Psychology

Pioneers

Do I count myself more grateful at 12,
or at 32?

Is the pressing of time like water against a dam?

Oh, but I can drift backwards
into the fullness of the ripening earth
beneath my boots,
the rank tang of ammonia in the barn,
the scent of aging hay in the sun,
the heavy shunt of horse-breath
clouding my face
under the stars of an early spring.

One day, before you die,
you may stop worrying and know love.
So- will I emerge more of a contradiction at 32,
or at 52?

(but
there is a hunger now-
for the trophy, not the food)

I find I’m beating the claws of this world off,
taking note of what bleeds most,
standing aghast
at everyone’s rushing,
at everyone’s talking,
the endless documentation of ourselves
and all we claim to care for.

Do you all fear death that much?

Are you running from the dark?
Or from the light?

a diet high in clocks increases your risk of heart attack
talk to your doctor

Ah, well.
Hopefully, at 72,
I won’t find in me the demon-
and
I am called Legion;
but perhaps,
if I’m lucky, instead,
something of Whitman-
and
I contain multitudes.

Day of Rest

Behold,
His voice was full-wroth as the ocean storm.

“Cast out the unclean
and the kingdom of prosperity
will be yours!
You shall have all you want!
Even now,
your country,
your family,
your very soul
are under attack!
The enemy surrounds you
on all sides!”

And He was visible at the pulpit,
and also on the high-definition projector screen.
And lo, the fear of God
was among the people.

“I think I’ve heard enough,”
said Jesus,
sitting in the back row.
“Lunch?” asked the Buddha,
turning to him.
The question hung in the air.
“Thought you’d never ask.”

Verily, I say unto you,
not a single one noticed
they had come and gone.

Prowl

I ride on the edge of the night,
where sacred-looking things arise
from power lines and signals of the civil-

doesn’t the wolf come sometimes
to the edge of the city?

So I feel alive and electric in the neon,
merely from contact and rhythm;
we are wired for this.

claws click on sidewalk pavement

Yet
I still need the full-breath,
the long-hale up from the blood,

the consonation

and synchronizing hum of your body
rising from the earth,
dripping with mud,
calling to the darkling beyond dream.

Skirting the trail,
sowing and conjuring then I traverse time and space;
it smells wet and rank-sweet in here,

but this hunt
isn’t really a hunt,
is it?

I can hear you
from my bones out
to the stars.

I wander home, alone in the descent of sacred things;
I wander home, alone,
riding on the edge of the night.

Bailaro

Once, a while ago, when the rhythm took me,

(sorry, sorry, sorry,
lo siento, mea culpa;
have you seen all the ways
we learn to apologize
for being alive?)

it was Los Lobos,
and it was Spring,
and I was in the kitchen,
and I was told to stop screwing off.

The next day, I drove past a graveyard.

Most days now,
I’m guilty of screwing off.
(especially where rhythm is concerned)

Lo siento.

Praésperō

She was sitting on the couch,
dying.

Well, not really dying, per se.

She was staring out the window
at the darkness fallen across the land.

“I hate winter.”

She shivered, even with the blanket.

The dog wandered over,
hopped up,
sat down next to her.
Opened its jaws, grinning.

{Hey.}
“What.”
{Know what I like about winter?}
“What’s that.”
{Spring’s just around the corner.}
She sighed.
“I suppose.”
She stared out the window again.

{Hey.}
“Yeah?”
{Let’s go run around and eat snow.}

She raised her eyebrow.
The dog raised one back.
{Please?}

“OK. Come on.”

{Cool. I’ll wait for you at the door.}

She grabbed her coat.

{Oh. My. God.}
“What now?”
{A small piece of bacon on the floor.
See! Like I told you
when I woke you this morning!
Best day ever!}

Fídō

Have you seen the mud
streaked across 
the hardwood floor?

Or, wait-

Did you watch the cat 
sleeping in the barn?

I see.

Surely, then, 
you’ve been tucked in
by the night sky?
You’ve seen the thunderheads 
crying and spitting lightning
so they could wash the face of the earth?

Well, maybe you’ve met
the white-haired woman
I spoke with in the shop-
who told me of classrooms
and busses full of protesters,
and of her husband, long-gone,
she who outlived 
her mother, father, brothers, sisters?

The one who looked at me, smiling,
who stared then out the window
with a face like a child’s,
and said,

“I swear,
life
is just…
amazing!”

