I Give You Back

I give you back.
I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear.
I release you, you were my beloved and hated twin,
but now I don't know you as myself.
I release you with all the pain I would know
at the death of my daughters.
You are not my blood anymore.
I give you back to the soldiers who burned down my home,
beheaded my children,
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who took the food
from our plates when we were starving.

I release you fear,
because you hold these scenes in front of me
and I was born with eyes that can never close.
I release you fear so that you can no longer
keep me naked and frozen in winter,
or hot and thirsty in summer.

I release you

I am not afraid to be angry
I am not afraid to rejoice
I am not afraid to be black
I am not afraid to be white
I am not afraid to be hungry
I am not afraid to be full
I am not afraid to be hated
I am not afraid to be loved, to be loved, to be loved.

Oh you have choked me but I gave you the leash,
Now I have no neck.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife,
Now you have no hands.
You have devoured me but I laid myself across the plate,
Now you are full and the plate is empty.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won't hold you in my hands.
You can't live in my eyes, my ears, my voice, my belly,
Or in my heart, my heart, my heart.

But come here fear.
I am alive, and you are so afraid of dying.

Unknown Poet

Room with a View

Same house,
different rooms.
One has light. One is dark
The dark room has a magnificent view
If you can only get to the window
Without tripping over the furniture
In the dark.

Limits

Containing Joy
I’m full to the brim
Walk steadily, now
Stay in balance
Stop when the stopping’s good
Then
The liquid ecstasy of Being
Will not spill
And get wasted.

Faithfulness in the Center

This morning at 7:30
I rolled out of bed
And while the kettle was boiling
I threw my hexagram for the day.

At the sixth throw, the coin stood
On it’s edge, perfectly balanced
Neither heads nor tails.
I nudged it with the Tao te Ching
Which happened to be
The book closest at hand.
But the coin didn’t fall.
It just stood still in the middle.

I saw that the choice was mine to make
Whether it would be heads or tails.
Rather than leave it to chance,
I could choose.
Heads gave me hexagram 61: Faithfulness in the Center
The power to move even pigs and fishes, hmmmmmmm
Tails gave me hexagram 60: Discipline, ouch!

But, as every disciple knows, faithfulness needs discipline.

So I didn’t choose.
I too, stood still in the middle.

Mnemonic

He Died
And entered the Ocean of Forgetting
For getting fish
For getting more
Aquatic invader par excellence
Sailing from shore to shore
Until all that’s left was Mnemniopsis
Littering the Black Sea shore.

Remember, remember, the jelly screams
There is nothing in my wake
I eat up all your protein dreams
Like you, I over take.

Form of Life

Only the couch is real.
I am not real.
Or rather I am real
My body is real
Until it dies.
Then there is no body.
Then where am I?
I don't exist.
Just a nobody.
So I spend a whole lifetime
Becoming somebody,
Just to die, a nobody.

But still after the body dies
I exist. This I know.
I exist in a body of bliss
Not as this form, Lakshmi
But as Spirit, formless.
So form less opinions
And embrace THIS form
In THIS moment
And THIS life
Can be full.

The Intense Pleasure of Small Things

The sound of the buttons
in the dryer.
The stillness in the
small hour of the night.
My brown fingers on the
black keys going tap. Tap. Tap.
One leg familiarly crossed over the other.
Tightly.
Lilting to the left.

Waiting at a red light, glancing up.
And seeing a flock of
migrating geese.
Flying high above me in the
night sky.

Standing on the bridge,
My feet firmly planted.
My hands folded.
Bird-song everywhere.
The rushing waterfall
of the expressway behind.
The sun on my left cheek.
I glimpse my breath
exhaled in a cold vapor
out of the corner of my eye.
The dog’s shadow,
My hand on the leash.
And through it all,
Something more suBtle,
Something with a silent B.

The sound of Luke’s guitar, throbbing.
The sound of the dog chewing
My indrawing breath.
The computer humming
Lamplight on orange stripes,
Warm and comforting.
Words appearing on the screen
From somewhere forming.
What mind writes this?
How pours it forth?
I know not what the next word will be
and yet, it appears with coherence.
Co-here, two here,
My yin and yang.
My belly is full of this.

I am conscious of the beginning
And at the end I am here again.
But the middle happens all
unbeknownst to me.

A child is born this way
Making love creates the seed
The child grows in the womb by itself
And the birth requires labor.

Uncross my legs.
Scoot closer.
Sit straight.
The mouse clicks.
I search my mind.
Nothing there.
Objects all around me
Quite meaningless.
Sunset!
Quick, walk the dog
Before the light disappears…..

