Soul

Soul 1

Where mechanism is sufficient
Where spirit longs to be incarnate
therein lies Soul

Where prose is too explicit
Where the silence needs body
therein lies Soul

Where spiritual terminology
and rational explanation
remain distant
And yet a song wells up
unexpected
Soul

There is no Soul
says shrill science
There is only spirit
says disincarnate spirituality
There is only nothing
says anxious existentialism

And yet I have only to look
at the lines on your face
to know that great Soul lives there

I have only to see
river tree and rock
to know that a great Soul inhabits

I have only to see
the ruined urban landscape
to know that Soul has been damaged

What proof?
Proof is for idiots
you only have to open your eyes
and feel a tightness in your heart
to know that everything caught in metal
is reaching for Soul

I’m not saying that Soul is something
that can be put in your microscope -
that will give you a reason, a handbook for living

No, instead Soul will invite you to enter the living world
and leave the dead one, that world of windy abstractions
and dead architecture

For Soul lives in the visible and the invisible world
in substance and form
and yet is not substance and form

Soul causes
an arrest of mechanism
and tosses you on the shores of wonder

There is a world of Soul
even as soulless principals trap the flesh in invisible cages
But I am not fooled, I see you, I see your living Soul

You have looked everywhere for answers
everywhere but here:
in your living Soul

You have looked to social workers and experts
to have run to the monasteries, confessed to priests
you have looked everywhere but the root

You have asked the pundits, the ministers
the reformers, the ‘people’
you have looked everywhere but Soul

Why did you find nothing there:
In that place called soul?

Because of readymade answers
because you couldn’t listen
because you were accustomed to a sterile edifice
And too ashamed of nakedness

and because Soul is too fine see
to subtle to capture
Because Soul is shattered by truism
killed by inherited opinion

And yet it never left you: your Soul
It only required that you listen
to that prior unity
those heavenly spheres
to that primal song

Soul 2

What is Soul?
Does some meta-personality
or Ubersoul exist somewhere?
And does it matter?

No, the soul that I speak of
Is not an object
is nor a subject
is not a thing
nor is it precisely You

The soul may be a flame
but it is also water
the soul may be wind
but it is also space
the soul may be spirit
but it is also earth

Is this inaudible to you
the word soul?
does it offend your Buddhist theology
Your utopian nihilism
your slavish skepticism?

Perhaps what I am saying
is too simple
that you deem it occult?
For the simple
is often the hardest to understand

The problem is you believe
too much in words
and not enough in Soul
you believe too much in reason
and not enough in Sense

you believe too much in the servant
and not enough in the muse
you believe too much in objects
and not their divinity

And so you remain there
on the periphery
because you have argued yourself
into a fixed position, a theology of nihilism

And so you believe that there is nothing to believe
and with such a force and vehemence
you defend your position
of soulnessness

will you let that flame burn uncontrollably
or instrumentalise it?
or you can give it your care and attention
or try to bind it with machines

Will you notice it, care for it,
keep it a fine and transparent flame?
or will you mine it and gut it
deny very nature
which is to provide warmth?

Or will you by magic
turn soul into blood money
a pit of bituminous death
or a nuclear fire?

There are so many ways in which
the soul is raped here
There are so many ways in which

soul is weeping
and yet that flame
never abates
never goes out
even as it transmigrates

For soul does not abide control
nor does it abide inattention
soul does not abide machine
nor does it abide casualness

Have you seen fine still flame
have you felt it run through channels
inside you?
can you feel its simultaneous
warmth and coolness
how it abides within
like a lover that only needs your steady attention?

Your soul is looking for a door
to its open country
Your soul gentle whispering

what is your souls demand?
what is your souls reason?
what is your souls music?
what is your souls family?
what is your souls method?
what is your soul ache?
what is your souls fight?
what is your souls peace?
what is your souls hunger?
what is your souls other?
what is your souls ecstasy?
what is your souls shape?

Where is your souls country?
and can you abide there?

