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The land is the one
Who invites me to breathe
My fragrance into her,
Without asking anything in return.

She carves for me a spot
At her infinite table
And serves me a taste of
My own freedom, for breakfast.

In her heat I learn of my passion.
In her wind I learn of my strength.
In her cold stillness, I learn of my patience.
In her transformations, I learn of my origin.

In all of her seasons I am revealed,
Like a reflection in an infinite pool.
To breathe of her is to live,
To live of her is to love.

Give me something I don’t understand,
So raw it compels me to ride
My drums like a horse
Until the sun comes up
And shines its light on my purpose.

Give me, in this one,
All-total and only moment,
Holiness,
And lead me to healing as
The water rises into my appetites.

We have come here with but one desire,
to EAT!, then exclaim,
“Yes! We didn’t miss it!”

Tell me with silence,
The language of my ancestors,
That the trees downstairs
Have the same raw stuff
That I do in my blood,
And pump Interbeing through my veins,
With an explosive surge of
Flooding liquid granite.

And in this one and wholly
Necessary moment, reveal to our bones
That the grass is no greener over there,
That we may arrive at Love,
Complete and undivided,
Right here,
Only now.

Move me.
I don’t much care how.
Just bring it on,
Like the red wine
Drips its slow molasses honeycoat
Over my windows of perception,
Resulting in a slow dance
With Time itself.
Or do it like
That girl across the room,
Who poured the magma
Through my eyes to light
The very flame
That licks my deepest recess.
Nudge me in the night
With the might of fifty steeds
Trampling through my dreams,
And play me like the grandest piano,
Tapping out your mystery
To an audience of everyone.
Or knock me down like Frazier,
But raise me up as the champ,
With nothing left in me but faith.

It came to me

from inside my bones.

A package sent from the past,

The future urging me to open it.

So I light the sage,

Bring the package out,

And set my body upon the land.

The Earth, she reveals it all to me, every time.

With gratitude,

I return.

Having gone empty,

I’ve been filled again.

I cross back over

while my heart shakes hands

with the Infinite,

then greets the world anew with a smile.

At the core is only love,

Founded on humility so honest

it requires me to shine,

and call the others out from their hiding.

Sing to me of your soul’s magic,

That I may give mine forth in dance.

Please, be like the river,

And let your rhythm flow downhill to me as it must.

Sing to me of the heavens inside your mind,

The way the night sky winks at me while I brush my teeth.

Place the trappings of society inside parentheses,

And I will, and together we will ascend in purity and truth.

Sing to me of the earth inside your pleasures,

And sing of it with impulse, informing great detail,

For you will be an artist then,

And I will view all of creation inside your hands.

Sing to me of the passion winds inside your heart,

Of your most brutal wounds and of your biggest courage,

So that I may wander your peaks and valleys,

And here or there fall down in grief or fill my belly with laughter.

Please, sing of your soul’s magic like the river goes downhill;

Let me hear how that Eternal Drummer beats his steady rhythm through you.

Truly, we will be together then,

As we dance in harmony with the golden-robed Spirit of the Infinite.

For Christmas my sister gave me a book of poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa and it has been inspiring me to try a different style of writing. This is the first poem I wrote after beginning to read Yusef, and I think it goes a little bit with my post from yesterday.

The New Old Hat

Every otherwise bright morning finds them coming,
Grey old over-greased drones on fear’s
Autopilot to anywhere but God. Buzzy ant
Tin-foil conversations crinkle into stiff air,
Waxed-up food in plastic packaging tides
Them over. Neon warning signs on their facial
Displays caution the user to avoid at all costs
Anything reminiscent of sticky, bloody, fleshy
origins. Mall-bought lip gloss veneers woefully
Disguise the raw heartache, earphones hardly
Silencing the deafening sickness.
“Hate your job? Have a Starbucks, with a side of
Pretend!!!”
In the eyes, the pitiful resignation to lives of
Tragedy, ideals gasping in gas chambers of empty
Promises, feet lodged in the mud, false comfort
Found in silken white-gloved waves of apathy,
masquerade of pure terror. Cattle being led to
slaughter, preferring not to realize it.
Coyotes howl at the whole of it.

The island is here and its cliffs are starting to reveal themselves again.
From deep within the fog banks
Their oft-shrouded but proud black shoulders
Are once more basking themselves in the warmth
of yet another restless dawn
that asks, “where have you been?”
and beseeches them with light to come out already.
As I behold this,
I can only shrug and chuckle,
gently laying aside my childish urge to say something smart.
I always knew they were still there underneath,
Didn’t I?
It is not from a distance that I regard these
towering and sacred sentinels of all that is true;
I but stand at their base,
Having only just now remembered that
I was this close to their indefinable
yet infinitely sturdy presence the whole time,
And that I’ve always been this close.
Howsoever I invite the clouded mystery
around that which is and has always been right in front of me,
this proud island of looming truth follows me.
It follows me when I mount my soapbox
To build a fortress in words out of all my impressive knowledges,
Only to peer down at me and remind me I know nothing.
It follows me when I strap on sandals of Purpose with a capital P
and traipse the hillsides searching for home,
then kindly reminds me that home has been here all along.
It follows me when I travel the dank and dusky depths
Of the underworld against my will,
And patiently waits to give me back my laughter,
When I am ready again to receive it.

Life is a fickle mistress.
Always it seems,
Though one gift be taken away,
Life returns us to beauty yet again.
Its forms are thrillingly boundless,
as has been echoed often when it is said
that one man’s trash is indeed another’s treasure.
I say I shall behold treasure within all that exists,
but when I behold it in a woman,
it gets me to thinking.
I have only sometimes such an incomplete picture of her,
And what from a distance
has merely caught my eye
persuades me to wonder
(even as I would not be persuaded)
what treasures of her soul
would reveal themselves upon a closer look?
And why does beauty in appearance
lend such a ready hand
to my anticipation of beauty within?
Perhaps it is only for my continued education
in the ways of the world,
that the beauty god has bestowed
upon the face of one
is a reminder to us all
of our necessarily unique potential for perfection
amidst our eternal, various and surely human follies.

Would that I could stroll through life unencumbered,
And like the rose unfold alone in simple beauty toward the infinite.
But where I get caught is that I want to know them all.
In every person’s face god peers back at me,
with a look of subtle compassion and eternal love.
And an invitation,
though their mouths and their eye contact
often don’t invite me the way God did through them,
before they knew I was there.
That I can’t have them all
doesn’t mean I can’t still dream of it,
in my most conscious waking.

Existing naturally within a skin of truth,
The man waits empty,
By the zenith of his mind.
And in the waiting he receives a Visit,
With open ears, and he is Merged.
The River doesn’t fight the rocks.