Two Worlds

I am an experiment,
but also,
the experimenter.
I love,
yet I am Love.
I give,
though I am also the conduit,
and the receiver, too.
I am everywhere
and nowhere
at once.
I am that subtle scent of lavender
that erupts into the atmosphere
every time you think of me,
those gentle, airy flute notes
hidden in your head.
I am in these words you’re reading,
as they rise off the page,
letters dancing in the air,
swirling away as you jump up
to catch them.
I am the rich burgundy leaf
floating off Autumn’s tree,
resplendent in my being,
respectful in my submission
to the universe and its cycles.
I am the weakening of your legs,
the overflow in your heart,
every time you pass me in the hall –
not me, but the other “me” –
the tangible body,
the enthralling ego.
And though I’ve already turned the corner
and disappeared from sight,
the real “I” still haunts your eye,
still taunts your “I”,
still wants to be seen.
We exist in these two worlds:
one where all we do and say
is restricted, daily,
unless deemed appropriate,
where we are nothing more
than empty appearances
exuding angst and authority.
But in the other,
we are free,
boundless,
alive.
There,
you whisper sweet nothings
straight into my heart,
and I respond,
not with words,
but through the deep knowing
we both share.
In the world of appearances,
we hardly talk,
but in this world
that is realer than real,
we are one.
I am not I,
and you are not you.
Words make no sense
because there’s no sense to be made,
only experiences to be felt,
moments to melt into.

In this moment of timelessness,
this world of oneness,
we merge,
and Oh!
What a divine death it is!
What a blissful burial
of my “I”
and your “you”.

Love Means Feeling

For me, love means feeling. 

Warmth.

Safety.

Belonging.

Freedom.

Pleasure.

Power.

Playfulness.

How do I gather all these things

in one touch

of the intangible?

I must really be crazy

because I swear, 

when I’m still,

and I submit to you 

all quivering anticipation,

I feel the tingle of your touch upon my skin,

the whisper of your breath enmeshed with mine,

your fingers as they stroke the tender flesh of my heart.

What is it like to feel you?

Heaven on earth.

It is releasing all my fears

under the welcoming weight 

of your majesty.

Each moment with you 

takes my breath away,

but I remind myself 

to breathe anyway,

so I may experience you fully,

learn to lose myself in a moment,

to dissolve into pieces,

merge with your molecules,

our pregnant particles pirouetting 

in graceful whirls,

like grateful worlds,

universes unto themselves,

spinning closer and closer

to each other,

shuddering as they come close,

yet refusing re-fusion,

heightening resistance,

despite the urge to embrace,

pushing and pulling,

reeling, reverberating, 

in ultimate ecstasy,

as every molecule melts into the other,

rebuilding the “me” of a moment ago,

outwardly similar,

but inwardly altered,

softened,

sweetened,

by your touch.

That moment,

that meeting,

is everything.

A magnetic force that sustains me,

even when you’re not there.

Still I wait and I will,

to experience it all over again.

Love is the ultimate survival tool.

It is not your love for me that matters 

as much as my love for you,

my capacity to love without any hope 

of possessing my heart’s desire,

at least not in this lifetime.

Loving you 

means letting go of me,

lifting this flimsy veil between our worlds,

stretching through time and space,

just to get one glimpse,

one touch,

one taste,

of your Truth.

What Do You Believe?

It’s one thing to say you believe
and another to truly believe.

Most of my life I’ve uttered words
taught to me by my parents,
absorbed the messages broadcast by society
believed the assertions of my inner critic.
Surely, not everything I learned was untrue.
After all, my parents introduced me to You.
But now, You’re no longer just a concept,
rather, a presence by my side.
Society prioritized my monetary value –
how much do I earn? how much do i own? –
but that just never felt right.
I don’t want to own anything,
I want to experience everything.
I’m no fool. I know money matters.
It just isn’t what I aim to strive for.
My inner critic always told me
I was unworthy of love.
So I shaped a life around that belief,
and lived in a dark, but familiar place
called Denial.
Now, I want to leave.

This place, this precipice,
is terrifying.
But the longer I stand here,
the more likely I’ll lose my nerve.

