How Dare You?

How dare You
tell Your
incipient
Clown
to sit down and
shut up,

send Your
burgeoning
Weirdo
to Their
room,

ask Your
Serious Self
to open
the Door
when there’s a
Knock?

As if
it isn’t bad enough
that You tie
that useless
satin noose
around
Your neck
every day,
draped over
a garment
drained of
any color
that might
suggest
You’re Anything
less than
Solid Substance.

Have You forgotten
that there is
no Love
without Laughter?
No Light
without Lollapalooza?

That The Creator
is
Robin Williams
and
Richard Pryor
and
Phyllis Diller?

and

They made You
to
Laugh
Your
Ass
Off.

(Photo by Hikkyo Ikan; UnSplash)

 

Light Being

Let’s say
You’re in
The Black Hole.

Your Self-Examination
reveals a Self
so full of Flaws
You’re not sure
You can continue
to hide them,
especially from
Your Self.

It’s shameful,
the way You
wrap Your arms
around Your
self-inflicted
wounds,

refusing to
use those arms to
embrace
even those
Who desire
to feel Your arms
around Them,
scars and all,

Other Selves
with wounds
of Their own,
perhaps sitting
next to You,
there in
The Black Hole.

There are days
when You even believe
the best thing
would be to
pitch forward and
fall into The Abyss.

But there’s more
to You than
flaws and scars!

Emerging from
Somewhere near
Your Heart,
awaiting Your summons,

a Being
made of Light,
wearing
a shameless grin,
arms wide,

Who swallows You whole,
until You are
the Light Being,

and there is
no Black Hole
that can
hold You.

(Photo by Cristofer Maximilian; UnSplash)

 

Theater School

Daydream with Me
for a Spell.

Imagine We are Here
to Learn,
as Wise Ones say,
but let’s deepen that
a bit:

Let’s say
this Life is
Theater School.
We’re here to learn
to Act
from Scripts
penned with quills
dipped in Love.

Stories built from
narratives
straight from
The Mind of
The Divine Lover
Who built
The Theater.

Dramas,
some of them
quite wrenching,
nearly unbearable.

Comedies,
some of them
quite titillating.

But what if
You are also in
Theater School
to study to Be
a Playwright?

What if
You’re here
to Be
The Creator
Yourself?

(Photo by Ben White: UnSplash)

 

Sunday Sermon

A page from
a Holy Book
tells Us that
“The wages of Sin
is Death.”

Another page
explains that
“Sin is missing the Mark,
falling short of
the Glory of a
heavenly God.”

What if
the Idea
that Failure is
the Harbinger of Death
is not
so Holy?

What if Failure
is reason to
throw a Party?

Bring on
the Musicians,
set the Table with
the best dishes,
hire a crew of
Extraordinary Chefs,

Make the Failure
the Guest of Honor,
with a seat
reserved with a
Silver Sign
that says
“We Love You.”

Actually,
that’s a page
from that same
Holy Book.

You decide how
You want to
greet Your
Failures.

(Photo by Al Elmes; UnSplash)

 

Play By the Rules

All Your Life
You’ve been told
You’re not Enough.

In fact
the loudest Voice
has likely been
Your own.

Imagining
that You don’t
have Enough
to Be
the One
You’d Love
to Be.

But what if
Love is What
made You,
is What You’re
made of?

What if You
imagined
that if You
Play the Game
by the Rules
of Love,

that Love has
made certain
there will always
be More than
Enough?
That It can’t Be
Otherwise?

That Everything:
every Power,
every Object,
every Thought,
every Creation
is already There,
waiting for You
to claim it

for the Service of
The Love that
You Are.

(Photo by Janosch Lino; UnSplash)

 

Disrobe

Love is
The Great Disrober,
and, No …
I don’t mean
THAT,
for Goodness Sake …
You can do THAT
disrobing on
Your own time …

I’m talking about
The Black Robe
that hangs in
The Judicial Chambers
of Your Heart,

that You wear
in the Courtroom
of Your Mind
when You’re Judging
All That Is.

