Knee Deep In Shallow Waters

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” - Aldous Huxley

Some may never know the value of their freedom until they are standing knee deep in its withered demise.

Until nothing is left but the aching breath anxious to fall and again it shall always rise.

Until we have nothing left to hold,

and all it takes is to release your gut and trust in the bold.

Trust in love.

When we see only the unknown ahead and ashes of the lives that once held our illusions in place, we will know our most difficult moment in taking that first horrific step into the unknown.

Terrifying, hilarious, humbling, humiliating.

That we have nothing left and we’re still holding onto ashes of the illusions we would have died to uphold. But sometimes life doesn’t give us any other choice but to choose to drown in our creations of stone, or to let go. Even our deepest holding, even our last breath of barrier, even our darkest fear and our self-loathing, what if we also let that go?

What if we let our grinding center of stone suddenly blossom into the most beautiful flower that we can no longer ever hold?

Could we stand it?

Could we truly ever be free with nothing left to hold?

Knowing we could have years and years left of watching others lives unfold, knowing our own would be just to always breathe into the unknown.

Our gut is the last thing keeping our feet on the ground.

Our gravity, our tether, our weight, our bones.

The world all around us, however pleasant and safe, is just acting as a tether we’ve all created to keep us safely from space.

For stars are vibrating,

you can see it if you try,

our inner most workings are made of the same lies,

for when we let them linger and wander and fly,

our atoms are secretly dreaming of returning to the sky.

What if one day we all just let go, would there be any longer gravity to this earth keeping us stone? Would we all float away into vibrations of light, joining effervescent moonlight and universal delights?

Would hate have any place hold if we no longer held it within? If we all one day agreed to start over and begin? Would daylight still taunt us and love still remain a mystery?

Would famine and greed and hatred persist? What if we no longer had tethers to hold our deepest bowels from the bold?

What if lightness and darkness were secretly lovers waiting to dance, within and without leaving us in a trance?

What if loving was useless as we’re all truly one?

What if bounty and heart break were keeping us stunned?

What if we could release our inner most pain?

And release ourself from lying victim to its weight?

What if kindness and resistance were things of the past?

For loving and oneness could be our hearts true calling at last.

What if we released ourselves from the bind of human form?

Not to take our own lives but to let them transform?

What if we loved even our worst enemies?

Our critics, our notions and our deep human needs?

What if we no longer needed anything outside of our selves to fill our holes, left by burden and heart break and storms?

What if instead our insides weren’t wanting to be filled?

But unleashed and unfurled in potential and grace?

Our heart break can hold us back from our most precious of dreams.

If we hold them close

and don’t let them go,

they cant run away leaving us with only our pain.

But what if our pain is taking place of our dreams?

What if we let it be it’s own entity?

Instead of letting our heart shake teach us to be free,

we have trapped it and harnessed it into hatred and greed.

Why not appreciate it as something that has taught us a great deal,

but deciding in an instant not to drag it along leaving our stomach in ungodly turmoil.

What if darkness and shame only existed because we’ve kidnapped them from light? Intertwining our illusion and mistaking our identity.

But a moment and a choice is often all that it takes.

_______________________________

Sometimes a poetic mind takes hold and it won’t let you win.

You try to go about your day but your thoughts go on with rhyme and whim.

You can no longer have but a simple thought without it twisting into deep poetry revealing your deepest glory and sin.

For beauty and harmony and inspiration embolden the heart stir the spirit dancing within.

All of those times you were told all you’ll ever do is get sick and get old.

Dancing along the fabric of your need to break free of the cold.

When rhyming won’t cease I suggest you desist,

from whining and trudging and let it persist.

For one never knows what magic could ever possibly unfold

From a seemingly arrogant and relentless idea forcing form.

It could be the lifeblood you’ve always needed to feel home,

it could never make it past the scribbles but in your heart it could carry you on.

For words are just scribbles and wiggles and the right direction of light.

And so are your bones, holding on for dear life,

but maybe, just maybe,

we are meant to let them breathe light.

For our atoms are coy, playing solid when seen,

and the stuff of gods in our dreams.

What if our fear of rejection is us already rejecting ourselves

before our secrets even have a chance to be revealed?

____________________________

"Sometimes I say to a poem, 'Not now, can’t you see I am bathing!'

But the poem usually doesn’t care And quips,

'Too bad, Hafiz, No getting lazy - You promised God you would help out

and He just came up with this new tune.'

Sometimes I say to a poem,

'I don’t have the strength To wring out another drop Of the Sun.'

And the poem will often Respond

By climbing onto a barroom table:

Then lifts its skirt, winks, Causing the whole sky to Fall."

Hafiz