I can see the grass that carpets the sky
I hear the waves, never once asking why
I watch the birds as they effortlessly fly
I know one day I will die

Like a wave returning to the ocean
Like the water in perpetual motion
My form will change, dissolve, disperse
And then perhaps it will reverse

In and out
Like the waves on the shore
Like the breath from my lungs
Like the day and the night
A cycle, cycling, recycling

I’m one with you
And you with I
So if I expire
Yet you still respire
Am I truly gone from this widening gyre?

There will be dancing
On that joyous occasion
That moment
When I just
Am
There will almost certainly be dancing
Of the body
Of the spirit
In that moment
When I breathe
Deeply
When the clock stops ticking
When I quit keeping score
When there is no "more"
Or "next"
Or "because"
When there just
Is

Roll up to the gym
I’m not here to swim
Pre-workout courses through my veins
I shout through forces and strain
I know pain equals gains
And I came to hurt
Give my muscles a good growth spurt
All the ladies are trying to flirt
But my answers remain curt
I am here to put in work

Headphones on and my focus is scary
I sift through my music library
So that I can lift legendary
I need the right kind of song
To make me feel kind of strong
To push me right along, never lead me wrong
It needs the right beats per minute
So I can fight and beat my limits
Go to greater lengths
Accomplish new feats of strength
Demolish two fleets of tanks
Rip my tank top in two
To work out harder than you

When I bench the earth starts quaking
Every muscle in my body shaking
And tomorrow there will be aching
But right now it’s exhilarating

I am manic and mindful
I am so focused it’s frightful
My methods are not intuitive
But they are ingenuitive
I gain weight
To become enlightened
I sit up just to lay back down
I slam a ball into the ground
It’s not insanity
Or disdainful vanity
It’s religiosity
It is reciprocity
I get out what I give in
This is the body I was given
The body that I must live in
That’s why I am fully driven
To maximize this perfect prison

Let go now, get lost
Adrift in the sea of love
You will soon be found

The seal does not bother to ask why
It spends its days on hunt and play
And when it gazes at the sky
It does not wish that it could fly
It looks, it sees, it turns away

Alan Watts knew the secret to life is that there are no secrets to life
There is no answer, and there is no question
There is life. There is an infinite playground to explore
We are offered a window into this world
A body and a mind
And we have one life to live
We have but love to give
So we dance
We play
We make intentional decisions about how we construct these visions
We create
get inventive
We share
our perspective
We care
       Without incentive
We connect
get twirled
We dissect
this world
We dance
to feel alive
We thrive
when together
So get tethered and get swirled
Into novel combinations that rearrange our observations into brand new constellations
A new form of reality
We accept the plurality of interpretations
The ambiguity of our sensations
One of infinite iterations
We dance gracefully with the many ways in which our world is an illusion
And we take solace in the fusion of the stars
The knowledge that sent machines to mars
In basic science, we make sense and rationality
We reason that reality is not cheating, it follows certain rules
And in that order, we connect
We share the same constraints and operate in shared space
We can look behind a face and see infinity
Wonder and divinity
Meeting in a moment of this multiverse
We converse in true connection because we share a few atoms
You are not lost in a sea you are right here with me
Dropped on this crazy earth you did not exist then you were birthed
And **** is it confusing but I find it quite amusing and I love to share my musings
We share enough that we can see each other
I beseech you to see me as your brother
Not just another
Not an other
We all revolve around this sun
Our journey just begun
Divided we are done
United we are one

The way I conceive of enlightenment in my mind is as follows:

Picture a landscape with many people staring into the sky. The sky is filled with light. Each person looks up at this sky of light. You see a light swirling in each person's head. The light beams up toward the sky. Some beacons of light go higher than others. The very highest merge seamlessly into the infinite sky, an ocean of light.

Whether that infinite light represents everything or nothing is a matter of perspective.

Does merging with that infinite light symbolize enlightenment or death? Fullness or emptiness?

What is the directionality of the light? Is the light shooting toward heaven, or is the light actually shining down from above into the minds of humans?

Or perhaps even this image is suffering from a false contrast. Perhaps everything is light. Or everything is darkness.

Poetry, art, and love are when you are soaring up into the light and trying to communicate your experience back to earth in a way that makes sense, but will always pale in comparison to the blinding barrage.

