I always want to see a shooting star and sometimes do And whether or not they really shoot they really seem to The existential action is what is the attraction For the any of the many or who come of the some The beating heart of being blazing through the blooming night
2
Though shooting might seem optimistic from the point of view Of stars which may fall short of shooting but which overcome As disconnected diamonds descending points of light Stunning on blue velvet flashing frozen fire all the way Down empowered with powers of flight if temporarily
3
Since anything can happen when to be is to become They seem to shoot awhile before they fall to be their all In all in that moment of their opportunity to Surmount the structured strictures of a stationary ball As what they lived for after all in all has been and done
4
To sing the song of the silver swan and then to be gone To leave the stage quickly and not run into anything Urging horizontality on a trajectory Of inevitable downwardness but with a birthright Of flight if for the moment rising up to take the fall
5
A moment of the will a gesture outward toward the sky At a moment which becomes all moments each now and here A moment which contains both anything and everything And the moment is the moment without which that is all With all within one moment and that moment is this one
6
Though backhanded consolation seeing stars disappear Leaving holes in the blue velvet as they puncture the night The flash of their existence has become the attraction As I see existence as a flash and fall of my own Remembering my branding with a falling star tattoo
7
Having seen my fellow fallen to the satisfaction Of my fear at least till morning as though dreamed in a dream As though daydreamed in a nightmare I am all alone here And the part of me which never sleeps sees myself being Awakened by a sound which sounds like falling stars to me
8
And as I flash and fall and see that I am not alone I come to the moment of my existential action And would like to be like them as the moment comes for me Having heard how all the way down all the senses are clear And as they fall to ecstasy they sing their silent scream
9
As they are freeing themselves I am seeing them being Brilliant all the long way down along as they fall streaming Lightning like Lucifer tearing through spacetime and screaming "This is what we lived for" silent through the brightening sky Surrendering and rendering respect to gravity
10
The phoenix spreads its flaming wings becoming one with light To overcome the hard way to be born within to die As the morning after whitens to embrace if to erase The points of light of the night before to mean something more When points of light converge and merge into the morning sky
11
A star though falling is bright enough to light wrong from right An omen how it might be between then and when it was Allowing us to see how it will be beyond first sight To be for now for how it was and might be as it does When only here and lonely in the middle of the night
12
And I too am a shooting star as doubtless you can tell Falling is what I do too screaming silently for you As we transcend together to become the light we might They say "write what you know" and this is something I know well When night was never darker but when morning is in sight
Riddle
What matters cannot be destroyed and so we fade away To be the stars we always are though hidden in the day
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Oct 2, 2010, 4:54 pm
Believe It or Not
One
A tempest in a teapot a typhoon in a spoon Camouflaged chameleons none but the blind can tell Obeisance to the sun done in the dark of the moon Pigs flying in formation on a cold day in hell Circumnavigating by not going anywhere
Two
Mad scientists with vaccinations for our disease Tested on the suppressed and then reserved for the best Of the rest who were the worst before the bubble burst Robots marching four abreast into a wishing well But they do not suffer as we do and wish them to
Three
I never thought forever could be over so soon But our disease remains incurable as ever And over and under and around and out and through Another forever is as easy as you please You can grab one right now out of the air if you dare
Four
There were forevers at my feet in the street today But if you cannot find one you may take one of these As the lotus unfolds through a few absurdities It never hurts to have a spare forever or two Given how scared we seem to be of finding never
Five
And then they only last as long as now anyway Before being sanitized into our sanities Underestimated to irrelevance to be Rarified into our ritual inanities To be the state religion of a moment ago
Six
We are rather silly animals if you ask me Terrified and scarified with battle lines drawn on The worried brows of worriers who soon will be gone Persisting in pursuing and pinning forever Resisting and insisting to know what not to know
Seven
Self-consuming candles cannot last the night till dawn Which is why I do not worry anymore you see By transcending both the bonfire and the vanities I enjoy the equipoise of doing and being I like it better when my in and outside agree
Eight
And if some want to worry about their forever Let them begin by being open to their seeing Stop resisting seeing what insists on being there I would love to have a hand in freeing them and yet Forever is never when they need it I regret
Nine
Camouflaged chameleons none but the blind can tell And I can tell if not tell when their minds have been made A tempest in a teapot a typhoon in a spoon Robots marching four abreast into a wishing well But I am dancing now and the piper has been paid
Ten
