Author: Tom (Page 39 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/".

Write the Words, She Says

July 11, 2016 / Tom

Somewhere, between here and there, we stand.

Lost in human folly, forgotten in a moment’s rain, we stand. Longing, wanting, devoured by a certain kind of thirst, we stand. Playing humble amongst the trees, seeking a path to where we are, pretending we don’t know yet feeling all but certain, we stand.

“Write the words,” she says.

I’ve written them, a million times. Has she not seen them? Has she not knelt at the altar of our dreams, gazed at the same sky, and called out my name? Has she not felt the tingle on her skin and let out the gasps of a moment’s truth?

Perhaps I’m standing in solitude, this feeling a part of me alone not shared by the stars above. Perhaps I walk a lonely path, the sweet nectar found in the mere mention of her name something I, alone, can taste. Perhaps I am a man of folly, prone to a jester’s arrow bent slightly by my beating heart.

“Write the words,” she says.

I do as I’m told, laughing at the irony of my mission. I write the words because, she says, it is what poets do. Out spill the words I long to whisper in her ear. Drawn out are lines I wish to trace upon her naked skin. Pulled from within me are the breaths I wish to hold as I taste her sultry lips.

Helpless as a babe I am, a soft noodle in her broth, a tender piece of meat in her stew. Come to me, I think I shouted as my lips remain stilled, my eyes frozen in a time which may never really come, stuck on a page which she may never want to read.

“Write the words,” she says.

Once

June 22, 2016 / Tom

I told her I loved her once. 
I never lied.
Through the treasure of her moment's pause,
Came the music born of her own fear.

I held her hand once, 
And I never wavered.
Though uncertainty rained down upon our sands,
Strength was found in the grains that held us firm.

Perhaps our moment happened once,
Perhaps it never ended,
Because through the rain a ray of light,
Her smile, her eyes, Heaven sent them both.

At once there was all there was to know,
Forgotten twice there came the measure of a man,
My heart and soul embraced her forevermore,
Moving on, yet never quite forgotten.

I told her I loved her once.
I never lied.

In Love…

May 23, 2016 / Tom

You know you are in love when the words simply fail to form, when they fail to describe the way things are. As a writer, that provides me with such a dilemma. Emotions that I once could easily describe have become indescribable. Feelings that once flowed effortlessly onto a page now are difficult to transcribe. Everything is so very, very different.

I’m fortunate. I feel such a thing. I twirl around in a state of bliss, approaching this life with a power that such a certain truth provides. I want to tell you about it, but it’s not some easy task. I want to paint a picture for you but no color or brush seems adequate. My palette has certainly not run dry, but it surely does not seem bright enough to share. It pales in comparison to what I see, what I feel, and what I know to be true.

It would be easy to say that what was once formless in the mist has now taken shape. It’s true, the one I felt in the fog I now caress in the sunlight. It’s accurate to say that the one I’ve always felt walking within me is now walking beside me. It’s honest to say that the love I’d always desired is now suddenly wrapped in a beautiful woman who loves me just as much.

Yet, it just doesn’t seem to be enough. There’s so much more.

How does one accurately describe the cascading waves that overcome me when I look at her? Waves that are a mixture of desire and admiration, of need and want, of pure selfishness wrapped in absolute selflessness surely escape description. Waves of powerful energy that envelop me, take me away while firmly rooting me in the place we share find words so unworthy.

How can a mere man offer words of truth when swimming in pool of ecstasy? How can I describe the weakened-but-strangely-empowered knees when I bite her lower lip, when I feel her reach for me as the dawn breaks? Maybe the sigh that escapes my soul at the thought of her, when she tells me her little secrets, or shows me a once-hidden part of herself is the best description I can offer.

Perhaps a sigh is all I need. Perhaps that is a billion words crammed into one sound. Perhaps a sigh is the “OM” of lovers, of Beings so completely familiar with one another that nothing matters but their truth, a truth that says, “you need never walk alone again.”

