" . . . and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)A very long time ago, perhaps even the first post of this blog, I mentioned having "guest" bloggers. I have had the occasional contribution here and there (duly noted) from readers and friends but up until now there has not really been a guest blogger. That is going to change as of this entry. A large
part of this entry will be given over to the writings of Daniel Drumm. Daniel is a friend of long date and we have recently reconnected after thirty or so years of being out of touch with each other. In this blog entry I am (with his permission) giving space to his poetry as well as a brief excerpt and hyperlink to a nonfiction work published on Scribd, The Light of Life (http://www.scribd.com/doc/8883353/The-Light-of-Life). I enjoy his writing very much and hope that you do as well. I encourage you to visit the Scribd piece to read in what other fields Daniel thinks and writes. Daniel is also available on MySpace and Facebook ( http://www.myspace.com/daniel_drumm and Facebook/ Daniel Drumm). The photographs and illustrations published here along side of Daniel's work are in no way the responsibilty of Daniel Drumm, they are my additions and their use my decision.If karma were simplistic (which it is not) and if reincarnation is true (insert your own answer), then lead a good life and pray that you do not come back to work anything out in the five following countries: Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines, North Korea or Myanmar. There are others, of course, but those five top the list. I
decided to abandon my roll call of the world's disaster and political follies for this entry simply because recently it has been overwhelming. I become exhausted from keeping abreast of the constant flow of news, banalities and sometimes breathtaking outrageousness. With our ADSL television line, I have I-do-not-know-how-many twenty-four hour news channels, in myriad languages, All of them trumpet and drum roll the ongoing lists of disasters, political propinquities and nature's armegeddon with a sense of the blasé so profound that their numbness transmits itself across the line to the viewer. My roll call will undoubtedly return, but not this time. First I shall post Daniel, guest blogger, and then in a fast following post I shall give the next set of Major Arcana, the Attributes. The first set, the Avatars, has already been given in a previous post. I shall also recall a few points on The Path of Totality and the Synthesis of Mysticism. That post will finish with another excerpt from The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day.Daniel Drumm
Continuing
"What did you want? Even a name recalled here
Continues, rises before you, filling the heart,
Emptying..." And the heart hearing descends to an image:
A long strip of sand and washing water. I walk
Upright, aware of breathing, the moment's clarity
And surface, the blinding light...I am any
One, a wheel turning another time. It ends
As it begins- a wind barely touching percepts,
Presence passing hand to fitful hand, a dream
Language of opening, entering
The sleep of things. This hour we meet.
Still moments in a garden of voices.
The small bodies of birds weave
Above the ocean, spark, twist, crisscross
Kiss, till I wonder what it feels to be
So light in the intimate pull and pushing breezes
Streaming, falling, beautiful dark wings
With no hard sleep of thought remembering
Sleep, or waking once more in another air.
Ever filling. Ever emptying.
Living silence somehow afraid of the quiet
I spoke not speaking, newly wakened
In a dream of nouns, carefully unfolding a clench
Of rose, for a heart ever opened.
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
How private this
as every tryst
with form:
a space quiet fills.
Spectral shape
for holding
the stirring
movements, urgings
some primal desire
of stone aliving
in the unreal
slow twilit minute
of parks and weddings...
Turning, turning to
the physical the mute
understanding of curve
stone gives beneath
the curving hand.
Here
in the dreaming living
where meeting, met
no longer hear, miracle stirs...
Change moves and removes
love regains and remains.
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
LUCIFER:
Bitter is the daybreak. But bitter still
The thought that God's grand vision bore no
fault.And where's each placed? No matter... all are brought.
Man-kine even, God's cattle. Clay and froth!
Non Servium! was my great call, and round
Bright wings bore dark into the dream of Mine.
Fire gave birth, new light, and thus enwrapt
Did we descend to rule... mere sands, wind-tossed.
All fell, all fell into a dream of self
And would not serve... to serve this heavy hell.
Bright winds deep-fixed and burning, body-caught,
While the circle of their souls still fall and call.
