To her own tune

There is a woman

Dressed to the nines

Or what she would consider tens

And maybe others zero

With pinks and blues

And bright, bright greens

And hues that women her age 

"Should not wear."

With bright taffeta flower in her hair

And headphones always in her ears

Or on the days she totes the cart
To Pathmark,

It bears a small pink boombox

Blasting funk and soul loud enough

For her to hear, but not to bother

Those she passes, who, inevitably

Stare with curiosity or, usually,

Looks of disgust

Through dark eyes that match

Dark clothes

And darker souls.

And when she passes, it's not

A walk so much as a

Bop, and groove, as,

Keeping time to her own heart

She always smiles;

Always knows that others' looks

Don't matter, and further, what 

Others think of her own looks

Matters less still.

I wait for her sometimes
While sitting in my window
When I'm blue

To see her wearing and listening to
Similar blues, but so vastly different

To inspire my own to realize its potential

To be brighter,

And conceived anew.

Walking with God

Walking through soaring space

Mile-high arches flanked by gold and wood

Light pouring in choosing what we view

And bathing the pews in warmth,

I might very well see

How many years ago

Those who walked the same soaring space

Would immediately believe

They walked with God.

Subjective

The gray, transparent projection

Of the tree shades hazily

Across the rooftop,

Product of the sun behind it,

Unreal because trees don't grow on roofs

Nor do they appear and

Disappear with the sun.

Somewhere between the actual tree

And the version of itself

Lies the truth

So if you stand between the two,

Because the tree shields you from the sun

And there is no shadow of you,
You are real there in the interplay

Cast into being by

Your relativity. 

A (debateable) momentary 'meditation'

I seem to be exhausting myself trying to figure out how my mind works; in other words, I'm spending too much time thinking about thinking, which seems to defeat the whole notion of "letting go" and "living in the moment" and such. But then again, if you're thinking about what you're thinking, isn't that dissecting the moment into teeny pieces and overfocusing? Hacking up the moment? Not allowing the moment to transition on to the next as moments seem to do?

I'm doing it right now, aren't I?

Rats. Let's try this again.

It's raining out. A lot. I like cheese (There's no cheese here at this moment -- speculation). I want to watch this thunderstorm from my bed but I can't (Oops -- future-watching). It's hard to stay in the moment (Hmmm...observation of present difficulty? That's a little better...)

How 'bout this: moment moment moment moment moment. If you say that fast enough it starts to sound like "OM." Maybe meditation began when someone with a hamster-wheel-brain like myself got fed up with adages they couldn't live up to and started being silly.

The best things always have silly starts, no?

Great. Now I'm thinking about the past. Time to go to work.

[This message has been brought to you by Crazy Shack.]

Even

Whip cracks down 

Just when we've caught our breath

Takes it away

But somewhere else

Someone breathes easy

And it is ours, too,

Collective in and out,

Rise and fall

Which when taken into full account

Keeps an even keel

Always.

Progress

Creeping past the giving point

Where things could go either way --

Down, as gravity dictates most,

Or slightly up from where we start.

It may be hard to tell at times

But every instance we succeed

In scratching slowly up, it's where we land

Again when we return to the giving point

Where things could go either way.

Like marking kids' height on a wall

Most find that through the struggle years

Though day to day it's hard to tell, 

When we turn around to breath again,
We find our current mark has raised an inch

Since we began.

In the moment

Sometimes the day tries

To get ahead of itself,

As if it's not dependent on

Whomever is living it.

No rhythmic breathing,

No cliched saying,

No desperate pull to slow it down

Can bring it back

To whom it belongs

And in a blink,

A year is gone.

Routine?

Flit in and out of lives like a census check

Touching and being touched without the possibility

Of permanence, of the cushion of long-term relationship,

And if this is the chaos and unpredictability of days,

And if this is the unscheduled schedule,

Does it then become routine, this impermanence, this daily dive

Into the unknown, 

Or do I remain true to myself by default?

Gross consumption

Food tastes so much better when

You're hungry, so the hungry say,

So there are those who starve themselves,

Greed for the future imminent,

And wind up going past the point

Of being hungry anymore,

Instead of savoring the privileged taste

That comes from a more humble, honest need

By forcing gross want into its place,

Distorting nature to an extent

That once the body's own defense

Relinquishes, and can no longer hold

Onto what it's fooled itself to think,

It grows into violent pretense;

One which consumes unmercifully

Both subject and object.

And with a misplaced vengeance, while

The original thing, gently desired,

Without fault then bears the blame,

The who, wrapped in one's own arrogance,

Must then destroy the entire thing, 

With self included.

One who can't tell the difference

Between oneself and the more one seeks,

And more, and more, unending, and forgetting then

The one thin line, that which can tell

Distinction selflessly implied

Between the path that's criminal

And the ever-dying, empathic one that

More and more stands extinguished by the

Societal, distorted, perverse incline

Toward that which seeks always

To destroy

That necessary sense of balance
That could exist,
But both then die.

Paradox

The closer in to a thing

You go, the more and more you find.

The subdivides and variations within reveal

The more and more that you don't know.

But the further out

You go, the less and less you find,

Within the larger picture, there is
For your mind to obsess over

The less and less you know.

Releasing

Blew through her hair, and held her there

Blinking in the darkness.

And round the corner everywhere

She saw it waiting,

Harnessing all of its strength

By taking what she didn't know

She gave, until she knelt

Aside the sea and left it quietly

For the waves.

Experience

Nope. You can't  have it.

Even though you want it.

You can't even touch it,

Because it's too much for you

And you have to get your own,

Starting small like I did

And learning to wield it once it's grown.

This one's mine.

Now leave it alone.

Divine order of protection

Aura of light

Whitely and bright

Swirling around the outside of me

Takes over at night

And during the times

I can't be as wary as I want to be

I'm hoping it might

Put up the good fight

Although I'm so tired I can hardly see.