There is a lock on the heart.
I’ve forgotten the combination 
and ask others what’s inside,
wanting a hand to gently open
and caress the interior experience.
What if I reached into others
the way my own breath
tenderly navigates 
the landscape within?
Whose hand is reaching out?
Whose hand is reaching in?

​Why do we look for love
in all the wrong places,
bare our hearts to the doors
that are closed, the signs 
that read, back in one hour,
as if to promise access
to a space where what
we really want can’t 
be bought so easily?
 
Feel the stone inside you--
the heart that is almost 
hardened.
Almost.
Its center still soft, 
vulnerable,
like an egg 
wanting to be cooked 
slowly
on low heat,
still raw from 
the experience.
 
There is a feeling
when the sun is rising,
not yet glaring from above
as if it already sees 
and knows everything,
but still eyeing the world
in a soft glow of possibility.
The morning birdsong 
 is just for you, my love,
as well as the people 
and things that step
out of night’s shadows 
to mirror and magnify
your love.

​Like a fine mist,
your ephemeral body 
is composed of phrases,
music, color-
so light that I
wonder how you
leave such deep 
impressions
on my soul
when your nature
is empty,
effervescent,
and everything
to me.

Kill the pain of what no longer serves you.
Crush it into blood and bones.
Eat it, drink it,
the suffering of the world.
Recognize all the tools you have to do so.
Don’t be afraid, my love
to kill the snakes, the tension
in the paraspinal muscles 
with Durga Ma’s powerful weapons.
Feast on them, devour them
to taste what else is there.

​*Inspired by Eye of the Heart retreat.

Showered in blessing
from skies above,
nourished by the Earth
below,
there is gentle encouragement 
to inhabit the whole energy body,
a genuine wish to extend
these blessings and nourishment
to you, your body
superimposed on mine.

What would an image-
billions of bodies
umbilically
connected to Earth,
roots in unfathomable 
beyonds-
look like?

​For now, it is enough
this image of you and me,
superimposed.

*Inspired by Eye of the Heart retreat.

There are so many templates for living-
for the ideal doctor, mother, wife,
daughter, for the model citizen.
This template can even make a mess
of Buddhist spiritual practice,
constrict the breath of poetry, 
any artful, intuitive endeavor,
creating a sterile individual 
whose heart never bleeds
and eyes never tear.

Let me then be messy,
be vulnerable, be human 
a near and far enemy 
of the Brahmaviharas,
and still a legal resident
because of this honest 
template for living 
that still judges
and is learning 
to embrace it all.

*****

An image of two hands
move up and down the spine
massaging, caressing
holding the energy body
in sincere prayer.
This body, this temple,
church, mosque, synagogue-
they are all Brahmaviharas
waiting to be recognized,
understood and loved.

​*Inspired by Eye of the Heart retreat.

There are some people I like,
and some I dislike,
some people I understand,
and others, I misunderstand.
Maybe they have mixed 
feelings about me, too.
Let me sense your divinity,
your dimensionality,
the design of your heart,
and discover that we 
​are not that different.

I am always listening to you,
unzipping skin to intimately 
know your inner world,
decorating your erogenous
​zones with marital marigolds,
drinking the sweet nectar
that drips from them 
when you are aroused.
Sometimes you doubt
my sacred participation, 
dreaming of other lovers
who might see you,
hear you, and understand.
Grant me autonomy
and I will show you
just how much I am 
devoted to the Devi.

At first it is a simple vertical column of energy,
dormant, slowly coming alive with color--
a tinge of yellow, then bright orange
changing into a whole spectrum of hues.
The column feels strong, perpetually
full of sustenance, and fragile,
the length of a cocoon supporting
gossamer wings emerging
too slowly for one who wants
to know the full design before
it is ready to appear.

What would happen if i
granted the image autonomy,
reinhabited the vertebral column
for a balance of twoness?
 
Now it is the vertical handle
of a stringed instrument,
it’s musical performance
dependent on my ways
of looking and listening,
the spine of a leaf,
the trunk of  a tree--
veins and limbs extending
into unfathomable beyonds
of a divine world, theater-like
with soft and elastic edges,
reduced when i see it
as a simple, dormant
column of energy.