Home » Poems » Best » Gary Onderisin » Best Gary Onderisin Poems

Best Poems Written by Gary Onderisin

Below are the all-time best Gary Onderisin poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Gary Onderisin Poem

Like a Small, Quiet Death On a Page

One too many poems:  Like a barking dog at 

The Garden gate:  Oblivious to the beauty of the Garden, and

Unwilling to let anybody in it to enjoy it.

Details | Gary Onderisin Poem

No House Built On a Bridge, Part Three

3.



Or down yet another city street,
This Way down that grand Hiway,
That Third Eye opened:
Random patches of dandelion manifest,
Climbing the overgrown commons by the road;
Disappearing out of sight -
By the cracked, sun-blanched sidewalk;
Golden and deep emerald green dandelion
Over the smog-choked horizon.
Humanity on the brink,
Sliding down that proverbial 'slippery slope" -
To the proverbial abyss of our insouciance, to
Our bourgeois folly, infernal cruelty fed by witless greed,
The more mundane, mere surface of all things, as they may be.

But again, surely, this can't be all that is:  So mean, so toxic.
Refreshed, one looks again, looks with eyes wide open with
New Saving Knowledge.
Now the patches of dandelion seem even more startlingly 
Alive and vibrant.
They seem, somehow, almost "more real than real".
Illumined, they appear hyper-real, dazzlingly brilliant,
Appear preternatural, mesmerisingly coronal, and
Opulent, yet as though man-made, like ethereal origami,
Like the sun itself, another Saving "Point of Navigation" to
the Hidden Infinite Divine Source behind all things mundane.


*****

"Jesus said [to Judas Iscariot], 'Come and I will teach you ...
about a great realm and a boundlessness whose measure no angelic
race has comprehended.  In it is the great Invisible Spirit ...'"

--- The Gospel of Judas 10: 1 - 5

"God is one's very 'own'.  It is the eternal relationship.  One realizes Him in
direct proportion to the intensity of one's feelings for Him.  Don't be afraid.
Always remember that somebody is protecting you."

"He who is really anxious to cross the ocean of the material world will somehow break his bonds.  No one can entangle him."

--- The Holy Mother, Sri Saradamani Devi, the divine consort of 
     Sri Ramakrishna


"Mary [Magdalene] said [to Jesus Christ], 'Lord, is there a place which [lacks truth]?  The Lord said, "The place where I am not!'"

--- From the Dialogue of the Savior

"God is a dyer.  As the good dyes, which are called 'true', dissolve with
the things dyed in them, so it is with those whom God has dyed.  Since his dyes are immortal, they are immortal by means of his colors."

--- From the Gospel of Philip

Details | Gary Onderisin Poem

No House Built On a Bridge, Part One

1.



At a mosque at Fatahpur, India, --- what was the capital city of the
Mughal Empire, --- Akbar (r. 1556 - 1505), the third emperor of the Empire, had constructed the largest gateway in India.  This imperial construct, Akbar's
Triumphal Arch, was meant to symbolize the supremacy of the Empire.
And emblazoned on this arch, on a panel of kufic script, are the words -
Akbar commanded be put:

"Jesus, the son of Mary (on whom be peace) said:  "The World is a Bridge, 
pass over it, but build no houses upon it.  He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity, but the World endures but an hour.  Spend it in prayer, for the
rest is unseen."

*****

"Entheogen" Hiway (Harmony, sin, redemption):

"[Jesus' disciples asked] him, 'When will the Kingdom come?'
Jesus said, 'It will not come by waiting for it. 
... rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and 
men do not see it.'"

---  From the ancient Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Saying 113

"Jesus said, 'It is I who am the Light which is above them all.  
It is I who am the All.  From me did the All - come forth, and
unto me did the All extend.  Split a piece of wood, and I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

--- From the ancient Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Saying 77

"Sometimes it is said that by meditation one will understand that God is -
seated in the heart of the human being ...  The Bhagavad-gita [confirms] this -
with the declaration that Isvara, the supreme controller of the world, is 
seated in the heart of everyone.  He is present, not only in everyone's 
heart, but also within the atoms.  No place is vacant, no place is 
without the presence of the Lord."

