I love you and I’m sorry.

Dearest Brothers and Sisters
and those who are Gender Expansive-
Single celled organisms to cellulose to cell walls to wood to trees to rabbits to speckled birds to sky- all that ever was on this planet, and all that may ever be.

My teacher would always say these powerful secret teachings are blazing around the world right now, like wildfire, like a candle at the end of its life, blazes up just before it extinguishes.

I was always so sad when he said that- nothing lasts forever. The sun itself will go nova and expire and our planet at that time, if there is any life left will return to the fantastic electric nebula from which it was born.

We are part of the light all that was, all that is and all that ever will be and there is some existential solace in that

was humanity not smart or compassionate enough to save itself?

I’m sorry for all the children worldwide who are starving as we are now taking away their food rations. I’m sorry for the immigrant farmers who came here with their families, seeking opportunity and a better life who pick our vegetables and work in service without ever complaining and now we’re treating you like criminals when you actually have more ancient rights to this land than we do.

I’m sorry for the trans people who served our country in the military, who are being routed out and relieved of their careers. I am sorry for all of the government workers who now are unemployed, and we can’t realize that the attempt to destroy our government is a national security breach of the highest order from the invisible hand of a foreign enemy power who we pretend is a friend. I’m sorry for all of the disabled people receiving government checks whose checks will now be cut off. Where will you go? What will you do?

I wish there was someone that I could pray to to help you. No one will be untouched by this regime and I cry almost every day, because there’s no way that I cannot look or care. You are a part of me. I’m sorry and I love you.

I’m sorry too for the hurting earth which is bearing forth plague, famines, wars, and constant destruction because of the imbalances created by the wanton greed and consumption of man and wombman, me. I’m sorry and I love you.

I don’t know how long we will endure but I know it will not be forever. Maybe the only thing left of us has been sent out into space- a recording of our time in the Voyager capsule, that once was. I’m sorry and I love you.

I am a Buddhist, but I actually don’t believe in transmigration because I don’t believe that there’s any permanently existing self.

I believe that humans can’t stomach the insult of their own finiteness, so religion makes up promissory stories as some type of existential, permanent solace of everlasting life or lives

but I regret to say- when we die as us, WE do not continue. I’m sorry and I love you.

What then ever had any meaning in this tiny infinitesimally small speck of green and blue and white dust, cleansed by one hard rain?

Was there ever any moral authority, any God to judge our flaws- any existential reward for our good deeds, a cosmic mirror of Yama’s abacus of black-and-white stones mapped somewhere stuck on to vast space? No there is not. I’m sorry and I love you.

I had a body and that body had lovers and a baby and all kinds of stories and experiences both so painful and so joyful- the theater mask of the agony and the ecstasy. There were never any answers- just stories and then silence. I am sorry and I love you.

I wish there was a God- we could ask his forgiveness. I wish there were angels and outer Greco or Buddhist deities that could fly from space to save us from ourselves, but there are not- no one will help us, no matter how loudly we clank the cymbals and supplicate.

No matter how long we hide in retreat.

It is up to us, and I see no way that we can survive with the power of global M.A.D. destruction at the fingertips of psychotic Strangelove man babies.

I pray into space for a miracle. I write these electronic words and hope that somehow they will penetrate. I do mantras of love and removal of all ignorance and destruction, and pray for nothing less than the miracle of people rising up toward a new day of change, we can if it is all of us. I am sorry for what we have become and I love you.

It all meant nothing but it all meant everything- the stories they were so colorful and they will not last and no one will remember

but even so, my heart is full and I am grateful that I did exist. Forgive my flaws in the light of a wet morning dewdrop on a desert flower.

Remember, whatever was authentic and I hope that some thing in my life touched the heart of another in a real way. That’s all I ever had.

May life on this planet, endure and prevail for as long as possible.

I love you and I’m sorry.

