Let The Silence Descend

This is the only way I knew how to say no:

I pretended to not be broken

I discovered the transient nature of things too early:

You tried to break what was already broken

I couldn’t fight you, so I fought me

Not knowing I wasn’t the enemy

I turned on my blameless self, unaware of my innocence

All this time, I’ve been trying to prove myself unbroken

When all I’ve wanted to do is lie here broken

And let the silence descend

Epithets

I thought I was the epithets you applied to me

So I, in my turn, applied my own

Until they were all that we could see

Today, let’s leave all our ideas at the door:

Your ideas about me and you

My ideas about you and me

For such things prevent intimacy

I’m tired of making excuses for what I am and what I’m not

I want to lie down with you

I want to come to you empty-handed

I have nothing to offer, and there’s nothing I need

We are so much less than we think we are

And so much more than we could have imagined

The Ballad of Me

I tried not to feel it

Yet not feeling it was so much more painful than feeling it

I tried not to need, thinking that if I could not need

I’d get what I needed

I knew this wasn’t it, and I ignored that knowing

In all the ways I knew how

I built a shrine to myself

I sang the ballad of me

My triumph when it was turning out well

My fault when it was turning out bad

Intent on proving myself right

I waited (in vain) for you to validate my version of me

Let’s face it: we’d almost rather kill ourselves

Than admit this isn’t who we are

Here’s the thing: It’s all totally innocent

We can only be what we are

The Stunning Symmetry of Opposites

I thought this wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t terrified of death:

I was terrified that this was all there was

I was terrified that life might only be this

I was trying to survive on only one shore

Despite the waves carrying me relentlessly to the other

I didn’t understand that it’s enough just to be here

Today, I can’t find a difference between life and death

Life completes death, death completes life

The staggering completeness of it all, the stunning symmetry of opposites

There's black’s velvet comfort, white’s deep delight, such intimate exquisiteness
And nothing ever out of place

When You Let Life In

When you’re willing to give every single last thing

You’ll give up your bargaining, your frantic insisting

You’ll disband the border controls, dismantle the surveillance

And you’ll stop counting life in units of you

When you let life in

The door will open, and everything will hurt

so much that you’ll laugh helplessly

Open the door to love, and pain will come too

Open the door to pain, and love will inevitably follow

The Caterpillar Is Not Condemned By The Butterfly

The caterpillar is not condemned by the butterfly

I was looking (in all the wrong places)

for a solution to a riddle

that didn’t exist

That’s how it had to be

That’s how I had to be

We have to be that to become this

Here’s the secret: there’s nothing about you

that needs to be changed,

nothing even a hair’s breadth out of place

Transformation is your very nature;

no admonishments or exhortations are required.

Yet we berate the caterpillar

We’re often at odds with our markings

Struggling, our movement limited to an ungainly crawl,

we long to fly, in the faint belief

that we have wings, somewhere

One day, the time comes, and all activities cease

All further motion is rendered futile

as we turn inward, trust the darkness, and wait.

There Is Nothing To Be Done

I’ve been rationing silence

(As if it were a rare and precious commodity)

Because I knew it would be the death of me

And I had to learn to be willing to die

Stop for too long, and the Divine will claim you as its own

Make sure there aren’t too many cracks where the light can come in

Or you’ll realise that there is nothing to be done

You can’t force this: let it come to you

You do not need to earn or embellish existence