Considering and reconsidering I perceive My reality becoming that part I believe And seeing believing I come to see forever As now as how it is not when then but whenever It may be as always now as it was never then
Eleven
I can only be now since that is all I know how To be though still I try to be forever till when I see how I can never be anytime but now Which any way you look at it is better than then Circumnavigating by not going anywhere
Twelve
Never mind forever it is only now again This moment of transcendence within the in between The moment within which all other moments remain Hopeful fruitful and pregnant with possibility Whenever they say forever now is what they mean
Thirteen
The sharp edge of eternity comes sudden and soon And the only cure for our disease is being now Because now is forever and becomes everywhere And because I am here now I am already there Then believe it or not when forever I will be
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 28, 2010, 8:53 pm
One Basso Bow Profundo Wow
a sonnet for The Big Old Dog
They called him Yankee Doodle and he was a friend of mine He was a big old dog who must have weighed a buck oh nine Although I never weighed him (since how could I anyway?) And having buried him I come to praise The Big Old Dog today
Oh The Big Old Dog The Big Old Dog (to me that was his name) He looked like Senator John McCain but I loved him just the same Becoming the hit he would become he started gold then went platinum Resembling some of us in this way with that serious sense of play And the gravitas gravity gifted his face he wore like a timeworn gift of grace As settling with time settling into the ground he settled him down with a settling sound
But in the chorus of the canines who transcended time and space One basso bow profundo wow stands out and one familiar face Looking like Senator John McCain but loving him just the same Yes! The Big Old Dog! The Big Old Dog (to me that is his name)!
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 26, 2010, 1:53 pm
A Little Luck Left in My Shoes
a Mystery of Nine for Sachin
One
I always seem to have a little luck left in my shoes If nothing else but weariness where used to be a penny In the left for luck for many years but now bereft of any Because luck and money are not necessarily Birds of a feather I have found from watching warily All I can do is know my wish was granted and came true
Two
Though sometimes I allow analysis to run amok Because it does sometimes as some things like that tend to do When it can get confusing in the wonder of it all A flood of feeling all about and only drops of doubt to drink And life is even more confusing in a time of drought Repeating things I hear like "I do not believe in luck" Insisting "that is only hay I find between my toes"
Three
But the fact is that whatever you may call it here it is An observable phenomenon like writing in the starry sky And if you speak of it and me you might say "it is his" Or "that ungrateful one does not know what it really is" As the he of me is as surprised as you are I suppose At having what I have for having nothing left to lose
Four
And after I walk in circles awhile I think to stop to think How I could kill myself again or I could sing the blues Left foot right hand wings to fly away the way I choose Or I could be an even bigger fool than I have been Having a hell of a time of it now as heaven already knows And as those of you like me who have been fools know what I mean If I forgot my luck and got stuck out of the in between
Five
But the good news is I have a little luck left in my shoes Good enough for me somehow at least enough for now With luck in any case the grace to make my footsteps sure and swift Though I have been a long way down I step up now and this is why At never any better nor indeed another time for me to be
Six
A little luck left in my shoes becomes the transcendental gift Of one who knows my footsteps and has been this way before Who knows we must exceed ourselves and supersede us that we tire Of being where we are to get to where we next desire The fire of forward motion falling out of the commotion Of a disciplined dissatisfaction with what is outgrown Discarding what becomes too small exceeding what before was known
Seven
And every day a multiverse of open roads not taken yet A crossroads of a thousand ways and shadow on the way through yes to know With each moment a decision everyone must make alone Creating in detail a future when we see succeed or fail A thousand worlds which are yet never were with some to our regret And some to our relief with every possible joy and probable grief
Eight
Worlds we never were to know yet are forever even so Worlds which I remember at the same time I forget What went before I wonder when I then discover more In and with and under I transcend into and through the wonder Of it all now as I find the great revealed within the small Ungrateful he transcending to be thankful me who knows As the he of me is as surprised as you are I suppose
Nine
I know who brought my feet this far these years to more through less As the walls have shrunk the sky has grown into one great embrace Of my footsteps through the path of sky as led to follow sure and swift Pursuing as pursued by the familiar transcendental gift Of one who knows my footsteps and has been this way before Who blessed me by the journey I begin again this time to bless
Chorus Mysticus
My footsteps through the starry sky will find my place At the crossroads of space with time where they embrace When a little luck left in my shoes there by the grace Of one who has been here before will be enough for me
