Holding up a cheery facade-
exhausting, necessary, effective.
Telling myself elaborate stories-
it's fine, i'm ok, i'm doing my best.

Eventually it will be true.
Soon the stories will manifest.
Hold fast to the veil of illusion.
Don't unmask the magician yet.

Part of me wants to hold the pain
the way I wish I could hold you
it feels more productive
than letting go.

How can I allow
the process, the universe, god
to take care of itself, when there is pain?

As if the preoccupation with the possibilities,
will protect you more than my prayers
as if the pain were a sentinel.

I hold the pain as a dagger.
Stabbing into the darkness, into the void.
Fending off invisible foe, parrying against suffering.

No one leaves life unscathed, and so I fail you.
I cannot protect you from life.
My honor is tarnished.

My love, please know,
I will be here when you are happy,
And especially when you are sad, scared, lonely.

When life bears down, and the weight is too much,
I will be here, prying apart the dimensions,
As an anchor to reality

My precious one,
You are beloved since always.
This love has always been, and always will be.
When all returns to the great silence,
This love remains eternal.

I send my roots into the earth,
accepting the sacred duty.
The gentle, yielding, firm,
and fertile ground of the mother.
I will water her.
I will protect her.
I accept responsibility
for this ground.
I yield to this process.
Enveloped by life. By time.
I yield to the watching.
I accept what it brings.
I choose to love
what comes before me,
so that what blooms
when I wither away,
may always be love.

Like a cell drawing in pure water, rejecting unnecessary, undesirable molecules.

Like a virus spreading multiplying, taking over with vigor and tenacity.

Like the bubbles on the burbling lips of a toddler, growing and popping and dripping.

Like a ronin samurai without a lord, coming and going like the wind.

Like a thought that just won’t quit, a feeling that burrows into the bones.

Like the intensity of a fire, when a steady wind presses the seat of the fuel source.

So is my passion for life.

I keep running
Out of time
Away from difficulty
Away from change
Away from you

I want to be someone
Who gives love freely
When life is generous
When life is cruel
When love is hard

I crave happiness
That is equitable
To sustainably live
To pass the time
And to pass on

Don't you want
To run to freedom?
Don't you want
To be the change?
Let me pass on
The sacred mission:
Life is chaos
Keep it strange.