Fall Back Further

This place carved of cliffs and stone. Row houses crowding the street and dilapidated businesses stacked vertically upon each other. We walked the streets of this tiny enclave and it felt like a Bruce Springsteen song. Before turning back, a record shop. My money ran out before I finished looking through Dylan bootlegs.

Do you have time to linger?

Consider behavior as language. Sweet, gut-wrenching words can be spoken, but what are the actions? Treat me like an object and you'll have to lose me. Do you think that is true and if so, am I lost?

If I write by hand it's on yellow legal pads, like my father. My very first poem dissected food and my body – all neatly stanza'd on yellow paper – in the voice of my father.

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Prepping ginger and turmeric root for storage. New-old ways of relieving pain and quieting suffering. The old ones say, “Don't take a pampered cat for your teacher.” Buddha Nature is no longer on the outside of things; I have found the hut and here I will stay.

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The awareness of Christ surely is an advent but what He pointed towards has always. . . been. Fall back further. Before our feet knew the earth, the Mother carried, writhed and birthed Home. What we perform in December makes us fools.