Soul 3

Are you waiting for your soul
to be released from its cage?
Are you waiting for deaths trumpets?
Have you named the world a stain?

No, let’s be done with those unkind theologies
and find again Whitman, Rilke, Cummings
poets who love tanglewood and flowers.

For Soul needs wine, Soul needs intoxication
not that poison vinegar called ideology
not those machine like men who rule a vacuum

Soul needs to bow deeply
not to ciphers not to machines
but to those living things, and those bright beings
who are slightly mad from brushing with the angel

The soul needs proud Walt Whitman
The nurse of men, Adam in the flesh
that infinite tenderness of twilight
the one who affirm both pulsating life and receding death
the phallus and the womb

The soul needs You
brief apparition, unique constellation
Leaning towards fire and flower
,
You, my Soul, who were born
In dust mots and sunlight
Will you continue somnolence?
Will you be timid here
where everything is lost?

Or will you stand unburdened and blushing
with penis and vagina awake
before your Lord?

Have you not seen the promise?
have you not seen fullness of 10 o’clock sun?
have you not conquered the afternoon?
have you not ridden twilights horses?
have you not fucked the midnight beast?
have you not been prosaic and absurd?
have you not burnt your book of love?
and then began composing it
all over again in the smoking dawn?

Will you not do absolutely anything
for that One?
even as she spits into your eye
and smashes your eyeglasses?
Are you not the number one fool?
and yet proud somewhere of your inability
To full adhere
Will you not continue to wrestle
that bitch of society and all of her phantom armies?

Haven’t you
my Soul realised yet
that She can’t be vanquished
that it will go on as before
but that it doesn’t matter
for you are drunk again before the Lord

And can you turn that poison into nectar?
be truly indifferent to circumstance
because the world flows though you…?

Can the twilight shadows in the tree and the screaming birds
be sufficient to seal your wonder
and your ardor and your faith?

Will this interrogation awake You
You my soul, that is sufficient
that is ever dynamic, ever in rapture
ever sealed in living flame?

Oh soul, awake! And again. And again

Soul 4

What soul can be found in the machinations?
In that place of contraction and concept
in those constructions of fear and loathing?

But if you begin to dismantle the edifice
Soul comes running
Like a child to its mothers skirts

That soul comes in the gaps
In the empty spaces
Where the landscape is noble
Where there is one scrub tree
one rock and maybe one mad seagull

The Soul is not shy of
places of hard weather
When the winds are free
To run through the smashed
Windows of consciousness

Soul comes when mind falls into the Heart
when the excess
Falls away like hollow bark
And the newborn tree stand before
It’s Virgin winter

Verily Soul has no location
For it depends on the hearts eyes
for it can be found
even in our devastated abode
even in this Moloch city
As green shoots break though black tar

Soul is rarely found in opulence
But in another kind of luxury
Those ornaments on bare skin that do not hide
But reveal some of the beauty

Soul departs in the face
of human avarice and flees from
places of machine architecture
And sterile religion
And those places of no Soul
Soul is the most fine intimacy
the most painful joy
The most delicate return
Of leaf to ground
The rising breast
The swelling sea
The primordial ground
That is Soul

Or at least Soul is what I call
The nameless unity
That primal music
That Soul

To have a Soul
Is an absurd idea
For it is the very ground
The very origin

And soul is never in our possession
But something that is given away

Soul can’t be found by searching
But is revealed in undoing
In unbuttoning
In the erotic gesture
rather than the mechanical one
In the animated jest
In that thrust toward union

And the discovery of
the blushing roses of
provocationIn that place of contraction and concept
in those constructions of fear and loathing?

