What if I said "yes" to your smile? That simply delicious way you have of asking me a question, Moving me in pockets, Testing my resolve. What if I just wondered into your heart? Playing the strings of your embodiment, Softly blowing through the reeds of your desire, Tickling those parts of you. What if I trusted your instincts, As much as I trusted my own? Climbing steep cliffs and rocky ledges, Together, holding hands. What if I softly touched your skin? Tuning the instruments of your longing, Strumming the soft notes we've written together, Singing ecstatically to the Moon. What if I followed those lines to the center of you? No distortions in our hastened breath, Our rhythm keeping Universal time, Like the Sun and Earth in unison. I want to walk with you to places of pure joy, Find you basking in your own pleasure, Enter you in moments when you need to be filled. Call for me. I want to hear you scream your epithet, Hear you moan your story, Writhe to our song, Do not lay still, for the moment is passing.
Author: Tom (Page 34 of 71)
Tom is a stroke survivor, a seeker, a meditator, a veteran firefighter and rescue tech, a motivational speaker, a poet, and a blogger (new site) & author. He is also the father of three and as their student and teacher, has found applying spiritual practices to all aspects of life provides a vast amount of possibility and abundance. Tom has discovered that true forgiveness is the key to a pure heart, and a pure heart can lead us to wondrous experiences.
You can also connect with tom on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tomgwriter55/".
There was a time when you were but a hope, a dream. Some think that marriage is a sacred union, but in truth the most holy of unions is at the moment of conception, that moment when a man truly becomes one with a woman, when the hopes and dreams of two humans unite in one form all to her own.
Like some tiny pebble, you were created. There you were, a bundle of humanity exploding within the womb. Like a dim light soon to be a rising sun, you sat in active stillness waiting for your moment. Like some wonderful promise made to the Universe, you became something from nothing, a universe all your own.
Like some enormous stone splashing into a finite sea, you were born. A tiny spark became a big bang, and the world was given a glimpse into what was to be. A dream was born into a babe, a babe into a woman, a woman into something poorly defined by words.
The words “happy birthday” are, to some, offered in passing to note the day you were born. I wish to offer them intently in honor to the dream, the promise, and the reality of you. You are heart that bleeds into the ether, onto paper, and into my heart. You are a kindred spirit in the creativity of beautiful things, a passionate soul given life in a beautiful form, and a wonderful human being set forth on a beautiful journey.
So, “Happy Birthday”, and thank you for being born. Thank you for living, for your experience, and your future. Thank you for the gifts you give the world, for the little one who graces your own life in a way you share, and for the happiness you bring so many. Thank you for your service to others, and for bathing us in that splash that was your arrival.
With much love, I offer you this piece of me, to that piece of you that knows.
Peace.
To whom do I owe, my love?
I want to know. I need to know. When I sit silently in my loneliness, playing with my fears, lost in the shadows that move within my mind, I ask. When I lay alone reaching for that empty space where you should be, playing with the wrinkled sheets, the sigh I offer begs an answer.
To whom do I owe my truth?
I love you so. I love the way I feel when I think about you. I love the vision of the way you stand. I love your voice as it echoes in my mind. I love the beauty of your smile, and the way everything about me flutters in the memory of you. Yet I lay here, alone, unsure of which hour the clock has struck, missing the very light that greets my morning eyes.
I stretch my body, stiffened by the demanding night, and let out a moan of continuing renewal. Naked as I lay, enshrouded by comfortable discomfort, I ask for the warmth of your body. A shiver is the only reply.
They say that people our age have found their independence, and made an irreconcilable agreement to give our time to very few, and devote our lives to even fewer of those who would seek more of our attention.
That thought saddens me, as such a demand should be sweet to parched lips. Perhaps, to many, the fruit of love has become sour to the taste, the price of companionship too great a price to pay. Perhaps we’ve found liberation in our moments alone, a certain freedom in the empty spaces that another once filled.
Maybe I am slow to the realization, or maybe I don’t share in the agreement. Maybe time will tell to which I owe these lonely moments, but the darkness demands I ask.
To whom do I owe my time?
