i am tired, Lord.
hold on.
hold on for what?
for Me.
i don’t know that i can…
you can; you have.
i am tired, Lord.
I know; hold on.
Prayer
We Fall Down
I forget –
often –
just how much I am privileged
and blessed,
allowing The Darkness to rise
and My Light to then subside.
Ironically,
gratitude never ceases,
it remains steadfast,
knowing this resurrected Shadow shall too pass.
Surrendering,
I will remember:
we fall down,
become lost,
and are –
eventually –
re-found.
Letting go,
I slowly begin to dissolve
that desperate,
terribly frightened façade.
Breathing deeply
and in-tentionally,
re-leasing lineages of conditioning
and very old stories,
the tight knots
in heart and belly
begin to relax,
they unwind.
I return –
once again –
to some humble
Presence of mind.
powerful people
who are they?
why are they?
what are they?
we look Up
and admire them,
envy and revile them.
fundamentally human
like the rest of us –
ordinary people
with too much extra –
a “gift” and a “curse”
to hold such a place
on our spaceship Earth.
need it always be so-
a few “high”
so many made relatively “low”?
perhaps a little more equity
on the way to generous equality
spurred by empathy,
our shared humanity,
and true understanding
of this current road’s danger
and lack of sustainability.
prayers to you
what’s it all about,
you coming into
this scared space
spewing your hate?
why not go outside
to the streets
into the Light –
strong and proud
expressing as you perceive:
that only white lives matter
all people of color
have “it” coming
that their lives mean nothing.
prayers to you,
for you truly know not
what it is you do.
you have forgotten
what You really are;
alas, you can see but so far-
only to the level of the skin
so utterly limited you are,
tightly constricted
unseen, likely never really heard,
lonely in your Little Box
amidst your tribe
of hardened have nots.
from such profound lack,
you shame and blame
easily kill and maim,
desperately looking outside
for what does not exist within.
no present capacity to self-reflect
nor the tools to adequately take stock
and practice personal responsibility.
fervent prayers for the lost pieces of you-
may you soon re-member and awaken.
I can’t breathe!
“I can’t breathe!!”
we, people the color of night’s sky, have been saying –
pleading-
for centuries.
What part of this do you not understand?
Are you not human
like me –
flesh
bone
blood?
A parent like me –
mother
sister
father
brother
like me?!
Look into my eyes
deep into The Soul
as I gaze into
The Essence of you.
Hear me:
I can’t breathe.
Tell me:
How does it feel
to have your knee
pinned to my back-
digging deep,
crushing with intention.
How does it serve you
to tie your noose
around my neck
stifling my breath
as I sway
gently
from the poplar tree?
Look into my eyes –
see what I see
so very clearly:
whatsoever you do
unto me,
you too
shall reap.
We
can’t
breathe.
Sacred Moment
this strange,
sudden
lonely
traumatic
seclusion.
A particularly fierce form of Grace.
All a bit of a blur-
so much has taken place
as revealed by this now wizened face.
Innocence gained and lost
as we endeavor to make the most
of what is truly a Sacred Moment–
a pause, a break, space
for resurrection and metamorphosis.
Who will come of this?
Already feeling familiar pieces
falling away – cannot retrieve them
for there is no going back-
only surrender –
a radical submission,
to humility and a facile generosity
born from the remembrance
of our connectedness
and shared ancestry.
RED
Mixed emotions,
my relationship with Red–
the color of
sensuality and menstruation-
of sin and punishment-
as I was taught.
Red did not hide-
neither docile nor shy.
Red, to me,
embodied extroversion-
loud and insufferable!
Beginning,
in the latter chapter of life,
to warm to Red some-
to appreciate her contours
and taste her complexity.
She’s beckoning me, Red–
an invitation to finally
stand
firmly
in my Power.
“It’s always been there,”
Red says.
Mask
Alas,
how is this suppose to work
now and going forward?
Vulnerability,
the removal of our masks –
invisible and heavy-
had just become
more comfortable
for so many.
Now,
suddenly,
the mask-
sterile and tangible-
has become
mandatory.
A rare treat
to see a naked face
walking down a street.
We’ve become aliens
out of necessity,
orbiting around each other,
getting no closer
to the “stranger”
that six feet.
WoMen and Men
At their core,
in their essence –
WoMen and Men –
how different are they?
are there feelings
in a WoMan
that a
Man
cannot access
if he so chose and intended;
if he were allowed to be
who he really is
without the burden
and misconceptions
placed on him
since he a little boy child?
same with WoMan-
are there feelings and thoughts
in a Man
that a WoMan could not
understand
and express
if she felt free,
less tightly contained,
and truly seen?
We’re Human –
is all –
the masculine and the feminine,
Light and Dark.
Yin and Yang,
the need for Love,
for gentle touch,
in all.
Everything else,
a grand illusion
for simplicity
and convenience,
exacting a heavy
societal cost.
Change to Save
I will need to change my life
in order to save it.
This I am feeling to my very core.
Don’t know how much more
I can swallow.
I’m walkin’ on thin ice,
on troubled waters that are shallow.
Born an introvert, Quiet is the air I must breathe,
what sustains and maintains me.
Without adequate doses of silence,
I lose pieces,
become untethered,
cannot see a hopeful reality,
begin to question my existence
and that of all humanity.
Why all the noise –
the incessant chatter and mindless banter?
“Y’all gonna make me lose my mind
up in here, up in here.
Y’all gonna make me lose control
up in here, up in here.”
I will need to change my life
in order to save it.
Deprived of silence,
I feel my blood boiling,
heart racing,
hands tremblin’,
mind slipping.
I can taste that bitter, flimsy line
between love and hate;
that soft, raw space
where even the gentlest among us
can suddenly snap
and do things we can never take back.
The Devil isn’t over there-
No, it plays in us all
bidding we follow
and fall-
fall so hard and low,
we can barely stand up.
I will need to change my life,
re-claim it
in order to save it.
Exactly how to do so
overwhelms and scares –
the tide is seemingly so high.
Got to go deep inside,
to The Core
lean only on that which is Truth and pure.
burgeoninc 