Child of the Times

You are a child of the times!
blaze of hope, deluge of spite
dreaming up forests of pine dusting the planet,
destroying divide.
But people hide so deep inside
their bodies curl around their lies,
bent over like a snowy branch.

You pierced me with a dirty needle
I asked to know the heart of darkness

A priest’s eyes tear to see blind faith
the purest saints are slain

You lie down in the dark
sun touched not your privileged skin today
you casually thought of
dry places where the earth could not even shed one tear for its unborn fruit
while staring vacantly at the corner of the ceiling

You are a child of the times!
walking on slave engraved so(u)les
a slow- motion, time- slaying sway from hidden to seen

Put your smiles in a box
fruit don’t blush like they used to
sun sounds silent sobs
laughter like a dagger falls
my adamant hands claw at the mouths
seeping with empty words I cannot bear

Oh silence! pierce me
watch the pool of blood expand
to life touched by the hands of man,
beneath the stars which we gave meaning
“The love of god” we sang, “is gleaming!”

Have I tried to rinse too soon,
(bent over like a snowy branch,)
my guilty wound?
the blood spills golden from the turrets
we are singing in its rain
Snow blue I watch you go
before a dying sea I stand
before a dying sea I am
before a dying sea I dance

You are a child of the times
as ordinary as kitchen sink
as hunger
as the shame of clean hands
the cracks in a  farmers hands
the black and white
the gory past
don’t recall
don’t imagine
don’t think
just:

The Genesis in your eyes-
the how I hate it
the how I would die for it.

Child of the time, bound by light
pierced and proud and wondering,
“Is there something wrong with me?”

a body dances in the frozen air
a body dances in the frozen air
a body dances in the frozen air

Weather Vanity

Forceful weather vanity and dishonest self obsessed courtesy fall away along with the singularly fearful perspectives which create greed. The 70s was a catapult in understanding and now the quickening of chaos and enlightenment has come. The martyrdom of simply decent folk is normal. To be kind and honest makes you a saint these days.

So you keep your eyes open. You gently smile at the day. You pray ceaselessly in an organic way, gathering in prayer with others like constellations of stars or buoys in the rough sea of our degraded era. A metal roof is ripped off in unapologetic fury.

It's not personal. Instead, it throws an accusative glance at the collective. It puts the "self obsessed every man for himself" on the stake and asks us all to feel the burning flesh of a stranger as if it were our own.

We are asked now to love our neighbors as ourselves; to stand between heaven and earth and claim our breathing bodies. "Admit your breath brings you home. Admit there is no object worthy of a obsession other than love or Grace or God or consciousness." The rain pelts down, the nuclear power plant leaches waste into the sea, and golden chains lay knotted and rusting at the bottom of the heap of trash in calcutta .

The spirit realm is not for sale and yet we've gone around with gaping open-mouthed smiles slapping price tags on gifts from God.

You take a friend, bravely, by the hand and go down to the river to watch the water slowly drag itself across your eyes. You see a family of ducks waiting for the last small child to enter the stream and suddenly remember that mothers of all kinds care and love their children. And you abandon self centeredness enough to feel the tickles of the grass and the sound of the voice of a stranger low and velvety in tone sitting somewhere behind you on the bank. Somehow you know the voice comes from an open mind and this knowing causes you to remember to be quiet; in fact you bite your own tongue so that your conditioned self doesn't fill up all the space where God or magic is kindly waiting for the opportunity to come forward and offer itself as the crowned member of the gathering.

After a perfect portion of silence, you open your mouth without thought and a song with no words is there in your throat. You are brave and relaxed enough to sing it. You look behind you and share a smile and eye contact with the stranger. A great calm spreads across your mind.

The sun has set and you put your arm around your friend and feel her ribs expand as you both take a deep breath and let it out together. Your hand mindlessly touches your pockets to make sure your keys and phone are still on your person as you think, "Soon we will stand up and go inside."

Words Don't Work

the call, knowing, depth, darkness, lost, heavy, stuck, confused, spiraling, story, ironic, mistaken, mute, ashamed, pressure, sky, river, lake, fail, silence, stillness, mirror...

these words have all been worn out. Even "worn out" is used up- a dishrag recycled to the garden shed.

our painting cropped up and I wanted to place words down and have them witnessed; to say things differently; to loose my voice and find myself someone new

can't get them started, the engine  stalled

I feel irritated by simile and metaphor.