Enlightenment is climbing steadily higher up your beam of light until finally merging with the infinite light of heaven eternally.

Going with the flow
Yet you do not know
That the flow goes all directions

The natural lines that blind your mind
These barriers of glass
Create channels, rivers, currents
Patterns
Where the water
The flow
Simply goes

When you are always in the rapids
When your point of view is rabid
Only reacting
Not responding
So swept up in the current
You flail, flounder, following
Helplessly

Yet little do you know
The flow goes all directions
You are never alone
You are a node
You are the ocean
Not a current
You are everything
You’re worth it
You are the moment
You are worship
You are attention pointed out
Barriers are but illusions
Your life is lilting, tilting fusions
But becoming the ocean is not always easy
It’s massive, the motion makes us queasy
Most of the time we are in our own streams
Funneled by barriers as real as our dreams
But funneled nonetheless
Carried away

The process of growth
Is slowly raising yourself out of the stream
Slowly
Gradually
Adding moments of response
Instead of reaction
In that act
We find branches
In the stream
And therefore choice
We can paddle
Change our course

The world opens up
We are not the ocean yet
But on our way
As you lift yourself higher
Out of the stream
You do begin to see
The flow goes all directions
Flowing into the sea
Not only are you the ocean
But you are every stream

You float above this aquatic landscape
Coursing rivers like veins across the living earth
And, here is the magical part:
You can choose where to swim

You dive in
Headfirst
You are birthed
This is divinity
Infinity
Each moment of consciousness
A fateful flux
Between ocean and stream
Between finite and infinite
The macrocosm above
The microcosm below
The cosm in between

You are
Here
Now
The barrier between the mundane and the divine
The band of fluctuation
You are the frame
In which
This artwork unfolds

That is what happens when you can choose
When you lift out of the stream

On one level, you choose the next moment

On another level, you choose any of the infinite realities that your mind can imagine

On yet another, you are consciousness, the great ocean of light
Choosing which point to dive into the universe
Which river to course through

To enter a life of conscious experience
To sing the body electric
Be born and live and die
Be born
Live
Die
From ocean to stream and ocean again

The stream will be your entire experience
While you are underwater

But never forget:
This is Water

David Foster
This is Wallace

Meditation is learning how to swim
To realize this is water
And dryness is within
Then you learn to rise
Float above the water
Ascend
Transcend
Fly
So high
Then choose your stream
Dive in
Up and down
In and out
Like a dolphin merrily moving through the ocean
A smiling sine wave
Flowing seamlessly, dreamily
No wonder they are smiling
As free as one can be
They are the ocean and the stream
A realization that is probably easy
When one is born under the sea

We are the water in the stream
And the sea
Stretching across infinity
We are the force flowing through the tree
Splitting, branching
Diverging from the whole
But connected at the soul

In actuality
We are fractality

Inside my brain, there is a train
Near the caboose, a man sits in a noose
Writing fiery lines in his diary
Trying to convince his provincial demons
That he should depart the train
And not this life
So he pours out his struggle and strife
Searching for catharsis
Emotional dialysis
Escape from this chrysalis
Sometimes it is diaphanous
Sometimes he is an optimist
But in the end, the shell remains
His mind untamed
He’s not insane
But he is un-sane
He walks in mental rain
He feels a mental pain
Life is a mental drain
And so he stays inside the train

One day the train flew off the tracks
Everything the man knew went out of wack
He was tumbled and turned
He laughed and he learned
He cried and he died
And on the other side, he was reborn
No longer in hiding
Standing in the wreckage
Shaken but unscathed
The man was finally free
Free to finally be

The umbrella of
The one that you truly love
Gives sunlight, not shade

It’s not despair but dis-pair, you and me instead of unity
Together we are a part, separate we are apart
Side by side we start the spark
Creating art, a walk in the park
But without you, there is no us
Wondrous becomes blunderbuss
So how about you stay with me
We live together for eternity
I help you keep your sanity
And you help me see humanity

We are nothing but vibrations in the universe
This movement is a blessing or a curse
In some ways, it’s a choice
If my voice is one of honesty
My frequency made of decency
That is when I let love in
Surrounded by my friends
I let my life begin again
With no thought for the bitter end

