“The Ocean in a Bottle” is a small collection of poems that was my part of the poetry anthology “Five on the Western Edge,” from Momo’s Press (Stephen Vincent), published in ’77. Included in the anthology were myself (as Steve Brooks) Stephen Vincent, Hilton Obenzinger, Beau Beausoleil, and Larry Felson. It was Stephen’s idea that we, a diverse group of male poets, writing in the Seventies, would get together for a year before publication, talk, hash out, and mull over our various ways of living as writers in relationship with others and the world. It was a noble idea, but there wasn’t much open talk among us, as there might have been if Dr. Phil were present, but he wasn’t. Stephen wanted to call the book, “Five Disturbed Men,” but that was roundly rejected. Later, in my poetry satire, “The Blood and Turnips Poetry Festival”, I parodied that idea as “Five Disturbed Men on the Brink of Disaster.” I’ve reconnected with the others on facebook, but we are all as terse as ever in our non-confessional maleness. Poetry may be, as Stéphane Mallarmé, I think, once said, a way of saying what one has difficulty feeling, but open discourse is another matter, altogether.

Fall Awake

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Fall Awake

These 48 original watercolor paintings, 5” x 7” each, are, collectively, a small tribute to the art of Marc Rothko. I picked up a book of Rothko reproductions in Borders Books in Bettendorf, Iowa, one afternoon in ’04, and, sitting in the Borders Café, as I was preparing to write what became the book called “Mother”, Rothko’s art brought me to tears, surprising me, at the time.  I was in the Quad Cities, now called the Quint Cities, more specifically, Moline, Illinois, where I was born and raised, after my formative years in McCook, Nebraska. I was living with my mother in the last year of her life, taking care of her and writing about it. After my time with her, I left her in the care of my brother, John, who had been with her for two years before I was. On my return to Seattle, I began a series of paintings based on the square. This series is the result of that time.

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I Am

Sun is shining in its place as Sun, and here, now, Sun is shining in this place I am. Sun fills me with its heat and light, and I am made the same as Sun. Never thinking I am the Sun, I am Sun.

“The Wind blows,” we say, but Wind is Wind. Standing in Wind, like a fish swimming in the ocean, I swallow Wind, it swallows me, and I am Wind.

Earth, this land, this soil, this ground beneath our feet is lifted from itself by wind. Earth becomes scattered across the surface of itself, as I am scattered from my origin, across the surface of my life. I am Earth, I live apart from myself, I settle down to myself again.

Rain falls, as rainfall does, down upon the land and sea it rises above. My eyes rain from themselves, in brokenhearted memory of what’s been held close as my own self. I am the rain of a tear that falls to sorrow from sorrowing. I am this Rain that evaporates in the air, to fall again, when sorrow calls again. I am the rain of my raining. I am Rain.

I breathe in and out the Air that breathes me. I am the Air that fills and empties me. I am its vessel, its container, the shape of its strength. Air opens and drains my lungs. I taste its nectar. I am the shape of shapeless Air. Without Air, I am the shape of its destruction. I am the Air of my demise. I am empty Air, from which I breathe myself alive. I am no difference between in and out.

I am Water, as I seek the shape of my container. I seek my shape in myself, as flow seeks itself across the flat bed of a stream. As I level myself with any like me in my range. I am Water, in being round in round things, narrow in narrow things, spiral in spirals, wide in deltas.

I am true to myself in many forms. I am Water. I am Air. I am Rain. I am Wind. I am Sun.

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Contents

I Am

All Fall Down speaks of the state of awareness, the consciousness, and the thinking of a man in the time of letting go of desire, who discovers the romance of reality lurking beneath desire. This Romance of Reality also needs to be let go, in order to be clear of the attachment to living a certain way of life, so he can live in life itself.

“In 1992, I attended a concert in the meditation hall of the Osho International Meditation Center in Pune, India. The hall was a white marble floor as big as a football field, surrounded by netting, with a tented roof, surrounded by a jungle garden, surrounded by a complex, called by some Club Meditation.

