Stumble not, drunk on that ignorance-wine,
spewing what cannot be held.
Pause.
Breathe.
Lift the eyes-of-the-heart upward,
Oh this taken time.

The flood rises,
yet a shore-current waits longing
row toward it.
A harbor-of-clarity awaits you,
where light shines clean,
where no one sleeps in shadow of a dream,
but all gaze clear-eyed,
and the mind emptied it's voice speaks without tongue,
the heart beats but the vision sees without eye.

Strip away the soul-veil you wear
the corpse-of-sensation,
the chain-of-corruption,
the living-tomb.
It whispers us comfort,
yet strangles without knowing;
it loves falsely,
yet hates truly.
Tear it off,
and behold truth of this beauty,
beyond the mask-of-matter.

I say this to you wondering travelers,
Nothing dies.
Nothing perishes.
What men call death
is only form our moment change,
a turning back of what was,
a return to what is.
This Universe breathes immortality,
and we, its clay jar children,
share in the endless rhythms.

All Matter once was unknown chaos
now the sphere form,
now this order dances in and around,
now the rhythm-of-increase-and-decrease sings.
What we call death
is only sense-fading,
a wheel-turning,
a passage.

Sense and thought twines within us,
inseparable yet apart,
dream-bound, waking born.
But higher still is mind of the fire
receiving seeds.
Some fall from shadow,
sprouting deeds-of-malice.
Others fall from the Mystery,
sprouting virtues roots,
self control,
truth and the endless devotion.

Knowledge comes slow to those who seek,
The knower is mocked,
hated,
sometimes broken
yet they alone turn evil good,
as the life gardener
turns waste-soil into growth,
watering with careful hand.

This Universe itself has thought and breath,
a single current flows:
to create, dissolve, renew.
All lives are planted,
harvested,
re-sown,
without end.

The Mystery is not apart from these things.
It does not “possess” them.
It is them.
All things in the Mystery,
all things of the Mystery,
all things returning as a Mystery.

To see this is to believe.
To believe is to understand.
And to understand
is to rest in light of being
known.

I struck my skin upon the barren thorn,
And life-red rose to surface warm.
I stared into it-bubble-deep,
As from the wound,
my skin did weep.

It traced a path slow to the floor,
Reminding me of days before,
And all the roads I dared to tread
Each drop,
a whisper of paths I've fled.

It showed the way I made it down,
From mountain smile to valley frown.
Each fall returned me to my start,
A bleeding map of shattered heart.

The droplets fell with quiet grace,
Coating grey cement's cold face.
At first,
it seemed a wasteful spill,
Like years I'd lost against my will.

But then,
with every crimson line,
I saw the tears I'd left behind
Each drop a ghost, a dried-up cry,
That never found the ground to dry.

A marvelous beast is the giraffe,
Whose neck seems to stretch by the half.
He nibbles the trees,
While swaying with ease,
And makes other creatures just laugh.

Life is short, this is true
remember that.
Yet it’s the longest road
you will ever walk.
Find someone to walk beside you;
nobody is perfect,
but it is better to walk alone,
even in the wrong direction,
than with the wrong person.

Many lessons I’ve learnt,
some I’ve misplaced,
others I’ve forgotten.
But one remains,
like spirals in the sands of my mind,
like truth carved deep in my soul:
there is nothing more lonely
than spending your life
loving someone
who did not love you back,
or at all.
All the possibilities passed by
while you held their hand
and the lies you whispered to yourself,
“It will change,
there is time”
becoming a prison
you built with your own hope.

Time is not the enemy.
It never was.
It is the choices,
the unspoken ones,
the moments forgotten.
It is the blindness we wear,
the mask that hides
what mattered most.

Not knowing which seconds
to hold forever,
not knowing which to release,
like moments slipping
through weary hands.
I wish I had known then
which were the ones to cherish
not now,
digging through scattered thoughts,
scratching at shadows
to piece together
what was,
and what was not.

The people I saw,
the hands I shook,
the embraces I shared
had I known
this was the last time
we would stand together in a moment,
I might have held on longer.
I might have breathed it in deeper,
honored the minute
a little more.

I could craft a metaphor,
a clever disguise,
to polish this into poetry.
But these tears, this trembling,
falling as I let go
of what I carried too long

this is already a poem.
And it is more
than enough.

By chance, as a dreamer I rarely counted fading moments,
but suddenly started to weigh paths against strangers
and I was startled to learn how much shorter this road bends.

I was the seeker that never traced these moments with patient sight before,
and went on boasting of golden dawns, flushed like harvest wine.

Yet today this evening the glass of the sundial wine discloses another
frail and chalk-white as a wind-beaten feather falls softly.

This once youthful vessel has slowly leaned toward silence,
and the remaining nights must be carried in halting strides.

In this truth , Too late arrives the warning that life's weaving already began to unravel;
and now, what journey still endures?

Ancient flame and faithful currents whisper dimly through these worn out bones,
and neither joy nor grief replies to their cadence.

A slender kindness must be sharpened to pierce through longing;
the shadow-clock that restores hours is, clearly, a myth.

Alley songs, softly climbing beneath burning lantern haze,
beckon this lonely drifter to wander and sing beside them.

Now even imagining drains the heartbeat;
a moment’s rising, then a slow unraveling as time drifts away.

Little green caterpillars
weave raincoats of straw.
They hang silent on pomegranate branches,
they struggle,
they split,
they flutter,
powdered wings trembling into thin air
yet the flight ends
as all wings must.

I row across a lake of ice,
oh little broken boat of mine.
My oars shatter like jade,
each stroke breaking,
breaking against what will never yield.
Snowy mountain peaks shine,
but their cold remains unbroken,
a beauty I cannot reach or touch.

Rain droplets fall,
urging the thirsty soil awake.
Flowers burst in their thousands,
a majestic riot of color
no sooner here,
already fading.
Even bamboo shoots that break the wall
are only reaching
toward another silence.

The afternoon sun presses its furnace,
warm rays against my back,
a fleeting heat,
a drowsy lie.
Storms pass the eaves,
dark clouds bent and bitter,
the smell of renewal lingering in the breeze,
raging against the same north wind
that has never lost a battle.

And I see it, all in this moment:

Life quickens,
life blossoms,
life flames,
only to fall back
into stillness.
All of it beautiful,
all of it vain,
in a single, fleeting moment
those little green Caterpillars in Pomegranate Ashes