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Posts Tagged ‘truth’

Child 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 22, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
You will sit naked in the center
of a circle, aware others are watching.
They’ll have white hair and point at you in delight.
You will reach beneath a fence to steal
something small, a black plastic man
with a coat that ripples in unseen wind.
Guilt guarantees the toy never brings you joy.
You name him The Stranger. He will never fit in.
Another time, you will tell your parents you wrote
your own name, then point to the teacher’s
perfect block letters. They will see through your lie,
make you sit in the corner and face the wall.
Eventually you learn being at ease with nakedness
is a superpower. Eventually you learn to delight
in the fact you will always need a teacher.

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Wonder Woman Writes Back

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 12, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
That strapless suit, those high heel boots,
those were lures. The invisible plane was, too.
The real story was always the Lasso of Truth,
that golden rope forged by Hephaestus.
Superman has his vision. The Hulk
has his strength, but sweetheart,
there is no power stronger than the truth—
the willingness to want it, the urgency
to find it, the longing to know it,
even when the truth is something
we’d rather not hear. I know you don’t
have the luxury of a lasso, but
you have poems, and they will help you
question everything you know.
Our greatest enemies are always
the ones inside us, especially
when it comes to the truth. Your greatest
gift is your wonder. Let it rope
around you, invite you into
a listening beyond the words.
What is true will always escape.
Still, devote yourself to such listening,
to a practice of circling what is true.
That circling is what will save you.
 

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One Affirmation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on May 19, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
cupping the truth in my hands
until my own palms
glow

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Insight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 18, 2024| 7 Comments »

I’m not sure I could say
they are beautiful,
these brittle brown
cinquefoil stems
trembling in the wind,
though part of me longs
to find beauty everywhere.
Ah, the longing to see beauty
shapes the way I meet the world.
There. Seeing this truth—
beautiful as a golden flower.

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Self-Portrait as Tuning Fork

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 5, 2023| 18 Comments »

I am what continues.
            —Joi Sharp
 
 
There is, perhaps you’ve felt it,
a moment when the day falls away
and your name falls away and
everything you thought you knew
falls away and for a moment
you know yourself only
as whatever it is
that continues—
your whole body abuzz
with the eternity of it—
and you quiver
as if struck by the great hand
of what is true,
becoming pure tone,
more vibration than flesh,
a human-shaped resonator
tuned to the frequency
of life itself,
and though later you might try
to dissect what happened,
in that moment you’re too abloom
to wonder how or why,
you simply are
this ecstatic unfolding
knowing the self as I am,
so alive and so infinite
you tremble like a song.

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What the Mermaids Sang

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 11, 2023| 9 Comments »

            after Mermaids (1898) by Gustav Klimt
 
Truths are hidden from the surface.
            —motto of Carl von Rokitansky, head of the Vienna School of Medicine, who influenced Klimt
 
 
We’ve traveled to the waters dark and cold
where the only light to be found
is the light you learn to make with your own body.
We have traveled to the depths
where we were crushed by pressure,
where the only way to move is slow,
where the only nourishment is what is dead,
and now we arrive on shores of gold.
 
There are seas in you, deep trenches
you’d rather perhaps not explore.
But you must meet the mystery—
must be changed by all you cannot know.
It will widen your eyes forever.
Dear swimmer, this change is the treasure.

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Longing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 8, 2023| 7 Comments »

 
I want to hear the click of authenticity.
—Adaline Kent
 
 
Like the clicking of crickets
on a warm Nevada night,
or the click of a camera
as it captures what’s here,
like the click of the keys
of an old typewriter,
or the click of the light
as it switches to on—
that’s what I feel when
my mind meets the truth—
as if the gears of the world
have been tickity ticking
and some sweet inner cog
has been snickity snicking
and then with soft precision
all clicks into place and
for a moment, it’s quiet,
and I’m still with what’s real,
and I soften, I lift as I trust
(can you hear it?) the click.

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When My Friend Asks Me a Difficult Question

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 25, 2023| 9 Comments »

 
I close my eyes
as if the truth might rise
from the dark
the way leaves
of water lilies
float greenly at the edge
of two worlds.
When the words do come,
I taste shine in them.
Now I don’t want to speak
in any language
that doesn’t open like lilies,
nourished by depths,
encouraged by light.

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Freedom Night

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 23, 2023| 4 Comments »

All those words
I was afraid to say,
I gave them wings—
dark ink black wings—
and watched them
fly away, watched them
dive and circle,
swoop and soar,
enchanted by their flight.
The cage of shame
I’d kept them in,
it disappeared,
till all that was left
in me was sky.


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One at the Film Festival

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on September 5, 2022| 7 Comments »



 
 
a happy ending, nice,
but what the heart most longs for—
the hairshirt of truth

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