Pools

I thought I was finished, but still the waves
Distant me from the shore.
Drifting, drowning, I reach for stars,
But find more water.

Sometimes I don’t care,
And that is the worst.
I sift through emotions that flit like insects
Between the bloody leaves.

We all delve into pools,
And hope to never find the bottom.
The murky, mucky depths
Are the threads of fantasy.

I think I’m done, but I know again
The waves will call me back.
And though I struggle, something older,
More powerful will win.

Returning Home

I found a feather returning home today.
It was snowy, tinged with black on one side.
I held it against the leaden sky
And kept it because I couldn’t bear leaving it for the rain
To clump the follicles together and ruin the silken beauty.

So I carried it across the grassy hillside and down my sandy driveway,
But it fell before I opened the door.
Perhaps it didn’t like the way I twirled it between my thumb and forefinger,
Or maybe it simply didn’t want to go inside
Where the sun and sky are boxed in.

Either way, I left it to be rained upon, or blown by the wind.
Maybe it will be crushed by the tires of a guest.
I would have lost it at some point, or stepped on it accidentally.
Such small things tend to be forgotten.
So I left it there by my door in the sand to return home.

Science and Art

We are sentient creatures in a vast and complex universe. Our curiosity is a useful tool of survival, forcing us to learn about our surroundings thereby increasing our ability to adapt. Thus, we are born scientists and philosophers. Our rationality is curiosity's tool.

We are also emotional creatures in a tumultuous universe. Emotion is also a tool of survival; it provides reactions intended to increase either our longevity (fear, love) or our reproductive success (desire). But the role of emotion in our lives is so much bigger than a survival adaptation. Our experience of them makes us artistic (the attempt to define our experience in a physical way) and religious (the attempt to create meaning and purpose based on our emotional responses).

Being the scientist, artist, philosopher, and religious creature makes us human. Logic and imagination are bedfellows that we imagine as opposites.

The meaning of the Life Experience is found in both science and art.

Bullets for a Saturday Night

Folded in triplet
And emblazoned with the bust of War,
You await an evening’s conquest
Loaded with guilt and nonoxynol-9;
The armor of trust.
A mask--
For within are seeds of something more powerful.

Deeper than the breast of the sea is your spirit.
Purity prepackaged and more potent
Than the horns of Aries,
You await an evening’s conquest
Loaded with lube and razor blades.

The Greatest Being

"Now we believe that [the Lord] is something than which nothing greater can be imagined." - Anselm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm%27s_argument#Anselm.27s_argument

I ponder Anselm's Ontological Argument, as I do sometimes. Can I imagine the Greatest Being?

I can. I can imagine an omnipotent being defying all rational contradictions and paradoxes; one that can create a burrito so spicy that even It cannot consume it.

But wait! There is an even Greater Being than the Greatest Being of my imagination! For there is the one that created it.

Me.

I am greater than the Greatest Being I can imagine. I created it, after all. But I am an illusion, aren't I? Born of the distinction of "I" and "not I"?

So "I" am the Greatest Being I can imagine. (Other than, of course, the I that created "I.")

Wooden Ears

"The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may listen the more and talk the less." - Zeno

I expected to find open ears.
Eager, or at least willing, to listen to some individuality,
Instead I find sarcasm tinged with judgment,
And skillfully laced with insult.

I recant.
But my words fall on wooden ears
That are too busy with their own language
To ever hear mine.

Shapeshifting

"In all of us there is a lawless side like a wild beast that peers out during sleep." - Jim Steinman.

As afternoon turns to dusk, and the September air goes from balmy to chill, I shed my clothes and return to the earthy embrace of a pine and hemlock forest.

Unfettered by artificial chains, I stalk the forest like a wolf. I sprint across unkempt trails like a deer. I dance with the stars. I undo myself.

Shapeshifting is associated with werewolves, but has a deeper significance and power. It's not only about connecting to the wild beast within. It is about connecting to "nothing" and "everything." It is a return to Chaos.

In that chill September night, I become the Horned God spiraling back to the Goddess--back to the Garden. I am the Garden; there is no seperation. Only when I am fettered by the constraints of the adult human mind--seemingly secure in its razor logic and knowledge, definitions and divisions--am I cast out of Eden. Only then do I spiral away from the Unknown God, the Goddess, the Horned God.

Trapped within "I," I suffer, for I remove myself from the Garden. As long as I live I am removed, trapped within the Temple of perception from which I interpret the world without. But when shapeshifting, I lose myself to the Wild without. I become the child again, running naked without shame or sin. Maybe not in the Garden, but a part of it, for my Temple resides there. And I can choose which windows to look out!

I return on a damp September morning to the adult human world, where I must mask myself and hold back the Garden within.

Dying Fern

Who am I who walks a tightrope
Between the doors
Of Heaven
Of Hell
And that Other that brushes past the unexpected
in libraries filthy with age
and bedsores leaking Neon.

They filter out God sometimes
As something Golden and so pure
That even in the whitest snow Its name cannot be peed..

So rename!

I laugh at iniquities bought through years of splicing
the synergy of proactive solutions. Investments reek
Of unholy Profit and Greed.
Profit and Greed!
P!
and
G!

Suffering in turmoil at the hands of prophets dressed in Velour
And buying into Old New Age scare tactics.

I walk instead through gallant ferns
Dressed in the fertile fluid of morning;
Glimmering at the expectation of coming into
The world.
To die and rot and be the foundation
Of new Life.

Transcendence, or "Transcend-dance"

In 2002, I became a college student.

It was a journey that I began warily; unsure of who I was and what I wanted, I was reaching for shadows cast by a light I could not see in a room I could barely move around in. My spirituality was a solid alloy of liberal Christianity, Eastern philosophy, and eclectic paganism. It was the only shadow I was sure of--there was a God and a Spirit and Magick and a Self!

Then the philosophy classes began.

I was sure my spiritual shadow was solid, but I was shown that it was as evanescent as an early morning mist. There was no God, no Spirit, no Magick. There wasn't even an "I"! There was only...thought?

Existential malaise set in, and I grew despressed. I could not figure out why these things meant so much to me when they had never existed in the first place. I was a wanderer without stars. A candle without a gleam.

Looking back on it, I don't remember any epiphany. I began to realize that through philosophy, I was given the tools to reconstruct my spirituality in a way that transcended "I." There was no longer a fenced in Self, but an all-embracing observer that could travel further than "I" ever could.

It was a new pair of glasses. Through these, I looked at the scarred remains of my old spirituality and began to rebuild. It was the rebuilding of meaning. The rebuilding of a Temple to observe the Garden lost.

(If a tree falls, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Yes! and No! The Universe exists because we observe it. Without observation, there is no Sound, no Sight, no Me, no You.)

And so I walked in the woods a little more. I played my guitar a little more. I wrote poetry a little more. I tried to make transparent my eyeballs and become them. I fused art and science through the power of epistemology and rewrote my personal Scripture and Book of Shadows.

The shadows grew darker.

Joining Religiousforums.com was a baptism into a bigger world. Through discussion and debate, I was able to forge and hone my newfound Temple into something greater. I was able to mix my metaphors into a crux that intersected all roads so I may journey even further. Specific posters have and continue to suppliment my mysticism by challenging my thoughts and allowing me to challenge theirs.

I am reaching for the Garden, knowing I haven't reached it and may never except in those times of quiet solitude when the forest and I make love and cease to define each other.

I am dancing with transcendence!