Alden

They told me to be myself

That everyone else was taken

But I’m taken

With everyone else

No one ever told me that to be yourself

You have to be everyone else first

How no one ever spoke a word they didn’t chisel

From the lips of someone who else who said it to them, for the first time

I open the pores of my skin to receive, cupping myself like hands begging, like petals opening in a chilly spring rain.

It’s all taking. Even the generative parts. Especially the generative parts. All I have to offer are the receipts for what’s already passed through me.

My only legacy will be the catalog of all my debts. I will owe this world nothing but gratitude.

I’m losing my grip on what’s been gripping me

Losing hold of what I’m holding onto

Up to here with never being here

Finished with never finishing the finishing stroke

It’s not complicated, my way of complicating everything

I wish that I could just stop

Stopping seeing what’s directly in front of me

With is in mind, I’ve reached the decision to entrust what’s left of me

To the project of trust itself

That’s possible, you know. It’s possible to trust fall into the palm of the universe

Never asking about the ending because there isn’t an ending

Because I’m not the beginning of anything

Least of all myself

I believe that I grew out of my mother as she grew out of hers

It sounds obvious, but it’s not. It’s harder than you think to believe the most basic things

Still, I know that the fruit of the tree of life was never forbidden

Only guarded by love, like a flaming sword, like bodies colliding in the vastness of a heart space too old to fathom

I believe that everything is falling but nothing is falling alone

So I’ve decided to fall for everything, be taken in by all of it, be bamboozled by the world

I’m not sure when I handed myself over

Turning myself in

Consenting to holy matrimony

To this

Whatever this is

Without answers to even one of my questions

Like two kids at a midwestern church

Promising each other the world

The way people do when the world is promising back

I thought at the time I was standing up for myself

Carving out a little space where I could still say “no” to everything I was against so that if “yes” ever found me, I’d still be here waiting

I thought I was waiting for answers

I was so scared to not believe in the divine Christ that I padded my so-called skepticism with prayers for forgiveness for needing to know what really happened

To cause a thirty three year old man who never knew his real dad to die for something he believed in that didn’t even have a name

All I knew was that the parts I believed most were the two Mary’s at Calvary, unlawful mother and daughter, weeping until dawn because their love was more real than every law laid down by that bloodied priesthood

Because they knew what I knew, that no one should have to die for the love of god, living god’s love is already hard enough

All I knew was that when I watched the world outside our tiny world through the telescope of my eyes—and god knows I always watched—I didn’t see darkness

I saw people whose eyes I wanted to be brave enough to meet

All I knew was that something in me would die unless I said “no” so quiet and deep that the world stopped its orbit around the sun and I stopped getting older

Because I couldn’t be ok when I wasn’t ok

That was all. A simple matter of facts.

I’d no idea that the truth would ask of me everything except answers

Until she’d drawn out of me every question cradled in the cavity of my chest

I’d no idea that when I turned myself in I’d be turning myself inside out

Until the deepest parts of me travel the long mile from my heart to my face

I couldn’t have imagined that when I signed up to revise my opinions I was signing up to revise myself over and over again until my self fits the shape of a soul I couldn’t have imagined

I thought I was facing reality, when in reality, I was facing my own face, which is all that ever stood between this heart and the world

That to walk that mile I’d have sob the heartache of the people my ancestors drove out of this country, walking, because my people hadn’t learned a language older than taking

That to walk that mile I’d have to say I love you and mean it for the first time, to someone who could never love me back

Because until I’d spilled my heart love like a broken vase, I wouldn’t even recognize its contents

I’d have to look into the eyes of someone who wanted me to get better for no reason other than their own wanting and say “I’ve got nothing” while their compassion undresses me to the center of the center of the center of my shame

Shame so much older than I am that I couldn’t name its heredity except to say that we’ve laid waste the earth trying to expunge a sin that was never even ours

