confessions p 31

A heart is a word is a drum is a question.
A heart is a machete is a muscle is a classroom
is a lightbulb is an open door is a tide.
A heart is a glance is a secret
is a grimace is a kiss is a scar is a resignation of defiance.
A heart is a plug is a powerchord
is a battery is bio-luminescence
is a judge is a window is a mirror
is a curse is a prayer is a baby in the fetal position
is a wave is an eddy is an ocean is an eye.
A heart is a leaf is a valley is a breeze
is a sun is an oasis is a smile is a dawn
is a dam is a bridge is a train is a greeting.
A heart is a gun barrel is a black box
is a sail is an old couple in a park
is a hostel is the distances between stars.
A heart is a seat is a throne is a promise
is a witness is a mother's foot is forgiveness.

how does a universe fit inside a human being?

There is a voice inside me
with the patience of the sea
twenty six flowers rest on one branch
by day's end
each has blossomed into a thousand trees
worlds of forests, deserts
valleys and undiscovered peaks
By moon rise
their petals sway into the spiraling arms of a galaxy
and the vast empty infinite of the cosmos
is kissed with the cloying fragrance of evening primrose
moonflowers, nightshade, gladiolus, geraniums
and drunk, the great starry void inhales
and breathes out all the colors of the dawn
The Beloved arrives
the Beloved is here
the Beloved was always here
(and never)
There is nothing but the Beloved here
There is nothing but the Beloved
I thought I existed
I and the world
I and so many other I's
I and the sun and earth and ocean and sky
I and Nature and the cosmos and you
and you and you and you and you
But I have never truly existed
How can something have existence
when it is here one moment and gone the next?

How does a universe fit inside a human being?
It curls into the body in the fetal position
like a prayer
or a question
whose answer requires an eternity of now

the great starry void of the cosmos is within
the vast stretches of infinity
the endless desert of space
star nurseries, galaxy clusters
and all the empty space between
is here, right here
Heat death and the expansion of the universe
the beginning, and the final trails of light
the big bang, the apocalypse and the end of our sun
all the moments of the cosmos and the earth
from the birth of light and time
to the end of eternity and the shores of pre-darkness
how can so much time fit into so small a body?
It curls into it in the fetal position
Like a prayer
or a spark from a fire leaping skyward
trailing light in the shape of a question
whose answer requires an eternity of now

To the flowers that have not yet bloomed;

turn your face toward the sun
let the shadows fall behind you
and soak up as much blood, water and tears
as your roots and veins can hold

The ancestry of language

They come and we break words
and wet tongue to speak to each
but you and I share something beyond words
a dance of light in the eyes
something rooted so deep in the seed of our being
that it precedes language...

What is the mother tongue of the Universe?
And what was its first word?

What were some of the earliest languages
of being and becoming?
And what was the first death
experienced by the Universe?

I think the Universe's first experience
of death, temporality and finitude
may be what preceded the birth of language

In coming face to face with its own mortality
did the silence of the cosmos
erupt with the ripples of language
each word a container
a souvenir from travels past
a glimpse into the untimebound for the timebound

confessions p 30

Mercy on mercy on mercy
Light on light on light
13 years in an instant
Then, now, always
The same question
At the heart of all I hold true
What did I do to deserve this?
Nothing
I did absolutely nothing
I just am
And You love me like this
For nothing
With no reason 
 I just want to learn how to love like that

Letters p II "Faceless Lover"

Who are you?
Where are you from?
Why does your shadow haunt the horizon of my dreams?

Whose face are you wearing today?
Whose voice have you borrowed?
Through which word shall I find you tonight?
With what mask will you kiss me in the morning?
With whose eyes shall you peer into my soul?

Oh faceless lover
Shrouded in shadow and cloth
I have only ever heard your echo through the walls
Once, I thought I heard your voice
Over the din of so many others in the marketplace
So that even now, I can't tell which throat was yours

Oh faceless lover
Who are you that awaits me at every ending?
Who are you that began with beginning?
Through whose eyes are you looking at the world?
Who are you that wears the face
of every lover I have known?
The mothers with which I have grown
Sisters and brothers, born and unknown
The was and the will be
The yet to be formed
And the seeds of the unsown?