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 23, 2010, 10:01 pm
Being the Kiss
When the evening star is as bright as this Some people wonder and others believe So much they become less able to see An opportunity too good to miss Who in not of miss out as not above Projecting their own image on the sky
Given to open themselves to receive Like a pelican presenting its bill Paying by praying for what is for free Feeling holier than some about it As I am one of the some to wonder And it could be just me but I doubt it
When the evening star is as bright as this Some people and one of them might be me Feel a sense of universality As if the universe offers a kiss As free as we were always meant to be Not above of but in with and under
To love and to know if not to know why And if some people will not be I will An opportunity too good to miss By seeing the light and hearing the call Of the universe as the call of love By being at one with the one in all
Giving receiving and being the kiss When the evening star is as bright as this
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 22, 2010, 11:35 am
No Regret
My father knocked an opportunity When my mother then was knocked up with me Though that might not be the way they might see It then in the inconvenience of Their anxiety answering the door
Love when given is received in its turn As loving we live as turning we learn And opening then they found I was love Turned and returning after to before And turned and returned two as three turned more
You are like me and you know what I mean We give and we take we spend and we make Through breakup and breakdown and in between And oh how we bend but we do not break Do not forget we have not broken yet
I have risen up and have fallen down Bottom side up and wrong way round downtown I got knocked down but I got up again I am and because I am I remain To give and to get what I came here for
And I am like you and I know that you Know what I mean and what you mean I know Because you are love because I am too Because returning then is what we do When after to before we turn to go
Let love not be spoken of with regret We get knocked down but we get up again We are and because we are we remain We give and we take and we do not break Do not forget we have not broken yet
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 20, 2010, 2:46 pm
Between Us and the Sky
Smoke break in the lockdown psych ward was the public square The agora of the insecure or overblown Wherein each of us was crazier than each other Exchanging our schizophrenic paranoias there With each other mistaking us for Dad and Mother
And out of many one dysfunctional family Wherein the unspeakable was fluently spoken Everyone insane in pain where some someones remain The garden of memory weedy and overgrown There where I always knew I was and might be again
Where the brilliant and the beautiful go when broken Going for broke in a haze of psychiatric smoke As if we were on fire and who can say we were not In twos and threes of dos and bes gone strangely awry When anyone remembered then what no one forgot
In the fellowship of the to be or not to be I was on a pilgrimage and some were in a rage With everyone together and each of us alone All of us alone together in our metal cage With razor wire and chain link between us and the sky
A donkey gets dusty just being the way A donkey is when in the course of the day She rolls on the ground then with no one around
Asininity in the whites of her eyes As she wiggles her ears to scare away flies With no one around when she rolls on the ground
Seeing how she is being a donkey now As ever and she never horses around With nothing whatever to do with a cow
A donkey sees things as she pleases because A donkey always was as a donkey does Just being her way in the course of the day
And should anyone say she is asinine Heehawingly she could say that would be fine
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 16, 2010, 1:54 pm
The Paradox of Love
I turn with the seasons And return with the tide As love rhymes its reasons The heart cannot explain In riddles solved inside
To reveal what is real Like a spark in the dark Where what is not has tried And failed to understand The paradox of love
You ripen with the grain As dusk turns into dawn April turns September And you leave to remain Where coming you have gone
I fall to rise again As I have come to go Beyond thinking to feel Beyond feeling to know As below so above
How love is the wheel and Love is what turns the wheel As both effect and cause As what is and what does As why what does and how
As above so below As going you have come As coming you become And turning you return From having turned away
As returning you learn Or as I remember Passed along hand to hand When skin responds to skin As a spark to a spark
And we begin to see The paradox of love As ending we begin In the in betweening Of what will be and was
On the breath of today In the heartbeat of now When love is the meaning How love is the wheel and Love is what turns the wheel
As above so below And skin to spark to skin As below so above And you and I within The paradox of love
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 13, 2010, 3:53 am
On the Wind of a Wednesday
thinking about Joel Bratton
Wondering under the sun of a Sunday I feel one with the sun when it speaks to my skin And then another one to listen to the wind begin But in the end the wind will be what carries me away On the wind of a Wednesday another time around And under the sun with a wonderful sound Of the wonder of love when I rise above from under
