Spiritual Animal

Somewhere in the yellow blue sky
There is an angel creasing the night.
Distant wings beat out the rhythm of moon white heat pouring in.
Controls are losing their grips.
Karma slips into a distant memory.
Form and passage remain but in silent abstraction.
The occult trembles in the music concrete.
Bricks of dreams. Foundations of sway.

Dancers ply their trade of meat, sex, ballet,
and whispered passion.
Sweat and sore muscles remind them that they are still brother
to the Howling Wolf of the Full Moon-----
Frozen Music. Crystal Patterns.
The frost and the animal.
Lonely sound of space and energy.
Full Moon and the dancers feel it.
They chant in their timing to its energy.

The audience has forgotten how to pray.
How to be animal.
Poetry is something they take in forms apart from their daily
lives.
Alienated, they shudder at the sweat stains in the ballerina's
crotch.

Lonely and space between us, now.
Chanting in a hollow rhythm.
Hollow and tired of being misunderstood.
Tired of trying to make a living while being a Spiritual Animal.
Tired of trying to relate to the brothers and sisters
who remain normal in their waking work,
and stampede the night with dreams of howling at the moon.
Cold and distant. The wolf body.

Children chant the sound of OM.
Chanting and believing in make-believe.
crying and dissipating
crying and chanting
O Lord, I'm tired of being a child.
O Lord, You can't sell dreams.
I can't prostitute my dreams.
I can't substitute truth for some commercial appeal in my art.
I've already drummed out that fake bullshit to be who I am.
Willing to die.
Willing to live.
Howling while awake.
Leading the Lost People in my dreams.
And always, O Lord, always, trying to escape the law
enforcement officers awake and in my dreams.
Magic and alchemy
poetry and music
wine and tea
I try to study Chinese poetry.
Laugh and end up drunk.
Where are you now, Buddha?
"Up in the plum tree."
There is no wine to be had up here in the mountains.

I miss the friends I left in the city.
I don't miss many, just a few.
I'm wondering if they miss me.
I never see them unless I go to the city and find them.

Artist got dreams and poverty.
Hardly eat. It's hard to raise a family.
It's a hard life for the family.
No money comes in.
Try and do art the judges will like.
They reject it because I matted it funny.
I write poetry on it.
I dream while I paint.
I miss doing metal sculpture and pottery so damn much.
There is no money to buy the tools to do it with.
No money, no wine, no music.
Just a few friends I go see in the city.
They love me.
They hate to see me chained to poverty and inadequacy.
Cry and chant.
Brave the anger and rave at my lazy days.
Where is the path?
Buddha in the plum tree.
Christ making wine at the wedding.
Confucius too belligerent to give a damn.
Tofu spoiled in the refrigerator.
Margaret in California.
Junkies in Katmandu.



Blues and second quarter energy.
Pool hall memories of hustlers.
They con the dumb.
I just chalk up and line the five in the side pocket.
Walk over to meet the cue ball for long shot to three for corner.
Call next shot before it hits the pocket.

Jazz and abstract expression.
William DeKonning and David Smith.
Charlie Parker in Birdland.
Stan Getz cooking in a 5 am jam.
Looks up to see full moon grinning in the window.
Grins back.

Jazz chanting improvisation and Japanese calligraphy.
Music defines space.
Full moon defines time.
and somewhere in Arizona a white man sits among the Natives.
Peyote ceremony.
He listens to the drum speak a message that crosses the language
space.
His turn to sing.
Looks into the fire.
He breaks through the stillness to sing the song shooting through his body.
I can't sing it to you.
I'm tired of singing visionary songs tonight.
I'm tired of singing songs that we dance to.
You can dance to them also.
That is what I am writing about.
I'm tired of trying to tell you it's time.
If you are afraid of what someone will think, let the song pass
and wake up here again in new baby's clothes.
The midwife raving about the easy birth.
You've got to sing your own song and dance sometime.
You've got to realize that the Buddha in the plum tree is you.

A vision of your last life time.
You---old man who walks away from the village into the snow.
Goes up to the hill top. You are being called.
Your world is crumbling. You are crying.
You are bitter at the white man.
You have seen women and children shot and left to die
in the snow.
You have seen your leaders stabbed in the back for a jug of
whiskey.

From the hill top you cry out, "I answered the calling.
Speak quickly as I have little time.
I am an old man. Let me come back to lead the people.
Let me help the hoop reconnect.
Let me teach all people to treat the Earth with respect.
Teach them to stop stripping the Earth of her blood and
leaving her scarred and naked.
I am an old man.
Let me serve the people again. A-ho!"
The sky grew quite. Silence engulfs you.
Coming towards you was the Spotted Eagle.
As it passed over you it dropped a white feather.
It fell on a dead man.

White Feather is amongst us.
She is re-membering the Old Ways.
Teaching by example.
Helping direct the Seven Directions to heal and restore balance
amongst all people.
Walking in truth and freedom for all people.

Let me be myself.
Let me live in balance, peace, and harmony.
Let me fight my own demons.
Dream a few moons tonight.

Out there. Out there somewhere in the night, a man is chanting.
He is turning to the east.
It is time to meet the one who dances near the Clinch Mountain.
It is time for them to create a connection from the east
to the west. From the north to the south.

Memory and myth stretch out.
Angels and cherubim sing to the children in the night.
Ancient sages sail across the waste.
The time is coming when music will be powerfully placed.

Dreamers.
We sing in our sleep.
Music and birds haunt our rest.
The night is gray.
Sparkling spirits bless the food.
Sparkling spirits bless the medicine.
Uranium dances in blue mud.
Blue star earth music.

