Status Updates From Gold

“Why do I run when no one can escape you? Why hide when you’ve found me a hundred times?
I thought I could lose you in a crowd of people. But you find me even in crowds of secrets, even behind my own masks.”

“They call the wide-eyed flower jasmine.
They call the wide-eyed flower a thorn.
The wide-eyed flower doesn’t care what they call it.
I adore that freedom. I bow to it.”

music floats on the wind
like driftwood on waves

in the ocean depths
pearls shine, lending their beauty
but never touching the surface

we hear the dazzling echo

we're fodder for death so learn to laugh
from the angel of death.
he laughs at the jeweled belts and crowns of kings-
all that splendour's just on loan

If a ripe pomegranate on a branch
doesn’t open its ruby mouth to the birds,
what else will it do?

Moonlight seduces you.
Sunlight feeds you.
What more would you want them to do?

Reason warns, “Forget union! Forget surrender.
The void is full of thorns.”

Love replies, “The thorn is in you, my friend.
Constantly sounding the alarm. You call that existence?
Pluck the thorn from your heart.
Let the garden bloom.”

Lovers drink dregs and brim with ecstasy.
Stone hearted men of reason seethe in denial.

Reason saw one market,
opened a shop, and started haggling.
Love saw many.

Reborn so many times,
I know that music.

I linked arms with death
and leapt into emptiness.

My mind second-guessed me,
chased me down,
tried to scare me out of surrender.

Why should I be afraid?
I give form to formless fear.
I write it’s every rant.

Once I lived in a prison of circumspection.
I thought I was being prudent and wise.
A prison. Why? What had I stolen?

Your naked freedom
is your shield.

Steeped in union, the heart remembers
a world beyond words.
Soul, send the news.

There’s one spirit in countless bodies,
one oil in countless almonds,
one meaning in countless words
uttered by countless tongues.