The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (58 page)

The place of dharma has been founded,

Abundant with spiritual and temporal powers:

Dead or alive, I have no regrets.

July 4, 1975

Rocky Mountain Dharma Center

Translated from the Tibetan.

To Gesar of Ling

Armor ornamented with gold designs,

Great horse adorned with sandalwood saddle:

These I offer you, great Warrior General—

Subjugate now the barbarian insurgents.

Your dignity, O Warrior,

Is like lightning in rain clouds.

Your smile, O Warrior,

Is like the full moon.

Your unconquerable power

Is like a tiger springing.

Surrounded by troops,

You are a wild yak.

Becoming your enemy

Is being caught by a crocodile:

O Warrior, protect me,

The ancestral heir.

July 4, 1975

Translated from the Tibetan by Chögyam Trungpa and David Rome.

Love’s Fool

Love.

What is love?

What is love.

Love is a fading memory

Love is piercingly present

Love is full of charm

Love is hideously in the way

Explosion of love makes you feel ecstatic

Explosion of love makes you feel suicidal

Love brings goodliness and godliness

Love brings celestial vision

Love creates the unity of heaven and earth

Love tears apart heaven and earth.

Is love sympathy.

Is love gentleness.

Is love possessiveness.

Is love sexuality.

Is love friendship.

Who knows?

Maybe the rock knows

Sitting diligently on earth

Not flinching from cold snowstorms or baking heat.

O rock,

How much I love you:

You are the only lovable one.

Would you let me grow a little flower of love on you?

If you don’t mind,

Maybe I could grow a pine tree on you.

If you are so generous,

Maybe I could build a house on you.

If you are fantastically generous,

Maybe I could eat you up,

Or move you to my landscape garden.

It is nice to be friends with a rock.

July 8, 1975

Report from Loveland

First you like your neighbor,

You have a friendly chat;

Then you are inquisitive,

You begin to compare;

After that you are disturbed

By a lack of harmony;

You hate your neighbor,

Because there are too many mosquitoes in your house.

How silly it is to have a territory in love.

The trouble with you is

That you have forgotten your husband;

The trouble with you is,

You have forgotten your wife.

“Oh this love of datura

It’s killing me

But I like it

I would like to keep on with it—

One late night

Drove home

Having been loved

Oh how terrible to be at home

It’s chilly

Unfriendly

Feels guilty

But angry

Household articles

Begin to talk to me

My past

My home affairs

My love affair

My wife my husband

Oh shut up!

It’s none of your business

You stove

Just get out of my way

You rug

Make yourself invisible

I’m not going to tidy you people up

But

But

But

It’s my home

I always want to have a home to come back to

Hell on earth

Hungry ghost

Jealous gods

Human passion

Euphoria of the gods

Stupor of the animals

I thought I was having fun

I’m so innocent

If only I could be with my lover

Nothing would matter

But

The past is haunting me

If I could live in the present

Constant fountain of romance

Nothing would matter

How foolish

How stupid—

Maybe how fantastic.”

It all boils down to

Rotten fish beef stew gone bad.

Before we imitate the cuckoos or the pigeons,

We had better think twice

Or thrice.

July 8, 1975

Testimonial

When I first met you

You were a cross-eyed frog

Then you were a chicken

Puppy dog

Aluminum tea kettle

You’ve grown

Now you are full of jealousy

Your jealousy can drain the ocean

Your jealousy can shatter the earth

Jealousy is your food

Your success is in jealousy

Hard-core as you are

You turn deaf dumb

Aren’t we all funny

Especially you

This poem was copied from a blackboard

Much love

July 10, 1975

Boulder, Colo.

1018 Spruce Street (and K.A.)

So passionate

That your lips are quivering

So angry

That your blood is boiling

So stupid

That you lost track of your nose

So much so

In this world of so-so

So much

Therefore so little

So little

So great

Just so

The beauty lies in

A rose petal

Just touched by

Melting morning dew

Beauty lies in

Dragonflies

With their double wings

Buzzing neatly

As if they were stationary

Beauty lies in

Majestic shoe

That sits diligently

While the meditators

Torture themselves

In a restless shiver

So right

Norwegian girl

With her occasional professorial look

Dancing with the typewriter

Wife-ing

Just so

With her lukewarm iron

How titillating

(This ticklish world)

Just so.

If you’re going to tickle me

Be gentle

Be so precise

So that

I could be amused

But

Wouldn’t get hurt

By your clawing

But titillating enough

To stimulate

My system

With your feminine

Healthy shiny

Well-trimmed nail

Just so.