But if you begin to dismantle the edifice
Soul comes running
Like a child to its mothers skirts

That soul comes in the gaps
In the empty spaces
Where the landscape is noble
Where there is one scrub tree
one rock and maybe one mad seagull

The Soul is not shy of
places of hard weather
When the winds are free
To run through the smashed
Windows of consciousness

Soul comes when mind falls into the Heart
when the excess
Falls away like hollow bark
And the newborn tree stand before
It’s Virgin winter

Verily Soul has no location
For it depends on the hearts eyes
for it can be found
even in our devastated abode
even in this Moloch city
As green shoots break though black tar

Soul is rarely found in opulence
But in another kind of luxury
Those ornaments on bare skin that do not hide
But reveal some of the beauty

Soul departs in the face
of human avarice and flees from
places of machine architecture

And sterile religion
And those places of no Soul

Soul is the most fine intimacy
the most painful joy
The most delicate return
Of leaf to ground
The swelling sea
The primordial ground
That is Soul

Or at least Soul is what I call
The nameless unity
That primal music
That Soul

To have a Soul
Is an absurd idea
For it is the very ground
The very origin

And soul is never in our possession
But something that is given away

Soul can’t be found by searching
But is revealed in undoing
In unbuttoning
In the erotic gesture
rather than the mechanical one
In the animated jest
In that thrust toward union

And the discovery of
the blushing roses of
provocation

Soul 5

Dear Soul: remain steadfast
for you will offend orthodoxy
while some will know you are faithful

And you will be branded a heretic
though you have made your confession
and done the daily absolutions

And you have only strayed
when you have wandered into
lockjaw dogma, when you lay down on the lawns of power
when you were smug or pretended to ‘teach’
when you lusted after high office
when you sought applause

Dear soul the true applause
is just this silence
this moment of communion
with leaf and star

Dear soul, I never meant anything by
the word Soul, but music
that is the music that is between us
in its harmony and dissonance

For the dissonance only comes
when there is some fixed position of certainty is held on too
when monomania grips us

But even that is good, for without dissonance
there is no music

For precision needs to be matched with warmth
the flame needs to be guarded with loving attention
there is no need to preach anything
for Soul knows it’s path, it’s reason, it’s ecstasy

You still object to the word Soul
because it doesn’t belong to your ‘system of thinking’
but that system of thinking was made
to jailbreak all abstraction, anything that is too readily ‘believed in’

Well, yes I agree. There are a million fake teachers out there
trying to sell you some toxic substance called ‘Soul’ or ‘Atman’

But, how, dear soul is that any of my concern?
For I have heard the music of Soul
on the lips of a great singer.

I have heard that unified word
the rooted word, the word that is utterly orthodox
and yet totally free in its utterance

For faith in That has no words
nothing that you can call Soul
Nothing that you can argue with
No position, no adherence, no violence
Except Loves reason

So, how are any of those other ‘teachers’ any of my concern?
I won’t parrot those words of membership anymore
for the Soul’s music is my concern

The work, the discipline, the Sila
is that other wing, that other bird
Yes, that is true

But there is also Redness and Blueness
as well as Whiteness
ingredients of Soul hearty soup

Yes, it’s true that too many ingredients -
too many philosophies — make a toxic substance
a real ugly stew.

But, how dear Soul is that any of my concern?
for I have heard a great Soul singer
who can speak without narrowness
or provincialism, and who can dance in the pit

And now I only long only for that
that Sweet Soul music
not some other kind of music!

The only song she ever knew
The only thing that ever turned her on
The only thing she ever told me
In a nunshell was:

Gimme some of that
That
That sweet soul music!

This is not negotiable
I am not asking
This is a command, she said.

For how she loathed
those abstractions!
How she longed
to be free from that mentation and
mechanical music!

How receptive she was
when I lit the match!

Soul 6

Dear Soul?

Why do you come to me under such circumstances?
Though each day I deny you and then beg for your forgiveness?
What is this shame at the core of my being
This denial of its very source?

