Author: Tom (Page 54 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/".

I am Simply, Me

May 29, 2014 / Tom

Please whisper to me again. Don’t go, don’t leave. Please…

Write me a story, I promise I’ll read it this time.

I promise I’ll sit, and study, and be sure to pay attention.

Who am I kidding?

I’m a writer, not a reader.

And try as I will I just cannot make sense of your words.

To you, I am illiterate

To me, I am simply, me.

Please sing to me again. Don’t go, don’t leave. Please…

Sing me a song, and I promise I’ll listen this time.

I promise to move, and hum, and spin to the beat of your rhythm.

Who am I kidding?

I’m an eagle, not a swan

And try as I will I cannot float gracefully through the shallows

To you, I am an oaf

To me, I am simply, me.

Please talk to me again. Don’t go, don’t leave. Please…

Tell me all about your faith, and I promise to believe this time.

I promise to kneel, and pray, and smile through the bleakness of my soul.

Who am I kidding?

I am doer, not an actor

And try as I will I cannot feign my joy through such hapless ritual.

To you, I am a heathen

To me, I am simply, me.

Please love me again. Don’t go, don’t leave. Please.

Give me your body again, and I promise to be fulfilled this time.

I promise to feel what you need me to feel, and never let my mind wander.

Who am I kidding?

I am a round peg to your square hole

And try as I might we cannot fit without destroying one another.

To you, I am a guarded man unworthy of your time

To me, I am simply, me.

And as simply me

I deign

To be

Free.

Let Go (A Poem)

May 29, 2014 / Tom

You will never understand untill it happens

To let go

What if I dive so deep

That I never see the surface again?

What if I search at such darkened depths

That I forget that light my eyes enjoy?

If only I could just let go.

To let go

Of the strings that I’ve clung to

Of the strings that have played me

Like a marionette, like a toy

To this I struggle against the Master mind

Becoming twisted, knotted, left limp in the corners of this stage.

Like a doll played by a child true to his darkened self

I am owned, I am hard as I am limp to the whims of a twisted heart

When all I want to do…

Is simply…

Let it go.

A Moment Cherished

May 21, 2014 / Tom

“Who are you looking for?” came a voice in the night.

“You,” I responded. “This, us, everything.”

This is how it happens for me. In the darkness of night I hear her, and in the throes of my slumber I can feel her. There, I can look into her eyes and feel it, and there I can touch her hand and know a truth that is, and has been, a certain reality.

“I’m happy you were patient,” she says, touching her hand to the place where my heart resides. “I’m happy you were there when I called for you, and I’m happy I was here when you finally arrived. I’m happy your arms were empty when I reached to embrace you. I’m happy we both were tested, and that we have finally reached our place, our time.”

The look in my eyes spoke total agreement as my beating heart sung the praises of a moment fought for, a moment cherished.

My mind first wanted to travel backward, to the scattered remains of lessons learned and of things lost. It screamed for attention to the bandaged places, but when I looked there all I saw was light. It wanted me to revisit old pains and distant agonies, but my heart had set the bridges to those places afire, turning them into impassable piles of ash.

Her lips drew my attention back to the place on where we stood, together. I could feel the sturdy sands of our beach give way slightly to my bare feet as we kissed, the warm surf surrounding us in our moment of pleasure. The sea tugged at us, wanting to pull us away from our place, but our root held firm as our passion grew. There was no other place out there; for us there was only the here, the now. As the Earth held us tightly, the air embraced us gently as the sea issued its sweet song of surrender.

Here is love, and here is where it will be.

My mind then wanted to travel forward, into times not yet created but certainly well-known. In the fear of a moment never seen before, the mind wanted to find security in what it had known, and in the process created tomorrow out of yesterday. For a moment I could not feel the soft sand beneath my feet, but only felt the stony beaches of yesterday. I wondered if those rocky coasts were my future paths, and if the lies uttered by a hundred mouths before would one day be said by the lips I so eagerly tasted now.

Now. Come back, now. Please listen…

Her hand on the back of my head brought me back to our place. It is said that tears are a release of stories kept deep within the soul, and I release mine as my mind surrendered to what the rest of me was screaming. I listened as fear raised a white flag to the moment, surrendering to the passion, to the promise, to the reality of a moment cherished. There were no more footprints in the sand save the ones we were rooted in, and there were no more doubts in the bedrock of water and sand in which we now stood. The miracle was that the sun had risen as though it had never, ever set.