As If
All That Is
was Anything
Other
than another
Name for
The Divine,

when even
The Big Black Holy Books
You treat as Law
declare that

“God Is Love.”

So Who needs
another Name
beyond

Love
for All That Is?

Only Judges and
Holy Law Books.

So disrobe,
come off of the Bench
and out of the Courtroom.

Wear something
You Love.

(Photo by Majid Korang; UnSplash)

 

Poetic License

At the risk of
revocation,
I proffer my
Poet’s License
as follows:

Imagine
the Garden of Eden
with two Trees.
By my Poet’s Liberties
I will call them
The Tree of Judgment
(formerly known as
The Tree of the Knowledge
of Good and Evil) and
The Tree of Love
(formerly known as
The Tree of Life.)

The Creator has
warned the Two
who live there,
Adam and Eve,
to avoid the Fruit
of the Judgment Tree
as if Their Lives
depended on it.

But the Two
have ignored
Their Creator –
curious Beings
They are –
and eaten
a dozen or so.

Now Adam is
huddled atop a rock,
awash in shame
because He would
rather meditate
than tend the Garden,
and He knows
He should work harder.

Eve is sulking
because it was She
who urged Adam
to eat from
The Judgment Tree.

And the Creator
has startled Them both,
springing from behind
another rock, and

grinning at Them
as any adoring
Mother might –
They were created
in His image –
Her and Him Fractals of
His and Her gorgeous Light!

He waves Them
to Herself,
laughing:

“I warned You about
that Tree of Judgment.
Lesson learned,
am I right?

Here,
I brought you both
some chocolate-covered
cherries I picked
especially for You,
my Precious Ones,
fresh from
The Tree of Love.”

(Photo by Solstice Hannan; UnSplash)

 

Stroller Boy

Out for My
thirty-minute trek
to the tune of
Indie-Rockin’ in
my earbuds,
My only concession
to the Exercise-a-holic
Twenty-Thousand-Steppers
colonizing my
Facebook page with
their boasts.

I’ll forgive Them
to the tune of
Slow Dances and
The Winnetka Bowling League,

or, even better,

I’ll float in
The Wisdom
of The Little One
I just stepped aside for
on the narrow trail,

pushed in a stroller
by a grinning Father,
body too young
to toddle.

But when He
looked at Me,
I knew that Little One,
eyes lit and
sweet half-smile,

may have had
a hundred Lifetimes
to loft His soul,

to light Mine
for a few
love-leaking seconds.

Thank you,
Little One,
and welcome back
to The Planet.

(Photo by Alyssa Stevenson; UnSplash)

 

Prayer

Perhaps,
like Me,
You were taught
that Prayer is
entreaty,

bowed knees and
bowed head, and
desperate
lifted hands.

I have come
to Believe,
for a forever
of reasons,
that

Prayer is a
headfirst dive
into the deep end
of a Pool of
Love,
bubbling with
the Creator’s
Laughter
that You ever
thought
there would be
any Answer other than

“I will give You
as much
YES
as You can bear,

until You are
persuaded that
All I ever desired
for You
was that

You learn to
swim in it,
and You
band together
with Your Friends
to prowl
around the Pool,

grabbing hapless
Bystanders and
flinging Them in
until They must
swim for Their Lives.”

(Photo by Jed Villejo; UnSplash)

 

Inexplicable

There are some
wild theories
about the Creator,

like the one where
there is only
an inexplicable
Bang,
with a billion
permutations
until You
latched on
to Your Mother’s
breast.

But I’ll tell You Mine,

where the Creator
is like Your Mother

when You
wrote that poem
or
rescued that spider
or
told that joke
that made the principal
smile
when You were
sent to her office
for something
You didn’t do,
but You couldn’t
rat on
the lonely boy
who did.

The Creator
smiled too, and
loved You
as much as
Your Mother,

and has since
that inexplicable
Bang.

(Photo by Gabe Pierce; UnSplash)