Love is Now or it is never

There is so much that cannot be explained.  You want it to be simple.  This happened, then this, then this and finally this.  But life never falls in straight lines.  Life is a maze the solution to which is never revealed until the last turn is taken, the last line is drawn.  People demand of you what you cannot give.  They want to know the solution before you have plotted the course.  They want the security of knowing that the writer, the author, knows the ending and is guiding them, step by step, through the process that will eventually lead to this ending.

They don't know you.  They see you as some guide, some leader they can follow.  But you aren't a leader.  You are struggling to keep up with the images, the ideals, that pour into your brain unbidden.  They want to believe in you and when they discover they cannot they blame you.  You are at fault because you cannot give them the reassurance they are so desperatly seeking.

It's no wonder they believe lies when they are spoken with such self assurance.  They yearn for someone to lie to them, someone to tell them the truth is just beyond their grasp.

They don't want to be told the truth is out there, somewhere beyond the reach of their teacher.  They look for teachers who can end their search, can take away the burden of searching for themselves.  Believe me, I know the truth.  That is what they want to hear.  They don't want to hear the truth is something they have to discover for themselves.  They look to teachers who know the truth and they fault themselves for thier failure to understand.

You are not at fault.  You have simply reached the end of the road that others can lead you to.  They don't know the truth any more than you do.  You want to believe they know more than you.  You want to believe in the Truth.  And there are many who would take advantage of your will to believe.  They will sell you books and lectures and dvds and seminars none of which will lead you to the Truth but all of which will convince you it is your fault, some lacking in your desire and your will, that keeps you from knowing the truth.

And all along, the truth is simple and uncomplicated and you have known it in the past and only need to remember what you have forgotten.

Simple things like when you die your life ends.

Like all you have is this moment, this bubble in time, in which you live.  That when you want to do something, you have to do it now.  That putting things off to another day is refusing to do them at all.  That if you love someone you love them now, in this moment.  That love defered is love denied.

Things like you can only love each person you are with, and only then in the moment in which you live.  That making claims to love people you don't know is just so much rhetoric, meaningless talk.  To say that God is Love is the same thing as saying God doesn't exist.

Things like when you die your life ends.

There is no afterlife, their is only life and if you don't use the life you have, then you are damned and if you use the life you have, if you love each moment, each person you know, then you are alive.  That the only difference between damnation and salvation, between Heaven and Hell, is in this moment, this decision each moment entails.  Do I love you?  The answer should be there even as the question is asked, be it yes or no.

I love you.  Each person who reads these words.  Now, in this moment, not in any other, not in some vague sense of Love...but in the specific sense of me keyboarding these words and you reading them...I love you.  If you blink, if you hesitate, then the moment is past.  Love only exist in the present moment.  Love is the point at which our selves move through time.  Or love is not.  Love is an on off switch.  Either it is present or it is absent.  Love is a binary function.  The switch is either on or off.  There are no gradations, there is no dimmer switch.  You either do or you don't.

Right now, in this moment, in the keyboarding of these words and in your reception of these words, there is love.

Ask me tomorrow if I love you and the answer will be different.  Everything happens now.  Nothing happens tomorrow and nothing happens yesterday.  Now is the only time we have, now is our eternity.

The rest is illusion and a striving after the wind.

how can i describe you

how can i describe you

how can i describe you

without seeming

unbearably sappy

and romantically redundant?

