Empty Boxes

His life is stacked in boxes
  in rooms where no one lives,
seemingly waiting for a reason....
while the bits and pieces
   necessary to perform
lay scattered about.

His breath,
  caught between then and now,
    between why and how,
reaches for notes
  to an unwritten song.


As I dance to music he can't even hear.


It pours from empty boxes....
    from books on shelves,
      from pictures hung
and curtains flung...
  open to the light.

It spills from empty boxes
  and moves to the beat of an open heart....
and now,
to the most beautiful sheet music
  anyone has ever shown me.

Hum as I might, I can't write
  the song he was given to sing.
It isn't mine...
  and it sure isn't me!

So it waits, stacked in boxes,
  in rooms where no one lives,
on shelves waiting to be filled.
  In pictures hung...
  and curtains flung...
open to the light.

Out Of The Woods

We are not,
wandering together,
lost in a dark, dense wood.

We are,
each of us,
the dark, dense wood
in which we are lost.

The sooner we stop listening to
those calling from the edge
of their perceived freedom,
the sooner we will discover
our own.

It is an inner path....solitary
but with common perspectives
that fool many into believing
it is a shared journey.

Unfortunately, knowing this doesn't mean
I am out of the woods yet....
but remembering it keeps me from
calling to you from the edges.

Voice Of Reason

Nothing is so urgent that I seek to escape myself within it.
For me it's just not there anymore....
at least not to any measurable degree.

Once quite good at hiding from myself
within any given crisis,
I could always be counted on to extend myself,
beyond myself.
But no more....

Today I can stand perfectly still
within the midst of any whirlwind
and remain unscathed.

It's nice to be the calm voice of reason,
even if I am the only one listening.

Curtin Call

I can no longer respond to the inherent drama
written into the script.
Time and time again I find myself center stage....
aware only of the rewrites.

It's an odd thing,
the shape and feel of a role
once played to perfection,
completely unavailable now.

I can still feel her on my skin.
But her lines hang in my mind
refusing to project themselves
to engage an audience.

Missing my cues no matter how well directed
I take a deep, long bow
and leave the theater for good,
deeming myself no longer fit to perform.

Music

Music knows itself as music.
It is content on its own,
but welcomes the dancer.

The dancer moves to the music
is inspired by the music....
kept in time by the music.

Guidance is the music.
mind the dancer,
too often believing itself music.

Ten Thousand Deaths

After awhile the dying isn't so bad....
ya get used to it.
Ideas of me bud, bloom and wither;
thoughts on a vine.

It's resisting death
that really causes the problems.
The insistence that a flowering notion
reach its most beautiful, fragrant peak
and sustain itself...right there.
Forever adored....forever ador-able.

Better to see from the start
the futility from which they are seeded....
an ever wilting bouquet of notions. 

Realizing that all is experience and nothing more
frees me to delight in ten thousand deaths,
all the while tending my garden.

Loose Threads

I keep tripping on my own advice,
catching my high minded heel in the
toehold my perceptions have on me.

Like a snag in a rug that I refuse to have mended
it's always the same....
believing in belief,
thinking it the same as knowing....
when knowing...true knowing, is beyond all belief,
beyond the thought process entirely.

Knowing is direct, arising in the moment at hand.
All encompassing.
Never based on the loose threads of belief
waiting to trip me up.