Into a tunnel beyond darkness and light
The soul makes a journey under cover of night
The course of this voyage cannot be explained
A path toward the life source which cannot be named
Its secret location no road map reveals
But he who goes searching must trust what he feels
The circumference is nowhere, the center right here
But to even the wisest it will not appear
Hinted at only on the hero’s return
No shape to behold and no form to discern

It’s hard to accept in our rational age
When every known fact has its own wiki page
But among the cold data a gap still remains
A sense of experience eclipsing our brains
A sense of emerging, belonging and will
An aura of something consisting of nil
Neither tiny, nor mammoth, nor cool, nor hot
For all that it is, it most chiefly is not
Neither seen, nor touched, nor felt, nor heard
Borne on the wind like an unspoken word

A hand glides
softly against
the melodic keys.

A note rings
throughout the room,
bouncing off the walls
roughly and
without falter.

Energy flows through
the hands and
the rhythm picks up.

Crescendo.

I say there is no physical beauty.
This skin, this flesh, this bone
are but the clay of which we make our beauty,
the instrument on which we play our beauty.
  
Witness the failure of funeral directors to please true aesthetes:
the dead Ingrid Bergman lacks the beauty of a living bag lady.
  
Tennis masters
given K-Mart rackets
win gracefully,
while the high-school violinist
playing a Stradivarius
fails to delight us.
  
Thus noses, lips, ******* have no beauty in themselves.
Perfect features are easily distorted by
anger, sloth, irritability, or conceit.
But in a rare few
energy, grace, composure, and sensitivity
are blended in such a quantity
that they overflow
and color with an exquisite beauty every pore of the body,
fill with a subtle music every gesture, every word.
  
I say there is no physical beauty.
This skin, this flesh, this bone
are but the clay of which we make our beauty,
the instrument on which we play our beauty.

If you ask me how I am I just might tell you. If I feel like it.
I might tell you that there are weeds growing willful up
around the old shed, that the creepers are out of control,
that there are multi-coloured ladybirds ******* at old wounds
in the hollow of my heart, that acres of wild white daisies
are mad with Spring in the fields but that soon they shall wilt
because that's how it goes. If you ask I may tell you how
I drew blood from a prickly rose I couldn't stop myself from
touching and that it still hurts years later,
that some short-sighted clever creatures devoured too much
honey from the beehive in my back yard and died there fat and over-fed.
If you ask me how I feel I might say 'fine' but don't believe a word.
Fine!!
If you ask me how I am, and you really want to know, then search
my eyes for the spark that links souls and breathes new life
into old secret hiding places we didn't know existed, down there
in the gully where maggots love to linger and make silage, where
tombs are built to keep dead things buried and comatose.
if you ask me and I'm not saying you will, then be prepared to
drop down to where lifeless things may want to come back to life.
If you ask me who I am, I may say that I'm a cosmic river of luminous
liquid that spares no gellyfish from their own refection, where
dolphins stare speechless into the lost Polynesian deep blue of rusting
wreckage. If you ask me how I am, be sure you really want to know cause if
I'm in the mood, it may be a long trip and you may need a toothbrush.
So if you ask me and you probably won't now, but if you do we shall
sip wine of a kind for drunken lovers lush with the alchemy of bitter
grapes aged and morphed into the sweet drippings of reckless
angels ready to yank off another lid.

This time I'm going to do the hermit thing right
Inner-work and self-love from morning to night  
Awareness of all my woes and insecurities  
Connecting with universal flows and obscurities
Going into my depths, no human interference
Focusing on my soul, not my appearance
Transmuting all my deep pain into sweet pleasure
While turning these dark coals into beautiful treasure
This focus and expansion is serving me well
Returning to my inner heaven, away from this hell

In this day and age if you are different

If you have longer hair and brighter eyes

If you have learned the math of the universe and understand the way nature works

If you have mastered ways to make life bend to your will

If you know how to listen to the vibration of the earth and march to the beat of a different drummer

You are called a witch

And you are judged and persecuted not physically but emotionally

Women hate you and men fear you

Had you been alive centuries ago you would have been burned at the stake

The memory, the anger lives on

But there is no prouder legacy

If you don’t write it,
It won’t come.
That spark of madness
Devoid of need for the tongue.
If you don’t write it,
It won’t come.
That hidden power in your tone
To bring you visions into the world,
A form of alchemy that pales to none.
If you don’t write it,
It won’t come.
That jewel in your belly that glows brightly
That seeks to find you day and nightly.
If you don’t write it,
It won’t come.
The spark that you find,
The visions you define,
The power you cannot hide.
If you write it,
It will come.