Consider What Choices

Jackson Pollock, unknown title; I call it "Paw"

You wreck my shop and my house

and now my heart, but how can I run

from what gives me life?

I am weary of personal worrying,

in love with the art of madness.

Tear open my shame and show the mystery.

How much longer do I have to fret

with self-restraint and fear?

Friend, this is how it is.

We are fringe sewn inside

the lining of a robe.

Soon we will be loosened,

the binding threads torn out.

The beloved is a lion.

We are the lame deer in his paws.

Consider what choices we have.

No Flag

I used to want buyers for my words.

Now I wish someone would buy me away from words.

I have made a lot of charmingly profound images,

scenes with Abraham and Abraham's father, Azar,

who was famous for making icons.

I am so tired of what I have been doing.

Then one image without form came,

and I quit.

Look for someone else to tend the shop.

I am out of the image-making business.

Finally I know the freedom

of madness.

A random image arrives. I scream,

Get out! It disintegrates.

Only love.

Only the holder the flag fits into.

No flag.

Looking for the Center

The Friend comes into my body

looking for the center, unable

to find it, draws a blade,

strikes anywhere.

The Knots Untie (2)

We have tried the fullness of presence.

Now it's time for desolation.

Love is pulling us out by the ears to school.

Love wants us clean of resentment

and those impulses that misguide our souls.

We are asleep, but Khidr

keeps sprinkling water on our faces.

Love will tell us the rest of what

we need to know soon.

Then we'll be deeply asleep and profoundly awake

simultaneously, like cave companions.

The Knots Untie (1)

Fire is whispering a secret in smoke's ear.

This aloeswood loves me

because I help it live out its purpose.

With me it becomes fragrance,

and then disappears altogether.

The knots untie and open into absence,

as you do with me, my friend.

Eaten by flame, and smoked out into the sky.

This is most fortunate.

What's unlucky is not to change and disappear.

This way leads through humiliation and contempt.

The Moments You Have Lived

An essence turns to ocean,

the particles glisten.

Watch how in this candleflame instant

blaze all the moments you have lived.

Medicine out of Pain

In this drumbeat moment of red flowers opening

and grapes being crushed,

the soul and luminous clarity sit together.

All desire wants is a taste of you,

two small villages in a mountain valley

where everyone longs for presence.

We start to step up.

A step appears.

You say, I am more compassionate

than your mother and father.

I make medicine out of your pain.

From your chimney smoke I shape new constellations.

I tell everything, but I do not say it,

because, my friend, it is better

your secret be spoken by you.