Hundreds, both sannyasin and local, attended the concert, given by some of India’s most honored and revered musicians. It turned out the performers weren’t able to attend, and their children, nearly as well-known as their parents, carried on in their place.  In India, music is a family affair.

The stage was elevated, carpeted with beautiful rugs, and the show was introduced in Hindi and English, among other languages perhaps, since the ashram was visited by people from all over the world. After lavish introductions, the musicians assembled at their instruments; tabla, sitar, etc., and began to play. I sat with my friend, Suryo, and listened to the beautiful sounds.

I didn’t know what I was listening to, so I listened the way I might at any Western concert. I listened to hear songs, pieces of music, but what I heard had no demarcation, it simply went on, without apparent parts. After an hour, I thought I was listening to a long composition, and I anticipated an end, but none came. After two and a half hours, I had a different sense. I was led by the open-endedness of the music to the sense that I was inside the music. I was in a neighborhood of music, a park, a garden, an open space of sound. I felt free to wander around, to see what I could see, to smell and touch the music, to listen or not. The effect was not in any part of the whole, and it was not in the whole, it was in the environment.

All Fall Down is intended in a way to be something similar to that. All Fall Down was written as a long poem from many poems that became, here, many poems from one long poem, but the demarcations are almost arbitrary. There’s no need for them, or for the poetry, for that matter, except for the uses of form. Poetry is more easily digested in courses, even dishes or cups, but hopefully here, there’s an environment of awareness more cogent than any part or even more than the whole.

All Fall Down could be called teaching the unteachable to those who would learn the unlearnable, but there’s no intention to teach anything, and no intention to understand anything, either, except the un-understandable. There is an intention to be as clear as possible in language about that which has no language, using language to point in the direction of no direction, to distract from the lack of clarity in the use of the language the poem employs.

We have instruments to make music, but sometimes the effect can’t be assumed from the shape. Music can be made to accent the stillness in which it occurs. The luxury of music can become the environment in which it occurs, more than the definition of anything that occurs within it.  I invite you to ride along with this language and look at the scenery as it goes. Dance to the music, all fall down.”  Steve Abhaya

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All Fall Down Contents

All Fall Down

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.

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Prepare to Dance (She)

Prepare to Dance (He)

Savage Amusement

The Autobiography of a Semi-Unknown, Semi-Genius,

The Life of a Poet in San Francisco, in 1975. 

Longing for One in the Other

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.

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Savage Amusement Introduction

Savage Amusement

Nothing, a One-Man Show, is now available for viewing online at: http://mcooki.es/216521/

“Nothing” consists of a talk with the camera, i.e., whoever is watching, about what I experienced, doing my first two one-man shows, “Keep Talking”, in ’75, and “The Blood & Turnips Poetry Festival”, first performed in ’82. “Nothing” was recorded in Seattle in ’03.  My son, Jaxon Brooks, made this possible through his diligent effort and the facilities of his wonderful website, MilkandCookies.com, which I highly recommend for its insightful and often hilarious content.

I recently added The Ocean in a Bottle, my poems from the 1975 anthology, “Five on the Western Edge,” a collection put together by Stephen Vincent under his imprint, “Momo’s Press.” The anthology included me, as Steve Brooks, Stephen Vincent, Hilton Obenzinger, Beau Beausoleil, and Larry Felson. If you want their poems, you will have to squeeze them out of these fine poets, individually.

The page 57 Covers, on your right, provides a capsule view of what follows below on several pages. The most recent addition to this site is A Conversation Among Raindrops, now on this page. I have added a new version of Alone, on this page, also. A new drama, Fall Awake, is here, too. All Fall Down is also on this page. Just keep scrolling. Altered Egos, a book of brief, satirical biographies, appears on this site in a updated version, including contemporary characters. Use the Search box to your right to bring it to the front of the pack. Square Roots, a series of small paintings in tribute to big Marc Rothko, is new on this page. I Am is a collection of poems about this elemental life in which we find ourselves. Prose excerpts from Beyond Desire are included in the page to your right.

