how is it we forget about love? Isn't it out of love the sun rises in the morning? Can't we feel the love on our skin? and did God make these bodies just for work? how come he/she wired this body for ecstasy? why are we afraid of love? somebody must have whispered to us long ago that love is dangerous it's not healthy to feel too much best to hitch up the mule and go to work build houses and tend gardens. but even a house is made of love and gardens grow when they are watered. I’m standing in the pouring rain singing a song of love for you.

There’s a furious flower at the heart of us all We pretend to be polite decent citizens but we want to bloom all over the fucking place we want to blow people away with our love you say, that’s your affliction, I don’t have that problem but you’re lying I know there’s a furious flower in the heart of us all. We want to touch and be touched, we Can’t stand to be alone We wonder when we will be saved from our Lonely vigil. Blooming in a field of furious flowers, we can’t Even see the beautiful fury of our brothers and sisters Exploding in love, making a mess of the place Losing our shit and falling into cosmic love Thought you were alone Thought others had it together And could keep their shit Together? Hah! We’re all bleeding and blooming and exploding Missile tests on the white sands range Hoping our pollen will be spread by the bees And made into luscious cactus honey Our true desire, to bloom without regard for Correctness, social niceties. Sending cosmic nuclear shivers up the spine Of our lovers, and loving everyone without regard Without regard for the lines of demarcation between The one we are supposed to love And all the rest. A general declaration of kundalini rising. An ephemeral explosion of color and love Littering the planet with passion, Furious flowers that we are.

if the ocean is one thing and the earth another what do they mean to me? the ocean is wild and wet and scary, deep and dark and unknown refreshing and renewing, a reminder of the womb and the darkness from which we come and to which we go. and the earth is comfort, the known, everyday life, safe and predictable the earth doesn't move, surging in and out. and so the lighthouse standing firmly on the rocks let the sailors know as they return home, to the safe and comfortable Here are the rocks! Don't come this way! Surely you'll crash upon the rocks and die! And who controls the light in the lighthouse? Naturally, there are days i'd like to ignore the lighthouse's warning and go straight for the rocks, and die in a dramatic crash, splintering wood and crashing waves other days, i'd just as soon stay on terra firma and not venture into the water at all and other days i'd like to just stay at sea forever just lost in the infinite wildness, tossed upon the seas of the abyss, until i fully forget who i am what roles i have to play upon terra firma. When you speak, i know it is not to me and yet i hear it as if it were to me i imagine you are talking to me and i say, yes, yes, over here, Shine the light! You are the lighthouse, and i deep upon the sea know i have work to do on land, but it's so painful for a fish to walk upon the dirt. Better that a man walk upon the water, and lose his identity. and you call me, though you are simply doing your job, and turning the light this way and that out to sea, warning for any lost and wayward sailors. i see the light, i sail straight for the light, though i know it is folly. The old romantic self, born of an inability to live the earthen life, cries bravely, “Like a moth to flame, a child returning to it's mother, a bee returning to the hive i am sailing to you, heedless of whether it makes sense in a world of dirt, of whether it is convenient in the everyday affairs of the earth. I am sailing straight towards the rock, led by your light like the sirens of old, you pull me, and i care not for the consequence. splintered and broken, lying on the rocks seaweed washing over me, tides coming and going over my broken body for the body is of the earth, but the spirit flies in flight, soaring in the ether above the rocks above the dirt and above the waves free at last. free to be water, free to love the light, free even to live the earthen life, and free to fly.

tonight i have no ambition but to undo unsay unthink unbe tonight i have no desire but to unlove the woman unkiss the dark unravel the nothing unmake eternity tonight i have no ambition but to untie my shoelaces and go to bed. this a night for unspoken things a night to become undone.

tender is the heart a mere fleshy soft thumping thing protected by some ribs and the armor of rationalizations... reasons for not opening the heart for when the tender, beating thing thumping along it's merry way is touched by seemingly insignificant things, it can trigger a wound inflicted long ago forgotten in the mists of time a young boy playing his electric guitar with abandon a little girl's smile passionate moan of a lover a beggar by the free way. it quivers, it trembles the engine of our living so tender, so soft powerful and awesome in it's wild and lively way tender and trembling and sensitive beyond all reason i open my heart and tears come forth i open my heart and a laugh breaks forth i open my heart and all hell breaks loose i open my heart and feel heaven a fleshy red thumping thing thundering drumbeat wondering if your heart is as stupidly tender as this....

whispered dreams breathing, sighing moving towards a mystery many things are imagined and what i need tangled in what i want and knowing that every breath and every movement touches the stars, touches you, touches infinity but even to stay still and do nothing has an impact so to breathe and move and sing and dance with joy and freedom and the conscious desire to ignite freedom and joy wherever these contrails linger this is what i want. what i need a cup of coffee and the touch of your hand casually, with no intention a reminder that my skin meets infinity and i have nowhere to go and nothing to do. but meet a friend and feel all of eternity...

