Air

division is the air

the world inhales—

violence is the air

the world exhales—

the wisdom of love is the air

that leaves the world

breathless

Baptism of Love

We weren’t religious.

But drinking downstairs all alone one Friday night,

I started thinking who am I to not baptize our daughter,

sleeping upstairs, two years old,

dreaming new identities she could be like Lego characters

assembled thought by thought until

the ever-present inimitable magic of one’s being is covered up

by something old and borrowed.

Every beer was turning me more blue.

And so I tip-toed up the staircase,

passing prints of Andrew Wyeth’s artless landscapes

opening around an empty house,

until I stood above her sleeping peaceful form,

and felt the consciousness we shared as breathtaking love.

Then I touched my finger to my tongue

and prayed she’d always know she is that light of being

that had come into our disillusioned lives

to teach us what we always are.

I placed that finger on her forehead

feeling fourteen billion years as building to this second.

Suffering Through

The world is like an incubator 

growing wisdom in its fervor 

slowly. Some will never see 

through confines of that world because—

there’s not an object to that final 

preposition. There’s no objective 

in the world at all. Such is 

its insight being seen outright. 

There’s only the absolute subjective.

Christine: an Appreciation

She drove that orange Volkswagen like freedom itself. No one would ever know where to find her. That didn’t mean she wasn’t quite striking when around, but only that she could disappear before you knew it.

And her style, beneath it all, was traditional. She had no misgivings about the American Dream other than it should exclude no one, especially women. So it was inevitable that we would slowly drift apart. She veered toward that dream, driven, and I was always swerving away from it, searching.

The only reason we lasted as long as we did was the initial nuclear fusion-like strength of our love those first years. In time, it took the form of our beautiful daughter, to whom she sacrificed much to be a loving mother. Not too long ago, I told her ours was an epic history. She questioned that, and I countered maybe it was more mythological: the marriage of Sea and Sky and the birth of Venus.

Chris passed away on Friday. Imagine the loss of an ocean. And the depth of its absence.

unthinkable pseutra

today's art is tomorrow’s cliché, but truth is no time.

fear of transformation fuels the status quo. imagine what love does to it?

love isn't your all-time favorite default state? what are you thinking?

there's nothing when self-awareness isn't love. isn't That something?

i’m sorry it took me so long to see there’s never anything to forgive.

acting can never keep up with the play.

why, my dear, shall we dare to imagine following the truth. how lovely that would be!

the self intends countless ever-transforming perspectives on itself. should it be anything less?

if non-dual wisdom isn't the alien, what is?

set the alarm for now.

wake up. it's now.

one chooses one. it's only the choosing that appears duplicitous.

it's not rocket science. although it's also rocket science.

one never knows the extent of what the other gives in their relationship because one never knows the limits of what the other thinks it is.

relax. surrender. only the heart knows. and only the heart does.

in the self-awareness universe, it's all about the aperture.

what is an eye? who am i ? two sides of the headless coin.

how many facets in diamond awareness?

what is your original facet?

if an answer can't be seen as a question, it isn't an answer.

what is your relationship with the non-dual?

in other words, try thinking the unthinkable.

life isn't fair. it is and it isn't.

asking who i am is love without question.

Ballyhoo

Black lights above a psychedelic 

roller coaster returning to 

the sea of soy—beneath its rails 

the barker builds banana splits 

and on the midway middlemen 

delight in dukkering amusements. 

The carnival is burning down the town. 

Come see the doubleheader being 

played in three-dimensional 

illusion! Come hear the organ grinders! 

Smell the neon; feel its pain. 

And while you wait in a line to die for, 

taste the floss that’s spun from rain. 

Genealogical Self-analysis

The fear of death 

is just the fear of that 

which one 

essentially has always been. 

My genealogy, 

if traced in truth, 

descends 

the evolutionary scale 

on earth, continuing 

to comets, stars, 

and all 

dark matter coming from that burst 

of light emerging from 

the great unknown. 

Unborn— 

that is my only family name.

Tempest in a Teapot

Imagine all the world is inside-out 

and what you thought was hard reality 

is pure imagination resting in 

a headless head. That picture window is 

an opening within this consciousness. 

Look, chickadees are feeding on themselves. 

Their cerebellum is this space of sky 

and eyes are everywhere it touches. Ground 

is just the edges of a deepest sleep 

from which the branches of some scientific 

playground spread until I see myself. 

My leaves are falling everywhere. My river 

runs through sure-footed galaxies. My ocean 

waves at countless years of soundless notions. 

None of this is what I really am.

On the Reflexive Universe

The pure subjective doesn’t know 

itself—as there is no it 

to know. There is no Mars or Venus, 

no Earth or Moon or Sun, no Big Bang 

to speak about, no words at all. 

This universe of names exists 

within intent of that subjective 

self to know that self. That’s all. 

The light becomes material; 

material evolves to see 

it is the light. And what we call 

this world of suffering is just 

the last throes of an object in 

its education there’s no object. 

This is the point of space and time, 

all necessary for one rhyme.

I Am the Light

The shadow knows it doesn’t know

the light. The light is well aware

there is no shadow in the light—

and all is light. The light proclaims

I am the light of self-awareness!

There is no dark division in

my light; there are no violent nights

within a world of gloom and fear.

Without the shadow of a thought

there’s only light and not some knot

that needs to be untied in fright—

the light is one and all is light.