Pick up your heart

How to hold thyself, you ask
In the face of adversity
How to hold thyself
When the world asks more
Than you believe yourself capable of

How to hold thyself, you ask
When the passions have you weak
When a part of you
—Banging on the doors of your inner rooms—
Screams that everything matters,
That everything counts

Then, my friend
You pick up your heart
And you put on your shoes
And you let them carry you
To the deepest part of the nearest forest
And you find the stillest tree that you can fathom

And you ask it for help
To share its stillness
To bless your heart
And you learn
To hold yourself
The way that trees do

Summer Guest

When I take a bite
From this juicy peach
On a stuffy summer’s day
Half of my brain
Begrudges the mess
Tries to maneuver my body
Out of the fall line
Of this dripping glory
While the other half
Quite thoroughly delighted
Declares the triumphant arrival
Of those timeless times
Which have come to stay
For a little while

The watchman

Your fire burns for the world
And it sometimes scorches your own skin

Your love refuses to be
But in abundance
And yet somehow it also knows
To bypass this very face of yours

Oh dear, dear child
You do find your reflection
Quite unbearable at times

To close one’s eyes
To forge ahead
To refuse to listen
When what you hear you cannot bear

No play remains
Once a heart is set on fire
By the watchmen of the north.

No play remains
When everything matters.

Small poem of self-compassion

 

I’m in love with this garden I have found myself in. With the boy who is sitting on the other side of this florid house. In love with the parts of me that say the wrong things at the wrong time. And that particular part, right now, that is too shy to sit with the others. In love with the me that gets carried away — like a leave! — by gusts of joy, and sadness, and melancholy in ways that is far beyond my control.

 
 

Opening

No difference to fathom
Between laughing and crying
Just different forms of prayer
Each prayers of my love

Laughing and crying
Best understood
As different ways of paying attention

To the beauty of the world
A beauty that’s already here,
Woven all across,

A mere opening away
A mere opening away
A mere opening away

A beauty that sometimes comes as ‘You’
And sometimes as ‘Me’
And sometimes as the way the sun hits the mountain side
Or the soft tilting of the eagle’s wings
Or the cautious steps of the deer walking through our garden
Or the very rustling of the tree tops causing me to lift my gaze just now

Beauty of sight
And of all the senses
All the outwards ones
And all the inward ones
And all the ones that reach beyond

Oblivion

I want you to hold me again
Now that I'm all gone, far away

To be placed in a cocoon
Of aerial, sentient touch

And when you’re with me
The scary ones become tame

Under your eyes,
I find myself more beautiful than before

You make me strong
When, really, I am not but a blade of grass

Just as you make me weak,
Never closer to dying than at the cusp of life

I know nothing
I know all I need to know

Wishes for R & M

I don’t think I know anything about love;

Except that love is beyond words to capture,
And that love, at once,
Wants everything, and nothing at all.

I don’t think there is anything I can give you;

Except my witness -
To behold you on your paths
And to meet you anew, each time again. 

I don’t think I know anything about commitment, nor freedom;

Except that they are living, breathing creatures,
And that anything I could say about them now
Would have ceased to be quite right tomorrow;
And might even turn into shackles to the imagination.

And I know that we form them, just as much as they form us
And that a lot of the art of living
Lies in the subtle ways in which we allow the world, others,
To sculpt our deepest being;

A marriage of autonomy and surrender.

Submerged

I want to tell you how I feel
I want to answer all your questions
I want to lay myself bare, in front of you
— Nothing you cannot see

But I am tangled, oh so tangled
There is no start, no end to what I feel
— I am submerged
No looking up, no time to breathe

And what I fear most
— In face of all precarity
Is that the waves will carry me away from you
Two hands reaching out through the night

— Never to touch
Nothing more cruel than the ocean
In its eternal abundance
And relentless dispersing of space

Nothing’s perfect

 

Nothing’s perfect,
Nothing is;

Everywhere you go
You find them,

Small grievances
Or big ones;

You will always find
Reason for despair.

Nothing is perfect,
Nothing is;

The world not for you,
You not for the world.

What it means?
I do not know.

We’re fucked?
We suck?

Both probably.
And also:

Beauty isn’t measured in perfection;
Nor is love.

The right response
To life,

The right response
To imperfection

Is despair;
But not just despair.

Also love
Also wonder

Also hope
Also laughter.

Nothing’s perfect,
Nothing is.

For M.

 

I want to live
With the flame of love in my center
And the light of truth in my eyes.

I want to walk
Forward, steady
Free from strife and free of doubt.

I want to take things into my hands,
Feel them, weigh them, taste them
My grip determined, my touch soft.

I want to stare at the dawn of day and rejoice
In the sweetness of the morning air
And the promise of the rising sun.

I want to be in integrity,
Unflinching before myself,
Steady before the world.

I want to take - every day again -
The actionless act of courage
In daring to be here; be really here.

Something important

But what
But what if
But what if you’ve come to twist my reasons around

What if your presence,
Your entrance,
Amounts to an exorcism
Of myself upon myself;

What if you turn me
Into someone, or something
I don’t recognize.

What if You
Crowds out Me;

My soul drifting offshore
Caught by a current
Too strong for her
To ever drift back to me.

Like distance,
In a cold universe,
Ever-expanding.

What if by letting you in
I’m letting in the world;
Come to spoil
Something important.