Where I sat silently on Saturday Like another did once in the tomb like a womb When waiting for the sun there to speak to my skin And listening then for the wind to begin When that was the how what was then became now And now is the how I must just wait and see What the sound of the wind of a Wednesday will be
But I can tell from now it will be wonderful somehow As above and under full of love and wonder Under the sun I discover how to fly On the wind of a Wednesday and into the sky Under the sun and then into the sea Carried back to the womb for the lack of a tomb When the struggle is over then and I will be free
Carried by what is and does nor buried by what was or might have been And not only to be carried to be carried as it were away To be and not to be beyond what any day has seen So the moon of a Monday may find it hard to see And though the tune of a Tuesday is the existential blues day By day my eyes adjust as must but night by night as might And they only see love now as they open to the light
To be and not to be an any of the many one And being lost and found to hear a wonderful sound When the sun having spoken I transcend my skin In token for the broken and I hear the wind begin As the wind of a Wednesday brings me to the day of thunder A day to span forever now a day to always be of All the days the ever best the ever blessing of the blessed
When you will hear the singing ringing swinging down to me to bring Me through the other side of always to the heart of everything
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 8, 2010, 11:58 pm
The Open Mind
for my friends in Aklan
I have the magic in me and I think you do too As I realize those really are stars in your eyes And because you were reading this I already knew About you just the way you must have known about me
Or else we both got lucky but that too suggests the point That the universe smiles a proud parent to see Some someones of the many one who turn out not to disappoint Appointed as we have been to return eternity
The ones who understand some of the some if not for everyone The some who do what must be done the sum of me and you Unequivocal equation universal evocation Vocation vocalized in transcendental invocation
And ever the reflection of forever as we realize It turns out better than we knew being me and being you Being us unfolding like the lotus everlastingly As new beginnings here and now begin to be begun
Listening to silence we are called from everywhere Enlightened to enlighten called above it all to love To simply be and then to see what happens next from there From where the heart finds out about how now is anywhere
As some someones are drafted other someones volunteer With all of us together many one now and here And each of us according to our specificity Since we who are of many one are anyone we please
Finding who we are each of us shooting like a star Or leaf in autumn lifted by the wind to fall the other way If only for a moment now but beautifully and when We fall we only fall to catch the wind to rise again
Discerning algorithms of untold realities Present in the promises of parallel eternities The possibilities become the Dao of now as learned from then As if to scry the multiverse projected on the midnight sky
Revealing and peeling the layers away Concealing this the present given here and now today And not to be ungrateful but to try to understand Gleaning meaning overlooked by harvesters who hurry
As hidden in plain sight we find today where yesterday left it behind Thinking it tomorrow and that it would never come But those who say it does not said it yesterday when it was not And come what may it has come now at least to some of the some
Being who we are and speaking what we have to say With authority and not as the scribes anymore Worrying spacetime like a dog a bone to find the paradigm But not that way a person does because the magic does not worry
Continuing with the continuum since whether or not we do it will Keeping on going growing and knowing that what we do not know will be known Someday someway having learned it the hard way first but this time not alone In movement in stillness as movement moves on and we move on moving still
On the journey of a lifetime seeking wondering what for And finding it to recognize the stars reflected in each other's eyes As none but some of the some and we really are seeing stars we realize And wonder what else we might be seeing what other wonders we might see being
Finding ourselves there in the eyes of everywhere and seeing how With so many stars to comprehend too many to explain now So many to count but if anyone would one could only number them one Of the ones of the some of the some with the magic within beginning again
Nor are we disappointed by what comes at the end At least at the end of the part we can see When it comes let it come then like the long lost friend It is which we have not seen since the other end of be
And having come this far by questing now we rest with life suggesting Being was a mindful riddle but a game we won Out of hiding feeling riding the wheel in the days of always to find As if it were an open car the freedom of the open mind
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 5, 2010, 9:54 pm
Strangers No More
Knowing as I know now going as I go how I know now and know how I have gone a long way Toward making my hope of going home come true Of coming home to put it more immediately Hoping for home with a hollow heart Though lost and far away with no idea where to start But hoping for the best and suffering the rest
Having taken a pretty hard fall or two And wanting to go home and be safe someday Having looked into the eyes of strangers and seen That occasionally one of them knows what I mean Having found out hope lies in humanity But in spite of itself tells the truth anyway Having gotten some scars from catching some stars
