Consciousness is

Thinking

Thinking is hard. I've heard is said that

genius is nothing more than continued attention,

I think that may be true.

I am possessed by desire to know and be known and feel and be felt

and if I am not seeking, I am sinking.

I am like a shark in that way.

But I know great men and women that are not like sharks at all,

to the naked eye, they seem much more like lonely bears

that forage and eat berries (somehow supporting their mass) and sleep

and are formidable in their own way.

But maybe we are all sharks, or maybe I am a bear,

I get excited when I think I may have it all wrong, because that is fresh and I am a learner.

Here is something I think I know: We want what we are not, because at the root, we want to control all of creation, and control comes from ownership and understanding.

I believe that is why we are attracted to opposites: to grasp them, understand them, own them and control them.

We do not fear what we understand.

I am a student of movements of the heart

I am a student of movements of the heart

when the clouds like milk in water billow and spill

down the low places of the mountains

and the late sun light is too smooth to believe,

I am a student of movements of the heart.

when I am bestowed a life of co-toil in worthy soil

with kin closer than blood by choice and not by choice,

and wake every day springing from my floor

ready to do what I was built to do,

as a pelican must feel when it sees its wings work on the lift of wind by the crest of waves at the shore, I am a student,

when a best friend is committed to raise too much money

for too high a mountain and kids too burdened with chains they did not fasten,

and a best friend shares a cigarette with me to confess his sins and

make me feel less alone,

I am a student of movements of the heart,

for they are neither joy nor sorrow,

but one part longing, one part hunger, another thirst,

and a space in my chest and fingers and knees,

that makes me wish to be barefoot,

to burst into mist and mingle there

where I have no body but all of it at once.

Critics as creators

There are critics,

and there are creators,

and so often, I am a critic of critics and a fan of creators,

but there are critics who are creators, because they see the world around them, assimilate it, and hold it up as something that can be grasped. I like them.

“Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life’s experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer “to” anyone or anything, but prayer “about” everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.”

- Roger Ebert

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

From The Country of Marriage (Harcourt, 1975)

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,

and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,

we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,

we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,

we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.

~D. H. Lawrence

I can hardly wait

for the day that all this contrast

comes in to focus,

and I see it from above.

but oh how I love the pitch and peak of the story, the flashlight

at God's chin as he reads me

my next turn.

We all agree. Yes we do. Yes.

If I am being honest,

and not the kind of honest that asks for the

permission to say hurtful things under the mask

of honesty,

but honest in the sense that I share something that

may be unpopular:

I'd say 95% of the time

I fear exploring my culture-enforced beliefs,

I fear questioning the doctrinal authority of Paul,

and the salvation story

and the implications on sin and judgment if choice is an illusion,

because of social discomfort and alienation,

rather than upsetting or frustrating or disgracing God.

I wonder what that says about my true allegiance,

and if I am unique,

and the Christian quest for truth over the establishment of a comfortable culture

and the fiction of communal accord.

I do not know the seasons

“There are no miracles beyond the seasons, yet you and I do not know the seasons. And what if a season shall be made manifest in the shape of a man? In a field I have watched an acorn, a thing so still and seemingly useless. And in the spring I have seen that acorn take roots and rise, the beginning of an oak tree, towards the sun. Surely you would deem this a miracle, yet that miracle is wrought a thousand thousand times in the drowsiness of every winter and the passion of every spring. Why shall it not be wrought in the heart of man? Shall not the seasons meet in the hand or upon the lips of a Man Anointed? If our God has given to earth the art to nestle seed whilst the seed is seemingly dead, why shall He not give it to the heart of man to breathe life into another heart, even a heart seemingly dead?”

- “Jesus the Son of Man” Kahlil Gibran

One world, under Man.

secular Humanism: the belief in finding the right through reason and philosophy:

a good theology for modern government, I'd say.

Christ-centered historicism, pre or post evangelicalism, universalism in the prism of Jesus, post-emergent realism, Zionism: isms looking for the right. some truths are focused on heaven. some truths are focused on the sexy idea of truth.

some truths are grounded and fed by fear and the loneliness of the soul. no, they all are.

