I think I see

Other people’s bones beneath their flesh.

When I feel their bones and their flesh,

Temporarily, I quit looking for my own.

I find myself in being alone.

 

Download here:

Savage Amusement Introduction

Savage Amusement original

Savage Amusement

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