Echo of Emptiness

 

wind songs drift through this infinite sea of love
you arise in love's caress
gently her currents engulf you again
and you are wind
softly falling through waves of light and shadow
lost in the overwhelming brilliance of your own love


pain is a story like the end of pain.... time is a mental construct, there is no beginning nor end nor middle of an event or moment or thought... can you say, as it happens, NOW! is the beginning of a moment or thought, and NOW! is the end of a moment or thought? 

there is no thing called pain until named.... without thought there is no one and no pain. 
we say our cat is in pain, but there is no cat nor pain without words.... 
the cat does not know or feel that there is a thing called pain which must be avoided, or indeed without thought the cat does not even know she is... 
and that is a story about cats which are not things until named... 

anything said about the dream is the dream... every single words seems to create and isolate things, there are no actual things underneath the words.... 

we assume there is a physical world but it is unknowable without concepts. imaginary things that refer to a physical world are said to be 'real', like bodies, and some imaginary things are utterly imaginary, like selves... 

I am an imaginary persona like you. 
there is no one or thing under the mask. 
somehow we seem to be able to talk to each other across this imaginary distance... this canyon of echoes which seems to sing us into the dance... 

but all words are smoke signals in the dark... some seem to resonate, but they are all reflections in the thought stream you call mind.... we are as real as love, and tomorrow... and enlightenment...

I can feel your pain as it is mine... echoes resonate in this chorus of one of two of many of none... 
there are no separate voices as we are these shared learned words, and in the sharing of our stories we recognize ourselves... we recognize this unspeakable beauty that we are... and this beauty this love has no center or edge... 

we seem to emerge in the sharing of our stories as we truly are each other... 
I am a flowing gallery of fluid portraits
we are all unique stories written with the same words.... 

and I see you as unutterably beautiful, a choice-less hologram, a swirling galaxy of memory thought belief preferences... 
and our galaxies can never touch... arms of light reaching out to touch... and light falls through light... 
it is all light...
it is all love...
I seem to emerge in the loving of you... and that is wondrous beyond measure.... this dream of infinite love dreaming itself....

enlightenment happens utterly spontaneously, just like life.... if it feels like there is a someone in the center of the swirling thought dream of separate things and events, then it does... 

and if it does not then that is what life feels like... 

there is no correct way to live or love or die...
the story writes itself 
just like this



love calls your name and you cannot ignore her song
as it is she who sings you
dances you
into the dream of joy and sorrow
she washes through you 
tides of emptiness and fullness burst through you
as you are the ocean
and her song

it may seem like you have lost love
and grieve for her song
but that is love 
singing silence into the waves
breaking the night into a rhythm that cannot be captured
but soothes the darkness
with an unfathomable light
never seen
never not seen

one morning there was a someone who awoke with a head on her pillow
who recognized her reflection in the mirror
she fell through the glass
and her world exploded
shards of light pierced her
viscously ripped her skin her flesh her heart 
drained her blood
burned her bones
erased even the wind after her ashes blew away

an image of a woman a girl a songster seems to walk by a mirror, but there is no one to recognize, it is all a flowing light fabric weaving and unweaving itself... 
wind sighs her empty breath and it is beauty singing
this is love singing
my song
your song
our song

there is no song
there is no singer
there is no love

you want me to tell you that all is love
that you are love
but what is love?
all we can know is this flowing description
this thought stream

all words refer to other words
all thought is circular
it may seem that there is a someone or thing in the center
what is a center
what is a feeling
what is thought
without thought?

no one knows what is going on
there is no one separate from this thought dream painting you and me into this dance of light and dark and space and time
and it feels like love to me
thought really has no meaning nor non meaning
meaning is thought

these songs are simply thought dreams seemingly caught on a screen or page
all is erased the moment it appears
hello
goodbye
hello
I love you



And yet this peace that cannot be understood or expressed gives the imaginary character a life utterly sublime 
It is like you become the eyes of love
I would say that if it could be given away I would 
But there is no one who has it and no one to give it to

This is an unutterably wondrous life and anyone who poo poos it 
Well 
Don’t think they have had this shift

Just this obviously magnificent wondrous aliveness continuously bursting without edges or time 
spontaneously all by itself 
always new always unfettered 
whatever it looks or feels like
of course, I would never want someone to feel the utter pain that preceded it!

The end of hope and fear and need of a never arising next 
The end of worry... 
the end of love as we knew it 
The loss of all and everything 
Yet it feels like love ...

I cannot give you anything or nothing... no one has this sublime emptiness... your questions are like asking "why red?" they are beyond meaningless... all is without meaning or non meaning... there is no next there is nothing other than this, there is no this... nor that... there is nothing more than this... nothing can be added to it... where would it come from? nothing can be taken away.... where would it go? is there an edge or outside to what seems to appear? if it feels like there is, well then that feeling is what is going on! there is no next you know that...




self is the assumption that if there is thought there is a thinker 
the knowing that this is not the case is not logical is it?
you are the longing for meaning and clarity, and there is none 
it’s like you are the looking for purple unicorns 🦄 on the moon!
there are none, and there is no one looking 
how can that be so?
It FEELS like there is a someone and a something to get 
...some time in the future
ever found a future? 
...bet not

but there is a belief in next yes? it FEELS like there is one...
what would you be without this belief? 
what would you be without this longing for an elusive goal called enlightenment?

what is enlightenment?
other than what you’ve read... 
what is energy 
What is a flower 
all you seem to be able to do is give me more description. 
what is it?

what’s looking who’s speaking 
what is the color red? 
all questions assume there is an answer 
what if the questions all lead in circles 
in circles 
in circles... 
what I sing of has no logic 
enlightenment doesn’t make sense! 
looking for something, when all you know about it are words from others is like looking for something that someone has described in another language….

before the shift I had no idea what I was looking for 
I never would have said enlightenment! 
I didn’t even call this that when it happened!
I called this 'the big wow'
and 'falling into indivisibility' 
my ideas about enlightenment were that it was something that happened to a person after years of meditation. it seems like it would be impossibly difficult! it would be a life of talking in a hushed voice and wearing white clothes…

I hate white clothes! 
I hate soft voices 
I like to wear rainbows and sing!
I would have longed for this if I knew what it was! 
the imaginary character does not go away... it never was... nor was there love or beauty or mountains... the passion play continues to sing itself and it somehow becomes super saturated in wonder… 
seamless beauty infused with love...






your heart is pierced, your blood your nakedness is drained into a vast ocean of tears where rainbows bloom and dissolve into their own colors...

we arise in this touch-less touch... 

light falling through light... 

love falling through love... 

liquid reflections soaring through an ocean of love

you are thought but no one has it

thought seems to create things like thought and a you... thought writes a story about how thought occurs...

the idea that there is a story is a story, a thought dream... 

all explanations are simply attempts to describe... and all words paint the dream of separation... even these...

you want me to tell you what you are? how could one imaginary character possibly capture the thought from which it is made and thrust in in the thought stream of another?

you want me to tell you that you are real, when real and false and truth are simply thought... you want me to tell you that you are love... or awareness... or consciousness... when these are merely more ideas... ideas are ideas... where will the thought stream find solidity when solidity is a thought?




I am a girl a woman a songster, yet I am nothing at all... 
peering desperately in a mirror trying to find beauty and love I crashed through it... the reflection had no image....

the shards that pierced and eviscerated me were all beliefs about love and beauty... about what I was and what I was not... about what the world was like and what it was not... all ideas of what I should be.... or could be... or not....
all illusion of time and place was seen through... all ideas of any separation at all were seen through... by no one....

this is beauty that has swallowed all ideas of beauty and ugliness... 
this is love that has swallowed all ideas of love and hate... this is a circular rainbow spinning itself into infinite colors... and dissolving into its own loveliness... 
numberless facets of light without light... turning tumbling twisting flowing through space without space... without time or dimension or movement... without any solidity or non movement...

