Mandala

I 

Taking up the brush

to paint the east gate blue

as we maneuver naked around one another

fourteen men filling in the lines

within whose boundaries we can play

as children before us were capable of playing
playing now at monk-see monk-do
with the ersatz materials at hand
all symbolism simplified
poster paints instead of sand
on a prestretched canvas
the petals of the lotus
on which the central temple rests
now collaged with the fragments of our longings
an Attic vase
two musclemen smiling at one another
across the divide of someone else’s fantasy
a spruce cone
deceptively phallic for a tree’s swelling ovary
a dragonfly
New Age ascended master
portrait of the artist as a young man
all opening now as petals of one flower
around the improbable goal of pilgrimage
yin-yang of two cocks
curved into one another
our contradicktion in terms
of tantric homosex
this vision of a temple we’ve raised
against all odds
for a few days at least...
 

II

...and the dedication two nights later

wherein we speak forth witnessed meaning
into these fragments
then silently pass our map of cosmic truth
from hand to hand out the door
and to the verge  of waiting flame
not quite the sweeping of sand into the river
but dissolution nonetheless
by what means we have
for what we have created
chanting Om Mane Padme Hum
as fire dims then licks
then at the flashpoint blazes out
with what we have
what we are and offer
under a night sky swarming with stars
amidst a woods swarming with fireflies
our feet wet with dew upon the grass
sister of our flesh