How many lifetimes of memory must I accrue
Until I can remember what is to be with you?
Again and again and again and again
Until every moment of wakefulness is doused
And drenched with your scent
Until every breath spent unequivocally in surrender
And every moment
Every surface and layer
Alive
Ablaze

Oh faceless lover
Who is it looking from beneath your hundred veils
That with such a thing as simple as one gaze
Can split a single instant into a thousand ways to say
I remember

Oh faceless lover
Strike me blind!
Strike me blind
So I may never put a face to love

Letters p I

Rumi, what am I supposed to be doing?
Where is Shams? Where is the sun of the sun?
To which direction do I turn when sight fails
And the horizon reveals only mirages?
What tongue do I speak when my soul's night
has chased the words out of my mouth?
To which constellation do I turn when my eyes
swallow light like black holes?
In what language would the words of love
not flee from me
after tasting the kiss of my faithless lips?
Through which window do I fly
when the house of my soul
becomes too claustrophobic for my dreams?
Where do awakened dreams find refuge
from this sleeping reality?
What is the soul of the soul?
Who is the spirit of the spirit?
"Who am I? Where is my soul from?
And what am I supposed to be doing?"

continued...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZqAnIp5dMQ

*quotes: Rumi

Hiatus p II

Some nights

I write poetry

Some nights

poetry writes me

A feeling 

an idea unbirthed

a haunting melody

from a song I made into a home

or radio waves

accidentally picked up 

without reception

a stranger at my door

Scents carried by a passing breeze

my mothers' smile in a picture frame

a forgotten promise 

an undying wish

a blank piece of paper

A memory

of the moon

waning, glistening

like an apology

wet 

ready to be kissed

beneath a canopy of pine needles
as bodies of shadow merge with luminescence

when people die
we don't cry for the dead
we cry for the living
we cry because we feel separated
we cry because we miss them
we cry because of the gulf we perceive between the living and deceased
we cry because death reminds us of all the ways we are not alive

if the living weep 
then perhaps the dead rejoice
if the living mourn 
then perhaps the deceased are dancing
somewhere where there is no room for distance or separation

Nyctophilia

I am the fear of unrealized potential
I am the quiet despair of a refusal to confess affliction

I am the one hiding from myself
I am the broken connection between mind and soul
The silent desperation of dormant aptitude

I am a prison of dead appetites
I am a jail guard of the unknown
I am the lack of hunger and thirst
I am a lock
I am withdrawal
I am an embryonic promise of infertility

I am Judas
I am Cain
I kill that within me which has not yet been born
I am the aborted fetus of untapped capacities
Within a jar of alcohol left to collect dust on a shelf

I am the bystanding victim of terrorism
I am a terrorist to my own soul
I am the mouth of the castaway
Who has forgotten the taste of home

I am an abandoned warehouse
A derelict street in a ghost town
I am the premature manifestation of planned obsolescence
I am the paralysis of choice
I am the shortness of breath
The venom of fear
Running feet, darting eyes
I am unbounded restlessness

I am running away from me
I am running from afternoon to dawn
I am running hard
My lungs are pulling deep on every toke
Panting for breath
But I can't be sober
I can't rest from this quiet flood
So I run to deny the torrent inside my chest
And I run and I run and I run
I run until I become a shadow of myself
If I could, I would run until I become a shadow of my shadow
I run because a shadow can't exist in the light
I run to unsee that which I have seen
But I can't
So I run and I pant and I cough and I wheeze
And I cough and I cough
And I roll up another one
Because my appetite for running knows no bounds
And before the smoke has settled
I am off to the next stop
I can't stop being in transit
I'm already late
I'm always late
Because I am running
I'm running away from me
And I'm late

Notebook

What happened to you?
You used to give me your undivided attention
What happened to us?
We used to be the best of friends
Remember how many nights we spent awake together?
You used to fill my empty pages with everything you had

You didn't have to vow
No other tongue had ever tasted the salt of those tears
You kept hidden from the world
You didn't have to to swear
No other soul had ever heard such hushed tones from your lips
I knew it from the way your breath quivered
When longing and sorrow molded your entire body into a flute
And you translated the winds of separation
Into a song of blood and fire

Remember how we'd maintain those sacred flames
With tear stained page after tear stained page?
We burnt down the temple and built a cage from its ashes
But we were free in our fortress of solitude

There were silences between us that came alive by night
And words which never saw the light of day
But they were ours because they didn't owe a damn thing to anyone

I remember every word you etched on my body
Every space you left unwritten
Each line you crossed out
Each corner you folded
Every exclamation and question mark
Every curse and prayer

Because god damn it
I am the conscience of that first notebook
You picked up and wrote it
Not for the sake of the score or the stage
But for the sake of yourself

Tell me, what freedom were you seeking?
Tell me, what did love ask of you
When you first mixed your tears
With the ink of your pen?

What sacred flame compelled you to write
When there was no mic, no audience
And no judge besides the truth in your own heart?

Remember that
Give it your undivided attention again
Because if you're still preoccupied
With what others might think about your words
How in the hell are you going to tell the world
That which you were born to say?

Alchemy

From madness and insanity we come to life
From bullets, to sanctions, to instability and strife
Even in the depths of darkness we rejoice at light

We carry dances within our steps:
The dance of the atoms and the dance of the stars
(I saw) the moon drip into the night
A shot of cream frozen in a cup of coffee
(I saw) dawn in the open eyes and mouths
Each child, woman and man a beam of light