Midwives sigh in their sleep.
Remember the birth-skin stretched across their crown.
Myth and appointed time lie heavy on the gifted chosen ones.
Even sound.
STOP.STOP.STOP.

The Spirits send fresh blood.
Fresh energy. New visions.
The new Atlantis is rising out of the sea.
The new Jerusalem.
The new Anasazi.
The Hopi remember the passage from another world.
People flying in stones.
They came across a sea of void.
Today, men in black approach people who talk about
extra-terrestrial life too much. They make threats.
There are beings in this universe we can't control.
There are motions in the stars that we can't perceive.
Our magic is crackers in a sea of infinite improvisation.
The ear tuned to the stars hears a different jam session.
Duke Ellington never had it so good.
John Coltrane never blew so true.
Celestial jam session.
White crystal heat.
Blue star.
Deep space music.

I accept the karma of my life.
Yet I grow tired of the greed I am surrounded by.
It is hard to remain honest but there is nothing else to do.
No where to go.
You may as well accept that I'm not going to do anything else.
My message will stay the same.
Dancing is breathing with your total existence.
Dance your life into existence.

Wings prepare the space.
Wings cut through the landscape.
Wings from here to music.
Coming in from aeons of space.
Star jazz.
Red carving the dream space.
This color.
Star Space Symphony.
Wolves answering the Star Sax.
Reaching new heights.
A chant in a Zen monastery answers the howling.
Bells shatter the void.
A gong pushes into the star milk.
Wisps of mist across a mountain.
Tea and rice.
Dreams of nirvana. Jam session.

Lotus moon wanderings in the garden.
In love with some forbidden fruit.

The wind is blowing in some cold weather.
Snow. Sleet. More rain.
Sun and spring not far behind.
Time to work on a pottery kiln.
Time to work out some karma.
Time, almost time.
I'm tired.

The music angels smile at my raging sketches.
All space is time. All music is dance.
Poetry is a tongue dance.
Chanting in Grass River Nothing.
Frustrations compounded.
I want to serve my purpose or die trying.
I'm not going to live my life idly while the multi-nationals and
the politicians take my life and control it.
Control the Mother Earth.
Twist it into power and shove it in my face at a high price.
Tired and angry and no dreams going to change that.
Only blood red karma.

I go out and pick up the glass in the creek, rake the lawn,
and ten minutes later a drunk comes round and throws a beer bottle in the creek, stomps through the freshly seeded lawn,
and then pisses all over my back porch.
He moans the blues because no one ever comes to see him.
He is just like the government officials except they have power
so everyone has to deal with them.
They would be just as lonely if they were just people instead
of power brokers.
It isn't power that makes us important, but rather the act of
love that motivates us to serve the people.
When the politicians wake up to this then they will start doing
good for the world.
We all go through that awakening someday.
Ho!
This old winter blues poem.
Even winter is almost burnt-out.
Snow is a melted ash of winter dreams and it's almost over.
Dig the change winter brings on out here where the eagle still
dreams, the rabbit pauses beneath a full moon and curses
the dogs, and when the fire goes out it means tough
survival.
Out here, when we pray, we mean it.
Out here...

Time of re-birth. Naked brother.
Nerves and dreams are raw.
Skin is dirty. Shitless silence.
I am scared some nights.
This is lonely country.

Mostly I am alone.
Mostly we are all alone.
There are one, maybe two, close to us who make contact.
Trust our songs.
Trust our medicine.
We listen to the songs.

Brothers and sisters have let themselves become castrated.
Caught up in the game of letting fear control their expression
of emotions. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The tea is old. Cold.
The stars are dreaming.
Clouds blowing in.
Landscape stretches out from here to Arizona.
A young man curses the wind.
A bird flies south.
Time to slow down.
north. north. north.
animal and trust this instinct which is music.
Dance. Poetry. Chanting.

Altered state of mind.
Aware and tapping the flow.
Music, Christ, music!
The Sounding.

Ships move slow.
Hover in the clouds.
Blue Star grazes in the mist.
Greek myth. Hopi songs.
Mayan stone carvings.
Tibetan records.
American spirit.
New birth.
White Feather.
Dreams thrust into cliffs aimed at Mars.
Saturn rings. Beyond.
Jam session in space.

Near the trees a lone mother cries.
Stomping her feet. Fairy birthing in progress.
The rushes overwhelm her pace.
She models herself after the energy of the earth.
Old angels come near.
Help her breath.
Show her that her body knows what it is doing.
Gravity tugs at the child.
Energy springs from the head.
Base of the spine.
Joins in the loins.
Rushes of life.
Rushes of memory forgotten.
The child is born.
Drops to the earth.
Cries and rises to the breast.
A new buffalo is born.
A new man is dreaming.
Milk is the fruit of birth.
Milk enters the song.
After dreams enters milk.
Milk. Breath. Dreams. Music. Memory.
Buffalo Man.
White Feather.
Blue Star.
Yellow Bear.
Eagle Flying From The East.

Songs spring from the spine.
Earth songs.
Power songs.
Medicine songs.

Music rhythm.
Drums and green water.
The smoke fills the room.
We pray. We pray.
You Gods out there, how I would quit but I would just have to
start all over again.

Winter wastes the body.
Another winter.
A long body of memory and silence.
Beauty and prayer.
Forgotten dreams.
Forgotten medicine.
Mila Repa chants from a distant planet.
There are three dreams.
Red, blue, and white.
They come together in song.
The jester is mad.
Coyote Bear is crazy.
The poet is berserk.
Dream your own damn dream, and when you awaken in the night,
listen.
The spirits just sent you a message.
Ho!
Oliver Loveday © 3/11/79/2 am EST (revised May, 1992)