That’s how curses work. That’s how healing works

You turn yourself inside out and stop being anything at all

Because being what this place made you isn’t a thing you can be

So you say “no” when you can’t say yes

It’s not complicated. It’s just lonely for a while

When you give up on guessing what you might become

You can’t promise your heart to anything

I’ve tried. It refuses to be bartered

And your eyes, they don’t belong to you

They’ll go on seeing in spite of you

Your actions, even, are a conversation—sometimes a screaming fight—with this world. You are at most half of the dialog

But you can take a vow of strength

I know because I promised to be strong

Before I was strong enough to know the cost of such a vow

Before I can remember

Perhaps before even taking a breath

I promised to run barefoot over the limestone of that long driveway and never show on my face the bruising of my feet

I promised to feel my anger like lightening, no matter how deep I had to bury it

I promised to swallow loneliness whole like a fish and never ask for love until it’s offered

I promised to never leave, even if in the end, there’s nothing left of me to stay

I promised that the only tear you’ll ever see on my face will fall silent and heavy as the world is heavy

I made an unconditional promise to live. And even when I balanced on the precipice of dying i never dreamed of giving up

The only vows you never break are the ones you didn’t make, because they made you. And you don’t know how to take yourself back

So instead, I had to learn new ways of being strong

It takes strength stop when you can’t keep going

It takes strength to ask for love when love is a conversation of which you make only half

It takes strength to leave when staying is killing you

You have to be strong to hold the weakness you’re pregnant with

It’s strong not to leave any of you behind

I’m not sure how I would have cracked my heart open wide enough to let all of me in

If you hadn’t pried it open with bloodied fingertips

If the song of your breath hadn’t frozen like the body of a sparrow

If the pulse of your silence wasn’t screaming that there’s a person in my house who’s dying

But wants to live

Don’t we all want to live?

If this were about relationship there would be a manual to consult in the manufacturers guide

There’s no survivors guide to the heart only the faith of a baby who will wrap her translucent hand around the finger of anyone close enough to touch

The medicine of the soul isn’t medicine at all, or a path, or even a crossing. It’s a hand you grab onto because you at least are still alive and cannot help knowing it

If you really knew me, you would know the parts of me buried so deep that I don’t even remember that they’re there

Like a water witcher waving your poplar wand, eyes closed and everything else open, you call me by truer names

Because you hold the knowing of a secret. That everyone really does try their best.

Only my best, like a borrowed tuxedo, is really someone else’s and there’s no way in this vast department store that I’ll ever find my way to mine, without the way you see me

The longer I spend seeking spiritual realization, the less I have any idea what I’m up to. I’m reminded of what Adyashanti says about the reason for spiritual practice changing. Maybe you begin because you’re curious or because you hope to relieve suffering or maybe just because you want community. Then you do these practices and eventually something happens. Something in you undeniably opens and you feel the possibility of more space, more “you” in yourself. It’s impossible to articulate but you feel it’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to you.

Then maybe you spend some years practicing because you want to feel that again. And most of the time you don’t. Most of the time at best you capture little glimpses of it, but as soon as you do you get so excited about it you can’t drop in again. And otherwise a bunch of boredom, self-pre-occupation, anxiety, and the like is what you primarily contact. You keep this up to the point of total frustration and at the point where you can’t take the disappointment anymore and feel like giving up on the whole thing, there’s another realization. The realization that trying isn’t the way. That all this trying is just the same old thing playing itself out.

So then you practice relaxing. And since you’re practicing relaxing and surrender and trust you aren’t nearly so disciplined about it. Soon enough you relax right out of practicing relaxing. You just slip quite gently into your same old patterns. Then you catch it and ricochet back into discipline, overshooting the mark a fair amount, but catching something real as the pendulum passes the zero mark between trust and alertness. And then again, and again, and the pendulum swings between surrender and self-responsibility—between being relaxed and being alert.

