LIFE

The Years of Passing

The years of Passing
are a Conversation between my Whisper & Your Silence
Can you Hear me Now, dancing this silent Dance, in between the shadows of Things Gone and things Yet to Come?

This Silent Dance that we both know.

in our Cellular Metabolism.  Our DNA. Our Chronic Gelatinous Lovely Cytoplasm.    The Dance that Breathes. Air. Sweet Soul. Softness. Light.

Completion.

Seasons Change their clothes like tired Strippers in a Dance Club of Laughing Gods.

And the leaves fall to the eloquent jazz of Wind & Fire.

Mothers say goodbye to children who say goodbye to mothers and fly with all their colors into the Deep.

The years of Passing
are a Conversation between my Whisper & Your Silence.  It’s a prayer we keep; a lesson, a promise… to one day be Born Again.

The Place of the Lovers

My love, I have searched for you
in so many shadowed faces
looked through the rags and rich velvet cloth
of so many different places……
that I thought I would die of the thirst of
missing YOU

The Quiet Tide of True Connection …

Evening is a “quiet time”.
Most people have settled slowly into the refuge of the night: reading, knitting, digesting, TV, dreams, sex, sleep.

The sun and moon hold the earth in their cradle and light slowly fades on the horizon of time. Other countries light up. Other people awake. Clusters and groups and families all seek their fame and fortune. Accomplishment. Survival. Enjoyment. Giving and Taking. Buying and Selling. The Market. The Temple. A bath in the Holy River.

There are “them” out there.  This we know.  A wild series of “them”.  Legions of “them”.  Unidentified scores and throngs of “them”.  And who are they?  They are a lot like you.  And me.  They are humans – going through the same routines, same dances, same prayers and celebrations as you and me.

Perception.  We isolate ourselves and hide in the small caves allotted by our fears, our distrust, our acquired kingdoms, our well-financed sense of separation.  These humans we see, we perceive, we visualize… are not only a lot like us, they are intricately connected to us.

This is where the “us and them” gimmick falls apart.  We have two “monarchs” of perception that fight for the throne inside of us – our hearts and our minds.  They mind is allied with ‘ego’, and perceives its kingdom as “owned”, separate, justified.  The mind-ego is the King of Attachment and despite the ludicrousness of the whole affair – after all, we’re not taking this ‘stuff’ with us when we go – the mind views itself and it’s Kingdom as eternal, immortal and untouchable.

Familiar tune?

And then – the Heart.  The heart does not “fight” for the throne, the heart ascends to the throne when the Mind/ego has finally understood its frailty, its stupidity and its ignorance and has surrendered its position because it can’t hold the house of Mortality together any more.  The Heart is the Silent Partner that awaits in all of us – the center of sweetness.  The innocent part of us that understands its true role as Speck of Dust in the hands of the Immortal.  Out of our control.  Gratitude.  Oneness.  Bliss.

The Heart also understands this foundation-point of “connection” between sentient beings.  We humans – if we look at one another with the eyes of the heart – can immediately recognize our union and unity with all mankind.  We are made of the same ‘stuff’.  The Divine is visible – shining! – in each and every one of us.  This is truly what unites us in its magnificence, its compassion, it’s deep love and understanding.  And we each claim and own this light of the divine in our deepest hearts.

The Throne of Understanding.

It’s there.

It never left.  It is us who left.  And it is us who must find our way back.

I Was Alone

I Was Alone
I counted Three
Minutes Before You Ran
Away with Part of Me

Warriors, They Joined Me
I have this Heart of Gold
Before me, Between me, Inside me
They said it would all Unfold

I Discovered my Flower
My god, my virgin, my light
Tucked into my belly-button cupboard
Glowing like a Raven in the Night

Now I Dance the Tribute to a Million Swans.

My life is over, my time is up
My garden blooms only once
in this Heirloom Silver Cup

the Stars are Singing
inside my Wounded Knees
I’ve already Eaten the Leftovers
Leave this Ancient Haunted House

will You Please …

This Crying Shoe

A Heart-Beat at a Time …

Vulnerability.

Some say there is an armor necessary in Life.  Consequences.  Precautions.

Why throw this to the wind?

Wrapped up in the arms of our many-colored coat, in the threads of our lost fabric, there is remembrance of sweeter moments.  Moments when we cared.  Cared about life passing by.  Cared about the “filler”, the glances, the minutes of time undocumented, where we found life brimming with substance.

Feeling.

We pass our days lost in lineups, traffic, phone menus.   We think we are “going somewhere”.  But in reality, we are going nowhere.  Just ’round and ’round in circles.  Faster and faster.   Emptier and emptier.  Traveling towards imaginary “goals”, victories, accomplishments, appointments, acquisitions.

And life goes on, a Parade of Colored Dreams.  No one slows down, very few stop.

Except when death comes knocking.  Or disease.  Or Trauma.  Or you wake up one day and realize your life amounts to nothing, your friends amount to nothing, the pieces of paper on your wall – which once announced your Greatness – are simply faded artifacts of a past dynasty which is now equal to Toilet Paper.  Used Toilet Paper.

And who are you?  You, the Magnificent Adult who has survived 3 marriages, high-school, children, cancer, middle-age, flat tires, obesity, cardiac failure.  You who prided yourself on your Kingdom, your Castle, your Retirement Savings Plan.   Those who knew you as “accomplished”, those who would laugh at your jokes and applaud politely when you paid the restaurant tab.

Those good friends.

Those friends are all gone now, and when they do show up, you see their cracked masks, their feeble opening lines, their well-worn excuses.  You see their compromises, their mundane dullness masquerading as “interesting routines”, you see their resident emptiness lingering under dry smiles, wrinkles, sand-dunes beneath tired eyes.

So, you are a sage of the open road, a connoisseur of day-dreams, a taster of forbidden romance written on pages of used pocketbooks.  You have coins and car-keys to jingle, credit-cards to wiggle.  Bank accounts to ponder, investments in foreign lands beyond your control.  You have everything, and on the same breath, you realize … you have nothing.

So, your whole life has passed and you’ve perfected the art of impressing the relatives, but you have missed the value of your own breath.  Your own life.  Your own substance.  Unknown.  Unexplored.  A gift, sitting under a deserted Christmas Tree, unopened.  Dusty, decrepit.  Dead.

Or is it?

There is a fortunate truth.

Substance never dies.

(Well, if it did, we would die with it.)

So, the Act of Fortunate Substance is alive at our very core and sustains us through all this.  All this misery, all this victory, all this noise, silence, indigestion, feasting and famine.  And this Fortunate Substance, this best friend-of-friends, still remains waiting, waiting, patiently, humbly … beneath all we claim to be.

Will we feel one day, will we see one day, will we be one day.  Will we?   Can we?  May we?

This lost hope of this forbidden dream of this abandoned childhood of wonder – this one that still glows beneath all the National Flags, all the Soldiers and Armies, all the Matriarchs, Patriarchs and Victory Marches.  The dream still dreams.  It dreams of us.  It dreams of oneness, beauty, the silence of immeasurable sound, the dazzling and cleansing light of a million suns that radiates the fragrance of the Place We Came From.

And the Place We’re Going To.

Slowly, quickly, a day, a breath, a heart-beat at a time.

We wait in line.

And the Journey of Journeys … has this quality … far below the surface … that one could only describe as …

SUBLIME.