MICHAEL:
Morning answers Peace, and new beginning.
And you... are held within a love so true
That knowledge of the hope and truth you are
Seem bars, and are, to freedom made of fear
(unfinished)
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
Coming In
Soon this wind will turn
the season almost saying
night and day with it.
Mechanics in relation
numb the hands.
Numbers follow nothing
blown like crowds
around a design.
Words turn in the mood
and change as memory
or the moon change.
In the bright city white
daylight drifts.
Open, uncertain
I call your name
between love and this
ebb.
Like summer coming in
the screen on a summer's evening
the wind carries a voice
fertile with reasons.
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
Message to Edna
What lips my own have kissed, or where or why
I've forgotten. As well what arms have lain
Across my chest till morning. But the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, who tap and sigh
Upon the glass, disconsolate, untied.
Here in my heart a strangely widening pain
Loosens, cries... how incomplete all gestures,
All remains, if love wears any lesser name.
Thus at midnight the clock grows loud. Save
That tree outside that naked reaches to
The wintry sky, no image reaches me.
The rain pours down. The ghosts relent. Now I
Who nameless wait till daylight bury grief
Know summer is a wing, and spring, a leaf.
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
(This is a rewrite of sonnet #43 by Edna St Vincent Millay...
I felt she was being inauthentic. I wanted to write what shallowness
in relationships would really look like when fruited. Below is her poem:)
(What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.)
"Selfless as melting ice" (Lao Tzu)
knows
it isn't water
that you unbecome.
Letting go
all you don't really know
the frozen flows.....
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
Meditation
Under will the stars whiten. The void creaks.
Beneath all your effort lie loss and remorse
like a razor under fabric, gleaming through a cut
like the scraping whispers in the blankness
your onliness searches. Fear fingering
undoing the braid of relation.
Pivoting
you reach from your poverty these pilings.
The wind shambles meanings you gather
hope on hope to this, just this, please this
little box of lostness, psyche deep
feeding on the world. Tiny voice
repeating all the reasons to itself.
Until at last the ground reveals
the smallness of all dream
the duality of all bravura
and in the baldness of the moment
you realize, simply, you do not feel.
And you feel. Your eyes breathe.
The muscles of persona unclench.
You contact once again the world of detail
your self in touch. You heart, at begin,
know open as no recoil. And you feel.
Later you will think. Later still, know...
fear has no size but unliving.
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
Dancing years
Around the wood the seasons burn and blow.
A sweet smoke flowers and like a song winds
sleepily upwards in your soft brown eyes.
While you dreamt drinking all most magically
the sea rose sounding suddenly your name...
in the strong sea light, bubbles and strange thunders.
By the edges of your growing life huge beasts
stand perplexed at the forest's long silence.
Far off in the distance a silver flute
begins an ancient music filled with Light.
Moving to the meaning the twining dancer
turns to turn the sea to foaming spray
flowering the cup you raise to your lips.
The dreamer murmuring magic syllables
wakes the four winds as memory the child
walks unafraid into your quiet eyes.
19 Sept 74
15 Feb 98
24 May 09
22 Aug 09
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
Dancer
"Oh Arunachala! Thou art the Inner Self
who dancest in the hearts as 'I'" - Ramana Maharshi
You feel no change within
love dreams light waking worlds
Clear motion turns to lead
Dawn dances still to the foot
hills descend ascending
Act or the road winds through
the dream machine as life
the sword made song of You
I the dreamt ocean dark
am the bright wheeling sparks
hear the source in the hearts
still lands beyond the rains
Dance! Dancer dance the skies
silvering ends lifeward
Dream draw the long strands of
poverty grass in diamond
The moment sunset dyes
The mountain core alights
The sky wills open the road
sword close the life goes on
the star turns lead to now
you hold love light spills through
the worlds assent to be
you see from all you are
The Dancer dancing ends
to end dreams to life loves
to dance each stage as time
begins to play
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
(Yeats once spoke of a myth he had heard. A man drawing near to the Tree of Life heard the most beautiful music coming from it. But when he got close he found it was made by the continual clashing of swords.