--- His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder - Acarya
of the International Society For Krishna Consciousness (ISKON)

"The splendor of the sun, which dissipates the darkness of this whole world,
comes from me.  And the splendor of the moon and the splendor of fire
are also from me."

--- Lord Krishna, from the Bhagavad-Gita [15.12]

"Light and darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of
one another.  They are inseparable.  Because of this, neither are the
good good, nor the evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death.  For this reason 
each one will dissolve into its original nature.  But those who are exalted
above the world are indissoluble, eternal."

---  From the ancient Gnostic Christian Gospel of Phillip

Details | Gary Onderisin Poem

Diana At the Ides of August, Part Three

Apparently in time and space, the dark "House of the Empire of [Utter] Chaos" duly falls: Weakened injurious walls tumble into ruination and leave an untroubled, celebratory, sprawling horizon laughing all around. There's no ceiling, no roof: Only stars in the Heavens above. There's no foundation or floor, but for the good Earth and the near Unfathomable Depths, born Good News once again.

Reason, Rapture, Wisdom, Knowledge, and Faith ring.
Diana continues Her ruminations, Her meditations:

Smoldering, poisonous slag heaps become great, thriving, swaying oases. Running, fetid gutters, lining dark, trash-strewn city streets, are made Mighty, Rushing, Living, Life-Giving Water, Infinitely more precious than any gemstone, than mere silver, gold:

No forbidding skyline, no hopeless night, no empty windows lit in the dark, like staring, spying eyes:

The whole world becomes a warm, welcoming hearth fire:

Roots Deeper, Blissful Eternal Life in the
Light in the Presence of Omnipresent, All-Powerful,
All-Compassionate Divinity: At once, really -
All that ever was, is, and must transpire.

The chasm separating Heaven from Earth is bridged.
Natural harmony resonates in the Perfect Gnostic Circle:
Everything that one can see: Images Deeper, Deepest:

Earnest counsel, wiser, a view informed:
Due Curiosity, Inquiry, Experience, Knowledge:
Diana's fair brow knits.
She only seeks to enlighten us.
"One simply must understand," She says, now only a tad more serious.
In reply, one can only feign indifference,
the good light of day only welling.

***

"The rulers thought they did all they did by their own power and will, but the holy spirit was secretly accomplishing all through them by the spirit's will."

--- The gnostic Gospel of Philip

Details | Gary Onderisin Poem

The Gladiator

Outside the gladiator's window, outside in the growing gloom of night,

The nearby volcano is almost invisible, only smolders silently now.

Inside his room, he can almost tangibly feel the darkness gathering about him,

Can almost tangibly feel it surrounding him, suffocating him with renewed

Fear of what may befall him tomorrow in the arena.

As cold and oblivion press in on him from every corner of his lonely room,

The tragic corpse that is the entire Material World molders on.

With a shudder of horror, and with a whimper, the gladiator hangs his head low.

But his surrendering to his fear is no real option for him:

If he loses this battle,

Then he knows Rome will surely win.

Fighting back his despair, the gladiator finally curses the dark

And lights his oil lamp.

Immediately the shadow of death flees to the corners of his room.

He knows that there is a Way forward for him.

He begins to don his Spiritual armor.

As he wraps himself in the truer armor of Faith tempered with

Reason, what was his quailing heart beats stronger, with an iron will.

He knows that the ignorant, ultimately wretched blows of the

Material World in the arena cannot defeat him.

Although still somewhat frightened, he has faith that he is impervious inside

His armor's glinting, ringing plates.

Truly, knowingly philosophic, the gladiator will rise

Above all Material destruction.

The sacred empty Tomb,

Its stone rolled back, and

Marshaling all his strength and faith,

He draws aside the tawdry, ragged curtain of

His worldly disbelief.

