Tough Talk

Scientists have confirmed

Reality is a figment of our imagination

Or more accurate to say

We create our reality with our minds

Our minds

Those sacred organs

Given to us in trust

Each lifetime a fresh start

A chance to do it better

Not forget the truth

The Buddha said

Reality is a construct of your mind

Self is an illusion

Thus it’s most important to remember

Compassion is the first thought

Compassion for self as other

Jesus said the same

Love is the source of all wisdom

Love your brother as yourself

Love yourself as your brother

Once you feel that

In your heart

For all life forms

Then you can know

Truth …

Reality as imagined

Is not truth

(Let me rant just a little while

It’s my mind

After all)

Reality is only truth

When you strip away

The body nation culture

Strip away the name gender family

Strip away the construct

Of morality philosophy

What’s left …

What then is left

Is truth

Lennon also said that

But names don’t matter

If we just do it.

Trees

Nature’s softness
Reaches its branches
In an expression of solidarity
With a consciousness
We cannot understand

Humans craft a language
To describe a tree
Ascribing feelings
To the sap, the leaves, the roots
Yet no one knows except

The sapling nestling its trunk
Against the mother
Talking to the breeze
Knowing truth
With timeless clarity

As I walk
I cannot help but wonder
How it feels to be the earth
The sky, the wind,
The insect in the bark

And if they will be here next year
And the year after
I let my heart speak
Giving all I’ve got,
Imagining an answer.

Friday Night Elegy

Elation expands
beyond the bonds of reason
with the first sip and clink of ice

Effortless riding a wave
of astral energy here in the bar
with its basic neon soul

I used to dream of climbing mountains
doggedly ascending to the top
with a tribe behind me

Oh, I should have remembered
how it's always harder to come down -
but whoever thinks of that when they're in love?

I only mention love
to give you a context
a subject I know so well, I could be an oracle

People should come to me
and ask their fate
Maybe I thought I was being born into it

God, what a fake-out. Psych!
All the courtesan memories and vestal longings
were only useful in the sack

Am I being brazen or crude?
I think those notions are played out now
given the world-wide-web, already antique

Soon we'll be doing marriage by podcast
I must say, though, this steak is good
the cow gave his life for me

And the whiskey got distilled
with only a glimmer of
what might be done in its name

Sure, I'm an old lady with a young lady's mind
as I pack up my things and
strut off to the night