But I must remember
As I dismember the lies that lock us inside
We all have illusions of agency
Though the control box has a vacancy
And those with misfortune did not choose
Their portion of this world
The atoms with which they twirl
The vortex of thought in which they swirl
We are all along for the ride
We run and we hide
But when physics is applied
There’s no free will there to find

So what do we do
With this ultimate view?
Let’s embrace each sensation
Pay attention to creation
Not simply seeking elation
Or striving for elevation
But flowing through the sine curve
Merging with each twist and swerve
Through the ups and the down
Thankful to be around
Gratitude for a connection to the ground
The mellifluous magic of sound
The technicolor infinities that materialize
When I bat open my eyes
Or begin to fantasize

In this boundless ocean of beauty
I can weather the storms
Simply passing waveforms
Bolstered by the knowledge
That nothing last forever
But hope is here to stay
Merely a second away
And even when my skies are gray
I remember I am just a string
Energetically swinging to and fro
And when I touch my fellow threads I glow
A spark of connection
I make a mental correction
Weaving myself into this web of life
I am not alone
I am safe at home
My down is another’s up
I cannot understand this pattern
All I know is that it matters
So I will be thankful every day
That I have a chance to play
That I may not have a will
But I know I am the way

This will be the winter of my contentment
I will shed regret and resentment
I will finally get it
I will not forget it
I will shred this narrow point of view
This prism of individuality
It’s a prison in reality
The world is a superorganism in totality
I see intersectionality and finally find sanity
My mind is now a GoPro
I can view my life in slow-mo
This is not the Truman Show
This is real, I can feel it
As this film reel flies by
I steal a glimpse with these two eyes
Before I meet my demise I will run with these two thighs
I will squat 5 plate, I will lose some weight
I will choose my fate
Lighter than a feather because I have come untethered
I float high among the weather, never weathered
Renewed by cleansing rains
You may call them hurricanes
But that is a matter of perspective
Positivity is infective
So I will spread a vibrant virus
From the Pope to Miley Cyrus
I say nope to the winter blues
This is the winter that I choose
To sway to and fro with the flow
To gratefully frolic in the snow

I strike the ground
Sparks fly all around
The sound shatters window panes
Planes fall from the sky
Tall tsunami waves grow higher and higher
Eventually my light will expire but for now my might is an empire
My soul is a vampire
Drinking in the world I admire
Blink and it is gone
So sink into each song
Dive into each moment
Thrive, let it foment
Be alive, be a component
No opponents, only love
You fit into this world like a hand in a glove
Fly high and look down from above
From the bird’s eye, we are all the same
Arbitrary labels, constructs, names
So we can faithfully play the game
That was constructed before we came
Maybe I’m a rebel
Because I would rather revel
Than try to beat another level

Conversations are like hikes in the realm of thought.

Multiple people traversing ideas, concepts, memories, emotions. Together.

Once the conversation ends, it’s like a completed hike, a route you can re-trek, go back to explore even further.

Like a tracing of a route on a map, the conversation is almost like a work of art. A map of the world of thought created and experienced in-between those conversing.

Some conversations, like hikes, are scattered, going all over, making many detours.

Others are a nice straight path, easy to follow.

Other conversations can take many interesting turns, detours, and leave you somewhere totally unexpected.

Some are like climbing a mountain, difficult to follow the trails, requiring great effort, but the view from the top is extraordinary.

You are the moon
I am the sun

My love does not care about distance
In this instance, space is irrelevant
Erased by my reverence

We chase each other eternally
My internal inferno rages
Separated by fate’s cages

We exist at the same time
Our tryst transcends word and rhyme

Our poetry does not need to be preserved
Love cannot be deserved
Only observed
Or regretfully reserved

So I will follow you
There is naught else that I can do

Are we truly apart
If you live inside my heart

Touch
I want it so much
Electric
Ecstatic
Attachment automatic

As soon as it begins
My head, it swirls, it swims
Intimacy together
Attached not tethered

A hand to hold
A leg to touch
A hug, a kiss
I long so much

The soma
The body
My Nadis, not naughty
It’s healthy, not snotty
Even if she a shawty

We are social creatures
Not a bug, it’s a feature
I’m not a leech or a lecher
Touch is holy; I’m a preacher
A reacher
Let me lead her
On a path under the bleachers

A gentle caress
More, not less
I must confess
I want to undress
You from that sundress
That is unless
It causes duress

Because at the end of the day, I just want to play
To dance, to sway
To lay in golden glimpses of ego eclipses
To live on the edge of ellipsis...

