Death:
a question mark, unanswered.

Vast, silent,
like the ocean.

The horizon disappears,
we are swallowed whole.

“Divine.”
“Abyss.”
– Is there a difference?

Death is a forest at night;
obscure, quiet.

A person enters it alone;
no guarantees.

The archer, poised;

connected to his breath:
a silent stream,
In. Out. In.

His will is like the Tao;
the emptiness
between too little,
and too much.

I hear a knock.

Death has come
not at night
but mid-day.

I look it in the face
not with fear
but with sadness;

not the sadness of having to let go
but the sadness of knowing finally and fully
that I never truly held anything.

I saw eternal freedom;
its caves,
where the underground people live.

Belly-down in damp rock tunnels,
they search for crevices and cracks;
smaller, darker spaces.

Cursing the cold,
hard rock;
cursing the darkness,
their own stench.

Unable to go forward.
Unwilling to go back.

Two or three of something is healthy;
ten or twenty of something is not.

Two or three of something is exploration,
enjoyment,
balance;

ten or twenty of something is the ego
reaching for more,
trying to heal.

I cling to the bar,
knuckles white,
shaking with exertion.

“Let go.”

I will not.
I squeeze tighter,
strength failing,
will giving way,
emptied of strength,

I let go.

I hit ground,
feet firmly planted,
shake tired arms,
blood rushes in.

“Get back up.”

I will not.
The ground gives way beneath my feet.
I scramble and run until at last
my legs fail.

I reach, grab the bar again,
legs, rest and refresh.
Until finally, I hear once again:

“Let go.”

Life

is the man waiting in a rocking chair,
in his living room by the fire,
looking out into the night;

he invites you to come inside,
warm yourself;

share a meal and drink wine together,
and tell stories;

to receive what every day
you beg for in the streets.

My morning is fresh dew
anxious to drop from the leaf.

My evening is the fallen drop,
lost among the grass,
wishing to be lost.

He would sooner break his neck
than submit to the yoke.

He thrashes against the whip
that saves him from the cliffs.

He walks one thousand miles in the wrong direction
if only it be his direction.

Fear is the only sin.

Fear closes.
Shuts down.

It hinders our capacities to create and to express;
our ability to know and to understand;
to love and to be.

Fear cuts us off from our source of life.

Fear is the only sin.

Perhaps mind begets mind.

Perhaps I am not a dream of god
but the dream of one of god’s dreamers.

Then what of my dreams?

Where will they end?

What dreamers will I dream?

I stop.

Long enough to feel
the weightlessness
beneath all this.

It terrifies and saddens me.

I sigh,
and in that sigh,
exhale the void.

I breathe in,
and in that breath,
the world is re-born.

God is not the word God.
The word is not the thing.
But a sign pointing to the thing.

God is the silence before that word.
The stillness that surrounds it.
Never understood.
Never named.

How do you manage that pain?

That deep pain,
like the dark ocean;
ancient. Cold.

Discipline, hobbies, food,
sports, religion, self-help,
shopping, gambling, sex,
internet, work.

How do you manage that pain?

It pains me:
the whole world,
slipping through these thousand tiny windows.

I feel everything passing through me;
transient, never caught.

I am a net.
Waiting, wide open.

I hurry my life.
Seldom feel peace.

Why?
What good comes from speed?
– From having the list completed?
From saying, “I did this, and that?”

I do not know.

I know that a life unsavored
is a wasted life.

But I cannot seem to stop.

There are two ways to live life:
open or closed.

Open is:

to let be and let go
to release and relax
to take in and give out
to give and to receive
to reveal and be revealed
to hide nothing and fear nothing

Closed is:

to fight and shut out
to cut off and not allow
to close and contain
to force out and hold back from
to be unreceiving and inhospitable
to conceal and hide

I scream across the abyss of time,
trying to tell you;
trying to show you what I see now,
what I feel now.

Death is near.
The illusions have shed
like accumulated fat.

All the walls and masks and safety nets
abandon me in a moment.

I am alone.
I finally see everything so clearly.

Hear me.
Hear yourself.
Shed your layers.

Learn to love
this transitory wind.

Some days, driving you
through gales, thunderstorms,
soul, shivering.

Other days; gliding you
over calm water
like an ocean breeze.

I am not white, black, or brown.
I am not fat, skinny, or athletic.
I am not straight, bisexual or gay.
I am not American, Indian, French, Italian.
I am not Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Atheist, or Agnostic.
I have no name.

I am every person you ever will meet.

I was a dancer.

They took my legs;
I learnt to draw.

They took my hands;
I learnt to sing.

They took my voice;
I learnt to listen.

They took my ears;
I learnt to think.

They took my mind;
I learnt to receive.

A crossroad: two diverging paths.
One sign, old and worn.

I went right.
There was black.
Cold, flame.
Grunting, toiling.
Hunger. Sweat.
I saw Prometheus.

I backtracked,
went left this time.
There was white.
Soft. Abundance.
I saw Judas.

Confused, I returned,
stood before the signs.

A hooded man approached,
I asked why Judas
was in paradise.

“All wander where they like,” said he,
“Judas indulges all day;
never finds peace,
the leech, unable to stop sucking.”

He continued:
“And there, Prometheus, the noble soul,
each day tortured for his sacrifice of love.”

“So which is heaven,
and which is hell?” asked I.

“Neither,” said he,
“or, both, if you like,
for the souls that dwell there
make either so.”

Like feathers on the arrow
you quiver,
driven, upwards by a wind.

Reds, oranges
yellows, and blacks:
beautiful and severe.

Your blue is not the blue of peace
but of war.
Hell-fire. Purifying.

Fire:
you burn so near to my heart.

Often,
I live as a child on Christmas Day,
surrounded by gifts.

I want them all now.
I hate to wait.

One is handed;
I rip it open,
throw it aside.

I demand the next one
before even saying “thank-you.”

Some nights,
Life walks with me.

She stops her games,
so I stop chasing.

She leads me down long, quiet,
winding paths,
through places I have never seen before.

She whispers in my ear,
things I have never heard before.

And so I wander with her,
led, through the night.

Let us live
while we are alive;
let us be dead
when we are dead.

Never to mix the two;
life with death,
or death with life:
that seems wise to me.

No death bittering life;
no life sweetening death.

Let the bitter be bitter
and the sweet be sweet.

Death, the uninvited guest
has come.

– As I take his hand,
I look back with sadness.

Not the sadness of having to let go,
but the sadness of knowing finally and fully
that I never truly held anything.