And though I often speak of you in the highest possible terms
In truth I deny you terribly, continually.
And have traded you for lesser things
Dollars and deeds, never bothering to read the fine print

Oh soul, but none of that was ‘me’
It was just a dark dream, that deal I made at the crossroads
Not the devil who taught me to play the guitar
But You, my very soul, the life giver

Now, I can no longer be mute
I can no longer play those deadly scales
I can no longer be so totally fake
So falsely humble and debased

That is why I am arrogant enough
to write this graffiti on the skulls walls
to throw these words
into the cyberspace din

Because somehow I know
That you will find this message in a bottle
And that I will once again see your face
That I will once again find your body of truth
my soul, my heart, this one true matter
For now I can no longer be silenced by anyone but You

Oh, soul, Oh fullness
Oh sunlight that is still visible in the pale morning sun
Do you think I do not remember
your tangled hair, that waterfall

Do you think that I have forgotten
That day you shot me to the very core
Now, even though I have no visible proof, no evidence
I know that you are right here in these very words

Dear soul, if I must be a beggar
Let me stand tall, in all the rags of time
Dear soul, if I must be a vagabond
Let there be some kind of poetry here in
this beauty of wasteland

Oh, the beauty of this abandoned lot
of this broken pot and vine
of this vacant space where
the fine golden light of autumn
subsumes the wreckage

Dear soul if I have wasted my life
up to this moment, then let there be just
one moment of union, and let that be sufficient
to break the whole world cycle of confused wanderings

Oh dear soul Let this hard case break open
let me learn to love the faces behind the shadows
let me learn non-manipulation
let me learn to be animated by grace
and not mechanism
truth and not hubris
goodness and not sentimentality
vision and not dreams

Dear soul? Why do you come to me under such circumstances?
For I have continually missed the mark
I have wilful forgotten
I have gone into self exile
I have taken to that burning highway
where there was nothing but
terrifying apparitions
shouting ‘Wake! Oh wake! My soul’

Dear soul, no I didn’t listen
I continued to shuffle my feet like all the rest
and to be drawn towards
the slaughterhouse of Souls

Dear Soul, I am laying on that table
like Abrahams son
I have been on that cold table
for a long time, waiting for the blade

But God, he was lying
playing a dirty trick
Dear soul I never liked that story
I never liked those ways and means

Dear soul, is it not time
to forget the table, the knife, the killer God?
And can we not just
be forgetful in Love?

Oh soul all that is ever needed is
the end of false sacrifice
the birth of magnanimous generosity

Dear soul
can we not dance tonight
even here
in this rag tag place
in this lost tavern
at the edge of the universe?

Dear soul
Can we not dance?
Dear soul
I am not too proud to ask
Dear soul
Will you not be
my dance partner?

Soul 7

I can’t tell you what Soul is
There is only the perfume, seeds in the air, light refractions
hints of Souls magnitude

Nowadays people don’t really believe in Soul
but they believe in other phantasmagoria
dark magic they call science and management and religion

Never mind, it is no use to argue against the vehemence
of those who march in the devolution of man to machine
They still have to meet Soul, they will still come to meet dust
still they will still be disassembled

And even those who are golden, who are magnanimous
may be found in dark role plays
because they have become to machinated
and they long for that Soul

But I say that Soul is swift, that it swiftly goes
to its own source, that you can only create a space of freedom
where Soul can crystallise into a liquid sail or a swan

Soul comes with letting consciousness fall into perception
in letting the colour red and the colour blue
be unnamed

For soul is in the un-naming of things, in the letting things
be in their own nature, in the direct and purely intelligent
outside of dependence on world systems

I do not know what is your Soul, what are you hands
your long hair, your tiny feet, the way you suddenly
dance your way into existence

I do not know and any attempt
to pin you down, has always lead to disaster
Because dear Soul, I cannot name you, I cannot mine you of your substance
You are forever full, forever liberated

Soul, I can only call on you. I can only shout!
even if my fingers are tapping, and my mouth is silent
may these crystallisations be shattered
and return to what is fluid and potent

Soul, you are not some kind of misty illusion
In truth you are diamantine, hard, cutting in all directions
The 3am wolfish hour of return
The peace of innocent humanity swooned in cool dark sleep