Though hard to hope now it was harder before Stuck in a place between dying and living The hope for home less hopeful and stranger Less hopeful or more hopeless I should say Becoming dangerous and unforgiving But I am a stranger no stranger to danger And I know the hard way how home is nowhere now
Knowing as I know now going as I go how I know now and know how I have a place to stay And the hope of this will be enough of home for me Because my home is found in the propinquity Of another to care enough to dare to understand A stranger at the door offering a hopeful hand As if hope were coming home and we were strangers no more
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 3, 2010, 1:08 pm
The Eyes of Everywhere
for you
Hiding in plain sight seeking in the in between Looking for love and finding it too Wondering about wonders and seeing the unseen Looking for love and finding you I am happy you are here with me to know what I mean Bending spacetime in this transcendental interface Of one and the other becoming one another
With so much to think about so much to explore Never so far along as today And so few like you looking deeper for more Seeking in the in between and seeing what you see Where you find what you find where you change your mind But where the many are not the any to be Showing their faces or leaving safe places for in any case
The many do not seek so do not see the unseen where You come face to face with you coming through me But you are not the many anymore but the any And though the many would say you should look away You are like me and you look anyway Into my eyes and you find yourself there As both of us look into the eyes of everywhere
The deeper we look the more we find What we have been looking our long lives for As the more we wonder the more we know Never so far along as today As we listen to what the silences say How the lotus unfolds in an open mind How love is what makes it bloom and grow
And though the many would say you should look away You are like me and you look anyway Hiding in plain sight seeking in the in between Looking for love and finding it too Wondering about wonders and seeing the unseen Looking for love and finding you I am happy you are here with me to know what I mean
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Sep 1, 2010, 4:15 pm
Clouds
The clouds were wearing wedding white when they gossamered grey as day turned night And then after dark they wrapped themselves in softest sable of raven black They were light and then shadow and then they were gone on a day further on Beyond the future present as presented by the wind as it blew past
The clouds passed over and away too fast but I will not forget that way They looked that day that way they would if they would come back again if they could Bearing their whispered witness by the wind in the sky again and again So many clouds and so many more I have not seen but have seen before
The clouds were wearing funeral black when the wind came due and blew them back Blown away the way I know on the breath of the universe I must go But if only I could understand I might not be quite so lonely when The wind carries me inevitably away someday when now is then
Someday to come to comprehend the way the universe borrows to lend Around and around receiving to send and turning and returning where What turns returns where one who learns this way finds the freeing of being there In a heart where love grows when it knows as it comes and goes around the sun
I have to know if I have to go that nobody ever goes anywhere That there is always here as here is always everywhere that all is one And then for when the wind carries me inevitably away someday To come to go but to know the freeing of the being of everywhere
The clouds were wearing wedding white when they gossamered grey as day turned night The clouds passed over and away too fast but I will not forget that way The clouds were wearing funeral black when the wind came due and blew them back Whatever the clouds are wearing we turn returning to eternity
However we look whoever we are we spiral each a rising star If lonely only because we have not met ourselves in each other yet Remembering myself along the way I know the clouds will not forget That way that day which they remember up to down but it is this same way
What turns returns where one who learns this way finds the being of everywhere Though the night is long the journey longer still I know I will find it there In a heart where love grows when it knows as it comes and goes around the sun That there is always here as here is always everywhere that all is one
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 31, 2010, 1:04 pm
Arriving
Fifty-five years alive and older than I ever Dreamed it to be possible for me to be Nor do I feel it somehow I who once said "never Trust anyone over thirty" but never does Not seem now because I am who I was Even though a quarter of a century past: Now is not never now is forever
I have gone on but I have not left me behind Still having my improbable child's body A legacy of my idiot savanthood Still having my still more improbable mind All more or less accepted if not understood And do I trust myself? I believe I do at last: Now is not for striving now is for arriving
Myself and I have been through a lot together It has been very strange and subject to change Encouraging times through discouraging weather Like a red eye flight through a very long night But I can see the sunrise from my window now As arriving I have a good feeling somehow: And here I am world! Are you reading me?
