In the modern fiefdom of Fred Meyer, the walled city,
where all things necessary exist, & nothing changes--
not in housewares, the supermarket, the pharmacy, the clothing store
I hear the PA system cry out for Betty Rogers to return
        to Playland.
& I wonder who Betty Rogers is, & why she ever left there.
How human, to wander from a place called Playland

& the voice of the manager
becomes God, & the stiff mannequins of children holding Power Rangers,
seraphim with flaming swords .

Maybe Betty is on her knees in the deli section
or found a sacred Ganges in the fountain display.
Or maybe she's dousing her head with charcoal ash from the Weber grill.
Because I too have been rehearsing my sins

in Fred Meyer, on a Saturday.
I can see liver-colored disks of meat
fanned out by the grocery, bins of flame-colored, mammalian romance novels,
a small wetlands of misted seedlings, coppery pipe
ready to take, like the finest confessor, what taints our bodies spew;
a jewelry store, the leviathan-mouth of the door
opening, with its own will, on the half-asleep.

Can it be I didn't see this as a temple?
Can I have missed what my maker so wanted me to see
it just kept repeating
grass-seed, grass-seed, look: litter, look: screw . . .

It's time to publish my sins
frankly, as this newspaper blazons
Satan 's Twins Just Born to a cow in Minnesota.

When a piece of refuse, gum or candy wrapper,
sticks itself to my shoe, & I kick, over & over again,
to remove it: this is how I've treated my life.

My thoughts have wandered
in every paradise: I've interrupted with my mind
the elegant flow of one thing to the next.
Accused my body of lowering me
when all the time it's been the good servant of an erratic
master.

And though I've been to the Channeled Scablands & the Eternal City,
driven along Going-to-the-Sun Highway, cruised Point No Point, stuck
my foot in Damnation Creek

I persisted in seeing my life as ordinary,
needing the brush of thought to make it luminous--
the quotes from Augustine, the Meister Eckhardt
consecrating every ordinary act.

I sat in churches, pretending deity can be drawn
from the bulk of its forms, even the windows sealing off
the made world with story,

caging the divine
in those glassy, sad-eyed images
like a too-powerful. too-joyous beast.

***
Along the Diablo lake, we camped
& hiked through the high forest, canopied from rain.
Drew corn & potatos from the fire
while moths consumed themselves, log-brides
trailing their dirty white garments to the flames--
I knew spirits hung all around. Any minute we might see the dark god,
the one who drinks from a skull of blood. Fanged, fire--
browed, from his home
in the northern corner of the brain . . .

Sagebrush censed the nighttime, Montana dark
spitting out a little matter when our flashlights
pressed--
dim circle of discolored grass.

We heard the voices of the other shadows
wandering through small pockets of camping space.

When through intense ignorance I wandered in samsara

I walked with my flashlight, five
senses & a consciousness. Unable to see. Somewhere

two made love
& I was drawn to them, their stifled shrieks, their Oh God Jesus Jesus
damn the way it might have been suffering
but suddenly I want it
it wasn't suffering, the labored
excited breath God it's good baby o how they rehearsed
I'm dying here all the terms of human existence
for the disembodied, waiting at the wombdoor--

Though it seems at the end there's just a silence & a rolling over,
guttering torch, the deep blue human light.

Now when birth is dawning upon me
I will abandon the laziness for which life has no time
Now that I have attained a human body
there is no time on the path for the mind to wander

***
Sometimes there's a stammer in my ear
an 1,1,1,1, bird of self chirping through the lips.
The soft red light of the jealous gods. The ones
who are always softly bickering. A realm

where envy pulls. But I didn't realize
how much & how truly I enter it--

A university. I work here.
My words, the bird says. My
articles. I,I.
High-pitched song
but my own.

When through envy I wander in samsara

I come to rooms within rooms, windowless. Thin stick chairs,
like the skeletons of chairs, in rows . . .

And they appear: the goddess-worshipper, the one
whose mother was shot last year, the blind one,
the schizophrenic student with the unpronounceable name
he made up on a mountaintop, & his confession
that he eats ladybugs "because they're beautiful"

Oh son of noble family, blown by the moving wind of karma

"It hurts to leave my body," he says, "there's nothing out there
but faces, & I can't look back"

your mind, without support,
helplessly rides the horse of wind

***
City on a hill, Fred Meyer, I wondered
where the missing realms lay: I've found them
in your phantasmagoria, your blinking sale lights--
the white light of the gods, yellow light
of the hungry ghosts, hellsmoke light--

And I see the worst thing I've done--
deciding where & when
to pray: carving things up into fane & profane,
as if the self could choose its sacraments.

There's not much time
to gather what I need here. Meat,
butter. A bag
of charcoal stamped with a talking flame.

When the five luminous lights of wisdom shine,
fearlessly may I recognize myself

& I approach the cashier, hand out, holding a dead bird,
a box of fat, a bag of fire. She takes them
as I give them, her pale. insensible fingernails
dragging them through the sensor to the other side.

I give her money. She lets me pass

& when the forms of the peacful and wrathful ones appear,
fearless and confident may I recognize the bardo.