It’s easy to be happy, we just have to pretend.
(And we have to pretend we are not pretending.)
We are living on a wedge, in a balancing act,
Continually contemplating our emotions.
That’s how we wobble. (And we wobble a lot!)

I want to be a sunflower.
I want to feel like a sunflower feels.
I want to just be there, all dutiful and content.
I want no unhappy thoughts (there are no unhappy thoughts!),
Nor happy thoughts –  just simply be.
Sensitive and responsive and alive,
And nothing else.

They say we are more.  
They say we are more than animal, more than physical.
They say our souls are souls and that we have a deeper essence.
I say we are not.
I say we are animal and that we are precisely physical.
I say we are chemical, electrical, mineral, and vegetable,
And so much more.
I say our souls are not souls and nonetheless we have essence.
We have so much essence!
(However, our essence is physical, not metaphysical.)
There is so much philosophy in not having a philosophy.

Let there be pain where there is pain.
Let goodness be goodness, and evil be evil.
They are all the same.
Let things be beautiful without them being beautiful to you.
Love is not you, as you need it to be.
Love is everywhere and in everything.
Love is in the nature of things.
It is the nature of the Maker of things.
It is not you that creates love, nor love that creates you.
You don’t need love – not the love you need.
What has this love given you?
What has it turned you into?
You don’t have to be something you are not to be you!

You add up the days, you add up the years,
And you grow old. (The adding up makes you old.)
You add up everything you have, everything you are.
Adding is growing, adding is being, you think.
The more you add. the less you are you.
It’s obvious, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Yet, you keep on adding till you are almost nothing.
You became a doubt, an ellipsis.
If you were to stop adding, stop pretending, you would start growing.
Naturally, organically, faultlessly.
You would grow into you. Not more, not less. Not someone else. You.
Beautiful you. Perfect you. Godly you.

Look at children.
Look at children playing.
Look at children eating ice-cream *****.
Look at them picking flavors.
There is more depth in this picking than in your whole existence!

I want to be a sunflower.
I want to be the sea.
I want to be a single ray of sunlight.
I want to feel the freedom the wind must feel.
I want to feel like the meadows and the valleys feel.
I want to be simple and natural and magnificent.
God is hidden in the simple things –
This is what we should never forget, yet we always do.

It’s easy to be happy, we don’t have to pretend.

it’s beendonebefore
b  e  f  o  r  e
that’
s also after that
’s still before in concentric cir
C
les of re-(de-)
pressive ***-ual releases in-

to bliss in
spite in spir
it                  autos tandems con-
tained by ads of women ***-ed  
vastly amid ******* stilted Dei-
ties as of grandkingdomcomes

to reap unwarranted respect
***** Welsh adulation in selfservingcycles
of crimson-ish
Santas
living with in plu-
m fairiesinlalaland(that are all stiff
bar in thy top)

(do you really think you ought to
? or can? why
not to try must a
nd with-
outcauses)

sing-along sing-along follow follow on track on track;
‘til you crash to reboot perhaps
and may
be
bye by
any luck

(you-oughto you-oughto you-can you-can)

and happiness fol
lows bye by
all
means
for sure

i thought you were with me
so tender so human so fresh
absolutely into me.
easily you say you think
you love me(you think!)
“let’s go for a walk, baby,” you console me
then you ******* a kiss through the fibers of your eyes.
you blew it, for god’s sake!  and you slip into yourself
ever deeper.  bit by bit you’ve been fading away
so tender so human so fresh
just slipping away.

possession is nine tenths of the law
just doesn’t apply
just can’t apply to things
that can’t be owned.
you’re one step ahead
while i’m out of step(with myself
with you with all)
“memories don’t come cheap,” i realize
and you’re too absent to relate.
so tender so human so fresh(to me)
so cold so phony(to others)
you’re so you(to you).

persistently we go on with our walks.
there’s days we go to the park and feel the flowers
and there’s days we don’t go to the park at all.
i’m so ready to grab life by its throat
and rip it open and let
all this fakeness spill out
until its last drop.

I loved her, she loved me
not. She loved another who
loved another.
Hopelessness ran
through our bodies as one.
Together, we loved. Alone.
We climbed walls. Alone.
We walked the fields. Alone.
We slept entwined. Alone.
My heart, soaring, endured and surfed the storm.
Hers, spellbound, dreamed and ogled far beyond the horizon.
Our cheeks never flushed. Not once.
When she left, once again my sunsets were sunsets.

I’ve seen innocence playing, and then learning, and then growing till it is no more;
Babies sleeping on undeserving laps of cataleptic and lifeless parents that can’t see an inch beyond themselves;
Souls crippled and mutilated by an almost perpetual chain of senseless, co-dependent and self-seeking conduct.
However, in all honestly, I must absolve them all: man only wounds when wounded.
Man is perfectly imperfect.