“No one,” of course, is my answer, yet in my humanness I wish it different. I want to owe my time to you, discover a commitment made to not only cherish our moments together but make them abundant. I’ve found a path to share that we can walk, a rising sun we can watch together, an altar on which we can make love for hours.
I want to bask in the inconvenience of such an agreement. I want to sigh in pure delight walking when I wish to sit, in leaving when I want to stay, in staying silent when I wish to speak. I want to give something up for you, not in demand of sacrifice, but in the wonderful gift of seeing what was empty full, in what was dark well-lit, in what was cold now heated by our rhythm. I want to be soaked in love with you, fatigued in our sweet passion, and I want to lie next to a woman I know better than anyone else in the world.
Perhaps this desire is the follow of a simple, yet complicated, man. Maybe this end is not destined for me, perhaps my time alone dreaming of you is as close as I am meant to get. I just know that I am bored beyond belief in the life of a single man. I find no joy in the simple compliments of women, in the lurid sex that our bodies demand. I find no satisfaction in the lack of real connection, absent of the possibility of forever in a touch. I find no real words in the shallow books I now read, and I find no real truth in any oath I hear.
While I find joy everywhere, I find in the emptiness a promise of its own. I hear the sweet song of love in every stitch of sound, and see the light of this truth in every moment I am awake. I have loved, and lost, and been lost in love. I have been fulfilled in hollow dreams, and trusted in empty promises. I’ve uttered words I had no hope of understanding, and sought solace in the ways my mind thought would save me. In the end I crashed and burned, reborn in the hopeful ways that have awakened me.
The awakened me feels everything I trust and trusts everything I feel. There are no middle grounds here, just the truth of intuition and of instinct with a voice all of their own. I know that voice, it doesn’t speak like all the others. I hear that voice, it doesn’t sound like all the others. It exists within me, and the more I dive into that place the more I know how much I feel…EVERYTHING.
It leads me to places where I bend to smell a flower bloomed, and lay in the grass to bathe in the morning dew. I love the flower and the grass, the birds above and the leaves that crinkle under my bare feet. I love the clouds, and the earth, everything between and everything beyond. I know it, because I can feel it, and I’ve learned to listen to what I feel.
Alas, a question rises.
To whom do I owe this love?
I feel it’s you, and watch you from this distance. I’m alone and naked in the rain as I watch you twirling in a mist of your own. I’ll watch from here, my toes flexing in the mud, my heart beating quickly in the storm. You are beautiful in every way, so I’ll hold this space as necessary for my own survival, as necessary for the process of living to unfold.
For I owe you nothing, and yet I owe you everything. I owe you for waking up the dreamer, for holding steady the power of intention. I see no path to you from here, yet I know our winding ways will intersect somewhere. All I can do is walk, forward, keeping the vision of you in my mind as I focus, intently, on the twisting path ahead.
That vision of you…the one that strengthened me before it had taken form…sustains me now. I know there will be those moments when I reach through empty air, when I open my eyes and find nothing but empty space. I know I will lose myself in the misery of wanting you now. Yet, I also know that I will survive, as I have done each and every time I’ve thought of you, until you are finally, clearly, here.
I will be, too.
I try to sleep, but sleep escapes me. There is a restlessness in my nights, and movements in my dreams.
Like a dreamer awakened as the Sun rises, I wish to touch the face of glory. I sit in awe as the light graces my eyes, as the warmth caresses my skin. I’ve wanted to touch you for a long time, and at last you are here, as you were the moment we met.
There is a wicked challenge ahead I feel, but I’ve risen to many before. A man once tortured by himself, wounded by choice and blinded by time, I am now ready. A Warrior once weakened by his uncertainty, I am ready. A gift once hampered by the pattern of his bow, I am ready. I am ready for you, and hope that you are ready for me.
I want to love you. I want to stand by you in the downpour. I want to hold you steady in the wind. I want to carry you when you can’t go on. I want to be all the things you need, and need all those things you want.
To be…your love. What a dream to be that hand you search for in the nightmare, those lips you seek in the moonlit shadows of your restless desire. What a life I’d live just sitting there, your head on my chest, listening to you breathe. What a man I’d be to wait for you in my lust, to call for you in my own moments of need. What a wonderful sight when you come for no other reason than just to be there.