dancing with the goddess, who was sleeping for so long, well, perhaps all the gods were sleeping too! when nietzsche said God was dead, i think instead god was napping, all the gods and goddesses were taking a snooze while mankind and womankind explored dimensions of mind temporarily abandoning our hearts in the search for knowledge and the Presence slumbered, the goddess awaited the golden touch that reawakened her desire to dance, and ecstasy reentered the human vocabulary. Men felt the quickening too and the final descent of spirit into body began. The Presence awakens in us all, the goddess dances, gods exalt to feel the embodiment, and thrill to dance with the goddess! What a time to be alive! Towers of power and greed rising and falling, Violence and stupidity balanced by the explosion of consciousness and light! We don't even need to make anything happen, we just clear the conditioning that has blocked our hearts, and open and open and open. the water of life rushes through, a cleansing waterfall of pure spirit like a small silly boy, i surrender and ride the water over the rocks, yeehaw!

you challenge every cell of my body,
my mind, my heart, my soul
you drive me to the edge, the edge of who i have been
and the edge of who i want to be, or dream i could be.
something grander, stronger, more loving
and yet you also leave me feeling worthless, weak,
incapable of moving the world and bending it to my will,
that i might find the way to your heart,
and walk alongside your soul.
can i drive a metaphor over the cliff,
beyond this feeble attempt to say what can’t be said
beyond trying,
into a land of magical truths which arise from some inner cauldron
can i write a song that moves men to tears,
and women to swoon?
kiss you so that all time stops, the earth moves, the skies swirl,
and we drop dead of the full bodied passion we can’t deny?
or bring such peace to your heart that you sleep
in complete contentment, nothing lingering from the day,
knowing that you rest in the love that lives in the silence
beyond the loneliness of night and the distractions of the day.
love with you such power that you cry and laugh and sob for joy!
but i’m so ordinary, full of doubt,
wondering if you even care about me at all?
maybe you love another, the one who understands your metaphors,
who laughs at all your jokes, that stands in the rain and sings to your window?
it’s he you love, i am beyond redemption.
I go to the lake and jump in, surely to drown a romantic lover’s death,
incapable of finding the fulfillment i dream of in your arms.
and yet your compassionate heart reaches out to me,
you cry, “it’s not your fault that you can’t love me enough!
No one can love me enough,
it’s up to the stars, and the moon and the winds of night,
it’s up to the surf to pound me into submission,
and open my heart to infinite unbounded love.”
and i cry back, “oh love me if you can, i’m losing faith over here, the winds of death are howling, and i'm afraid of these shadows, this deep penetrating loneliness.”
In any case, the circumstances that separate us crush my dreams.
 
I wander in the night, singing sad songs and making a mess of it all,
going all romantic and sentimental,
burying myself in the detritus of frustrated desire.
It smells of old patterns that have never succeeded,
failures believed in because of the centuries of longing
that has ended in the suffering of unloved men, and unloved women.
and i attract this painful drama, i fully expect it to go wrong!

Screw it all, i say! I've seen this lighthouse ahead
and it warns of the rocks of storyweaving and fantasies.
i’m tired of politely accepting both the myth of failure,
and the hope of romantic dreams.
It’s you i want, and not some fantasy.

and i remember the light, the deep love that embraces all,
even my deep neurosis and fear. the reunion of us all in
the starkness of what is, and i smell some roses growing in the garbage.
giving completely up on romance, i sense the fresh life ahead, life
free of the old ways of suffering and failure,
the polite abdication to Fate. Screw Fate!
Who gave birth to Fate if it wasn’t the void, and deep in the void,
is there not the Sun that burns eternally!
It’s no cute new age dream, this Golden Age, it's not pretty but it's real.


There is no love unless i find it in myself.
there is no light unless i embrace the dark with utter passion.
There is no you, and there is no i.
just maybe, on a summer day on the beach,
we might find a moment to see each other,
to feel each other, and live our lives with breathtaking urgency,
for one moment.
i open my heart, i'm driving a maul into it as if it were
an oak log bound for the fireplace.
that’s how much i want to burn for you baby.
And i say to myself, it’s time to stop my whining and get on with it! Jump into the darkest shadows in my soul, and drink it up.