What happens over time is that the pendulum swings become smaller. You spend a bit more time balanced precariously between alertness and relaxation. The pendulum keeps moving, overshooting in both directions, but the swings become progressively smaller as the strength to stay with sensation grows and the trust to be gentle with yourself and relax into reality also grows.

Now the realizations come more often, but they’re smaller. Less exciting because you weren’t that far out of ease or clarity to begin with. Now you meditate for a new reason. Because it’s gentle and rich and nourishing to hold yourself in compassion. Because you really want to know what’s going on inside. So there isn’t a “because” at all anymore. Just the doing it.

Of course, this journey isn’t linear. It’s directionally what happens but there are plenty of loop backs and false starts along the way. You come to some plateau of progress where the sitting is just sitting and the pendulum has quieted. But all unknown to you there’s another wing to the building you’ve never visited and in the gentle quiet the locks fall away and suddenly some new experience comes surging to meet you. Or perhaps that experience comes to you from the outer world, like a letter inviting you to feel some emotion you wouldn’t have chosen but now can’t deny. Then the pendulum starts up good and strong again and the whole process plays out in miniature.

The universe is undeniably fractal. Galaxy within galaxy cluster, star within galaxy, and so on to the grains of sands and invisible cells of our fragile bodies. Wave on wave within a tidal pattern. The earth itself waves — in and out of land mass. Rising into mountains. Falling again to the ocean floor. Just the same, realization rides on the cresting peaks and vast undertow of yet deeper knowing. It doesn’t resolve. There isn’t a hero’s journey. Or rather, the hero’s journey happens again and again and again every hour of every day of every life. But there isn’t a happily ever after or all’s well that ends well. Because nothing ever ends. The band keeps playing while all the players drop out.

How is it that I become solid and porous at the same time? How come I stop knowing anything about Alden, and at the same time Alden is here? More here? I explain it to myself that there are parts of the brain involved underneath language. That when they are felt the thinking mind knows its smallness and the felt intuitive body knows its power. That’s a pretty good explanation. But even in explaining it I lost the fact of it. So back in. Back in the darkness. Into the womb. Into the predawn. Into myth and symbol and the chiastic void of the infinite. I guess it all sounds pretty phony until you go there. Or else it sounds very grand. It isn’t either.

It’s just love. A great tenderness of the heart. A great welling compassion that doesn’t need a reason to be there. It came first. It was already here. Texturing the sunlight on the wall and making homely faces beautiful. I wonder how B’s face could be so beautiful. It doesn’t make sense. All that distortion of muscular dysfunction and the saliva dropping when he’s fed. You see your sister turn away and that makes sense. You remember also flinching away and feeling bad about it too. But now there isn’t disgust. You feel his face is beautiful.

How strange it is that we ever believed in the world we see when a change as basic as the moon rising can transform it before our eyes. How much more so, the opening of our body to the breath. How much more so the warming touch of love that wakens choral voices within. The world comes to us by messenger. How good it is to finally receive the world. How good it is to be received. Until there is no difference. No one receiving. No one received. But alas. I wish I could be the first to write about matters of the spirit without enigmas and self-contradictions. This, it seems, is not allowed. Reality does not permit it.

Sisyphus. Condemned king of legend. Trickster who deceived the gods. He’s like the O.J. Simpson of mythology—less famous for his crimes than for his capture and punishment. He’s a boogieman to remind us that the only thing in this world that is truly infinite is impotent desire. The cruelest of punishments is not to go without. It’s to go without, when plenty is right there for the having. It’s the definition of maddening. That’s what they did to Sisyphus. They made him go mad.

This is a counter story.

The water is there, frigid from the high mountains. You dip your head to quench a thirst that is fire in you. And then. “No. No, not again.” There are only dry stones.

Frantic, you try again and again. Plunging yourself into a world that can promise but not deliver. You run madly up and down the length of the riverbed, diving periodically into pools that are not pools until you are bloodied by a deceitful world.

