Confessions p 36

The hand moves, the heart breathes, the whole world sleeps
What dreams await us? the forgetful and forgotten
What company waits for us gathered around a fire
burning the darkness away, peeling back layer after layer
Do I have the heart to look at what's behind the curtain?
Why are melancholy and grief anchors?
What do I seek on these roads?
My heart, be still, peek beneath the hood
Being, please grant me the strength to be steadfast
Being, let me take root not in the garden of my self
but in the endless beginnings and renewals of being
Why does the hand stray? Or the feet wander?
What do the eyes seek, over and over?
The garden of Being is right here, it is not without
I will not stumble onto it, lest I find it within
I will not make an altar of myself, to myself
what is this self and this Self?
The difference is a razor blade's edge
Why does the tongue shrink? or the back hunch?
What notice do I seek to escape?
What if I lay right now, on the final resting place of these bones?
What if the light were to slowly extinguish right now?
Death, please accept this student
Open the doors of your library to me
Let me sit inside your temple
I can be forgetful, self-deceiving
I put things off for tomorrow
as though tomorrow were owed to me
I can be selfish, petty, spiteful and proud
willfully ignorant of truths I do not love
My faults are numerous
But I am earnest
I am sincere in my desire to learn
Death, set aside a last chance for me today
I beg you, please keep your doors open for me
though I may be late, or announce myself rudely
though I am ignorant of your customs
though a storm may follow in my wake
though I may take your name in vain
it is because I fear taking Life in vain that I seek your tutelage
So guide me from the flashing lights to the darkness
If knowledge and wisdom seek immortality
then guide me from knowledge to ignorance
guide me from all of tomorrow's broken promises to right now
Brace my knees and grip, give me something to look up to
as you guide me from comfort to learning
And guide me from dying
to dying gratefully

Confessions p. 35

What view do your eyes afford?
What strength does your grip lend?
Whose voice says keep going
when you can no longer hold on?
With whose eyes do you look
when your own linger on shadows?
Who speaks inside
when you are speechless?
  Who looks out with your eyes
    -Who speaks with your tongue-
        -Which door unlocks-
           -Which window opens-
What flutters and moves inside you
-when your breath becomes frozen-
when your heart becomes breathless?
With whose feet do you step
when you can no longer travel by foot?
With which thoughts and words
do you build a home
for the nomad in your soul?

Confessions - freewrites III

I sit here with a microscope, a magnifying lens and a camera, swapping pictures, maintaining a little catalogue, curating a magazine of my reveries and fantasies and little fears, I poke and I prod, and I zoom in and rewind and replay, watching and waiting for an ending that isn't there. These little worlds of my imagination, like wheels that keep on turning, and streets that refuse to follow straight lines, meandering as though on some never-ending quest leading to a million and one alleys going nowhere, like a sea of unfinished endings and sentences that run off into sweet nothings, back lanes that lead to back lanes, a labyrinth of whispered words and sidelong glances and empty musings of other peoples' thoughts, as though I care, what do I care, to whom do I cater when I walk in the shoes of memories, wearing the soles thin dragging my feet because I know in my heart there is nothing for me here, there is nothing for me there or then, but I keep looking as though the horizon before or behind me is hiding the key to an imagined salvation, oh the imagination can be the greatest prison ever conceived, oh to be free from musing and reverie and the potent latency of idle thought, oh to be free from the shackles of thought and the shadows of the dark side of the moon where my imagination runs not wild but chained and caged to a pen, why does the soul shrink from its own light, and its own size? What cracks and crevices does it seek out to slip under? What shadows or darkness does it seek to hide from itself? Oh to be free in my own insignificance and greatness, to be unhindered by ideas of what should be, to be unhindered by thought itself, oh to be free, completely free, in my own darkness and light, to stand as short and tall as I am without hunching or jumping or tiptoeing or lowering my gaze or stomping my feet or slamming the door and having to whisper lest someone hear me, really hear me, oh to be free, free to be heard and seen and touched and loved exactly as I am right now, not how I could be, or who or when I will be, and oh to be free to love this moment, exactly as it is right now, not how it could be, or who or when it will be.

stories need room to breathe

What stories are living inside you?
What tales lies resting, waiting to be awoken
in the arrangement of your bones
or the curve of your brow
and through your fingers that speak in tongues?
Which poems are writ on the manuscript of your skin?
What are the names of those who have etched their memory
on the chamber walls of your heart?
What image has your wildest hope carved
on the insides of your eyelids?
What makes you soar?
What wings have found their way
to the deepest recesses of your imagination?
And to which destination are they leading you?