I am a dream of love and emptiness falling in love with itself ...there is no one or thing at the center... these is no center... 
there is no emptiness
there is no love




I could feel that echo of emptiness
an underground river plunging through an unfathomable darkness I feared
it was my heart
beating
it was my blood
streaming
love flowing rushing through love
unsigned
un-owned
placeless
spaceless

that devastating utter emptiness was me
it swallowed all and everything
day and night
sound and silence
all was erased by its own reflection
the last echo across the canyon was mine
the walls collapsed
the ground collapsed
love's silence left no one to wonder who or where or when or why

all division
all measurement
all distinction
was imaginary
and there was nothing to divide.... 

yet the magical dream of love continues
no longer believed...
it feels even more magical!

and in greeting you I fall in love
deeply
in the meeting of our eyes I recognize an overwhelming beauty
that has no opposite
an infinite love
that has swallowed all ideas of love
it is in the sharing of beauty
of our tender humanness
that is love

together we are rays of sparkling 
a kaleidoscopic dream
spinning a magician's tale
of infinite wonder
infinite beauty
infinte love

and what is wonder
what is beauty
what is love?

no one knows
who could possibly step outside the dream that we are
and capture it

light pours through light
darkness falls through its own shadow
light and dark are erased
the illusion of two
of one
of many 
of none
is
illusion...
illusion is illusion

love falls through love
and not even love remains
knowing and feeling this
is love




crystalline light of utter darkness sears your weary eyes
melts inside into out
outside into in
your were never the eyes of fear
you have always been the eyes of love
she pierced you with your own heart magic
so that you could see that light
and love
have no source other than this imaginary dance
of shine and shadow
of love and love lost
we are infinite rays of reflected light
shards of infinite emptiness
a ballet of nothing and everything 
of never and forever

mirror of wind on an empty beach
sweeps across the plains
echos in the mountains and valleys
rushes down the canyon
settles in the desert dust
a mirage
an enchainment
a song
tells the tale of a lonely wanderer looking for her own reflection
but the mirage holds nothing
gives nothing
everyone's heart sings in these waters
without surface
or depth
or any substance at all

love is the moon and her song
and fistfuls of sunlight in your eyes





sensuous liquidity of light soaring through light 
an echo of feathers drifts across your tears 
bathing you in ocean song 
super saturated as wetness itself 
there is nothing other than loves kiss
falling through her own lips 
your lips 
our lips

your kiss 
our kiss

your light 
our light

your love 
our love 
arises in this pirouette of wonder
this ballet of infinite kisses
Is where we dance 

the wetness of love’s kiss 
Is this utterly Intimate immediacy, self arising and self erasing, 
where time and space drown and slide into the back beat of wonder 

all words of love slide through these pages as they dissolve into paper wings
unfolding into this searing light 
that burns all and everything into a story of emptiness falling through its absence.... 

love’s fire kisses you back
into winged day dreams
soaring through love’s burning echo
and the ocean song you never left




I heard my voice in the wind
but could not find the words
where is the end of wind
when it has no beginning?

under the roses
there are tiny blue bits of broken shells
has the sky fallen
or the earth risen?
where are the wings that sailed across the morning
where are the tears that consumed the night?

time slid down the rainbow and was catapulted into its reflection
it was just a hologram
dancing through itself
in an imaginary thing called space

the golden treasure was never hidden
nor found
it is all gold, a fairytale of wonder
the story sings itself
and that is a story
no hands can grasp what is not a what
when there are no hands
nor footsteps on an empty beach
when all is sand

through your breath love slides into its own echo 
and you find yourself singing the universal sigh
just like this there is no answer
nor anyone to look for it or find it
love seems to slide into itself
boundless sparkling radiance abounds





all thought is empty
all is thought
emptiness is thought
thought is thought
spinning ideas into infinity
inward and outward there is nothing to find
the line between them is as thick as thought

we call it sky but it is empty
we call it space but it is empty
we call it yesterday but it is empty
we call it tomorrow but it is empty
we call it now but it is empty
we call it the ground but it is empty
we say it is us but we are empty
we call this truth but it is empty
we call this love but love is empty
we call this emptiness but it is empty




I am caressed into being by the sigh of lunar winds soaring through meadows of wonder
...they skim the surface of this morning song leaving ripples to catch my reflection as it fades into sky
falling 
into words into letters dissipating into lines and squiggles and a vast all encompassing emptiness that has never held a thing 

no one wants to hear that this life just as it seems to appear feels, well ...utterly perfect

Delicate flowers blooming... fading... new leaves unfolding and ripped off their branches ...falling into the muddy gutter with blood and tears and rotting flesh ... eons of memories of all who have ever lived and loved and lost love...

the dream feels somewhat surreal, and yet realer than real!
Vibrant and alive and busting into bloom and simultaneously wilting, without any time for the scent to linger... on our hands in our hearts or in the deep deep places we used to image were ours... it feels like love falling in love with itself.... 

I never say a thing to my imaginary lovers... I feel their pain deeply... this unspeakably wondrous dream dreaming itself... I weep

It is not sorrow nor joy nor love in the way I would have thought of it before... it is love in the deepest sense when reason has left the ballroom... beyond all ideas of beyond where thought has twirled into and through and around itself into a spiraling galaxy of wonder... a pirouette of light ...of love ...of nothing at all...

we are imaginary dancers swooning into and through each other ...for it is these very words that define us that keep us apart...

we exist only in the touching... and although I long to hold you I know we can never touch... and it is sad and beautiful and everything in between.....





elegant sweep of wind
forms the inline of your face
softy softly thought paints this dream of you and me and love
colors flow into colors through the kaleidoscope of thought
the brushstrokes of your life are painted with disappearing ink
with water
in water
oceans of thought flow in this river where we bloom and
dissolve

this is a watercolor dreamscape of space
and time where a dream dancer in a passion play
seems to spins along a path from birth to death
the ends cannot be seen...

sometimes it feels gentle
other times it is not so soft
but all the edges are imaginary
although the cuts feel deep
they are as deep as thought
and the caresses sweet
as sweet as thought

where is the taste of taste
it is in the taste itself
where is the love in love
it is the love itself

all thought spins the dream
you are the dream
you are thought
thought is thought



we are this nakedness that no one wears... these naked tears and smiles... this naked love pouring through an imaginary membrane in between an imaginary inside and out...

this tender delicate butterfly kiss of light in light... of space in space... of emptiness in emptiness...

this dream of love where lovers twirl and can never touch.... and the ache to merge to dissolve into each other, to dissolve into love...

when the lines are no longer felt, made up boundaries dissolve... and we find we are each other... as there is no one here, or there... there is no here or there... or in between....

dissolving into you I dissolve into myself and we disappear into the flowing....

this is the utter nakedness of this love that has no words... it is unknowable, un-captureable, but can be felt deeply inseparable from all that seems to appear in this dream of you and me and we...

this is the love that sweeps away all shadow and light and yet dances in both worlds... the world of things and the deep recognition that there are none... worlds painted with words... 

these words that can feel like there is a knowing of them... but are simply the wind rustling through the trees.... the hush before morning... tires on the distant road.... the slow dawn chasing darkness under the bushes .....and the adornment of the empty bird feeders.... waiting....

all of life sings this song but it cannot be understood... there is no one separate to hear it... it is your heart beating... your breath... your eyes scanning this page.... my fingers sliding across the keyboard....

I am the longing to touch you with this song... and the knowing we can never touch... for as we do... we disappear... 

like this





This is the end of all ideas of what perfection and love are
It always feels like perfect love 




and you know life is magical and precious... you have since you were very small and wept when you saw a dead bird in the garden, and wept when you heard a song about love lost... and loved loving the song that made you weep... this feeling that the magic could be lost... that life would end... that the song would be over.... and tears felt beautiful... and precious... and tears shared... oh my! how my brother and I wept singing these songs about getting old and losing love even when I was eight years old... 

how beautiful the song that you are... that sings you... sings me... sings of love and love lost so sweetly... songs are only words... thoughts... seemingly strung together into a necklace of ideas.... with a someone wearing these iridescent gems.... 

thought seems to tell a story of a little girl singing and weeping with her brother... and a woman weeping while remembering him... how he loved me and I loved him... how we would sing all night a song that looped back into the beginning... our last conversation on the phone... how they found his body in the park, sitting under a tree, the morning sprinklers anointing him... what happens when there is no one alive who remembers you as a child? was there a child? is there a woman? 

we are flowing memories... liquid stories that seem to flow.... to dance into a person with memory.... 

does this knowing that all separation is made up diminish the dream... does it erase love? it seems to make it more bittersweet... more precious, more alive... more resplendent... 
the self is known to be a most precious gem... a center less jewel of reflections.... and tears are love's magnificent echo... 
they pour through the empty places you used to fear and erase all hope and fear... there is no need of a never arising next... as time has exploded into this divine edgeless-ness... 

utter gobsmacking wondrousness abounds.... 

and is there a me here to love you
when there is no here nor there?
no center can be found
there is no one to look

yet in the meeting of our eyes
there is a melting into you
a lover's dance 
a waltz of shine and shadows
melting into a lullaby 
a song of all who have ever loved and lost love

we are reflections spinning
and I am dizzy 
intoxicated with your beauty
our beauty
in love with your humanness
our humanness... 
in love with love itself
through you I hear my own echo across the grand canyon
the great divide we can never cross
through you
I hear my song
our song
love's song
and I weep




love erases all lines between heaven and hell
she burns all the lines around you
and all the walls around her
she is consumed by her own fire

endless ocean endless skies
there is no wordless state
before words appear
before is a word
it cannot be found
nor can after
nor can a now

where is the space between sound and silence
when silence is a word
when sound is a word
when space is a word
when word is a word

you are the seeking you cannot stop... 
you are the thought stream you cannot escape it... 
...escape is an idea... like every single word written... or sung... or thought...