Those Who Dance Are Considered Insane by Those Who Can’t Hear the Music ~Friedrich Nietzsche

To some this is an alien existence. They watch a clock and hear it ticking, never knowing how those who know can be so certain. They see the past and live there, never giving the present its due. They hold firm to ideas that have never worked, that have failed over and over again. Mostly, they are in such amazement as to create a sense of denial. They never quite get it, and we are under no obligation to explain it to them.

We just dance in the rain. To our own song, our own beat, our own complete bliss. Your joining us is always welcome, but your attendance is never required. We can’t describe it to you, the words will fail us. All we can do is ask that you sit in stillness and watch, and then you will understand. Or consider us insane.

That’s us. In love. Utterly unable to tell you about it, completely devoid of words that can make sense of what we’ve found. We know we are right where we need to be, and we feel exactly what we’ve always wanted to feel. We are going to shock you, no doubt. You may shake your head in our direction. Enjoy that. You may, however, find something valuable if you really want to look, something you can’t describe in the love you see, in the love you feel. You may find something that you never want to let go of either, even if you never really need to grasp it.

You’ll smile, just like we do. You’ll laugh and you’ll gasp in ecstasy just like we do. Mostly, though, you’ll dance just like we do, and you’ll notice the nonbelievers with their shaking heads and pointless advice and you will hear nothing but the music they can’t. You’ll grab your lover and growl, and she’ll understand exactly what that means.

Yes, I’m in love. With her. And I’m dancing.

Sigh.

In Our Whispers, In Our Silence

May 16, 2016 / Tom

There’s a Silence in the nights we share, a peace between us, resonating a bond forged long before we first touched and eons before we knew each other’s name. In the sweet caverns of our darkness the song of Silence courses in the space between the stars, giving life to the light that exists within it. In the night we make our music, in the night we state our prayers in the holiest of ways. In the night we know our days that are filled with the notes our hearts have played, in the tune only we care to hear,

There’s a Silence between the heartbeats we share, a Silence that allows the echos from an eternity of lifetimes to create new music from the mist. There’s a beauty to the power of that beating sound; the rhythm of life made whole by the sweat of our bodies laying powerfully upon the altar we have built from remnants of a past made whole. We’ve built such beauty from the burning embers of the bridges we have burned, giving birth a sacred space in the spaces that we lay, together, telling secrets and stories as smiling lips gently embrace each other, as tested hearts find their sultry muse.

When our love has been made and the stories have been shared, I lay awake in such wondrous Silence, listening to you breathe, the rain falling softly on the walls around us, the faint sounds of nocturnal creatures bringing me home to the wilderness. I find your form in the darkness, resting beautifully as only can. I use every bit of light to take you in, and I pay homage to the darkness that has me reach for you, and the Silence that has me knowing such awesome beauty. It is then that I wonder if the light I see exists outside of us at all, or if it is the spark of creation that our Universe unfolding gifts us along the lines of the connection that we share. Such a mighty spark surely can light up the world, even before it realizes its own greatness.

Then there are those whispers; those faint tremors that rock the earth beneath our feet. Sometimes they are words, but usually they are something so much clearer. I hear them in your touch, in your kiss. I hear them in the little bumps so beautifully etched upon your skin. I hear them in your laugh, in your smile, in the way your eyes light up each and every space they’re in. I hear them in your voice regardless of the words you are using. I can feel them course throughout my Being, never stopping for long in any one place, but never leaving that place either.

I hear you whispering to me in the Sunrise, and in the moonlit sky. I hear you in the pulsing of my body, and I hear you the moment a raindrop lands on my naked skin. I hear you in everything, in the void, in the fullness, in the solid ground and the shifting sand, in the still waters and in the waves breaking hard against a rocky shore. I hear you in the cloudless sky and in the rolling thunder.

I hear your whisper in my heart, and as the tears roll down my happy face, I hear you there, too.

