IRONIC

#48

IRONIC

Lost in our heads

bruised and exhausted by relentless thinking

we create our own 

dis-ease

by

the deeply ingrained belief

that 

something must be done

about this compulsive drive 

to do

Something-

...and Happy Festivas for the Rest of Us

                                                                               #47
          

xmas morning. 

holds no connection to spirit for me but my connection to spirit has been lacking lately as it is.  although i know that the force of love is pulling me towards its source always, in the midst of my fear and resistance, i can feel despairing and alone. 

what keeps me from giving up?

the love,

 the undying love i have for myself keeps me in the ring. 

ironic that it is my self love that refuses to settle for an outcome

anything other than the experience of self love and complete acceptance.

the appearance of loves absence is illusionary. 

but the belief in it’s absence 

creates an experience of sadness

and loneliness for me-

for this i can always take note and apologize, 

make amends to myself for

forgetting to be compassionate with myself. 

i am the first person on my list 

that i must love completely 

if i am to love you. 

when i judge and am unhappy 

with myself 

for any reason, 

when i measure and reject my current presence

i reject all the world and 

each and every person in it. 

as within so without

at all times. 

i am an imperfect man

with a good heart

and a sincere desire to become

a love spot, 

a safe place to be for my self and others

in an unsafe and often frightening world. 

what makes me safe is my understanding 

that the force that shapes

circumstances in this world

has as its highest intention

the goal of growing me,

of growing us

to the realization that we are-each of us

 simply a shard of God itself, 

simply a crystal of light from all that is light, 

just a chip off the old block of Love

that creates everything in the universe

that is

the universe itself. 

amen. 

THE LORD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

#46

or

GOD ONLY KNOWS AND WE SURE AS HELL DON’T!

...we all contrive stories to explain why things happen and are the way they are.  but we don't really ever know, we are not gods or omnipotent. we are human and limited in our understanding. we can strive to maintain faith in a loving universe that provides for us, and what appears to us as good, bad or ugly conforms according to divine plan, chaos theory, or whatever you want to call the force(s) you believe in.

what if, we really are immortal and after our deaths, regardless of whether we think of them as untimely or tragic..we come back?  we live in god’s world and not one of our own making. the game goes on and on and on, life after life after life. 

This idea doesn’t at all sound strange compared to the many systems of belief that we indoctrinate ourselves with. Born a sinner having to repent and be perfectly good (whatever that looks like)  so we don’t go to EVERLASTING hell after we die. Why the fk  would an after life last eternally when the one we know is so short? 

Who developed these beliefs; especially the ones with a cruel and punitive god. thank you for writing a horror movie for me to live in disciples of Christ or scribes or ghostwriter altogether.  What nonsense. Harder still to understand is how we can go on believing even slightly that there is hell and damnation if we don’t behave exactly as some dogma written by some imperfect human proclaims. 

We are kept in our place by fear. This is the way societies control the people. And the more frightened the people become the greater their own need for control, for rules, for ideas of right and wrong. The result is that we live our lives founded in fear instead of love. Judgment instead of acceptance. 

But if we are immortal then what is there to fear? Death is just a new beginning ya? Isn’t this idea as valid as any other? Perhaps even more so since energy is neither created nor destroyed but only transformed time and time and time again. 

I dunno.  What would it be to go through life feeling completely safe in the wisdom of insecurity, never knowing what will unfold next? If not for our fear, isn’t this the adventure we would all like our lives to be? 

#45

Happy Birthday Dear Jesus

well it’s xmas time sweet jesus

what an advertisement you are

seems like every mothers daughter 

is out driving in her car

and the streets are strewn with holly

and the stores all hired their jolly

santa claus plainclothesman

to help them push the stuff

and all in your name jesus

we buy in vain sweet jesus

i wonder if it pleases you 

to see this going on

it’s your spirit that they’ve used again

i think you been abused again

from one cross to another lord

when will it ever end

cause it’s xmas time again sweet lord

i wonder if you’re getting bored

or do you sit dejectedly

revising plagues revengefully

to visit unexpectedly

upon our lowly sins

o the irony is great my prince 

like shakespeare you’ve been better since

you died and left a lifetimes work

for us to misconstrue

your’e birthday is our birthday lord

your tree in every home

because you lived is why we give

but when you died, you died alone..