At last you lie down, spent. There is a quiet of dying around you. There is comfort in that quiet, and the chill of the failing light. The night comes and with it a sliver of moon. The echo of a verdant land once again comes to dream drenched senses. The sound of water as it rills between the stones. The whisper of willows.

You stir. You creep forward. Slowly. Very slowly. Slow as the approach of a wild thing, or the approach of the one who would tame it. The two approaches, you realize, are the same. Slow and attentive.

As you come close, the water again disappears. Only rock and sand. But this time, only the sight of it. The sound of it still comes to you. How strange. The sound of water in a lifeless, bone dry country.

You wait. You wait until your mind aches with waiting. Then again, quite suddenly, the moonlight glimmers on the surface of water. Gently you exhale the night and proceed, your belly serpentine in the long grass. Closer. Even slower. Bending time, so as not to break it.

That’s the counter story to unquenchable desire. That’s how you stop going mad. You slow down. Want to meet your wild and precious life? Try the crawling, twitching, wide-eyed pace of a wild thing pit in the balance of fear and desire. When desire is stronger than fear, the world flees from you. When fear is stronger than desire. Well then, that’s when you give up. You can’t run from the world. It’s the only one you’ve got.

There’s an unintuitive, but perfectly sound logic to all this. If you want quenching, learn to tolerate your thirst. If you crave freedom, accept your shackles tight about your ankles. You can’t run. Not yet. You can’t even walk. What you will one day do will only be known if today you do what you are able to sustain. No less. No more. That’s what finding your edge means. It means finding the exact amount of free action that you can really, actually, sustain.

Let me put this another way. Finding the waters of life—of your life—means giving up on breakthroughs. There won’t be a breakthrough. If there were going to be one—well—you’d have broken through by now. You’re praying for a break because crawling all that way seems just about unbearable when you’re so thirsty. Because crawling that slowly seems absurd. Like listening to the podcast of your life at ten percent speed, the droning of your frustration drawn out into ridiculous distortion.

Still, you sense that if you move at the pace of trust, then a foot traveled is a foot gained. You’ve always felt this. Before words. Below them. You want ground you can hold and water you can drink. It’s freedom—a mustard seed of hard-earned, bonafide faith. If you make a break for it, you’ll pull up hard on the end of your halter. Very hard. You’ll be thrown back and lose ground. The water will dry as you palm it. You’ll cement a little deeper the belief that there isn’t a way out. That you’re doomed to play the same joyless game endlessly.

So. No break throughs. No revelations. No sprint to freedom. You’re going to have to move at the speed of trust. The speed of the most frightened, resistant, distrustful part of you.

So that’s the bad news. What’s the good news? Because there’s actually a lot of good news. I had to tell you the bad news first for the good news to get in. If I told you the good news first you’d probably guess the bad news and that would distract you from paying attention. So take a moment to accept that you’re going to have to move much slower than you want to. So slow in fact, that you’ll likely need to give up on your goals altogether for the time being. If you’re in a Sisyphean dilemma, goals aren’t nearly as helpful as people think they will be.

With that disclaimer out of the way, here’s the first piece of good news. It’s about Sisyphus and the undrinkable water. There’s good news that it’s vital you believe. I can’t overstate how important this is.

The water is real.

That’s the good news. You can actually be free. You can have what you crave. What people always crave, when you get down to it, is to be loved and to be free. Because love loves and freedom frees, neither are scarce resources. Your deepest desires aren’t a mirage, even when they seem to behave like one. Even though satisfaction disappears every time you dip your head to partake. Even though your every attempt to love or be loved ends in disaster. Even though the whole idea seems trumped up after a while.

The water is real. When you hear it chattering over stones or thundering in the distance, that’s real. The voice calling you is as real as you are. And it’s close. Close as a whisper. The problem with Sisyphus isn’t with the water. It’s not even with Sisyphus, whose thirst is equally real. The problem is with method. You can’t push a string. You can’t take time back. And you can’t love through force. It’s just method, that’s all. There’s not even a bad guy or a hell or anything to make your suffering “meaningful”. It’s not particularly meaningful. You’re just employing the wrong tool for all the usual reasons.

