Thursday, February 27, 2014

how could you not love something like that?



how could you not love something that

never leaves you
regardless of how often you ignore it?

that's always self-shining -
never needing flint or switch or fuel?

that never changes
regardless of the vicissitudes of your daily experience?

that never takes sides
whatever person, team or nation you're supporting,
whatever idea or opinion you hold?

that never breaks apart 
even though your life appears to?

that never minds
n-e-v-e-r  m-i-n-d-s
that you spend your life running around looking for it
while it's in your face the whole time?

how could you not love something like that?

something you can never escape,
and that's so immanent
you are forced to accept it
as your own true identity?

how could you not then love 
Y O U R S E L F ?

and everything arising
- thoughts, perceptions, memories, feelings - 
within that inconceivable Self?

how could you not love that immensity which precedes
and includes all existence?

how could you not kneel at your own feet 
in awe?


how could you pretend that your enlightened
heart-driven passion
was not the Great Passion of That
which holds the planets in their orbit?



how could you ignore the urge to pour
your energy and attention
into whatever opens your heart?



how?





miram louisa
Photo:  Peter Bowers






Fire



Set your life on fire.
Seek those who fan your flames.

Who gets up early to discover the moment the light begins?
What was whispered to the rose to break it open
last night was whispered to my heart.

You've gotten drunk on so many kinds of wine.
Taste this.  It won't make you wild.

It's fire.
Give up, if you don't understand by this time that 
your living is firewood.

Set your life on fire.
Seek those who fan your flames.

The lamps are different, 
But the Light is the same.
To change, a person must face the dragon of his
appetites with another dragon, the life-energy of
the soul.

What is the body?
That shadow of a shadow of your love, that
somehow contains the entire universe.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some
momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and attend them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently
sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, 
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet
them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets
that serve to cover, and then are taken off.

That undressing, and the beautiful naked body
underneath, is the sweetness that comes after grief.
You haven't dared yet lose faith - so how can 
faith grow in you?

Gamble everything for love, if you're a true human being.
If these poems repeat themselves, then so does Spring.





Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
With thanks to  Love Is A Place
Photo:  Peter Bowers







Friday, February 21, 2014

Coming Out



I am gay.  I am straight.  I am lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender.
I am a man, I am a woman, and everything in-between.
I am a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim,
a Sikh, a humanist, a pagan, a Satanist.
I am an agnostic, an atheist, a nihilist, a dualist
and a non-dualist, a believer, a non-believer.

I am the space for laughter, tears, agony and ecstasy, the most ecstatic bliss
and the most profound heartbreak, despair and disillusionment.
I am the space for the wonderful dreams, 
the terrible nightmares, memories, visions and the most creative
manifestations of light.
All thoughts, all stories, all concepts, all sensations, all possible
feelings, human and animal, vegetable and mineral,
pass through me, arise out of me, 
and fall back into me.

I am Consciousness itself.  I am what you are.

I am coming out as Love.





Jeff Foster







Friday, February 14, 2014

With That Moon Language



Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me".
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with the full moon in each eye
that is always saying, 
with that sweet moon language, 
what every other eye in this world is dying to hear? 





Hafiz






when you love



When you love a man, he becomes more than a body.
His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, 
vanishes.

He is rich and sweet and right.
He is part of the world, the atmosphere,
the blue sky and the blue water.





Gwendolyn Brooks
Photo:  Peter Bowers






A Third Body



A man and a woman sit near each other, and they 
do not long at this moment to be older, or
younger, nor born in any other nation, or time, or
place.

They are content to be where they are, talking or
not talking.  Their breaths together feed someone
whom we do not know.

The man sees the way his fingers move; he sees
her hands close around a book she hands to him.

They obey a third body they have in common.
They have made a promise to love that body.

Age may come, parting may come, death will
come.

A man and woman sit near each other; as they 
breathe they feed someone we do not know,
someone we know of, whom we have never seen.





Robert Bly





Sunday, February 9, 2014

Beyond Measure




You are flawed,

you are stuck in old patterns,
you become carried away
with yourself. 

Indeed you are quite impossible
in many ways.

And still, you are beautiful 
beyond measure.





John Welwood
Photo:   Peter Bowers






Saturday, February 8, 2014

The Snow Man


One must have a mind of winter
to regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
to behold the junipers shagged with ice, 
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
of any misery in the sound of the wind, 
In the sound of a few leaves, 

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow, 
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 





Wallace Stevens
Photo:  Peter Bowers