A cool rush of flagrant defiance
Unlocks a chain of misdemeanors
That fall from my tongue in a fevered cadence
My soliloquy goes uncharted
In this forest of layered beasts
Whose fragrant alliance has put me up to the mischief
I have fallen at the feet
Of one cleansing breath
That has choked the life from subjugation to rules that loathe exceptions
And I have taken flight on improbable wings
Where am I?
In the sea…floating…gracefully
Having left my shore, my home, my beginning –
my end
I am here floating
Counting on the great watery vastness
because nothing else counts
There is no future or past
that can measure against this moment of birth,
this gem of becoming,
this blossoming under the moon
There is no structure made of earth or time
that can define boundaries of love
No words to describe what it means now
What you ask of me is too small
The sea is full of air
the air is full of sea
the cosmos full of rocks and stones
that are full of atoms, full of particles, full of space
Where is there an end or a corner to pin love to
and say, “this is how high,” or, “this is how deep,” or, “this is how long?”
You ask too little of me
I love you more greatly than this
A river of stars finds me dreaming
Inviting space to sculpt stone into waves
Where river and red sea meet
Where so-called laws of physics
Are tossed into depths unknown
And shadows bear witness
To blood and tears fueling the mallet
The chisel strike sparking points of illumination
Into thin air
To be held aloft in a vacuum
Promising nothing
And doling out all
In a lucidity of timelessness
That gazes into the density of my abyss
And calls me beloved
One morning an eagle flew out from the fog
And crossed my window pane
Splitting the view between treetops and sky
And then disappearing into the wings
Into sight unseen
I was rapt…I was her mark
It was my fog that held her aloft
And that lifted in her absence
Not to be earthbound
But ripped loose by talons seeking life
To bring death into life again
The soaring peal of a tailwind
Resonating the divide
Between treetops and sky
Freeing the spirit like so much fog
I am asked and answered
Beleaguered jasmine trill of longing
Skyward dances
Snake smoke trail seducing sway
Leading way
Beguiling smile descending
Swing upending the cause
Bemused and bespoke
I am exactly as ordered
Dyed crimson and bordered
In sailcloth and wind
And nothing untangles the fragrant cry of desire
The sea sprayed reaching
For fire aloft
From hands singed with elation to remain
We came out of a land
Rich with harmony and sacrifice
We built legends and legacies
And threw fire from our fists
Unto the firmament
We brought down gods upon our heads
We sought shelter in their arrogance
Devoured our fear like ripened fruit
And this is how we nourished our souls
Grew teeth in our throats to imprison them
Behind voices made lame by our dinner
Our hearts grew thinner
And our chests spanned wide
To shield and conceal our labouring breath
Convinced of our impending death
But our souls
Trapped in our breasts
Heaved through our skin
The immortal summons
To life
Images by Corinna Schenk (left) and FreePhotos (right)
To me, truth is joy, and joy is truth – one in the same. So in my view, joy does not always come in the form of happiness. It does not always contain happiness. Always, it comes with the clarity of what is true inside. And that clarity brings a feeling of freedom. Not always a celebratory freedom. Sometimes it is a freedom that is heavy with responsibility to go forth and transform something painful into something so beautiful, it is worthy of the loss that necessitated it and worthy of those who will benefit from the gift of it.
Molasses And Steel
You brought colour to my life
Black for molasses
Blue for steel
You stood for things that were not real
You stole in the morning
Then peeled away
Laying rubber, black as molasses, on scorched streets
You performed elegant and death-defying feats
You raised a glass to greet something
That would beat us into submission
You were cold, hard
Blue like steel
Peeling away the layers of skin
That healed you into my soul
Is not a goal I cherish
Or claim the wherewithal to do
But there is a piece of me in you
And whether black or blue
We both must breathe
We must leave a trace of ourselves in this world
We have to be the steel and molasses
That builds and feeds
And sweetens harsh deeds into submission
It is our composition
At least it is mine
So if I am to thrive on the brine
In the glass you gave me
Break your fast and save me
A cup of molasses
I am often grappling with the uneasy coexistence of absolute oneness and the seeming separation imposed by being in a physical body and of an individual mind – the condition of being an earthling, as it were. Here, the antidote to existential loneliness is an acceptance of a connection that is not knowable through my physical senses – a real surrender to my own beliefs. Physical touch is so much easier, yet this other kind of connection is so much bigger. But how do we live that kind of connection in our day-to-day physical world? We have to reach out our hands, answers my intuition. She gives no further instructions.
The Art Of Touching You
Telescope to the sky
A tingling darkness rises within
Shaping me tenderly
Resonating with things too far or too close for the eye to see
Things to be known instinctively
I sit alone with the universe
Embodying its great infinity
Contemplating the boundlessness
And the borders we impose
Intersecting at nowhere
And it is here that I laugh again
Because you are so close
That I can feel and know and love you
You are in my very own particles
And yet you are uniquely apart, as am I
But the art of touching you
This is the quest for which I turn to the telescope
The finer details eluding me
Out there we intersect, you and I,
At every point imagined and unimaginable
Here, I lie back and open my soul
To the immensity of that truth
My cosmology defining nothing while explaining everything at once
In this vast darkness swirling immeasurable light, I surrender and repose my longing
And reach out my hand and accept that you are here
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