Our lips parted and we looked deeply into each other’s eyes. I could see the trail of tears on her cheeks that framed her beautiful smile, and I smiled in return as she wiped the last vestige of old stories from my face. I knew, then, that she had traveled far as well in our cherished moment, and that we had not only shared a collective peace there, but also an individual journey in the seconds we first felt a new reality. Some connections cannot be explained, or reasoned. They can only be known, and when two hearts know that connection as truth, nothing can stop the dream from becoming real.

“Thank you for waiting, my love,” she whispered.

“I had no choice,” I responded. “You were always speaking to me, always there. Even in the darkest hours I could hear your voice begging me onward, reminding me of things not yet done, and places not yet seen. Thank you…”

She hugged me tight, no other words needed to be said.

We looked down the beach, deciding silently to head in that direction, to everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Our hands embraced as we splashed along the way, laughing and talking the entire way toward each sure footfall, each telling footprint in the sand. Our night was drawing to a close.

I awoke with a smile and a renewed feeling that change was coming. The emptiness in my room became filled with birds singing from beyond walls through cracks the windows would provide. I had never seen it so bright on such a cloudy morning, and even as the humid air stuck mildly to my naked form there was a sense of comfort there. There was always a sense of comfort in surrender, in knowing that control was only possible over the choices I would make. In those moments my anger over the lies of others in their untrue testaments of truth and promise would end. It appears those souls were simply unconscious leaves from the tree of life that the wise wind had taken away. They were malformed to my purpose but certainly valuable to another’s, and the release became a testament to the promise kept to the one who will be waiting.

There is great service in truth, in surrendering to the will of the wind and the great sands where we stand. There is a great love shown in letting go of the pieces that just don’t fit for they, too, deserve a true moment cherished. How many square pegs continually grasp at round holes believing that with great effort will come a perfect fit, all the while finding the work undertaken is destroying both pieces. We deserve to be honored, to be cherished, for who we are by those who need not change to cherish us.

We all deserve our truth. Once we discover what that truth is, I mean. Until then, we all deserve our illusion separate from those who can’t live within it.

As for me, I have vowed to remain true to that which I am seeking, knowing full well that it, too, is seeking me. I cannot return to the human expanse of barren promises and broken dreams that I know all too well. I not only burn bridges that would take me back to those places, but blow them up with an abiding attachment to my own sense of truth. It has taken me a long time to arrive, and I’m not giving up the hard-earned ground I’ve traveled for a sense of human security which is, of course, a human frailty. Each experience teaches me, each dream fulfills me, and each cherished moment reminds me of who I am.

I love even the round holes to my square peg. They are beautiful, which is one reason I don’t seek to change them more to my liking. While I do wish they’d stop trying to change me to theirs, I understand who they are and where they stand. We often seem to fear uniqueness, we seem to fear that which reminds us of what we’ve created as a painful truth. We seem to fear aloneness and become fearful of those who don’t. We fear being different, and work hard to fit into places we truly do not belong. “If I need to change to make them happy, why don’t you need to change to make me happy?” seems to be a mantra of leaves unaware that they, too, are simply blowing in the wise wind. We often don’t seem to learn that the “one” will never arrive if we are busy holding onto the “wrong one”.

So, yes, my lover, I am letting go. One day there will be a light so bright as to blind us both to everything not within it. There I will go, even if only within the confines of my slumber, to let you know that I, too, am waiting for our moment cherished. I know it is coming.

You May Never Know

May 17, 2014 / Tom

There are things you may never know.

You may never know how often I think of you, how the very light of morning brings you from the depths of my heart to the surface of my mind. My mind embraces you in the pink hued rebirth of day as I know you again in the awareness of my first breath of the conscious day. I feel alive simply in the thought of you.

You may never know how I feel you when the cool spring breeze gently teases the sweat on my skin. I feel you in the desire of my body and in each drop of water that soothes my thirsty soul. I know the truth because I feel you, and I know the lie because I pretend that you don’t exist.