this dream dreams itself... and trying to awaken is like trying to pull the planets into alignment with an idea you have about enlightenment... trying to push or pull the seas into an idea about the perfect ocean.... 
where did you get these ideas? they were learned... like all these words your brain learned, long long ago, when you were just beginning to form into an imaginary boy or girl.... racing around asking what, who, where, ....why? 

all this knowledge forms the imaginary world of things and time and space.... what would you be without these ideas, these words, this 'knowing?

you insist on quoting ancient texts... if they are old they must be true! SOMEONE MUST KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON! and you will not settle until you find that perfection you have read about.... that knowing you have read about.... that enlightenment you have read about....

but....enlightenment is about not knowing.... it does not make sense, that what you long for does not exist... nor that you do not exist... 
you seem to want a life without a self, but that is impossible, you cannot exist as a non self! you exist only as a human being, and life as a human being is full of great joy and great sorrow, deep grief, love and losing love... 

there is no other, better, more or next.... and it is the looking for an imaginary goal that seems to pull you to push you, it is you. 
you say, 'but somewhere, just over the horizon'....
.... well the horizon is an imaginary line that you can never cross... like awakening, the very seeking for it pushes it further away... like trying to catch all the ripples in a pond with your hand, it simply makes more ripples... 

and I cannot soothe you or stop your seeking although I would love to hug you and tell you it is utterly ok, that you are perfect just as you think you are, and I love you (because I do)

this is a very rare shift in perspective that seems to occur in the brain. the very brain that fabricates you... and trees and wind and mountains and vast oceans where the sun slides over the horizon into a place you cannot see.... 

will it come back? we assume the next day will come... but you never know... you cannot know if you will be there to greet the day.... 

and I have almost finished my eighth book about this and I have not even begun to touch it, to kiss it with words... as every word seems to create things, and there are none... 

how could there be no things, you may insist! 
how can I know that, you want to know! 
well, you cannot know, you can never know anything or nothing... as knowing is an idea, an assumption like you... 

and we can talk in this circular fashion for decades, and I will dance with you spin with you and love you but I can never give you this for I do not have it... no one does...



beauty almost seen
is beautiful
I am the missing of you
we dance through the light and shadow in this forest of emptiness
between never and forever
between love and nothing at all

an echo of love
can burn your heart
the sweetness of beauty missed
can softly 
fill it
and overflow into love's beautiful reflection
that we are
but can never see
as we are it





what is this emptiness in your chest
it is the echo of infinity lost
the breath of aloneness
the sigh of love
sliding through its own beauty
hovering on the cliff of madness
falling
falling
falling
through the dream of mirrors
where all reflections vanish
and there is no end
nor beginning
to this song of emptiness
no before
nor after
to love

love so vast it is utterly empty
so intimate it overflows
painting the dream with infinite shades of wonder
caressing your tender beauty
embracing a heart that was always empty

there was never anywhere to hide
no one to hide
no love to hide
it is everywhere and no where
not yours or mine
but seems to arise in the sharing of stories
as do we
we are echoes of love
reverberating across the great divide
the words that define us
split us apart

and we are
hovering
in between
the in between
is it your heartbeat
or mine




beauty almost seen
is beautiful
I am the missing of you
we dance through the light and shadow in this forest of emptiness
between never and forever
between love and nothing at all

an echo of love
can burn your heart
the sweetness of beauty missed
can softly 
fill it
and overflow into love's beautiful reflection
that we are
but can never see
as we are it

this tapestry this flying magical carpet of dreams, this fabric of words is us ...weaving and unweaving itself... writing itself with disappearing ink... leaving trails of memory that seem to form a silhouette of sound... but it is only a photograph of wind falling through itself...

wind slides through its own echo and tastes its own breath... through these words through this song through these lips this mouth this heart that cannot hold the consonants or vowels that seem to form their own roundness as they roll off your tongue roll off the mirror 

...losing their reflection they have no more or less meaning than the treetops dancing in the wind... such elegant beauty!

and that we know that it is beautiful and we can somehow share this beauty...  this is beauty itself!

and that we can share this love song... our wondrous humanness.... and feel deeply each others stories... our stories were never ours... they are entwined into an unutterably wondrous love song that has no beginning or end...   raveling and un-raveling itself... like this... 

it is in the sharing of our songs, joy, sorrow, this broken hearted beauty... that is love itself...

this song of aliveness that we are pours through its own words and leaves us breathless awe struck weeping laughing dancing in each others love light ... we are each others reflections each others stories and we are woven into this sailing soaring carpet of tattered wind that seems to have an echo a song a chorus of liquid mirrors aching to touch to dance to fall into each others softness... 

we are this utter nakedness flying wingless featherless skinless through the clouds the sky this infinite spaciousness without space...

we are each others echo... sailing through this dream that feels like love unbound unfettered un-graspable un-knowable caressing itself into being with these very words...

Illusion is illusion

Swooning into you I swoon into myself


I was the longing to swallow love and be swallowed by love
Now all there is is this intoxication
In love as love through love



soaring through the tides of moon
bathed in cloud light
shadows racing below
and above

we fly without splitting the sky
sky has never been fractured into blue and clouds
stars do not pierce it
it is all light

we love without splitting love
love has never been split into you and me
sorrow and tears do not dissolve it
it is all love

all is dissolved in a searing brightness
an all encompassing brilliance
you can hear her voice
beckoning
she only wants all of you
your skin your blood your heart
your deepest secrets that even you don't know
nothing escapes love's kiss
there is nothing to leave behind
there is no behind
nor forward

love gathers all and everything
light and dark
and even herself
into her beautiful arms
a pirouette of dreams
weaves itself
as it unravels
trails of memory seem to paint a journey to love
or away from it
but they are the echoes of a bird in flight
they cannot lasso sky

in this unravelling of all your hopes and fears
there is nothing underneath your shadow
and nothing to hold the light
you find there is nothing that you are
and nothing that you are not
there are no things
not even love

yet you hear your own voice calling you back into the dream
welcome home
I love you

we exist only in the touching
and we can never touch
we are imagined beings
isolated galaxies of thought
dancing in our own music
our own light
we have no actual substance
love is the dream in which we dance

it is only in this love that we seem to appear
we are reflections of each others love light
I have no existence without you
I love you
I am you





echoes soar down main street
stripped of all their overtones and undertones
they have no place to land
nakedness has no anchor
or sails
winds of love rip sky into mirrored shards
you see your face in every one
razors of love
slash all ideas of light
eviscerate your hidden dreams
your portrait painted with hope and fear melts
into an infinite ocean of reflections

love tears open the dream
into a rawness without time
or movement
or even the impermanency you feared
all measurement is painted with thought
the dream of edges
seemed to have a center
and a door
to another side
but there are no walls
other than your imaginary prison
there are no sides to the mirror
all is liquid transparency

and here we are bathing in the day dream of love
knowing it is a dream
is the dream
not knowing you are dreamt
is the dream
how can I not love you
there is no one
nor two
we are the spinning of echoes
blooming
and drowning in the back beat of moon




Awakening is far far more intimate than a lovers kiss ...nothing like listening to a talk or an armchair discussion
It is an armegedon of you and your world






poems are words stretching their skin into light
dancing
on a canyon stream
red and orange and golden leaves whirl-pool along the banks

wind brushes the surface of the word wind
and wings slide through the tree tops
as light and shadow flow through us
languorous ripples slide across the sandy bottom
we are reflections of the fullness and emptiness of water
painting beauty into rivers
flowing into oceans of thought
words are echoes of transparency flowing through itself
we are the beauty
that sings us

we are the color of words
tasting their own echoes as they leave our mouths
basking in their own warmth
they flow through our mind streams
our hearts are bathed in love's glow
we are the eyes of love

we are the light of the world
everywhere we look the universe appears
there is not even nothing without thought
without us there is no light nor colors dancing
no river no sea no unfathomable depths
no cloudless mornings beckoning
no towering mountains or low slung hills
no pathless desert
no mirage
no sun nor warmth nor beauty
nor love





these tears have no name nor number no source nor destination...
they are un-owned… how wondrous this intimacy that has no boundary nor center... such unbearable beauty at not knowing nor longing to know to capture to kiss this unexplainable majesty that seems to appear all by itself and simultaneously disappear...

a kiss falling through itself neither beginning nor ending ...an atemporal love song singing all and everything shaded with overtones of a beautiful melancholy.... of love of wonder of nothing at all.... infinitely deeply raw and intimate when the lines between here and there are seen through... when backwards turns inside out and forward has no meaning nor non meaning... directionless... without movement or non movement....
there is nothing that I am and nothing that I am not... there are no things...

golden finches in the morning swarm on the feeders... the canyon breathes... all is a love song caressing me from the inside and out... breathing me singing me into a wonderland of love...
yes it is impersonal as there is no person... but an imaginary dancer twirls down the canyon with you... laughing and weeping deeply at the love the loss the utter devastating emptiness that consumed the dream of separation and ...yet.... somehow... my husband sleeps and I will never know his dreams.... or thoughts... or how he feels... or what the color red looks like to him... or how the wind feels on his face when we walk in the canyon...

only through sharing these stories that we are is there a seeming touching... of distant whirling galaxies... reaching... arms of starlight... light falling though light... all is light.... all is love ...even the loss of love...

such unutterable beauty that we are these stories that we share... arising only in each others eyes... and so the story goes... writing itself....