?

Alright, then.

(He waves the pamphlet in the air. 
The world is ending.
“Do you believe?!?”

“I do,” I say,
“yesterday I took my dog to the park,
and stared into the eyes of God,
and was licked by the Buddha’s tongue.”)

The Most Convenient Definitions

“Battling your demons,”
they call it.
Fighting the monsters.
Taming the beast.
Or, perhaps,
rebuking the Devil.

You must cleanse yourself.
You must take this pill.
You must do yoga.
You must read this book.

You must.

I suppose I can’t lie;
shedding the past is good.

However…

do you remember?
Think back.

Before you were told what to fear.
Before you were told what to hate.
Before you were told what was wrong with you.
Before you were told who to be.

I’ll tell you true,
cross my heart, hope to die-

’cause I seem to recall a boy,

whose demons brought him food,
whose monsters came out from under the bed 
and gathered ’round for story time,
whose beasts ran with him
past the high school lockers,
and who walked the prairies and woods
with Lucifer and Jesus both;

we shared Canadian whiskey,
Dominican cigars,

and harmed not ourselves 
nor any soul,

traipsing the beat
in the heart of creation.

Audacity Beyond 2017: A Love Letter to the Human Race

Hope. Change. Love. Transformation. Luck. Finally.

Did these words bounce around in your mind as the clock rolled over to the new year?

I don’t blame you. Not one bit.

Our new culture is saturated with keys, triggers, signs; easy nuggets of hope that in turn saturate our subconscious, leaving us salivating for beautiful fruits that may never bear.

It’s ok, folks. I’m telling you, right here, right now, it’s ok.

I have walked with the hopeful, with the dreamers, with the expectant mothers and purposed fathers, with the wish-makers and wayfinders. I have also walked with the hopeless, with the downtrodden, the abused, the reckless and disillusioned, the cast-off chaff of this new world who’ve all but given up their faith in humanity.

Still, I say: it’s ok.

Are you calling me out on my BS yet? Please do. 

Bring me your broken dreams. Bring me your deaths. Bring me your fear. Bring me your burdens of blackness, your wreckage that writhes and grins at you in the night.

Do you truly believe, in your deep-heart, that an arbitrary number has anything to do with the timing of the universe, with the random dance of molecules or economies?

I don’t think you do. But it’s nice to believe, isn’t it?

That’s my point. Right there. I don’t care what you believe in. Just believe. The fact the you WANT to believe tells me your heart isn’t dead.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the symbolism. “New year, new you.” Fair enough. But I need you to do me a favor.

Accept that a new year, in and of itself, won’t change a damn thing.

Trust me. Knock it off. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment.

Set goals, yes. Retain hope in the future, yes. But you’ve just been handed an empty box.

Much like a new relationship, a new year comes with an empty box. What you get out is what you put in. It doesn’t come with anything. And this empty space is what’s important. 

We place value on the structure, but the space is what we use.

So what will you fill yours with?

I can’t stress how vitally important it is to define this concept. “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst”? When did we become so lost in our hearts? It’s not wrong to hope, nor to have a back-up plan, but I’ll challenge you right here and now to “hope for what you want, but prepare for what you need”.

You hate this already. I can tell. You don’t need death. You don’t need disease. You don’t need loss. You don’t need breakups, financial hardship, hatred, betrayal, anxiety.

What you need is the hope of the undying.

Allow me to set you up for the pain of the coming year right now.

Ready?

Some of you, this year, will lose something. Your car will get stolen. You’ll get divorced. Someone will die. You’ll experience betrayal. You’ll get diagnosed with something. You won’t get the job.

Can hardly wait, right?

Are any of you thinking of what could go RIGHT, though?

Hear me now.

In fact, how could we appreciate all that is Good without the absence of it? How could we grow in mind, in body, in heart, in spirit, without being broken on the altar of life? Without being hammered on its anvil? Would you wish for an easy life, or for the strength to endure a difficult one?

Better still, would you wish to walk through the flames and STILL COME OUT shining your light to the world, to hold out your scarred hand to a beaten soul and say, “come with me, for there is still Life up ahead”?

Would you wish, instead of being broken and clinging to your brokenness, of staring at your brokenness with resentment, to allow the light within yourself to shine through the cracks?

Only by being broken can we transform. In being broken, in being dealt a bad hand, we are given a choice; perhaps the most important choice in our lives.