You may never know that I found love with you. How I smiled through the tears knowing you were happy. How I flinched with joy as the pain consumed me whole, knowing you were flying high somewhere. You may never know just how much you helped me grow, and how free I was in your absence to discover the wonder that was always there. You may never know how losing was my greatest win, and how depths of the greatest suffering I have ever known led me to the highest highs I have ever seen.

You may never know how cleansing the muddy water has been, or how refreshing the stench was to my unconscious mind. You may never know how high I flew with you in the wind our moments made, or how hard I landed, broken and mangled in the twisted weeds of your lies and deceit. You may never know a thing, but that would be more than you knew before.

You may never know how your crooked mind bent me, or how strong your switch taught me to be. You may never know the full rage of my hatred, or the full scope of my love. You have grown so distant, so skewed in the tortured, distorted rows chaotically dug in the infertile fields you have plowed. There you left a baby to die, a boy to fester, and a man to rise again above the mud and sludge of the wasteland you tried to create for him.

You may never know how much I love you, and how burning the bridge that connected the infernal anger to the man whose torch it was to bear, was the only way I could survive. You may never know how forgiven you are, and how this life, this story, this simple prose is not at all about you.

From the harshest desert to the lush, green oasis of my life I’ve walked unsteady, but sure, toward the clarity that was always mine to have. I have torn through thick brush and danced in soft meadows along the way, and the contrasts have taught me things you may never know. Above your protests and your challenges I stand, knowing where I am simply through the memories of where I was. Beyond attachment to that weathered past the sun shines brightly on my naked back, a testament of my human bonds. The shadow ahead of me is the only thing that knows where I am going, while the light behind me knows surely where I’ve been, even as my feet are firmly planted in the soil of my present moment. The burning pain on my bare skin has always driven me forward toward the shade my shadow knows exists, and while you may never know where the source of shade will come, I will hug the tree and bless the storm clouds that often give me respite.

Such is the depth of my depravity, the hopeless in the greatest hope I’ve ever known.

You may never know that as the darkness deepens into the thickest part of night, as my eyes grow so weary they cannot help but close, a thought of you will creep into my heart, creating dreams of what will be when the dawn returns anew. A chuckle comes, and then a sigh, and perhaps a lone tear from my weary eye. You may never know, and for that I am all too grateful.

Goodnight. To all of you, my blessed teachers, my unsightly demons, my impatient students, I love you. To the wondrous night I surrender, and the coming day I pray for yet another chance. To the one who will love me through the cracks in my solid frame, I pray for your arrival. To the one who will love me through the blinks in my steady gaze, I hope for your embrace. To the one who inspires in me a great union, I promise you my frailty. You may never know how long this journey’s been.

Conscious Man (A Poem)

May 8, 2014 / Tom

Photo by Tom Grasso

Beyond the weathered jetty

Beyond that deep blue sea

Is a dream I’ve often called to

The better part of me.

Beyond the ocean’s torment

Beyond the frothy shale

Is a mountain I call out to

A summit I often fail.

Without such mindless measure

A conscious man I wish to be

Whose footprints tell a different tale

A spirit whose set free.

Beyond the ocean’s drift line

Beyond the seaman’s boast

My aged feet will find a home

Upon that rocky coast.

Beyond the whims of others

Beyond their unconscious wail

You’ll see my mast unfurled and true

As I set my heart to sail.

Without such loving pleasure

A mindless man upon the sea,

A drunken monkey on an ocean

Is all I’ll ever be.

How In the Hell Do They Do It?

May 8, 2014 / Tom

I don’t know how some writers do it. Onward they go posting many articles a day about all kinds of stuff. I see them all over the internet, posting daily different articles, on various things, for many blogs and I wonder how the hell they do it.

I can write like that sometimes, depending on the inspiration and the muse. Usually, though, my day is so crammed with non-writing essentials of living that I barely have enough time to fill my passion. Other days find me completely spent, the well dry, wondering how the hell they do it.

For me, writing can be akin to going into labor without the pain, blood or “other stuff” that comes with it. I give birth to something, somewhere, and it comes out of me in a rush of raw emotion and conscious expression. In the end, I am usually left drained as if there was great sex involved with a partner I cannot see, but certainly know is there.

Maybe it’s not like labor, but more like the event that created the need for labor. I’ll chuckle a bit at that one.

