Hide your despair from God.
Bury it deep in your heart.

Do not think of kisses,
or hands touching skin.
Do not think of meeting with relief.

Forget the blankness of
this room in the dark.
Forget the empty,
scooped out sadness,
no longer pungent.

Only when you forget your desire
can God see it
in its truth.

Cover it in a cloud of forgetting
and turn your thoughts to the simple joy
of unencumbered being.

There you are a little god,
enough to answer your own prayer.

Here you are a demon,
swathing yourself in torment.

Hide your despair from God.
Bury it deep in your heart.

I fell in love with a shadow on the wall.
I fell in love with the light.
I fell in love in dissolving, parting,
stepping in sing song.
I fell into never falling,
spreading into every direction,
feeling and being felt everywhere, within and without,
feeling familiar and utterly new.
I fell in love with nobody.
I fell in love with nothing.
Nothing was there--I could see it
in the shadow on the wall,
in the light.
I could not see it, and I was in rapture at the not sight of it,
a face that was not there,
a thousand times a thousand times greater than love.

Yet here I am, miserable, a fool.
With no great gift of strength, or if I had one I squandered it.
A snarl on my lips and my face in the mud,
cringing all around my heart,
withdrawing my hands ever away,
dragging a great sack of rocks.

You say: Your power is effortless.
Your effort is confusion.
Be still and remember what is inside you.
It is a fire that burns sorrow clean.
It is a river that washes your heart new.
All you have to do
is stop trying to be you, or safer, stronger, or better. That is not you.
Don't keep grabbing--let go. Say "Not that, not that."
All those grey, thorny treasures are worthless.
Return to what is eternal: nothing.
A great, shining, smiling, flowing, blossoming, nothing.

Say no, say yes.

You climbed into a boat of light.
Then the night grew, until it devoured you.

You found your great soul.
And then, you lost it.
You know it is gone forever--
for it will never come to you in that way again,
willingly, and enormously.

This is
how it almost always is.

Once, you were gently surrounded
by endless, loving, non-discrete beings.

Now it is an infinite ache and confusion--
emptiness.

Your love is laid to agonizing rest
in the grave of your heart

and you wade through pathlessness
without any reference points.

O Mourner, remember.

Your love is also there, in despair.

You've lost everything of beauty, strength, and safety;
yet you have gained the only thing of value.

You cannot truly love
until his beautiful mask is stripped from your sight.

The darkness which surrounds you
is not your enemy.

It is the greater aspect of your friend.

Be merciful towards it, even though
it causes you pain.

Remember that emptiness is love unmasked.

(When emptiness presses from within and without,
against what does it press?)

When you are also empty,
then you will be full.

Soft rain on
a cool summer night
quiets loud voices in gardens
revealing the contemplative hum
of the city in motion.

You sleep, still dressed
beside me
in your world always
slightly apart.

The new growth on my apple trees is covered in aphids;
the leaves curl and darken under the crawling green foam of their bodies.
My roses broke out in black, dropping yellow leaves,
bearing thick sickly flowers of hope on bare spindly stems.
Now even old hollyhocks have scales, those innocent seeming bumps
multiplying and spreading. And the aphids will go everywhere when they
**** the apple trees dry, they are already migrating
to poppy buds and young tomatoes.

I go to the nursery, resisting the urge to wring and brush off my hands.
She uncovers the facts--my garden got no fertilizer, and water may be insufficient.
So I will try to give my garden what it needs--the nutritious powder, the thorough watering,
the ladybugs in cheesecloth cages, the beneficial microbes, and where I must I will hack the plants away.

My self, meanwhile,
crawls too.

I slather vice on the wound, but the sting always returns.

The world expects me to be stronger than I am. The world is set up
for strong people, and it provides for them.

Once again I am like the short, shy child standing by the counter, overlooked.
But I cannot expect to grow into strength. And the world will only protect me
once I no longer need protection.

At times I sit in a stream of presence. I slather virtue on the wound,
but the sting always returns.

I straddle need and lack,
a gaping wound between my feet. I could sink down that hole,
but it too hurts, it hurts.

I am in the wild--no gardener comes to tend to my hunger or thirst,
or my illness after harsh conditions. Well, one comes--
a harsh gardener comes.

I wring and brush off my hands. I brush off each little invasion,
but there are always more.