you are the first breath i took

when i rose screaming

from the womb

you are the marrow in my bones

where my life’s blood

is manufactured

you are the dawn

of a day that never ends

you are the fawn

frozen in the headlights

of my speeding life

the one i chose

to wreck my self

into the gutter

and across into the trees

to avoid hurting

you are the taste

of wine sap apples

on my tongue

the essence of cinnamon

and nutmeg

you are the appetizer

at my banquet

and the main course

and dessert

all served at once

you are the one

i was waiting for

before i even knew

i was waiting

you are the ferris wheel,

the merry-go-round,

the bumper cars---

the carnival of love

you are the gold crayon

in my crayola box

and the blue and yellow

and red and green

there is no picture

i might want to color

that i will not find myself

reaching for you

you are the one

of which there is no other

the prime cause

and end result

of all my days

you are what god gave me

as compensation

for my failure

to get to heaven

you are the pulse

in my wrist

and the pain

in my side

you take my breath away

and breathe life

into my lungs

all at the same instant

the cat who straddles me

and sucks my breath

and the paramedic

who gives the cpr

to bring me back from death

if i had never met you

then i would never have known

what love means

i would have stumbled

in the dark

blind to the meaning of light

if i had never met you

i would have never understood

the purpose of poetry

my talent would have been

so much sand

to be blown by an indifferent wind

you are my mother

and my child

my beginning and my end

and all the life between

i could have died

without knowing you

and my life would have ended

like the life of a fly

without so much as a whimper

but now i will scream in dying

trumpet like a bull elephant

at the outrage of mortality

how can i be

what i am

without being in love with you?

there is a simple equation

at work in my world now:

i love

therefore

i am

don’t think i am obsessed

i am as rational

as any man dared

hope to claim

as sane

as a psychiatrist on valium

and as calm

as a cow

who has been fed, bred and milked

yet

i love you still

and the crazy part of me

loves you

just as much

as my rational self

how can i describe you?

when i open the door

into the dark room of my heart

you are the light

that floods in

and illuminates my soul

nashville, 1971

with a dozen roses from tyler, texas...

stems pressed between my elbow and my side,

blossoms jutting out beneath my shoulder

like a burst of blood frozen by the camera

in a cheap and violent movie...

i lope easily across the rain-engorged alley

my dingoes squishing shamelessly in the mud

erupting small splashes of sound

into the early sunday morning silence

then, from the alley, i ascend a gentle rise

to the glass slick, rain-washed lawn

of a tall, rambling three story house

turned gray with vampire winter’s wind

sucking life from ancient white-washed walls

now the leather of my boots squeaks on splintered stairs

a sneaky, sheepish sound

my run ended, i am suddenly slowed

not ready yet to announce my arrival

i carefully climb the wooden backless steps

uneasily attached to the rear of the house

to the first landing and the single eye

of the back door window whose lacy curtains are half-closed

as if what lay beyond were feigning sleep

and watching me greedily behind an eyelash thin wall

now, shuffling the mud from my boots

onto the frilly fibers of her doormat,

i feel a massive, incredible wave of adolescent shyness

sweep past my adult sophistications

and drown my will beneath a flood of indecision

i hold the roses before me in one hand

an ineffectual barrier, fooling no one,

my free hand stretches out, one finger trembles

the trembling translates into a noisy, stacatto buzzing

of her un-feminine, unnerving doorbell

i stand, back to a gray and ugly sky,

facing a door in a wall of gray and lifeless wood

and feeling just as gray from the inside of my ash dry mouth

to the paleness of my nearly fainting face

with a ridiculous, incongruous bouquet

of obscenely red roses

mocking all the gray and coldness

in the air, in the wood....in me

and the door opens

moving on mysteriously silent hinges

in a world where such things nearly always creak and rasp

and a gasp of air envelopes me

like the breath of a child escaping all at once

astonished by the splendor of the tree on christmas morning

warm and tingly, vibrating with a thousand whispers and promises

laced with the twin smells of baking bread

from an oven somewhere nearby

and a perfume that strikes with

a pungent, serpentine sensuality

transforming the yeasty image of bread rising

into a throat catching, erotic flash of twin breasts rising,

pale and flour-ery from a shocking, silky slip of negligee

my eyes skid past her

careening off walls and floor and assorted pieces of

salvation army furniture and mirrors and stained glass, tiffany lamps

till, braking and boomeranging, i force my focus to her face

my elbow creaks, arthritic and threatening to pop loudly

as my automatic arm thrusts the roses forward

unnecessarily close to her pert nose

i stand in the space between the seconds ticking by

and my hand begins to vibrate with a low hum

i stare into her solemn, searching eyes

and know that if she does not smile soon

my whole arm will be palsied with

a violent, uncontrollable spasm

and i’ll scatter a cascade of rose petals at her feet

and turn and leap down the stairs

in a complete and utterly defeated rout

and run back across her yard

through the mud of the alley to my hollow room

and in the instant when it seems the fabric

of time itself must surely rip from the strain

a faint, butterfly-shadow of a smile

passes over her serious, until now unapproachable, face

the roses bunched lightly to her breast

she turns slightly

and, with the delicate motion

of a fragile fingered

impossibly feminine hand,

she invites me in