Below is a list of what can be found on this site; a wide variety of written work and art work, including poetry, prose, humor, journalese, zen consciousness, autobiography, satire, and a children’s book with illustrations. Art Work includes nothing but art. Fearless in Lucknow describes time in India with H.W.L. Poonjaji, also called Papaji, a tough, brilliant, 80 year old man with the eyes of a tiger, the heart of a lion, and the wisdom of unending stillness. The book leading up to that time is also included here, Ordinary Ecstasy, written in the ashram of the notorious guru, Osho Rajneesh, by someone who was not a devotee. Borderwalker is a story of a drunk poet who comes to a crisis of transformation. Mother is the story of taking care of one’s elder in her last year of life. Zenwords is a zenictionary of zensical and zenfound zenguage. Alone is a book of poetry that is also part of the prose poetry of A Prisoner’s Cave in Heaven. Two versions of All Fall Down are available here, one with open spacing, the other more conventional.

Steveabhaya.com makes it possible for these different kinds of work to be gathered in one place. I believe that creative work is completed by becoming the provenance of the reader. Work, that’s found a limited audience, can now be made available to a potentially unlimited audience.

If you don’t care to scroll through these pages, you can go to Search, to your right, and type in the name of the post you are looking for. This page will come up first, because it contains the name of the post, followed by the post itself. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and see the post. Voila!

There’s no absolute order to the postings, so I suggest you look down the list below to see what strikes your interest, or look at 50 Covers, and see what visually attracts your interest.

All artwork is by the author, except for the cover of The Exquisite Poet and The Blood & Turnips Poetry Festival Anthology, by Alexandra Benjamin, the cover to The Zen of Housepainting, by Chris Blum, and the paintings that accompany The Lonely Lion, by Christine Schibly. The cover photo for Fearless in Lucknow was taken by Michael Schiesser. The artwork that accompanies Let’s Spend Some Time Together is by Gregory Vose.

Steveabhaya.com now contains these complete posts:

Fearless in Lucknow, 53 pages, prose, up close with a teacher, H.W.L. Poonja (Papaji) Lucknow, India, 1994

A Conversation Among Raindrops, 55 pages, prose poems of awareness, 1993

The Ocean in a Bottle, 26 pages, excerpt from Five on the Western Edge, Momo’s Press, ’75

Alone, 117 pages, poetry, 2007

Fall Awake, 56 pages, drama, 2010

Square Roots, 48 paintings, art, 2005.

I Am, 48 pages, poetry, 2009.

All Fall Down, 55 pages, poetry, 2009 (also 62 pages, open text)

Prepare to Dance, 32 pages, love poetry, 1993.

Savage Amusement, The Autobiography of a Semi-Unknown, Semi-Genius, a poet’s life in San Francisco, 212 pages, journal prose, 1975

Borderwalker, 55 pages, parable of loss and redemption, 1989

Never Mind Gertrude Stein, 200 drawings with aphorisms, 1982

I Became a Florist to Run for the Roses, 25 pages, humor, 2001

The Boy Who Named Himself, 8 pages, fable, The Carlton Hotel, Lucknow, India, 1992

Spike’s Eye View, 80 Cartoons for children and others, 2000

The True Story of  Zenman, 98 drawings with captions, 2001

Music Night, 13 pages, abstract art and poetry, mid-Nineties in the Honey Bear Bakery Café in Seattle.

The Cartoon Kid, 76 cartoons, 2000

Big Head Theatre, 202 satirical drawings, 2001

Café Life, 117 pages, Life in the Owl and Monkey Café, SF, 1991

Café Faces, 60 drawings of café patrons, done at various times

Pardon My French, Illustrations of French Colloquialisms, 1995

Let’s Spend Some Time Together, drama, Intersection Theatre, 1972

Art Work, paintings and drawings, 1990 to the present

I’m Alive, 29 pages, drama, Seattle Playwrights Festival (Honorable Mention) 1990

Joni, 45 pages, biographical prose, 2002

Fleshy Blue Boat, 55 pages, poetry, 1972, light, early poems

Fierce Tranquility, 101 pages, a journal of inner discovery, 1989

Being Itself, 78 pages, prose poems of awareness in being, 1993-2008

Death, 39 pages, poetry, 2000

The Exquisite Poet, 51 pages, poetry, 2008

Regina, 52 pages, biographical prose, 2002

101 Ways to Avoid Reading Self-Help Books, 11 pages, suggestions, 1996

Philip Blanc in San Francisco, 6 pp, light surreal poems, drawings, Panjandrum Press, 1972

