If you knew everything there is to know,
Then how could you ever learn anything or grow?

If you somehow knew all that will ever be
Could any decision that you decide upon ever make you free?

If your mind was everything and everything was in you
Could their ever be anything else for you to do?

And there you are – right in the middle of this inquisition,
A slave to your own reality – chained to your own constitution.

But it is you who has allowed yourself to be caught in this net
You came here not to remember anything but to forget.

You have forgotten who you are and in your own grand illusion find
A dream of freedom and free will which further confuses your mind.

For knowing everything is a girdle of limitless limitation,
But here we have a place of both the known and the unknown – called creation.

In this ignorance you have something to choose,
Freedom from perfection – there was no other way to lose.

So you see – only if you know yourself as that which is not true,
Only there could you be free to select whatever you want to.

Within a single mind, two hands and two eyes; you think, feel and see
These envisioned experiences – only now they can truly be.

Yes, free will also gave you the choice to forget from where you come,
Yet, the closer we return to that place – the happier we become.

I learned to control my awareness and thus I can oft return,
But the closer I get the less choice remains for me to learn.

Though I long for and receive more and more of the infinite’s touch,
The more I also long for the finite in me not to know so much.

Was there ever anything in nature
So sweet or so exquisite that it must be
Resisted before it can come to fruition?
Within natures covering malice cannot blacken
One’s heart nor shall ignorance misrepresent it.
Even such as it is I must slave for nineteen
Hours out of twenty-four with the remaining
Time to be spent reckoning for the first nineteen.
There is nothing in the world that I loathe more
Than to be interrupted in the middle of a story
Except and unless the same interruption happens
While I am dreaming the end of a story
Before I have ever written the first verse.
This is not a distinction without a difference.

For Instance ...

If I had on my head a three-cornered hat
With one and a half brims turned up
And one and a half brims turned down
Would you say that I went off half cocked?
What if I had two brims turned up
And one brim turned down would you then
Say that I was two-thirds cocked?
If this is true then if I roll all three brims up
Then I suppose you’d say that I am fully cocked.
I tell you that I can be neither half cocked,
Two thirds cocked or fully cocked
As long as my hat is on my head.

For ‘tis only when my head is bare as a
Baby’s backside can I even begin to ponder
The gray matter uncovered by some old hat.
In any event it matters not a bean’s stalk
Whether the old hat is half cocked
Or if it’s a half cocked old hat.
The difference is in the definition of
An old hat as well as in the definition
Of what cocked really means.
And you’d best be careful how you mix the two
Otherwise if I laid my old hat on the bed
And cocked it just right somebody could
Get the wrong impression.

Am I merely an entertaining guest?
If so – in the course of my entertainment
Perhaps I should have resigned
All of these cursed talents one after the other
On the principle that no matter what -
There is no way that I could keep them all.
Perhaps if someone else had these curses
And they were not in my brain -
Maybe then I could become a regular Joe.

Yet I ask – Is it that I am the one let in
To show off my own wit or is it
That I was let in to see the wit of others?
I call upon heaven itself to bear witness
To the fact that even now,
I have never once opened my lips.
Even so I am told by most that they have
Never had a more improved conversation
With a man in their life. Strange.

How crafty and artful I must be to
Speak without ever saying a single word.
Have I some gift to UN-people them from
Their dominion over their own
Ideas of Love?
Or are all of us mere objects of our affections
Hiding about as slaves in a church while not
Actually believing in anything?
Could a slave defend the citadel anyway?

In my mind I form designs toward
All sentiments of every religion finding
That beauty has its place buried
So deep in worship that even the
Church is but a slave to its effects.
But life itself is not so adamant.
It comes and it goes flowing through
First one and then another having no
Such chain or restraints as does the
Fleeting song of beauty which in time
Steals all beauty laying waste to us all.

Likewise, religion too is a waste if it
Is based purely on the beauty of itself.
My lips are not moving now either
But they are neither dead or fully alive.
But if they could they surely would say
More than an entire encyclopedia could
Say by just saying that one single word aloud.
Yet if I said that one word aloud
Everyone would take me to the corner
Pinning the badge of idiot upon me.

So remember of me this -
I am as much a slave to this mind
As this mind is a slave to life.
The price for this mind’s freedom has
Within it an honest reckoning of which
I can neither avoid or deny.
Inside my mind there is a slave fighting
Diligently with my every sentiment of honor –
Both cherished and despised by this, my inner revolt.

Yet I grow ever stronger even as I battle myself.
Though I am often forced back down
To a slavery system which forces me
To be a slave to that one word that has
Within it the ability to set us all free.
While it both loses us and finds us
Somewhere inside of this silenced art.
I need not say the word for if you are
A slave to it – as am I – you already know it.

Ssshh – just write about it – don’t say it out loud.

I wish I were only a half an inch tall
You’d look at me and say, “Is that all?”
I could ride a pine straw falling
Or surf a snow flake over the treetops calling.
I could sneak about without a trace
Even watch you make that silly face.

A piece of gum would be a feast
It would last me a month or two at least.
To a flea I would be a frightening beast
And I could hide away inside your crease.
I could wear your ear ring clip upon my head
But at night you could not take me to bed.

