a path is clear

1.
How quickly things can change
The wind can whip around the tallest pine
in all it's reaching toward
the only darkest cloud in the transit
The sun can singe the thick water
and suck it up to turn grey in an instant
No amount of holy icons
deliberately placed on alters of intent
whether hopeful, or absolutely not
can halt the inertia of that moment
when certainty climbs into the picture
even if so quietly, the ear does not hear it
The eye cannot see those fast little ghosts
overlaying the sunniest days
dropping down in the second's worst decision
and haunting the body til it chokes
on the unexplainable coldness

The chill descends
pulling blood from your hands and feet
forcing your physical heat to compensate
for all the choices you never knew
the hefty price for, until too late dawned
on your bobbing head, with eyes blinking
wide and teary in the ethers
And the same sun,
burning water into vapors
can reign down on you like a slave-master
beating in the lesson
Or it can fall fast into your very arms
for a hug

2. 
An embrace called love
is not a keeper or a prize
but a gem so precious
your reverence is just not enough
So much for worthiness
when such things are not relevant
One can not hold it
because of holding on
And one cannot release it
because of letting go
One can only show up
again and again
to see what they are made of

This star-studded tapestry
is the mysterious dowry
for a prince who never thought better
of bending a knee
One pant leg a bit over worn
until the balance takes itself out
on the other one who called
for Holy Reconciliation

~Season, 2011

You are becoming beholden to beauty
because it's just what you're made of
You must get comfortable with this
though it is known
you will never take it for granted
Christened complexes catapulting fireworks
just to show how your love is an acrobat
Oh, your relief
that there are no tight ropes to her
or blazing hoops for your obstacle coursing
Reprieve, rest here
at the stop sign without the waiting

There was so much listless luggage left
and you reincarnated fresh for the flower
as a flower
You polished the precepts
and put them in perfect pockets
with holes big enough for seeds to fall
one by one, in great lines
that will be leagues of guardians one day
You asked for nothing
and gave thanks for the blessed lesson
And you waited, but not for waiting's sake
For spaciousness written in the distance
from the casing to your nucleus

Her rejoinder for your odyssey
given to you in soft breaths
for the stories you told to answer her heart
And you notice every time, the inhale, pause,
the warm exhale, you feel her smiles
You will find the secret passage ways
inside the infinite dance when she is
holding out her hand for you
an invitation to a new world
You may never notice how she sways
already moving sweet and subtle
to the rhythm of your soul,
happy to be there

More than a mayfly of an apparition
this is no mere imprint of your love
on the soft surface of hot sands
beckoning for the ocean to come again
for another great cooling
A sediment seeming sublime
sits on the edge of a sailboat
rushing on the wind to your harbor
hoping to land in calm water
A surrogate for her surrender
to the captain, oh captain
How she loves to give in like this

You can carry each other with strong hands
for you've built houses and you know the rules
You are familiar with stretching yourself
so far your skin aches, sweating
from trying to keep up with the universe
This is not going to hurt
it is another order now
No delirium, but delight is allowed
Flex those fingers in this direction
for there is something to be learned
from the grand opening of trust
It is beyond your reckless past and you
both have earned this one
No right of passage, but a gift

Go, Lover, to her lips
Let her speak your soul easy with a kiss
You can whisper her heart down
into the gentle ground with it
Let you two find the stillness
of the in-between breaths
and be compelled to answer the knocking
of hearts beating on chests
Let you move when stillness no longer serves
Let you move towards one another
as roots dive under layers of earth
as branches reach for thriving's sake
and their tongues lap up the maker

~Season
12/22/10

Version 2.  Still don't know if it's a poem or a song...
...