When the world seems it is ending is when it begins For me anyway just to get my attention And the one who knows what goes around comes back around wins A new world a day of intention and invention As the closer I look the further I see: Now is not never now is forever Now is not for striving now is for arriving
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 25, 2010, 7:10 pm
To Be a Star
There was thunder and lightning the night I was born and As a child the adults could never understand How I knew what I knew but I had read ahead And reading behind if not all the way through Some posited that I might be possessed instead Meaning by the devil as if everybody knew Since some are always imagining something
But simply self-possessed and unimaginary Imaginative certainly a dreamer born to be Existing to imagine what else I might find Transcending as it were by curiosity Being on my own alone with what is and what does And tuning to my inner specificity I began to feel how specific I was
I gazed at stars and noticed how some others were Shining around me like stars in the sky Free of credit and of blame of pride and of shame Getting it straight by keeping the point in mind At the point of a point of bright light in the night The point being love above everything That we are love and love is what we do
And my mother was one so I became like her Opting to embrace my opportunity Having had done with the imaginary some Aspiring toward a more perfect propinquity Knowing where I came from and remembering my name I decided that to live by love was worth a try And by loving me and everybody I have overcome
Knowing who you are is the way to be a star Opening your heart to be the star you are To be here free and clear to see the now is how And to be as we were meant to be is why Just as to be content and continent within your own Specificity albeit paradoxically Is when not to be alone then in December
Knowing when young then growing old remembering Who you are remembering that you are a star Knowing now and later in December to remember The star you are the specificity you bring To the universe to never stop discovering And knowing the point and being love above everything Be and do because the thunder and the lightning are for you
Fall and rise again and you will learn to fly Up and down and up until you reach the open air To get up there where you belong or else by trying die But everybody dies so keep on trying and get there Remembering that we are love and love is what we do So go on with the show and play your part with all your heart No matter where it leads you even when it seems too far
Knowing who you are is the way to be a star
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 19, 2010, 11:57 am
Night in the City
It is night in the city and the light is bright But shadowed now and not quite real like how you feel When you have been burning the candle at both ends And what end do you hold on to? Well that depends On if the center holds and what is holding you
Night in the city of the living and the dead Who when living were dying then to get ahead But neither here nor there they found themselves nowhere And having gone too far now wonder where they are But I am living here in the city instead
Night in the city at one time was so pretty But one time looks a lot like another time now When there have been too many times for me to see Witnessing firsthand the unfolding of always And overhearing what the disappointed say
Some of them say the city has gone bad or mad And then some say the city is not what it was As it is what it is and it does what it does While others say the city has seen better days And yet what day is better to see than today?
But other times and other places interpose Memories of other times and places like these Between what was and what will be at what is now Having been and seen too much I remember those Things you might have remembered to forget somehow
And it interferes that some of my heres are there And that some of my nows are then now and again But I suppose remembering those is just what I must do and if not forget then at least not Regret what I cannot forget at least not yet
But when my heart is always I am everywhere And this is the higher me to which I aspire Passing time through space to a sense of place by grace At the center of the universe wherever I find myself to be so I find myself free
When night in the city is pretty forever With its elements of earth air water and fire Reconciled in balance as its seasons revolve Belonging the city belongs to us because We and the city are as one as we evolve
And though the city is a place of belonging We are lonely by nature and lonelier where So many people are with so many needs there Being met and unmet in close propinquity Night in the city and you can feel the longing
I dream back in time to this place and remember The beauty of the duty of the people who Built the city for one another to be in Back in the May I remember in December As what ends in the city brings what to begin
Things I forgot to remember about somehow Since one time looks a lot like another time now But this looks like as good a time as any to Stop dying trying as the living dying do And not try anymore at all but doing be
I want to be the higher me alongside you Because night in the city can still be pretty When we are the living and it is our city Along the way to how between nowhere and now Into the center of the universe and why
Night in the city of the living and the dead Is here now as our time to live and not to die We are living tonight in the city instead It is night in the city and the light is bright Night in the city of the living and the dead
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 13, 2010, 1:00 pm
For Teddy
21 August MMX
Teddy my fellow traveler through time My fellow seeker for the paradigm And for the pattern of reality Trying to figure out what it might mean As we have wondered why but found out how As we have wondered so we wonder still Adventurers alongside all the way
Thank you for being a best friend to me My fellow wanderer wondering why But finding out how these two decades now Of this our connectedness as we find Someone to listen when no one else will Someone to talk to about what to do A partner in the shared life of the mind As well as my son so that I have two And not only one so that I have you