And the mysterious clues get picked up, like bones in the badlands, of a brontosaurus,

and legends of dragons are written,

and the Cretaceous period is mapped out day-by-day as if we were there, by men who write backwards...

and reverence for the way it is is lost.

and worship for what it must have been is a golden calf.

I love the assembly line and hate the responsibility of one life under God.

and I worship what it must have been and drink and laugh.

April 26

"The inner wagings of biology and heart, reason and instinct. I detest my attraction to beautiful faces and bodies... how they can pull out of me more attention, laughter, focus... and tell me that beauty does not fade. ha. We are all promised by our lust that the taste of beautiful skin will satisfy our lonely bodies. It does not matter how many books, parables, films and songs I hear and see and read about the fleeting dangers of choice by physical attraction... we will still war with its silver tongue. I sometimes wish to be blind and content as an island and straight as an arrow and married. strikingly handsome. or fit. or fat and jolly. or a cow in another pasture, mocking me by paying no attention across the fence. I say sometimes, some more than others, some not really at all. I just hope to be good. A good boy with the talents in this box clutched in my arms."

Something I wrote

Something I wrote while in love with an impossible love and reading Rumi:

covered mystic poetry from a desert man

that removes the shape of

the soul, dissolving

self into The Friend,

I am possessed

marching possessed

in the mirror I hold

to set side by side

self and other and

skin - bone - breadth - hair

skill - speech - heat - hunger

pull and ignore and conquer

slave slave slave

slave slave and

not a bond-servant to

this

dip into mystic river,

free me. freedom. or

give me, and let it be dry.

or teach me how to

love, or what to love, or

break me, Spirit, in the Texas soil

like my sister

and sew me again and kill

me and wait, in white snow cover

for spring. or something else.

there is man and there is woman and

i have come to believe that gender is a layered thing

in every child of God.

It is a load-baring block in the wall,

but it is not a kind or a label or the wall itself.

masculine notes. feminine crescendos.

these things matter,

but in a world of education for all

and unity for love equal to function,

there is a wife who leads the family in her firm choices.

there is a man who shows tenderness for the quiet sheep.

there is a woman who seeks first the counsel of her husband.

and there is a husband who has never known why he feels.

and this is not an abomination.

this is the varied faces of God lived out in a union,

in the complexity of this human experiment.

and this I believe:

one day, the fractured identity of mankind will be made perfect,

but I do not believe the current mingling is without it's timely perfection,

and I do not believe that redemption will produce

a cold man who leads and makes no mistakes

and a sweet woman who quietly waits for instruction.

our Lord is not so boring. and not so poor an author.

God bless us

to the exclusion of lesser borders,

we have been given favor

because our Constitution was formed in His truth,

He gave unto us a ripe and virgin land

barely spoiled by the animal-men here before,

a stain easily under-rug swept to make way for providence.

"A man can be a Christian or a patriot, but he can't legally be a Christian and a patriot - except in the usual way: one of the two with the mouth, the other with the heart. The spirit of Christianity proclaims the brotherhood of the race and the meaning of that strong word has not been left to guesswork, but made tremendously definite - the Christian must forgive his brother man all crimes he can imagine and commit, and all insults he can conceive and utter - forgive these injuries how many times? Seventy times seven - another way of saying there shall be no limit to this forgiveness. That is the spirit and the law of Christianity. Well - Patriotism has its laws. And it is also a perfectly definite one; there are not vagueness's about it. It commands that the brother over the border shall be sharply watched and brought to book every time he does us a hurt or offends us with an insult. Word it as softly as you please; the spirit of patriotism is the spirit of dog and wolf. The moment there is a misunderstanding about a boundary line, or a hamper of fish, or some other squalid matter, see patriotism rise, and hear it split the universe with its war-whoop. The spirit of patriotism being in its nature jealous and selfish is just in man's line, it comes natural to him - he can live up to all its requirements to the letter; but the spirit of Christianity is not in its entirety possible to him.

The prayers concealed in what I have been saying is, not that patriotism should cease, and not that the talk about universal brotherhood should cease, but that the incongrous firm be dissolved and each limb of it be required to transact business by itself, for the future."

-Mark Twain's Notebook

a spider web is stronger than a stone

these few things

they are related one to another:

pornography is an abuse of intimacy through removed observation.

defiling the sacred through exaggeration and inflation.

and from it, comes mutant expectation and fantasy.

what then, is the Notebook? Atonement? Love Actually? Titanic?

