Focused on healing, evolution, the soul and God, focused on the end of harm.

Whispering Softly at the End of the World How Loud I Sing

To know on the edge of your screaming
that you’re gonna be alright,
to see it plain as day
in the darkness,
you go on steam engine,
you take your task with God.

I don’t know if it’s gonna rain
mud puddles in my mind,
firecrackers in my heart,
but I’ll be okay.
The world has caved in,
and sunshine has found me lying in the sun.

Do you know sleep?
Do you know how to sleep?
It’s a ridin’ all night long
the team fellows of the mind
with what you need to know liberty
while you’re still in bonds.
It’s a conscious sleep.
You hear it talk to me now.

You can’t spend me.
I’m a waste of your time,
but I will speak to you from the hours
the training of the ways,
deep soliloquies of love
 that hasn’t found its purpose yet
but challenges the world with it anyway.

You will laugh at me,
but I know time like you know your own hair,
and I can stand up and sing when God is killing me.
What is a poet for?
Can I quote my little boy?
It’s for blankets in the sea.
I can only grasp his hand in verse.
I can’t see him anymore.

Whales sing,
and they bring in the ocean round to itself.
It’s more than call letters.
It’s an attempt to dare fate
and expose ourselves to bright shiny blades,
so we can give time its meaning,
even if that’s just a language cloak.
You sit there and read us
those bright and shiny blades.

Fuck you I love you the poet says. 
Nithish did you hear that?
It’s how we meet the world Planet Us
and not die in the telling.
We undress in front of the world
and give it its mic,
all the while singing our hearts out
in front of I don’t care.

I am loud in a sea storm,
Prometheus battles night
on top of an angry world
because he’d brought fire down of the Gods
into the people of his sleep,
and lit the poet’s tongue on daily cares,
common battles,
and everyday falls
to know we are more than these.

About Harm’s End

I share this blog with my best friend Douglas, but I write the poetry on it, and for about the past five years, it has been an exclusive poetry blog, that features longer poems than the zeitgeist likes that I feel are inspired by the muse of poetry, a new style of poetry I’ve developed over a lifetime that uses conversational English and symbolism to talk about the deepest things imaginable and about the shallowness of the everyday life of humanity, and to talk about myself floating between those two poles.

About Donny Lee Duke

I grew up in the suburbs of Houston, Texas and on a family farm in East Texas. At 17, I joined the army, and, after a brief time in the infantry, I traveled the Texas rodeo circuit with the last active duty horse cavalry troop and was their muleskinner. I then became a Green Beret (special forces), and in 1983 I parachuted with my A team into West Germany with a tactical nuclear device that was unarmed, but we didn’t find that out until we landed. I got out of the army when my time was up and got a BA in English and a minor in History and went on to do three years or so of post-baccalaureate work learning to translate Classical Greek. At the same time, I explored my inner life via lucid dream and out of body experience to try and see how deep, wide, and high we go inside and if we are connected in consciousness to one another. After finding my soul inside and experiencing my higher self several meters over my head and a momentary experience of enlightenment, I left normal life in 1992 and became a homeless pilgrim, first in the United States and then abroad, living in over 27 countries on four continents for about 10 years. I worked my way from country to country and had no cash, assets, or bank account, but I got a lot of help from people, especially from Douglas, my best friend of 25 years. I returned to India in 2003, where I’d always been returning to since my first trip there in ‘95, and where I now live with Douglas, my grandson Nithish, 12, who is not now with us but is returning, and our four dogs. I clean house, shop, cook and take care of Douglas, Nithish and our dogs, and I write poetry and do photography as part of my sadhana for the Yoga of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, which I have been practicing for 30 years. We live in an undisclosed location in the area of the international city of human unity, Auroville.

Image & text © Donny Lee Duke

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