THE KNIGHTS OF Y (12 new poems by Shaman Dagaji

DAGAJI AT YAKIMA UPLANDS

A few years ago, I performed a Shamanic 'feat'.  Marilyn Monroe, as my 'Benefactor', is in the habit of giving me assignments, things I have to figure out, sort of like a koan in Zen.  As I go about my business, my spirit works on these things, until it comes up with a resolution.  There is an 'aha!' moment, and we move on.  I've forgotten just what the assignment was, but when I accomplished the resolution, my reward was to become a member of "THE KNIGHTS OF Y".  I have no idea what this means.

Many years before that, when I was caring for my mother during her senility, MM and I were walking in the yard.  As I stepped over a blooming pink Davidii, she burst out with "I am the sign Y!"  To which I immediately replied, "I am Y not!"

She is my muse.  We first met in the early 1970s, when I was in graduate school in Southern California.  She climbed into bed with me and woke me with sex.  Years later, we became linked during my Shamanic Initiation, and worked together constantly, writing poems every day, and doing drawings and paintings.  It was a sort of channeling, but mostly a combination of talents.  Then things went south for several years, and I stopped writing, and changed my drawing style.

Recently, things have gotten better, and I began to write again.  Some poems were published in the online journal Four and Twenty, but then I stopped writing short poems.  This is a collection of recent longer poems.

THE KNIGHTS OF Y

11.08.12

HOTEL TEOTL

when the squint-muscles begin to sag, and the flesh droops

above the smile, a certain knowledge manifests –

knowledge of the spirit as it confronts the agents of demise

the Mayan Gods

displaced by the Cosmic Shift, the Gods are homeless

their search for blood and corn depletes their powers

I set up a stone

“Hotel Teotl”

carved with niches and grooves

it has eyes where they fight to roost

Hotel Teotl, at the top of a stair

one step at a time we receive their presence

as they master the tests of Time

11.09.12

GENIUS OF THE MUSE

topping off the terror with some beer

I’m hoping the error won’t come near

too late, I fear – her heart is pounding in my hand

as I drain her life-blood from the can

the genius of the muse, the life I choose

living like there’s nothing left to lose

I wrestle a loosening tooth against my tongue

coaxing a lucid truth to leave its lung

11.10.12

TO A T

the more I insist on being me, the more I is I

even though Jesus took over in between, (“crossed my  ‘I’s”,

so to speak), the more “I” suits me to a T

He has a hard time being him, when I’m around

me being so strongly connected to the ground

I brings him in like a lightning rod

He strikes me like a cattle prod

so I penned a tune titled “Battle Him”

just to get under his skin

11.11.12

THE RAINBOW BROKE

his long snout covered in grisly white fur,

the werewolf remained at bay while I held him with my gaze

beneath my stymie, he squirmed and hissed

my hands were busy with my tortoise

coaxing the oracle with my stroke, I inhaled, waiting

the clouds around us were bursting with rain

prana was surging through my brain

until the rainbow broke into golden knowing

and the loco lobo lunged, plunging into the cauldron of my heart

11.12.12

DEADWOOD

when the deadwood sprouts and thistles bloom

on stalks as thick as your wrist, I walk

through neighborhoods sick with Christ

Jesus walks with me as I puke

in training to be my muse

I’m a little choked up, and my voice is thick

does he have anything I can use?

like stalks of celery hollow with pith,

the people of Jesus, addicted to myth,

have long been known as enemies of Earth

11.15.12

EARTH KEEPER

siphoning off the departed soul of the Hamas leader

was easy, in the melee; the blood-letting orgy of the mid-East

tribal conflict

I didn’t get all the pieces

but I did get a bucketful of panic

and enough hatred to fry a snake

my training finally has kicked in

I am the Earth Keeper of Yakistan

for the blood sacrifice, I’m the man

reduce, reuse, recycle, the motto goes

waste not, want not

Mitt Romney was right—it’s all about the Culture

in the birthplace of Jesus

like a child, I watched

Jesus as he slaughtered the innocents

and like a child I let it go to waste

until he gave me a taste

the chocolate syrup that greases the wheels of this world

11.16.12

HORSE POWER

because the Earth is my Church

it’s also my parking lot

with Angels for valet, it’s hard to find my car!

and so I walk

but I don’t get far

two legs or four?