I AM back.
A creature riffling thru the reeds.
The smell of greenness in the dusk.
The shrill sunset cry of a bird
Gravel crunching,
The dead tree silhouetted majestically
Against the pale red clouds fading into night.
A good sight.

The air so crisp today.
Even the sun is crystallized.
The frost on the bridge sparkles
Like a carpet of fairy dust.
Dazzling my every step.
Rabbit footprints etched on ice.

The cold air envelops my brain
Seizing every errant thought
A thought crystal for my contemplation.
Until finally I can stand it no more.
I turn off the light inside
And I simply feel the pebbles hard
Under the soles of my sturdy shoes.

I love you Life,
and I love you God.
Keep me aware of these essentials.

Benefits of a Low Place

I’m in a low place
From here I can’t see the big picture
But I can smell the dust in the air
And count the pennies on the floor
From here I don’t know anything
And that relieves me of planning ahead

It used to be scary for me to plunge so low.
I would immediately try to get out of the situation
By any means available to me
I would flutter around and bat my wings, hoping for lift-off
I would thrash my tail wildly back and forth
Hoping to agitate my way out of the mess
I would make decisions and intentions
Hoping the tension would incisively cut through my difficulty
But you know, my difficulty was very simple:
I didn’t like low places.
I judged them wrong.

And so every time life
Took me for a little dip,
I drowned in sorrow.

Now I don’t mind the low places.
I enjoy the view from here.
I can’t see over the horizon
But I can smell the wildflowers on the hillside

I feel happy that I can stop driving for a while
I can just let myself be led
And let life show me that the answers to my questions
are not all that urgent
And that I won’t lose anything that really belongs to me.

So I, a lover of truth, can truthfully say that
I am willing to lose those things that are born of illusion.
Even those illusions dearly beloved to me
And most difficult to give up.
Because the gap created in my being by this disillusionment
That gap, is small and dark and empty, a chasm
And it grows more empty, more hollow every day
And one day hollow turns holy
And holy turns whole.


So who am I to complain about

small
dark
places?

My Roomy Heart

I intend to make my heart roomy
Expand into infinite space
So that there is no You and I
I see no pairations
And all I feel is Love

Love that I draw up
From the infinite well of my
bottomless heart.
Love that filters through my poetry
Holds me in divine rapture.
Oh I have felt you touch me so.
And even though I know
That 'You and I'
Is a fiction.
It is a lie worth telling just to have
That dance of union
It is so delicious to anticipate,
You drawing closer to me
And my heart filling up
with divine Ecstasy.
It mends all things
Heal all shortcomings
Blesses my wounds
And sanctifies my life.

I want to make my heart roomy
Just to welcome You.

New Moon

who am i ?

in the scheme

of no thing

where even

my sound

is silenced

when I dot

my i…

by Shanti Hudes

Divine Hand

These archetypes:
Shaman, poet, designer,
Magician,
Goddess
Child,
Fool...
They're like a deck of cards,
Shuffled to fool me
Into thinking that's real.
But then the deck collapses into one card,
That lays flat on its side
And disappears into melting hands...
And only in that moment do

I realize that I AM
The divine hand holding
That Ace up my disappearing sleeve.

Cell liberation

Throw away Hope
And where is Hopelessness?
You said.

Its in the same place where I threw Hope
Lurking behind it like a shadow.

Throw away Life
And where is Death?
Lurking behind your wasted life
Like a shadow.

Shadows and reflections
You cannot escape them
In the world of form.

In the world of Form
(and there is no world of no-Form, by the way)
Time, space, distance, speed
You, me, this, that
All the pairs that you see
Separate you from seeing
The silent infinity of non-Being.

People strive to be non-dualistic.
There are paths and destinations.
Once I get There I will be this
Great Being: a Bodhisattva.
But we are ALREADY a body of truth.
Creation cannot sustain itself for an INSTANT
Much less for a human lifetime
Or a millenium, or aeons
Without Truth resonating
resounding, vibrating
and oscillating in every cell.

So liberate yourself from this cell
of constantly striving for Self-knowledge.
You already are, and Life already is.
Because all the understanding in the world
Cannot make the sun rise,
Cannot make a Poppy unfurl its petals
Like a Tibetan monk
Throwing off his orange shawl and
Dancing naked in the sunlight
Scattering his seed and his fragrant essence
To the wind. Just for free.
Just for the joy of Being
Here Now.