Beloved, Let Us Weep (Your Blessed Mother Wants to Know)
Absolution By the Blessed Virgin (Demons: Just Little Old Me)
The Reason You Eat So Much (Mercury Retrograde)
Beloved, Let Us Weep
(Your Blessed Mother Wants to Know)
If you could distill your experience into wisdom
and drink of it like wine,
How drunk would you be?
Your Mother wants to know.
To encapsulate time and the potency of experience,
and eternity
Into a pill,
Yes -- Could you take it?
Your head would implode,
and all God's wisdom
Would bleed from your pores
As sparks shot from your Orphan Annie eyes
Tell me. Why are you in such a hurry
to be wise? People complain
That growth is painful
or gradual and slow
Does the rose open overnight
Or the thorn of suffering instantly awaken your soul?
Alice, can you be certain
This pill will banish your ills
Or make you taller or smaller
than the size of your integrity?
We are baptized daily by lies
And our sins can turn watered grief to the most intoxicating wine.
Drink with me now of the relief of human experience,
To chart this panoramic treasure map with divine compass
Your Mother wants to know
What it will take to make you complete,
Drunk on awareness until your souls sings
like a nightingale, with intricate good will
When your vision wholly resolves yet can encompass
All disparities in your clarity:
Light & dark good & bad hesitation & breakthrough,
High tide wets my shoes. I wade through branches and breaches of daylight
Stretching my arms to the sun like a plant seeking to bloom
Before my time has come
Then, the Blessed Mother says,
you are mine!
I was in such a heavy sleep,
Racing to the next red light
Tumbling and spinning like a top
towards stocks like falling stars
Be brave, the Blessed Mother advised,
And lift your dragging feet from the mud:
Do honor to the blood that was spilled for you,
Aware that you stand on shoulders of the fallen
So your vision can stretch towards the sky
You haven't perished in a camp
You haven't fought in a war alien to human sanity
You haven't been persecuted as spiritual target practice
In a city inhabited by strangers or angry Romans
Wearing long judgmental robes against your kind
Truthfully, you answer only to your feeble heart
Waiting for you to awaken & take a stand
On your own two feet of understanding
Shining as the lotus you are you are you
Are you my beloved? Are you
My immortal sweetheart so fine?
If I could kiss you awake
Until my life-force ebbed and died,
I wonder if you would appreciate my sacrifice
Would you would you could you even remember my name?
The Creator
in these shadowed hours
Wonders if, momentarily, you have also forgotten
Earth's beauty sublime,
With its clogged traffic lights
and all its petty gains
Beloved, my heart opens to you as a sunflower
Unable to resist your healing morning rays
Which stroke & cool my pain, and bless my awareness
Until the petals of my face unfold to the courage of daybreak
I am shattered. Not content to live much longer
as a successful coward
Beloved, let us weep tears of light
Into each other's embracing arms
and become awakened once again.
Absolution By the Blessed Virgin
(Demons: Just Little Old Me)
I have a confession. The demons
I saw in others, the attributes
I attributed to them, and to
Motivating their behavior towards me
Were my own demons partying in the attic.
I thought they were in the basement
In some dark, hidden place covered with roots
In some dank, musty cellar in a rotted chest of drawers
Next to a rack of questionable wine.
They were not. They were mine,
So close to my higher thinking
That they didn't need to hide.
These demons didn't need to
Dress in outdated clothes, or
Effect the styles of olden years, or even pretend
To be unresolved memories from another time.
Nor were their whereabouts that hidden, though
Under my own nose. Or rather, right beneath my third eye.
Their power was based by aligning their thoughts
As closely as possible to my hidden fears
For rejection and for being unloved. Classic. To realize
They've been throwing a dinner party in my attic for years!
I didn't have to demand that they leave.
Nor did I require a Priest to exorcise their chaise lounge
Or their Chippendale cabinets (they decorated with flair)!
I didn't offer them a final cigarette
In honor of their expulsion / execution / excision.
For I saw that their base of camp
Was actually tastefully decorated, and why
Destroy the attic for the sake of a few fleas? In fact,
I love the job they spent decorating the space.
And I frequently adjourn there,
To the rarefied place of the higher mind,
To seek an overview of my domain.
Besides, I hate to pay another interior decorator
To rip out but then reinstall
Additional perks and modes of thought for my mind...
Truly, we must acknowledge the good work
Of consummate professionals who justify our inner life,
Who make our mental workings so absolutely comfortable,
Even if they are demons.
I had a simpler, most elegant way.
I sat with the Blessed Mother of the clear light.
And I petitioned Her ‹
Holy Mother, Loving Mother,
Refocus my core thoughts to priority and clarity.
Fill my heart with self-acceptance.
Refrain from flagellating myself, bashing myself
Upon the rocks of comparison to others.
Blessed Mother of the pure white light,
Allow me to receive the key
Which causes demons to fade, by centering my focus
On that which is in my most authentic good.
At last I had integrated an understanding of my enigma
Which the attic demons skillfully lodged in my mind,
Adjacent to my rather lukewarm hot tub of forgiveness.
They would say to me, "It's not you, it's them." And immediately
I would project upon others my fears, a sense of being judged.
Sometimes it WAS them. But almost always,
The fear of being unloved was mine, and was not the others...
It was just little old Me.
The Reason You Eat So Much
(Mercury Retrograde)
The reason you eat so much
Is that life has not filled you..
And the reason life has not filled you
Is because you are incomplete.
I looked up, and there you were
Riding on a thousand-petaled lotus
Blaming your mother for everything
That has gone wrong.
Beyond the horizon where stretches my gaze
You're blissfully entangled,
lounging in Mercury's arms.
"Mercury's retrograde for three weeks," you said.
Your smile was wan as He cradled your head
To have you looking back the wrong way.
I got a headache watching you shimmer, sliding in retrograde.
I've got a neck sprain, I've lost my taste for dinner
Trying to fathom why your companion, Complaining,
Moves you, sputtering, out of void, into chasm.
The reason you flounder and flail at communication
Isn't because Mercury's retrograde.
Your excuses are trails of powdered sugar
Dusted backwards about the cosmos, across the centuries.
"I'm a diabetic," you say..
"What's for dessert, my sweet?"
The reason you fail is because you succeed at failing
And spike your excuses to the goal post of a falling star.
Your ranting and railing, your whining and wailing
Are some Pony Express by your headless rider,
All the more telling.
Beloved, were I to tell you
How beautiful is your true and immortal soul,
The heavens would weep with happiness
And from their tears dolphins would leap,
Forming formations of perfect geometry
Even Busby Berkeley would like.
Clueless? You regale us with stories
About your heartless landlord parking a semi
By the entrance to your third eye..
You cannot work because your father abused you,
Your tenant is an alcoholic, there's a pig that's escaped
From your sty, and he's not shy, but you're a rebellious vegan,
Wolfing a BLT under your sheets on a day for repentance
Like Little Bo Peep, and your missed Muffin has curdled
And you no longer know which way to go,
Your dog is in therapy
And ate the map
To the secret treasure of your soul.
At last the planets were in perfect alignment,
The tenant had moved, and fresh flowers fell
From the helpful Heavens as you stumbled through the snow.
Jesus appeared in a flawless polka-dot bikini
Just to help you to write. At last, the Universe
Was in sync with perfection, and no darkness
Was swept under the rug in your closet of blight.
"I don't like the color," you said, and sent
Christ consciousness away.
"I just don't feel like it."
And you sat with your arms folded by the Tree of Life,
Watching the starlight fade.