Arunachala is the hill/mountain that Ramana Maharshi lived at the foot of his whole adult life. Local legend said that it was Mt Meru, the center of the World, and that a pillar of Light ran through it.
The word Aruna/ Chala is literally Red Mount. It is taken to mean the Heart. It was in this sense that Ramana called it the Inner Self, the seat of the real I, the spark of the Oversoul as Emerson called God.)
The Death of a Ladies Man
for Leonard Cohen
She follows you talking
fluorescent mirrors
angelic ceramic urinals
the rattling night train
a story of women you...
hours of rain.
How you trashed your heart
trashed the sameness of the poet
to thee, for an autograph
in the throat.
The Conversation pounds
the shore. A million dust motes
lift then settle, lift and settle.
Others die differently, and live on
the same beauty, weak-fingered,
unable to fend off their wife.
Some love you not
magic's nervous pajamas.
Why all this spitting, raving,
punish my beauty, my in
side? Just so no one catch
you flailing at love?
"It's all done with mirrors."
No... never One at all.
The woman lifts the jar, singing.
Return.
Not to the fathers
no strenuous meaning
not to the sound of your own fear godding...
but to the heart you always forget.
Feel, the woman is feeling
not ritual, the many gloves
of fear, but this hand here
reaching. Lilith gibbers
in the mirror, scooping flesh
from your out side.
She stares and says, "I feed you
the broken dish, adolescence...."
Feel, the woman is forming.
Under sex she turns to clay,
not wind, not the living breath
of your returning being, knitness.
Clay.
You carve, it stays. It stares
and says, "Now that we are modeled,
Need you ... I don't need you.
Need you ... I don't need you."
The clay of the eye
cannot reflect what is.
Make no name
for yourself.
If the world were not spun
but held ever in love
you are where you rest.
You are not alone, but present.
When you don't make love
you make idols and heat.
Your Gods are so much
smaller than your sanity.
Require no firstborn.
She lifts, singing, the original man.
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
12-19-08
3-21-09
4-14-09
In Your Arms
If the world were not spun but held
ever in love you are where you rest
The soul's voices whitely cover your eyes
Leaning plants within their angle close and open
The mountain centers nothing beyond your gaze
remembering perfectly no other time
In your prayer's need love grows tired
like hands raised from winter rags
And every word changes in love's zero
from action to just news about its progress
Before this began, while you continued
the wind the long sidewalks followed in turn
that night in your making still deeper in none
Love's entrance answers to radiant calm
apart from you none make sense
Hold to nothing in your way in love
Under will the stars whiten, the void whispers
"New loss and emptiness follow going further"
Then you reach from your poverty and shambles
where the wind moves senseless in small circles
losing all you call your world...
seven broken landscapes ring the Light
Your sex changes you divine the machine's parts
and the seasons' relations hidden in the life as death
spins a complicated pattern in the ragged trees
Night stills each embering desire with depth
of perfect surrounding perfectly empty
Somewhere in love making equal to none
the woman of your understanding lies down
to be near your calm center of breathings
by morning the sun wakes in your arms
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
A moth flutters past
my eyelid. A moment... then
the wind from his wings.
No army. But the
abstract tension of motions
as the line crumbles.
Mid-winter gutters.
Forgetting to be
How you starve after something.
Stilling the thinking.
Water drips in the forest
Depths. Plip. Plip. Plip. Plip.
(rewritten from a Japanese haiku)
Impossible weight
and frustration. Outside, green
and yellow blowing.
Black and white. Movement.
A silent conversation
in shell, shale and wood.
Winter. In a car
a tape plays a woman's voice.
Trees wrapt in silence.
Shadow of a moth
outside the window
flutters weightless on my arm.
