The true poem is not the work of the individual artist, it is the universe itself, the one work of art which is forever perfecting itself.

Ernst Cassirer, from "An essay on Man"

I can see this only with my imaginary eyes
I can feel it in the vibrant empty spaces inside
how everything is woven together
so that I belong to her to him to them and to you
I belong to my skin I belong to the bones of my hands
I belong to my nails, of course to my heart
what if we are first imaginary beings with concrete joints?
have we forgotten that we belong to the story of the air
water fire, to the story of the earth?

the closer I get to who I am, to the earth of the soul,
to the real depth of blood, the more I cease
for a moment to twist the faces of wind in my mind
so that the world doesn't get hurt
I belong to a window, to this edge
between outside and inside

I belong to the world, oh
how wonderful that
the world belongs to itself

"Contentment is a synonym for loneliness, cool loneliness, settling down with cool loneliness. We give up believing that being able to escape our loneliness is going to bring any lasting happiness or joy or sense of well-being or courage or strength. Usually we have to give up this belief about a billion times, again and again making friends with our jumpiness and dread, doing the same old thing a billion times with awareness. Then without our even noticing, something begins to shift. We can just be lonely with no alternatives, content to be right here with the mood and texture of what’s happening."

"it allows us to finally discover a completely unfabricated state of being. Our habitual assumptions — all our ideas about how things are — keep us from seeing anything in a fresh, open way… We don’t ultimately know anything. There’s no certainty about anything. This basic truth hurts, and we want to run away from it. But coming back and relaxing with something as familiar as loneliness is good discipline for realizing the profundity of the unresolved moments of our lives. We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."

"Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment. Cool loneliness doesn’t provide any resolution or give us ground under our feet. It challenges us to step into a world of no reference point without polarizing or solidifying. This is called the middle way, or the sacred path of the warrior."

by Pema Chodron from "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advise for Difficult Times"

coloring inside the lines is impossibly bleak,
with a hissing noise
atomic locomotive
rounds the bend,
extrasensory perception is not
a mindless gift,
it's a train station in the clouds,
tracking all my starting points to you,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.

you leave in opera
with secrets and grievances
under the radar,
and your ready-made
wings catch in the power lines,
you're coiling like smoke
in the arches of my cathedral,
a sense of elegant decay
while sweeping up the debris,
committing arson
with the paraffin of my temporal lobe.

yesterday's fairground waltzes,
ghosted lullabies,
and woodland hymnals,
set in a context not of
resolution and closure,
but of contradiction and assimilation,
break the bond,
away they float on purveyor belts,
one too many molecules,
one too many departures,
always on the surface of everything,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.

each morning bird watching
is a silent meditation
I have pigeons sparrows seagulls
megpies in my gaze
their delight of falling
makes me smile
I watch them teaching their wings
for each day
picking up the debris of sleep
spinning around each other
they start cheerful conversations
about the taste of the air
steal crumbs of wonder
from each other
a woodpacker comes
from time to time
its red stain is fun
none of them travel to you
they get round and round
wayching out
their own flight

apart from breathing through your nostrils?