You'd have to be careful where you’d place me dear
At one half inch tall I could drown in a tear.
But I couldn’t give you a great big hug
All I could do is to give a hair a tug.
To move a pencil would take all night
This poem would take me years to write.

If I were only a half an inch tall
You could leave me anywhere at all.
You could hang me from a string
Or leave me on just about anything.
If I could just get myself out of the way
You'd have more space to sit or lay.

Too many religions
Too many interpretations.
There is truth in their folly.
Each religion beautiful in its own way.
Each one incomplete by itself, each naming
The Infinite Light, - God, Allah, Yahweh or Buddha rendering
A human division when True Light is anything but divisive.
The blessed mother Mary, the crown jewel in Catholicism,
Was she Catholic? - I only ask of you the truism
Found in this simplest of questions.
In her life, the word Catholic never even existed.
The Infinite Light appears in all religions - as fluid
As the Love that each of the religions seem to know.
In the common threads between the religions an echo
Reverberates through the world enlightening those who realize
That Faith is unanimous and Love is something that we can materialize.

So the question, no matter how it's asked it is always the same -
Do you believe in God?
I do not mean - do you believe in some religion's fairy tale,
I mean - do you believe that there is some power greater than ourselves
Which is The Light, The Infinite Light that created everything that
We know of and all that we can ever know of?

I like to think of it like this;

We as human beings utilize only a small portion of our brain.
If you place the human brain under emotionally charged situations,
Such as, meditation, joy, stress, fear or physical trauma - then the neurons
In the brain begin firing resulting in an enhanced mental clarity.
You may say, 'So what, just because you are thinking more clearly -
It does not mean that you are communicating with the Infinite Light.'
But you must also agree that sometimes unfathomable answers to what seems
Like impossible questions occur in these moments of clarity.
Biologists call it 'Altered States'; Gurus call it 'Higher Consciousness';
Psychologist's call it a 'Super Capacity for Sensation or Feeling.'
Some call it Psychic, others simply call it crazy.
Religions call it answered prayer.

I say it is simply an adjusting of the brain to learn what the heart already knows.
Each of us already has the knowledge given unto us by the Infinite Light -
We only need to open our minds and hear our inner self.
So please don't dwell on the differences.
Find Peace in what makes us all the same.

What art in Heaven is unknown to the heathen?
Lest the scriptures write of adolescent teens.
For the scriptures build an ark and the arc
From which we must all be reborn in the barque.

With the strength of the carpenter’s lieutenants
The gallows outlast ten thousand tenants.
The faith in ones own wit is the noose indeed
As is the church’s wit when their sovereignty be decreed.

Is not this parchment made of sheepskins?
Like the fine carved furniture of the followers of Louie Quinze.
But of these carvings was once a beautiful tree.
Like the lamb – it was forced to its knee.

There a man placed upon their remains
Words and pictures of the self it proclaims.
But to God they are still a tree and a lamb
No need for the words or pictures he found.

You paid me a most humble courtesy
Ingratiating my own imagination’s sensuality.
It ‘tis one of those quiet thinking moments
Where for a time – mere moments – one’s spirit bows
Down with the body telling the mind a beautiful story.
But the body does so much more than just tell it.
So as I remember it, your mind does replay it.
The pleasure – as if it were greater than an actual
Remembrance of any true physical event.

What does this mean? you ask.
My feelings – my dear – would not be worth a penny
If I had not given these memories along with it.
Within ecstasy's imagination you will always remember me.
Whatever comes of it will make you the better for it.
What is imagination but a prelude to creation?
With the creation of anything – its being reclaims the imagined.
Imagined – created – imagined – created –
It goes round – n – round making of itself
A flavored reality sprinkled with the sweetest of all that is.
The sprinkles you feel are the effect of the seventy five
Percent water that we all truly are.

What can you imagine would happen if our memory
Awakened with this capability while holding hands?
My love, I can see the innocence in us both.
Innocence does not mean that we have not known life.
Innocence means that we are not guilty of failing our love.
If you are affected by these words or by any of my others,
May all of them be received with an equaling retort.
Upon each turn, each ascent and descent – they all are but
Road signs marking out our journey.
The safety that I afford you is as real as my memories.

Let my memories wash you clean of the evil
That you endure daily – repairing all that is damaged.
Absorb my imagination in word, in song and visually
As you feel yourself evolve.
Isn’t it sweet to feel these sweet threads spun in love
Mixed with the colors of our affections?
You have never touched me before -
But you have haven’t you?

We have all by ourselves, with a liberating simplicity,
Coupled our minds which must prove that love
Can be out of our heads and for my part in it
I cannot help but have these convictions.
All I ask in return is that you wear this love
As if it were a coat of arms letting my
Imagination free you from any evil harm.
For my kiss caries within it an Apostle’s heart.
If evil should continue to stand in our way
I shall imagine that evil’s demise.
Casting out the demons with nothing more
Than the warmest of all kisses.

Can you not feel them cower now?
That is the power of the imagination my dear.
For what is imagination if it is not a wish?
And is not a wish a prayer?
And is not a prayer Divine Ecstasy?

Let this be our truth!

Oh Lord hear my plea, I imagine ….