when did I fall asleep?

I have these dreams where

I am searching, like a moth

through countless flames

for a raging inferno

burning for complete consummation.

I have these dreams where

every single moment of my life

is an unfathomable miracle in itself.

Where everything that takes place

is an unimaginably beautiful reconciliation 

of contradicting dualities.

I have these dreams

where I feel more awake

than I've ever been.

Where everything 

brings me back to you.

Where nothing needs a name

but everything has a story.

Where there is no longer any distinction

between the words "you" and "I"

a bed of hidden nights and reveries

I had a dream, of walking a well lit road
In the distance could be heard words in many languages
The comfort of firelight lit the woods like fireflies
And the smell of food and the sounds of company
Joyous, full of laughter, made me pause, thinking it home
But restless, the road stretched on, carrying me with it
To different fires, different faces, different words and names
All saying: "rest awhile, take off your shoes"
My heart, I could feel in my feet
And weary, I laid them down to sleep
Yet when the dying coals became cold
I awoke, seized again with restlessness
In that shroud of darkness I could not find my shoes
So barefoot I stumbled on, until the road became a path
And even that, eventually disappeared
There was no moon, nor stars
I could not even see my feet
So gingerly they stepped, hesitant
Before my imagining of what lay ahead
In that darkness, sound became scent
Sight became touch, and everything was felt
There, motes of dust carried more weight than words
There, my eyes became my feet
My feet became my heart
And I could feel the grass blades bracing
For the kiss from the morning dew
Wordless, shoeless, I carried on

To my mother, who taught me the reality of prayer

Last night I had a strange weep, I was reading Rumi poetry and I felt a strong connection immediately.  Vision blurred, I felt the familiar swelling from my heart.  I called out, with complete abandon.  I saw with closed eyes, a projection of the world moving outward to the universe, and somehow my silent cries-not the physical ones, broke its silence.  (The image of the universe was invoked by a Rumi quote: "The universe and light of the stars come through me.")  Somehow, almost not of my own accord, I started to cry out my own name-this had never happened before.  Something in me started to build up, alongside the swelling and through it at the same time.  It felt as though the beating swelling from my core became unfettered.  At the same time, I felt almost a gravity pull (my) focus inward.  Next thing I knew, I started to see that same universe inside myself.  There were large parts of me that were dark, deep, empty spaces, and galaxies upon galaxies of cellular activity, emanating a kind of starlight.  I stopped crying out to something undefinable, cried out to myself, lovingly gathered my own tears in my hands, gently pulled and caressed my own hair, all the while pouring that swelling sensation from my heart right back inside myself.  It hit me with the suddenness of laughter.

None of it matters.

None of these things to which I cling.
I could not help but laugh through tears.  

Anything can come my way.

None of this can take away from me

because not in a thousand lifetimes

could I fill this universe inside me.

Waking Up

This morning I woke up
tasting the honesty in your breath,
in the emotive potential of flesh,
like emotions hidden in limbs
and memories that seep into bones
 ***
How can each moment
be anything other than perfect?
When each cumulative one, has led
to me standing here, before you?

When each one built on the next
and led us, to exchange glances now
through veils, so many veils
laid bare by the naked flame of the heart?

When they have led to this dance
inside my chest, forsaking breath?
Breathless...breath itself left forgotten
in the annihilating wake of your beauty.

Youwei

My mind is always saying "I,"

but my heart is set on "You."

I just want the solace of "We."

When do "I's" stop being "I's?"

When they see only in "You's?"

What happens when the moon

eclipses the sun of "I?"

What happens when the heart

is stricken mute and the mind dumb?

What of the spaces between 

desire and fulfillment?

What of that moment when perception 

and perceived become one?

don't talk

Save me your words,

I want to taste your silences.

Save me the confusion of words,

the way they slip from your mouth

tells me more than they ever could.

Don't hear me out, feel me out.

Lay a hand on me, as I speak.

Feel the journey of these words

through my skin, in its blushing color.

Listen to the emotive potential of flesh.

Taste my breath with yours, I can hear

the dance of your heart through your lips.

Ode to Friends

If today were my last day

I would owe it to you my friends.

It was your songs that burned me to life

Your love stories that made me look for my own.

Your tears, that paved the way for my laughter
And your laughter, that brings me now to tears.

I know nothing but our reconciliations.

I know nothing but the fires 

You have lit in my heart.

I've risen with you at your best

And lain with you at your worst.

Everything I am, all that I can say

Are both accumulations of you.

All I know is that there is nothing

Greater than union with you
Under the roof of this halfway home
Before that final destination.

And that's why there has to be separation between us

so that yearning may glow, and grow brilliant.

Oh would that I always have the disheveled air of a lover for you.

untitled 3

I was given a world!
What am I to do with it?
I've added rules and regulations,
sizes, formats, tastes,
codes, lines, boundaries,
and so many adjectives.
Yet,
I need neither approval
nor judgment
to know it,
to know myself.

dear reader

I saw a timeless face, and it was both fleeting and enduring. 
Please, I am not trying to sell you anything.