As a certain man I need nothing more. There is no evidence I need, no clock I need to watch. There are no walls I I need to crumble, or hills I need to climb. There is only our loving Silence, and our faithful whispers, and all I need do is listen. They never tell falsehoods, and they never mislead. In our strong embrace, the one where we squeeze all the air between us to somewhere else, we both know our wonderful, beautiful, undeniable truth. It’s a truth no one else need know, or subscribe to, or deny. It is ours, and we know exactly what it is.

Those Bumps

April 28, 2016 / Tom

I often sit alone in the mountain Sun, talking it all in. I breathe the air and listen patiently to the way of things around me, not wanting to move for fear of disturbing the scene. There are spaces all around, never empty and never full, begging for a soulful exploration. I try to do so in the natural ebb and flow of things, and sometimes that means just sitting still.

In the heat of passion I feel love’s breeze cool my moistened flesh. I hear my heart love loudly, echoing in the silence I seek between each beat. I feel love’s caress raise sweet bumps upon my skin.

You know those bumps, don’t you? They come from somewhere else. They are part of you but somehow otherworldly. They are like little aliens telling stories in some foreign tongue. Yet, you understand them. Each of them, for somehow they speak your language, too.

I see her and I feel those bumps twinkle like stars on a moonless night. We’ve had conversations and debates and I’d sit distracted by those bumps. I’d read her words and feel her thoughts and those bumps would be talking to me, too. I’d imagine dancing with her slowly to a lover’s song, holding her body close, and those bumps would remind me I’m alive.

I’m reminded of how something so small can be so big, of how often I get too wrapped up in words to actually feel what inspires them. Sometimes silence restores me to that balance I crave and that space I’ve come to cherish. Sometimes there are such great things in the void that I am filled with all I’ve lived to know. Sometimes I need reminding, and those bumps appear to whisper the sweetest memory.

My desire is read like a needle on an old record player, gently scratching the surface, playing a melody imprinted somewhere deep beneath my skin. It’s her song, my song, our song playing in the ether to everyone and no one at the exact same time, an otherworldly sound echoed by our hearts, and read in the bumps I feel cascading through my flesh.

Find me there, please. Don’t hide yourself in the shadows, I need to see you in the light. Don’t fall silent in the cloudy moments, nor search for shelter in the storm. Stand with me, hold my hand, breathe deeply and jump into the mud. Let’s roll around in the dirt, stopping only to draw pictures on each other’s skin that tell tales of our unbridled joy until….

…those bumps appear. Then we can tell each other not-so-silent stories of ecstasy set free.

Find me there, please, and hurry.

Forever Long

April 4, 2016 / Tom

I've seen you,
And marveled at your beauty.
I've heard you,
And sat enchanted by your melody.
I've felt you,
And melted slowly in your passion...

Now, a puddle am I,
Lost in thoughts of your power,
Kept imprisoned by nothing short of my own liberation.
Left drawing lines with my mind's wondrous pen,
"Come, sit beside me,"
I whisper words you'll never hear.

I see you bend in such wonderful ways,
A smile, a sultry a mission spent lost in space,
All of me, seemingly pointless in direction,
All of you, a star my ship sails nowhere to,
A master's compass begs me to some strange land,
A broken compass points me straight to you.

My god! I am lost, wandering about aimlessly here,
Gone intrepid pieces of some whimsical fantasy,
Where you and I are hand-in-hand,
Cheek-to-cheek, breast-to-breast,
Dancing slowing to our song,
Lost forever, forever long.

Amiss I may be, 
But true is the arrow on which my blood runs red,
Disharmony runs amok across the streets where I lay,
But true the song that sings your name,
So true the song that sings you name,
Love...I need to sleep...here I come.
Lost forever, forever long.

A Word Before I Go

March 8, 2016 / Tom

A word before I go.

I love your hippie soul, your soft edges, your crazy fears. I love the way you sweetly stand firm to your beliefs while sacrificing all you are to the shadows you see. I love how you grasp at greatness, and how I feel with you lying next to me, holding that same brass ring.