So, I wonder how they do it. I’m left spent and drained after pouring my heart into my art, and they are pumping out stuff like there will be no tomorrow. Here I am feeling like I just gave birth to a baby elephant and there they are like a fish laying eggs all over the ocean floor. Who is the blessed one? I don’t know, but my proverbial birth canal is sore and tired, screaming at me in a not-so-quiet way that “it ain’t you, pal.”

If you are wondering, I have no idea why I am so obsessed with the reproductive system today. Maybe it’s because I’m a man. Maybe it’s because I’m a man who once dreamed of being an obstetrician until, one tragic day, I found out I would have to be a gynecologist as well. “I love pizza too much to open a pizzeria” I remember saying in my rather immature way (like it was last week). Frankly, I don’t know how gynecologists do it.

For those of you used to my normal deep, philosophical prose about life and love, I’m sorry if this just doesn’t fit that bill. I’ve been fighting the urge to write about stuff that makes me laugh so much that it’s created a writer’s block of sorts in me. It’s as if the Sun was screaming at me, “You fool, I’m not on the morning horizon any more. I’m a bit west of center now, so stop trying to look for me over there.” I listened, and submitted to simply sitting down and writing what I am told to write, instead of what I want to write.

To those who just sit and write what they want, I’m jealous. I don’t know how the hell you do it.

Oh well, time for this nonsense to end. I’ve got balls to bust and fun to be made in the spaces between the work I have to do. If I don’t end soon these 600 some-odd words will become 1200, or maybe 12,000 and I will have exceeded my own 30 second attention span. I just have to surrender to the fact that I’m an elephant with the attention span of a dog trying to become a fish in a sea I want to bathe in.

Oh, look, squirrel. How the hell do they do that?

I Know

May 2, 2014 / Tom

I want to shout out my open window to the singing birds.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, but I swear by the very stars in the blue sky above that I will do it!”

But of course I know what I am doing. I’ve always known. Even in the throes of great unconsciousness I’ve known. Even as the torrid rains of suffering have washed over me, I’ve known. Even when I’ve had no clue, when I’ve been so completely and utterly lost amid the creations of my mind and ego, I’ve known. I’ve known it all, and in the well-meaning and devout oath I utter to the ether around me, I realize I know this, too.

A subtle wave of bumps, born deep within yet now exposed upon my knowing skin, issues me a simple truth. I know. In the fluttering of my youthful heart and the throbbing of my male virility, I hear truth with every pulse of life within me. In the pit of my stomach, in the place that knows the language of the gods and where the Universe speaks to me, the truth rages like a stormy shoreline whose sands are firm and whose lighting strikes and thunder claps remind me simply that I know.

And the birds keep singing, because they know too. The little tufts of white born against the blue canvas that make their way quickly past my view, know. I know those blue skies lie, pretending not to know that beyond the illusion there is an eternity of possibility; where each ray of light offers thanks to the space that allows it to be. Yes, even that dream surely knows. I dive deep beyond the obstacles my mind creates because there, in that awesome stillness found upon the stormy shore, I know.

“God, I love…”

I pause. Not because I fear the words my mouth is about to utter, but because I want to feel it as each word spills from my beating heart.

“…her.”

Exhalation. Joy. I know.

The Seeds Left Sown

May 1, 2014 / Tom

♥ The Drongo Love ♥ Happy Valentine's Day ♥

Forget the beauty before my eyes,

Such things are often a sad disguise

I care for things that love has grown

In equal parts in my soil sown.

Nothing left to manhood’s sure

But what is given to love endures

So I toss those seeds into the ground

To see what type of love is found.

Gone tomorrow this day is true

Yet today is heaven spent with you

So I’ll sit and smile and pray for there

As the seeds left sown find open air.

In joyful prayer the silent sit

I’ve found the song my lyrics fit

It isn’t yet her cup to fill

So I just sit and love these moments still.

One day, perhaps, the song we’ll sing

Then fly away on lover’s wings

To dance in fields I always knew

The seeds left sown, I’d sown for you.

You Are There, I Am Here, and That is the Way it Is

April 25, 2014 / Tom

I love you.

You may never know how much, but I love you. You may never know how the fiery idea of you consumes me; how the wonderful thought of your embrace comforts me. You are there, and I am here, and that is the way it is.

Please smile.

You may never know how your smile sends my soul to flight, but it does. You may never know how the curves of your lips and the light in your eyes sends shivers up my spine. You are there, and I am here, and that is the way it is.

