HOLY  HOLY  HOLY  HOLY

HYMN ONE

Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy

Holy are the vomit stains on the ties of the washed-out salarymen on the Hankyu

Holy are the cock and arsehole and balls

And the shit from the bums of cellulite babes with blue eye shadow and yankee coloured hair.

Holy is the concrete that grows across the ground from Tokyo to Osaka and beyond.

Holy are the phone lines and out-of-order babes that live under bridges with dogs and wash in rivers and nobody wants to fuck ‘em.

But holy are those that do.

And holy are those that don’t.

Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy

Holy the mantra and holy the pen.

Holy those that remember it.

And holy those don’t.

Holy the temple and holy the toilet.

Holy the harlot and holy the priest.

Holy those that know the meaning of the words and holy those that memorised the text without knowing the meaning.

Holy the farts of those who have never seen nor heard of the text.

Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy

Holy the rest too.

Holy the west and holy the best.

Holy the spirit that informs the text.

Holy the smiles of the passersby.

And holy the scowls too.

Holy the express and holy the implicit.

Holy the clear and holy the obscure.

Holy the veins that inscribe messages in unknown languages on the ribs of the leaves of the forests.

And holy the veins of the junkies that burst purple and blue on corpses outside banks in the land of money where gutters are paved with two cent coins carved in intricate and marvellous designs of polecats, possums and pussies with long tails and eight nipples to feed their offspring.

Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy

Holy the arsehole with the smell of yesterday.

Holy the vagina with the smell of tomorrow.

Holy the strip of confused flesh between the two;

That delicate sensitive elusive NOW

Which nobody can touch save all of us holy holy holy souls!

Holy the devil and holy the angels

Holy God and holy and holy the nihilists

Holy the doctors and holy the disease

Holy the scabs, the pus, the lymph

Holy Kawaramachi

Holy the Hankyu

And holy the Keihan too………………………….

HYMN TWO

Holy the subterranean world, holy the surface and holy the heavens

Holy the seven concentric circles of worlds beyond and yet co and inter-mingled with this one.

Holy the angels like spiritual secretaries who dictate soul-phone messages into our inner ears giving us guidance in our daily lives.

Holy the blindness, holy the ignorance and holy the eventual light.

There is no devil. Holy the devil.

The devil does not exist.

Holy the ephemeral, holy the permanent,

holy the paradox, holy the trick.

Holy the truth and holy the lies

Holy the appearance and holy the disguise.

Holy the essence. Holy the form.

Holy the exception, holy the norm.

Holy the armless, legless cripple, his limbs blown to pieces by mine(s) and yours

Holy the stumps oozing blood and pus and lymph.

Holy the legs that no longer exist.

Holy the leg, holy the walk.

Holy the fly, holy the talk.

Holy the crawl, holy the slither.

Holy the wonder and holy the blight.

Holy the darkness and holy the light.

Holy the indecipherable legends which mask the origin and end of life in confused strands of sympathy and strife wound around the great tree of the husband and the wife.

Holy the simplicity of sex

with its complications and convolutions.

And dark impenetrable (w)hole.

Holy the blackness, holy the wetness

Holy the abyss.

Holy the upstanding shaft

entering silent and brave

an unknown world

in expectation and expectoration.

Holy the anus, holy the cock, holy the balls.

Holy vagina, holy ovaries and tubes

Holy the womb

Holy the spark of life born one instantaneous moment in a universe of unbearable darkness.

Holy the strength of the mother who carried the seed for a thousand miles

then planted it on a bed

where its legs would not take root but rather grow feet and knees

and stand up with a backbone

and walk.

Holy the miracle of locomotion.

Holy the wonder of stillness.

Holy the both and the neither

and the nothing and the everything

and the something in between

which all things are

including nothing.

Holy nothing!

Nothing is holy!

Even Nothing is Holy!

Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy

Mark White Osaka Kyoto Train

about Autumn 1999

(two hymns written two weeks apart on the way home from work)

(inspired by Alan Ginsberg’s HOWL)

WATER

In your heart there is a river flowing on until the sea

And it rises sunborne upward, making clouds of mystery

Then it passes over mountains and embraces all the trees

Caresses birds’ wings, drips on spiders spinning webs in secrecy

Down the hillsides, moistened tree trunks, moss and ferns by streams

 Your heart it keeps on flowing ever onward to the sea

Do not stop it; do not dam it, ‘cause it will just break its banks

There is, you see, no currency that you can hold to when the river thanks

The sky for venting out its feelings; tears of gratitude

For the earth and for the river, for the clouds in stormy mood

For the people and their children; all of nature’s brood

The river flows, the river grows, continues to the sea

And it ceases not with seasons though it slows its mighty flow

On it goes in eddies, swirls and takes its prisoners when it can

This river’s flowed until the sea since time, since rain began.

 KUDALASANGAMADEVA

You secret creature; mysteries hidden in the pain you wear

Eyes are advertising longing for a truth beyond this face

Sitting by a river flowing realise that life is not

a frozen moment in a camera nor to run as in a race

Arms as thin as fragrant sandal on a tree of tiny flowers

Neck and chest and breast that’s sloping as a hillside clothed in hours

Time and place are both beyond the hidden thing you long to see

but no eye of human vision can perceive the size of light

Only closing, only being, one with all there is tonight

Only walking, back from here can, we inhale the stars that might

just as equally inhale us as we pass like birds in flight

What is in and what is out my dear sweet fragrant child of love

Both are neither all inclusive all dimensions are as glass

You, You secret crystal garden, hold me in your loving grasp

Fingers long and touch so gentle to the dull unfeeling sod

Whisper secrets of the growing, going on unknown, you, God!

For long moments it seems there is a poem in me and my eyelids tick like an abacus running through the alphabet of rhymes, apt, bapped, capped, clapped, enrapt.

I feel as a bottle with the holy water sloshing inside me and with the swaying of the vessel I pray that some droplet of this divine liquid will escape and spill into these regions so we all can examine it but I know not how to coax it out.

Do I follow the rhythm, the rhyme or the meaning? What is the secret of these waves in my belly, these tears in my loin?

Where does this sweet percussion come from making melody superfluous; flowed over? Oh who?! Oh how?! Oh!

Golden yellow feather of a birds-wing now decayed

The mountains seem to have arms. The fields are as finest flossy down growing on the cheeks of a green and yellow Autumn God.

Where is the chorus? Is there a mantra? Give me some holy refrain or just this chaos. Forgive me my trespasses for I passed judgment.

