​

to get into the river
I let go of the shore
drift past fear and through

to discover something new
I let go of the familiar
walk toward the unimagined

to change my mind
I let go of beliefs
allowing stillness in their absence
​
to change my life 
I let go of my self
detached from the mask

​

​
​that voice again
pipes up, howls
at the suggestion
of a moment's silence

why so vicious
you might take softer approaches instead
of the hammer, a knife, the furnace
of contempt that burns away what
might have been otherwise a flower or
a song

i control the tempo and temperature
of my response i give it flavor
gauge progress by shifts
in volume and frequency

it grows quiet for two or three days then
i tend to violate any fragile truce

​​ought to see it coming by now

​

they're big and they're decimal
written in stone
one's about an ox
one demands, thou shalt love

just who commands? surely not
that smiling fat buddha, no--
a king
a lord before whom you kneel
begging for enough to build
your own fortress 
you, princeling
of this tyrant who commands love
why? Can it not be pillaged?
Must he insist?

Any child knows: love 
is spontaneous as laughter
and cannot be commanded
even for the ​amusement of the god
who demands love in exchange
​for protection from what he made