If You Want to Get to Heaven � Copyright, Charles Riley, June, 2003 If you want to get to heaven, you first need to attach the crown of your head to a skyhook, preferably located in the direction of the Northern Star.  In this manner, you may observe and blend with the heavenly movements while maintaining your center of balance.   The skyhook should be in good repair which infers constant, dedicated maintenance.  If properly maintained, the skyhook will transmit, convey, and graciously bestow a stream of purple healing light or golden light of the spirit.  Constant observance of adjustments must be engineered in a delicate balance between the gentle heavenly pull from the crown of the head, to suit personal anomalies of skyhook fasteners and organic members, through the soles of the feet into the pull of mother earth and all of her hidden currents.  This is the hard part to reconcile, coordinate and compromise a credible and beneficial connection of the feet with the earth's flow of energy.  The feet must be immersed to ankle depth in the sacred mud of our ancestors as we walk gracefully and with a firmly rooted gait.  After five to ten years of arduous practice, one will learn to be comfortable with time and in tune with nature's infinite and caring spirit. The generosity of tress, especially the oak, are affable, understanding guides of pertinent knowledge and knowledge of long past experience which we can only know superficially through second hand sources.  In fact, some trees, which are much harder to understand, such as the holly, can approximate the experience of immortality better than other trees.  The holly never dies.  It may appear to die in one place, but it's roots are sprouting a new resurrection or incarnation (depending on religious direction or diction) in a new location.   When communicating with a tree, it is best to do this in a humble manner and bow first.  Trees pity the short hectic lives of humans, but they are not arrogant.  They are just unable to communicate with souls that are not receptive or connected. Some of the best advice on the delicate balance of skyhook and earth has come to us through the beneficence of trees.  We are reminded to stand still and move gracefully in response to the heavenly and earthy connections.  When the wind blows and the rain falls, grow with it.  Keep your feet connected to the earth.  Walk, rather than ride, as often as you can.  When someone talks, listen respectfully, and with unwavering rectitude.  Present what is true, in silence.  On the wings of silence, there is no obfuscation or prevarication.     The Center Limited � Copyright, Charles Riley, December, 2003 This would be suffocating, if this is all that was and nothing existed without approval by documents or trials. The air would not breathe. Connections would be lost in the frost. Dragons would cease to exist in caverns Sealed by man-hole covers of magic dissipating iron.  Smoke of the breathe of fire would be transformed to common steam, nothing to be excited about. Hats would sit heavy on our heads, engulfing us in the hunger of existence that has been woefully circumscribed. Hats would cease to exist as hats if limited as words without existence. ONE � Copyright, Charles Riley, October, 2001 TO BE ONE WITH GOD IS TO NOT BE ONE WITH GOD.  TO BE ONE WITH THE WAY IS TO NOT BE ONE WITH THE WAY.  GOD IS THAT WHICH IS NOT, AND SO THE WAY IS THE WAY WHICH IS NOT. THE WAY CANNOT BE FOUND EAST OR WEST.  WE CANNOT KNOW THE WAY TO EAST WITHOUT THE WEST,  SO WE ARE LOST WITH A COMPASS THAT DOES NOT SHOW THE WAY.  WHOSOEVER FINDS THE WAY DOES NOT FIND THEMSELVES.  INSTEAD, THEY LOSE THEMSELVES BY GIVING THEMSELVES TO THE WAY.  THEREFORE GOD IS THAT WHICH IS NOT.  A RIDE ON THE TRAIN MAY GET YOU THERE.  IN A MIRROR YOU WILL NOT SEE YOURSELF.  PRACTICE THE WAY TO FIND IT ELUSIVE.  THE TEMPLE DOES NOT HOUSE IT, BUT YOU MAY FIND IT ABUSIVE.  TO HAVE GREAT LUXURY OR POWER IS TO BE MISERABLE BEYOND BELIEF.  IT IS BETTER TO BE MISERABLE AND FLOAT IN THE WIND AS A LEAF.  A CHILD CAN BE THE WAY HAVING COME FROM THE WAY.  THE GREATEST SOPHISTICATION AND LEARNING WILL NOT FIND IT,  BUT WILL STAND IN THE WAY OF THE SIMPLE UNIFIED MOTIVE.  WHO NEEDS THE WAY?  WE CERTAINLY DO NOT.  IT MAY BE GIVEN TO SINNERS, WHICH I AM BECAUSE I FORGOT THE CHILD.  ONCE, MY TYPEWRITER WAS STUCK ON CAPS.  IT WAS THE WAY OF THE TYPEWRITER.  NOW THE CURSOR SUDDENLY LEAPS AND APPEARS IN UNFORESEEN PLACES WORDS . ONE THING ALL RELIGIONS HAVE IN COMMON IS A PRACTICE (A WAY) TO FIND UNION WITH GOD. Christ, the Poet � Copyright, Charles Riley, December, 2003 Christ was a poet. Did you know it? Born to poverty, the mystical East paid homage. The East shaped him at an early age. He was not one of us, but one of the, an outsider looking in. He returned, not one of us, to do reverence for the yoke of oxen. For thirty years he led the example of subservience to the art and technology of wood. Then there was the art of the sale, the blending of words. Emptied of words and tribal circumscription, he retreated to the desert. The desert spoke in heated words that emptied him of the impure word, the callous or affected word, the word of slight, the words of separation and put him beyond any proof, any test. Do you think you are more than less? You say that I am,  but there is no me, so the question is meaningless.   A Taoist Poem with an Irish Twist of Lemon � Copyright, Charles Riley, December, 2003 I am going underground to spy on our ancestors.  Perhaps I will become a double agent, appearing to be alive.   A Special Message from the American War College � Copyright, Charles Riley, February, 2003 Armageddon weapons and Doomsday blueprints based upon the co-opted martial art principles of Aikido have been developed by our devoted scientists, who have now disappeared for security reasons.  The heretofore unknown secrets of Aikido were conscientiously extracted by the highest moral standards available.  Unfortunately, they didn't work and we resorted to kidnapping, torture, threats, blackmail, extortion, bribery, and the best available hallucinogens and truth serums.   Some may consider these extreme tactics Machiavellian in nature, but in the end, by witness of the new world order, everyone will come to realize the end did justify the horrible disfigurements of recalcitrant sensei or teachers. Despite the small price, we have attained a great victory for global peace and we have dealt a mortal blow to global warming in the process.  The world of now and the future, take notice. The Doomsday blueprint has been successful beyond our wildest expectations.  Some of you have suffered some temporary setbacks and inconveniences, but they have been worth the culminating peace within the world and ourselves. When we first proposed to stop paying for oil to subsidize terrorists, everyone thought we were mad.  We soon fixed that with a blitz of advertising  and spin doctor mind meddling and melding.  In the short term, we rode horses for several generations, while we worked out the kinks in the new fuel cell technology and the distribution of hydrogen, but the byproducts were peace and harmony with man and nature.  The air, seas, and rivers are no longer polluted disgraces that dishonored man before God and our ancestors.   The billions in the crash program to develop and implement the technology has brought forth from this nation a new light to the world.  Fresh air fills our lungs and souls with enlightenment and it enlivens us for the dance of health, harmony, and peace.  Yes, we are the blessed ones of the perusia.  Body and soul of each of us has been assumed into heaven, whole and everlasting. Turning the other cheek blended with our enemy.  Fuel cells neutralized their attack and sent them packing off on camels to the ungrateful, and unheard herd. All weapons have been superseded by Aikido inspired weapons of less destruction such as the wooden jo and sword.   The ray gum machine based upon the Aikido principals of blend, neutralize, and immobilize has literally made all metal based weapons useless.  On this higher level of turning aggression around is the shame and frustration that immobilize the most wicked and horribly inhumane hordes of barbarians imaginable.   When a ray gum transforms metal into a slimy and gummy mass by a simple chemical restructure, the humiliation is complete.  As witnessed in the early days of this enlightened weaponry, hordes of drugged berserkers numbering in the thousands were miraculously defeated and turned into whimpering  babies by a seven year old playing war.  Such humiliation is never forgotten by the hardened warriors spouses who bear the brunt of the loss when they find they are reduced to nursemaids removing slimy, sticky gum from the hair of crying, complaining, sore losers.  Unnerving and unceasing nagging is the final immobilizing result of an elegant and efficient weapon. Many uses have been found for the gum ray over the years.  At sea, the decks of aircraft carriers are easily transformed into a gummy mass that makes a ludicrous scene of planes attempting to take off as well as land. As the military uses of this weapon have become rare, it has taken on a new life of replacing the shotgun displayed in the back window of pickup trucks.  However, these trucks are most often driven by save the animals fanatics. A close cousin to the gum ray is the "rubber bubble battle balloon."  It has made missile and air war a thing of the past.  A missile or plane is engulfed in a rubber-like bubble.  The missile or plane is helplessly immobilized and it safely drops the missile or plane to the ground as the bubble absorbs the shock of the landing. Other weapons in our arsenal have been banned due to their inhumane nature, but they are worth mentioning here.  One is an indestructible bomb that broadcasts jokes in all tongues.  Thus critical concentration is broken.  Losing a battle under such circumstances has led to low self-esteem so it is to be used only as a last resort.   A similar weapon to the joke bomb is the laser phantom force of attacking naked clowns.  Such an attack radiates a dispersion, a diasporas of focus and balance.  The root of any self-respect is undermined with the anguished thought of attacking and killing cold heartedly a sea of laughing clowns.  What would their children think of them?  How long would their wives deny them access to the bedroom?  