I’ve risen from my blindness so that I may see you. I’ve awakened from the numbness just to feel you. Now, I sit patiently with thoughts of you dancing through my heart, knowing that in all I’ve faced and all I’ve done I am ready, for you.
So, goodnight. Goodnight to the hopes and fears, to the dreams and not-so-subtle doses of reality. Goodnight to the winds and the snows, to the stops and the starts, to the single place where you and I shall stand, forever.
“Sleep my son. Rest, my boy, it’s all over now.”
And with that she kissed him one final time, and though she bathed his little cheeks in a mother’s tears, others said a prayer about a man who had lived and who had died in the only way he knew how.
The world saw a man adorned in an ornate, flag-draped box. She saw her sleeping boy. The world threw around words like “hero” and “brave”, she could only muster the words “my baby”. There were those who hated him for the color of his skin and the nature of his birth, but she could only love him. He had given her the greatest pain of her life in his birth, and they had stolen him without knowing him, without even giving him the courtesy of knowing his name.
They had beaten him for his innocence, and stolen everything from him for the vile fear that festered in their own mind. They detested how different they thought he was, so much so that they could not see just how much he was like them. He bravely walked as he was, and bent his knee to no one. He simply wanted to be free, to do his part, to be equals in the eyes of all people.
For that, they killed him. For that, they stole his liberty. For that, they became the killers of man’s great hope, the murderers of unlimited possibility.
Perhaps he had crossed some invisible line they had created. Perhaps he had climbed some magical fence they had built from sand. Perhaps he had assailed that wall they had built against themselves. Whatever it was, it scared them so that they became beasts of prey and the thoughtless, heartless, fearful murders of the wonderful endowment of their own Creator.
They saw something beneath their caste. She saw her greatest joy. They saw something to be thrown aside. She saw a boy to be held through his nightmares in the dark. They saw some scourge of their holy book. She saw the word of God as he grew into a masterpiece of his own.
They killed him. She gave him life. The laughed as they left him to die. She will cry her tears forever. They are animals. She is her son’s mother.
Soon, they will lower him into the Earth, an Earth that doesn’t see the color of his skin, or the place of his birth, or his creed, or his faith. The Earth will embrace him, turn him into a seed of life watered by the sweet tears of his mother’s broken heart. The Earth does not know to which flag it should honor, or to what god it should worship, and it will love this man’s flesh as the ether will love that man’s soul. Each day, a mother will bide her time, hoping and wanting to join him.
Life will go on for the rest of us. We’ll create our silly separations, and succumb to our silly fears. We’ll laugh, and we’ll play, and we’ll sing our songs of peace and love and hate and fear. We’ll create our dark rooms of worship and belief, and we’ll point our fingers at small rays of light and hope that enter as if there is something wrong with them.
We are all a mother’s son, or a mother’s daughter. We are all so much alike, beings bequeathed a great potential at the moment of our conception. One day we can hope the mother’s tears end, replaced by the laughs of love and the smiles of true liberty. One day may we love our similarities while allowing our differences to blossom.
Until then, a mother cries herself to sleep, and a son prepares to die. No walls we build will save us, no laws we pass will end our horrid suffering.
Don’t. Please don’t.
I don’t want your hollow words. I don’t want your seemingly endless promises. I don’t want those fancy words describing your fanciful thoughts about endless gestures of love. I don’t want your frothy surface, or your endless need to grasp at some illusion of security.
I want your boldness. I want your strength. I want your power and I want your depth. I want to touch that rock-bottom with you, and rise through the surface of things having experienced a great depth.
There are times in our life when we are faced with mountains whose peaks seem to high to reach, and whose faces seem to sheer to climb. We hear those voices in our heads demanding we find a safe route, and we hear the echoes of a past we feel so beholden to. We may take a step or two, but as those voices grow louder and those echoes more stark, we surrender to the valley, somehow thinking we’ve done enough in our quest for living.
Don’t. Please don’t.
Don’t forget that you want that view the heights promise to deliver. Don’t forget the way your feet became weighed down by the muddy trail below. Don’t forget the fantasies of truth and love that you’ve created while drowning in the muck. Remember, please, how you used to talk about the view above the trees, of gazing at the Moon without the branches in the way?