1.
Miracles are interwoven with suffering
in crystalline substance you can see right through
I never claimed to be grand,
I only wanted freedom,
though the cost of that,
the cost can hardly be spoken of

Burdens like chalices
carved by grief
are filled with pestering phantoms
merely bewitched by wonder
waiting for a ride somewhere new
holding fast until the path is clear

These bones hold stories of survival
but they are not jewels I protect
They are lessons at best, I hope
I pray for the growing, oh God
those not so tender Charlie horses
are roaming for a pasture
kissed by you with more flowers

I will not lie and pretend to want nothing
I will be no fraud and fake submission
I will be broken down and die
over and over again
Sacrifice the novelties,
and all my specialties
just to be in the kingdom of angels


2.
The Biblically brokenhearted one
wrecked by sheer smallness
strives to muster up enough love
to go home with, and lay at Jesus' feet
Lay it all down as he touches her head
Oh, Forgiveness

I confess my humanness, by God, be loved
I beg to be stripped down, and I am
Stripping away the superfluous
one layer at a time, many layers deep
to be in the garden again
before the shame

My uncovered eyes hold flashes
of old Polaroids washed in brightness
and bleeding sepia overtones
The captured graces,undeserved,
are working to be embraced
from diamond to dust

And those sand blasted miracles,
glimmer in the dream in which I swim
You can see them shining in the water
of lakes built from weeping
bound together in an ocean
with relics at the bottom, long abandoned,
a treasure to a certain excavator


3.
There is contrast enough
to be grateful for kindness,
so gentle,
one must let the armor fly apart
Crack the shell and expose the self
so only the softest skin can sense it

Thank God for that delicate grace,
that whipping magic in the microcosm,
the precious corners of our hidden hearts
Making pudding from ambitions
too old for all of this
becoming the devil's favorite treat
 
We don't feed our souls to demons
but fear, oh fear, the conquistador's claim
to sustain the colony of the blackest wings
on the wisest wicked men
The captor's wish
Take it and fly on home

Rest well and let live the living
Let sweet death do it's bidding alone
Trust the fragrant, dank soil for it's alchemy
of turning waste into fuel for the stretch
And let this trembling, birthing, borne
be delivered into the arms of love
 
~Season, 12/17/10

When Pride and Shame
fall by the wayside
you will see what remains
In the small corners between Could Have Been
and Impending
When shadows flicker in peripheral vision
as souls pass by and some cry out
in ferocious declaration against Illusion
You will be the Watcher, the Waiter,
the Seer, the tale Taker,
taking this into the account
embossing itself ever gently
on the stained glass slide
of this memory

In a gaze full of ripe vulnerability
you can see beyond seeing,
beyond personalities who steak claim
in the drama unfolding all around,
all the time, all your life
It boils down to this second
in all it's fragility,
wonder, and strength
This is not what it seems
It never has been
You are a Child
Mother,
a Kin,
a Father,
a Lover

Yes, you are a lover
in the arms of the God here
You can be nothing else
for nothing else is Just
This is no scale for your judgment
There is only what you are made of now
What is the matter of your heart
What are you keeping, holding,
and therefore reaping
And how shaking are your hands when they are
letting go
You are like a Baby
and a Woman,
an orphan
and an angel,
a Man

No pretenders or upholding
Nothing but the pinpoint acuity
of a needle on a nerve,
a finger on a pulse,
an iris on the smallest part of a soul
And in the nakedness
of Nothing Else's brazen view,
of the glory in the grand pain
and holy tears of sacrament
when her heaving chest dies down
with the quietude of solace
found in a moment's relief
when a small battle is won,
When his war tale is told
as an act of compassion
and eyes loom open upon everything,

When things fall into a whole other place
and you find yourself all together normal
in all your super naturalness
When the only warmth
is from the burning of your will
as you feel Wants slipping and tearing into
You are brought to your knees
and your perseverance
And you find that your resolve
contains all the love in the world
if nothing at all,

When righteousness calls you
to rise ,Lover, rise
Step upon the wave and ride
Find the cauldron stirring in your very spirit
and listen to the hymns the waking brew whispers
Sing them out in every step forward
and step forward,
When you find the secrets were never secrets
and the only things left are oxygen and Truth,
You will breathe
and you will see all the colors there
all the colors of your love

~Season, 12/14/10

It seems that I am not really using this space right now. I just haven't had time to read or write here. I rented the house I was living in within 2 days of putting it on the market. I moved out of there and into a spare room at a friend's place temporarily. Then I got sick again. These things have all kept me very nearly 100% consumed.