This is truly a weapon that is too inhumane to even contemplate. Tao, Da Liu Many years ago, I found a book by him on a park bench  and this introduced to me in a curious way the practice of Tai Chi. It lent itself to my self imposed poverty, and subsequent yearning for a food supplement. The park of premonition was in Bridgeport,  a noble desert of refinement in asphalt and cockroach tenements.   All pretense was paved over and guarded by roaches  in a life and death struggle for peace. The officers' yacht club was situated under highway 95 and overlooking  the breathtaking Riviera of an open sewer. Shell shocked roaches flocked to the resort in their bright summer regalia to forget and forgive. Golf was the pastime of the affluent. I often woke to a televised tournament on my bedcovers, not able to move for fear of embarrassing myself on national tv. Fortunately, I was able to practice Taoism if not regular Tai Chi. I think the I-Ching classic was mad at me, foretelling heartbreak and a complicated road in rubble, stranded and alone in the midst of many, snubbed and denigrated by women.   Who could blame them? I pushed and smoked disintegrated cars. I found a sullen and soulful car, unwanted and abused, pleading for a warm home and a tender heart. I tried to restore confidence in the wounded and afflicted movement. I tried to teach her to blend with subtle energy  that emanated from the fecund mother of invention and explored the outstretched arms of the cosmos. I tried to teach the meaning of a beautiful circular motion, that would unify spirit, driver and body in invincibility. Despite my efforts, a neighbor let the air out of her tires after I caught him stealing my food. It lay on it's side with broken pride. Resolute with indomitable will, I raised the forlorn and torn and patched with concerted effort, not willing discouragement in my relations. Tenderly, I prodded her with care until she hummed with pride and courage. However, with prehistoric awareness, she feared the dark, where the dead and living coexisted. She would not set forth in the night, shutting her eyes with my anxiety driving her, alone and patched with what should be patched as best we can patch the surface of life. In fear of the night, her vision dimmed with oppressive visions of retribution. In our monastic austerity, we were companion misfits who only knew hints of Da Liu like the first drops of rain, waiting like compressed spirit to be released. He was in the corners simply waiting, learning and teaching from where he was and was not. After all, he did not move,  but was firmly rooted in St. John the Divine. We actually drove in the wrong direction, North to Nova Scotia, looking for the unwarranted haven beyond ourselves. We arrived, but the refuge was destroyed by a nature with foresight. Nature had circumscribed us, drawing a circle that drew us in. Naked on the beach and in the cold, We scooped fish with our bare hands out of the frozen waters, but they were too small to eat. Totally unprepared, we were prepared for anything with nothing. A discarded board served as a plate to pick from an illusion of food. We were driven back from the garden to serve out our monastic duties of harsh atonement. The monk on four wheels introduce me to a strange and unusual woman from the sea,  who pushed the reluctant monk in the evening without embarrassment. The monastic roaches, having a practical sense of humor in lieu of verbal comic routines, often hoisted our mattress to neighboring rooms and even cities for us to wake like babies each day in a new tenements or a vagrant's quarters beneath a bridge. New York City was a favorite spot, where we would wake in cramped quarters with a view of a brick wall. Making the best of it, I took courses in authors who supported a dead father like the author of  A Long Day's Journey Into Night. Tired of roach locomotion, dire prospects, poverty without direction,  hopeless ignorance of the world, an inability to express the breathe of life, the inability to say the right thing, the inability to explain or prove, she joined the chorus of dark disapproval, leaving openings in her soul for maliciousness. Years of depression ensued within a closed room of the dark night of the soul. Another woman shared her poetry, and said she might be interested if I wasn't a cluck. Beyond pain and self-interest,  the I-Ching stood like a stolid barrier between my heart and another. Forty nights in the desert were turning into forty years. I looked in small apartments in Little Italy, Soho, The West Village, Chelsea, and even the Bronx. Testing fate at all hours, I seemed to walk in a protective aura, listening to poets and musicians on the street in the late hours of prayer. In the phone book, I browsed through Zen masters, but was never convinced. I visited St. Patrick's Cathedral, where a man swore in benediction. I served in a soup kitchen and prayed at Mass to honor my father and to seek what was missing. All night pool and beer with a dear friend fulfilled communion with nicotine stained teeth and talk of travels, St. John of the Cross, Merton, Hopkins, broken hearts, hopeless dreams and yearnings, psychological maladies, books that made us wonder, the waitresses  in their tight fitting clothes and thin smiles they wore as easily. During the week, I was humiliated as a secretary in a School of Social Work, where