What If . . .

What If
You Were Born
into a Tribe of Players
In The Theater of
Love?

Love of
The Other Players,
Love of
Your Surroundings.

Gardens and
Furry Creatures and
Jungles and
Waterworks of
Waves and Tidepools and
River Runs with
Finned and Water-Breathing
Leaping Diving Wonders?

And That’s Just
Act 1, Scene 1,

Before The Clowns
Come On and
The Laughing
Leads Into

The Act Where
Adam Meets Eve and
Little Ones
Appear Onstage.

But Somewhere
A Player Named Fear
Is Writing
A Book of Rules

To Tame The Clowns and
Order The Little Ones
Into Clans and Clubs and
Commandments and Covenants and
Cathedrals and
Congressional Committees.

What If
It’s Time
To Take The Play Book
from Fear

and Let
The Lovers and
Little Ones and
Clowns and
Caretakers of Creativity

Write The Plays
for a Change?

(Photo by Yiran Ding; UnSplash)

 

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)

 

Director’s Notes

Are You In Character?
Method Acting?
Pretending that
The You

Who Procrastinates
with Great Proclivity,

Who Imagines that
Laziness Is the Actual
Lay of Your Soul,

Who Fears that
Your Love of
Solitude and
Savored Social
Ineptitude

Are Actually
Signs of the Sin of
Solipsistic Narcissism?

Are You Pretending
That’s You?

Sometimes I Am.

But I’m Hearing from
The Director –

Who Assures Me
That I’ll Learn My
Soul Craft
by Playing
Many Roles –

That I’ve Always Been
Free
to Write
My Own Script,

Perhaps with
Lines of Love
Overcoming Fear
in The Third Act,

But Whoever
I Am
Playing,

I Must Remember:

I Am
Always
The Director’s
Beloved Child.

(Photo by Howard Wang; UnSplash)

 

Questions

Think of a Being,
Human or
All-But-Human,
like Your
Furry Couch Pal,
Whiskers Tickling
Your Elbow.

Think How Much
You Love Them,
Except to Say
Love
Is Not Enough
to Contain the
Cherishes and Adores and
Idolizes and
All But Smothering
Embraces
You Want to Stuff
Into That
Love.

I Have Questions:

Does the Mud
Your Furry One
Tracked Into
Your Kitchen
Dim the Light
of Their
Beating Heart?

Does the Habit –
Maybe More than One –
That Stirs
the Beehive of
Your Annoyances
Mean
Your Life Mate or
Your Little One
Loses
Your Longing
for Their Habitual
Touch?

How Could You
Imagine
Your Maker
Longs for You
any Less,

With All Your
Muddy Tracks and
Annoying Habits?

(Photo by Kateryna-Hliznitsova; UnSplash)

 

Diaries

Why Do We
Imagine
Our Maker
as a
Judge?

And the Diaries of
Our Adventures
to Be
Some Sort of
Karmic Police
Report?

Or, at Best,
a Log of
Our Attempts,
Mostly Self-Perceived
as Failures,
to Find
Our Way,
Lost Souls,
Looking for
The Right Path
Back
to The Maker,

as if
We Were Born,
then Abandoned
in The Wilderness?

What if
Our Diaries
are Travelogues,

Asked of Us When
The Light
That Is
The Maker

Diffracted
Into Our
Innumerable Eternal Rays,

Asking Nothing
of Us

But to
Write Stories –
Write and Re-Write,
When
The Art of Love
Requires It –

That Will Be Told with
Breathless Wonder
Forever.

(Photo by Joshua Hoehne; UnSplash)

 

Why?

Why Do You Think
You Signed Up
for This
Go-Round-the-Sun
a few Dozen Times
on This Spinning
Watery Globe?

Was It Because
Your Celestial Soul
Needed a few Semesters
in some School
of Hard Knocks?

Your Perfect
Eternal
Beingness
Needed a Ph.D in
Fearing
The Love and Light
and Laughter
that Made You
a Fractal of
Its Adoring Self?

You Must Be
Joking.

Perhaps You Need To
Lose Your Mind
in Order to
Remember

Why.

You Wanted to
Make Art.

To Paint
Landscapes of Love
and Make Movies
of Kindness
Wrestling Fear
to the Ground
of All Being.

You Signed Up for
Art School,
Silly.

Take as Many
Classes as
You Wish.

(Photo by Arthur Tseng; UnSplash)

 

Let’s Party!

I was Told
that The God
of My Sunday School Class
Loved Me
In Spite of My Self,

a Self Despoiled
by Eve’s Curiosity and
Adam’s Disobedience
In Tasting Forbidden Fruit
Called Knowing
The Difference Between
Good and Evil.

That God
then Fashioned a Whip

to Drive The Two Sinners
from Paradise,

to Distant Places
Teetering on the
Edge of Hell,

Into Which Death
would Throw Them
Unless

Lambs were Slain
in Their Stead,
including
The Lamb
of The Gospels.

I Am
Waking Up
from That Nightmare

to Find My Self
In the Inseparable
Cherishing Embrace of
The I Am That
I Am,
That You Are,
The All That Is
All That Is.

The Love
and Light
and Laughter
Who Knows
Nothing Else But
to Throw a Party of
Adoration,
Free of
Condition or Judgment,

for the Beloved
Prodigal You
Fear Your Self
To Be.

 

Rock Concert

My Aging Limbs
Long to Sink
Into the Comforting
Grip of the
Seat Beneath Me,

But All Around Me
The Others Are
On Their Feet,
Energy from the Stage
Insinuating into Their
Twisting Torsos and
Flailing Young
Limber Limbs.

Onstage the Magician
Musicians’
Fingers Fly and
Arms Dance,
Seducing Sound into
Admissions of Pleasure
Beyond Guilt.

I Enter
The Mystery,
Where I Am
Told by The Maker of
Limbs and Torsos and
Music and Magic and
Pleasure,

That This Is
Every Bit
The Worship of
All That Is

That Every
Holy Hymn
Aspires To.

(Photo by ActionVance; UnSplash)