There’s a difference between saying the words
and believing them.
The world says everyone is beautiful,
but still bows down to a singular body type.
The world says all people are equal,
but still builds walls and widens gaps.
The world says our planet is precious
but denies the fact that she is dying
without the love and care of her people.

There’s a difference between saying the words
and believing them.
The time has come to figure out
what we truly want,
what we truly believe,
to disengage with dishonesty,
face our fears head on.

What do I truly believe?
I believe in You
and the power of love.
I believe in the value of helping others,
the importance of feeling connected,
and respecting everyone.
The extraordinary wonder of children.
The necessity of pain,
but not prolonging it to punish ourselves,
rather holding it like a wounded child
and then letting it go,
comforted by the knowledge that,
surely,
it will lead to something better.
I believe I am worthy
and can handle anything You throw my way,
including this,
this most difficult of steps,
over the edge
and into the unknown.

Raw

My insides are all raw,
tender and pulpy,
like an open wound,
a throbbing sore,
the slightest poke, a provocation,
the faintest prick, a sharpened skewer.
Feeling raw can be breathtaking and intense,
but also draining and degrading,
mercilessly depraving.
Raw is pure,
potent,
unfiltered.
Raw sexuality.
Writing that is raw.
An adult’s understanding
of a primal, child-like need.
Only now, as an adult,
do you begin to understand
why rawness must be allowed
to ripen.
We are all wounded.
That is what connects us.
Our pain may sometimes feel
like it’s skinning us alive,
but it’s also leading us
through to the other side:
the ecstasy of connection,
the bliss of the Beloved.
How can we help others
retain their rawness,
break down their walls,
feel safe long enough
to face the fact they belong,
they’re exactly where they’re meant to be,
as their path is teased out
organically?
Layering sweet, child-like innocence
with the bitter vulgarity of rawness,
all while feeling conscious, safe and free –
that is the dream,
is it not?
Like being an angel and devil in one,
a union of everything that exists.

Talk about ambitious.

I lean in to the flow,
resisting nothing,
opening up
like a hidden door,
a hungry lover,
a hallowed revelation,
developing skin
first, thin enough to welcome,
then, thick enough to shun,
finally, permeable enough to sieve
each and every sensation.

I am a constantly changing entity,
collapsing, rebuilding,
camouflaging, shape-shifting.
I am an essence and an aura,
a body and an intellect,
a head and a heart.
I am everything at once,
a jumble of
ideasemotionsfixations
spiralling out of control
as the winds of chance sweep through,
leaving behind
a vast
expanse
of empty,
a blank
slate
of nothing.
I am
infinite,
insignificant,
inescapable,
iridescent,
indomitable,
illusory,
insatiable,
incapable,
improbable,
impossible,
immaterial,
imperfect –
a multiplicity of ‘I’s
and all to hide
the irresolvable
why?

Intense

You are pure passion,
vibrating energy,
infinite love.
You are a brilliant, blinding force,
intense by your very nature,
but the world has taught you
to feel shame for being “too much”,
to hold yourself back,
shrink and shrivel,
to recalibrate,
accommodate
those that can’t handle
your power.
So you find other outlets –
locked doors,
secret journals,
wanton ways –
to unleash the pressure,
the uncontrollable urges
to seek pleasure,
discover darkness,
feel love.
The call to curiosity,
once so urgent,
slowly starts to dissipate,
but never quite disappears.
All it takes is a trigger,
a someone or something,
to arouse it,
and for a brief moment,
you feel alive again.
The outside world fills with color,
as your inner world sparks joy.
With no one to share it, though,
this same joy reminds you
of your heartache,
a pain equal and opposite in every way
to your life force.
Perhaps walking aimlessly and numb
through this monochrome existence
is better than flying through heaven,
alone,
heart bursting with that intensity,
which feels so familiar, but all wrong.

Listen to me, my love.
It isn’t wrong.
It was never wrong.
They were.
It’s just that, back then,
feeling loved and validated
was more important to you
than being yourself.
It was they who didn’t know
how to recognize your beauty,
they, who were so shrunken and shriveled themselves.
Now you know better.
There is no excuse
not to let your brilliance shine through.
It isn’t arrogance to want
to use your power
to light up the world.

