From whom should my secret be a secret
When all is me…?
(In that I have faith
But knowledge is still to dawn).
My breath enlivens my whole body
But my appreciation of this fact is partial.
How do I feel it in every muscle, every nerve, every cell?
How do I see its immanence?
I attempt to watch the essence
And grapple with my darkness
And in that I hear a voice speak:
“I know you’re secretly looking for me
But why are you keeping it a secret?”
It’s in my nature
to want to know
to choose to ignore
to unconditionally accept and love.
It’s in my nature
to consolidate patterns into identities
frame experiences with knowledge
and compare the meaningful with the meaningless.
It’s in my nature
to write time as a document
of my ideas and my memories
…of the quality of my presence.
Long after you left…
Your pointed words stayed with me
Often acting as effective antidotes
To the excesses of my own mind
All of my wild leaps of imagination
Swiftly cut down to size
By your pre-emptive acts of concern
Had it not been for you
I may’ve been lying fallen somewhere
Ditched by default of my own design
Yes, the credit for my salvation
Must be rightly accorded to you
And to the corrective power of sarcasm
For what could’ve otherwise been brutal
And left me hurt and wounded
Is now only a persistent dull ache…
I continue to exist- corrected, but wronged
Alive, but dead; breathing in a coffin
Shrouded in a symbolic spotless white.
Your heart, I sense
Once again
Is a changeling
And now
Once again
I shall have to learn how to love.
He speaks with conviction
In words certain
With belief, meaning and purpose
While she dwells in doubt
Her words sitting on the fence
Of belief, meaning and purpose
He knows what he sees
And sees what he knows
She overlooks what she sees
And oversees what she knows
He travels to distant lands
In search of industry, wealth and love
Carrying with him
Proof of accomplishment
Proof of wealth and
Proof of love
He’s driven by desire
To own and possess
She knows that to own
Is to be possessed
While he speaks of his dreams
Of bringing her all of heaven and earth
She wonders why he won’t see
That all of heaven
Is right here, right now
In her hearth
He works odd hours
He says it brings the bread home
She cooks for two
But dines alone.
He says he’s free like the wind
And will not be tied down
And yet like a gentle night breeze
That’s destined to fill in a calm
He fills into her arms
His defenses down.
We are all in a sense blind
Without insight.
Understanding doesn’t follow the rhythm
Of day and night
And its own dawn comes after
Many troubled nights.
I walk on the earth
A soul tormented
By thoughts that are the machinations
Of an untruthful mind.
I know that I need saving
But don’t know who else can save me
But me…
This is the first time
I stand face to no-face
Challenging myself
To speak my truth
Or remain forever silent.
This is the first time
I wish to see myself defeated
By a higher truth.
For in that I know
Lies my return to a place that
I’m trying to create for myself
In an imaginary world.
My hands join in prayer
And a tear rolls down my cheek
Today I pray for silence
So that I may rest
And so that no thought
Can come in between me and myself.
It’s not about you
There is no ‘you’
There are only circumstances
So that desires may act
And through action
Be liberated from binding thought
But who do these desires belong to?
…They belong to me
‘Me’ is only a thought
A rather persistent one
It’s actually a misnomer…
There is no ‘me;’ but there is ‘am-ness.’
Sound, space and light
In their tireless play create
A world of forms, words and meanings
And become the experiences
That ‘am-ness’
Describes as ‘mine’
In repeatedly describing experiences as ‘mine’
It condenses into an identity
A limited being
Perpetually longing
For an abundance
That pretentious language has hidden away.
You and I
Can trace our ancestry to thought
The remnants of an inaccurate language
That didn’t have the words
To describe
The indescribable.
The true end of things
Is always at the beginning.
One day I shall cease to exist
Simply because I never did
to begin with.
Yes, I know
That there will be suffering
For you
When you have to let go
Unwillingly
Of all that you have owned
And laid claim to
Yes, I know
That I too shall suffer
In your suffering
Attached as I am
To your heart
Yoked as I am
To your being
A separation
A severance
A theft
A murder
Tortures unleashed on pleasures unwilling to relent
It’s all inevitable
Yes, I know.
I know you see me live
And ask of me all that I can give
But I’ve always wondered why
We don’t see each other die
Things often taken a turn
When the last remains burn
So easily we let go
Of all unworthy sorrow
And see clearly through moist eyes
That death claims us…
Long before we actually die.
