1. |
Aleph
02:17
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The Aleph
Each thing . . . was infinite things
Borges, "The Aleph"
Aleph a vav and two yuds
Sit down
Find your silence
Become an aleph
Feet to the ground
Tethered at the top of your head
First letter
Silent
Aleph
One
A yud above a yud below
A hand above a hand below
My lines are drawn in pleasant places
I am wearing them now I am weaving them
Working backwards from the source
I breathe soul at the inner point of truth
The lines converging on tiferet beauty
Be a true person of compassion
Pull the lines together into time
Just enough for another day
My lines are laid in pleasant places
Meet me at blessing
Tunnel to the heart of the world
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2. |
Empty Me
04:04
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Empty Me
Interactive song-poem
Here I am planted in front of You
And my conspirators in prayer
To pray for myself and on behalf of my community
Some of the people here I know I love them
Some of the people here I don't know I love them too
Empty me
Of obstacles
What separates me
From everything I love the most
I am a vessel an instrument
A harp on the edge of the bed
A northern wind blowing through me
Play me like a harp a flute an oud
Empty me
Of obstacles that obstruct
Add here your own obstacles and when you do
Take a moment to name them
What separates you from G*d
And everything you love the most
As for me
I will love as purely and as whole as I can
That my prayers my actions my life
Might be rescued from the externals
We will never lose our yearning
We will never settle for less
With all our songs our poems and prayers
Bless us O G*d
One G*d
Unclaimed G*d
Lonely G*d
Empty me
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3. |
Bless This House
04:49
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Bless This House
Please surprise me
Lift me off somewhere new
Send me a roundabout way
A common journey
One I would not have taken
If not for this if not for that
Too far out of my perimeter
I might not go with you
Bless this house Bless this house
Use your own words the idiosyncratic ones
The ones that tumble in your head
Don’t tell me too much
Smuggle in an organizing notion
Sneak it past the guardians of equanimity
First line of defense the ones
Who speak way loftier than me
Bless this house Bless this house
They snatch away the lowly the uninspired
Their standard high language and gesture
Only tortured Southern drunks in heaven aspire to
And the circle of intellectuals from Detroit
Who sit and discourse
Always alert to cliché the inelegant
Excessive and symbolically over-fleshed
Bless this house Bless this house
They guard my perimeter like coyotes on the hunt
My teachers the owl-eyed Reines
In his work shirt and heavy boots
Dr. Lehman who speaks slowly
Draws on five six civilizations
Dr. Fish roaming through the texts of a dozen
Libraries on three continents
They’re a tough gang to penetrate
Be thoughtful push your ideas
The best you can
They are merciless on language
Bless this house Bless this house
Be a thinker a word maven
Sweet singer of the unconventional soul
And remember Mihaly chewing on a pipe
Will be standing in the final circle
He will be saying this something he said
Or I might have put it there
I need meaning it completes me
Bless this house Bless this house
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4. |
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How G*d Created the World
Like an architect
Checking the drawings
I built it with substance and form
Like a poet
I poured over scrolls
Until words scampered off the page
Like a designer
I took the supernal forms
And built them into my creation
Like a composer
I made a chorus for singing
Also something hidden from slogans
I don’t know how I created the world
It didn’t measure up
There was a pillow of comfort
To fall back into
And determination
To fix it
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5. |
I Am Not Afraid
04:52
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I Am Not Afraid
De-stabilized
Paralyzed
I am not afraid
Cannibalized
Infantilized
I am not afraid
Like a tree planted by the water
I am not afraid
Modularized
Polarized
I am not afraid
Elasticized
Territorialized
I am not afraid
Like a pigeon on a New York public library
I am not afraid
Factionalized
Depersonalized
I am not afraid
Pressurized
Particularized
I am not afraid
Revitalized
Humanized
I am not afraid
Harmonized
Democratized
I am not afraid
Organized
Synchronized
I am not afraid
Civilized
Spiritualized
I am not afraid
I am not afraid
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6. |
Conduit
02:16
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Conduit
Prayer from the hands
Make a conduit with your hands
Make them round
You are a conduit this way
The circle round
Wheel within the wheel
When you’re round you can support
As in if you fall
I will support you
Supporting the fallen
This is G*d and all of us
The circle of spiritual aspiration to comfort
You can be nouns in relation to other nouns
The connection of nouns
What you belong to
Hello nouns we belong to each other
You may get to be a door
A door that opens onto
Skill and enthusiasm artful and
Healing
You may get to be a connection through the hands
Giving over substance one vessel to another
When once the chain had been broken
Again look through the circle of your hands
Receive through it the interrupted connection
What you got
What you give
Let your hands be a conduit for repair
Growth and skill
Passing through your welcoming hands
Be a student all your life
Get a good teacher
Be a good teacher
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7. |
Confer
05:24
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Confer
Maimonides Hafez Rumi Yehudah HaLevi
Leonard Cohen and
James Baldwin Confer (Ten Parts)
All of them working
The repairs
From over the
Divide
They chose me to
Transcribe
I choose you to
Imbibe
On the subject of what
Constitutes
Whole
W-h-o-l-e
Part 2
Maimonides taught
Keep it pure
When truth arises
Minimize surprises
Disorganization
Confusion distraction tenses
Build around the truth
With fences
Buttress guidelines and
Protection
Above all
Or-gan-i-za-tion
Take what you know and
Categorize
This is what I did
12th century
This will help
Even if it will not stand
You will be remembered for having
Planned
Part 3
Well educated I am
Yehudah ben Shmuel HaLevi
Poet physician
End of 11th century to beginning
Of 12th century I wrote almost 800
Poems
The most famous I call
The Khazari book
Born in Tudela then under Muslim rule
I am drawn to the Sepharad feel of the south
To the music and the verse forms
Of the Mizrach the East
I sought a teacher Moshe ibn
[son of] Ezra
I never lost my yearning
Libi b’mizrach
My heart is in the East
I left for Jerusalem the blessed
And somewhere near the holy city
I died
V'anochi b'sof ma'arav
At the edge of the West
Part 4
Hafez Persian
I am named for memorization
Fourteenth century
I knew Koran by heart listening
To my father’s
Recitation
I knew all of Rumi
In love with a beautiful
Unattainable woman
I drew a circle around myself
Forty days and forty
Nights vigil
What was out of reach
Physical
I would attain
Spiritual
Part 5
I am Rumi
Balkhi
Mevlana/Mawlana
I am called our master
13th century
Settling into life at the
Madrassah until I met
Shams
Shams disappeared
Where should I seek?