I could paint in a large studio,  unsupervised, and uninterrupted for credit. Thus I repaired damaged souls. This was where I found Da Liu at St. John the Divine. "Ah, you are here," he said, The road led to Da Liu and a woman so innocent and pure of heart that I had to take one last chance. It was the end of a road of rubble and the start of a road of grace. The great spirits of Justin and Max carried us on wings to where the roaches lived not. We found refuge in the Hungarian Pastry Shop, Soho wine and cheese, coupons for fast food diner with candle light, The Golden Donut, daisies, Central Park where we shared one Thrift Shop coat, too big for one. When she said yes to life the heavens opened up and poured generous graces. I found Da Liu and Lili without looking  at the end of a road of a ruble of books, places, and people. At eighty, Da Liu's fight was won before it begun. He lived alone. Women with bad teeth, he would not marry. Once the I-Ching said he should climb a mountain. He told me he climbed the hill to the Cloisters. For Manhattan it could qualify as a lofty summit. Never did he explain the dynamics of motion, but he was a witness, like an invincible fly. He was in harmony with motion without movement or commotion. No dramas played in his head. Without condemnation, he was not condemned. He did not teach us to defeat, but to win without winning. We would only hurt ourselves to learn to defeat, he said. Once I taped a video of his Tai Chi. It was a long class with much commentary. "Wave hands like cloudy turns the wheel of life. Make the skin very beautiful for the young lady. Very good for circulation and health. See!  Very Easy!  More Comfortable." At the end of the class, I told him the sound recording was off. Therefore there was no recording of commentary. He said, "Ah!"  He understood. I made the "Ha!" sound once, very naturally when my unsubstantial met the substantial. I saw his eyes dart across the room and suspend the class in time. He was looking for the student, I'm afraid I was not. Late as always with slow reflection. I was honored nevertheless in many ways. He fed me Oxtail Soup. "Very delicious!  Very nutritious!" Mind, body, and spirit blended with the world around him. St John the Devine blessed him with sanctuary. After several years he said, "You should have questions." "I have one." "It's too late!" I found out about a year too late that he died at ninety-eight. I took a walk in the park, where I found the Falon Dafa. In their brochure, it cited Da Liu, as the man who was credited  with bringing Tai Chi to this country. He was quoted to have said, "I now tell my students to practice Falun Dafa." If Wise Spirits Offer Prosthetic Devices in the Night. � Copyright, Charles Riley, June, 2003 If wise spirits offer prosthetic devices in the night, accept them graciously.  Wear them proudly as generous signs of favor leading us altogether to redemption.   An especially useful device is the neck alignment battering ram.  The unfortunate name belies its importance as a tool of salvation and good health.  You will recognize this device by the large, soft, spongy head that absorbs the shock.  Emerging at a considerable rate from the region of the heart, a piston propels the shock absorbent head just below the chin to correct critical head posture. For the paltry price of a dream, a completely energy independent device can give you a guaranteed extended life warranty.  At no cost, enjoy thousands of hours of enjoyment and refreshing bops to the head. If anyone asks you why you are smiling during a meeting or a socially required party, please tell them, "If wise spirits offer prosthetic devices in the night, accept them with gratitude. Color Has Returned to the World. � Copyright, Charles Riley, June, 2003 Color has returned to the world. Birds have cleared their throats to sing. Sandstorms choke and sting. The dunes seek to smother. Will we kill one another? We pray for soldiers brave at heart, that from oppressors dark they part. The curtain of deception hides children tortured before anguished parents,  while dignitaries of terror receive prelates. Plots win world support from impressionable people, comfortable in their privilege, while dissidents await in coffins for someone to lift the lid. Will the Jesus of The Bill of Rights kindly raise the dead. A Giant Step for Man � Copyright, Charles Riley, June, 2003 Bird walks past, the way birds do. The water tumbles and steams in empty bubbles. The paper feels soothe before it is torn and energy is poured forth. The seats on this journey are uncomfortable for a purpose. Words drift lazily in the evening, "If only there was a job that paid for the contemplation of ominous birds, teacups, and paper sacks of sugar." If Bread Is Man � Copyright, Charles Riley, July, 2003 If bread is a man, not outside of man,  nor the figure of a man, but the experience of man and not separate, the bread is the sacrificial offering of man, then the sacrifice conveys a complete balance in the sacrifice of perfection for imperfection and disharmony of body, mind, spirit. Go to Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5  Click here to buy a book in print. ArtTechnology.com, A Gallery of Original Expressionistic Art, Poetry, and Prose