But there’s more good news. That agonizing, crawling speed of trust… is also the speed of pleasure. It’s the speed at which you’re able to let pleasure in. The tragic thing about Sisyphus is that he’s actually splashing his face in water, but it doesn’t do him any good. If he keeps it up, he’ll end up stealing other people’s water out of pure craving. And still, it won’t quench him. You really can’t force love. You can only wait for it. You can only speak to it in soothing tones, inviting it to come out, because it’s safe now.

When you move at the speed of trust, you start to receive almost immediately. Sure, it’s slower than you’d like. But it’s real. Love starts working on you right away. That crawling descent to the water is actually punctuated by little rills of nourishment and the tingling pleasure of anticipation. Yes, it’s hard to be with the feeling of exactly how stuck you still are. But it feels unquestionably good to move at the pace of you. The forcing was always abuse. It was abuse when other people forced you and it was abuse when you kept on forcing yourself. It feels good to stop being abused.

I think because of this pleasure element, it’s most often found that people grow faster than they expect, once they can tolerate starting slower than they can imagine. Once you move at the speed of trust, trust grows. Then you can move a little faster.

After going so, so slow for a few minutes or hours or days, you ask whatever distrustful part is active today “can we go a little faster”? If there’s no hint of blame in the question—if it’s really only a question—you’d be surprised how often the answer is a slightly shaky, but enthusiastic “ok, let’s try it”.

A word of caution, if you think you deserve the yes or if you feel that “no” is un-brave. If you insist on a yes or tip the scale at all, you’ll get a yes. You’ll cruse right past your no, ramming forward only to crash once again into that blunt feedback instrument called reality. Forcing a yes is a lot more damaging than overriding a no. It’s a deeper kind of abuse. There’s no hatred, like the hatred of the person who finds that the consent they forced on another was disingenuous. The same is true within yourself. Self forcing is the root chakra of self-hatred.

Freedom is found when you move at the speed of trust, always listening for that pulse in the body which means “no” or “slow down”. Listen even more closely. Often the quiet no’s aren’t quiet at all. They’re screaming so loud that people across the room (who know how to look) can see it in the set of your jaw or shoulders or the furtive glance in your eye. You’ve just learned not to hear.

And listen to “yes”. To pleasure. Especially the shaky, tentative yes. It might be the yes that guides your life one day, once it has a voice. You’re learning. You’re a mystery to yourself. That’s ok, slow down and listen. A bit of humility goes a long way. Going faster isn’t worth the risk of missing some part that isn’t ready and abandoning or suppressing yourself all over again.

When you move at the pace of the most distrustful part of you, you bring all of you along. A lot of people choose between freedom and wholeness. When you move at the pace of trust, you don’t have to give up either. The way, the dharma as it’s called, is to take it slow and listen. Be honest that while where you are is hard, it’s actually bearable. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here bearing it. It really does get better, once you can slow down and be with what’s here now. Just give it a little time.

First, you must be yourself

Entirely yourself

You must be more real to you

Than the world

You must know what you are

Feel it

Like drums

Like water falling

You are of a people

This it why

The waters part for you

Because you have many mothers

And will not disgrace her

Because you are of a proud people

Of good stock

Even if you have forgotten

Through all the years enslaved

Your bones know it

It is this, that binds you to this world

Fierce love

When I was growing up, there was something we called sin

And there was someone. Someone we called the devil

The thing you ought to know about the devil

Is that he’s always hungry

And never satisfied

That’s what’s unnatural about the devil

Normal, human, hunger, is satisfied

Human thirst can be quenched

But there is a hunger that is greater than us

An aching void

A hunger that consumes stars and galaxies

A hunger that is infinite

And we call that hunger

Sin

I’m happy report

That rates of sin, here in America at least

Are on an exponential decline

It’s true that depression is rampant

It’s true that violence and oppression lap our doorsteps like a high tide

But sin is found only at the margins

We’ve banished the name

But have we, really, banished the hunger?

