All posts tagged: Desire

Freshly Cut Light

February 9, 2015
by Michael
comments 16
Poetry

I was a diamond on the ride in today, a precisely cut sentience whisking across the frozen tar, a conscious particle accepting every direction, every possibility, into its center. Breathing. Zooming. Flooding the radio silence with unformed memories. Remembering forty years from now. Embracing the horizon’s glow. Letting that fire reflect inside of me from every angle before being released. Calling every misgiving home from the wild. Setting out food. Becoming the rookery while it’s […]

Drilling Down

November 28, 2014
by Michael
comments 9
Poetry

We have to drill down. Straight through it. Through the door we nailed shut all those years ago. Through the weathered planks and carefully placed stones. Through every concession we once offered to the sky that the sky could never take, and still be a place for shining. Through all those fragmentary hopes that never went anywhere. Through that half-light we never really wanted. We have to drill down. Down through our belief that things might […]

Reaching In, Reaching Out

August 5, 2014
by Michael
comments 20
Poetry

Some nights are for forgiveness. I can only let the mail pile up for so long. Then I have to open the notes I’ve been sending myself since who knows when, and really drink them in. Notice the handmade paper, the choice of twine, the careful hand-writing, the postmarks from places I never knew I’d been. How did I get there? When was I lost at sea? I realize… a distance has been opened, and […]

All Your Playful Swatting

July 27, 2014
by Michael
comments 23
Poetry

A body is neither a limit nor a cage, but a flower on the vine of who you are. And those bees buzzing all around you? Those zoom-zoom experiences that keep swarming your life? They just want to collect your holy nectar and take it back to their hive so they can toast you all winter long, quite possibly for the rest of their lives. Best to stop swatting them away and open your petals […]

Call Center

July 4, 2014
by Michael
comments 15
Poetry

One night when Hafiz was working the phones, a call came in. The man began by announcing that he had a few questions, as if he were preparing his counter party for a barrage of heavy artillery. The way he said it made it sound like he had a few answers, too. Look, he said, you can’t really know if there is anything beyond this life or not, but consider: if there isn’t a God, […]

The SheepMan’s Instruction

June 5, 2014
by Michael
comments 11
Book Reviews

After reading the final passage of Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance, I pinched the book shut in one hand and took a deep, satisfying breath- the kind of breath you might take at dawn on the Seventh Day, a breathing into and through kind of breath.  Part of that satisfaction was the rich fullness of having encountered a work of art that spoke to me on a deep level, a story and its telling that […]

Point of No Return

May 12, 2014
by Michael
comments 35
Christ / Course Ideas

There are so many amazing things a person could choose to learn about in this world, enough to fill whole lifetimes– like the way photons make decisions when faced with the conundrum of a diffraction grating, or the way high-speed traders manipulate the flow of money on time scales that make the pace of human thought seem like canyon-making, or how the fashion industry unraveled the mystery of the neons.  There was a time when […]

Window Shopping

May 9, 2014
by Michael
comments 27
Christ / Course Ideas / Poetry

With each breath the possibility exists that your heart will no longer merely window shop along the shores of Eternity, sneaking peaks into that vista of marbled light, self-tending gardens and  pain-free childbirth, imagining with aching joy all the wonders doo-dads and luxuriant, long-lasting features that you probably can’t even begin to comprehend that come standard with the Wholeness package, but will pull open the door, step inside and ask itself, really ask itself, to […]

The One Great Desire

May 7, 2014
by Michael
comments 18
Poetry

Once, when he was still learning his craft of ushering the anxious and doubtful from the shadows of falsehood to the river of poetry at the center of their own being, and in a well-intentioned effort to raise the general morale, Hafiz gave away two court-side seats to the Explosion of the Sun. Because, as we all know, sometimes having something to look forward to can make all the difference. In this particular case, the […]

Pure Empty Endless

May 3, 2014
by Michael
comments 8
Christ / Course Ideas / Poetry

Here in the Meanwhile, on the shores of Forever dotted with the charcoal stumps of forgotten fires, the mossy walls of collapsing wooden shanties and various debris of antiquity, such as: half-buried edges of glass, torn diary pages, ice picks, the bones of dead birds bleached by the sun, and a curious face caught in sepia, the faint notes of song drift past on the breeze, pastel tones that have nowhere else to go and so […]