Within
A bird whose wings abound
With strength beyond all peers
Stays silently on the ground
As others take flight and soar
Gazing with wonder she cries
At the cruelty of a befallen fate
That chained her from the skies
With a heavy burdened soul
Only inside her deepest fears
There is a truth silently hiding
Disguised by her own tears
That she could rise again
Two Hunters and the Snow
Too often this life sings us a cacophony of lies
To tame our spirit and disconnect us from ourselves
But when our inner nature chooses to speak
And forces us to acknowledge what is within
The mind must sit and listen so entranced
Understanding dawning, realization thrumming
The way a delicate hummingbird can hover
Beating its wings fast enough to be still
A wild soul resounds with terrifying power
Forced out of the cosmos, pulled down from the stars
It thunders and rings out like the bell of gods
A sound which can split the very light in the sky
The only thing capable of delivering revelations
Telling me that I had been wrapped in chains
Sad remains of the cruelty of being loved imperfectly
Not for who I was but for who another wanted me to be
And I have heard the voice of a wild heart call out
Laced so intricately with the hope of salvation
That unmistakable, mournful baritone cry
Desperate and impassioned, pleading to be heard
The heart carries on despite a lifetime’s sorrow
The origin of affliction and remedy for its fever
Warning to not feel fear so deep it drags you under
Singing the incantation of a true believer
And the hope that persists within my pain
That sings so sweetly with a wild songbird’s lilt
Told me to touch the light that would show
That the truth I was afraid of could set me free
Let the walls of deception and rejection crumble
If I listened to the sacredness of the earth beneath
And felt the certainty I had come to know with time
I could escape forever from the prison of my mind
Shed
Approaching the sacred without fear of death
I sought to offer you the way to transform
Just as buds became flowers in that garden
To shed the skin of ignorance in favor of light
View the world through eyes of the divine
Provide illumination of the mind and rebirth
This new vision would require your rebirth
But it would also mean facing the death
Of things you loved and thought divine
Such death would be how you transform
And look with new eyes to see the light
The truth which hid beyond the garden
A womb safe and fruitful was the garden
The place of the first birth and rebirth
Shielded from the curse of blinding light
To keep eternal and know not of death
Never having want or need to transform
This was the promise of the worldly divine
Promises were also the secrets of the divine
Secrets that were not whispered in the garden
The secret was the ability to know, to transform
That you have the command of your own rebirth
And you could understand the urgency of death
Be warmed rather than blinded by this light
You were cheated, told to fear that light
Fed a frightful, outrageous lie by the divine
Told that to know truth would mean death
Everything you want is already in the garden
Stay in darkness and you will not need rebirth
Ignore why it is you have a desire to transform
I let you fulfill that desire to transform
Feel the warm weight of the knowing light
The stunning enlightenment of your rebirth
Have knowledge that it is you who are divine
You who is the womb and life of the garden
The one with power to create life out of death
You could transform into the supreme divine
See the light that filled the world outside the garden
Understand that rebirth is the same as death
Moth Medicine
The moth that flutters gently at the darkest times
Seeking the light that feels so impossible to find
Settles occasionally upon what might be nearest
To the brilliance of joy that that once danced
Within the heart that now weighs so heavily
Will one day cease its rustling wings and still
Not because the need for light in the dark is gone
But because the darkness has become small enough
To carry more easily through the days that remain
Charade
There are those who attempt to convince us
Being tough with your children is a favor to them
Prepares them for the world’s harshness, teaches them to expect disappointment and loss
But there is ample time to become hardened and rough
I promise you, I will never do you this favor
I will fight to keep gentle your thoughts and mind
Hide those harsh things away in my own heart
To forbid them from reaching you
Ensure your little spirit is light and beautiful
Until the world makes it impossible to continue my charade
Even when I don’t know if it will ever be ok again
Because sometimes when you sleep I can hear you dream
When I lie awake thinking of my failures
As I promise myself I will do better tomorrow
Pray you don’t notice the hastily packed lunch
And the wrinkles on the uniform I didn’t press
Or the fact that a drive through is dinner, yet again
Hope that a cold shower did enough
To wash the stinging redness from my face
Which would be too clear a view of reality
That all the guilt and fear could slip down the drain
Dissolve in the water and disappear forever, never finding you
Desperate that you will remember the good days
That I can give you a house full of stories and songs
Overflowing with all the love I could ever create
I wish for those dreams to come true someday
No matter how unlikely this world will make them
Heaven is a Thrash Metal Concert
I died twice in a decade
Spent years slowly shriveling to a husk, becoming empty
Bones crushed to dust by the weight of “what if?”
My ghost haunted this world
Even as misery bloated my corpse,
Covered in shrouds of “should have“ and “supposed to be”
My first death was an instant and an eternity
My second death came quickly, the kind of ancient mercy
That death became a formless state
Fearless, and willing to be reborn
Ended by electricity shocking a still heart
A double bass drum pounding resuscitation
Breathing life with howling screams
Into the place of primal awakening
Knowing finally the freedom to exist as my spirit dictates
Within the sacred surrender to sound
That cacophony of energy
A mass of swirling forms
Like a portal to another dimension,
I found the resurrection of identity
The Visitor
A visitor calls when everything ends
After the world begins to turn again
Once flowers wither and wishes die
Weeks to years the time drifts on
Then unannounced, it’s by your side
Pulling at what you hold within
Arms will ache for another embrace
The warmth that can still be felt
Longing imagination lets you hear
Voices in silence that are not there
Or see a familiar face at a glance
That fades under desperate eyes
The hollow yearning for yesterdays
In the emptiness of quiet times
Without warning it passes through
To brush against the deepest wounds
Taking each time something new
Before slipping free the closing door
That holds the anguish in just so
And shuts against tender memories
Carried Away
When the past is all that is left
Winds will take these ashes
Far from this world and pain
Over the serene blue water
To dark night sky and then
Towards the very stars light
That will create again reality
Above the world there is quiet
Eternity is a powerful reckoning
Our life is but a moment to time
A flash of feeling in nothingness
Unfathomable in the insignificance
Unbelievable in the importance
Of what lies within the ever after
Fragile forms cease to matter
Peaceful and elegant they fade
Back into the endlessness of it
Where the sun is no longer warm
And the ocean no longer black
How small it will all seem to be
At the distance of the everlasting
Interstice
A hotel room is liminal,
The space between places
Like the sky that a plane traverses
A hall full of life’s doorways, all closed
That open to unknown parts of ourselves
Hidden across the paths we must travel
Snow, sky, and ghosts of lingering emotion
A room where I hear a chorus of human voices
So easily drown out an orchestra of instruments
With a view of that black swelling abyss, the water
That calls out with the promise of eternity
A door to downtown Los Angeles: 5 AM
Covered entirely with a hazy serenity
Quiet and eerie, painted in morning light
With strange, watercolor brushstrokes
Colors like flowers on a grave
The wonder of intentional impermanence
I went with them carried in my arms
As an offering, and an admission
To that same ghost of emotion
A pilgrim, I sought wisdom
Because I had none within myself then
Only handfuls of stars and memories
They are the reminder that life
Exists for a moment between death
The wisdom lies not in their death
But in the beauty of how they lived