I'm shining a light on my own shadow,
and may God help us all to shine a light on our shadows.
If i embrace every stinking one of them then maybe, i can say a word about someone else. or maybe not…
In the meantime, best i shut up and tend to my own neglected garden.
when i have the courage to shed light on all my shadows
and love all the hurt that i've have feared to feel,
there won’t be anything left to do but love one another,
and play all day long…

then i'll meet you on the beach on a sunny day.
and be able to share my love with you.

ah, i put the previous poem up a week or so ago, but in a different form. I have tried to clean up the excesses in it, as i was very emotionally worked up when i wrote it, and it rambled and showed my anger more than i care to publish. so i pulled it, reworked it. In my heart is only this deep love and gratitude, appreciation and even fascination with what is going on in the transformation of human consciousness, how it is showing up in the world, and in this internet zaadz world. Yet often the deepest pain is an incongruence with my deepest faith and ideals, and the personal loneliness and neurotic shadows, that coexist with an awareness of this vast love and spaciousness that i have experienced myself to be. Oneness as a concept does not nurture the heart, only an unconditional acceptance of what is as it is, shadows and all. That is basically the theme of the poem, along with an appreciation for the challenge to be my most authentic and powerful self, that has been inspired by a friend to whom this was written. the process continues, and the onion continues to unravel. i know that i am of most service in the awakening of the world to love and peace, when i am accepting of my own weaknesses. I pray that you too are loving and embracing of all aspects of yourself, and don't be too harsh on yourself when you can't live up to the grand visions that we find on these pages, and in our own hearts. Every single little thing, dark or light or crouching deep in the shadows, is also a part of the oneness that is.... the sumacs in shadow, frame the inspiring light of the sunset, and complete the picture. the shadows in my heart, the nothingness of the night without these, how could we see the light?

It has been an emotionally intense summer, and a very beautiful one. Now after the water and trees and play of Maine in august, i returned to Albquerque last week. Into my life...
   love has been my quest for sometime, maybe even for most of my adult life. it has come in three different areas at least. One is expressing love through sound and music and singing. I have been moved by singers and music throughout my life, and been learning to express my feelings through song. I studied Italian singing when i was younger, and although my goal was to do original music, and that is where i am today, i fell in love with the Italian love songs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centures. Such pathos, such passion, expressed so incredibly and beautifully! Very raw emotion, and no doubting, no self consciouness about it, they just let it rip. Romantic love in very pure form. I took my singing into songs i wrote, but my songs were for many years more an expression of my other search for love, the more Cosmic love, the search for Self and NoSelf. I lived in a zen center in Jemez Springs for a couple of years, and i was still studying Italian singing. So i would take my guitar across the jemez river and go into a canyon to practice my scales and songs so i wouldn't disturb anyone. (That by the way is a recurring theme, that practicing and writing songs and singing disrupt the people with whom i live...) And sat zazen, searching for the mystical enlightenment, the dissolving of ego into zero for which we all long (am i assuming too much!?)
    Anyway, the songs i wrote after i left the center were more about my spiritual quest. I honestly don't think, although i was in and out of several relationships, that i had any clue as to what love was, to love a woman and partner. I didn't write many real love songs at the time, nor do i think i was capable of singing a love song well. In my classical studies, i excelled at the heroic songs of Schumann, and the technically challenging, florid songs of Handel. And my own songs were about saving the world, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, and only occasionally personal. And even when i did write a love song, from my perspective now i didn't feel it very deeply.
    Now i see these two threads coming together, and my quest for love is all one quest. The quest to know myself, and rest in the unconditional deep love that exists prior to all thought, in this moment, is not separate from my desire to know the love of man and woman. And all of it brings me to my Self, and resting in who i am, without searching for anything or anyone. To be able to love my self finally after all these years, to love my pain, my heartaches, my joys, my triumphs and my failures, mostly to be fully accepting of whatever arises in me moment to moment, this is the intersection of it all. Thoughts and feelings come and they go, people and circumstances  come and go. The trick here (seems to me)is to love it all passionately, while also knowing it is ephemeral, that nothing lasts. As a youth, i couldn't quite deal with the intensity of loving and losing, so i think i gave myself less than fully, i didn't love with whole hearted passion, but  pretended not to care, by being "spiritual". At the same time, my body and my heart, (everything but my mind, i suppose)thirsted for a passionate life, to touch and be touched, to be wild and crazy and loving each beautiful moment as it passed. I was beyond and above all this roiling crazy beauty that is life. I was slightly dead, sleepwalking through life, knowing (imagining i knew!)in my youthful arrogance, that all is emptiness, and love brings pain, attraction and desire lead to loss. Occasionally i awakened from this trance, and i was continually desiring women and sex, but never diving in fully, never experiencing my lover and my desire for her with All of my Being!
    So now i am working on a project of Love songs from Around the World. I also intend to do a final recording of my spiritual quest songs, that i wrote while i was in bands for the last twenty years. And i am writing new material, and singing spiritual chants. But it is all different expressions of the One Love. Love songs can be deeply spiritual, and chants can be passionate expressions of love. Forms change, the silence which gives song birth, is always present.
     in gratitude to women and boa constrictors, gurus and guitars...