Soul you are that location where mind falls into heart
where technique falls into grace
where life is entirely full to the brim
and yet all the forms are transparent and fall into each other
(for they are always falling into that mysterious
filling up and emptying of souls)

Oh Soul you are much finer than flesh
and yet body is the symbol
Oh soul let that flesh return
to a soulful place
Let it be conscious of its own suffering and joy
Let it be Soul

Let them wake from that dream of death
of shuffling and half life, of it’s magazines
and deathly waiting rooms

Let Soul once again return and meet Soul
in that palace where Soul abides
and sends it’s command to everywhere and every Soul

Soul 8

What individual Souls?
What unique constellation is not contingent
and utterly vulnerable?

Therefore why do you praise machines
and not the sun and Moon?
Why do you worship logic
and not her mysterious reasons?

Don’t you see that all of those systems are bankrupt?
That the universal language is butchered and hackneyed

Should you not look for Souls living texture
And not her ciphers?

That there is no ‘individual freedom’ either
We are only singular in the sense
Of I between You
in meeting Other
In the middle space

You can never meet yourself
or shake our own hands
And yet in our solitude we meet
That’s our paradox

Oh Soul how I am bored of conversation
How I want to undress you
How I want to throw all those contraption you use on the floor

How I want your shining nakedness
So that in beholding you life is no longer
A prison but a field of wild prairie grasses

For the soul is found in the beholding
Even more than the dark embraces
In that infinite moment before falling in to sleep

Can we remain there in the souls domain?
How easily we fall back into
mediocre conversation, into orgasm and forgetting

Is there a domain where
The horses keep running even in our sleep?
Yes, I’ve seen it and I can tell you that
There is no ‘hereafter’ because
There is no time or death there.

I saw it this morning a little bird
spoke of it, and her throat was full
Of bright soulful sound

The rumors She spreads are true
There is such a place of pure intimacy
Even here where all seems to be lost

Oh soul lift us up
Oh soul inhabit us
Let us be You and not us
Not these petty games of rising and falling

Oh soul let us be virtue itself
Let us be forgiving let us be magnanimous
So that we can enter
You domain of truth

Oh soul come to us in our weariness
Come when we are falling apart
Come when we are sickened by rape and rat race

Come when spontaneous flowers
Start to bloom from the corpses
of our reason why
When music becomes the
Answer to our resistance

For I have heard that music
I have seen giant wings
rise from a grey bird

Oh soul do not listen to those voices
Of smallness, you do not need them
You have Souls permission

To be monumental
It is your birthright
To be Soul and not machine

You have soul’s permission
To verticality and flight
To be fully erect
And to penetrate souls mystery

Soul 9

Oh soul, let me be inconsolable
until I truly inhabit you
for those with nothing
and those with too much
for those who play games of power
and those who are truly powerless

There are those with a golden voice
who long for violence and self negation
There are those who are ragged
and yet love with every breath

Oh soul, there are so many types
in this world, so many mysteries
let us not fall into their traps, let us not play
those sadomasochistic games

How brilliant are we at clothing our demons
as angels, of putting a smile on death
How brilliant is that schizophrenic heart
that apparent grace, the hidden cruelty
How easily we are fooled

There are bright lights in which we wander
like moths, but the Soul has another light
that can’t be easily seen in this din

Oh soul, how perverse is the human soul
and yet how, sweet in forgetfulness
How bounded by contraption
how afraid of nakedness

How the human, keeps its pet beasts
hidden in the dark, how it lets the darkness fester
when just one match
would illuminate the whole horror show

Oh soul let me be inconsolable,
Let me never be content, with these conventions
of sleep and entertainment
of work and dollars

Let my suffering be awake
and not transmuted into dark hidden games
Let pleasure not be mixed by
perverse desire for power and a name

Oh soul, I am inconsolable
that some love dollars so much more than they love You
Oh soul I am inconsolable
That one could err so deeply

