No more missives of ordinary agony.
Control, control, tighten your belt,
and your lips, and your eyes,
and your smiles.
Hide your hands beneath your thighs.
Let them descend to your depths if they like
and in the meantime, keep it hidden,
pulsing, private,
let it bloom into a garden
in another world, that they can't yet see
and when they do, they won't know
what it means, that the water awakening and speaking in that garden
was the water of moments and secrets for them (that they could have had,
but instead, the other world has)

What a lovely walk I'm on
as long as I manage not to fall
down these pits and
cracks in the path.

And I, too, would give you the round
path of my love, without end,
but instead I can only offer that of time,
shattered and not endless,
though grand and
sweet just the same.

If my hand and my will were one and the same
I would reweave the strands of fate
and bring you to me in your sleep, in your light,
and here on a lazy day our minds would
play and delight and create.

My will however is only in my feet, so far,
with their certainty and their guesswork,
their endurance, their finding
and their leaving behind.

the theme of this love is ghosts
as it shivers by the sill.

what keeps us here, our grey shadows,
but our torn souls from the air.

loss echoes back for the ghost is lost
because of all the ghost lost and lost

sometimes one emerges and visits,
shifting from the emptiness, bringing thrilling chills

and sometimes I find I am the one
disappearing into the grey.

I am
the balance point
at the center of
a vast universe—
whooping with complexity
and groaning with emptiness.
And how absurd to see me
standing there,
powerless in an excess of power—
my only fulcrum
within me as I take a deep breath
and whisper, implore, reason, soothe
the great, uneven immensities
to be calmed,

and I dissolve my consciousness
into placelessness
so that I may place myself at the center of each
zone of complexity, each expanse of emptiness,
and center each millimeter within itself,
so that all this universe is a universe of balance,
continuously shifting yet continuously balanced,
her foot in absolute certainty on the path,
her body all containing,
the void her nourishing heart,

the enormity neither ordinary,
nor frightening,
nor any one thing,
but to see the consciousness in formlessness—
looking back at me—
all creating,
(and yet created, reflecting,) and yet
giving me
such power.

I hold a heart in my hands--
mine or yours, it hardly matters.
It's a cup of sweet pain--
sweet because it contains
a new world in each
potential swirling drop.
Sweet because we
can taste each world.
And the pain is just
a sharpening, in this moment,
of memories-- of our longing
for this new world-- for birth--
to take what is now real, but hidden,
and let it ripple and be unveiled--
this world hidden in our hearts,
too big, it aches because
it is ready, pressing against
its hidden containment--
we may not hold it in too long--

Life carries on with its own force,
seen or unseen, the new world emerges
in love from the old, warm and slowly scarred--
one new and ripe with life and will,
the other worn and wise, ready
to go quiet--where it will vanish,
covered and concealed, dissolved
then secretly congealed, gathering a secret pulse
and vibrant eye, to once again--for the first time
in all of time--emerge and be revealed--

Our hearts seem like vessels
but they are constantly transforming from old to new,
from hidden to emergent to present. We have
no one heart,
yours or mine, it hardly matters,
but a constant, murmuring emergence,
an ever exploring meaning.
Here in our heart
a spring rises from its endless roots
and meets the air of our awareness--
rippling, shining, silently singing.

Let our hands and eyes be midwives, then,
when needed.
We can ease these transformations
with a little understanding.
Let our eyes and hands
love the hidden heart
and guide its travels
for we are hearts and more,
wide minds, capable, some times,
of comprehending--peacefully--
the sometimes searing
duality
and finding in its balance
a way to, briefly,
crucially,
meet its blade
with peace--
to use the energy of dissolving
and the energy of emerging
simultaneously
to transform
one more
moment.

let me bare my soul
if I can find it
it was just here
last year
then it sank
back down
in the folds
I think you saw it last
passing down the hall
you said you saw a ghost
and so you introduced yourself to me
did you see which way she went

I take it all back. All of it--I'll eat every word. Every contradiction, every idea, every excuse, every truth. I'll eat it all. I'll turn myself outside in and start again--