I know the waves have jostled your wary mind, and the echoes have prodded your skittish heart into finding corners in which to hide. I tenderly hold you there, knowing that you will, one day, arrive.

Perhaps I muddle in a simplistic fantasy, or perhaps the rays of hope have widened skeptical eyes. All I know is that before I go I wanted to share a word.

Love.

The Wounded Space

February 24, 2016 / Tom

I know of me, as I know of you, out there, in here, and every space between.

I find those parts of me, and I find those parts of you, out there, in here, and every space between.

I am, like you, everything and nothing in any given moment. We are the sparkles and the darkness , the willow and the sky. the needle and the thread as well as the slightly wounded space between the edges that we’ve bound.

In this awakening I unfurl my arms, renewed with the strength of a thousand revelations, to both embrace and let go at exactly the same time. What leaves allows in, what departs makes room for something new. I claim ownership of nothing even as I lay stake to everything that I am.

I feel my existence in the gaps, in the moderation of extremes, in the mixture of the hottest hot and the coldest cold I’ve ever known. I am alone in the emptiness though surrounded by a billion beings, and I am found in the wilderness only through the eyes of my beloved, through the arms of something wanting nothing more.

I await for my Queen to arrive. She will grab the scabbard and pull Excalibur from my chest, rising to meet a heart that’s learned to fly through wind that meets me at my best. With arms so full of her in an embrace so empty in her absence, I stand as strong as purple-hued stars that light our evening sky, and in a voice heard through the vacuum we both sigh, surrendered to the whisper neither of us can hear, but both of us have known forever.

Thus, we are bound. The light, the darkness, the heat and the cold, we are tied together through time and space in an eternity of happenstance. In this Universe we are separate only in our perception, in our ideas. We are one without ourselves, truly known as forever in that which we only see as temporary.

In that thread we find whatever it is that binds us. We are one in the illusion that we are many, we are the same in the idea that we are different. The tears and laughs venture from the same place, the happiness and anger enjoyed by the same experience yet in a different moment. Or is it? Could it be that the present moment never ends except in the folly of beings so bent on finding something better? That is something to consider.

With that, adieu. If these are, by chance, the last words I ever write may you know that I’ve fulfilled my promise. Know that the sword you grasp is not that thinly made, and that it has been tempered by the fires of Hell itself. Know that the wings you see were not granted me at birth, but were forged from a thousand falls from a million different nests. Know that as my head nestels on your breast that it knows countless pillows made of stone. Know that as my body rests buried in a bag that it has walked eternal miles, all in honor of a heart that was meant to live, in a place it was meant to know.

Don’t worry, I plan to live. In fact I never plan to die. <3

The Master of the Fruit

February 22, 2016 / Tom

I see these visions in dribs and drabs…sacred testaments to a man once kept chained in some unholy place.

Indeed I have felt the lash of life bear down upon my heart, and I’ve survived the sting of a million lessons roughly hewn upon my mind. I’ve heard the ridicule of a thousand angels singing songs from their hellish spaces, and I’ve seen the fires pour from those pearly gates created by those who have called my name in the sweetest song. I have walked in the heavens and hells of my own design, never truly understanding my own power, a power I freely ceded to those whose words I read and whose ideas I saw as more important than my own.

To those who believe that the strongest marble or thickest block of granite do not feel the sting of the hammer or the chisel, let me assure you that every great work of art suffers some in the unmasking. It is in the relentless toil within the pain that we uncover that which exists. It is in answering the voices in our heads that we write the sweetest song.

My siren, my sweet siren, I’ve heard you in the mangled tone of my own forgotten promise! You’ve dashed me upon the stones of my surly sea, and hurled me upon lone islands where I’ve had no choice but to strip bare and languish in that great despair. Still, I have cast a line to the Great Sea, and reaped the reward of sustenance until I learned to paddle on my own, to beat the breaking waves confining me to the sand, to bask alone and with great promise upon the languid Sea.