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
The Laughing Man
with thanks to J D Salinger
How much was revealed by
the sound of his laughter the tissue torn
or known for that matter he stood behind
His face gave back the memory of pain
as calm eyes stared through the poppy
or dropped one by one slowly to sleep
What of his parents convictions his captors
his lonely childhood suffering at the hands
of men silent wanderings and what could be
discovered in his scars his loves his dental X-rays
in yellowed photos in clothes in words
or shaken loose from shattering contact with air
anti-matter strands of hair spittle tears
clippings from some reflective period spots
of blood molecular particles all great
criminals leave in the wake of the physical
relics worshippers detail their mythology with
some small perfectly knowable part of one
life infused with the violence of gods
whose life like nightmares terrifies
shuddering at the implications of the possible
disintegrations at the speed of light
assumptions violent as the
II
Love how little feels the loss as light
transforms the cross the years bend by
stars by pentagrams by pyramids
dark centers of the ocean and night falling
by magic mathematics Merlin
dissolves the coagulate sound separates
the cord by webs of weddings in the final
forest play patchwork white by burnt leaf
by now arranged in hair and bosom to please
the dying many-colored westward sin
Lavender is the color of a dying animal
sunset evokes the living fathers sons
fall like shipwrecked crosses
turn to light bones seagulls all that
remains as white invisible rainbow
burns through the clouds the aeons absorb
the rain-dreamt circle some ancient
symbol of love's dream of light
III
How private this as every tryst
with forms a space quiet fills
spectral shape for holding
stirring movements urgings
some primal desire of stone aliving
in the unreal, slow twilit minute
of parks and weddings...turning
turning from the physical the mute
understanding of curve stone
gives beneath the curving hand
and if this full minute in the grey
meeting no longer hears the homeward
call time but denies the proffered
miracle as love regains release
IV
From the symbol comes the night, mere turnings
as the day dreams on the distance between
roses feel absence as the white breath of spaces
and the face the rising reflection all mirror
mercury tinted remembrance of objects loved
imagines all before to be returning
for the loss irrevocable motionless violence
the remembered ash of some sharp glance
some suspended act of love recalled in secret
The guiltless lovers promise their bodies
to convents to converts to Christmas
Saints celebrate a comic book
perfection perform the ritual necessary
evils stain the calendar's pure number
with a subtle and undying love
What heroes these with spider webs of reason
what rings powers lanterns sinews bulging
from sere yellowed pages in blue black relief and all that could be understood of God
behind the necessary mask
Black Wing is dead
The ancient dwarf covers the truth and weeps
Vagrant winds blow meaning past the streetlamp
How many left the well-lit the familiar
home that night with vows of pure devotion
dedicated to the private landscape the crack
in everything created by love's offering
Daniel Drumm (c)2009
One and One is Apple
When one (contours of silence) with one climb together
in climb and gather silence gather the two
gather such fruit as gift might each to each
two eat in the dreamt leaf shade, in pregnant jest
pull the fleshy pulp apart, tear it from the seed
devour it slowly who savour the bite beneath
the tree (as symbol is the negative space of mind
and time defines with nothingness) till adam come
(we were not first to do this who were as gods)
with knowing grin to tell us of this new loneliness.
Then more than gods (gods are but relief
from our aloneness) we bring this newborn knowledge
to the separate bed, garnering silences like glassy fruit
in a shallow bowl sequestered by the light
apart from the fleshy dream, like symbol, who
climb to this hard thought among the branches
define it with our hand, knowing like adam, we
tempt the fell fruit in mind, tear it from the tree
tear self from self, devour the two
in jest join darkness and desire, then depart.
Until no longer knowing (we took three steps from this-
the last in turning showed us all) as all were gifts
and Now for rosy-headed children, the flora real,
the darkness merely dark, each symbol lost like time
(the space that lies between us) and adam gone
for all his bitter humor of one and one is apple, and alone
still something sweet to stay alive stayed with us-
always one found one and gathered two
as two become in silence, each to each
promises until we're broken.
Daniel Drumm ©1972
The Heart's Full
The heart's full
and each man flowers.
Life in love is
each man's holy lie
as time a liar makes us all.
