I find the centre path
My eyes smouldering with exhaustion
I tell you I am here of my own accord
Then pluck my eyes out and retire
I am no more bound to the maelstrom
No more a rat in the labyrinth proving my worth
I have scattered my pennies
For their rat-tat-tat
On the glistening white floors
And danced to their rhythm
Until my soles bled
My red fortune spattered and spilt
I hand you the hilt
And plunge myself thus to eternity
If I pierce the fabric
We have staged a coup
And I am bound with you
Into the margins
When we open ourselves to the truth and power of nature and light, we are resolved to the same truth and power within ourselves.
Rendered
A sylvan dream requites our arrival
Permeating gold ablution washes over giants
Reaching us in strands
Vestiges of brilliance painting our skin
We are but miscreants and maladies
An opus dissonant and wistful
Resolved and replete by respiring light
We are sublimating, reintegrating
Syncopated selves dissipating fleet
Into amorphic jubilance rendered
When there is no view to the sea
I am reminded of the complexities and displacements
Shallows that engulf sentient beings
Leaving us stranded
With our monikers
For things we cannot name
Beveled edges bend the view
Until our eyes cannot attain clarity
Nor connect our own continuity to fluidity composed
But we embark on this odyssey
Unframed by expansion
And isn’t that the mandate of the universe?
Its sole prerogative
Amalgamations transcending
We are revoking and upending
What we’re meant to be
Mavericks waking cause to breach a higher sea
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Legend
Legend comes after the fall
Rocketing on wings sooted with truth
Imagining bravely a new world
Jettisoned stocks of mislaid deeds
Lie crumpled in the garden
A masterful affair torn to wilds
And reclaimed by its own natural temperament
Bastions slated for oblivion
Rise to a new mantle
Humility spilling itself from rivers of love
Whose currents authored our passage
In this our new genesis
We blanket the sky
Freed from our stories
Alive with presence
Soul sounding endless reverberations
Of light made song
A resonant throng after the fall
This dream
Has made of me its signature
The water that binds us
Is the blue-black ink
That fastens me
To parchment parched
And crumbling under weight of liquidity
I am the scant scion of noble beasts
Who remember me in their churning frenzy
To feed – as all must do
I am the way through
The conduit to sustenance unending
The mind of creation wending its way
To truth
We are peerless
We are the dreamer warring with itself
Killers saddled with irony
Armed with love
A sea raging with determination
To awaken
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
“You are a worthless girl,” she says…and she says it again and again until the mirror cracks.
Then she studies the crack. Carefully. As it might well be a gift from beyond. Seeking a hidden message, she leans in and fingers the edges as her eyes scrutinize every jagged corner. She stands back and gazes from a distance. Arms folded. Knuckling fist to mouth…pondering.
“You are a worthless girl,” she whispers, re-examining the careless magic that summoned this unexpected visitor. “What does it mean?”, she wonders silently, eyes fixed on the glassy fissure. All day she is consumed by the question. It follows her through her tasks and obligations. It hovers over her. Slides beneath her. Envelops her.
And the crack in the mirror watches her. When she goes outside, it calls to her. And every time she returns, she studies it again.
She considers, tentatively, “you are not a worthless girl.” Then directly and squarely at the crack in the mirror, she declares, “you are not a worthless girl.”
The mirror does not mend.
But the girl…the girl is now fascinated by the possibility – by all possibility. What could come next?
“You are worth the sun and moon and all the stars in the universe,” she chances quickly.
“You are worth the planets and the ice and the oceans and every bit of life, seen and unseen,” she exclaims.
Nothing breaks, nothing mends. Everything is whole exactly as it is.
“You are worth time and immortality,” she dares. And at this, everything disappears.
She wracks her body this way and that, wanting to see every direction at once. Is it true, the nothingness? What does it mean? “What…is…it…worth?” she utters slowly as her face cracks the smile of consciousness.
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
Trauma, indignity, betrayal and other unwelcome visitors show up in some lives more than others. If they show up enough, a person might reach a point where they feel – they believe – they cannot withstand anymore. One more blow, and they will crumple and cease to be. They might plead and put The Great All That Is on notice: “Look, I can’t take anymore. I’m just letting you know this, in case you can find it in your heart to not send any more my way.”
Then, another blow – maybe a series of small ones, or one low-grade, crushing long one. Then, the person might just shut down – cease to even try negotiating with the powers that be. “What’s the point?” Now this person KNOWS, they really cannot take anymore. Truly, this time, the person will break when another wave comes.
Then, another blow. A big one. One that makes all the other blows seem like mere child’s play. And do you know what happens to our little person? Our weary, bedraggled, pushed-beyond-the-breaking-point little human, who has always had thin skin, but who now surely possesses no skin at all anymore.
It takes a long time, but this person opens their heart and makes themselves vulnerable – again. They do it. And they do it because now they really know something. Now this person knows something that is true: Life wants to live. It keeps going whether or not we can keep up. Life wants to live. So may as well embrace it. We are stronger than we think we are.
Embrace This
I’ve watched you break
I have felt every bone,
One by one, splinter into fragments
Into dust and rubble
Utter annihilation, not once
But many times
I’ve seen you stand up to tidal waves
I’ve seen you refuse fortunes
I’ve seen you run headlong into the mouth of a beast
And then another…and then another
How you emerge to run again
I do not know
But I’ve seen you reappear like magic…fully formed
Over and over again
I’ve seen the map re-write itself
I’ve seen the flowers bloom
And ruts in old roads replaced by mountain meadows
Purely by the sheer power of your will
I’ve seen you cry
Alone, abandoned and betrayed
And I’ve seen you walk outside and go right on loving
There is no give up in you
Even when you desperately wish it so
So may as well embrace this
This longing
This heart hurt
This betrayal
Because it is happening
And your heart will rise to meet you
…Again
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