Wednesday, September 16, 2009

8 Years Ago

[written on Sunday, September 16, 2001]


It’s the first weekend after the terrorist attacks on the United States.

We now have an immense gouge in our collective consciousness into which has flooded an incredible light illuminating a focused and zealous hatred captive and inextricably bound to a revelation of compassion and resolve in our human state. Thousands of voices silenced give rise to millions of voices stirred from their malaise, self-interest and confusion.

I was filled with a deep, conflicted depression as my mind grappled with the numbing details raging into my eyes, my ears, my heart, my spirit, and a weeping soul.

Life’s natural inclination to life and the momentous current of our total nature suddenly prey to this heinous void.

Stopped in our tracks.

Starring in to the abyss.


This abyss. Rife with an intensity rent from the bleakest of input, unavoidably streaming into our consciousness, an endless conjugation on emptiness.

As we seek answers in the void.

In the dust and twisted details the remnants of our individual and collective memory glimmer ever so dimly.

Inextinguishable.

If you stand on the perimeter of this tragedy and look for fear, fear will find you.

But, if you go into this space, so jarringly manifest, so incredibly real, so sadly exposed, you’ll find yourself.

And in your agreement to be here, you are found .

The hand that is laid on you is your own.

The momentum is you.

Your tracks are revealed as you inevitably engage your life, your phenomenal, some say ‘blessed’, life.

Yours.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Those Eyes

Look at the books they're reading from.
Some tattered from fingers plying through their pages like hungry souls,
Searching again and again for themselves.
Page markers jump out all over.
Bent in memory of a landscape powerfully glimpsed.
This silent map of a territory whose limits can never be known
Yet its contours felt precisely
As words release the magic beast that dwells just on the other side of
Those eyes.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

How Do It Know – Part 2 (A Current of Intent)

It’s our words to one another that allow us to feel the current in life, a pressure in the fluidity of our minds, an opposition so welcome as to make us aware of what it means to be aware. And at a wonderfully subtle level we suspect, yet affirm, a meaning in this current, something preformed, with purpose, directed at and through us, a current of intent. And as we approach and absorb this subtle inclination we find ourselves moved, in whatever direction, by something which seems external, but is of our own volition. And with out these words, ‘how do it know’*?


* the thermos invention joke

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Telling more

In small spaces

still words appear

intent on ‘fitting in’

yet bent on filling out.

Telling more.

Ever abundant.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Tears of this Universe


In all manner of grief
an endless flow of sorrow and loss
as voices look inside not to lift oneself up
but to lay others down with respect, deep
memory, and boundless love.
Don’t miss out on all the wailing, the crying of souls,
the aching of your heart and all other hearts.
This is how we know ourselves in our awareness
and embracing of all of this loss,
presently found in the water of your life,
in the tears of this universe.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

On Your Dreams Too

The well runs deep within us
And connects to a vast ocean we dip our buckets into.
Hauling up treasure and insight and
Life itself.
Sweet too the taste, gentle to the heart,
Sanctuary to the soul.
It’s meant to be brought up in a bucket that’s old with holes
That drip portions of our spirit back into that ocean
to mix with the waters of all of life.
For without such mingling how would you know
this taste is that which another
has dreamt for you when they sip
those same waters and slake their thirst
on your dreams too.