Someone Should Start Laughing
I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question:
How are you?
I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question:
What is God?
If you think that the Truth can be known from words,
If you think that the Sun and the Ocean
Can pass through that tiny opening called the mouth,
O someone should start laughing!
Someone should start wildly Laughing---Now!
The Happy Virus
I caught the happy virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars.
It is remarkably contagious---
So kiss me.
***
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,
My need of God
Absolutely
Clear
The God Who Only Knows Four Words
Every
Child
Has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don'ts,
Not the God who ever does
Anything weird,
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
"Come dance with Me."
Come
Dance.
A Community of the Spirit
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.
You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
Quietness
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon
comes out now.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
They may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
***
Some nights stay up till dawn,
as the moon sometimes does for the sun.
Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark way
of a well, then lifted out into light.
***
The cloud weeps, and then the garden sprouts.
The baby cries, and the mother's milk flows.
The Nurse of Creation has said, Let them cry a lot.
This rain-weeping and sun-burning twine together
to make us grow. Keep your intelligence white-hot
and your grief glistening, so your life will stay fresh.
Cry easily like a little child.
***
At night, I open my window
And ask the moon to come and
press its face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language door
and open the love window.
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.