yoga for cyclists

sundays

4 – 5pm

$10


@ golden om
778 lafayette ave
brooklyn
btwn throop / marcus garvey blvd
646 831 5388
www.goldenomyoga.com liayogany@gmail.com

*a regular open-level yoga class follows
from 5:30 - 7pm

la luna

gathering the lost and spreading as a lotus
there is no stranger
there is only the eternal known, which at times the earth eclipses

like an elaborate persian rug--
composed of laborious knots
there is underlying
a mesh armature
empty and steady in its design
its material and aging beauty
is only decorative furniture
the rug in fact is not a rug
it is a goal for the weaving
a meditation for the weaver

all the colors and the movements therein
beg witnesses to sense the vibrance that underlies
to look at the real of which its material denies

who am i?

have you ever seen me blink?
scratch?
perch?
heard my breath
or heart
resting?

I seek and hold nectar
I cannot smell
I do not flap
but rotate in figure eights
hovering here
like infinity

It's 2:30 am. Dark still. Almost the moon is full.

My brother wears yellow
rubber gloves and sunglasses.
He's a crossbreed
between one of the blues
brothers and one of the ghost
busters. I can't figure out
which of my parents are bluesy
and which is a buster.

"You don't know
how to conserve
energy!" Mama says.

“Why don’t you say
excuse me?
Why don’t you
say excuse me?
Why don’t you say
excuse me? Why
don’t you say excuse
me? Why don’t you
say excuse me? Why
don’t you
say excuse me?
Are you almost done?
Why don’t you say excuse me?”

“A junkie walking through the twilight./
I’m on my way home,”
Gil Scot-Heron says.

I’m eating
putobongbong
drinking
pito pito.

My brother’s new fixation:
taking steel pots to the sink,
forcing the water
out of the faucet at full
blast, sloshing a brush
around keeping perfect
rhythm and belching
in between. He inspects
the sides of the pot
for microscopic galaxies
and residual legume germs
while ripping a flatulent explosion--


“Explosive,”
he says.

“A lot of people in the world are thirsty,”
I say.

I wrap the purple putobongbong
in a banana leaf
and cap the coconut shreds.
I can intoxicate the air
with a thumb piano
while my brother talks
to the propane-fed stovetop. He stops
talking to himself.
“What’s that sound?” He asks.
“Mbira.”

Neuroleptic. I smell myself.
I smell
my foot. My feet stink.
There’s a hole
in my shirt. Yeah. I should do that.
Neh. Yeh. Hrcccgh.

He has phlegm—an excess
of yin—an excess of yang. Is that you?
Yeah I’m just talkin’ to myself.
I forgot about crossbreeds. Nah.
They’re nothing like what you think
are mulattoes or mestizos.
You never say a word. Hmmm.

He watches the flame. It’s dark
everywhere else. He’s tapping
with the mbira. There’s a lullaby
rupturing dammit. It’s about time
we are no longer cartoons.
We are no longer jarred
peppers and ceramic pots.

“Do you know how to cook beans?”

Watch a Tamarind Leaf Move

Watch a tamarind leaf move diurnally
and a vigilante octopus’ skin will be squid-like.
Thermal and chewy. Foam.
He’s contingent upon tentacles
measured in units of elephant ribs
which once lived in a sack of skin—
a type one might classify as human palm-like
sewn loosely and a smile leaking ink
where otherwise a tusk might be.

“Does the leaf belong to the tree or the day?” asks the vigilante.
“Who owns patience of this species?”

“If the tree belongs to the ocean,” the octopus says,
“my suctions might claim
its tangly skeletal branches
belonging once to a bag of leaves alive
the kind you might find in a pile
or blown by machinery
or fluff for body bag. Pillow-stuffing.
And when the black bags sit all in a row
they are pod-like. Boasting eager seeds
whose meat might be sour, but sugary.”

I AM THAT

The seeker is he who is in search of himself.

Give up all questions except one: 'Who am I?'
After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are.
The 'I am' is certain. The 'I am this' is not.
Struggle to find out what you are in reality.

To know what you are, you must first investigate
and know what you are not.

Discover all that you are not--
body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that--
nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you.
The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.

The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Cessation

When in the wind what water sway’d to rise
And children skip’d flat stones along the bank
We steep submerged and laps flip capsize
Our vessel and ripple pools echo sank
We hold our breaths—free-drown a little deeper
Algae suspends like dust around us. Our limbs
Disturb with every thrust: creatures, creepers,
And our thoughts—tokens of our lust and whims
Inept to bottle inspiration
We buoy to the top—surrender to
A dead man’s float and on the shore we shun
All movement. We have worn unto
A restless mind yet one must abide
The lake stops—reveals below and sky