I am happy here in my corner,
singing, weeping, feeling, being,
and if you would care to hear my song a moment,

to taste its bittersweetness, its secret joy in sorrow,
then I look forward to our companionship of words. 
You need not look me in the eye if you can read with your heart.

Black and White

I learned fear, and its different forms.

I learned anger, hate,

attachment and want,

inclusion and exclusion.

I took the road of everything pertaining to the self,

only to retrace my steps

and unravel the bindings I’d taught myself.

I broke everything that could be broken

to find my truth.

I’m tired of “I’s” and “you’s”

I’m tired of divisions and distinctions,

and all the lines and limits,

the 'rationality' and 'wisdom,'

that color the world black and white.

This love

I do not know the ultimate destination.

Becoming the source of existence is beyond me.

I only know that when I feel this love

my world stops

like the breathless lover.

When I feel this love
I laugh and weep, awestruck

as perception and perceived melt together.

When I feel this love

there is no right, no wrong
  or any judgment.

When I feel this love
do not speak to me of anything but

no...this love 
makes me not want to speak at all.

Bleeding

I am only here, to remind you of the dawn

to paint the brilliance of the stars

so you can see their light at will.

I had a name once, a livelihood

that weight, I cast off

shell that it was.

I lost myself in the meaninglessness of names
embraced namelessness to find my meaning.

I stripped away belief and disbelief.

Naked, afraid, against the immense rush of the torrent

yet only in the most violent currents could I find calm.

My nakedness became my shield.

I come to you with head bowed and hands open.

Let me sleep by your side, sharing your dreams

I promise to tread lightly. 
You don't need to say a word

dreams are written in the languages of the heart.

Don’t you see I only want to get under your skin?

I live to see you at your most vulnerable

tortuously naked against the relentless barbs of this raging flood.

For only the sharpest blades can hew a bleeding heart out of stone.

And in the waves of your bleeding heart

will you hear its language, unspoken and wordless.

Already tripping over your words, your mouth stops talking

and your eyes, your eyes, they speak of all your stories!

I see entire worlds glimmering in their depths.

Join me in wordless conversation

don’t listen, feel.

Let me see through your eyes.
Let me feel your stories as my own.

Leaves of one tree, we live through each other.

*option 1 (Give me your lips

let me breathe for you

and feel you tremble with life.)

I lay before you with this broken body

I can't give you my heart

that isn't for me to give away.

*option 2 (So let me give you my lips instead
so you can breathe for me
and feel me tremble with life)
In your eyes

I see you heart bleeds too

let us bleed together then.

As one in the blood-letting

like individual veins leading to the same heart.

the confinement of words p.3

Three letters I gave for this infinite alphabet,

all of myself, for the heart to speak it.

And still, speechless, empty handed...

This continuity of impermanence,

like clutching smoke, seeking solidity,

sifting through ash, for that which doesn't burn.

Before the sanctity of breath,

I am nothing but the formlessness

that defines form,

the forgetfulness before memory

and the latency that gives birth to bloom.

This dance, from nothing to something,

and its love story in every entity,

is my only articulation of being.

untitled 2

You breathe, like waves.

Eating silence.

Humbling time.

Shaming beauty.

Your eyes, like god

im..pos..si..ble.

And me, kneeling,

begging, for just,

one, glance.

first time i saw the milky way

The palpitation of planets,

swirling heavens,

an entire universe held

together by the gravity 

that resulted from 

a single instant of pure love.

And I, tiny speck, barely afloat

in an ocean of possibility,

not worth existence's notice.

What master architect 

deemed such understanding from me?

What ploy, what devilishly divine 

scheme lies in locking

the seed to all being

in each human being?

the confinement of thought

Even in this writing
My binds show themselves
I think I'm a moth
Searching in darkness
I think I'm an "I"
I think that I think
I have some idea
of what is happening
The truth is I don't
I am unfolding
Becoming unthought
Quiet, between breaths
My heart talks of death
What I think is death

**

link to related poems

Lovesick

I was the stranded shore of memory
against your lapping waves.
In your breath, I relapsed,
nostalgic, over the foaming crest.
I was in love with the changing leaves,
heedless of whispers, racing for noise,
running from silence, vilifying
everything, when it was all me.
Each time I broke was the last time,
each tear, the seal of the letter
I never quite finished writing.
So long, it took me to realize
the impossibility of every moment.
In roaming the sleepless streets of love,
I had not even taken one step
and already, I was in pieces.
So I crawled, on hands and knees, weeping,
tasting the footprints set before me
alchemy of tears lighting my way.

confessions p.2

This gradual build up
of nights and stray tears
from trickle to flood,
all bearing your name.
Each whispered breath
repeating one plea,
relief from this burning
non-astonishment,
being and non-being,
seeing, not believing
eyes closed, heart open
feeling for essence
among non-essence.
Would that I were not
but the breeze of change,
would that I could say
that I regretted
did not have enough
couldn't see, but no.
You render speechless,
not defined by word,
my tongue hides your name,
you're all I think of.
It is you bleeding
through my heart's hollows,
start and only end,
means and every end.
So this breast I bare
defenseless, needless
before reflections
of my own faces.