We, all of us, want to feel valued and loved

not for what we do, but for who we are.

But such a 'who' is elusive, because of course,

we are what we do.

I have never loved a stone for who it is.

modern masculinity is vacuous.

it highlights the strength and not the character.

and from it comes a kind of death.

it teaches the man to compete, rise, tower,

isolate and dominate,

all the while his right-man self is weighing the cost

in the shadow of silence

in the shadow of almighty humor

and the razor lies of comparison

and for it, a man's self is retarded as without water in the sun

until it is first uncovered by a girl.

but oh, oh, to uncover yourself

commingled with the drunkenness

of a woman.

the chemistry, attraction, and desire for a woman

is like a shaky mirror held before you

on a roller coaster freefall. you see something of yourself,

but for the gasping collapse of lungs

you may mistake that shaky falling face

for your true self. because apart from her eyes locked to yours, and asking you pointed questions for the first time, you've never been considered. studied. and so studied yourself.

she asks so that she might understand and own.

a brother asks so that he might delight and share.

that quoted, 'you too?! I thought I was the only one.'

this is why male friendship is a cornerstone

of the man complete.

and the liberation of a man to love his wife completely.

unrequited love is beautiful

because the pain makes you feel important, betrayed by the order of things,

and the love remains unsung eternal. and therefore perfect. unburdened by the decay

of infatuation.

remove desire, and we die.

this is why contentment is not true peace. it is death.

be content to sip your coffee and read a book for a weekend.

and a day, no, a week will pass, and you will kill the moth

in the window just to watch it die.

this is why old age so often becomes sadness:

when we become irrelevant, no longer depended on,

when our life is reflection not ignition, we can feel the wicking death

creep up our pant leg.

and why heaven must be something different than we think.

If the sin of Adam bestowed death unto the world,

and before the leopard lay with the lamb,

then why does the spider have venom,

why does the lion have claws and the eagle talons,

why would the Maker sew a shark for peace when it was so

meticulously pieced for death,

why is the decay of canyons the mark of their beauty?

perhaps his gift was the death of man alone.

and if heaven is eternal life in heavenly body,

it must carry with it some disappointment.

because eternal youth for the saved

would rob me of my memory of my grandmother,

her perfect crooked hands and white hair, the softness

of her face is only as it can be with the badges of time,

i do not know Betty Jo at 20 years old.

and the vivacity of youth and quick movements are not what I miss,

the slow simple gentle hands, those I miss.

but even so, how selfish of me.

a man has in him two possible foundations:

'I am worthy.'

'I am unworthy.'

and these two things will dominate his social posture.

they will fuel him in the thrusting of a new exchange.

when he is in a room of people, he will feel either

'I am energized to explore these new people and they are energized to explore me'

or he will feel

'I am a vacuum of non-contribution, and everyone else is aware of this.'

and the one cannot understand the other.

Music is science

In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself. - CSL

I wrote this to a friend, or something like it

every wooden man

has a galley full of slaves

rowing to the shores of their

future freedom

but not before their present bondage.

and here I spill out the sides

from the wicked man's perch

he hears

the negro spirituals condemning

him with their guttural harmony

flavored by the gasp of a woman

dead in child birth.

I am a wooden man

looking at Canaan on the horizon

propelled by my shackled brothers

and hatred of my port and bow

but a believer in their freedom

the death of my way of living

and the resurrection of other dead.

don't tell me what to do, tell me who to be

i have been living under the law.

the law is good and perfect

and the measure of

impossibility

by which we discover the impossibility

of human godship, that nature we carry like oxen,

the original sin: belief that man is his own destiny,

the author and perfecter of his living,

and not the written page or the pen

or the tree that was cut and stripped to paper

and therefore, it is the roadmap to the truth: we are created.

but what is the gospel?

is it a human exchange: an impossible law for a possible one?

if so, we believe the lie the first was built to expose.

that we can. do. it. ourselves.

no. not a new law.

(like a simple shaking free from the impossible law of

crazy jews in the desert)

(like a choosing instead a new law that is easier

to obey, to earn your spot in a heaven that probably

doesn't exist as you think it does)

I do not want to trade impossibility for impossibility and call it 'life'.