Matchless, boundless power

Floods his body.

Humankind's darker nature vanishes.

Beauty will indeed save humankind, in spite of the

Merely human.

Sacred, Gnostic twin fish rise lazily, calmly,

Breach the mere surface of all things Material.

Then rolling golden scales,

The fish descend once again into the Depth,

Into the Rest:

Images of Images deeper,

Roots Deepest,

Be they in Heaven above

Or on Earth below:

Blazing, almost blinding Light,

Ecstasy, Knowledge, Peace,

The God of all gods, the One God of Love:

Omnipresent, All- Powerful, All-Compassionate, Divine Reality.

(The above poem is dedicated to Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, renowned "Last poet of imperial Rome" ((348 CE - circa 410 CE));
and to Ray Manzarek, influential intellectual/musician; poet/songwriter;
author; producer, film-maker ((1939 - 2013));
and to Paul Kantner, influential intellectual/musician; singer;
poet/songwriter ((1941 - 2016)))

Details | Gary Onderisin Poem

No House Built On a Bridge, Part Two

2.



"Those who have gone astray, whom [the Holy Spirit] itself begets, usually go
astray also because of the Spirit.  Thus, by this one and the same breath, the
fire blazes and is put out."

--- From the Gospel of Phillip

*******

Alone, so very alone, one can only be hard-pressed, can only 
Be cowed and lied to, be otherwise foiled in our Material World for so long:
That great "Entheogen" Hiway finally opens invitingly before one, tantalizingly -
Disappearing out of sight, over the horizon:
Turn 'round any street corner there. What does one see?
The local shopping mall beckoning, alluring.
But mired in conspiracy:

Mall.
Mall the Merciless.
Mall the Unheeding.
Mall the Hidden Destroyer.
The one, baleful Cyclops' eye ever watching.
Darkness waiting to pounce.

Endless, close rows of cars
Parked head to toe and visa versa.
Like an endless sheet of chain mail gleaming dully -
Across the expanse of the mall parking lot;
Rows of cars like scales on a fatally errant dragon,
As far as the human eye can see.
But surely there's more here than meets the eye.
Surely. Now with new eyes, one looks again, 
Looks for the first time:  Scales duly drop from
Eyes of the spiritually blind,
And the weigh scales all Creation right themselves.

[In a perfect balance

Perfect placid Gnostic twin fish,

Languid, pearl, and drifting,

Bathing in the Light,

Rise,

And the blind see.]

Now one goes down another street corner.
(It really could be any other one.)
Down the Hiway there:  Another world unfolds:
The city is "rusting out", the city is betrayed,
Abandoned in a fog of soulless economic manipulation -
And predation.
A city water tower, the city's name painted across it,
Tilts, failing to one side, scarred and with peeling paint,
Like a doomed, industrial Leaning Tower of Pisa.
More "ruin porn" for the hard of hearing, left behind by
The heedlessness, by the "hard of loving".
Stagnant green ponds grow by silent rusted factory production lines.
Trash from a "trashed" lunchroom high on a hill.
One just has to stop and look again at all of this,
One just has to stop and listen intently:
One's ear is filled duly with that glorious Hiway's siren song:
Now there's Life, now there's Light.
Royal purple flags up high, ripple in the wind.
Opulent Byzantine towers rise, gleaming in the deep blue
Proverbial vault of the sky.
Magical, brave mirrors.
Pools of gold.

Details | Gary Onderisin Poem

Summer Solstice Gone

The dying inside:

Myopic windows;

daylight fading

on a glass table top;

dead flies milling,

unaware.

Best Poems Written by Gary Onderisin

Like a Small, Quiet Death On a Page

No House Built On a Bridge, Part Three

A Poet's Consolation

Sickly Vine, Thriving Vine

No House Built On a Bridge, Part One

Super Moon Suite

Diana At the Ides of August, Part Three

The Gladiator

No House Built On a Bridge, Part Two

Summer Solstice Gone