All posts tagged: Joy

That Strange Memory We Have

October 20, 2014
by Michael
comments 13
Poetry

The other day, unexpectedly and without provocation, because it made sense in a very incalculable kind of way, and eschewing momentarily all my previously aggregated momentum of character and personality, I responded to a clever advertisement stapled to the picture of a pet mountain goat that by some accounts had gone missing, and by other accounts been found, that was taped to a promotional photograph of a local practitioner of esoteric dietary arts involving seeds […]

The Missing Ingredient

October 14, 2014
by Michael
comments 32
Poetry

Miracles work like this: we stop trying to choose a life from the menu and invite the chef to surprise us our plate arrives twenty minutes later, empty but for a once-folded, scribbled note: where have you been get your ass back here the meringue is on fire Suddenly– we remember… We enter the kitchen to hearty cheers, exploding custards, the incoming flight of a ripe tomato, a glimpse of flames from the open pit rotisserie, […]

The Art of Pearl Diving

September 6, 2014
by Michael
comments 15
Christ / Poetry

See if this helps: Christ is a fisherman whose nets are cast nightly into the sea of non-existence, pulling haul after haul of shimmering beings out of the abyss. The seas are black as ink, the waves like rolling hills of liquefied obsidian, impenetrable to plain sight, but the nets emerge from the deep full of wriggling, unspeakable colors. We were each caught like that, scooped out of the darkness in nets woven by angels, hauled […]

Jabberwocky Detonation

July 21, 2014
by Michael
comments 6
Poetry

The Only Principle is this: Nothing happens that doesn’t unfold within a field of awareness, and every awareness is held by a greater one because no awareness is great enough to hold itself. This is precisely true, even though awareness is always, only and ever… One. (That last bit’s the Other Principle.) Using language as we are here is like trying to make a hole in the Emptiness by using teaspoons to scoop out little […]

Satisfaction Guaranteed

July 12, 2014
by Michael
comments 26
Poetry

This poem comes with a Satisfaction Guarantee. That’s right. Here it is, in fact: Your Everlasting Satisfaction Is Guaranteed. In case you’re wondering already– (you haven’t even read the poem yet for Pete’s sake!)– what type of compensation you receive should you find by some law-bending fluke of nature that you’re a twinge dissatisfied at the end of this, I’ll tell you that, too. Anticipating such a question, the Beloved has written the Answer upon an infinitude of hearts, […]

Scrubbing Smiles

July 5, 2014
by Michael
comments 15
Poetry

The instruction to just be myself resulted in a pretty meandering to-and-fro up-over-and-down there and back again maybe, but maybe not, should I educate myself better or get a few more life skills first type of thing until one day when I was brushing my teeth I came to a scrunchy halt, arm cocked like a frozen piston, and I looked into the silvered plate hung on the wall, the one framed by garishly bright […]

Half Time Talk

June 16, 2014
by Michael
comments 13
Christ / Poetry

However you came to this point, however you made contact with your inner geometry, whatever brought you to the point of finally placing all your stock into who you are, into that infinitesimal droplet of radiance lurking in your chest of which you’ve but caught fleeting glimpses, not yet even knowing what they might be, it doesn’t really matter. You’re here. Let’s leave it at that. However you came to this point, all we can […]

The Catharsis of Elroy Pontchartrain

June 10, 2014
by Michael
comments 12
Fiction

After fifty odd years of reckless living, things finally came to a head for Elroy Pontchartrain late on the afternoon of August 9th– a Tuesday.  The sun was blazing down upon all men equally that day, like a walk-in furnace advertisement, but this equanimity was hardly any consolation to Elroy whose access to reason was temporarily suspended for the duration of his personal apocalypse.  That was when the cycles aligned, when he finally rounded the corner […]

Jawbreaker Longing

May 31, 2014
by Michael
comments 17
Poetry

That longing at the center of your being is Hafiz and Christ, the Buddha, ten thousand angelic beings, my mother, your great great Uncle so and so, the not so famous one, his pet Lhasa Apso Louie, along with everyone you’ve ever loved and ever will love and all their friends and neighbors plus a few party crashers and so on and so forth– hell, it may as well be Love Itself!– shouting and waving […]

Hafiz, and the House Key Problem

May 26, 2014
by Michael
comments 21
Poetry

One morning Hafiz was giving a seaside discourse on the subject of Love. The wind was whipping in off the surf, causing flags to flutter and hats to fly. Overhead, gray clouds and brilliant sun were vying for dominance, swirling around one another so that the sky appeared to boil like a kettle. A woman near the back stood to ask a question. “What about the hockey problem?” The wind carried her words directly from […]