I want you.

You may never know how much, but I want you. You may never feel the way my body responds to your touch; how the very thought of my flesh in your hands sends me into a frenzy. You are there, and I am here, and that is the way it is.

Please be happy and free, and let the light spring breeze soothe your mind and set your heart liberated in the fields of perfect harmony. Please know the love that has brought you into my soul, and feel the light that has shown me the way to wonderful places. Go there, feel the soft sand in your toes and the world at your feet; look up at the clear blue sky with your arms spread wide and fly wherever you wish to go. Wear no chains on your feet and allow no man to clip your wings.

I ask you, my love, to be all these things. Be light, and free, and wise because I have given you up to know these things. Know yourself not through the cynicism and dependence you were taught, but through the love and power you became the moment you were conceived. Do not find fear in the thunder, but love in the rain that pours all over you.

If, then, you wish I am here. Waiting, among the ecstatic sounds of love and fragrant life abundant all around us. We can make love in those fields while dancing in the fullness of our own unique humanity. We can shiver in our touch, sweat in our mystic delight, and be humans within the cloakless form of wonderful anticipation.

Good night, my darling. I say this prayer that you may dream of the wonderful potential beyond the obstacles you see. There I am waiting, and there is where you’ll find me.

A Certain Insanity

April 12, 2014 / Tom

I wonder aloud about how crazy I am. With each blink of my eye her image appears, and with each renewal of sight I feel the urges born in the softness of her touch, the taste of her lips, the scent of her being wafting through the open air. I can feel her hand in mine, the way her breasts press against my chest, the way her hair feels in my clenched hand as I pull her harder onto me. There is, standing by the heat of sexual desire exploding all around us, something much higher holding the flame against the holy fuel of this passion. I need her, badly, and not just as the object of my body’s desire.

What insanity is this? What angel has sown the seeds of mortal craziness within the confines of my liberated soul? What prayer has been answered that will surely throw me into a pit of pure fire?

I don’t just feel this throb in the familiar place, I feel it in places left dormant by my journey’s effort. An uncertain song has been replaced by a sure mantra of hope as the frosted chill of winter has been transformed into the warm breezes of spring. A voice within urges caution while another urges me to jump headlong into the fire where I will not fall to burn, but rise to fly as a flaming arrow through the air.

There are moments when every cell in your body challenges every cell in your head, when the spirit within begs you to throw yourself off the cliff even as the mind begs you to caution. There are wings on us all, somewhere, often beaten back by time and circumstance but who spring to life when we simply jump outside of that thing we call “comfort”. We deserve, at least once in our life, to fucking give in to the truth we feel instead of the truth we’ve learned. We deserve passion, joy, truth, honesty, loyalty and liberation all packaged neatly in the frame of someone we simply can’t get enough of. We deserve to know heaven.

We deserve to be insane sometimes, to cater to the whims of our soul rather than the chains of our thoughts. We, as beings in love with all of who we are, deserve to be loved not in fingers that snake between our own, but in the feeling we experience when our skin meets. We deserve not to be slaves to the kiss, but to the pleasure that kiss provides. We deserve to know ecstasy, over and over again, until the sweat drains the very life from our bodies and offers it as a gift to the moonlight surrounding us. We deserve to know each other there, and we deserve to simply say “fuck it” and jump.

Ok, a breath. A sigh. A deep exhalation releasing the absolute desire welling up within me. In this swirl of certain insanity I relish the way it makes me feel. Not as a slave to fear or to regret. Not as a man chained to a some whimsical idea of what should be, but as a spirit flying high above what was once but no longer needs to be. I want to be free, and I want to whisk this woman away beyond those places that have created the scars she touches in the moments when her heart beats loudest. She must volunteer, and once she steps forward the wind will pick us up and we will soar high above this place.

For now, I will rest with the voices and the uncertainty that is my certain insanity, speaking as nothing but a dream intertwined into the fabric of my own reality. It’s a great ride, the watching the firmest bedrock set into its permanent place. Soon, someday, the wind beneath me will feel equally firm as we rise above the clouded earth we’ve known. Silent prayers are uttered by the chorus within me even as the flesh responds to the warm remembrance of what brought me here. For that I am very grateful.

Peace.