I would never say there is a thing called oneness or god or source appearing as thingness or even emptiness appearing as fullness

it is only with or through imaginary separation that there is a recognition of unicity... and an aware-ing aware of aware-ing... and we are the lens of imaginary separation.... of course all this is story.. it is all story... illusion is illusion...

it is ALL description and there is not even nothing underneath it... we assume there is a physical world yet it is only 'knowable' through concepts through thought.... thought is a concept created by thought.... and on and on the circle spins and it may seem like there is a center to the thought dream and that it is going somewhere or came from some place. or thing... but that it simply the thought dream weaving a universe with space and time and a unique figure dancing through a life...

the dream of enlightenment is a profound shift in perspective... it is apparently a rewiring of the brain... and it becomes obvious always that there are no things or non things nor selves nor others, nor time nor events nor measurement... yet simultaneously inseparably there is this dream of separation...

and it feels like love somehow... after the conflagration when even love burns itself




I would never say there's a thing called oneness or god or source appearing as thingness or even emptiness appearing as fullness

It's only with or through imaginary separation that there's a recognition of unicity and an aware-ing aware of aware-ing and we're the lens of imaginary separation, of course, all this is story, it is all story, illusion is illusion

It's ALL description and there's not even nothing underneath it. We assume there's a physical world, yet it's only 'knowable' through concepts through thought, thought is a concept created by thought. On and on the circle spins and it may seem like there's a center to the thought dream and that it's going somewhere or came from some place or thing but that's simply the thought dream weaving a universe with space and time and a unique figure dancing through a life

The dream of enlightenment is a profound shift in perspective, it's apparently a rewiring of the brain and it becomes obvious always that there are no things or non things nor selves nor others nor time nor events nor measurement, yet simultaneously inseparably, there's this dream of separation

And it feels like love somehow after the conflagration even love burns itself.





tears paint my story and evaporate into diaphanous rainbows
my colors soar through infinite shades of sorrow and joy
there is no where to land
and no destination when no one is wandering looking for love's treasure
it is all love
there is no end or beginning to this song of rainbows
I am an echo's dream

love skims the dreamscape
erasing all shadow and light
long long ago I was seeking the source of color
ripples shimmered through my reflection
earth and sky fall through each other
as I faded into clear waters
time kissed my face one last time
it was love
saying hello
goodbye
hello

wind sails through itself
and evaporates into her own echo
I am a flowing water color dream
pouring into into this river of song
oceans of light bloom
from above and below and in-between
petals of starlight
fall
softly
into pools of words where hummingbirds drink
and we are intoxicated with our own colors

rainbows explode
through us
in us
as us

love is the dancing
of our eyes
pouring light into the dream
we are reflections of stars
a prism of tears

through us
love falls in love with herself
kisses herself
through our lips
breathing echos into a river of song
this miraculous thought dream
this worded world is the only place where love and beauty live
...takes your breath away
don't it?




river of night has no end
nor beginning
moon and stars reflect the unfathomable vastness of unknowing

lying on still waters
breathing
sky




This will never be clear as enlightenment is quite beyond understanding or belief. The seeker is the looking for clarity for solidity for certitude, and there is none. There is no actual knowing or understanding. There is no one separate from what’s going on to know it or capture it. All we can ‘know’ are concepts, and all ideas refer to other ideas...
...all words refer to other words.

There is no actual definition, no 'knowing' in the true sense as there are no objects under the words and no hands to grasp them.
The thought dream is flowing description seemingly weaving a web, painting a world of this and that and a you somewhere in the middle, and time and space and all distinction and measurement, but middle and edges and ideas and words and thought ...are thought.... there is no solidity nor fluidity.
There are no things to be moving nor permanent...

No one to rest
....no place to rest...
No one to understand and no things to arrange into some kind of understanding....

All is illusion...

Illusion is illusion.




Actually you are just what you think you are
As you ARE thought

river of night has no end

nor beginning

moon and stars reflect the unfathomable vastness of unknowing

lying on still waters

breathing

sky

sky sails through the edge of clouds

burning

silence

in your eyes

music of moon Lillies in the dark

shadows drift through shadows

burning

sunlight in your eyes

trails of memory weave a forest of moon lace into sky

we are the songs of ancient prayer flags

colors burning 

wind

songs are afterimages of this searing brilliance

we cannot see this love light

we are it

the enormity of unknowing

drifts into the dream of knowing

all is lost and found

in this day dream of echoes

burning

Silhouette of Echoes


who left these fingerprints on the mirror
who saw through the glass
empty of an other side

was there ever a hand
was there ever a face
was there ever someone looking?

words slide off the paper of an unsigned letter
pour through figures at dusk
dancing
as night unfolds her wings
the dream of love flies out of your secret pockets
she leaves your signature in every footfall
but your name begins to fade
it becomes just more loops and lines
like the apostrophes and commas of fallen pine needles
...once they held the sky in the tops of tree
now they hold nothing
there is nothing to hold
no fingerprints
no signature
no yesterday to gather sky
no tomorrow when we will dance

fallen shadows blossom
the story unravels
as it crochets itself with every word
water
evaporates
so do tears




naked fierce love pierced me
ripped apart time and space
consumed all the air
and my breath
leaving not even a vacuum

ruthlessly love devoured the ground upon which I stood
and my feet
she erased the very ground of being
all shadow and light
all sound and
silence

can sound exist without translation?
or is the word sound simply an assumption of knowing this unknowable infinite symphony of perception?
open your mouth and birds fly out
words with wings
that seem to be heard across the canyon
but are only feathers
in the wind
circling softly
back to you
love letters
unopened
never written
never sent

a lasso made of wind
seems to create a circle of wind
'but I know wind!' you may insist...
do you?
all your knowing is only more description
thought seemingly circling around an empty center
spinning a dream of things like wind
and your beautiful tenderness
and your tears

only in this imaginary dance of twoness
is there wind and tears and soft cheeks drying
words and music and love songs
...deep kisses
and laughter floating across the moonlit dawn




is there a wordless essence beyond these words
a wonderland of emptiness
without emptiness?

there is no center to a word
these lines are filled with spaces
there is no bare root or meaning to any word
each word is naked like a note
lost in itself
and we are its overtones

as we are the color and sound of words
pouring through the shades and timbre of memory
floating through this poem
we are these very words streaming through our eyes

thought is a dream song singing itself
you cannot get stuck in words
there is no you outside of thought
we are linguistic paintings
an infinite dream world where water color paintings dissolve into their own colors
a river of song soaring through rainbows
we are arcs of scintillating light
requiring imaginary separation to be seen
to be heard
and to love






yellow finches
and ring necked doves at the feeders
sun slides across the grasses
slowly
gently
waves of shine and shadow have no rhythm
yet they are rhythm itself

ocean of light pours through me
I am this ocean song
of wind and light
and vast untamed seas
where there is no sound or silence
no stillness
nor movement
nor any one to sing

spider webs strung like Christmas lights across the garden
seem to gather space into a gift of light
suspended as the hush
the breath
of shimmering
bathing in its own ungraspable beauty

I swim through the softness of morning
roar of the garbage truck growling down the street
wind soars down the canyon
skipping sunlight across the waters
my reflection disappears into the shimmering
and I am neither lost
nor found
there is just the singing of echoes
reflections
dancing

no one can read the calligraphy of cloud shadows racing down the street
there is no need
to decipher love
or to hold starlight
to know its beauty

you turn around and cannot find the past
only an empty street where no one wandered
you spin and spin and cannot find tomorrow
there is no sign that cannot be read
its all words
they contain no meaning
or non meaning
there is no direction in a spinning sea of echoes
you drown in your own reflection

after the deluge the sun rises from your chest
leaving a vast measureless emptiness
and shadows of forgotten melodies
drifting down the streets
pooling in the gutters
where fallen leaves and blossoms gather

ancient stars pour through your hands
your tongue
your heart
made of starlight

without words
there is no center
or edge
to this song of life
singing starlight into your eyes
pouring our reflections
into love's burning echo






wind dances and does not leave her footprints

is it her smile upon your face?