Who though you might not realize it are As transcendental as a rising star Ascending constantly and steadily Rising but remaining in equipoise Lighting the sky for those orbiting by Finding the center in the in between Where I who see you rise know what I see
In a world of people who do not care I see one who does and is always there Alongside me when I have need of you And I see you love me as I love you So that we are alongside everywhere I see humankind in you being kind Humanness informed by humanity
I see balance among the many joys Awaiting those who now discover you To be as fascinating as I knew You to be in your long ago with me In the incunabulum of us as We got off to a good start and we grew In our Lancean specificity
You shot me for the cover of a book Or two just as I look just as you took Care of me as I once took care of you Then when my life was in the in between Suspended like a floating leaf in fall To land in your hand recalled by your call And because of you I return again
As how it is remembers how it was While wondering about how it will be And we turn to return with what we learn We leave but we never leave us behind And always say I love you when we go Turning as we go to learn to return We turn but turning do not turn away Because we turn together through it all Till someday we who have wondered will know
And if someday somebody should bother To ask you something about your father Something of you as something of me too And if you wonder what on earth to say Not that they will ask but in case they do You can tell somebody I was like you And gave you this poem for your birthday
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 10, 2010, 2:41 pm
For Stevie's Birthday
16 August MMX
"Me dearest darlin' boy" where would I start If I were to speak the love in my heart For you? But then again you understand That when all is lost some things remain and As some things become the way they must be Some things become too important to say
Understanding connected hand to hand As though we were links in a living chain From soul to soul through love by circumstance We turn but turning do not turn away Through spacetime in shared synchronicity And both of us are Steven Curtis Lance
Remembering Frank's Hobby Shop and all The adventures we shared before the fall And you with your blue book of poetry Sad old songs with you at the piano Saying too important things anyway And saying them seeing we understand
Those moments like these when both of us know Seeing me in you seeing you in me Seeing from a look in each other's eyes That we are not alone before the rise Of what was and now is rising again Of what is and how what will be will be
In the Santa Ana wind at midnight Is how I first saw the diamonds shine On the blue velvet and knew they were mine Holding the sky by the string of a kite And you hold the sky by the string now too Hold on then my son and never let go
The specificity begins again We turn but to return another day I cannot imagine being my son Or my doing as well as you have done Without even mentioning how you do Or how you will do and how about you?
I want you to know I am proud of you That you are the meaning of life to me Because of you I want to be and stay Here being doing and seeing you grow If only to remind you I love you And if only to say Happy Birthday
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 8, 2010, 2:54 pm
Bogeys
Who is she they dared and called her name three times When we were children waiting to become Like the darkness haunting our nursery rhymes They dared and called who appealed to and appalled Generations of wakeful sleepovers in the bathroom With a little sliver of a shiver of doom? She was under the bed in bed with the bogeyman Waiting to catch the unwary as catch can Though I did not call her and she did not come By the bogeyman she would give birth to some Names in lights who serve the dark through politics The ones who specialize in wakeful sleepover tricks But bogeys only exist as we let them As we remember to forget them
Bloody Mary
She of the extraordinary Darkness at the dawning of our curiosity Who is not but some would like to be The dark lady of our darkening times They dared and called who appealed to and appalled But I never dared and I never called Remembering other voices who Waiting to catch the unwary as catch can Remembered her in their own way too And call it poetic license if you will But she who comes when called is here and waiting still Under the bed in bed with the bogeyman As fear in bed with hate becomes the new reality All night and day in an angry USA on TV
Bloody Mary
If repeating a lie three times will not make it true Her brood of bogeys with their names in lights The only light they ever knew and ever see Bet their billions that thousands of times will do The trick to make us sick the way they are And going too far is not too far For those who turn our summer days to winter nights Lying and trying to control the souls of me and you With their frights and fights against all we hold dear As the bogeymen conquer our country through fear And Bloody Mary you are scary But your brood of bogeys terrifies Living their lies by which our hope of civil discourse dies Waiting to catch the unwary as catch can
But bogeys only exist as we let them As we remember to forget them
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 6, 2010, 2:11 pm
The Man in the Mirror
for Nick Rocz
The man in the mirror is becoming my friend So familiar and so like me in the end That I worry about him when he is away And feel better about him when he is not Off wherever he goes but someone has to stay Behind I suppose or that is what he thought
Or so the man in the mirror got me to agree On this side or so I thought then when he brought It up but now I wonder if that was only me Since for better of worse our images reverse He called me his shadow but would not explain And when I asked him he would only say
"Mirror mirror on the wall As I wonder how Who reflects whom now I wonder if you know Seeing my reflection Which of me is after all"
But being reflection The mirror does not know All it knows is that it goes Without introspection The mirror would be helpful but It says it does not know how only what
In which direction Does reflection go?