I morphed into a horse

as result of a curse

a horse with wings

of lightning from a star

“Excalibur!” named from a sword

I vanquish evil with my word

11.17.12

KISSES FROM TIME

looking deeply through the people

I embarrass myself

how empty I’ve become

“I gave at the orifice,” I tell myself

as all their faults and flaws

tumble helter-skelter into my vacuum

a hairpin pierces a button

liquids dance around a thumb

my dog eats cats with more grace

I think he’s a bone-again

fluids drooling from his chin

I pray to the highest vibrations

where the membranes begin to thin

and here come the heart-beats!

one by one I hold them in my hands

like fuzzy mice or ducklings or precious sands

like kisses from Time, like sacred plans

11.19.21

WIND BLOWS RAIN

“all branches and no roots!” she said

“the fruits are my roots!” I barked

elsewhere in the forest a picnic was in play

maids and their mates were making hay

“let’s make a crop-circle!” she said,

puffing her voluminous cheeks

I held up my fingers in the shape of her brains

fir-trees and cedars, maples and ferns

widdershins toothpicks in her winds and my rains

that heart with the arrow, piercing and true

went viral on YouTube for the world to view

11.21.12

IN MY STUDIO

the Bindu mat forms a ‘porch’ for the vortex

oak leaves (black) at the corners

look like little footprints

three toes at the front end, a pecker-head with a squirt

at the rear

the Beast Within (Jesus), when he roars, squats here

his yoni juices the Bindu

this Bindu is the Energy Center

of Yakistan

I place my hands to cover the oak leaves at the far end of the mat

and after Jesus roars, I sit

in the center of the Bindu, to Dream

across the planet in Gaza, the Jews

slaughter some Innocents with their bombs,

while CNN beams their screams into my Dream

my Shaman’s Body transforms the Dream,

streams it into the Bindu where it flows

to the hearts and souls of my city

this morning, after, the sunlight diffracted through my crystal

to send its rainbow to color the end of my dick

11.23.12

TASK OF THE SHAMAN

some people call it the ‘ethers’,

that amniotic fluid that permeates earth and sky

surrounding the Shaman

properly called “The Medicine”,

it naturally occurs in pristine Nature,

inherent in every aspect of the Natural World,

inherent in Spirit,

inherent in the Womb of Pachamama

wherein the Gods are whelped

in the days since Pristine Nature left the Planet,

it has become the task of the Shaman to create anew

this magical tincture that speaks with its own voice

11.24.12

The Knights of Y

with her crotchful of mollusks, my poor wife

drugged me and dragged me to join them

I slept through the entire whoredeal

one by one the Knights-Initiate

fell from her to the right, or to the left, depending

Xolotl or Teotl their fate

stroking my Quetzal wand,

she sang the dawn awake

JESUS AND THE NATURE OF REALITY

11.05.12

A few years ago, I caught on to the intent of my spirits regarding my Initiation as a Shaman.  I was not really intended to become a Shaman as others have been.  There was a special agenda for me, based on an agreement entered into in the years before the Sphinx was invented.  (I was the one who brought through the design of the Sphinx from the nagual.)  I was with my present spirits in this time in ancient Egypt.  In 1989, at the time of the World Series earthquake in San Francisco, I was guided to retrieve a large ‘Record Keeper Crystal’ from a collection which ended up in a bookstore in Seattle near my home, when a woman who owned a shop in Carmel was forced to sell her crystal collection after the earthquake.