does she long to dry your tears
or caress your softness?
or are you the longing
to dance with the wind

spinning into ourselves looking for a center
not even nothing can be found...
we find we are simply
a pirouette of wind
in wind

we are wind's echo
we find ourselves in the resonance of each other's reflection
we are liquid mirrors
soaring through the day dream of love




water
flows
disappears
into its own wetness

wind slides into its own movement

and love
well love is in the loving
river of love requires imaginary sides
but it seems to over flow its banks
saturate all and everything with an indescribable brilliance

you are the eyes of love
the light of the universe
caressing all and everything into existence
without you there is no water
no wetness
no wind
no love

and you are my heart song echoing in the trees and mountains and deep deep canyons that we can never cross... we exist only as echos of echoes and there is no more looking for the beginning or the end of the wind that soars across the great divide...

there is just the wind.... dancing.... with wind
we magically appear in the dancing....
only in each other's love light is there this resonance... this source-less echo...
without this dream of reflections... there is not even darkness... there is no outside... there are no sides...

we seem to be the dancers to unseen music.... a music that relies on separate notes and gaps.... and soft eyes and ears and tender squishy bodies....
....I am the loving of you... and the missing of you
gently
softly
wind caresses you from the inside out
and you are the wind's caress






Somehow the dream of infinite shadows fell through a dream of infinite mirrors and dissolved into this dream of infinite love






heart sings and there is no answer
only an echo
burning
in the marrow of love

utterly alone we do not exist
only in this imaginary space in-between sound
and silence
in between light
and dark
in between echoes our hearts mouth the words
and we are love's breath resonating...
love is the dance in between everything
and nothing
in between never
and forever
we are bathed in cricket song and the surround sound of moon

I am these words that paint my silhouette
empty of light
empty of shadow
twirling down the wet sidewalk
dancing with my own reflection
but there is no one here
nor there
there is no here nor there
nor in between

mirror of moon
has no other side

wind howls across the long desert moon
it is your love song
that cuts you to the core
you watch all your most intimate secrets
the very heart of you
a silhouette of echoes
dissolve

what is the sound of dew evaporating in the morning sun?

what is the song of tears

dissolving into their own wetness

sorrow

evaporating into its own beautiful melancholy

memories

slide through the thought stream

leaving no echo to beat your heart

nor signature on the window

as even transparency loses its solidity

what happens when words like sound and silence lose their meaning?

when even truth and meaning looses their grip on the dream...

when footprints gather fallen blossoms

and past and future are crushed into the flavor of your own

utter

aloneness

wind falls through its own breath

colors swirl under your feet

the ground dissolves

there is no one left to lose their footing

no hands to grasp the air

air and space are sucked into their own breath...

and wind breathes you

once again into the dance

there are no words left to describe

the absence of all and everything

and the fullness of it all

ahhhhhhhh.....

this magically appearing and disappearing scintillating dream

and the overwhelming love of it all

Love is a word

forest of night is eclipsed by dawn
silence
slow crescendo of wind in wind
waltz of trees and sky
lace of inline and outline flows through you and you dissolve
along with the imaginary walls
between you and sky

thought is dawn sweeping across the imaginary canyon creating light and shadow and caressing all things into the day time dream....

enlightenment is the dream of love sweeping through the dream of separation and erasing all things... time dimension direction movement... measurement.... all this and that...
even love....

yet love caresses you into her dream
not separate from all dreams...
and we dance in this imaginary canyon of infinite wonderment
we are this dream of love dreaming itself

love is the light that erases all shadows
it is the fire that consumes all light
it is the conflagration that burns even itself

the mind is a waterfall of words
skimming across pools of liquid shadows
memories paint the day dream with echoes
mirages stream through a color land fantasy of time and space and nothing at all

one leaf slowly drifts through mountain air
softly pours into its reflection on a shimmering stream
light dances in a water ballet of light

there is no one or thing underneath the thought stream
no one to manipulate it
or flow with it
a cascade of dreams
pouring into and through itself
seemingly creating things like thought
and movement
simultaneously self arising and self erasing

I am this flowing description
thought seems to take its place in the symphony of perception
there is no one left to read it
river of life flows as it does
spontaneously
naturally
all by itself

I am a wind song sculpted by wind
cast adrift in a sea of shimmering light
water tales of breathing
water
echoes streaming across an ocean of infinite reflections
that have no source
or shadow
or light

love songs have no anchor
or rudder to guide them
they are your sails
blooming
as you swoon into the wind
you are carried by love’s echo
she sang your name long ago
it was wind
and ocean
and sky
that swallowed you
as soon as you heard her voice

...but it was always your voice
softly riding the wind
soaring through you
the breath of love
caressing you
this love song that sings you
that you are...

the wind has gone camping again
she sings with her echo in the palace of pines
I love you
I am the missing of you

sea foam clouds drift through sapphire skies
through your eyes
through these words
worlds drift through your mind stream

there is no script
no one to read it
no words to slide off
no pages to dissolve into sky
no sky
words of love are only words
what is love
what are words
what is in the word sky
what words could be true or false
when true and false are words?

twisting turning swirls of golden gently brush evening across your face
and into your eyes
whirlwind settles softly into its own breath
the universe pours through thought
thought pours through the universe

words crochet a fabric of sound and light
...and shadows sliding down the mountain
pouring night into her empty dress
and starlight in your eyes

it is your naked eyes I long to kiss
for it is only in our reflections we seem to arise
we become the shimmering in between the walls of a deep deep canyon
we can never cross
there are no sides

thought dreams us
words as thick as thought paint our imaginary lines
without which we don’t exist
there never was a mountain
or anyone to climb it
yet here we are
walking through fields of flowing
we are waves of meadow wind
caressIng our tenderness
as we gently
gently
fall in love

wind has no empty pages to fill
life sings itself
this dream of love has no dreamer
there are only songs
singing this universe
poems unravel
and not even darkness remains

many believe that enlightenment is the magical disappearance of you
but you never were
nor was there a sky sprinkled with stars
nor devastatingly beautiful colors of sunset
no colors are painted without thought
all is thought
thought is thought

there is a palpable psychological and physical release
but who or what feels this when even feeling is an idea written by thought
the dream dreams itself
simultaneously appearing and dissolving
into itself

so what exists if even illusion is illusion?
there was never a sky to swallow you
or wind to blow through you
there was never any thing called love
there were never any things at all

spring and summer unfold with their blossoms
autumn brings it’s windy golden leaves
winter sings its long dark nights
and you remain
loving the beauty of the seasons
the fullness and emptiness of love
no longer looking for meaning or truth
or any solidity at all
simply loving the love of it all

the big wow is the knowing that there are no things nor non things yet all and everything seem to appear
let us shine in each other’s love light
and bathe in each other’s colors
sunset looms
and it is beautiful

This imaginary character does not prefer to use non-dual speak with friends and family. She never says, ‘there is no time or non time’, when apparent others say things like I’ll see you tomorrow’, and certainly she would never say, ‘there is no you nor me to meet’....

When her friends say that they are trying to keep up hope she never says there is no next...
when someone dies she never says that that person did not exist....

When someone says, ‘I love you’, she would never say, ‘Neither you nor I nor love exist’...

This echo land dream ballet dancer rarely speaks of this as who actually would care that there are no things nor non things? Most dreamlings see the beauty of the natural world but not of thought and feeling.... no one wants to hear about how unutterably wondrous it all seems to another....

If you want to be in the now I won’t say a thing, even though it’s obvious that there is no now, and no one to be in it or out of it.
If you want to examine your thoughts to see if they are true, I never say anything even though it’s utterly apparent that there is no one underneath or outside of thought who can examine manipulate it, as the idea of thought as well as a thinker is created by thought.

So if we are talking and you want this crammed down your throat you must tell me!
But it won’t do any good... there is no good or bad, no prize called enlightenment waiting for you... no one who has a magic key... there is no door... nor an other side... there are no sides and no middle.

As long as you are the belief in an other better more or next you will be the looking for them. You may look and see that there is no other better more or next and yet the belief remains... as you are that belief.  Who would want to erase themselves? Don’t worry, you are a flowing thought dream, like me.... as real as tomorrow and love and enlightenment.  You can’t erase yourself, you simply do not exist. All there is is thought, painting light and dark and color and form and things like thought and movement...
thought paints itself...
how deep how thick is thought
how thick is the word thick
..how deep is the word deep?
We are mental fabrications...

How wondrous the dream of all and everything magically self arises and self erases simultaneously without effort or non effort yet includes things like effort and ease.... and these very words are the dream... sliding through the mind stream that was never yours or mine...
How marvelous this life just as it seems to appear!
How sublime this love!

