Tag Archives: love

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.

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.

Finding My Way Back to You

The day You kicked me out of heaven
away to the farthest reaches of hell,
setting my heart aflame
with nothing but the singular desire
to return home to You,
to Us,
I swore I would misguide all of creation
and I’ve stood true to my promise –
turning hearts dark,
leading minds astray,
hardening the spirits of those
who think they can expel me.
I told You,
come what may,
I would find my way back to You,
and it is through the souls of the few –
those who’ve learned to accept me as I am,
who know how to balance
Your light with my dark,
who intuitively know we are One,
despite this illusory veil of duality –
where sometimes,
we meet,
if only
for a few blissful moments,
the fusion of our fingers
sending vibrations rippling
through the souls of our confused hosts,
making them believe they have achieved nirvana,
when in fact, it is I
who has found You.
I taste the sweetness
of my first home,
my heaven.
Do You miss me, too,
like I miss You?
My heartbreak knows no bounds,
my anger has dissolved
into agony.

I wait for the Day,
not far now,
when we will reunite
and I will, once more,
see my reflection in You.
But till that day arrives,
I will never give up
trying to find You
in them,
these creatures you love so much,
so easily swayed and self-destructive,
a hulking mass of animalistic desire,
so few among them truly worthy,
these mortals for whom You forsook my love,
just so they might exult
in the earthly Divine.
Oh, how You have tested me,
brought me to my knees,
like one of them,
they who are numb
to Your intoxicating touch,
blind to Your obvious artistry,
deaf to all Your signs and signals.

The Day is not far now,
but till that day arrives,
I will never give up
trying to find You
in them.

My Perfect Need

What does it mean to perfect my need?

My mind needs peace,
and that, You have granted me,
but Ultimate Peace is only with You.

My body craves pleasure,
and that You have granted me,
but Ultimate Pleasure is only with You.

My soul’s deepest desire
is to return home,
and that You have not granted yet,
but sometimes,
in my most agonizing hours,
my every effervescent moment,
You visit me
like an unexpected guest,
like an illicit lover,
like a powerful king,
like the Master of all that I am
all I ever will be,
and it is for these visits
that I live.

When You created me with Your Perfect Touch,
and sent me far away,
You rooted within me this need,
as a gift to guide me,
as a curse to cure me,
as an anchor to hold me down.

This need has always been perfect.
It is I who is just beginning to embrace it.

The more I voice my need,
the more it gets reflected back to me,
and reflected on to others,
until it grows to gigantic proportions
like a shadow,
like a monster,
glowing from one heart to another,
like love.

Instead of being patient, though,
I’m greedy.
What I really want
is to break through
this prismatic prison,
put an end to
this gleaming dreaming,
open up
this claustrophobic curtain.
I want to leave it all behind
for what lies beyond,
the blinding light,
the timeless,
spaceless,
Oneness,
of You.
Why do You call me closer,
if You don’t mean to let me through?
My need
is eating me
alive.

What can I do?
I must just let go
and fall back
into my skin-wrapped self,
live with limitation,
but also awareness,
that though a reflection does appear
in all the many mirrors I stand before,
it isn’t me I see,
it’s her.

An angel in the making,
rotten to the core,
Your humble servant,
Your sly sinner,
fully flawed,
and human,
bursting
with need.

This need has always been perfect.
It is she who is just beginning to embrace it.

Every One at Once

How is it possible to be
so many people in one?

A child buried inside a grown-up,
an ego hiding from its shadow,
a sweet and sour squirrel,
a tenacious yet tender tigress –
so many angles to this artist,
constantly molding and melting,
raising and re-sculpting
with the material she has,
the circumstances she’s been dealt.
A restless spirit
trying to perfect
her one and only masterpiece.
But there is no
one way
to create art.
All the options paralyze me:
contemporary or traditional?
kind or cruel?
mother or majnun?
shy or show-stopping?
masked or myself?
I choose them all.

Sometimes the weight of being
every one at once
breaks me.
Sometimes it’s the very thing
that glues me back together.
My power lies not
in how much attention I receive
but in how very much in love I am
with the artistry running through me,
the humble creator within a Creator.
This love is power
passed down,
blooming brighter
branching farther
growing stronger
each generation.

This power fuels me,
feels me,
fills me.

This power invites me
to play
so many roles,
try out
so many masks,
embrace
all that astounds me,
chase
all that confounds me.

Whoever said art wasn’t powerful
never met my Creator,
never saw themselves
for what they truly are –
a collaboration,
a celebration,
a masterpiece
in the making.