Ken Goodman (a celibate monk) isn’t much fun on a date.  He doesn’t smoke or drink, doesn’t eat meat, sugar or dairy…what does he do?

He makes ecstatic meditation & poetry creation.

Odessa 1920

My grandma got out of Odessa
hiding in the hay—
of a wagon into which

soldiers stabbed
                        pitchforks in—
again & again...

when I sneezed in September
she told me with a grin:
“That’s why you have hay fever,
from the fear I felt when they—
stuck pitchforks in the hay.”

in the equipoise

No way to wander away
                  from self-meditative glow:
home sweet home where path/arrival has no
where to go : mating unseen & beholding in
the equipoise—
where secret mantra silence inner-hears
noise or no noise,
unconfused by senseshell-relative centrality:
experienced directly clear
          through all diversity...
all at once (never elsewhere) I AM identity:
in the equipoise of [your] egoless deity,
immune to post & pre : blissful wisdom
letting thoughts calm voluntarily, witnessing
lifetimelessness where eyes can’t look to see:
in the equipoise of dawn-fresh & horizon-free:
GodLove kicking lazy out of AH
           effortlessly—
in the equipoise of mindcloud/GodSky centrally;
in the equipoise of wisdom-eye unliddedly;
in the equipoise of Constant mating Presently:
in the equipoise of I AM
                          no known name can be.
 

when I stood in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom…

You who
        breathe in my Address
eyeing my white writing dress—
beat-beat of your heart is Loud
but I may make your skin a Shroud
for stepping sole in my bedroom &
gazing out my Glass—
I could harden your heart to Tomb,
& can do it fast.
Lots of folks fall in love with me
now that I’m safely dead—
what makes you think I would have let
you backslide in my bed?
Writing poetry was my
                                Luminous Innerwear—
no suitor in some bodysuit
                             could possibly compare.
Leave
it to me
to feel…doubt…
moments after you:
                       Walk Out!