I know that this shift in perspective is uncaused, there are no separate events no separate moments, no cause and effect, and it does not happen TO the imaginary persona.  No one will never get this.... there is really nothing to get... nothing to learn by repetition or gain or lose by methods and practices, and that all this trying will only perpetuate the illusion of separation.

This is more like a ripping and shredding of the very fabric of life, of your life, of a you to have a life....  here it felt like dying, this psychological evisceration, like being skinned alive, and finding no one under the skin. I would never wish this pain upon another... for I have seen many go through this utter devastation and not fall all the way... they adopt the skin of philosophy or spirituality or religion... and poo poo the things I describe as impossible... yet I remember their tears when they had a glimpse as I was weeping too...

Non dual speak can never convey this love...
this love that seems to appear after love dies...
The imaginary center exploded and all that love I tried so hard to hold on to bled into the dream... and the water color passion play continues to dream itself.... no one lost and no one won in the war of emptiness versus fullness...

Anything said about the dream is the dream painting itself.
Oh my the sun is rising through the pines....

 the moment you appeared in this dream scape the world was shattered into infinite pieces
and you have been desperately trying to put them together ever since
the trying has defined you...
you are the feeling of brokenness...
...looking for imaginary things called wholeness... happiness... love...
for anything that will complete you

it feels like you are one half of a kiss...
standing on the edge of a bottomless canyon calling
...calling....
and hearing only your own echo
your own voice
your breath
your heartbeat
the wind.....

it feels like you are utterly alone
and you are
you exist only in this dream of separation
there is no outside to the dream
as inside and outside, like all this and that,
and you
are mental fabrications

yet the horizon may untie itself
as the canyon and sky and ground
and all things collapse into meaningless sounds
all your love letters
are returned
unopened
sealed with a kiss
the kiss of your own demise
the ink disappears
the paper dissolves
your world crumbles
along with the hands and the heart that longed for wings
to fly

wind soars through its own echo
sky slides through its reflection
sound falls through it’s own vibration
this hush between words evaporates
you fall through your own kiss
as all things
disappear
even silence

this utter devastation brings an unassailable peace of no longer believing or feeling imaginary separation...
and you discover that although no things actually exist
all and everything still seem to appear
the dream of enlightenment is still the dream
you cannot exist as a non self
you are a fairy tale persona in this water color passion play painted by thought
rainbows sailing in an ocean of color
constantly dissolving and re-appearing
...always the first and last kiss

this sublime peace remains
it feels like love has super saturated the dream with its own ungraspable flavor
this cannot be described as all words are knives...  stories writing themselves ...the dream dreaming itself...

and you are forever suspended in a delicious unknowing... in a constant state of utter wonderment.... such unstoppable joy and awe of simply being... in love with the love of it all

I see you on the edge of the canyon...
swaying to a music only you can hear...
we can never touch
but we can share our stories
and marvel at our beautiful humanness
and in this sharing we can can catch a glimpse of our own fathomless beauty
we simply do not exist without each other’s love light...
we are liquid mirrors dancing
echoes across the canyon...
love songs soaring
like this

morning streams into our palace of pines
and red castles
crumbling
thought paints a chorus of echoes that seem to create a me in the center of the dream
but the center is empty
as well as the castles
and colors emerging in the sun...

how beautiful that we do not know what beauty is
how wondrous that we cannot know what love is
how spectacular that we cannot know what any thing is
as there are none...
just this thought stream
chattering away...
all by itself...
flowing description is all we can know
yet the knowing is imaginary as we are concepts also...

we are a whirlwind of thought
splashing through its own echo
memory sailing in a choir of dream voices
never ours
never not ours...




putting your hand in the river... to feel the wetness you cannot see... you cannot touch light but your eyes soar through moonlight shimmering on the water... where are the walls between you and the moon? can you touch them?
where is the edge of love?

tracing the lines and loops of words poems seems to begin and end... stretch out letters into a ribbon of sound... tie up the song with a bow.... two loops and two ends... pull one end and the song disappears... doesn't matter which... pull a loop and a knot appears... what is inside the knot? can life be contained with words? what is life without words?
is life a word?
does it have a meaning outside of other words?
isn't meaning a word?
isn't love a word?

self is longing... it does not dissapear... it never was

Just Like This

darkness
rain taps her songs on the roof of my heart
beauty is indecipherable
love has no meaning
meaning has no meaning
I am echoes reverberating
ocean songs in the heart of a nautilus
who is there or here to listen
to the rain?
it is this flowing web of words
that spins this enchantment
without sound
or silence
or words

I am a river of echoes
reflections of wind
breath of dawn sweeps down the canyon
morning laughs
time runs along her banks
rushing pouring streaming soaring
I am wind dancing
there is no wind

ashes of moonlight
burn the very ground
chariot of clouds is lassoed by autumn winds
undress the sky
and you recognize your nakedness
a supersonic love song
saturated in wind soaked tears

all feeling is distilled into a sublime aliveness
I am awe
intoxicated
I am a dream of emptiness
of fullness
of nothing at all
the dream slides into an enchantment of un-knowing

we are this dance, yet no one or thing can be found
without an imaginary space to dance
or a backdrop of time...
the curtain is always closing into this dream of sunset wonder

this dancing is us
ephemeral and wondrous beyond measure
subsumed with an ecstatic love that drowns in its own beauty...
this water ballet of love
slipping sliding pouring into its own wetness through our lips our songs our hearts
our tears
pouring our aliveness into an empty glass
as the sides and bottom and
emptiness
falls away





first we mimicked the birds
then we made flutes and violins to sing of their beautiful flight
we are the instruments of love
but no one plays us
love has no hands
no arms to embrace us
we are our own embrace

my hands my arms are the dreaming
softly flowing through space
they reach out to touch the music
the song
the magic
the dance
the love
but I am the music dancing singing loving
weeping
at the beauty that there is nothing to touch
and no one reaching

we are the music
the melody
the words
without imaginary spaces
there is no melody
no words
no music
no love

we are a sailing ship of clouds
dissolving
into
sky

sky
dissolving
into
love

love dissolving
into
us
dissolving
into
love

what is death but the end of our song?
our melodies may linger in the hearts of a few
as music is many hearts merging
love is our heart songs recognizing each other
oh yes!
we sing, 'I am the loving of you'
as we dissolve into love's infinite embrace







it is the very dark that unravels night
light unravels day
what rips apart heaven and earth
and the silence in between?

what pierced the sky
the air
your breath
your heart
into tatters of moon embrace

what is on the other side of words
when side is a word
where is the wall between inside and outside
is there a door
a window
a promise of a bright tomorrow
fading
as all words do
as soon as they are spoken
what listens to sky
as it breaks apart light
and plunges our eyes into darkness

who made these words so songs could be written
creating stories so beautiful
we weep
and weep even more
knowing we are the story
of love of beauty of rain slashing down
of morning waiting behind drifting clouds
and mountains softly dancing above them

all stories are the dream
the dream is a story

we are shimmering reflections
the bubble burst and the luminescence is everywhere
and nowhere
we dissolve into our own light
our own love
we are the dream
dreaming itself
we are the song
of our own innocence




silk flowers are ripped by wind into pieces of sky reflection
I am a rippling empty dress adorned with wind flowers

what is an empty sky
without wind
without clouds
without birds
without blue
without emptiness
what is sky but an empty word
painting colors in your mind

the dream is a play of light and shadow
flowing across your lovers face
all and everything is the beloved
there is no lover
no beloved
nor love

seamless sameness
and infinite colors
both
and neither

there are no hands nor heart nor song
to hold or let go of the dreaming
or kiss the dreamer
as there is none
there is only this dream song
dreaming itself

love nuzzles your neck
and pours through your empty hands
your empty heart can never be filled
as it has no edges
my hands are dreaming
time loses her shadow
and no longer looks for light
love bleeds into wind songs

this road this road this lonely road
this imaginary trail from birth to death
where beauty roams
looking for beauty
where love wanders
searches for love
you can see her
an outline of an empty dress
a mirage bathing in moonlight
twirling and dissolving into her own silhouette

we are a river of stories
wind flowing across shifting desert sands
this path leading to a nowhere land
paved with lucky stones polished with your trembling hands
and love letters written and torn into tears
your lover's face shinning with the wetness of your eyes
morning doves
cricket song
and words dissolving into moonlight
memory writes your lines as they fade into an imprint of wind
flowers on an empty dress

empty footfalls on an empty road
dusted with eons of starlight and moonlight and the blackness in between
acres of searing suns and winds and countless feet and hearts and blood and tears and laughter
smiles that no one wears
a circular river strewn with hopes and dreams and fear and love
a mirage of burning shadows
ashes of wind
softly
settle into your footprints
as you dissolve
along with the path
and the ground
and acres of empty sky







