Shell

Porcelain veneer on a mended heart,

patched over with pulsing organic matter

resembling a heart,

quivering below a smooth surface.

See it shine.

Look into the sheen to see a reflection

of the one that got away,

the one you lost and keep searching for. 

It's ok if you drop it.

Like a planarian,

this heart regenerates. 

Exceptional

All Love is the Same,
and the nature of Nature is Emptiness,
nothing you cherish about your
Uniqueness
will endure beyond a few centuries,
or millennia for the exceptional.

So They say. So They say.

And yet the longing persists,
a desire to be an Individual
with your own rarities
talents
and peccadilloes,
even big Sins
and little Accomplishments,
grand and petit prizes
for your signature dishes and dalliances,
your specific specialness:
those eyes, that voice,
this riveting personal history,

Please: Tell me more, tell me all of it,
let me listen to you speak taking all of you in,
as my petty-seeming self is engulfed for awhile in your outstanding, extraordinary presence,
the way you fill the space around you like no one else can.

Come here and fill up this void of my space,
the place I inhabit while the second hand sweeps away
minute by minute
the torturous illusion
of a particular life.

Longing of a Ghost by Brightsoul.

Arc

We interAre
here, there and all over the great wide world,
hand in hand and abiding in seeming separateness
in far flung efficiency apartments
and bridge underpasses
gated communities and slums
in India
and everywhere else we can be,
we Interare.

Thought has a substance and a source,
not what you may imagine.
Thoughts never need you to think them.
Therefore you Are.

People come and they go back to and from
places you may not consider.

Find the straight lines in the sphere,
where they stop and start
and piece together how I met you
and why we know someone who loves us
who never knew we knew each other
and who had the same dream my mother had
in her bed
when she was twelve years old visiting a cousin
in California.

Tell me why the same stories keep repeating
and whose feelings are these,
really?

Lights, passing around the sphere,
bouncing in perfect arcs and changing colors
just when you thought you could see
the end of the rainbow that has no end.

World without end,
Amen,
Amen.

Rainbow Ball by LordFlasheart

Enamorada

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
On Earth as it is in Heaven.
As above so below.

He makes me remember God,
down here,
another marvelous fractal
inviting me to love and love fiercely.

Nothing and no one escapes the awe and the glory.

You and I are magnificent in all our splendor.

Virtue

Virtue within and virtue without. Few are those who never seek

Purification.

Take a mikveh
for your mentality.
Soak it away,
all that defiles you.

Defilement.
Impropriety.
Stain.

What is dirty in dirt?

Blood bath.
Salt bath.
Salt in your wounds.

Effort. Can it feel easy?

Like water the thoughts and impulses rush in
and out. The outside of the container may sparkle
but the inside is sometimes cloudy, sometimes opaque,
it may shine like onyx,
then soften. It may ooze through pores smelling
earthy.

To the earth we will return.

I won't struggle against what is impermanent,
fleeting by nature.
I won't judge
or run
like prey.

Do not divide yourself
against yourself.

Mirage

Not now. Not yet.
Perhaps never.

One day I will open it,
this door,
this message,

this:

gift.

Why must it be a gift?
It's not.

In walking innumerable miles,
over such varied terrains,
sometimes so very tired,
and straining to see one, just one

person

a sentient shelter

a kind of oasis.

And then there is one,
like the last time but different again,
Oh,
the act of recognition,
and an awkward embrace,
and some muted period of time
feeling,
possibly a sort of resolved satisfaction-
still far away even when it's close.

And then it's gone,
and that's supposed to be a gift.

Keep going, eyes to the horizon,

look up, look forward,

look within.
Again.

It's still here somewhere.

Don't open this. Only tears which will never come.

Conquistadors

How can something so old, so familiar and ingrained,
appear in an instant so new, so poignant and pristine?
Each time masquerading,
or maybe it really is
a second, fifth or twenty-third time
to be seen and experienced?

An opportunity to replay a narrative which gets richer with each telling,
a newer edition of a work you always prized,
and, but,
it's better than that,
if it is truly ripe yet new.

It offers another occasion
to palpate
to sample
to sip
to float upon
to swim within
to dive into
uncharted lands and waters,
to be a Good and Moral Explorer,
shedding preconceived notions and
receiving
all of this in earnest,
with a heart wide open.