Confessions - dreams

To stand on the lip of a volcano
To watch a hundred sunrises
through the beads of morning dew
To have faith and see it bear fruit
To see, and feel with the heart
To let go of the wildfire of desire
or learn to live with it in peace
To break the catharsis of comfort
To tear down the walls of idle thought
To see with new eyes
as though newly born or
recently cured of blindness
To care, as though never hurt or scarred
To break the spell of the ego
To develop a heart with the sensitivity of an eardrum
To cast off the shackles of doubt
and shadows of delusion
To be free of hesitation when faced
with that which the heart confirms
To love, as though unrequited
yet not become bitter or distant
To let love guide your course
yet remain your own person
To love with more depth and less attachment
How can I love you better?
Without making my loving you contingent
on how and when and in which ways
you love me back?
To hear sounds that make you glad to be alive
To sip and savor gratitude
To become utterly consumed
and enthralled by the Copernicus of beauty
yet still keep one eye sober
To be able to see anyone, no matter how invisible
and hear any story, no matter how quiet
To feel another's pain
To live with your own
To greet it at the door
like an undesirable relative
yet still welcome it as a guest
No guest stays forever
and everything eventually returns

That Which Lies Inside

There are seasons inside us
Whole continents, deep seas
Sun soaked stone, damp undergrowth
Vast stretches of undiscovered rainforest
There is a Himalayan mountain range
inside you, an unconquered Everest
There are five oceans inside me
Yet I am bound to the mouth of one stream
There are two poles at the center of my heart
There are places within me perpetually frozen
Where winter waits most of the year
before releasing Persephone
There is a Sun in the nucleus of your heart
Between its beats, there are days and nights
There are seas, valleys and lakes in your eyes
There are forests in your interiors blanketed by moonlight
Beneath the sea level of the surface of your gaze
There are worlds deep within us
unfamiliar with the stars
And strangers to the dawn though we may be
We have not forgotten the language of light
For within the perpetual darkness of the deep sea
It is in bioluminescence that we speak

untitled p III

Time is not always linear
It is still 1984
The great war is ongoing
My parents have yet to fall in love
I still believe the world is flat
and the sun and stars revolve around earth
I am still a pagan
The last ice age has not yet ended
I am still an ape
I am that ape waiting for the evolutionary leap
that caught some of my predecessors but somehow missed me
I am a pagan ape
still waiting to evolve
still waiting to exist

Confessions - freewrites p II

Can a thought be unwinded, or unthought?
Does matter return to thought at some point?
A thought, a dream, perhaps the entire universe
is a conception of the sleeping God's mind
Maybe God, wanting to be known
dreamed all of this into being
and we are all figments and silken filaments
of the Divine's imagination
which is more Real than our waking realities
Perhaps God sleeps an eternity as we do an evening
and when God wakes from that life-giving slumber
It knows itself that much more through Its creations
the gateway to life and existence as we know it
the dreamscape that we call the Universe
Eternity is one evening
The Universe--God's dreaming
Beauty is apparent everywhere
but perpetually submerged in shadows
maybe that's why our world can appear so dark
and why we can't draw perfect circles
and why we are so forgetful
and why we need to be reminded of the light
because we exist on the dark side of God's imagination
we are in Plato's cave, enthralled by the shadows
of Beauty and Truth, but having never known them
in the full light of day, and maybe death is only that
a stepping out into color from a cave of shadows
maybe death is simply a dream-riddled night
turning into a full day, maybe death is an instrument
of Divine alchemy, as the figments of Divine imagination
metamorphose into reality, because it is the gateway
through which we pass from night to day
imagination to realization, slumber to wakefulness
Death is simply the end of a dream
but nothing in a dream really dies
it is the shadow of life that imagines and fears death
it is the shadow of life that imagines and fears
the end of the dreaming, for in the wake of death
dream filaments and sleeping potential
turn into the realization of existence