O give me now a secret mantra that I might alone to you

Pray and sing a fervent longing; drink the draught whose smell you hold

All is too much for this tiny vessel to consume in one

Simplify your all-pervading wonder into one great word

And whisper then that word into my tiny human clasp

Let me hold it to my heart

Earth you are a woman; God you are a word beyond the words

Nothing now can save the moment nor can catch the thing I know

Nothing now can save the mystery; ever will unleash the flow

Always gentle, always fleeting, ever-present in the heart

Rhythm secret, and irreverent, still approach the thing like art

Or scream as serpents, winged in a sky of cloud and light

Or whisper secret, whisper always, whisper that your servant might

Repeat your name, your secret name, and write this name upon his heart

Here I know upon this spot you let your foot rest on the stone

Here I see engraved upon the world; your frame

Initials written in a language, that I cannot hope to name

There the stones beyond the spider; there the crow beyond the web

Water trickles; slime amounts to more than I can hope to know

There the noise and there the bridge and there the chance to go

Ringing like a bell at temple or a bike upon a road

And I sway and pause in wonder, halt in sickness like a bird

Knowing not the purpose of your presence in this world

but feeling knowing in my stomach that your voice is like a word

O tell me now the secret name; the mantra grant to me in song

Fill me with your flaming water; burn me with your liquid gong

And I’ll sing in tunes unknown the holiest irreverent name

Secret stomach all-consuming, tune of angels, feet of fish

There exists not one sweet creature to compete with all of this

Hare Krishna Holy Allah Ism of the setting sun

Rising angel sacred serpent God, his Will, will all be done

Holy Yahweh, Singing Thomas, River of the Deity’s name

KUDALASANGAMADEVA now I know your holy name

Written on the rocks in secret; scratched contingently in slime

In the groins of effervescent angels walking now in time

All your space and all your rites and all the things that grow as one

Are as telephonists numbers in a list that runs and runs

Ah the birds and ah the clouds and ah the rocks that breathe the air

Secret singer of the silent name you know that I can hear

Black birds in the belly of the river and electric sound behind

Secret singer of the river; holy water bearing God

You who wet me; you who washed me, you who held me to the sod

You whose shudder in the timber secretly embrace the air

You whose beak that playfully peck water in the hole

Television, tunnels of the, secrets of your holy name

hidden in indecent ciphers; censored by the things you said

beyond the silence of the river and the silence of the air

inside the shudder of the timber and the footsteps everywhere

permeate the concrete and the water and the air

float like bubbles on the water yes I see it everywhere

whistle as a tiny sparrow; roar as black as car as crow

you transcend the rocks and trees and all the things that we can know

wet me wash me bathe me in the strands of your black flowing hair

and inhale me with the nostrils of your all-pervading air

master of all origins and fate and will and choice

Lord of meeting rivers I can hear your all-pervading voice

************************

WORDS

At its most superficial level racism is the mere observance of difference and the feeling of alienation that comes from that difference. This alienation can be overcome by seeing through the veil of the physical and perceiving the fundamental soul quality of other humans beyond the superficial differences of race and tribe and nation.

At its deepest level, racism is a concrete doctrine formulated as a means of maintaining a separation between the races on the basis of their superficial differences and inspired by fear and hatred. It denies the commonality of humanity and is the most dangerous doctrine that has been formulated on the planet, and threatens to destroy it.

That people lump the former naive feeling of alienation with the latter creed of hatred and have only one blanket term to describe the two and all shades of enmity and distinction between them is a most unfortunate accident of language.

The word “racism” carries a variety of shades of meanings some natural and naive and others dangerous and despicable. Its mother “race,” describes the streams that have diverged in the human family and join again to form new and surprising rivers. By another accident of language the word “race” contains the nuance of competition and contest. The fact that “race” as in “horse race” or “swimming race” is a homonym for “race” as in “human race” means that each time we use either word, there is a trace of the other echoing within it. In the sense that all words contain multiple nuances, all words are poems that unite otherwise diverse areas of life.

Language can seem precise and exact in the way it expresses a thought, a theory, an idea or an opinion but in fact the more words a chunk of language contains, the more associations, nuances, co-locations and memories of other things spring to mind. Length begets complexity, ambiguity and lack of clarity.

The notion that the germ of its own logical destruction lies within any text is the essence of deconstruction.

Because of their vague, poetic quality, words betray us and add nuances we do not intend while failing to transmit all that we do intend. If we see a text, whether oral or written, divorces from the intentions of its creator, we can easily pervert it and twist it to mean other than originally intended. The very words themselves contain inconsistencies. (There are lumps in the custard 1 ) which expose them to ridicule. Communication in this light seems impossible.

However if one resorts to the faculty which Lafcadio Hearn called “soul sympathy” one is able by non-linguistic means to circumvent the unintended and unnecessary nuances that clutter each human message and enter into the heart of the intention of the speaker or writer. This is where true understanding takes place. It is beyond language and beyond the physical realm.

Unfortunately a great deal of the discourse which happens, takes place between people who are unaware of or deny the existence of the faculty of soul sympathy. They focus on what is said or written rather than on what is intended or meant. They lack the simple quality of sincerity.

1 For example “consistency” as in “a coherent logical idea” and “consistency” as in “the thickness of a dessert”