A RUGGED CROSSING

I

Revolution covers its tracks
Insinuated covertly to the naked eye
Taskmaster to a single cell
The keeper of the lantern since the beginning of time
Insisting monolithic stone, breaking small pebbles
Thriving as the great tree, flying earth's firmament
Lapping salt water at the shores of Eden
Instinctive within beast and Adam and Eve
Commanding the garden
Waiting, directing our crossing
From rocky somnambulism to harmonic consciousness
Death forever attending a birth of spirit.

Nature's bridge, a celestial, cosmological cycle
Of humankind dynamic, growing, demanding our fear
Finally revealing bellies and legs spread-eagled
Wet above the night, along its ancient journey
Taking aim with broken shoulders, contorted eyes
Munching on Milky Way bars
Breathing high in its chest a crumbling metropolis
Baying for its dictator, its chief of staff
Leaking thousands of dead batteries, sixty-year-old bumpers Innumerable rusted hubcaps clattering through jungles Taunting mad dogs snarling in far off corners of the earth
Pissing a stain under inspirational stars intended for love
Setting souls ablaze with quiet horror like funeral pyres
          floating down the river Ganges
Smiling through the gold teeth of fourteen year old men
While our women bleed and miscarry
Our doctors fighting, rotting
          losing toes inside their boots
Revolution, we say, rides the spine of Darwinian belief.

Painfully alone, early in the game
Youth grows through an ancient process
As develops our cosmos
The yin and yang of navigating a deep gorge
A cavernous gash throughout one's life
And how long shall I cast no reflection
Allowing death to steel my entrails
A man composes his life, though is never exonerated
That would be too much, living is just enough
The evolution of spirit begins when crossing the bridge Narrow, long and deep, and steeped in angry revolution
Daring to reach out, touching humankind because
Revolt without accomplishing heartfelt revelation
          is a hollow affair
Still, the bridge looms in darkness
Blind humanity crawls upon it
And the lantern remains lit.


II

We claim the Maya, the Inca, the Aztec
We claim empires forgotten, usurped on the front page
We claim the Palestinian, the African, the Serb, the Croat
Indigenous warriors for the word
We claim the Aborigines of Australia
We claim the true Irish
We claim in desperate silence the Native American
For a heap of maggot infested, ignorant, saggy breasted
Land bereft of hope, empty of milk
Wherever it exists, whispered in huts, in hovels
In ramshackle houses with tin roofs, whispered in bunkers
In the outback, in the ass ends of alleys
The word is 'revolution' often dropped in discussion
Like shoes on the floor, like pocket change for gum
The earth being so young and youth so ignorant.

Last week I stole from the fields feeding the hungry
Sleeping in beds under assumed names refusing to awaken
Sleeping in public buildings, beckoned by tourist posters
Sleeping in Lod airport slumped with my head in my lap
Sleeping in cold cockroach whorehouses on Allenby
Passing through the Afula bus station
Spying myself afraid, glaring at me
From some tabloid in a language I couldn't read
Trembling, enraged, I stood unknowing of my stain
In line at the Netanya post office, terrified
Waiting for a package from home: a tin of Bugler tobacco
          a lousy book, for Christ sakes
[I was eighteen along the bridge, waiting to be arrested]
God's lantern is lit, yet darkness surrounds me
I'm privy to a notion, Lord
This is going to be a rugged crossing.


III

Tonight, in California, my thin arms heavy with archaic
           M16's, slick with cosmolene, aching
I load the long white Chevy vans
Outbound from Van Nuys bouncing through the smog
Landing silently, struts touching down, grounding
A lonely airstrip, mud on the fly, outside Guatemala
While I steam in a hot shower, a cold beer, a warm bed
And I pity those poor Indian bastards, only a crop to trade
Chewing leaves for weapons that must change nothing
I'm laying it down for you, shouting in your face
Tonight I have blown off ears
Tonight I have torn out eyes
A stranger has lost his back
A mother her child
Still, I feel nothing, staring at the flame
Did I mention that misery is exponential
Tonight I have tortured
Tonight everything has changed
To live with myself I must cast no reflection
For tonight I have killed
And it seems to me I can not cross that bridge
Out there in the middle on my knees
Praying a strong wind will blow out the lantern
Realizing for the first time, I want to believe.


IV

Years pass, the search for belief, a pilgrimage
Through books, ideas, faces, the eyes of man
Traveling hard The Path, this celestial universe
One learns to love
It is a slow, difficult process, a rugged crossing
To begin the giving that opens our universe
To learn from those who come our way
Wise shamans, the wealthy, the impoverished
To marry, to bond souls with a woman
To realize we are students and teachers
That nature is our dictator and our responsibility
To listen, and cry, when at last the old man arrives
A spirit guide in the flesh blowing his flute, singing

     "The greatest thing you'll ever learn
     is just to love and be loved in return..."*

I looked around that day
Someone, the old man, I suspect, had blown out the lantern
My way home burned bright, my bridge behind me
Though, tell no one of this evolution
Tell no one of the infinite bridge, this rugged crossing
Because when they love, it's another cruelty
And not because they will think the lesser of me
No, take this spirit and walk alone
Simply because they will not.

© M.L. 'Max' Roth

*Original lyric from Nature Boy, by Eden Ahbez.

Commentary:

Recently, I performed an expanded reading of my poetry and prose at California State University, Northridge. Before reading my central piece, the above narrative poem, I mentioned this was my favorite work. The professor immediately seized upon my comment, shouting out from the rear of the class a simple one-word question, "Why?" The moment felt immediate, akin to facing one's roshi in dokusan. The class waited, stared, they too expected an answer.

Why Monks Are Poets; Tao, Zen, and The Creative Process is my answer to that professor's "Why?", exploring the relationship of science, art, and a spiritual belief in universal intelligence as these elements concern the artist. Our answer leads to a clear understanding of the universe as creative process, the knowing that humankind's true face is a naturally unified cosmos, our work is the practice of realizing our path, and our worth is the value of the creative process - for the process is who and what we are.