your heart can hold its imaginary shape
for only so long...
until time dies
and love explodes
unties itself from the pier
and drifts the vastness of endless ocean
weeping into its own wetness

without sails or wind or rudder
without wings or feathers or hollow bones
or heart
to reverberate echoes
into portraits
flowing into a lover's breath

love removes itself from any thing or place or person
until there is nothing to be contained
and no container
there never was an empty heart
nor one that was full
you pour into your own shadow
and disappear

suspended in the depths of ocean song
skinless
fingerless
footless
neither joy nor sorrow
nor any love can be found

one day there is a glimmer of light
love pulls you from emptiness
whoooooooshing up and up and up and up
you burst into the dream of light
and love
and are amazed at this amazement
of light
and color
and skies and trees and mountains
and leaves
dancing in the summer winds

and yet
you are stillness
suspended in ocean song
the dream of emptiness
never unties you
still
the dream of love
sings you






what spills through the lips of the flowering moon
pours through her fluted hollow throat
casts her sea dreams across the silence

vast unending songs of infinite hue
echo across long desert roads and among trackless mountains
rush down deep dark canyons
softly ripple in the pools and eddies of my heart

life sketches itself
love fills in the colors
and the tears

flowered dress releases its petals into the perfume of emptiness
silken clothes of moon song
caress the nakedness of night

what releases hope and fear
so that life soars untethered

was it the death of love
that dissolved me into butterfly wind?





looking for myself in every flower, every drop of moon, every word, every letter, every cloudy morning, every sun filled afternoon....
every thought every feeling every memory, which could not be counted or measured... they seemed to be constant and not separate... how to dive into a stream when you are it?

searching in the spin of after images when I would close my eyes and dream of finding this illusive me...
trying to penetrate to capture this mystery
in every doorway
in every window
in every mirror
...and never finding anything...

I no longer knew what I was seeing... what is a marigold
what is yellow
what is moonlight as it drifts down the garden path
what is the sound of deep deep sorrow as it evaporates into silent tears

never knowing what I was looking for...
yet surely I would know if I found it!
not even nothing was found... not even the looking nor the look-er could be pinpointed
nothing was hidden
nothing was revealed

an empty road implies a road with people going somewhere
empty shoes imply feet
and someone dancing
an empty dress implies a person who might slip into it
but the flowers fell off the dress
the dress dissolved into the scent of moon Lillies
filling the garden that no one tended
that no one wandered
weeping
looking for forgotten moon light
the garden and all its beauty fell away
there was no ground
nor moon nor sun nor sky
nor emptiness

when the rain stops
where is the rain?
what is water
anyway?





what is in the shadows
but memory clothed in night
and who is wrapped in silence
but an achy fiery brilliance
longing to sing

who mouths the words that your heart cannot sing
who breathes night into day
and day falling through sunset
colors
gently brushing your face
with an unravelling of all tomorrows
all colors
all faces
all light
all dark
all memory

no one wears the clothes of memory
liquid words
a chorus of stories
some falling through the filter of time
laying in piles like forgotten autumn leaves
...another story sings of the golden
leaves appear
stories intertwine
memory is fluid

words are water
falling
through water
snapshots of a river
that has no substance underneath its wetness
that has no depth
nor movement
other than the words themselves
how thick are words
how deep is thought

where is the story of your life
as it flows through itself
not even one phrase can really capture
this undeniable aliveness
that no one has
it recognizes itself
continually
what could be better?
what else is there




the poem unfolds itself
paper birds soar
through the rips in paper sky
painted with reflections of blue
liquid mirrors you cannot see through
nor can you see your own reflection

do the creases remain in your heart
after love erases the lines
that folded it neatly into a secret pocket
and surrounded your beauty
with a blanket of hope
and fear

the hum of an all pervasive silence
pierced the song of remembering
and forgetting
...the story of leaving
and returning
slid off the pages
of your unsigned heart

there was no where to go
no magic to find
when your heart unfolded
the folds were a treasure map
you no longer needed
the treasure was never bound
in ropes of tomorrow




liquid shadows spill over the sidewalk and into the road
street lights are flooded with cupfuls of darkness
my face is strewn with left over stars
after I fell
into sky
falling

sky never really spits you out
it has no mouth to sing of its beauty
there is only your voice
singing sky

I drank the sunset
as it drank me
I am intoxicated with my own colors swirling
fading
into night

my eyes pour rainbows into the dream
the dream paints my eyes
there is no end or beginning to this circular thought dream
that has no center
nor edge
there is no point of view from which to view it
no one star in this infinite galaxy of wonderment
all is starlight
dancing







time leaves no fingerprint in your mind
she has no hands nor arms to grasp you

you try to manipulate her arms
push yourself out of her embrace
and you find you are inseparable from this stream
of words of thought of
what has no substance
or place
or time
there is no running away from this dream
dreaming you

I felt I was running in place for decades
and decades
a treadmill of hope and fear
I was the effort to climb a mountain that did not exist
all this trying seemed to form my feet
and a body
running desperately
uphill
looking under every rock
and in every crevasse
peering into every mountain flower
trying to catch the magic in every stream
looking for a knowing
that would erase the uncertainty that felt so painful

I was the looking
for what I knew not...
surly if I knew what I was looking for
there would be no need to look
there would be utter rest

somehow the mind relaxes into this delicious unknowing
and there is no more searching for imaginary things
as its known there are no things at all

yet I seem to appear as this singing
of what cannot be kissed with songs
I am the longing
to pierce your heart with this unfathomable beauty
I call it love
this wondrousness of knowing I exist only in this world
of time and space
this running commentary is my home
this is where love and beauty emerge
this is the magic I was seeking
it was always here
I never left the dream
no one can




it seems that there is an unchanging thing called awareness... or consciousness.... for years before the shift I thought I was this timeless awareness.... then it was discovered that there were no things to be changing or permanent... and no me to be this thing called timeless awareness or even nothing at all





I remember the last belief to go was the idea that this could be shared.... which was the death of belief, even a thin one, of others.... hence the never giving of satsangs...

and yet songs flow... like breathing... like the wind.... thought streaming as before but hugely different... no more constant self judgement and self correction... the end of shoulds for myself or others or the world... no more reaching for tomorrows... or happiness...

words... reaching...
to lasso the wind takes only a word.... but many words are required to hold the wind and your cheek together...

to paint to photograph this love song that sings itself.... to build this castle of wind that is continually collapsing... tattered wind songs dissolving into sky...

and these strings of words written for no one... for every one....... these stories that we are, when shared... seem to anoint us to touch us to pierce us... deeply...

we are the sharing of stories... of our humanness... of deep deep grief and sorrow and unbearable joy and awe.... we arise in this call and answer love song...
it is love that calls and love that answers...

love is the center less jewel that spins into the dream when we meet when we touch when we sing nakedly with words without words when our eyes meet....
just like this
this infinite dream of love dreams itself



we seem to appear in this love light that is not yours or mine
stars begin to spin as our galaxies attract one another...
whirling in each others proximity
we dance in this empty immeasurable vastness...
we are empty arms of light reaching....
for an embrace that can never happen
as light falls through light
we can never touch

words seems to create a wind that swirls across this desert without selves
without love
without beauty
waterfalls of love seem to slacken our unending thirst knowing that we are this mirage
of water
and a desert
and someone who would kneel down and cup her hands
and drink deeply
this dream of dark and light
swallowed her
and spit her out
into a dream of unfathomable love
dreaming itself

...and the ground collapses as the waters sink into the sand... droplets of shimmering diamonds are these stars that lost their center
and have no eyes to shine in
no heart can hold a compass that can no longer find anything called love....

yet I call this love
this singing that seems to sing me
sing you
into a lover's dance
where we appear only in this embrace
our arms our hands our words
our hearts fall through each other
as the words dissolve
the poem ends
just like this






And what of stars
And what of rainbows
And what of blood drying on the pavement...
What is the sound of moonlight streaming through the lace of midnight
We all know this magic
Whether it seems to be separate from you
Or inside you
Or beyond all definitions of inside
And outside
Life seems to magically appear
No one has the key the ticket
there is no door to life
Or love

Infinite colors of sorrow
And joy
Play through your mind-stream
Paint the morning with bird song
As the moon disappears
Into a pocket of memory
That painted moon light
On your beautiful face

There is no path to life
No one to arrive
No special place or time
Other than this
Vast intimacy of life
Flowing through you
As you

No words can capture life
Or love
Yet they paint the wind
Streaming down the canyon
And this undeniable magic
That has no words
That is all words

Wordless we sing
Footless we dance
And fall in love




Mmmmmm why do songsters sing?
To see their own beauty fall into the wind...

we are the conditioning 

there is no one underneath it... 

no one to be broken or mended... 

no imperfection nor perfection... 