With numbing stroke
stills the murmuring mouth
and bleeds the captured
smell of permanence.
Let heart tick fraud
and each man's empty
Vase enamel blooms
for each loves close.
And still the acid etch
of tear on clay
that mouth this numbing
truth: time parts
and the images
love holds break away.
10 March 72 (final sentence
8 September 79)
Daniel Drumm(c)2009
Childhood's End
Where the children gather
the land opens to the rain
A heartbeat draws them they
come together by the rocks
Men drop to the flowers there
masses the Holy Ghost
As the air opens to touch
the children reach by One
into the rocks then blood
and out flow on ever
As never points in time
to the new direction, Man
held and released as Love
intends no clearer change
fulfilling wherever
first coalescing holy
numbers of the long flowers
open into the rocks -
vessels of the breathing sky
hold their fragrance to the time
As the wind is close and long
the children come often
pressing on one by one
awake to the strange touch
of dream as to going
Where the land opens to the sky
there the rain falls counting
children of the new wine
and reaching to the ground
lifts a clear chalice
Daniel Drumm ©
Before beginning grew in thee my love
grew gradually light in light, deep motions
tore sense from night, the circle then
called two all the ocean, now here
dawns clearly, love, truth, morning...
Before beginning grew in thee my love
grew gradually light in light, deep motions
tore sense from night, the circle then
called two all the ocean, now here
dawn redly the window mornings...
Daniel Drumm ©
Easter 1974
So many years with nothing
I've learnt to keep my distance
A good long step from loving
In time I learned to dance
Without touching my partner.
Protecting a weary pride
Of wants... still this perfect heart
Never kissed the new bride.
If angels sang I gave no
Second thought to life measures.
Love sought itself in rings of
Dreams of buried pleasure.
Now I kneel me down to dust.
Prayer is dying, knowing you
Don't know love, but a moment's gust.
Dying kills a taste for husks.
And Jesus gave no reason
Dancing years upon the cross
But kissed each tender season
And death was not its cost.
Forever is a long time
Loving seek no distant dream.
Angels don't sing lullabyes
To wake what death has seemed
Life is no real distance from
Objects of its calm, widening touch.
And I will meet him as I am
When I lay down to dust.
Dan Drumm (c) 2009
The Jesus Freed
1 Cor 15:47
You ask me very nicely what I'm reading
As if you'd like to hear what I might know.
You listen to my words, you nod and answer,
"The Lord is such and such and so and so."
The words are dead and blank as if you'd stamped them
On forehead, hand and heart some time ago.
"No one can buy or sell the Truth without him."
"No questions if there's just One Way to go."
A heart won't lift to heart's perfecting if a
mind can't ask, can't knock, can't seek to know.
What Jesus freed is still bound despite salvation:
The Lord from heaven from the man you show.
Daniel Drumm ©
The following is an excerpt from The Light of Life:
Preface
Christianity no longer really has a way to establish grounds for knowledge that derives from the divine, that includes what we call objective knowledge. Not that works psychologically and philosophically, and can stand side by side with science. As a result many churches have become faith or feeling based, filled with hope, love and belief, but not knowledge. Few Christians would consider religion an equal with science in obtaining knowledge or facts, despite their disagreement with science’s interpretation of them. Western religion has lost its philosophical and noetic roots in our culture. Yet with religion that hasn’t divorced insight from practice such as Yoga, Vedanta or Buddhism it is an odd fact that western science itself, and physics in particular, has opened a dialogue to compare its knowledge and thinks it may even have something to learn- from men who merely sit in meditation. Scientists like Bohm and Sheldrake have even incorporated elements from these knowledge based religions’ explanations of reality into their theories....
Daniel Drumm ©2007
Thank you, Daniel. On to other things: I am going to reprint The Synthesis of Mysticism, as well as a few points from The Path of Totality in a shortly-to-be-posted additional blog entry devoted soley, and briefly, to these and a presentation of the Attributes from the Major Arcana. The posting shall end with the excerpt from The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
From here in the DHOSF, until the next,
Leducdor
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