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POEMS BY MAX REIF: A Cry From Down the Rabbit Hole in the Time of the Pandemic and more

Last updated: August 11th, 2020

A Cry From Down the Rabbit Hole, in the Time of the Pandemic

I have gone
down the rabbit hole
chasing a bright
promise of information,
which I believed to be
the quick tail of elusive truth,
but so far, down here,
have scarcely gotten
even another glimpse!

You see, I thought I already
possessed that commodity:
that truth was safely inside me.
I pursued my daily
rounds of life with confidence,
eager to make my sojourn here
a vehicle for truth’s stamp
each time the sun came up.

Were those the days!
And in summer, I would travel
to faraway places and sometimes
my holiest spot on Earth,
to refresh those inner wellsprings.

Now my world has been fractured—
cloven asunder by Duality’s sword
in the form of bold voices
speaking into my world
what I considered nonsense,
with straight faces
and many earnest points
and copious hyperlinks.

My confidence
easily shaken when challenged,
a lifelong problem—
falters, and I think:
“Could they be right?”

I languish in this rabbit hole
of dualistic parry-and-thrust,
for my Beloved of my heart says
all are One, and even more:
“Inscribe these words on your heart.
God alone is real.
Nothing matters but love for God.”*

Oh, Beloved!
How do I recover the vision
of Oneness You gave me,
which I enjoyed—
let’s not exaggerate, though,
it was never continuous—
before I dove
down this rabbit hole!

They call this cognitive dissonance,
a fancy name for confusion,
for a dragon whose smoke
obscures the clarity of Truth!
A virtual destruction
of the wholeness
I thought I knew.

Show me how to restore
the perception of Oneness
to my double-vision mental eye!

Those contrary voices:
How can I see they are You as well—
that there is no “right” or “wrong,”
but only You?

What am I not getting?
God was. God is. God will be.
How can I not see this?

Do what You must, Beloved!
Bang me on the head! Burn me alive!
Skin me and turn me inside out!

If this is all a pang of rebirth,
please, please, slap me on the ass
and get me the hell
out of here soon!

*quote from Meher Baba

The Walls Must Come Down

There are walls
inside me, I’ve discovered,
walls inside me still.

"Walls Come Down" painting by Max Reif
 untitled painting by the author

Understandable that one
could find himself
enclosed by limitations,
finite life within
a finite mental house

perhaps having turned away
early on as protection
from some stalking pain;
but those times
come to an end.

It’s time to take
away the walls.
I see an image of
big white drywalls
being hoisted and carried away,
removed completely
from interior spaces.

I would be, Beloved,
simply a presence,
an openness

taking in the music
of people and things

all part of
the One

I AM.

 

Statues

“Statues are about
mythology, not facts
.” – Ken Burns

Black Lives Matter protests Robert E. Lee's statue
Robert E. Lee statue protest in Richmond, Virginia (U.S.)

Confederate statues
topple down. A game
of dominoes begins.

Suddenly, the Founding
Fathers, up for grabs?
The Father of Our Country,
after all, owned slaves,
though on his death
he set them free.

And Andrew Jackson,
sonofabitch who set
the Cherokee upon
the Trail of Tears—
a harness ‘round his neck
and men struggling like mules
to pull him from his pedestal.

Where does it end?
Does anyone truly
deserve a statue?
Is there anyone without
a closet full of shame?

America, your dual original sins
against the natives and the Africans
brought here against their will—
four centuries, still no real peace.

Each of us may always have
a private mental statuary.
Public ones must serve
the common good.

Can families of plantations
gone with the wind
press claims over descendants
of freed slaves?

What do we choose?
Sentimental affections
for “old traditions”
in which some of
our other citizens
were chattel,

or that which furthers
dignity for all?

 

Being and Becoming

1
Breakfast late this morning
after a routine blood test.
Sense of taste sharp
from fasting. Savouring perfection
of coffee and omelet
brings back Heaven’s world.
True, it will not last,
but for now restores me to
myself and Earth’s ground.

"Flow" painting by Max Reif
“Flow” (2020). Painted the day after the events described in this poem. Originally intended to depict the sequence of events described in the poem. But once begun, the desire established itself to forget about all that, and just paint the Beauty! 

2
Last night, trying to sleep, thoughts
crashed against my head.
I’d begun watching a YouTube talk
on releasing psychological projections,
then turned it off, deciding instead
to pursue that effort my own way,

remembering a long-ago retreat
at which deep inner contents
lined up to offer themselves
and each, when done,
made room for the next.

Entering my little meditation room
I sat down on the pillow,
closing eyes. After some time,
an internal state began
to differentiate itself:
claustrophobia.

A sense of recognition dawned.
“This is me without my flesh,
without my smile (forced or not)!
The walls are closing in!
No space, no possibility.
I am so limited, so locked
in this small room within!”

“NO!” came my quickly
countering reply.
“This isn’t me,
it’s just sanskaras*”—
conditioned responses from
this lifetime or another
to circumstances so pervasive
or long-lasting that
I accepted them as “me.”

I felt acutely the painful paradox
I’ve carried many years:
a belief that each of us is
unlimited, all things possible
and all continually made new—
yet in actual experience,
often feeling
a failure to measure up.

3
It wasn’t my first Awakening.
I’ve been fortunate this life.
But realizing “That isn’t me!”
shocked forth
new awareness.
Still sitting, I tried
to get behind that thick,
black, smoky pseudo-self,
to find some space.

Tiring, though. Finally, standing up,
I walked to my desk and made some notes,
then watched a movie with my wife
and went to bed.

4
There is where
the thoughts started crashing, as
I felt the half-regrets of someone
who fears he’s “gone too deep” and weakened
the foundations of normality, and now
will be swallowed up by this Maya
and lose the battle and the holy war.

But No! I won’t!
These words are a tablet
brought back from within,
holding the strength
to keep fighting
the spiritual battle of life.

The flame of Awakening
once lit, does not go out!

*sanskaras: The imprints left on the mind by past experiences (often in past lives) that then condition future responses and behaviour.

Steps on a Daily Walk

My rhythmic steps resound
upon the sacred Earth,
upon its solid ground

Painting of man walking into light by Max Reif
“Into Light” (1997)

upon this ground of dream.
How upon Being’s floor,
though, might these small steps seem?

Does it have any worth—
this grounding on the Earth—
unless True Centre’s found?

The world solid seems,
and yet its solid dreams
float in a cosmic sky.

Each step in present time
with its incessant rhyme                           
does every past step mime.

The One Eternal NOW,
that Truth which I avow,
is no mere chain of steps.

Strolling in the sea,
in shallows near the shore
comes dropoff of that floor

into an unknown depth.
What measure takes the breadth
of all these humble steps?

Does “sending rays down to
Earth’s Centre,” as I do,
help ground me in the True?

Measureless You Are.
What is this little “I”?
Speck in a cosmic sky.

I take Your Name and try.
Your Name will add the “why”
of each step,

till I die.

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image 3: Wikimedia Commons; all other images: Max Reif

  1. Dear Max,

    How wonderful to find this site (one of your nesting places), and this wonderful page where you so beautifully express your mind and heart! I can feel and identify so much with what you are expressing. My life is filled with so much activity, that it is only by God’s Grace that He gives me the chance to read and imbibe the Wine of Love that He is pouring through the throats and pens, the canvases and instruments, of my friends and of so, so many others in this world. Keep being the Vessel of God’s Love, Max, dispensing that Wine to a thirsty world. Jai ❤ Baba, David

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