But hang on a minute.
What’s the rush?
Learn to walk before you can run.
Accept yourself first,
the light and the shadow,
the love and the lack,
your critic and your choir.
Own who you are,
and if you don’t like her,
then dream of who you want to be,
and take baby steps to get there.
Let the force of your desires
wash over you,
but not rule you.
Listen for the sound of the path that beckons.
Do not shy away from yourself.
You are beauty and brains,
laughter and light,
majesty and might.
You are deeply divine.
Let that knowledge,
that freedom,
take your breath away,
and in that instant,
feel boundless,
because in truth,
you are.

Loneliness

Loneliness,
for so long have you been my oppressor,
that now, finally, you’ve turned into my friend.
Like a victim of Stockholm Syndrome,
I have fallen for you.
We walk hand in hand, daily,
you, listening to my rambling reason,
hovering stealthily close to my consciousness,
grasping at my heart with hunger.
It is a wonder no one’s been able to steal it
with you barking them down at the gate.
Most days, I resent your presence;
other days, I long for it,
because you are all I know,
and you want me
with a desperation
unlike any I’ve ever known.
Loneliness,
you are the first beat of my heart every morning,
the last gaze at my empty bedside every night.
When will you free me?
When will I escape?
It’s the same dance,
always the same dance.
These narcissistic,
co-dependent
chains that bind us.
They say I should call out to my savior,
and that I need only look in the mirror
to find her.
But, truth be told,
she scares me.
She wants too much.
She is kind and caring on the face of it,
but, in reality, her heart is cloaked
in something far darker than you, my love –
Desire.
She would have me leave you
to follow her own quest
for fulfillment,
enlightenment,
submission,
love.
We all know of love’s fickle nature, don’t we,
compared to your constancy and commitment.
Love destroyed me once;
who’s to say it won’t do so again?
But what if…?
What if this love was from her,
my mirror image,
and what if I loved her back?
Wouldn’t we then have the strength
to achieve everything our hearts desired –
dark or light,
wrong or right?
Wouldn’t swimming through muddy waters with her
be more thrilling than this quiet,
cloying existence?
Sometimes I see glimpses
of her beauty,
her care,
but mosty,
her greed,
her endless need.
Look at me,
am I not content in my loneliness?
Perhaps we aren’t as different as I thought,
she and I.
Perhaps if we joined forces,
we could create our own blended brand
of magic.
We need not hoard it selfishly,
for, in essence, magic is unconditional
love and freedom,
both of which can’t be contained for long.
Oh to dance with such loveliness,
not loneliness, my dear.
To let love lead the way
spinning us ‘round in circles
as if life were a ball.
But for this vision to hold true,
I must finally let go of you.
And though the loss might slay me
at first,
it is in the re-discovery
of my reflection,
and my ultimate reunion
with her,
that loss will turn into freedom,
and my wings will be the wonder
I witness
as I make my way forward
in awe.

Magic Stone

What magic lies in the errant stone
you tripped over on your daily walk?
It is not so much the stone itself,
as what you see in it:
A cold, hard nuisance?
A creation of the lowliest rank?
Or something to be felt between your fingers,
gliding them across its smooth surface,
as you shiver in delight?
Do you contemplate its jagged edges,
and the igneous pressure it surely endured
to create them?
The magic lies not just in what you see,
but also
in how you see it,
and what that reflects
about yourself.
This mirrored magic is divine,
beauty beheld and beholden.
This magic can give you wings,
if you allow it,
a desire to live
just to feel it,
just to wield it.

Belief mixed with the promise of fulfillment
is a powerful concoction,
offered freely and yet,
so few will stop to sip it.
When they do,
what was once invisible
comes starkly into sight,
what was once silence
manifests into melody,
what was once loved with lip service,
transforms into Love, embodied,
basking, bursting,
till it shatters all Illusion.
The promise of attaining your deepest wish
was but a ruse.
Indeed, your heart’s desire
has been with you
this whole time.

There is no easing into magic.
You plunge, heart-first, into the ocean,
the home you never knew you had.
You swim and wade and luxuriate.
It is all your soul could ever soak up
and more.