I want to call it death as it was first called.

this is our current history, our zombie song:

"don’t teach me about politics and government

just tell me who to vote for

don’t teach me about truth and beauty

just label my music

don’t teach me how to live like a free man

just give me a new law

(pre-chorus)

i don’t wanna know if the answers aren’t easy

so just bring it down from the mountain to me

i want a new law

don’t teach me about moderation and liberty

i prefer a shot of grape juice

don’t teach me about loving my enemies

don’t teach me how to listen to the Spirit

just give me a new law"

doesn't truth come in packages

delivered in puzzles

taught to you your whole life in pieces

so that when it finally rings true, it is assembled

from the familiar bones you've carried.

it is the gospel of grace,

the spirit written on your heart

that obeys the law

it has been said,

the man trying to be original never is,

the man telling the truth is almost always original

the man trying to make a good impression never does,

the man being himself and taking interest in another makes a good impression.

jed, stop pretending that you are living by the gospel

by shackling on a list of self-accomplishment by obedience,

by loving out of obedience

instead of loving out of who you are and who they are and who you are together

no one feels loved when they discover they are being loved by reason of looking lonely, sad, isolated, poor, or meek.

a man feels loved when who he is

is delighted in by another being who they are.

just remember your first love

and seek to know nothing but what Paul sought to seek to know nothing but

do not love the deeds of Christ

but Him

and His deeds will flow from right purpose through my fingers

and indeed I will not say it was me.

a mosaic suddenly makes a face.

i will certainly edit this in the coming days, as I find more clay fractures in the sand and place them rearrange them to fit.

what thoughts you have entertained you have done

Jesus teaches liquid thoughts

that can be molded to mean almost anything:

is rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's an invitation to

accept established government

or a sarcasm, as clearly in a world made by God, what is really Caesar's?

Is turning the other cheek an unmitigated command

or to be turned only when it doesn't jeopardize national security or

the sanctity of the sovereign state, or our duty to protect our family

on our safe school-district street?

Is the narrow path narrow

or open to those with good conscience and good excuses

don't we all have good excuses? a childhood broken

an absent mother

a chemical disposition to rage, then too stern a punishment, a feeling of betrayal,

and a response,

the pendulum of experience, nature, and a fragile analysis of personal justice?

and as for the broader path, where exactly does it lead?

Because Hell is Gehenna and

Gehenna is actually a place, the valley of Hinnom,

outside of Jerusalem, where children were burned.

Is that where we go? An ancient Detroit?

or the sins celebrated in church: sexual addiction, pornography,

homosexuality, those easily vilified because they are secret.

and the sins never discussed: comfort, greed, creation abuse, gossip,

family worship, national worship, idolatry, church growth as a

building not a body,

salvation without discipleship, those never vilified because they are public and co-sponsored.

and for this, I have trouble trusting

all but my subjective reason

and the Spirit's movement over my soul when I read

..of course, the Spirit's movements over my soul are subjective

but they sound objective when they ring truest to my subjective reason,

and so we get an email chain from our parents

that condemns the hunger of Islam, the bloodfeeding Koran passages,

a book I have never read, and shouldn't because i was born

into the truth

and the Christian scriptures that predict a very real deception

and an anti-christ

and a season of unrest

and violence

and a worldly kingdom ruled by Jesus

and my subjective does not want to believe that those scriptures become objective

in history

because my spirituality lives outside of space

somewhere in my fatalism to believe in a Watchmaker who loves me.

it does not want to believe because every generation since Peter has been

certain that those scriptures were for their own time

and so,

my mind is quick to spot patterns,

and I jump to disbelief.

and I am not a conservative, because i don't know what to conserve

I am unconvinced that older values are valuable

outside of a commitment to quest

for the truth.

which values to keep? purity? I've tested and believe it. mostly.

national allegiance? still testing.

national pride? for some few noble things. thanks for that one Zinn.

about my desire for intimacy

an understanding of sexuality

and hunger, purpose, forward movement

the Buddha's quest to quiet it

and Christ's desire to complete it

and my sojourner path to something that honors the Truth of Christ

and perhaps a lonely life befriended to the truth

surrounded by people.

how arrogant.

all this to say it keeps me young. wide eyed. and not tired.

a short thunder clap of current rivers

1. great films are a targeted lure that pull out of life a thousand fragments of experience

into understanding

and great poems, or prose,

or Meryl's face and pause,

2. San Diego is aswarm with culture. like no place I've lived and noticed.

3. I have a sense of guilt for my community. that i have too many A+'s and not enough D's. then I wonder if charity friendship is friendship at all, as opposed to friendship built on shared delight, interest, and journey. then I wonder what love looks like. seflessness. is it active dips into someone's life in a time of need, or a long term discipleship, or a long term tolerance of insanity in the hopes that steadfast love would... it's a... well...

