Do you not realise that your words affect me?
Harsh or sweet, raw or overbearing.
They always have an affect.
When I see your smile,
My heart connects.
Please don't reject,
Me.

More folk need to learn
About Cause and Effect
Respecting others
Is fundamentally what earns respect

My dad was raised Christian
Episcopalian
But left
No disrespect
He just wasn't convinced

So when I was a child
Our attendance at church was
sporadic
Sometimes a source of contention
And, usually, more pain than joy

The summer of 1969
Men walked on the Moon
And my parents
Split
My dad moved across town
I saw him one day each weekend
The most time we had ever spent together.

When I was twelve the earth moved
Sixty-four people died
And my father embraced Buddhism
And Buddhism embraced him
In a way nothing else ever had
and he learned moderation
Regaining his freedom

What got him was the Law of Causation
Cause and Effect
What goes around comes around
The Golden Rule
Unencumbered
With the baggage from his past
The philosophy of common sense
His pianist's artist's teacher's mind
Could comprehend
Grasp and hold for good

My twelve-year-old mouth
Would not be denied
And so I one day announced
That chanting
Was simply another form of prayer
A fact he acknowledged
reluctantly
but ultimately
with humor and grace

And was it my father's turn to Buddhism
That sparked my own
Journey into Spirit?

In 1972
With Godspell on the radio
I saw Jesus Christ Superstar
At the Universal Amphitheatre
Twice
And when my sister joked
"Let there be light"
And all the lights came on
Then she genuflected
Before taking her seat
It was only partly in jest
For there was reverence in the air
And a sense of the Eternal
The foundation of the story
Of every story
Cause and Effect

Later that year I was baptized
Before I realized
That no church held the key
For the key was within me
As it resides within us all

More folk need to learn
About Cause and Effect
We are here on earth to Love.
And respecting others
Is fundamentally what earns respect.

6/7 July 2005 Approx. 2 AM

Brothers front with endless affection
Reveal true colors from deep within
Ocean blue eyes now chaotic infection

The ***** within stabbed by your own
Once was full but now is drained
Drought in trust left him alone

Bottled up sealed with sorrow
Eyes strapped ready for launch
Hopefully all is better tomorrow

Smiling face embracing his flaws
Perfection the effect
Betrayal the cause

You makes me turn,
you makes me toss;
while you march into my soul,
my mind is at a loss.

But the love I give,
is not without a cause;
take my heart,
now you're the boss.

Does a word
die -
when it has been said or
Does it
live through
in another's head?

Within us there is a world unseen
Where a young spirit seeks to know
The voice he begins to hear each day
As His passion for life now grows

He will begin to make tough choices
As the voices within become so alive
Leaving him to seriously ponder daily
Which choice might be wrong or right

For everything he attempts each day
Alone with the choices his heart will make
Will deeply affect the life road he chooses
And within his spirit will now be at stake

Inside the voices strive for dominance
Like two hungry wolves over a tasty meal
And with the choices which are made in life
One gives a blessing while the other kills

We must always seek to be very cognizant
Of the choices each day which are made
So when the end time appears in our lives
By the Name of Jesus we are forever saved.

As I lay my eyes on you
I start to stutter
Words don't come out right
My brain can't form sentences

The effect you have on me, oh boy...
I'm *******