Or is it still there

Devouring souls

Extinguishing species

A demon on mythic scale

Grasping this fragile orb

In a hand of iron and steel

And what if, after all, this isn’t natural

What if we’re the deviant ones

The rabid dog

The unhinged generation

People have known for a long time

That if you don’t want to let the devil in

It pays to be righteous, which means upright

Which means, in balance

Balance is infinite in its precision

But bounded in form

Balance is health

Balance is human

Balance is nature

As we feared long ago,

Perhaps our minds have

The ability to lead us out of nature

Out of balance

Out of symmetry

So that

No longer upright

We tilt, and fall, and are

Taken by the great hunger

For what is this hunger

But an unreceptive mind

Craving to receive?

What is this hunger

If not a loss of innocence?

What is the hunger

If not the pride of thought

Saying I know the difference

Between what is good

And what is evil?

Was that not, the first sin?

In nature, all beings exist in balance

A balance of creative and receptive forces

A being is born, then reintegrated

Dust to dust

A word is spoken, then falls into silence

A though arises, the returns into oblivion

Light reveals what darkness cradles

And all these are in balance

But what if a mind could make a thought last forever?

What if a principle could be more real than the universe?

Because the principle is never false

What if a person could separate and never die?

What if we chose not to be in balance?

Chose not to be fragile, unique, cradled in mystery?

What if we could understand

And control, and create our our world?

What if we were gods?

What if, before anything else

Sin was a thought?

If so, perhaps we could un-think that thought.

The undoing of sin is righteousness

The undoing of sin, is balance

Is listening beyond words

Beyond concept

Beyond good or evil

Beyond self or other

To harmony

To nature

To birth and also dying

To finitude

To living at the scale of human creatures

For letting reality be more real

Than the names we put to it

For letting reality be more real

Than the abstractions we deduced from it

Righteousness is the wisdom to die

After living

To forget

After remembering

To let the great mother of darkness

Embrace the father of light

And to be lost

Without needing to be found

To be answered

Without mustering a question

To, having been the artist,

Be content to become art

In this way the great hunger is quieted

And we are satisfied

Walking under familiar skies

In our own lives

In our own places

It is my belief

That the restoration of balance

Is the calling of our time

As it was always

Since ancient times

Calling us to remember

A garden that we did not cultivate

A world that we did not manufacture

A universe that we did not invent

We will weave poem

And story

And myth

And body

And touch

And song

And ritual

And fire

To awaken within us

A righteousness which longs to be revealed

A nature, which begs to be expressed

Beyond good and evil

Beyond true or false

A nature, in balance, already here

Stored in the flesh of this soft human body

I will walk under the golden willow bow

And be content

I will run in the bracing morning

And be content

I will die in the laden afternoon

And be content

I will not expose

The secret of your heart

For I am the heart

Of your secret

I will pass unanswered

Into the great mystery

When I “get” something I didn’t see before about being human, it feels like being let in on a joke, or a secret that’s been hiding in plain sight. It feels like a ritual of initiation. I like to think about fellow travelers (present, future, and past) waiting expectantly for me to wake up and unfurl this being I’m driving around.

All of a sudden, I see that thing I just realized everywhere— in music, art, turns of phrase. Like buying a Prius and then seeing all the other Priuses. It’s been there all along, like coded messages, but now I’m in on it.

Lately, I’ve been learning to pay attention to the space between things. I’m learning to notice, very organically, how everything is in physical relation to everything else, and how I’m a part of that. I’m not alone, and I’m not merging into other people. But we belong here together, in relationship.

