What holds us in bondage?
Pain and poverty
Cruelty and fear
Greed and loneliness
Claustrophobia and linear time
Gravity
Moments of happiness
When the stream is flowing
The sun beneficent
The forest’s pines perfume the wind-chiming town
Moments of peace
When there is enough love
When nightmares and ghosts are
Far-away forgotten
When there is enough food
When no one sins
Do those hours merely distract us from hell
Or are they keys to heaven’s door?
Is Wonder itself the way out –
Punishments of existence pale
Against the infinite sky
The infinitesimal life of every cell
Every atom in its own vast space
Painless as it goes about its appointed tasks?
And what of Gratitude -
That elusive concept
Born of want and need,
Lost in the chaos and traffic of survival-mode white-knuckle
Jaw-clenching neck-and-neck races with death?
Is “thank you Spirit” a fantasy
Or a window into a new realm
Where Mercy outranks
The whipping winds of punishments
Overdressed for casual crime sprees,
Judgments handed down to damaged men and women,
Their hollow lives and worse:
Undeserved guilt inflicted by
Mean-spirited mentors
Citing God and good intentions
While they pass plates of suffering
To such as Socrates, Jesus and
Countless confused children of humanity,
A realm we cannot enter with grudges
With faithless cynical curses,
Blaming and shaming ourselves and others?
We rage at the door OPEN, damn it!
And when demands are met with silence, turn away, certain there is no God.
We pray the god of algebra
To fill in the blanks
But the page remains empty,
X y and z do not animate to soothe our ignorance
So the algebra god too has abandoned us.
The keys are universal and cost-free
Requiring instruction and practice
And conjuring from the depths of abject humility
To the heights of ceaseless Soul-seeking:
Eat the world’s pain
Chew swallow digest eliminate
Transform it!
Eat it raw, as it is.
Do not shrink from sadness
Or disease but taste, chew and let it pass
Though it is acrid and often
Crunches and cuts like glass
In the endless loneliness of desire
And childless years
And impossible goals.
Know it is unreal as Hollywood gore.
Cry if you must, if you can!
Summon Soul’s astringent digestive acid:
One teardrop or torrents,
This magical juice renders evil sterile,
A washing-machine for fears –
Confuse them, pound them in
The salty waves, ask out loud
To be purged by mystic, invisible forces and
Envision release
Relief, shout and vomit –
The dirty water
No longer yours to keep,
Returned to the sea of possibilities
Dissolved,
Distilled into gentle rain that blesses all sinners and saints.
What holds us in bondage?
The loss of Love’s certainty
In the faux paradise of transient things
We forget or do not yet sense The Child’s Hand
Reaching from the origin of every living minute
With innocence strong as diamonds
Hot as nuclear sunshine
And will not let go
Its fierce grasp.
Love is the perception of innocence
(And only what is Real)
Wherever The Child takes us.
Fearless.
Free.