I’ve seen youth squandered and consumed, as if it were perpetual and worthless;
Girls and boys, and boys, then girls, willingly falling into wells, and running madly into brick walls,
As if a florid garden awaited them, unaware that an abyss of emptiness and sadness lies ahead.
Fresh souls and drugged-up bodies will always wander, bemused and helpless, in a maze of their own making.
This youth is endless and quite probably already dead.

I’ve seen men that believe in themselves transform into giants and soar,
Just to turn my face the other way and find the exact opposite motion -
Fear and doubt pounding down with infinite weight our brittle existence,
Leaving behind a trail of things undone, loves unloved, and unrealized dreams.
Will we never understand that the script we write is the play that follows?

I’ve seen man pitted against man, against nature and against himself, in a never-ending cycle of sheer stupidity and sadism;
Enraged faces and frantic hands repeatedly stabbing their own child, their own brother, and their own flesh,
In an utterly comical and pointless attempt to soothe our inbuilt suffering.
Man is his biggest foe, his only foe:  the deepest scars are indisputably self-inflicted.
Pain is, consequently, inescapable.

I’ve seen a humanity that is not human: man’s wanting turned rotten, then dead;
Greed uninhibited and hysterical, pushing man to his lowest denominator;
Blood filling the gaps of understanding, and as a sorry excuse to a twisted and self-serving morality,
Whilst peace lies agonizing, tortured, and *****.
Human tragedy is simply the making of our collective human un-conscience.

I’ve seen into the souls of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews;
I reached deep into their chests, and with my bear hands ripped their bloodied, beating hearts out,
And I tell you – my brother, my sister – that they all look exactly the same.
We are all human, animal, chemical, and mineral alike.
Distinction is mental, psychological, and naught.

I’ve seen God Himself, compassionate and commanding, visibly invisible,
Yelling at me in languages I could not comprehend (certainly enraged at His own creation),
While I, on my knees, completely obedient, docile, and innocent, regurgitated endless mantras of fear, vain love, and inanity.
Fortunately, His yelling awakened me, and as I peeked into His eyes, caught a fleeting glance of my own Self.
We were not made in his image, he was made in Ours.

I’ve seen love, and the hope of love, give birth to a new life, to a new dream, and to a new meaning.
A love that conquers pain, past, and present is everything and holy.
This love is infinite.
Love, certainly illusory, is truly all, and more than all:
In the end, all things considered, love is our only escape.

Now, having seen all, I close my eyes and see no more -
I am love, pure love.

Above all reigns Zambi Kumbo.
Father of men, father of things, father of insects.
The non-created, the beginning, void of a beginning,
of all and any beginning.

The sacred is present in all instants and all instances.
All life is sacred and in it’s core are human beings.
The whole is anthropocentric and critical: human beings,
man, center of creation, spins the axis of good and evil.

I believe in the visible and the invisible,
in the interaction between these two worlds.
The natural and the supernatural are inseparable.  
There are other realities beyond the visible, man is not purely flesh,
there is spirit and heart and values beyond our eyes.

I summon the sun by tangu, which means time, present time,
time instance, favorable time, precise time.
To ask for the time, one should voice “what sun is it?"
The sun drifts on the ocean between life and death.
When the sun disappears in the horizon
it is a canoe carrying souls to the afterlife.

I sit on an ivory chair and wear bracelets of ivory and iron,
artistic woven fabric, certain hides set aside only for me,
an embroidered cap on my head, and a zebra tail on my shoulder.
Kneel, chuck dust above your head, and beg for my blessing.
I’ll stretch out my hands and wriggle my fingers to bless you.

I am Nagô-Yoruba! I am Okanran kandi abo!
Son of Xangô, son of Ketú, son of Egba.
E-e-e-o eya-o Great Mother, y-aa-o Black Beauty, womb of the wind,
creator of the wind that tangles the wild bush,
creator of the wind that tangles the fields,
creator of the thoughts in my head.

how strange how strange i
repeat myself myself how w
ond-
rous a thing
so wondrous verve life like mad-
ness that ain’t

mad-ness rather o
r perhaps all t
he maybees and why
not’s

circular doubts bulb  
ous greed       ******* fear joy in
games (concealed) child
ish forever childish for    ever
childish(we never grow superduper grow-up)blameitontheboogie-
man it’s nature’
s way it’              s my way(my natural way a
supernaturalway) god-

dam(n!) more
s beliefs that inhibit canned pro
-hibit (has Mother called you
lately? to ask)

on an unobtrusive god
youre just an echo of yourself
juxtaposed en pose in stance
echoes echoes of your-self
which is not your
self(-)

(to ask what mothers ask)