Wish you Were Here that's the song I played on repeat during my first suicide attempt at age 13.

Now it plays a backwards echo? A reflection in a bowl

Words. I want them to work. And today they don't.

 — 

See Me Here

Are you available to hear me?

I know there are so many important voices today that need and want to be heard. I wonder if I should make this request. What are the energetic circumstances that will lead you to noticing - what give and take- what dance of deserving- what emotional algorithm will help me get the support and love and attention I desire today? 

The truth is no outer support will fix my problem. But still, I follow the desire to ask you see me here: on Saturday morning in Berlin feeling so lost and alone. I know hormones and circumstance play a part in this stagnant state. It's my mind/body connection and the way they move or don't that seems to create the happiness or distress I experience. 

There was a time I meditated a lot. For many years. I don't do it much anymore and so know I am the possessor of what the Buddhists call an "ordinary mind" (like an unswept house or a confused person who's missed the greater point of their life).

I've been self- medicating with food and tobacco. I am gaining weight. I feel lethargic, stuck, and lost. 

I see a victim narrative and a baby narrative- that I need someone or something external to save me from, mostly, myself! My defenses are up. I've pushed several people away. 

At the moment, I don't make a sustainable amount of money and I have not alchemized my artistic gifts into financial income. 

Depressed. Down. Having trouble making moves to support myself. The usual symptoms....

I wouldn't dare to separate my ills from greater societal issues (captialism, the chaotic and violent state of affairs ad infinitum), but I have sort of always experienced this kind of depression on and off throughout the changing times. And I've experienced relief from it. 

I meet people who are happy and hopeful and alive almost everytime I go out into the world.

What am I missing?

I think I’m missing a life in service. Maybe my art isn’t a service so its not giving me the rewards that altruistic action would.

Where has my spark gone? It's here, in my discontent, getting distorted and silenced with the common distractions.

I want to reach out to you. If you're still here, reading, I’ll just thank you. Thank you.

I know I’m not alone in this temporary suffering. I send tentacles of empathy to all those who feel they have missed the mark- that their lives are unpotentiated- for all the adults that didn’t learn how to make friends and always feel outside of life.

Knock knock. We’re here.

Letter to An Ex OneTaster

Hey Hamza,

Ex One Taster here. I really appreciated this read. I’m with you in finding myself resting in an in between, or what may appeal to you as a helpful concept- a dialectic. Both and.

As someone with a strong way with words, I have found myself still crippled to write about my experience in and after OneTaste. It took me 15 years to write about being raped and escaping the lock-down cult I was sent to and escaped from as a teenager. So, I can only presume my psyche has it’s own timing. When will I be able to sort out and describe my experience of being within and of breaking from OT.

I am not able to fully make balanced meaning of my experience. Dialectics allow me to hold the contradictions I do see wrestling within. Dialectical thinking allows me to relax in the discomfort of knowing and now knowing what happened to me, of feeling like a survivor and a failure at once, of gratitude for the wild ride I was courageous and weird enough to embark on, and simultaneous sorrow for the painful woundings that were created, exacerbated and abused in a power structure I ultimately could not succeed within…

I want to high five you for being able to form salient contemplations in the wake of one of the many mysterious pseudo- deaths we as humans seem to manufacture for ourselves, on behalf of that within us which needs to explore, grow and mature. I felt a resonance with you at OT because I knew you were an artist. I am, too.

Almost immediately after my swift and painful ripping from the cult I found my mind body energy enter a down ward spiral that in contemporary society is called a "breakdown." I experienced the harsh vacuum of hyper connection, and a psychic break. As you elucidated on beautifully, a manufactured self was forced to surrender. In fact, I was teetering on the on the verge of psychosis for sometime while within the community and although OT claimed to be my everything, it was fully incapable of holding or giving appropriate support for that experience. Since they took over my whole life, shouldn't they haven also have been able to care for me when I was reaching out? I kept telling my community members that I felt myself "going down." Chicken or Egg?

Subsequently, my life force reallocated itself to my deep calling as a musician and painter. It was a voice — the being that was still “mine” that continuously reminded me, even while living in the OneTaste realm that my purpose was as a creator, not a sex coach. Anyways, I would love to have a dialogue with you.

Again, thank you Hamza.