Borderline


Over the gates of heaven there's a sign: 'Only Crazy People Allowed In Here.' (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)

What's your Dia-Gnosis?
I'm as borderline as Moses.

I wander off in the wilderness too,
listening to sunbeams in trees.

Ezekiel rode in a UFO, Elijah hid in a cave,
Jeremiah was ADHD Bi-Polar and Unmedicated:
in other words, they were great writers.

Apostles couldn't find Jesus half the time:
he ran away to be with desert flowers
listening to his own wild secret whisperer,
I Am.

What about Lalladev and Mirabai,
disgracing their families like that,
dancing naked down the sidewalk
with invisible lovers?

How about Buddha? He had issues,
squandering his father's fortune
to hang out under a banyan tree
until his legs nearly withered off,
finally staggering out of the forest
with one hand pointing up, the other
pointing down, as if that actually
meant something. Sheeesh!

And what about the guy who danced
with cowgirls, playing his flute all night
sighing, "Don't worry, ladies,
I'll split my personality a thousand ways
so each of you can ravish me at once?"

Know who's really borderline? Us.
We run around with these characters,
Krishna, Jesus, Moses, Mira.
We point to their whirling madness
and tell our children, "Do that!"

We could be listening to respectable fellows,
gray flanneled voices of authority, prosperity
and discipline like Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney,
Donald Trump.

But no, not us!

We dance with fools and poets on the borderline
out in the field beyond right and wrong where
Rumi drifted off and never returned...

No wonder we're alive!

1 comment:

Sue said...

Thank God for Rumi's field.

And that psychiatric medication has only been around for the last 50 years.

Or maybe not ...

:P

I'm so tired of this continual redefinition of what is described by a bunch of psychiatrists as "normal". When so many of those people who would fall into that category behave like they're nuts.

More holy fools, I say. More! :)