I see you in so many things, in so many ways. In the delirium of a great thirst I’ve seen you hold a chalice made of stone. In the pain of great hunger I’ve heard you comfort me in song. There is no one good way to find you, my love. I’ve sought you in the my reddened skin left blistered by the Sun, in the cracked lips that bleed as I feign a smile at nothing in particular.

I have found you in the smiles and in the tears, in the suffering and in the truth of great joy. I’ve known you in the empty spaces, and held you in arms left empty by the root of my existence. I have learned so much in the tools I have been given; from the ax I’ve used to chop down the tree on which I’ve been bound, to the saw I used to cut the shackles of the chain, to the key I used to unlock the bindings that tied me to a paradigm I’ve long since cast away. Like a kite I flew, pretending to be free, yet always tied to a thing that kept me safely rooted to ground not of my own choosing.

I challenge you, my Great Love, not in because of who you are, but because of who I am. I do not dare pretend that you can grasp that which cannot be held, or see that which lies beyond your vision. I do not dare fantasize about your arrival, since there seems no place for you to go. I do not have a single moment’s wish to be you, or them, because to be me is to love the world. You need me, much like a barren tree needs a single fruit, much like a dried riverbed needs a single drop of rain.

You may find your anger in the lack of blossoms or in the lack of rain you thought was coming, but I assure you that you will find abundance in the absence of your own expectations. Do not overlook that sweetest drop of rain, or that fruit that hangs in desolation on your heart, for they spawn a seed on barren ground, a promise upon that cracked and lonely landscape.

Do not focus on the dropped petals on the ground, but the fruit they’ve birthed. Do not focus on the dryness of the soil, but the promise of a single drop of rain. Till your soil there, and plant the seeds that heaven bore in the gift that heaven-sent, and know your power as the Tiller of the Soil, as the Planter of the Seed, and as the Master of the Fruit.

It is not the eating of the apple that gives you pain, but your reaction to what it’s shown you. It is not the taste that drives you mad, but its absence. It is not the shame you find resting in some other’s eyes, but the vision you have of what they want to see. Rise up above the surface, break ground with who you are, and know the power of the Great Creator who feels nothing but joy in every struggle.

That is your destiny if so you choose. Or you can die with only knowing the limitations of your potential and the walls you have built around your possibilities. Coffins, it seems, surround us long before we find ourselves in such sweet repose.

Sing to me, my Great Love! Tear down those walls of encumbrance, and be wicked with those limitations I have set before me. Splinter the wood and bend the steel on which I’ve bound my flesh, and let my soul rise high above the barren fields I have toiled. Let me not see any height as too lofty, any summit as to difficult to climb, or any soil to rocky on which to plant my seed.

Let me, and not the winds I feel swirling around me, nor the rains I pray fall upon my furrowed rows, nor the Sun I pray shine upon my hopeful destiny, be the Master of the Fruit I sow.

It is in You that I see everything, and in everything that I see You. Onward we go to create the footprints we were meant to bear in every song, in the sweetness of the nectar we were meant to taste in every kiss. Such love will forever be etched in the monument of time, for eternity it shall stand.

I Let Her Go

February 17, 2016 / Tom

I want to tell her that I love her, but I doubt she’d understand.

I want to tell how beautiful she is, but I doubt she’d hear a word I’d say.

I want to sing to her this song I’ve written, but I doubt she’d hear the melody.

When yesterday’s drums beat loudly in your mind, your heart can hardly listen. When past wounds have you recoil from the moment’s grace, your feet will slide down muddy slopes. When caught in the avalanche of fear, your wings shall be surely broken.

I’d rather be alone than suffer through a repeat of those lessons I have learned. I’d rather stand mighty at the summit, alone in my view, then be left playing marbles at its base with the stones of fear others grasp with such devotion. I must walk, and climb; that I cannot change.

I want to show her what I see, but her eyes remain fixed on the bridges she cannot seem to burn.

I want to dance with her around a fire of pure and holy desire, but she’s afraid of the darkness of the night.

I want to love her in the solitude, but it’s the silence she fears the most.

And, so, I let her go. Forevermore.