Otherwise, I have been using a paper journal. Growth and movement in the last 6 months has been too vast to encapsulate, and trying seems trite next to reality. As I've  worked my way through the darkest, ugliest parts of my past, I've found myself more deeply introspective and somewhat discrete about it. It feels like I've been kind of in another incubation period.

At present, I've been well for 2 days, and working my butt off to get ready to leave in what is now less than a week. I'm leaving Chico May 18 to go to San Jose, CA, where I will stay until May 27, when I leave for Peru.

My plane ticket is long since purchased, because I actually borrowed money for the first time in my life (*gulp*). The deposit for the program is paid, because I used what would have been rent money (very purposefully planned that way). I've raised about $400 to take with me to Peru (the whole thing is costing about $5k).  I still have supplies to purchase, and am using a credit card for it, which isn't the most pleasant feeling, but I'm doing what I have to for this to happen.  It's too important not to.  I'm still trying and hoping to raise funds, but I'm not counting on that, because I suck at asking for help, especially money, so we'll see how everything works out.

I've been using Facebook for very short updates, and for keeping in touch with others at a level that time allows for. (Call me a traitor, if you must!)  If you have a Facebook page, and we're not friends, let me know.

Once I leave for Peru, I won't be using my regular Facebook page or this blog much, if at all, for the duration of my trip. Internet access will be available, probably around every other week, and I have special sites set up for that.  In case you're interested in following the journey, I'll be using a Facebook page called Healing Season, and a blog here.

I hope everyone is well.  

Here we go again.

1.
A raindrop sits on a curl of his hair.
His eyes focus forward, faintly
drifting to me occasionally.

There is a mystery unfolding
in the third one created here,
revealed to us by ourselves
when our eyes are ripe to see it.

We are a product of convergence,
a moment of polaritiy's presence
falling away
like this...

A small hint of nakedness
underneath the weight
of ghosts ready to go home,

Transformation traversing
through the margin of space-
illusion-distance between,

Culturing, cultivating,
making ready for what waits
in the crisp clarity,
fresh and present,
always when the shadows
finally fade from the light
centered at high noon.

2.
The dream is pinching
the thread unraveling
at the place where we wish
to follow it.

I reach,
beauty building bridges
who serve only as long
as it takes to get us
out of the lie.

The only pain
is the echo of what does not exist
when we hold fast to it anyway
praying for surrender,

Burying ourselves
under the wreckage
only to cough up the dust
from disintigrated false selves.

We come before each other
with some dirt left to wash,
and parts polished - peaceful
paying for release by letting go
of past-reflecting poltergeists
so long companions.

A new prize - vacancy sign
posted where the light fills the hole:

Welcome,
You are in the vicinity of home.

Copyright 2010

Image by MinniatuRe

Passed on to me from a dear friend.  
I pass it onto you with sincerity and love...

Written on Christmas Eve, 1513 ~ by Fra Angelico

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much,
very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can
come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.
Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within
our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.
And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering,
cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you
will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power.
Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you.
Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there.

The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too,
be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering,
that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all!

But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,
wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings,
but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and
forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

Click the link. Go on, click it. You know you want to click it. Clicky clicky. Hey, you! Click, now! Aww, come on, won't you click? Pretty please with Hugh Laurie on top? You won't know why I just said that unless you click. Go on, clickify. Clickeroo. Clicker McClickerson. Click magic. Click, baby, click. Yeah, click! To click this link, drag the arrow over the top of the highlighted text and press the right button on your mouse. You can do it! Please? Click? Mmmm? Hmmm? Won't. You. Just. CLICK!

Live accoustic is excellent too. Watch it here.