Oh my soul, this heart is all knotted and tight
it bleeds for everyone
Oh soul better to bleed than to become
and empty shell, a plastic smile

Oh soul, the hearts of men are full of monsters
you would go mad if you saw these things
How people quietly cultivate
their own negation

Oh soul, may I be mindful
of those monsters in myself
and cut the weeds when they become too dense

Oh soul, may we become more thirsty for
meaning and beauty
and less for the chemical slime
the cheap fucking
and death trap called success

Oh that is not success, it is a terrible thing
to be make a representation, a figurehead
The only success is to live in this world
With soul, with meaning, with loves reason

Oh soul we all to some extent are
Seemingly bound to the soulless lie for mere survival
Oh soul, it all was written long ago
the fates, have told that story

But who will be still enough to embrace you
when the armies of unconsciousness are legion
now there are more and more
sophisticated manners and techniques of asleep

Oh soul, there is a wakeful life
there is sweetness
there is a manner of living
that is not slavery and domination

And there is a way of loving
of bowing down before the other
in true appreciation and outrageous joy

Oh soul, let me wash your feet
let me be clothed in you virtue
I’ll even be ‘religious’ without creed, or name,
or violence or ideal

And let this life be an offering
and not puppet game
A miracle and not an acquisition
human and not mythology

Oh soul, let us be magnanimous and forgiving
even to those monsters
they have devised their own
punishments, they don’t need our prisons

Oh, soul… Let me hear your voice
let me see your face
let me turn off the tv, the internet, the movie
those endless voices
which clamour in us
Soul my greatest offering to you
is silence… and sometimes

a tear.

Soul 10

Dear Soul
Who can say what you are?
How obvious what you are not.

Yes, there are fierce protectors at the souls door
they cannot be fooled by any spin
and have a horror of sentimentality

And yet they will melt at one
instance of sincerity
they are turned to dust
by one drop of conscious return

Yes, no word can go there
Soul will overcome your hesitant expressions
that compulsion to reify
to put houses of language
in wild starlit meadows

For Soul cannot be damaged
by any temporary stain
Soul is waiting when all
Those noisy engines of hubris
have died

Soul may be a bridge
over an abyss of solitude
You may that bridge alone
but it leads to Soul’s country

Lie to others, if necessary
but not lie to your own soul
or very earth will cast you from itself

It is that lie born of fear which soul cannot abide
that dark sophistry
that makes even the sun seem hollow

Do not lie to yourself, said my soul
though it is hard, because most of the generalities
that you have been taught are a lie

Look beyond those false houses of language
those endless suburbs
and you will see the clouds and the sun
making imperial patterns in the sky

Why would you want to live in those abodes
those houses full of people
where nobody lives?

Soul, you are a living thing, a tissue
you are something so fine, whose origin is
infinitely small and yet larger than all the known universes

The soul is not just a collection of atoms
You are spun from a finer, more delicate
and jeweled web

What can I say to you Oh soul?
Even the world ‘peace’ or ‘love’
rings hollow in that fullness that you are

For language cannot enter the
house of soul, you must take your language shoes off at the souls door.

For soul is the undoing of language
the pristine, the diamantine, the way things actually are
before they were reduced to icon and representation

And if you must chose language, chose
words that undo laces, words that unmake concepts,
words that overflow sentences, that are not
prisoners of syntax

For the souls words are not really words
because they point themselves beyond words
they are more like the poisons antidote

For let’s undo our disembodied notion of Soul
throw off those language rages and
return to the house of body and soul

Let us not divide material and soul
let us infuse material with soul
body with light

We have lived too long divided
oh soul, come to this house, inhabit it
and fill it with your mysterious music

Oh come into this house
and do your dance, undo all of the laces and buttons
those strange and alien contraptions
which we, human have used to cover you up

Oh soul, let there be a wild and naked
forest dance, the kind of dance
before Adam ate dust, before Eve bloodied the root

Oh soul cast off this dark robe of shame
Oh soul let us be un worlded
Oh soul let us bind ourselves to You