You can choose to say “I didn’t deserve to be broken. I won’t trust life any more. I will exact revenge where I can, so I can reclaim some of what was stolen from me”…

…or you can choose to say, “I didn’t want to be broken, but I’m grateful that I did. Life has threshed my wheat from my chaff, has hammered my impurities from my metal, and if I alone can be broken again and again and AGAIN and walk away laughing, to love and hope and offer an outstretched hand, then I am glad.”

Peace is not found in what you get. It’s found in what you do with what you’re given.

Right here, right now, witness that I renounce all claims to what I think I deserve. I am not special. But nor am I a coward for losing faith, for wanting to give up. I am given a calling and a priceless gift. If I get what I desire, I will be grateful. If I do not, I will also be grateful. 

I will be lifted up on wings, and dashed on the rocks. My soul will dance at the coming dawn, and I will weep in my pain as I am broken again. I am being hammered on the anvil. I am losing myself, and I am becoming myself.

I will use my tears to wash the dirt from another’s face.

The universe will deal me the absolute worst hand, and I’ll say “Here, take my money. It’s time to play chess instead.”

I was so sure blackjack was the answer. But perhaps chess is the better path.

I renounce and refute my human inclination to be hurt by loss, to curl inwards, away from the world. To die from the inside out.

If my house is destroyed, I will wonder what my next house will look like.

Because if I don’t, if I hold on to my innate ability as a human for pattern recognition, and I apply THAT to what happens to me… can you guess what comes next?

Let me tell you. Listen.

I will be the victim of my own self-fulfilling prophecy. 

“See? It didn’t happen. I knew it wouldn’t.”

Bull. Shit.

I’m not advocating a relentless, creepy happiness. I’m not saying “be positive”. Nothing so trite and meaningless. In fact, I’d encourage you to stay as far as possible from sources that promote blind positivity. Or blind negativity, for that matter.

There is a middle path. And you need to walk it.

Good and Bad are cyclical. Sometimes, one wins out more than the other. And there is NOTHING, no matter what, that can take away your hope and the love hidden in your deep-heart unless you allow it to.

There’s always a choice.

We are such beautiful and horrendous creatures. Pitiful and incredible, we sacrifice out of love and wreak atrocities on each other in the same day.

Living for such a brief speck of cosmic time, staring out at the universe, we wonder. Why? If you find an answer that works for you, and you can be truly satisfied in your soul, then I commend you. If you don’t, then let me tell you again: it’s ok.

You need merely ask the question. That, in and of itself, is the mystery and the answer all in one.

The fact that you can ask is beautiful, even without a clear answer. The closure you seek may never come. But the closure you need comes from forging a new path, and to keep asking regardless.

Animals are blameless and pure. The angels some believe in are that also.

So here we stand. Brilliant and flawed, halfway between the ape and the angel, staring up at the night sky in hope. Ready to love and ready to fight in the same breath.

So as you watch the stars in this new year, and for the rest of your life, you might say “I wish for my shooting star, but it never comes. Maybe it never will.”

And you are right.

But this is not cause for despair.

Your strength lies in the ability to unceasingly watch the night sky, time after time after time, marveling at its beauty, drowning in the mystery and audacity of hope so that you might learn to breathe again.

And when someone else comes along, saddened and beaten, wishing for a star that may never come, you can say:

“Look! My God, just look at the stars! Can you believe we get to watch them one more night?”

This, then, is my only resolution I offer you: become a beacon of hope to yourself, and to others. 

Unfurl your banners of Light and watch the armies of death break themselves on your shields.

————————-

“Some day, you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

— C.S. Lewis

Invigor 13:83

​Passion is a discontinued brand. 

Yes?
Can you give me some agreement on a Saturday night?
Can I get an AMEN from the front row,
and possibly a HALLELUJAH from the back? 

Say you all so? 

Now goddamn stand and speak, the lot of you. 

Stand, and be counted, and hold thyself not a hypocrite,
for you wander not in the land of Sodom or Gomorrah;
you are made of flame and pulse and must break yourself
on the rocks of the liquid shore. 

Cry foul,
cry pardon,
cut loose,
cut low; 

let slip the dog days of summer
out the still winter of thine own blood,
for you are always treading the plains of milk and honey;
and I have seen the future ripe, and full, 

and for what you want, 

I say surely you shall not perish,
but rise,
rise in shaking ecstasy at the light of dawn. 

Now goddamn stand and speak.