If our lips touch then I may combust
A price worth paying for your trust
To let me in, to let me hold you
Is more special than I ever told you

No one can bear
With poise and grace
The truth laid bare
Before their face

So stories reign
In highest court
Defying reason
And wise retort

Myths filter light
So eyes can see
The truth too bright
For you and me

Slanted truth is better
Than blindness, after all
But when falsity’s untethered
Soon cometh the fall

You have to forgive yourself for past wrongs
Or they will hold you back forever
They become the specter you must face
The space behind your face
That voice saying no
That barrier to flow
Your greatest foe
That just can’t be so

If the present is all then why not just fall?
Why look to the past, to all that you lack
You could just stand tall, straighten your back
With focus and attention there’s room for ascension
Transmission to a higher plane
Where there is no pain
Nestled in the lion’s mane

Same same but different
When you say religion
I see what’s missin’
No believing in fiction
Just feel this friction
Nuclear fission
The energy between you and me
The heartbeat of the universe
The electric thrum
The tribal drum
Or two spoons on a tub
The beat moves right through me
I can’t hold it back
It taps into something I no longer lack
This rhythm flows freely
I’m no longer just me
I am that i am that I am
Endlessly spiraling
No longer dialing
But tiling this world with the love at its core
Painting the shore with light from the ocean floor
The love that I found when I stopped looking for more
The love that finally opened the door

As I twirl in velvet mystery
I unfurl the quilt of history
I am left awestruck and dizzy
As I let the world shine in me

My senses are assaulted then assuaged
My brain battered and barraged
I tumble in a technicolor tornado
Made from borrowing the beauty of an autumn tree
And as I fall in twilight infinity
I finally feel I’m flying free

The autumn leaves form an iridescent raft
I sail on sunbeams and fly through dreams
I gently float down these fantastical streams
My vessel gleams bright as I part at the seams

My form opens up and I splash on the deck
A filament, a photon, a spiritual speck
My truest self made up mostly of space
No longer hiding behind the mask of my face

Lost in this brand new story
A novel way of noticing the world’s constant glory
The unknown adventure insistent, imploring
I cut loose my mooring and begin exploring

Colliding with chaos I plunge in the deep
I daringly explore the dragon’s dark keep
When I finally lay my weary head down to sleep
I will have made music that makes angels weep

Words out on paper
More like a laptop
I am streaming
Flowing
Gleaming
Glowing
Exploding with words that don’t want to stop
So I drop the ones I find
Blowing minds with my lyrical grind
My quick-witted witticism
Soaring above criticism
Filling up the catechism of religions with rainbows from my mind’s prism
Breaking free of this prison
Short circuit this system
The earth is shaking, cataclysm
There’s no mistaking, no masochism
Just linguistic synergism
You had better listen
To what you might be missing
The words to free your mind
These thoughts seem so divine
Elegant yet unrefined
Nature in its purest form
Raging, summer thunderstorm
Engaging, like a wormhole
Calm becoming turmoil
Live forever, eternal
My words dock on your terminal
They enter, suddenly internal
Whether heavenly or infernal
So much to see in a single kernel
So open up your eyes, dispel these lies
Capsize your ship and rise with the tide to the moon
Dispel this gloom and leave this tomb of a room
See reality in full majesty
Life is a mystery, not a tragedy
It is sad to be asleep
Don’t keep on snoozing
You are losing precious minutes
You should be choosing to get in it
So jump into the river of time
Swim and shiver in the sublime
You can break with rhyme and reason
Being awake is something to believe in

Oh what a pleasure
To begin this endeavor
To search for lost treasure
Wealth beyond measure
Please, at your leisure
Let’s do this together

One and one does not make two
Each combination is something new
No one is quite alike you see
So one, one, and one is not three

Two and two sometimes makes four
But it can make so much more
Two and three is sometimes five
Or it can make you feel alive

People are complex
Concave and convex
Multiplicative
Distributive
Bound to perplex

So put the calculator down
Take a look all around
Equations have their use
But reduction can be obtuse

I am indivisible
I am not invisible
I can make any move
I’m a number you can’t prove