confessions - regression

And where was Awe?
There was only I
So much of it there was no room for anything else
let alone Awe, which requires high ceilings
or no ceilings at all, and where was I?
The truth is I don't know
I would like to say on the cusp of something
or the verge or threshold
but there is nothing, I slept through my dreams
and they really became dreams; forgotten.
I was in myself, on my self
there was no room for anything else
when you become so consumed
in something so small as oneself.
Where was I going? Where am I going?
with this body, worse for wear with each year
Where am I going?!
Bewildering to realize that is the question
you ask yourself
Not where Awe is, that is established.

Morning Pages part I

Morning pages, afternoon pages, pages of my woe, of obstacles designed specifically for me, for a perfectionist like me, who likes to ponder about commas and where to indent the line and fickle or sickle to my wrists, oh ye control freaks, and perfectionists, who like to ponder moments before they arrive and long after they are gone, what little worlds are you and I constructing in the neat gardens of our imagination? What worlds are we conjuring all of us as we sit on the subway in silence, avoiding one another's eyes, looking at everything, posters, bits of rubbish on the floor, old vandals' signatures, and rereading advertisements, all to avoid holding a stranger's gaze? What is it that we are avoiding? What do we have to lose but the little worlds and big thoughts that consume us in transit?
There are 10,000 ways to greet a stranger, and not all of them involve words or speech. And I near my stop, time flies when the pages flow from me, I need this like my body needs exercise and stretching, I am not quite sure what I am stretching when the pages consume me, but it is somewhere inside, maybe my head, maybe even faintly in my hand, but most certainly somewhere inside my gut or chest, is my throat involved at all? Or is that only when I am conversating freely? Is this a form of conversation? Who am I having a dialogue with when I write freely in the pages? Is it me and myself? One part to another? Which parts are involved? If this is truly conversation, does it reflect the same dynamism as the dialogue between two persons? Certainly not, right? I mean, it is much slower to write a word than it is to speak it, for another, you have no idea what could be said next in a conversation, could the same be said of this inner dialogue? Could I really surprise myself? Could I checkmate myself without knowing it if inner dialogue were a game of chess?
I don't think so, but what do I really know without swimming the length and depth of the morning pages? So I will swim, and doggy paddle and pull myself through the sluggish waters of my soul, and commit to the pages every chance I get until I have an answer, or until I start writing poems again.
There are 10,000 ways I could write this; I am lost and I am looking to be found, no I am lost and I am looking for myself, a part of me is in the lost and found, but I can't remember where I lost it so I don't know where to look, or I am blind to parts of me, so I believe parts of me are lost, but really I don't know what I am looking for, I don't know what's lost or found, I am looking for something I cannot name, I am looking for something I am not even sure I can recognize.

Gros Morne

I don't want to leave

This place

Is too beautiful
To put into words

And I am afraid
I will forget this beauty
And how it makes me feel

I am in love and terrified

If I drop, there is nothing to catch me
And yet, a part of me wants to
Cascade down like the falls
There is a lake beneath
I would be at home
Just another ring on a tree trunk

Mountains are the measure of the Earth's age
And these ones are ancient
They are the roots of the previous epoch's Himalayas

I am at one of the world's oldest graveyards
And all around me is a wedding of life

Daily Bread p I

Everywhere, I seek daily bread
In any moment, at any time
I look about for a taste of daily bread
In the conversations of others
In speech, and a stranger's smile
Through a woman's voice
And another's gaze
In the songs of the birds
Over the bridge on the subway
In the middle of empty streets
Along the contours of a foreign tongue
Through all the races and variations
Of the human form
Among tree tops
And the bed of stars
Through the quiet hours of the night
I seek the daily bread
In any shape or form it takes
On giant television screens
On stages
And a multitude of screens
I keep close to me
In the park, at work
In my lover's embrace
My mother's voice
Through particular arrangements of words
Amid tragedies of Greek proportions
And all the triumphs of the human soul
I seek the daily bread apportioned me