Remember how you used to walk along the beach, kicking at the incoming waves, dreaming of the moment you’d be free? Tell me that story again, remind me of the you, you wanted to see. Then stop, hold that thought for a moment, and breath in the possibility.
Then stop. Stop the words of doubt you mutter to yourself in your silence. Stop the reliving of things that hold you down, that chain your heart down to a stone that only wishes to see you free. Stop telling yourself the lies of others that keep you there, in that box of yours, never to see the earth from heights you find in your wildest dreams.
And start. Start living the words of truth you hear pouring out from your soul. Start singing the song you hear in your happy moments. Start skipping in the rain, and doing all those things that bring a smile to that beautiful face of yours. Set your Charkha to spinning toward the direction that brings joy to your step, strength to your hands, and power in your intention. Soon, you will be climbing without thought, and you will find happiness in the fatigue of a body designed to get you nowhere but the summit.
Just get out of your way and climb.
I will love you up there, as I have loved you down here. I will soothe your achy hands to rest as you wish, and I will stand by you as you rise above the treeline. We will brave the icy storms, the winter winds, the spring floods, and the summer Sun with equal joy, and never relinquish our hold on the place that will take us to our sacred space…
…where the stars can be seen without obstruction.
…where the air is pure and each breath is divine.
…where we sit realizing even the stillness is found in every movement.
…where the shaky rocks fall away as the strong ground holds us firm
…to freedom
…to love
…to the truth that connects us all.
Now, do. Please do.
I sit in stillness, allowing what comes to come. Finally, a phrase sets in like a mantra I’ve been longing to hear.
What do I see before me, In those calming seas of blue? Some angel came to sign a song, A song that we both knew.
So together we…
Wait, this is such a foreign concept to the soul confined to solitude. Awash in a sea of people, bathed in the unique bonds of friendships and the sordid details of a single man, I’ve stood confined to my own brand of solitude. I’ve put my toes in many wonderful ponds, and basked brilliantly in many beautiful sunrises, yet alone I lay dreaming of a day when the whisper is real, and the feint breathing I hear is something other than my cat daring me not to move.
So, together we what?
Do we hold hands and skip down the weathered path, singing that song only the two of us know? Do we kiss passionately as the evening falls, awaking early to repeat the messages of the night before while ushering in a brand new day? What is it we do, or should I never ask the question?
I struggle to make no assumptions, though the timely visions come rushing in my head. I’ve made that agreement, the one that bears no expectations nor grants any assumptions, so where do those visions come from? Spliced together like a long-lost movie, I see the very things I’ve sought take form from the very moment I saw her face splashed wonderfully across the ether.
I sit with this vision, passing no judgment except the smile broadcast brightly on my face. This is no assumption, and I am creating no expectation. I simply see what is there, and what is there is the answer to the questions I’ve been asking, told to me in the manner that I’ve seen most things of beauty. I don’t create as others do, or so I’ve been told. I simply see, and hear, and translate things that others may not see. What I see here is all that’s I’ve ever seen, save the mist now taking form in a manner of truth I can only sit back and observe.
I feel a wave lap lovingly on my beating heart, its spray gently washing my skin and its chill reminding me of how beautiful this contrast is. I can feel the goose bumps rise all over my naked form, touching me in places I’m rarely touched, in a certain way absent from the journey I’ve been walking. My spine straightens on cue, and my crown reaches for the spaces where I’ve always felt her touch, where I’ve always heard her voice.
Beneath me, rises an objection. Fear, that snake whose head I’ve often tried to crush, speaks.
“Are you sure? What tales of truth can your spirit tell to prove such insanity?”
“Please,” speaks my heart, “let this cup pass. Yet, let thy will be done.”
The Master simply sits, and the feeling I have learned to trust remains.
“So sure am I,” said the Master to his heart, “that I have swam across an ocean and moved a million stars just to find a space to meet her.”
“So sure am I,” said the Master to his fear, “that I have borne a thousand scars and carried a heavy cross just to hear her sing one word.”
A tear rolls down my face, the light is born within me. Uncertain of nothing but the moment, expecting nothing but the present, and assuming nothing but the wave that bathes my soul, I stand in peace before my altar.