/0 Comments/by

Still I Rise

by Maya Angelou

 

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

 

Copyright Credit: Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise” from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems.  Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.  Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994)

 For Kamala after the devastating loss of the 2024 election, and us all. There are times in life that require us to rise, even exhausted, not sure if we still have the strength to fight anymore, but fight we must. May we be renewed and protected. Only in the darkest of nights is where you can best see the stars. May we shine and cut this darkness, like limitless diamonds.

/0 Comments/by

The Chains That Do Not Bind

Let it crumble
all of you that is you

the endless theater
of the painted forms
of your life
the props were
all acquired, borrowed

and see what is behind
the heavy red velvet

a stage lamp that shines
eternally
the silent sound
you know you
AH
home.

The droplets like rain
don’t move anymore
they are still

and form a dense matrix
of crystalline branch refractions
the quantum chains of light
the reverent mother of all

inner space
is the same as outer space now
a bursting butterfly nebula
that has no creator

solipsistic expression squirting
oscillating light particles

ooo they don’t like to stay alone
they gravitate toward each other
like amoebas in a petri dish

wanting to merge and multiply
procreation of bliss
that has no
experiencer

the cosmic soup of no less than
the alpha and omega god particle
chains make up all space

my chubby but still strong curvy body
my spicy dry french bread sandwich
my fearful and broken and hopeful and empty full heart
the remote wooded cabin that stands beside slippery snow capped peaks
that always point toward our sun and moon

and oh
that sun is hot
you could never possibly survive

and our Source
is just one teeny light
in our real home
the phantasmagoric milky way
we are so lucky
so sacred
I bow

and even that
is just one teeny light
into limitless unfathomable space
the final act~

I can see it
I can feel it
when I look
inside

all that I am
all that I was
all that I ever will be

everything that happened before
everything that’s happening now

all of the joy of creation
and aching despair
of destruction

everything that ever will be
is just one teeny light
in the chain
that could never
bind

we just forgot for a while

but it’s time now
to recollect.

464637540_1109941023824268_5821586141423196412_n

Surface of the Sun- Webb Telescope

_______________

I wrote this poem on 12:01 am November 5 of 2024, election day. Have you ever been on an airplane where there’s been a tremendous amount of turbulence? The pressure of thought that you may actually lose your life becomes so intense that you look for something inside of solace.

I imagine it will be the same at the moment of death. There’s nothing outside that we can hold onto so you’re driven to your core. You get religious real quick, what is there? What are we? What is the part of us that has never changed? Is there any continuity?

I studied with an amazing Tibetan teacher, who lived high up on a mountaintop in a remote nunnery in Nepal. Sometimes at night, I actually imagine that I can still communicate with a part of him like connecting to ancestral wisdom.

I have been working in politics for so many years and had to process the karma of the painful scandals of our religious tradition. The intention was not to destroy it, but with the hopes to reform some of the things that were hurting and exploiting students, and then preserve the parts of it that were exceedingly powerful, helpful and transformative.

And in this highly personal communication with him one night, I was praying and he gave me a teaching. He said:

“You fought for a really long time against these dark forces. You’ve tried to change the world to make it better, but now at this time of your life, I want you to give up the struggle and allow yourself to see things as they truly are. Everything is inextricably made of light and has never been separate from purity.”

When he was alive, he used to say that everything that exists are expressions of light like the rays of the sun. Rest in the knowledge that you yourself are made of light and are good and so is everything and everyone else.

And then he had me turn toward space and look up into the cosmos, and I could see stars and galaxies and nebulae and supernovas, and he said… THIS is the world. This is what you’re part of- don’t forget it’s amazing and fantastic and filled with nothing but light.

This teaching was a gift and these recent images from the powerful new James Webb Telescope have reminded me where and what we really are in this universe, proving visually, that all of his words are true.

We are part of an amazing and rare magical creation of light and space, that knows no limit or end. This universe is warm and creative, and can bear light itself.

Never forget, recognize your natural face, be confident and strong and gently blast open your being into the best within you.

All my love, all my failures, all my strength, I offer to all.

 

A FEAST for the Eyes

The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

 

/0 Comments/by