I am the same as he
His essence speaks through me
I have been looking for
Myself
Part 6
I have looked for guidance in
Wine
We might have seen that
God was there
I Rumi
Have given over a single
Poem in the last years
Of my life
Roots of the roots of the
Roots
There is I and there is
You
But not room for
Two
In one house
Knock knock
Who’s there
You
Part 7
You may come in since
You have cooked away
Your I
You are not a drop
In the Ocean
You are an ocean
In a drop
The universe in
Ecstatic
Motion
You will keep breaking your
Heart
Until it
Opens
Part 8
There is a crack in
Everything
That how the light
Gets in
I wrote it Leonard the Cohen
I died in 2016
Well quoted and often
Misunder-
Stood wholeness may not
Be all
We cracked it up
To be
Part 9
James Baldwin I am dying
In 1987
Wholeness not
Our aspiration
Everything
Splintered
What we do to fill
The cracks
With gold tincture
Beauty
Be bold
You may even
Give up the language of
Whole
Part 10
Some of us make
Repairs
Some of us visioning
Beauty There
From our flaws
We build a menorah
In the
Air
Above our heads
A vision
This light might
Illumine everywhere
What one person praises
Another person
Curses we have fashioned a
Menorah
Out of flaws
And Verses
Now we begin
Its repair
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8. |
Louis's Plan For Peace
04:11
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Louis’s Plan for Peace
Ferguson, Missouri, summer 2014
At this intersection of rivers
The omphalos the belly button of America
Emanating dream repair of old wrongs
Histories of violence and recrimination
Declare a History-less-ness
The beginning of peace-making
Forgiveness and thickening of compassion
Let the past be past
Here Now
In this noble heart-line city
Named for the Louis who brought two Crusades
Louis IX 13th century
Captured by Egyptians in his first Crusade
Settling Aco Caesarea and Yafo
Building defenses for future Crusades
He would go on two of them
Dying at the eighth crusade
Only Canonized King of France
Louis IX
Saint Louis
Responsible for mass burnings of the Talmud
Expanding the Inquisition in France
The mock nobility of his title
Lieutenant of G*d on earth
Ho Louis I live in your city I am speaking
Peace and forgiveness at the intersection of events here
It could have happened anywhere up and down the heart-line
Or even the far reaches of this expansive country
But it’s here
Like unlike all other cities
O Saint Louis
Lieutenant of G*d on earth
Turn over your dominion
Let us all take our histories and put them in a notebook
For peace making we begin fresh
We begin new peace starts now
We may trot out our stories later but for now
We are listening
When we come to know we are more alike than separate
We will unpack our histories
Tell them like a story redeemed
Sacred rite from storehouse palace Earth
O Saint Louis
O crusader
O Lieutenant of G*d on earth
Give up your title
O Sainted Louis
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9. |
Dressed For Class
04:15
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First There Is A Mountain
When I couldn’t breathe
I could learn new licks from Duke
When I couldn’t smile
I could write not smiling
When I couldn’t make conversation
I could teach something new
When I felt beat up and ruined
I could jump onto something fresh
When I could not dress for the ball
I could bang out dum tek tek
I have learned everything from my teachers
Inspirations influences
More* from my students and
Jam masters
Dressed for class
Work boots overalls
Fountain pens and notebooks
Signifying I am going to the
Peak
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10. |
Ir Me Quero
04:17
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Blessing
*Jussive in Three
Numbers 6:23
When the upper root
And the lower root find each other
They meet at the inner point of truth
Yes this is it
The inner point of truth
Will open onto Every-thing
And it will be a secret gracious wisdom
Yes this is it
The inner point of truth will lift us into Every-thing
Within and around a seamless version of the Whole
And every individual will be known as a version of G*d
Yes this is it
*May G*d blow your mind
And expand your limits daily
May G*d’s face change everything for you
Whenever you think you know
With certainty
May G*d’s face be lifted to you
And lead you deeper within
So that you are always yearning
And may you be blessed with
A permanent insatiable urge
To grow and learn
[whisper: May this be G*d’s will for you]
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11. |
Psalm 150
04:24
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Halleluyah Psalm 150
O the breath of every living thing
If our mouths were as full of song as the sea
And our tongues could sing like the waves
And our lips express like the sky
If our eyes flashed with the light of the sun and the moon
And our hands spread forth like the eagles of heaven
And our feet as swift as deer
O the breath of every living thing
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