Where is your Beauty?

Where is your Beauty?

Surely not

in the new shoes, fresh haircut,

expensive manufactured perfume or

endless product

product

product

pushed, hawked, manipulated into your brain

tinkering with insecurities secret and unspoken.

Your Beauty,

your Beauty! exists. Period. No one sells it to you,

convinces you of it, holds it over you, or

wants you solely because of it-

that sort is no kin of Beauty, but mere poison.

The posh tie, synthetic cologne, hippest beard or band-

they’ll not birth Beauty either.

No mask is She. Neither bought nor sold,

She is spark, and giggle, dance step and honest stumble.

She is inspiration,

your in-spiring moment to moment.

Nurture these and Beauty rises, rises,

a river filling thirsty banks longing

to sing her praises.

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Symptoms

Aching back, pounding head,

weakening eyes, softening memory,

anger, nightmare, spasm..

Symptoms.

What loves to be complained about

over tea, through the phone,

aloud aloud somebody hear this, oh please.

Imagine turning attention around,

bear chewing his tail-

Wake to me!

Symptom becomes lotus

opening

from murky waters into light.

Manifestation of inner

to outer,

an offering

a medicine

a gift.

Pain is not for pain’s own sake.

With suffering,

we alter to listen.

Awareness reaches up,

roots down,

grows.

Status quo

A conditioning of impotence,

reaching for the salt when another swipes it first,

mounting silence in heavy boots, step upon step,

crags of volcanic history ignored by all

but you.

Buttons pop in flights of frustration,

and the weight of carrying baggage,

generations of status quo,

threatens to break your back

until

the ludicrous heart-heaviness and surge

for a real place in family becomes visible

for the impossibility it is.

Pitching the straps off your shoulders,

searing sight of that graveyard of the forgotten

rising skyward

into memory, you shake your head

at the Sisyphean absurdity,

turn around

and walk away.