In the Museum of Suffering

My carefully curated collection

has been well-tended, as has yours;

We stayed with the cross long after

Christ himself had ascended into heaven,

our suffering  selves sanctified and idolised

and the meaning of his supposed death lost on us

Do not make a special case for suffering:

those velvet-bound exhibits in their glass cabinets,

however precious, do not confer nobility nor special blessings

(I believed that my soul would profit, but that was a lie).

We fetishised the cross, and postponed the resurrection. 

The World, And You

There is no difference

(It’s all in me)

It’s so much simpler than you think;

There’s nothing to monitor, evaluate, control, compare

There’s nothing to save (or lose)

There’s only one coin, despite

Our ability to see both sides

Those grand opposites –

Life and death, better or worse, up or down –

No longer holding sway

How much I’ve longed for this

How much I’ve longed to be back here

Where being has no opposite

(For there is no opposite to isness)

Where there is endless space in which to meet

As you are, so is the world

As the world is, so are you;

Some regions beautiful, privileged

Other areas dispossessed, neglected

Whatever you do to you, you do to the world

Whatever you do to the world, you do to you,

For there is no difference

This Body

This body needs no further instruction

I lost the ability to move

Except by decree;

The postures, poses and forms

Externally prescribed, and restrictive

This body became a stranger, foreign

Its motives suspect, its needs unconscionable

It mutinied, of course

Who wouldn’t under such a regime?

Its energy sequestered

Its forces subjugated to purposes not its own

It failed to thrive

Howling at the restraints of civility

Now, it starts to move

Entirely on its own terms

And surprises me

Possessed of a deep well of resources

Its grace and wisdom become apparent

As it begins to forgive these decades of neglect

I crawl, delighted

I rest on my haunches, enthused

This Is What Love Does

The juju thoughts, the talismanic thinking

Each carefully tended plan, every last strategy

All previously-struck deals and bargains:

Love took them all out of my hands today

And I, willingly this time, gave them all up to love

This is what love does

So we can pass through the needle’s eye

And enter the kingdom of the heaven we thought was elsewhere

Come Back To The Well

Come back to the well and quench your thirst for aliveness

Rage with the torrent

Spin with the whirlpools

Pause in the millpond stillness

All of it water, however it flows

Jump right in

You’ll get wet, of course

You might even risk a drowning

But why make do with the sidelines of life?

Marvel at the miracle of imagining

Revel in your maddest thoughts, your most insane notions

Rejoice in your body’s contortions, the aches of the flesh

You see and are seen

You do and are done unto

You hear and are heard

You act and are acted upon

You know, are known

And are the knowing of it all

Why pretend you're not all that?

Dare You Be So Bold?

There’s an embarrassment of richness here

You are the luxuriance of being, unfestooned

The decadence of depth

It’s not that you’re not enough

For existence itself is beyond plentiful

When you see your own completeness

You’ll wonder if you dare be so bold

As to appear in public minus the garb of insufficiency

That you’ve been mistaking for who you are

This Is What No One Can Teach

No one ever taught me how to feel this pain

I learnt how to doubt and second guess myself

So all this time, I’ve been stopping well short

I no longer want your promises of salvation

(Such an inadvertent disservice, such a well-intentioned unkindness)

No one ever taught me how to lay myself open

What greater freedom is there than to feel this

Thus rendering everything else (having served its purpose)

Null and void?

My body, arcing and shaking, finally dances to its own tune.

Like Jesus’ time in the wilderness, numerous are the temptations to avoid this desert

Many are the whispers to stay away, to be unfaithful to ourselves.

This is what no-one can teach.