After working with the crystal for years, I was unable to enter into its energy field with sufficient power to understand its significance, other than the fact that it had been my crystal in ancient Egypt.  Eventually, my interactions with my spirit guides, or Allies, led me to discern that this crystal was the key to my mission in this life, which has been to prepare the way for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  As I learned this, I was aghast.

This was nearly twenty years into my Initiation as a Shaman, during which nothing had seemed to be going right.  As it turned out, I had wasted my life.  I was nearly seventy years old, exiled to a retarded Red State town, far from anything my life had prepared me for.  I was in no way in agreement with anything I had ever known about Jesus and his religion, let alone the way he and his cronies had treated me and the people associated with me in this life.  These spirits were evil, in any way I could look at it.  I was in no way going to lend assistance to His return to the earth, in any role whatsoever.

The spirits had such control over every aspect of my life that I had no choice but to engage them in battle at every level I could.  This went on for many years, even before I understood what was going on.  My blogs have reflected this struggle, much to my embarrassment, for several years.

Recently, I have been having some success.  Recent blogs give some details of this.  This success, I believe, is due to my understanding of the nature of reality.

The world we live in is a world of energy, and energy is one aspect of Spirit.  Energy, and spirit, are aspects of the Philosopher’s Stone, which the ancients have identified as the basis of matter.  The Philosopher’s Stone itself, as I learned in a Vision in 1988, is Consciousness.  Consciousness is composed of particles, which the scientists are beginning to isolate, if not to identify.  The nature of Consciousness is Change.  This is the basis of the wisdom of the I Ching.  Through mastering the nature of Change, one can rearrange reality.  This is the process called Transformation, which is the basis of the ‘alchemy’ which is at the core of Surrealism. 

The essence of the arts of Surrealism is the feat of Transformation, using the powers inherent in the psyche, as expressed in the arts of painting and poetry, and is the core of the type of Shamanism I practice.

The practice of tuning to the changes of the lunar cycle is a preparation for developing the types of attention necessary to track the changes inherent in the process of Transformation.  Mastery of changes in many subtle arenas is necessary to engage in the act of transforming an aspect of reality as potent as Jesus.

I have apparently succeeded, at least partially, in transforming Jesus.

I could not defeat him, at least not permanently, but I have apparently changed his agenda.

Early on in my Initiation as a Shaman, he showed me a glyph to represent his Second Coming.  It was a Cross, with two crossbars, the top one slightly shorter than the lower – a Double Cross.  The cross of Succession.  One crossbar atop the first.

As I discovered his agenda, and realized my opposition to its success, I was at the same time expanding my powers of awareness through my own efforts at Shamanic Training, and the invaluable experiences of being of One Energy with my spirits, or Allies.  Actually being of the same energies as these beings has given me amazing insights into the nature of reality.

The ability to hold a world of many facets within the intelligence of my physical body / psyche, and the Medicine Energies of my apartment, requires an expansion of my spirit.  This was accomplished through years of hard work with my Allies; going to the edges of the physical universe, and to the dawn of time, and to multiple levels of reality of the world of the present moment (parallel universes), has expanded my awareness, and my ability to hold this expanded awareness in the time – space continuum of my physical body. 

With this expanded awareness, I have been able to track the changes in my Allies which resulted from my Despacho Ceremonies, my furies and rages, my Medicine Work, and other trial-and-error efforts to get rid of them.

As I was able to remove them from my energy field for longer periods of time, I was able to track the progression of signs as they re-entered my energies.  Each time was a little different.  And so I began to restructure my responses to their tactics, oddly enough, in ways which seemed to parallel the ‘teachings’ of the spiritual masters.  As I developed a stronger mesh of “Ayni” (right relationship) in my Medicine Energies, I found that the energies could support a gentler, more accommodating reaction to their return.

Without the Intent of my own spirit to be totally free from these intruders, the truisms of the new age teachers were merely hollow affirmations.  It was the indomitable desire to be Free that allowed me to overcome the will of my captors.  And as I began to overcome their will, their will began to change.