Walking in Ellensburg, 42 pages, poetry  on the streets of a small town, Ellensburg, Washingon,  2008

The Zen of Housepainting, 11 pages, prose, from City Miner Magazine, 1982

Half Past Kissing Time, 104 pages, novella, 2000, sequel to SWIMMING

The Cock Poems by Georgio Vesta, 17 pp, poetry, Love Lights Magazine, 1974

Ordinary Ecstasy, 157 pages, journalese, written in and around The Osho International Meditation Center, Pune, India, 1991-1992

The Lost Poems of Jesus, 45 pages, poetry, 1993, Talking Raven Magazine, ’94

Eternal Ruse, 44 pages, poetry, 1985

Minnie the Mermaid, 20 pages, fictional prose, short story, 1990

The Blood & Turnips Poetry Festival Anthology, 42 pages, satirical poetry and art, 1978, compiled after the one-man show of the same name, Intersection Theatre, The Precita Park Café, and other venues, 1978-88

The Lonely Lion & All the Animals from A to Z, 26 pages, children’s stories and art, 2001

Mother, 608 pages, prose, taking care of an elder parent, 2004

Zenwords, 141 pages, prose, redefining words in Zenthink, 1999-2008

Dear Nadja, 179 pages, autobiography that parallels the fiction of Borderwalker, 1982

SWIMMING, 145 pages, coming of age fictionalized autobiography, 1989

Altered Egos, 171 pages, prose, invented satiric biographies of the famous, infamous, and legendary, 2007

A Prisoner’s Cave in Heaven, 378 pages, contemporaneous prose combined with the poetry of Alone, 2007

I Spilled Coffee on the Buddha, 58 pages, imaginative poems and art, 1991

In the Garden of Fugitive Souls, 40 pages, surrealist poetry, transliterations of the poetry of Rimbaud, Breton, and Lorca, 1976

The Dancer in the Heart, 89 pages, poetry, 6 paintings, Philos Press, 2001

The Queen of the Rhumba, 50 pages, poetry in the city, 1980

Invisible Lion, 137 pages, autobiographical prose, starting over, 1985

San Francisco Snapshots, 68 pages, short poems, written on the street, 1974

The Roomless Room, 30 pages, poetry, after a heart attack, 2002

]]> http://steveabhaya.com/2009/03/01/books-art/feed/ 0 Abhaya Windows on Art Four Fingers http://steveabhaya.com/2009/02/25/being-itself/ http://steveabhaya.com/2009/02/25/being-itself/#comments Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:13:11 +0000 Steve Abhaya http://steveabhaya.wordpress.com/?p=482 ]]>

Being Itself is a compilation of a particular kind of interior language, written after I got back from India, after enjoying the presence and the awareness of H.W.L. Poonja, who was a teacher I didn’t seek but found. In his presence, I saw another human being speak what I knew to be true. In his presence, I witnessed doubt, that I didn’t know I carried, disappear. I’m not a disciple of his, and he’d be happy to know that, because he sought no disciples. His teaching, called Advaita, is the practice of no practices. These writings are as close to the kind of language that would exist if there were no religion, as far I am able to make them. Papaji said to me, ‘Nobody has ever been able to describe this, but don’t stop trying. You are a writer. Write from the source.’ He meant that I write as one who was not separate from the source, as the source speaking. I saw him speak, not as one speaking about being to others, but as being speaking to being. In his presence, I saw love pouring out toward itself. I’ve never seen that as clearly, in any other human being, before or since, but I believe it is the natural state of our existence and not confined to the people we hold up as teachers, gurus, and masters. If it’s true for anyone, it’s true for everyone.  I have meant this writing as awareness itself speaking to one who is ready to live in his or her own awareness, because that’s how it came to me. That experience has lead me to address myself and the reader as you. This is the writing of one person who is open to his awareness, the same as anyone might be, so you is you, and me, and everyone else.

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Being Itself