I’m learning to shift (as a matter of experience, not an idea) from “I” to “we”. I’m starting to notice the forest, not just the trees. It’s intimate, to feel like we’re here together, weaving relationship through space. Or perhaps space weaving us into relational forms. I’m starting to finally see the choreography. To see it, it helps to literally shift my attention to the space between beings. As it turns out, that thing my artsy friends say about negative space, isn’t just an art school cliché! It’s a teaching.

Realizing the space between allows for dimensionality. I feel more oriented. When I don’t notice the space between things, then the whole world flattens like a wallpaper. I’m a lone actor in the foreground. When I notice the space between things, I’m a participant. I’m part of a we. I’m part of a whole that’s too big to be comprehended, but is moving all of us. I’m a fish in the ocean, a thread in the weave, pick your metaphor.

But I can’t stress enough, that this isn’t an idea of being in relationship to the whole. It’s the much deeper work to actually embody that perspective. To literally be a “we” more than an “I” at the level of my own subconscious. Or to be an I that’s inextricably part of a we, of a web of many beings, human and non-human.

This perspective shift reminds me of a magic eye book I loved as a kid. I spent a lot of hours learning to relax my vision, so that the 3D shape would pop out of the page, like magic. Only, this isn’t magic or an illusion, it’s simply realizing how things actually are. I’m actually a participant. We’re actually in this together. We actually belong here. And the whole, is actually mysterious to our minds.

I have never met a beautiful poem. A poem is like an old, bedridden man growling at a young boy to go outside and let the rain pelt his soft skin. A poem is a sendoff. It wants to be left behind, traded for the world.

People told me about love. They painted it in many colors. They sang songs about love. But the wise one demanded, “where is your love”?

So I went looking

For my love

And found it

Hidden in the flight of swallows

And the hum of electric wires

Over a supermarket

And the creased forehead of the woman

Who still calculates change

In her head

Love is everywhere

I said

“Bring me a picture”

The wise one demanded

So I photographed my love

In many poses

But when I presented them

To the wise one

There was only a bent woman

Checking out customers

“I lost the love”, I apologized

The wise one studied the photographs

For a long time, then said

“The love is there, it’s just not breathing”

He put a hand to my chest

And told me to breath

“Love is breathing”, I said

But he shook his head

“I am love, breathing” I said

And it was so

When I captured the moment, I made art. When I surrendered to the moment, I became art.

Lying in your bed

Do you know the direction

From which the sun rises

Outside your window

Which tree limb catches the first rays

When the woodpecker goes to work

Do you remember

That above you

The stars wheel and turn
Even through the day

Or that you’re breathing

The exhalation of the forest and the sea

Not in your mind

But in your lungs

Even this breath

It’s worth troubling

To imagine the truth

Like all our people

You’re of this world

Fleshed of her flesh

Boned of her bones

Inextricably part

Of her whole

Had

A piece of

Of time

To divvy

Into cream puff days

Had my share of love

To squander

All along the way

While the earth sleeps

Tilted on its side

Thought I’d ride the bus

To someplace new

But when i got there

I didn’t have the change

To change the destination

Or submit my resignation

I asked directions

At the station

On the corner

Where we used to walk

On Summer nights

There were bars on the window

And bars on the door

And the guy inside

Changing quarters

Didn’t have anymore

Ideas

I guess it’s up to us now

I’d rather

Catch a paper plane

I guess I’d rather

Fly away

To where nobody counts

The cost of being young

Where did all the young ones go?

It’s chilly in the city

It’s quiet in the hills

The lone wolf howls

But rarely kills

And the people on the street

Go on crouching in the cover

Of screens held up to screen

Their aching eyes

Staring

Holes in the pavement

Holes in their shoes

Holes in their pockets

With nothing to lose

And holes in the sky

Where the stars are

(Turn the lights down

Turn the lights down)

I asked directions

At the station

On the corner

Where we used to walk

On Summer nights

There were bars on the window

And bars on the door

And the guy inside

Changing quarters

Didn’t have anymore

Ideas

I guess it’s up to us now

I’d rather

Catch a paper plane

I guess I’d rather

Fly away

To where nobody counts

The cost of being young

Where did all the young ones go?

