Child's Play

When did we stop stomping in puddles 

When did we cease playing the balloon game

How long has it been since you caught snowflakes on your tongue

When did we all become so tame?

When did the wild crashing river

become a trickling flow

Where is that unabated spirit 

Just where did it go?

Have you rolled down a hill

tried to catch a leaf as it fell from the tree

Lived with abandon, unbounded carefree

In the seat of this moment, in liberty

Pay a penny for blown dandelion wishes

rising on Summer's breezy air

cartwheeling through sprinklers with nary a care

riches from each fountain you leap, for a simple dare

This poem's for you little boy on the bench smile stretching your face

Still holding momma's hand before it becomes out of place.

Does childhood slide like dusk to dawn 

Or is it slowly replaced

Does it escape suddenly like the balloon's loud pop

Or is it one day there then the next day stop.

Without expectation unburdened by history

Beginners mind, children's way, true liberty

We shackle ourselves in fear bound by grown up worry

We forget what is truly here 

In our obtaining, grasping, and hurry

We get stuck when all along we had the key.

Open, let go and 

let it all be so.

House Builder

House Builder

What if life is telling you exactly what you need to hear?

What if every moment, every single heartbeat,

every random twist of your wrist, twist of your hair

or twist of your story, that you make to be about you

has led to this moment now. 

Actually, could it even be any other way?

What if rather than looking beyond this gift 

you let go and embraced now, fully.

All of existence worked its potent power for you to exist.

You are the only expression of your form that will ever be

Can you see you are infinite beauty manifested?

but this is not a project of affirmation.

This is not a poem for building self esteem,

for a self that isn't here.

No, this is dynamite set to bring down the builder's house,

to reduce you to only the essence, frankly, nothing. 

But in that nothing, that is the subject of all objects,

you will discover life and know that you were never separate.

The Angry Poem

I, am an angry poem,

Beware, I might jump off the page 

and with a tightly curled fist wallop you in the gut too.

or I might spray my molten heat all over you.

I am a black man after all, you probably expect no more.

concentrated genetic fury from slave block to jim crow.

People like you would imprison us still

making sure we don't access the fullness of our wild hearts

For me, anger has always been radioactive.

Uppity people who look like me get put down, permanently.

Perhaps that's why its always been easier to hurt than to hurt.

To be black in any family is to know anger, but not always how to hold it.

You may talk of fighting anti-blackness 

but you are snake-like in your poison planted words

deceptive, plotting, traitorous.

You do not fool me with you empty platitudes 

and honey-laced toxic whisperings

I see you for who you are.

And if there is any power in this angry poem at all

in the first encounter with it or the twentieth,

it will be in its power to DESTROY.

but not like an atomic bomb or a vicious slur

no, this explosion melts all boundaries

reduces the aggrieved and the aggriever

into their interdependent primordial essence 

transformed.

no blame exists here

just the raw ingredients 

of pure potential bathed

in compassion's building blocks. 

Belonging

Perhaps it all just wants to belong,

to be seen for what we are, 

to be known for the fact that by,

improbable odds we even exist.

Love comes back to collect all things

to know itself in all things.

Life as a game of peek-a-boo.

It seeks all the shadowy parts, 

all the parts that feel they have no home,

that may fear being seen. 

I "see you"

What if more than anything 

those parts simply want to be seen, heard, felt,

from the ache in your arthritic knees

to the calla lilly in the vase 

to the unforgivable act committed against you, 

by you, for you, in your name.

How a quivering heart would oscillate

if it was all seen; the sublime in it's majesty

to the unfathomably grotesque

just different nomenclatures for 

Lila

in it's all encompassing magnificence.

In Search of Something Else

 In Search of Something Else

The love that passed you by 

is not your source of misery

Nor the paths you could not try

that cause you to be unhappy

Neither parties that you've missed

Nor the ones you've never kissed

No self imposed, failed test

could yield such profound unrest.

They're not the foundation of your stinging pain

Nor the sorrows tallied in your sullen ledgermain

For in truth, a deeper reality and beyond exists

In this space here, dwells peace and serenity persists

Relax into yourself for it's near as can be

When all is removed then what do we see?

The source is never separate and never can be far

How could it be, it's in fact who you are.

Abandon memories of a self and all of its stories

Jettison your deeds, your image, your mind, your glories.

This place, above all, is silent and is still

Leave at the door, all false masks and your will.

Beyond the threshold --all that which is true

Discover here that which is simply, wholly, you.

A you unbounded vast and fully free

A you, that is we, expressed as mystery

Fruit of Being Poem

Fruit of Being

I never dreamt I'd lose myself and find the whole world

though I searched a thousand basket stands for the

ripest fruits

each time, empty hands.

I'd been told about the sweet nectar of true surrender,

of a cup full of emptiness, 

but I'd not tasted it's draught

til now.

What do you eat when you're satisfied ?

What do you drink when your sated? 

I know not how to be in this world

but I am no longer frightened 

fulfilled,

I am.

 Haiku Recipe

I slowly wake up

and begin to see clearly

how to be today

--

With a lions roar

felt like a gentle whisper

we are all uncaged

--

Johnny Appleseeds

sprinkling truths into the air.

Somewhere sprouts will grow

--

Intent is the fuel

surrendered to emptiness

we stir the soupot 

--

First this way then that

Tasting to make sure its good

Now, ready to eat