Conversations with the heart p. 1

Heart, I said
what do you need to tell me your final destination?

Shall I find a clearing in this forest of limbs where each instant,
there are dozens of branches reaching out to meet your touch?
Shall I dispose of the old water in this bottle
so we will have no other choice but to find a fresh spring?

Heart, you are my guide to the unseen,
I am blind and you are my seeing dog.

Heart, I whispered
sometimes I am afraid of your destination.
So I pretend you are the destination.

You know where you are going
you were carved from the walls of your former home
you sing with the memory of its hallowed halls
and to your former home you shall return, whole.

But you are heavy with half-loves I have forgotten to forsake.
I have kept you prisoner to a sea of endings forever born,
held you in a perpetual Autumn
warmed with only last winter's dying coals.

Every moment,
there are tens of thousands of souls rushing into this world.
Every moment, there are tens of thousands of worlds
fading into the white and black of memory.

Heart,
as much as I try to keep you fettered and caged
I felt you stir free like the wind this morning.

Heart,
I felt the kiss of the morning sun today and forgot how to breathe.

***
to be continued

conversations with poets p. 1

X:

I had a vision of leaking light from a wound, as though dying. The only way I could reconcile the pain was from bleeding all that light out into everything I was doing. Somehow I know that is the only way I will find peace. 

Y:

That was not death but birth. That which you were was escaping to illuminate the world around it.

X:

A guru of sorts told me to find guidance in the line "let me die, and become the breath of the breathless." I need to die. I need it like so many waking hours need sleep. I need it like life. And I've been up so long, eating and drinking past my fill, stealing light from the early morning hours. 

Y:

There is no death. Only change. And change you will. 

I know why they cry sometimes

I remember

you were sitting on your knees 

in a bathtub half full of water

and I was standing on my toes 

watching the mascara run down your face

as you held me in your mouth.

Knees trembling, my whole body quivering

like a tightly drawn bowstring

and I had to hang onto the curtain rod for balance.

Still on your knees, you arched your back and sat up

your mouth swelling with the storm gathering inside me

hanging on by my fingertips, my legs shaking uncontrollably 

my mouth, as incapable of speech as yours.

When I finally came like rain after a drought

a flood, a tsunami, dumbstruck

as waves of the ocean's roar shook my body

like a leaf. Unable to stand, I collapsed on the toilet bowl

and I remember feeling an overwhelming need to cry or laugh

and not knowing how you'd take the tears

I laughed and I laughed, like thunder 

from dry storm clouds finally granted release.

Idolatry

There is a battle being fought for your mind
Everywhere, men hawk their idols
Don't succumb to the fear they sell
There is enough fear in the great spaces between stars
There is enough fear in the hollowness of our being here
We are shadows that have burst into color
Light, we are candle flames in the dark

****

Science did not kill god
Those who took up the name of god killed god
Those who substituted the fathoms of the unknown
For a false divinity made in their own image have killed god

(You, who have made of God
Some notion of an ideological judge
Are the true idol worshipers
Because what you worship is certainly not God)

You who have denatured the reality of the divine spark
That is in everything yet is no thing in particular
And cast the unimaginable spectrum of all-possibility
Into the ugly role of some moralistic judge
-More human than divine-
You do not worship God
You only wear the name, you have made an image of god
An idol of ideas which you use to cast fear unto others
You remind us of your idol's righteous wrath
And speak in honeyed tongues as you ration out its mercy
(Like food to soldiers)
Your idol may be great
It may tower over any structure
It may even blot out the sun
But we see your idol
And though we can no longer see the sun
We can still see the rays of its truth
Tout your god all you want idol-worshiper
We can see that it is unmoving
As incapable of action as a board of wood
Your idol does not frighten us
We will not bow or be bowed to anything but truth
We will walk among you
And on nights like this we will cast down your idols
Because we will not live
In the shadow of those who tower over us
By twisting scripture into pedestals and thrones
We will cut through the ranks of your idols
Until we arrive at the last one
The mother of all idols
Will wear our own face
Our own selves we will battle at the end
So that in our final hours
-When we must all take that step without feet-
We may greet the darkness in its own tongue
With a familiarity born not of fear, not fear
But love, and love, and love...

Confessions p. 18

These words have been a companion to me,
they have been my global ambassadors
They have facilitated my reconciliation with the world.
From the beginning when I entered this labyrinth
I have laid a string of words to mark and trace my way back out.
The fibers of that guideline are laden with the taste of salt n copper
they are drawn tight around the corners, fraying at the bends
Like a cross continental power line
the lifeline of my memory disappears behind me into the horizon.
Some places, it lies submerged in forgotten pools
gathering floating oddities,
Underneath the canopy of forest leaves
it has grown into the moss,
Beneath the crest of waves deep under the possibility of light
it has become a part of the seabed
like a fading trail through the perpetual darkness.
Over the hills it hangs through heights, sometimes
it catches droplets of morning dew, and for a few brief moments
a string of small suns are reflected along its length,
Occasionally, one of those droplets falls
like a tiny shard of a mirror dazzling and glistening
with the colors of the solar system
as it falls to the earth like a moist kiss from the sky.

