High

What is Meant by Waking Dreams

relax your shoulders into your spine
collapse like wings.
all my thoughts are random
with no rhythm or reason -
or is it rhyme? -
nothing like song
or like mathematics -
nothing you learn in school.
rather, this is something found
when listening to the sound of air standing still
while you sweep past on a swing
or down a slide.

this morning, I was on the road before the spaceships
came to pick up the children;
the sky was aureate-purple
early sunlight diffused and catching
the molecules of various atmospheric gases
and being transformed by them.
I knew that later the sun would rise
transforming dull gold into sparkling diamonds
dripping off the grass by the shuttle stop.

when I was a child, they would dart
around the red plastic flowers on the feeder.
what must the world look like to a hummingbird?
would it move as slowly as mine?
perhaps they feel as if they are floating
through a softly blurred field
in spite of moving so fast -
because they move so fast -
humming meditatively.

Passacaglia

There are songs which captivate me, quiet my mind, and hold me still. They are so deeply affective, so compelling, so beautiful and alive, I can't speak or think; I can hardly move. All I can do is feel. It isn't even listening. Listening requires thought, some kind of intentional engagement. These songs carry me through attention - beyond.

The music becomes an experience, a world of its own, colored by something deeper than emotions, more real than the senses. I can feel the elysian wind of this world in my hair and smell the bright grass, the dusty trees, the sweet flowers. . . . The air tastes new, fresh - like the crispness of cold, clear water. I feel grief and joy and yearning - pure and unadulterated. I am moved beyond movement.
I feel old, as if I've seen and known everything there is to know in this place. So full, so stained by time, my skin feels thin - stretched to hold each past moment - not as memories, but as whole experiences. I feel young, as if every smell, every sound, every sensation, and every sentiment were new, untouched, unexplored. I soak it in without a thought; it becomes a part of me.
And for minutes, for moments, I do not exist here - only there, part of the organism that the music comprises, breathing as it breathes.
Yet, I sense that the music is only a single entity in a greater field; it is encompassed by grace, love, beauty, and light - by a perfect existence which lacks nothing and in which everything finds its being and its place. I am surrounded by God, who is above all, over all, and in all, perfect in holiness.

My love, you are a song to me.

Noise

Maybe time is not as linear as we often think it is. Perhaps we simply progress through it - or it through us, as the case may be - while it stands still - or moves in a single wave, each moment a molecule of water - every single moment happening in one nearly eternal moment, so that at the end of time, all moments cease.

Ache

Dry Heave
(or The Problem With This Poem: Being Too Honest and Saying Too Much)

I want to write -
to write something wonderful.
Something eloquent and beautiful,
like the rich, captivating stories Anodos lived and dreamt
in the vast, quiet library of the Fairy Palace.
Something natural and earthy,
 like some dew dazzled bud,
new leaves trembling beneath the weight.
Something compelling and honest,
like a heavy, sweet, soothing concerto,
dripping with grief and anger and beauty,
like Concierto de Aranjuez.
Something old and nostalgic,
like a floral area rug,
border worn down from the friction
of small feet tracing the pattern
around and around, over and over.
Something wise and thoughtful,
like a poem, brief and full,
full like a chalice of wine, shining like liquid garnet,
smooth and bitter and healing.
But I have no such words to write.
I hardly have thoughts, well-rounded and clean thoughts.
I have the broken
fragments of ideas, random bits and
phrases evoked by emotion.
Nothing to grab onto, nothing to grasp, nothing whole.
Reaching, sputtering like a drowning man,
desperate for a lifeline,
lungs burning, chest aching,
I try, testing every line of reasoning I find,
to explain, to rationalize the way I feel.

I'm drifting in an ocean of who knows what.

Surrender

I saw my hands, shriveled and blackened, clenched around the shame and fear of what had happened to me and what I'd done. Love looked at me.
"Let it go," He said. "I'll fill that place." He showed me mounds of fruit, so vibrantly colored they seemed to glow as light refracted off of them. The skin was clear and the liquid inside the fruit was effervescent - moving and sparkling. They were like growing, tender jewels. He showed me other living treasures, and I saw, as a picture, my hands made whole as the treasures were placed in my arms one after another until they were overflowing. The picture faded. "But you must let it go."
I looked down at my burned, closed fists. I could just see the light glint off my "treasure" between the fingers of my right hand; it was like black obsidian - dark, cold, and dead. My left hand cupped my right, supporting the oppresive weight of the dark stone from underneath.
I tried to separate my hands, to uncurl my fingers. I couldn't do it. It was as if my flesh was burned together. "Jesus, it's stuck. Unclench my hands. I am willing to give it to you." I begged, helpless, my voice tight. "Please take it."
He smiled at me, picked up one of His living treasures and placed it on my hands. It rolled off my blackened fists. The smile never left his face. He continued to place the fruit in my arms - such beautiful and varied treasures - so quickly, so joyfully. There was something earnest and strong in His movements, something similar to urgency but without any anxiety or panic. Instead, His face was radiant; His smile was child-like in its pure joy and exuberance. I smiled and laughed, trying to catch the glowing, sparkling orbs as they fell from my arms. Love's eyes glittered with mirth as He watched me. Before long, I caught a living ruby, and something heavy thudded against the floor. My hands were whole; my arms were full of living treasures. The black stone had become dust and was dissipating in the light from the fruit. Love was smiling at me, still adding treasures to the pile in my arms. I laughed and threw my arms around Him, the treasures falling in a shower around me, and He embraced me, echoing my laughter with His deep, rich, reverberating laugh.

Glory

I saw a great expanse of beauty -

I ran over golden, red, pink, warm grasses and grains on a high hill and leapt into a deep green valley. Branching across the valley ran deep-cut veins of frothing blue water bordered by thick green vegetation. In the distance, I saw misted purple and pink mountains shaded in deep navy. Across the valley to the right, I saw a high cliff covered with blue-green vegetation over which fell a thin, sparkling, white waterfall into a deep circular pool below.

I flew as a bird across this valley through the mist of the waterfall, above the shining blue veins. I was joined by another bird, and we flew in a weaving helix towards the sky. There seemed to be an air current higher up, and as we rode this current, I heard a voice: "You are my inheritance."

Then, I stood as a woman at the edge of the blue-green cliff, looking over the valley, the golden hills, and far off, the mountains, my hair blowing back from by face and off my neck. He stood next to me and said, "Over all this, I want you. You are my inheritance."

Attention

Waiting for the Medicine to Kick In

My thoughts are
milling around like
passengers waiting
for a train, clutching,
thumbing, absent-
mindedly twirling
their tickets,
picturing their
destinations and -
many other things.