As noted in recent blogs, my spirits have become much more accommodating, and much less intrusive on my own energy field, and hence more and more welcomed by my own spirit.

So far, it seems that the will to freedom is the key.  But the key only works in a matrix of the Medicine Energies, and the expanded awareness of the Shaman.

My drawings are a vehicle for apprehending the changes in my world and my awareness.  Even though I might start a part of a drawing with a specific intent, my own lack of skill, and my penchant for the Surrealistic twist, gives each image the chance to become what it will, outside of or beyond my own understanding and intent.

This morning, while I was sort of ‘noodling’ at my drawing, at the coffee house, an interesting configuration appeared in one part of the drawing.  A tail feather had a sketched-in line which I unthinkingly doubled.  I had now two long vertical lines, side by side, which I joined near the top with a crossing line.  I now had a cross, with two uprights, which I saw was an interesting variation on Jesus’ Double Cross.

Two verticals indicated more than one Ascension, rather than one Ascension repeated.  In other words, no ‘return’; no Second Coming.  Rather, more than one Ascension.  More than one Jesus.  This fit nicely with my quest to develop the inherent qualities of the human energy field, in order to achieve things in each individual never conceived of in the Christian theology.

We can change the nature of the world we live in.  We don’t have to accept the current truths.  We can discover deeper realities in our own lives, in the world around us, and in a future which we can create from the energies we generate from our life-styles.

BLACK TARS OF MY MORTAL WOUND

BOTROID   The Spirit of Mt. Adams

I woke up this morning thinking of 1968, when I hitch-hiked on acid from Seattle to LA, to see the Surrealist exhibition at the LA County Museum of Art.  This museum is located at the site of the La Brea Tar Pits.  It was all I could do to keep from climbing the fence and diving in to the black gooey ponds.  A sabre-tooth tiger called to me.  This was before I knew about Power Animals.

During my Initiation as a Shaman, I was taken by Queen Nefertiti, (Queen of the Witches) to view the World Axis.  It was as black and gooey as the tar pits.  Not good, I thought, naively.  I was soon to become One with that blackness.  It is the core of my being, my Shaman's Mortal Wound (the 'wounded healer' --more than a metaphor!).  

On Hallowe'en, Nefertiti appeared in my dream, in her black cape, with her black witch's hat obscuring her face.  Haven't seen her for months!

I've failed at everything.  I've been exiled to Yakistan.  I'm watching the soul of the people suck at the pits of ignorance.  I can't believe that Mitt Romney is even close to becoming President.  The stupidity of the people has me  very depressed.  My own Allies have betrayed me.

There is a heat in the black gooey tars at the core of my being.  It is the same heat, the same darkness, I witnessed when I was sent into Hades to retrieve the spirits who caused the attack on Gabby Giffords.

I can use this heat.  This morning I was so sad.  I sat with my tom-tom, and tapped out a dirge.  Eventually, I went to the bottom, where the tars warmed me.  I leaned forward and entered the black circle of the bindu painted on my yoga mat. The blackness took me, and I was in the light.

I got up, opened my black Liquitex, and painted a bindu in the center of the red orb of Marilyn Monroe's painting.  I painted a black line around the red.  

I went outside to retrieve the Botroid from atop its pole, just as the blonde witch was arriving up the alley to the barking of the dogs.  

The center of the world is very present in the core of Mt. Adams.  Ever since the departure of Mt. St. Helens, things have gotten worse here in Yakima, as well as in the world.

As a Shaman, my art is the transformational miracle of Surrealism.  I have been gifted with the ability to turn the black tarry world axis into energy I can use.

It is the time of the Black Crescent.  We are entering the Dark of the Moon.  This is a very fruitful time.  The light which we seek is at the core of the darkness.  Let it burn in your soul until it shines in the world.