Take Back Your Brushes

Before You Arrived
You Chose
The Chrysalis

Into Which
You Wished
to Squeeze

The Light That
Is You,

With a Plan
to Emerge and
Spread Your Wings

Beneath an
Artist’s Smock,
Pockets Stuffed with
Paints and Brushes,

Ready to Fill
a Gallery,
Bearing Your Name,
with Your
Flights of Fancy.

But It May Be That

Your Brushes
Were Seized by
Prison Guard Parents or
Indoctrinating Instructors or
Preachers with Holy Handcuffs
on Their Bible Belts,

Who Persuaded You
to Surrender
Your Easel and Palette,

Put a Padlock on
The Gallery of
Your Daydreams.

It’s Not
Too Late.

The Key Is Still
In Your Pocket.

(Photo by Ekaterina Novitska; UnSplash)

 

What Heaven Is Like

Jesus
is reported
to have Loved
His Metaphors,

often comparing
Heaven
to a Kingdom of
Love.

Once Saying,
“It’s Like When
a Rebellious and
Renegade Son is
Greeted by His
Adoring Father
with a Robe and
a Ring and
a Sumptuous Banquet.”

Or a Woman,
caught in a
Hooker’s Transgression,
is Told by Him,
after Chasing Away
Her Prosecutors,
that He Rejects
their Judgment and
Condemnation.

She’s Free
to Go and
Find a Better Way.

But, Above All,
I Favor
His Metaphor

for Receiving an
Open Invitation
to Enter
The Heaven of
That Kingdom of Love:

Practice until
You can Live
The Life of
a Child,

Filled with
Laughter and
Play and
Believing in
Magic.

 

Who Am I?

Who Do I Think
I Am?

Am I
that little Photo
on that Card
with My
Particulars?
Height and Weight
and Unrelenting
Rolling Count of Years?

That Card that
Marks the Confines of
My Bodied
Faults and Flaws?

No.

I Am
a Bright and Lustrous Beam of
The Light
That Shines As
All That Is.

A Light That
Has Always Shone and
Always Will.

That Won’t Fit
On Any Little Card.

Play This Game:

Sit However
Comforts You.

Breathe This
In and Out:

I Am.
I Am.
I Am.

Be.

In That Place
Where
You Are.

(Photo by Keegan Houser; UnSplash)