4. I take people to Africa and show them things, without understanding them myself. Africa or the things or the people I'm taking. how humbling. and then we have the white house expecting us to be the experts. maybe, because we care, we are the experts. because experts care about things. and no one else really cares. really. and the things that need experts. but the experts.

5. Do people ever work out to be simply fit. only fit. in shape. capable. strong. without the quilted-in desire to be attractive. or better than.

6. A commitment to truth above a commitment to tradition or what I've been taught produces a renewed sense of adventure in scripture, understanding G-d, theology, the Christianity of Paul, Jesus, Aquinas, and America, Gibran, Emerson, Lewis, Merton.

7. Jack of many trades master of one. I have intentions. But what does it mean to be a master? Public recognition? The recognition of those inner thrones of proximity and intimacy that I respect?

8. Does anyone actually believe in Christ as the evangelicals teach here in America? Actually live like plain-read-American-understood scripture? Does anyone actually believe that the bible is God's word? His one and truest revelation to our species? If we did, would we not feverishly read it?? does anyone actually believe that those who do not profess Christ in their hearts will spend eternity in hell? Everlasting fire. Eternal damnation for 70 years of selfish understandable mistakes? If they did, would we not crawl across burning coals every day for just one to be saved? ...or are we so selfish that we do believe, and still do so little. what if what if what if what if what if what if...

9. What does it mean to be holy? to be righteous? what does that look like? and does it include humor?

10. i think alot about questions. fewer answers.

11. i think i like visiting more than being visited. but barely.

12. i find myself to be beautiful and ugly at the same time. what a wonderful tension. it has more power over me than i realize.

Maybe the world breaks on purpose

'

""A long time ago, things got broken here. People got sad and left. Maybe the world breaks on purpose so we can have work to do."

trouble

"Here is a revolutionary practice everyone should try: Take a bill from your wallet, think of all the things you could buy and then calmly set it on fire. Smell the burning paper, pay attention to your emotions and meditate on where money goes when it is destroyed."

After Telluride, it was said better than I could. but later I will try.

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

— Margaret Atwood

How am I different than the picket fence beside me?

"Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christians should take a stronger stand in favour of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong." - D. Bonhoeffer

how can i savor? what i am now

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies

are not starving someplace, they are starving

somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not

be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not

be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women

at the fountain are laughing together between

the suffering they have known and the awfulness

in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody

in the village is very sick. There is laughter

every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,

and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,

we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,

but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,

we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

We stand at the prow again of a small ship

anchored late at night in the tiny port

looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront

is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.

To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat

comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth

all the years of sorrow that are to come.

- Jack Gilbert

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast… a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

— From a speech to environmentalists in Missoula, Montana in 1978 and in Colorado, which was published in High Country News in the 1970s or early 1980s under the title “Joy, Shipmates, Joy.”, as quoted in Saving Nature’s Legacy : Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity (1994) by Reed F. Noss

“The small man

Builds cages for everyone

He

Knows.

While the sage,

Who has to duck his head

When the moon is low,

Keeps dropping keys all night long

For the

Beautiful

Rowdy

Prisoners

— Hafiz

the tension, of electric joy at beauty, the scandal of delight

and the contrast of sun-day and midnight,

how can I soak my face in light if I know the sunset comes,

and the murdering moon is reigning on the other side?

because I know the morning is rising on one horizon, coming to mine. it promised.

and dispair is the deepest indictment of day.

and when the darkness comes,

I, as a bearer of the promise, must flame up my torch and light the softer crooked dirt path

to heal the feet of the panicked.

with a promise. and broken feet.

thank you mariana and jerry for exposing me to the above.