cave dwellers

They will say
we lived in a broken home
somewhere between darkness and light
sometime between day and night
we wore our chains like our favorite clothes
walked backwards and couldn't stand the sight of our own footprints.
They will say
we built walls out of our fears to protect us
lived lives dictated by what not to do.
We forgot
the colors of the sky
we forgot
the stars out in the middle of nowhere.
We built a broken home
brick by brick, fear on fear
somewhere between darkness and light
sometime between day and night.

quotes 2

"I didn't know what to ask for anymore. As soon as I started thinking about what to wish for, I couldn't escape knowing that I had everything I needed. I saw a road leading to every wish I could truthfully make. Before me I saw a tower made of fear, ever rising, while a pair of golden boots shone from its top as it lay surrounded by two moats of desire and lethargy. I crossed the moats, though it took many years. I climbed the tower, though it took even more. When I put on the boots, it was like they were made for me...and I have not stopped walking since."
A.D.A.

confessions p 17

I never told you, that time

when you missed your flight

and had to stay another night

I wept as you slept, awestruck

by how beautiful you are

and I wondered whether

I could return your love better

than the last man who broke your trust

Heart Diaspora

We speak of home. What is home for the diasporic? Are we not all on a diaspora? Spiritual beings on a physical diaspora. What home? We do not know the word. And if home is where the heart is, then let us tend to the heart and defend the "republic of the imagination." For without it, we are nothing but meaningless cogs in an accidental clockwork universe devoid of a higher consciousness than our own. And though some find this easy enough to believe, we would be extremely presumptuous to believe that we are the highest form of consciousness thus produced within a universe spanning billions of years and birthing untold numbers of stars, solar systems and galaxies; not to mention the potentially infinite number of other universes and bubbles of existence between the plains of pre-eternity to post-eternity. Or it could be that we are the crowning achievement in this sea of being and becoming. The microcosm to the macrocosm of the universe. Either way, we have not yet experienced but a drop of that which we are truly capable. Consciousness has so much room to grow within all of us. We should be fighting to learn about ourselves patiently everyday, over years, lifetimes, generations, and ages. We are such a young species; we are only the earliest blossoms of humanity's spring. Trees have been growing for 700 million years. Can you even imagine what a story that old would sound like? Do you think you would be able to hear it if it were being told everyday-every moment you spent outdoors? What if one day you wake up and find yourself able to hear the all sagas that are being told around you? And you begin to hear tales in the slow shuffle of your neighbor's crooked step. And jutting out like the veins in a leaf, you start to read the stories that the trees never tire of telling. And that tiny green shoot growing between a crack in the concrete becomes an epic [Homerian] narrative of hope, of struggle and grace in growth; a heroic celebration of life over prisons of stone. Can you imagine what would happen to you if you heard all these tales? Your ears might take on the sensitivity of a virgin's  lips or a soldier's wound. You might rush to that insignificant plant and cry tears of elation over the marvel of its everyday growth through layers of rock and man-made sediment. "If you can grow between the layers of concrete, oh my green ancestor, then I too can grow a heart from these walls that my fathers and I have erected between ourselves and others who call this place home."

tearbrush

as an artist without a paintbrush
i use my tears as the paint
with which i try to recreate
the stars on a clear night
upon the floor of this borrowed home
where we dance and kneel
where we bleed and peel
back layers from the night sky
of our own dark hearts.

confessions -1

While I still breathe
every mortal moment 
of my life is timeless
though I am not.
So do not comfort me 
with promises of reconciliation
in another world
this is the only one we know
this moment, the only one we live

ode to artists in exile and the freedom of expression

Do you know what it's like to write a poem about your home
and not be able to share with your neighbors?
Or what it's like to make an international award-winning film
about your people and then be outcast from your country?
Can you imagine singing a song that captures the heart of a nation
only to be barred from setting foot there again?
[The artists in my country are bleeding.]
The flowers in my country are torn from their roots
before they have a chance to blossom
Hear me out. Imagine, the very next time you come up here
to this stand and perform a poem before this mic,
you go home and sleep, like any other night
and the following day you get a letter in the mail,
signed by the highest authorities, informing you
that you must never again return to your birthplace
that you may never again see your parents in their own home.
I can't speak to that...I'm not there, yet.
But one of the saddest tones of the human voice I've ever heard
was a man singing about the separation from his homeland and mother
and what broke his heart was that he couldn't be there
to bury her when her time came.
So for all the artists out there, all the boys, girls, men and women
with fire in their lips, hands and feet
who are questioning whether or not to continue
keep perfecting your craft.
Don't take it from me, take it from the exile.
This is our greatest liberty, the expression of our humanity.
So the next time you come up here, keep that torch burning baby.
Keep it burning for the rest of us,
keep it burning for those who are kept in darkness.
And I would humbly ask that you not only keep the torch burning
but that you feed it until it burns so bright
that it illuminates even the darkest corners of human imagination