We are us

We are different
We’re not like them
They think us strange
But that’s okay

You are not
Alone anymore
You no longer have to
Wish your difference away
You no longer need to
Be what you are not
Like what you do not

As long as you stay with yourself
You will see through smoke
As long as you stay with yourself
You are the fire that lights your way
As long as you stay with yourself
We, too
Are staying us

Wild power

Continental riff.
Startled by what I find inside.
For a moment there, still —apprehension;
A feeble try to reign you in.

But there is no holding back.
Scorching lava streaming down the mountain slope;
An unstoppable swelling of a golden, dripping heat. Fire.

White light
Silver brilliance
Piercing my all
Bursting this vessel
That is me.

All fear has left her eyes now,
Long gone -
And she knows her strength,
And the vast expanses of the grasslands.

Oh, I would build for you
—A Cathedral of the Heavens;
And you would tear it down, laughing—
Tipping over towers, crumbling the walls.

And although they fear you
Their fear is not mine.
And like all life
Your nature is tidal, too.

And so I will not hold you;
Not in, and not back.
And so you will flow,
In and, out and through me.

Wild Power.



Apologies

 
“Is it meaningless to appologise?
Never.”
— V for Vendetta
 


If I just knew how to say I’m sorry
Without the fuzz and ties;
Without unwittingly following a script
Not of my choosing;
Without inadvertently entering a game
Of guilt, analysis and righteousness;

A simple I’m sorry;
A breath of warmth into the icy air.
A bare token of surrender
To the inadequacy of humankind.
A sorry that floats above all that;
A gesture that reaches beyond.

Not because I think it the solution,
Not because I do not want that too;
But because I don’t know, and I don’t care
And In this very moment
I just want to feel
The space between us to be whole.

I wish I could,
In all my nothingness,
Connect you and me
To the parts in ourselves
That are already so:
Whole, healed, loving, loved.

Floating above all that.

From nobody to nobody:
I am sorry.

 

Little hedgehog, London 2022

River Side Ruminations

A plant with holes,
Half a fence
In a pitiful attempt of fencing same from same.
(Maybe it’s art?)

A water
Flowing, close to me, but I don’t hear it.
I don’t know whether it’s standing or gushing;
Whether it wants to speak to me of peace or of chaos.

A purple flower of mystical scent
The imagination of which tickles my nose
- Mediterranean glory.

Leavy arms leaning against the brushes of the wind
Freedom - in fact - :
A firm, gentle hold.

A moment of peace, the absence of all the rest
Then, lingering, a sense of threat
In front of me, in the future, somewhat unreal.

Now, a pinch of sadness
For finding myself in Moloch’s grip;
Lost
In a maze of words and no purpose,
And I wonder why I’m here, or when I chose to go there - if at all.

Maybe those hyperbolic songs,
Were not so hyperbolic after all,
Just normal sampling.
Sad pitiful paradoxical human existence;
Or mere storytelling?

And then I dive back into peace
- plant, water, flower, tree -
A song of freedom and revolution.
It’s time to take the inevitable step;

Toward the dreading next scene,
Toward where the rhythm of the song takes me.
Now with peace by my side
And the absence of all the rest.

Wish me luck,
Since luck I will need.

Friend of different endless form

It’s because your empty
And because you’re not;
Because the rustling and crackling
Announces around your corner,
Noone
Who wants a thing from me.

The meeting of glances
In that other space
Two different beings of endless forms
And yet united in shared puzzlement
At the oddity of our mutual singular existence.
And I wonder what you wonder about my wondering.

Becoming whole
Is decidedly not about solving anything;
Is about playing the strings of experience -
A violin in the middle of an oceanic orchestra; 
The melody of existence.
All that is, all that was, all that ever will be.

I’ve come to listen to your song, dear friend

Geneva, 2019


When time is generous with me

On certain days,
When I'm the right amount of tired and awake,
Time is generous with me.

It flows
With the weighty, sticky velocity
Of golden-brown forest honey.

It stands
Nearly still
Like sultry middle eastern air on a hot day.

The ticking of the clock,
Slowed and muffled,
Its needles slightly too heavy to move in sync.

The sun paints rainbows on my lashes,
Obstructing my sight,
Directing it towards the ephemeral.

The music takes my body,
Decides to dance with it,
Carrying me from one life to the next.

When time is generous with me,
It inserts between two moments
Another one.

So small it could close go overlooked
And yet clearly there;
If only I tilt my head in just the right sort of way.

Waiting
For nothing at all.

Never do I feel more blessed
Never richer
Then on those days; when time is generous with me.

A long time ago, Czechia

Silent change

I am thinking about change now - change in humans, changing humans

Changes that occur in silence
Changes that happen slowly, dimly
Changes sourced in mere witness
Of the outer world, the self, and the reactivity between them

Changes that creep up on you, unnoticed
Until they confront you in their full-bodied inescapability
Small changes that, gradually, become one big change
Changes that, once occurred, leave nothing unchanged

And as the gears of change grind along, slowly
As the tension builds, irrevocably
You will know, somewhere in the dark corners of your body and mind
That what is isn't right anymore

There will be fog at first - and fear
But once the feather sprung, once the drop spilled
All you remember will be
That it did

That everything assumed the place it was always meant to assume
That there is no going back, not even the thought of it
That you have become different, changed
That you have become

And while the silence that bore the change
Is what gives it its power
Silent change takes the world by surprise
And surprise will - at first - be met with resistance

And when the world finally does catch up,
Nothing remains intact
Everything is renegotiated
A new world is born

 

Secret moutain lakes - Summer 2021