A mother's dream

When night wails its loneliness
her separation of flesh
brings to tide woe and longing
feeling, seeing blind, she reaches
conjures possibility
attends me in white, glowing
peaking, then fading away.
She flutters, and her motion
carries me into the unseen
without feet, I step over
every threshold of the real.
I fade, she flares, burning  time.
What more? What more o goddess?
my every breath, tear and call
not mine, not mine, only yours.

consumed

Breaching sight, I look
for you through veils,
without hands, I reach
to feel bare hearted,
I forget myself
in your memory.
My eyes lie to me
they lie about you,
every word could not
contain such presence.
I am overwhelmed
by your stillness,
become nothing
in your shadow,
consumed, consumed,
by your burning.

smoke

We are smoke,

we are smoke,

I refuse 

to be stagnant,

assuming form 

in formlessness,

dancing into every

impossibility,

before I am dispersed

unto everything.

confessions p.1

I thought I made out on this journey ten years ago

today  I realize I was born to love you.

Somehow I came to be out of this yearning for you.

Every night I am maddened 

by the thought of what I would do

once [re]united with you.

Reason!  Flee from me!

Words! Mutiny!

so that I may never articulate love.

Sight, leave me

so that I may never see in black and white.

Heart, oh heart, break and break again

so that I may finally be free.

the confinement of words p.2

In this life, I only wish 

to say a few things,

I yearn to mold word to thought,

hah! I'm already outdone.

I only want to make a word

strain in sorrow like the flute,

whispering the secret joy of death, of breath.

And yet, I am wordless before my essence,

I live only to speak this language without words,

once uttered, I will be relieved of this circling dance.

hallway sunset

The tiniest dust particles start floating, as if on strings.

They dance, swimming in tune with "Winter's Embrace,"

golden-lit against the backdrop of a piece of the sun.

The clock refuses to tick,

a curtain of gold gently falls when Apollo's lost twin,

hidden from the rest of the world in this hallway,

becomes too much for me, caving inside,

leaving residue like unborn photographs.

Such stillness can not make sense of any rush,

I emerge from its cocoon,

aware again of breath, of animated motion 

in the absence of that effortless dance.

Apollo's twins have all gone home,

and in the twilight of transitions

I am left looking back at a stranger in the mirror.

**Winter's Embrace --> www.altusmusic.ca

just the thought of you

Like that invisible shudder of the heart

before the birth of each tear

you seep into my fugitive folds.

I don't have words for what you do to me.

Speechless

when faced with the infinite well within,

just a shadow of your memory

leaves me quaking, like floodgates

holding back before I spill out everywhere.

I am beyond bewildered

by the trace of your aftertaste.

I'm a moth fascinated by your fire

lovestruck from every moment of being.

You spread universes before me

as I serve you my head 

in the platter of a lifetime

something in my room

My bed smells of random tears

the wrinkles of the sheets

are like lovers entwined
the pillows taste like gratitude

for nothing to some

everything to me.

Sleeping alone

has become my refuge 

to reality from this dreaming.

death

I forgot about the tranquility 

of the universe,

the proportions of cosmic stillness

have no room in this bubble I think is me.

I am tired of running from silence,

I want to taste every touch,

and listen to the story of every scent.

I want to live the death of every soul

that journeyed forth before me.

What is it about the wake of death

that slows down time?

What glimpse of the eternal 

is revealed before the soul

shuddering,

takes that step without feet?

the confinement of words p.1

I don't know how to make words out of tears,

nor from the kiss of forbidden lovers.

These words leave me clumsily,

attempting to articulate 

that which can't be worded.

I can not explain the endlessness

that brought me to my knees,

this life broke my heart

it is so beautiful,

surely the next one will kill me.

I know just as these words 

are only shadows of tears,

so too is this world

a mere shadow of the next.

music

I heard music so beautiful

it made me want to run away.

The strains were so painfully perfect

I wished I were deaf.

Each lilting note questioned 

this fabricated veil of life,

and as the song wailed and rose,

so too did the veil,

and now

I am deaf, blind and mute

in bewilderment,

all I can hear is your voice

cascading around me, 

halting reality.

Somehow lovingly, 

it makes me want to stop being.

I have nothing

and yet, there is so much beauty

in the world that I wish to show you.

Presence

I want to breathe in your light

and soak in your breeze.

I want to touch your warm earth

and taste its freshly rain dampened dirt.

I want to hear the language of the wind

and listen to the stories it carries away.

I want to consume every scent as daily bread.

I want to listen to the rustle of dried leaf veins in autumn

and reflect all those dying colors.

I want to feel the trembling quake 

of newborn life amidst a garden of bones.

I want to be overwhelmed in all these senses

and catch a passing glimpse of your presence.

musings

I've lost myself in the bottomless well of the heart.

I sometimes make my way up to the light,

but the pregnant and trembling unknown of the darkness

calls hauntingly,

promising life and death, over and over.

Until every line is made and crossed,

every path shaped and tread upon.

Until every tear shed, every heart forged and broken,

until every word said, and deed done.

Every lesson learned, relearned, and unlearned,

and until every love is lost,

and in bleeding, reclaimed.