So together we will walk, in the way that we shall walk. Together we will see, in the way our souls will see. Together we will feel, in the way that open hearts will feel. There is nothing else we ever need do.
I look in her eyes, and I feel…
…a wave, gentle and soft with the power to knock me off my feet. A temperate cloud burst softly soothing my weathered skin, cool to the touch yet setting my soul on fire. A cool drink satiating my deepest thirst while leaving me desperately wanting for me.
All because I can feel, and I am ready, when I look into your eyes.
Through the eternal journey, amid the countless footsteps, we’ve arrived. Here, two paths seemingly distant and removed were always meant to intersect, in their moment, in their time. Here, a dreamy mist forms into reality, and a once distant voice softly whispers in my ear.
I beg you, my love, do not give up your power. Do not relinquish your rightful place on the throne you’ve hewn from a million memories. Do not change a thing, except filling those arms left empty in the shadows of the night. I shall fill them at your beckoning, and I shall turn the evening shade into a glorious light where we see all the things that brought us to this altar. I want to bask in the heat of your strength, and swim in the sweet waters of your desire. Allow me to pull my own chair up to yours, look you directly in the eyes…
…and feel.
I am ready for you. Though it wasn’t always the case, I stand a man now carved by experience from the roughest marble, ready for your soft caress. Though I once was the illiterate one, I now read your words so wanting to touch the hand the wrote them. Though I once could not speak your language, I want to hear the stories of your own creation, and hear the songs you sing in the hallowed moments of the night.
Oh that sweet sweat! born of labor so intense that survival was not assured, now bearing the fruits of work many would choose to avoid. I offer gratitude for each drop and each puddle I’ve left behind, each moment that has prepared me for this moment. I honor each step, each stumble, each holy rise for the place I now stand…
…ready…
…for you.
To swoon over the Moon, To find countenance in the Sun, To bathe in a mountain's early morning dew, To be comforted by her warmth on a cold, winter's day, Is to know that love. To fall into a warm, natural spring, To speak without ever saying a word, To know, absent even the slightest thought, To find desire in the eternal teasing of her soul, Is to find that love. To see beauty even in the roughest, uncut stone, To stand tall even in the weakness of your knees, To walk straight even when the mind fails in vertigo, To find life when standing at death's door, Is to discover that love. To grasp a beauty that is silence in the chaos, To find a smile through the veiled tears of suffering, To know peace in the violent rages of a war, To touch the face of heaven and God herself, Is to finally meet that love. It is that love for which our purpose lies, It is that love for which our moments meet, It is that love for which our dreams were broken, It is that love for which our hearts do beat. It is that love for which we seek.
The cold winds blow around us as the Moon shares her light. We are lost souls not really lost; we are broken hearts not truly in pieces. The words we share are not those offered by the broken lost, but by the wholly found, the holy discovered in the truth of a moment born.
I look into your eyes and I surrender. I feel you inhale my breath as our lips meet and I fall. I know you, somehow, a faceless voice from the abyss, a silent visage from some distant horizon. I feel you, somehow, a magical mix of desire, of healing, and of forgiveness. In the heat of my body I surrender to the chill of the winter’s night, and in the warmth of your hands I find comfort in the darkness.
You are…
Present.
A gift of a thousand scars and a million steps suddenly made right by a single kiss. I honor you, I seek you out, and I forgive those who have led me to you.
You are…
Promise.
A solemn oath once uttered by a lost man in the wilderness. I live by impeccable words etched deep within my heart, words you’ve spoken in the light touch of your fingers. Allow me to return the favor.
You are…
Truth.
In the honesty of a moment we fall into each other, our bodies pressed firmly against each other, our hearts pressed firmly against the winds of time. To speak of this place is to speak of the truth, implicit in its belief that possibility resides in the action, that potential resides in the heart, and that peace resides in two breaths made one, in the subtle fragrance of a morning glory.
It is there we are. Let’s sit here for a while, and bask in the rising Sun. Let’s hold hands and make love as a testament to the dawn we now share. Let’s not gloat, or run, or seek out certain glory. Let’s just set here, for a while, and enjoy the moment for what it is.
Peace.