The trees

Grow

Just so

Baby ducks

Learn to float

Just so

Mosquitoes’ beaks

Well-made

Just so

Oh you Norwegian girl

Do you know how many warts

On a toad’s back?

How many wrinkles

On granddad’s forehead?

How many deals

Steve Roth has made?

Nothing to worry

Everything is

Just so

Doesn’t quite hurt

But sometimes

Painfully ticklish.

July 28, 1975

1135 10th Street (and G.M.)

How nice it is to meet an old friend,

How refreshing to see an old friend;

Meeting an old friend is much better than discovering new ones—

Passing an old stone

On the winding mountain road,

Passing an old oak tree

In the English country garden,

Passing a derelict castle

On the French hillside,

Passing an old ant

On the sidewalk—

Glory be to Giovannina!

Maybe all this is a castle in the air,

Maybe this is my conceptualized preconceived subconscious imaginary expectation,

Maybe this is just a simple blade of grass.

It is all very touching.

Maybe it is just glue,

Glorified glue

That glues heaven and earth together,

Glue that seals great cracks in the Tower of London.

However,

There is something nice about Giovannina:

When she smiles,

She cheers up the depressed pollution;

When she talks,

She proclaims the wisdom of precision.

She is somewhat small,

But dynamite.

She seems to know who she is.

She could create thunderstorm;

She could produce gentle rain.

She could get you good property;

She brings down the castle in the air.

She is somehow in my opinion well-manufactured.

Fresh air of the Alps—

I think she is fresh air,

Which turns into a well-cared-for garden

Free from lawn mowers and insecticides.

July 30, 1975

1111 Pearl Street (and D.S.)

Our anxiety,

Our case history,

Our problems with the world—

We tried so hard to accomplish,

We tried very hard.

But now we are a sitting rock in the midst of rain;

We are the broom in the closet;

We are just leaves rejected by an autumn tree.

Sometimes we think highly of ourselves—

Thundering typhoons!

Glory be to Captain Haddock,

Punished for not being crazy enough,

Sent to jail for being crazy.

Does a pitchfork have a blade?

Do the handcuffs have emotions?

Persecuted by your own guilt,

Uplifted by your chauvinism—

The whole thing is a bag full of razor blades and pebbles.

August 1975

78 Fifth Avenue

It was a desolate space you provided today;

It was hearty, but sadly WASP.

The subtle air of power is devastating

In the midst of the Black Velvet advertisement.

It is a rewarding experience that you are not on a billboard,

But a breathing human being

Who produce a star on your nose as you sweat.

Our meeting was like a lady rider having a chat with a horse in its stall

With the atmosphere of potent dung, refreshing hay,

While the neighboring horse, clad in a tartan blanket, looked on.

This desolate concrete cemetery that you claim is your birthplace—

I feel you deserve more than this:

Rebars and concrete facades,

Eternally farting cars spreading pollution,

Yellow cabs producing their own aggression for the sake of money and legality—

You should be sitting on rocks

Where the heathers grow, daisies take their delight,

clovers roam around, and pine trees drop their needles of hints.

You deserve a better world than what you have.

I would like to take you for a ride in my world,

My heroic world:

We ride in a chariot adorned with the sun, the moon and the four elements;

We take a great leap as we ride;

We are not timid people;

We are not trapped in our beauty or profession.

Oh you—

Your corrupted purity is still immaculate from a layman’s point of view.

However, I am not a layman:

I am a lover.

Let us chew together a blade of chive—

You could take me out for dinner next.

Heaven forbid!

Gosh! as they say.

Suddenly I miss you.

Do you miss me?

You miss

I miss

You miss

I miss

You miss

I miss

Should you miss me?

Should I miss you?

It’s all a mutual game.

If you miss me, maintain your isness.

When I see you next, I want to see you exactly the same as I saw you now.

But that is too foolish—

Let us come to an agareement:

If I miss you, you will be slightly different;

If you miss me, I will be slightly different.

Let us meet each other in our growth and aging.

In any case, let us build the Empire State Building on top of the Continental Divide.

March 22, 1976

The Alden (and Thomas Frederick)

I hand you my power;

If I grow you grow.

Your childishness is the ground where you can take part in the power.

Your inquisitiveness is magnificent.

There is need for a further growing tie with heaven and earth.

I have given you the space,

The very blue sky;

The clouds and the suns and the moons are yours.

But you are confused,

You like more toys: