waiting to live

There is no such thing

As good art

Or bad art.

There’s just art.

There is such thing as pure and impure art:

Art can be tainted by derivation

Or it can glow with self discovery and still,

There is no such thing as bad art.

You don’t have to be an artist either.

We make art unintentionally.

From your first breath until now

Your path is your creation.

The style crafted by your experiences

Is woven into your being,

Wield it thoughtfully or carelessly,

All of it is art!

We fumble to grace,

Like bark beetles writhing in darkness-

But to break into the light someday

Blind to the beauty in our wake.

The magic we can thoughtfully make

As a bridge to our hearts, to crystallize

The beauty and pain

Of being alive-

That is pure art,

Worth living and dying for.

The opinions of others mean nothing!

Your art,

Is your art.

Your art is you!

Revel in it,

For that is to truly, deeply, love yourself!

Ah that momentous day 

For our class to leave the nest

And take on the world!

The sun was high

And the smiles were wide,

But not mine.

I had no one beside me,

And I tried to hide my stunted wings

Built on years of glue and wax, for

I knew I could not deceive 

A single member of my class.

It was time to face the facts.

While others revelled in their friendships,

Lovers, and family,

I sat there alone, and I cried,

I tried to hide my tears, but couldn’t.

I was so lonely I felt it burning,

As if it would dissolve my stomach

And spill my guts into the world

As I had done so many times 

Before potential friends and lovers,

Scared them off in droves, I did.

And still, almost 10 years on,

I sing the same song,

Slightly less lonely now

But with no illusions.

The path I’ve chosen to walk is fraught

With self doubt

And chosen suffering.

Because to honor my heart is to reject

So much of convention that I’ll never,

Ever fool anyone, much less myself

That I can be embraced by everyone

The way I want to be.

But I’ll be god damned

If I don’t create the world that I want,

Even if it’s made of wax!

Though I may never take flight,

In my little corner of life

I am building a resplendent garden 

For any and all to come

And revel in unconditional acceptance.

See you there!

This is a story about a child

With a heart too big for his slender frame

And too gentle

To last in this wicked world.

This is a story about a boy

Who was made very tired by loving,

And waged a decades long war against 

The pressures turning his heart to stone.

This is a story about a boy

Who saw countless tired souls 

And wept. 

For he suffered their pain as his own.

This is a story about a boy

Who took those tired souls 

And stoked them till they shone like new,

Time and time again and still–

You can find him anywhere.

Perhaps he will find you.

But why? Not for gratitude,

Not for the expectation of reward.

But for faith,

A faith tied to no religion, no man, and no state.

A faith that thrives in life itself,

The resistance, the fight, the weight.

The freedom of a burden shared:

We all love, we all lose, we all suffer,

And yet we glow with the same light–

This wisdom which was always known.

That same boy, now a man

With the same heart of kindness

And the rough gentleness of a farmers hands 

Tends the seeds of love he has sewn.

Beyond the horizon of his life he saw:

Together all of us will rise

On the breeze in some distant land,

As the cottonwood seeds

Or the spores of calvatia

In the pale morning sun,

Shimmering like the stars 

And as numerous–

With reverence, adapted from Walter Wangerin Jr’s “The Ragman”

A relic,

An ivy strewn ark

Pierces the sky.

Who am I?

This is all so strange.

The more you truly look,

The more you truly listen,

The more you wonder…

How have we gone so wrong?

Society lost sight

Of what’s most important 

And sold it for convenience.

How have we forgotten?

Yet in this valley of darkness

Sounds of the past ring still,

And they resonate within you.

Listen!

An intent listener is a wise soul:

Hear the songs of the land rise,

The hum of humanity dancing

To the living rhythms of mother earth.

The soft morning light

Filled my soul with peace.

Like a lover’s touch

Delicate against my cheek,

Finally, after fighting a world

That’s turned countless hearts to stone 

I let go,

And I learned to embrace it all.

Tortured hearts, tortured minds,

Gentle spirits still in binds

Find me. I am here

With my branches spread wide

And ever growing.

There is room for all.

My love does not discriminate.

Come to me for rest, 

And from this sacred vessel

I shall pour out life anew.

I stare blankly into nothingness,

The cigarette burning my fingers,

Stale smoke clings to my clothes

But I don’t care anymore.

Accumulating between the bricks

Was a magic sludge of cigarette butts,

Overchewed gum, coagulated grime,

And nothingness, perfect nothingness.

To be forgotten, to be nothing at all,

What a gift to be ignored.

I’ve trodden these bricks for years

Without appreciating that nothingness.

And the nothingness behind nothingness,

I stare into the cracks between bricks

And beyond, into forgotten dreams, hearing

Ancient winds, distant lovers…

That gunk that accumulates between neurons,

That desire to tune out, to turn off.

To appreciate that which all ignore,

To bless the forgotten with awareness.

I stare blankly at my phone,

I stare blankly at my TV,

I stare blankly at my computer,

Those pixels sharp as hospital lights.

I stare blankly into my own madness,

Then, recalling those forgotten cracks

I am embraced by millions of lost souls

Whose eyes reveal they feel the same.

There is no comfort in the digital world,

That prison of evil emptiness!

Of trash that exists just to exist–

It holds nothing on my nothingness!

Every cigarette butt, every piece of gum,

Every ounce of that disgusting grime

Made a long journey to this destination,

From the beginning of time, from eternity.

From the big bang, 

To the grease in those cracks,

Everything has an origin

And an origin before that.

And then you too are staring into nothingness,

That perfect nothingness! What a gift.

The horizon vanished before me,

Leaving behind an endless void

As I began to understand

This nothingness is infinite.

The piles of dust that gathered

In the corners of my heart

Began to glow like diamonds 

In the radiation of eternity.

What I had become was God,

Or greater yet

I had become as nothing, and

One with everything.

Indistinguishable

From any face in the crowd

Or grain of sand

Or star in the sky.

I traversed that pathless road

Across a thousand lifetimes

Without taking a single step,

In the perpetual motion of

Beginnings and endings,

Births and deaths,

Infinities and singularities– 

I ceased to exist entirely.

When I came to from that endless daze,

I felt a depth of pain from all I’ve suffered

From the bottom of my heart 

to the ends of my veins.

I recalled a lesson long forgotten 

Which patiently flickered in the darkness:

This pain makes us human.

These moments of weakness,

Yearning, loneliness, doubt,

Are not to be ashamed of.

You’re alive,

No matter how much pain you carry.

You are still alive!

You can still fight, and 

You can still love.

There is still time.

Nothing can take that away from you.

Nothing!

That miracle is the guiding light

Never to be forgotten again.

Life will be difficult,

It will feel impossible,

But I promise you

It is not so bad in the end.

Suffering is the blade

Which carves our hearts

To be refilled with unfathomable love,

All you must do is hold on!

That sunrise you never expected

Is over the horizon.

It may be today, or next year, 

Or in decades, but it is inevitable.

Life will not yield a happy story,

Yet with nothing but perspective 

We can give it a happy ending,

And that’s all that matters.

For years I felt my fight was vain,

Yet foolishly I held my faith, oh how I clung!

Subconscious, even when I tried to stop,

Even when it tore my hands.

That most important faith:

A faith that love would guide me,

That in love there is no misdirection,

That mistakes and suffering are the path.

And so, let my final wisdom be this:

It was all worth it in the end.

If you steer in the direction of love,

No matter how intense the storm

I know someday you’ll see it too.

I could see the weight in your smile

But to your friends it looked the same.

What’s the difference anyway?

Everyone’s smile looks like that, right?

There is no joy untainted by my burden

So you say.

When I saw that shameless smile

For the first time

I fell in love immediately.

What’s the difference, anyway?

The weight is still there, but somehow

Your joy found its liberation.

My greatest wish for the world is

That all can share that sweet smile.

I had written it off as myth for

My entire life until that day,

And how simple it was, the path

To free the joy we’ve always had!

How rich you can be

With nothing but a smile,

With nothing but that freedom

Which nobody can take away from you.