And the people on the street

Go on crouching in the cover

Of screens held up to screen

Their aching eyes

Staring

Holes in the pavement

Holes in their shoes

Holes in their pockets

With nothing to lose

And holes in the sky

Where the stars are

I had

A piece of

Of time

To divvy

Into cream puff days

Had my share of love

To squander

All along the way

While the earth sleeps

(Lyric)

look at yourself

livin’ every day

like a lie

i guess you buried

the goods

leaving nothing to chance

it’s a cry’in shame

that we can’t even dance

around the truth

i’m tired of

try’ing to recon

why you took the early train

it’s taken

everybody’s got a shadow

but where you walk there’s only sun

everbody’s made mistakes

but I know you’ve never made the one

of opening that door

‘cause that’s what walls are for

there’s a corner

of your pretty mind

there’s a small room

with blackout blinds

there’s somethin’ that your body says

that’s never never never never

made it to your mind

feel it

feel it

I wanna see the rest of you

To finally meet the problem you

I wanna see you steal the show

Until you do we’ll never know

What this world is like

When we see it through your eyes

I know

I know you’re scared

Of course you are

It takes a little faith to dig the grave

to who you are

Come on now

Break it down

Tear it up

Let’s turn it round and inside out

I wanna see what you do

Who you love and what you choose

let it out let it out let it out

let it out let it out let it out

let it out let it out let out

let it out let it out let it out

It’s all right

it’s ok

it’s just as it should be

a snowflake

melted by the heat

you’re all alone

you’re in your home

you think you hope to die

it’s all right

it’s ok

just fall into the night

and let the sliver wings

that always bring

you home

cary you

when you wake up

you won’t be

the same as when you left

feel it

feel it

I wanna see the rest of you

To finally meet the problem you

I wanna see you steal the show

Until you do we’ll never know

What this ‘ol world is like

When we see it through your eyes

let it out let it out let it out

let it out let it out let it out

let it out let it out let out

let it out let it out let it out

You’ll wait here a long time

In the closeness of the vault

You need nothing

But this body

Fat with the glut of that decaying summer

Here the world comes to you

All in scent, and drafts of cool air

Like a memory, or a dream

You don’t measure time

You weather it

In the drifts of snow that pile to your door

Then melt away

Leaving sodden ground

And pale skies

And the vast womb of nightfall

A man with a bad leg

And a cocaine habit

Ordered the butchering

Of millions of people

It’s not important

Except for all the people

Things don’t mean other things

They only mean themselves

Hitler is not less boring or shallow

For being handed an idiot nation

When you’re caught in an avalanche

And let’s face it. Aren’t we all?

“Why” is the least important question

What most people lacked

Was the courage to see

That no matter why, it was real

So too now

Even the good stuff

Only means itself

That should be reason enough

To care

If I’m being honest

I want to perform for you

To take a bow

To be a dancer

Or to be the dance

It’s like the peasant who offers to the priest

The choiceness of her harvest

Only then, can she eat

And be satisfied

When the offering has been blessed

When your eyes shine for me

The hunger in me is quieted

We will walk the lingering evening

Asking each other

Who was the giver of us

Come close

To the hollow drum

Inside of which beats your heart

Get intimate with the gripping

Only listened to, will it unclench

Don’t try to create something beautiful

Or ugly

Those are only words

Stay curious

And self-forgetting

Prefer quiet

Until you notice the stillness

Bound up in the heart

Of exuberance

Prefer motion,

Until you find the

Wind that innervates

A still night

It’s ok to give up for a while

On being you

You aren’t going anywhere

I resolved then

To ask nothing of anyone

I would rather lie in the shade

At the end of summer

And hear what the wind says to itself

In the boughs of the great fir