#44 The One & Only

The One & Only

i don’t know what to do God. I truly do not know what to do. It is so quiet this grey morning in the world, in your world... i would like to become this quiet. Perhaps that is your wish and your gift for me. To quiet me. I don’t have to get up and go to a job I don’t enjoy. I don’t have to wake up next to a person I don’t like. I don’t have to get anyone off to school. I have nothing I have to do yet I feel compelled to do something. Compelled to know what to do.  What is this? Human doing and not human being. 

What would it be like to just be? To let thoughts dissolve. To pay them no attention. Let’s see.......

( an hour later)

I am still agonizing over what to do

to escape the existential discomfort I am feeling;

under it all

lies a deep familiar grief,

a sadness,

the grief of loneliness..

they say this is when we need the hand of god

on the back of our neck

to comfort and console us.

they say god is here and willing but i must ask

for him to come

and bath me in his healing light,

pour love through this useless vessel

until it is filled with meaning,

until an abundance of love overflows me 

and once again

i have something to give to others in need,

they say, 

you cannot give away what you do not have..

Surrender Dorothy

okay i give, i give!

we all remember having to give up, right?

“Do you give?” 

you cannot wrestle free from the painful hold 

someone bigger has applied to you.

“Yes,yes I give” 

 then suddenly relief-

but relief poisoned by a sense of shame

at your surrendering. 

i should have won or at least withstood the pain! 

i should have been able to break free!

 I should have chosen death over giving up,

giving in,

I should have chosen honor..

But don’t they say, 

your arms are too short to box with god? 

why the shame?

what is there to be ashamed of?

that you are not a man? 

and if you are you are a broken, weak and worthless man? 

who gave you these ideas of yourself? 

who judged you without mercy ceaselessly?

whom could you never please or satisfy?

invent yourself a god who loves you when you are down 

and can’t get up of your own accord,

invent a forgiving god who loves you

vulnerable and imperfect,

sit here right here and continue to write because

you are really praying in the only way,

in the best way you know how. 

the pen is your rabbi,

the paper your scroll,

this is the sacred work 

you were meant to do,

the reason you are here,

everybody prays in different ways

and when we pray 

 the differences we create 

to separate ourselves 

from one another disappear

leaving only the essence 

of who we really are,

we are One, 

the one and only

*

i want to blame the world for my discontent

but i know that isn’t the problem,

I’m sitting here 

tapping my pencil on the inside of my head

trying to shake loose or pry open

an answer to this ongoing 

existential question:

what am i supposed to be doing 

in a world of 

right and wrong?

a world

where everything is evaluated, 

judged good or bad,

 right or wrong,

this worrying tool

i carry on top of me

that weighs me down

chops off my happiness

with a hatchet.

whose hatchet is this? 

is this my dead mother’s hatchet? 

that opens up the wound my shame grows in? 

is this my father’s hatchet

that chops my dreams in half before they have half a chance?

is this my older brother’s hatchet

that hangs over my head and threatens to kill me

if i tell on him?

is this my first love’s hatchet

chopping at my manhood and my genitals?

whose hatchet is this? 

and why

although every one is long gone 

am I still surrounded by this threat?

Mother and father and brother and lover

long gone

and still i wake up fearing for my life. 

whose hatchets are these? 

they are mine-

why do i keep them?

when will i stop this? 

how can i learn to love myself 

reliably

when i am drowning in self hatred?

is this what prayer is for? 

is God here waiting 

for me to humble myself (again)

and admit

that i do not know how to love my self

and that I am ready to learn?

is there a man or woman in this world

who i can call

that will say the loving things to me

i cannot say to myself?

is there a man or woman in this world

who i can call

that will  listen to me

say loving things to myself?

i am no deserted island

i am a man abandoned

by himself,

unprotected, unloved,

unsafe..

i am that boat on the horizon

that never sees me on this island,

neglected, ignored, and abused,

i perpetuate the past

again and again

i feel despair,

an inability to reinvent myself

i feel so far from God,

so far from safe..

i know what i need

when this mourning for the dead and dying ends,

when this premature funeral 

for my hope is over

and a belief in escaping this grave returns

in times like this 

there is only one hand to grasp,

 and reaching up in prayer

i hold the hand of God once more

and feel the lift of trust and faith

carry me out of darkness

and back into the one and only

 sky.