Summa Cum Laude

Perhaps You’ll Allow Me to
Flash My Poetic License –
You Have One Too –
and Ask You to Imagine
You’re the Offspring of
Michelangelo,

Recently Birthed,
at Your Request, on
the Campus of
Earth University.

You’ve Arrived Here from
The Home of the Source of
Creation of All That Is,

To Learn To Paint
Your Version of
The Sistine Chapel Ceiling,
with a Palette of
a Million Shades of
Light and Love,
Joy and Laughter.

But there’s a Challenge.

By Design –
You Asked for It –

The Canvas of
Your Sistine Ceiling
Is Made from
Weavings of Fear
In All Its Dark Threads,

A Challenge You
Embrace,

for the Thrill of
Transcendent
Transformation.

But How Would You Feel
If the Registrar
Informed You That
Failure To Pass
The Final Exam
Will Cast You Into
Dante’s Inferno?

What If
The Truth Is

You Can Enroll
for as Many Semesters
As You Please.

No Hurry.

Everyone Has
Their Own Curriculum.

And Everyone Has
As Long as They Wish
To Graduate
Summa Cum Laude.

(Photo by Lorenzo Turroni; UnSplash)

 

It’s a Sign

Here’s a Daydream
for You . . .

You’ve been Awakened
by a Messenger
from The Mystery,
an Archangel from
The Love and Light
that Can Not Be Named,
though I Am
Will Do.

You are Told
You are Being
Offered
a Once-Per-Lifetime
Gambit:

You May Choose
Another You,

to Inhabit
the Fleshpot
You’re Presently
Simmering In.

You May Even
ReForm that Fleshpot
to Resemble an
Other You
Admire.

What Will You Do?

You Ask for,
and Are Given,
Hours to
Thumb Through
the Catalogs of
Possible You’s to
Replace You.

Suddenly
a Crack Appears
In the Chamber of
Your Being,

and You Are
Immersed In
A Love
That Is Too Much
To Be Named.

And You Know,
Beyond Knowing,
It’s a Sign

To Wrap
Your Self
Around
Exactly You.

 

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)