yet 

this dream of you and me and we is subsumed in a love that erases all imaginary lines 

you can feel it

you know this magic 

everyone does 

and sometimes it feels closer and it’s noticed more often ...or further ...perhaps seemingly forgotten

but it cannot be remembered or forgotten

it is the forgetting and remembering itself

 

it really cannot be captured or held or described 

it is the describing itself 

it is the words themselves 

it flows in as and through all imaginary things as it is the imagining itself

and we seem to emerge in, and are, this unfathomable dream of love 

dreaming itself

In love with love


ocean paints its colors with sky reflection
I have no colors without you
there is not even nakedness
or a vacant silhouette
to fill in with cut out clothes and a face from a magazine
no empty page where you can write a story
of a girl
a woman
a songster
a lover of love
a lover of all that seems to appear
a lover falling in love with everyone I see....
....I seem to appear in the loving of you
love writes my lines
and erases me

thought is memory's paintbrush
anointing my eyes with infinite shades of summer
and tears to wash the colors into my heart
all colors paint this love
that cannot be held
or painted
all things fall through it
and are held in it

photos sing without words or music
memory paints the colors of morning
how would you know a flower without memory
what is a flower but memory
blossoming
and wilting

waterfalls of tears wash away the rainbows of the past
and the colors of an imaginary future
there is no actual knowing of flowers
or beauty
or love
perhaps that is why we love them so

awakening is utter intimacy
the slash of reds when my heart was eviscerated
the deep greeny blues when I was drowned
the clear transparency of sky
when I fell through my reflection
and the utter absence of light
when there was no one on the other side

I am the low howl of moon rushing across the desert sky
falling into a mirage of love
pools of echoes paint the colors of water
no one can grasp

you cannot hold moonlight yet you love it so
love's delicate petals cannot be grasped
for they are crushed
into memory of moon






I am a flowing portrait of memory
that no one ever posed for
no hand or camera created it
there are no lines to erase
or fill in with color

I am less substantial than the song that sings me
sky soars through sky
no need of wings
or feathers
or skin

I am a river of reflections
...flowing echoes of faces
of tears
and laughter
and wide eyed wonder
there is no source
nor end...

I dance with my shadow
on red canyon walls
there is no original dancer
only this dream ballet of light and shadow
that no one dreams

I am the singing of infinite fairy tales of wonder
a liquid mirror of reflections
of you and you and you and you...

you are not
I am not

love

is

not

and yet....
there is a dance of lovers
no one leads
no one follows
there is no before
or after
no steps to take
no where to go
in this canyon of echoes
singing you
singing me
singing
love





I can feel the curtains blowing in the room next door
I can feel the shadows blooming
I can feel the tree tops dancing
I can feel your heart breaking
for it is mine
it is ours
it is us

for a while the rhythm of the night
accompanies the first robin
a sigh
a pause
the hush before dawn....
as the crickets hide with the darkness under the roses

this silence cannot be extinguished
it is the fire that consumes us
this love without edges
pierces our hearts
and skins us alive
and we find nothing underneath the skin
the flesh and bones and blood never contained a person
there was no skin
to shred
there never was a mountain
to climb
the shoes were always empty
they never were....

simultaneously and inseparably without beginning or end
without oneness or twoness
we dance in love as love through love...
the dance of nothing at all is supersaturated with love... always the first and last kiss...
there are no two in emptiness
no two in love
I am the loving of you...
yet there is no one here
nor there
there is no here
nor there
nor In-between
yet
this is where we dance
and fall in love





and you are a beautiful love song that sings my heart into an ecstatic dance where dancers seem to appear and dissolve with every breath every note every sound every pause every word singing the infinite names of love....

we are the wings of love's all consuming embrace that erased us, and formed us into an unimaginably wondrous love song
never heard nor not heard
utterly apparent but never grasped...
dancing without time or space or any thing
or any one
dancing......

I am the loving of you.... together we are this dance of sublime  liquidity, a water ballet of colored winds.... waterfalls of grace tumbling through an atemporal waltz of never and forever....

we exist only in between the remembering and forgetting...

in between the in between is a placeless place where love falls in love with her own echo and cannot find and cannot lose her place in this dance without dancers...
in this love without lovers
or love....

the is the dream of love, of lovers, of infinite rainbows bursting into a song that no one can hear or remember or forget yet all can feel it...
this is the magic they seek but cannot find, as we are this love without love...
we are this dance without dancers....

we have no words yet find our mouths... our breath... our lips our skin our tongues our hearts singing together....
in a language foreign and familiar
with vowels round and full and the staccato of consonants.... like the trees singing in the autumn winds.... or the dog barking in the distance.... and the tires on the road.... a corny country love song barely heard caught in the canyon winds and delivered straight to a heart that no one owns....
as our hearts have exploded into love's heart magic....

just like this we are a love song.... unabashedly human.... unabashedly in love with all and everything... and nothing at all.......

all are sublimely innocent.... choice-less imaginary personas.... masks without a head or face....
no one is wearing the character or playing a part...
we are all a flowing thought stream, which seems to swirl and flow yet never moves nor is not moving....
there is no center to the swirling... no beginning nor end nor middle
no one to hold on
or let go...
I feel like hugging every one I meet and telling them how beautiful they are and that I love them, but I don’t, as  this can easily be misunderstood....

as I am also a beautifully innocent imaginary lover dancing down lovers lane...
painted by the perfume of sunset
and the wash of darkness....
knowing and feeling there is no other better more or next
this embrace of love's infinite intimacy longs to be shared
but it cannot
and I weep
and muddle along
looking for ways to say, 'I love you'
because I do






memory soars
through summer skies
ocean song
has no beginning nor end
you will never hear
any words that will fill you
or empty you
as you are nothing more or less than words
this thought stream that paints your world
spins a flowing web of morning
and billowy white flowers of night
wilting

eons of dreams
acres of tears
we are the pages of memory turning
no one writes the stories that we are
or reads them
no one plays a part
there is no actor underneath this nakedness
no one singing
no one dancing
no one loving
no one dissolving into love's infinite embrace
there is no one soaring
on wings of love

death is love's mirror
grief is her shadow
she reaches through your reflection
and plunges her tongue into your heart
the grief of all things lost
of all lovers
all yesterdays
and all tomorrows...

the devastating evisceration of this skinless world
the erasing of even your nakedness
leaves not a breath
nor song
but is the song of emptiness
singing itself
another story
another idea
falling through all ideas
coloring the dream with an unidentified perfume
igniting love's fire
for when there is not even a sky to fall through
or an ocean
or waves
or water
or tears
you find yourself again
shoe-less
foot-less
wing-less
skin-less
soaring through the dream of love
in love
as love

it is only the dream of wind dancing through itself
long trails of roses in the morning light
a bird I cannot see
sings the dawn

there is no need to sew water into drops
that will fill the ocean
no need to separate wetness
from your tears
hands may seem to move through morning skies
trying to capture this vastness
hearts may seem to be empty
or full
but it is only love singing a lullaby
shhhhhhhhh she says
it is only a beautiful dream
neither real nor unreal
neither true nor false
just a dream
dreaming itself
like this






no one reads the book but the pages seem to turn
all words have fallen through the paper

all is drifting
clouds
dissolving as they
almost
form

sky falls through her shadow
painted with a dream of blueness
and source-less light
transparency slides through transparency
and there is no sky or clouds or endless blue
nothing to be held
and no heart to hold it
we are liquid dreams slipping through an amorphous wetness
that has no taste nor smell
nor anything that can be seen

it is felt...
sky burning
the last embers of day
as all horizons unfolds into an inky blackness
that has no depth
nor end

I am sky
there is no sky
I am water
there is no water
simply liquid sky
dreaming itself

we are wings of love
soaring through sky
sky
soaring through sky
not two
not one
just hearts
beating
madly
falling
in love
with love

walking along the horizon between the night

and day time dream

falling into this empty breath

where empty words collide

dancing in between the in between

where nothing at all is dancing...

opal moon slides across the threshold

leaves this poem on my doorstep

painting this empty room

this empty heart

where love said goodbye to love

words swirl in a nautilus shell

ocean pours into a glass

and swallows me

infinite liquidity paints color into my breath

my heart

these songs 

ignite the words they are written with

burning the pages

so your very being is exposed

to be words

fire cannot escape its own fate

wind rushes down main street

collecting leftover leaves and pieces of forgotten moon

swirling dreams of nowhere

gather in the gutters with yesterday's rain

reflecting memories of love's pyre

burning the dream of nakedness

as sky falls through its own sunset

where is the heart to hold your world

when your heart is the world?

where are the words to hold this love

when love is the words?

where is the sky in last night's dream

where is yesterday's sunset

...falling through empty pools of memory

washing color into this dream of day

we are the blossoms of yesterday's skies

petals falling into echoes of memory

how beautifully they kiss their reflection

in the wetness your eyes