The mirror does not know It says (and looks the other way)
I will have to look in the mirror and see Over there where it looks so much clearer to me About this and ask my friend if I might come Across through the mirror the better to see clearer What I have only seen reflected but If there is happiness there I would like to find some
And if it is true that over there is where I become The person he makes it look so easy to be Or come across that way or at least come nearer Through the mirror where my friend seems to be so free Making me ask why I have to remain Here behind the window of opportunity
Wishing I knew which is looking which way I entertain the possibility That the man in the mirror might be me Only to be frightened into turning away To turn back and ask my friend which I might be Who am I / who are we anyway?
Mirror mirror on the wall As we wonder how Who reflects whom now We wonder if you know Seeing our reflection Which of us is after all
In which direction Does reflection go?
The mirror does not know It says (or knows but does not say)
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 4, 2010, 11:36 pm
Diamonds on Blue Velvet
remember me
You wonderful ones who have wondered with me In your youth about truth and what that might be Who have understood me better than I could Having grown up with me and my poetry Remember me now as you venture and go To all of the places I never have been As I adventure in the spaces in the in between
And if peradventure you know what I mean Think of me now and again when you see A ring around the moon in the blue velvet sky Wearing stars like diamonds to remember us by To wonder about wonders beyond what we know And when you see this to receive a kiss Around the corner of the universe from me
You know about stars from my poems before Who know what I mean and who know that I know That you know that I mean that none of us go That is when we go then we go like a ring Around the moon or like the wheel of everything Turning but returning no matter how far Around the corner of the universe to be
Spangling we spill across blue velvet and call To one another each to each the star We are and know we are because of these on this Our history across the sky no mystery to see Like diamonds on blue velvet we flash until we fall To rise again within the memory Of you wonderful ones who have wondered with me
A star though having fallen now rising after all Remembered is thought of all over again A flash and we are in the sky once more Remaining to depart and arriving to remain Like all of us always again and again Like stars though having fallen now rising after all Like diamonds on blue velvet we flash until we fall
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 1, 2010, 3:19 pm
Learning to Let Go
When Grandma was letting go After holding on so long She told me I too must let Go though not of life of what Was killing me and was not Of life were I to remain
It was easy to dismiss Remembering to forget As part of a parting kiss At the time but she was right
And I could not prove her wrong As I finally found out Though it took all day and night In the shadow of a doubt
But I let it all go free When I gave it all away And by letting go became So that you know my name In the way I came to be As I am here today Being and becoming strong
I remember her by this Until I see her again
We only let go so we can embrace Only renounce so we can receive We only say goodbye to say hello Only remember to forget the face Of yesterday to recognize today As we see what is so we can believe In tomorrow as seen from its yesterday Where the promise of today awaits
Today is when what will be will be With yesterday the shadow of today When tomorrow's shadow falls the other way To what will be through what is from what was Creating a future we cannot see When they say tomorrow never comes but For the sake of today just in case it does
Letting go is opening the gates Keeping the line clear for the call when it comes Ready for whatever no matter what Being prepared even while being scared With open arms empty just in case Being becoming what being becomes
Letting go is being becoming strong As the lotus is blooming inside Blooming what is instead of what was Learning to renounce to believe And letting yesterday go to receive Tomorrow as seen from its yesterday
Today may not be much but is all I know This and what I find as I go along From what was through what is to what will be Like the river knows as it flows to the sea And never delayed though often denied Like Grandma today will not turn out wrong
So when tomorrow comes I will be prepared As easy come and easy go I grow Coming and going and come what may Finding the equipoise of faith and doubt Of bitter and sweet of fast and slow Of everything and nothing watching the show
And it was a comedy it turns out As it passes by having learned to let go
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Aug 1, 2010, 10:47 am
Friendship River
for Giancarlo Vega
Up down and all around a world of people of all kinds A river flows of friendship through the meetings of our minds We find ourselves in one another in good company And we like one another like being able to see Another turning and returning as we find us where We need us when we need us who remind us then and there
That then and there is when and where we need us as we learn That as we turn and we return someone is being there With us that we are not alone that someone cares the way Only a friend cares one who shares both time and history With the perspective of the elective and just because Since we have known each other life is better than it was
Some people like to be only but that can be lonely I for one like to have a friend or two or three or four And not only do I like them but I like to make more So if you are only and lonely I hope we find us As we found each other being to find our being where Friendship is flowing between tomorrow and yesterday
The river between when and then before and behind us Laughing with us finding comedy within tragedy Between what goes and never comes and what we have today Asking nothing sharing everything turning to return Up down and all around a world of people of all kinds A river flows of friendship through the meetings of our minds
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMX
Jul 29, 2010, 9:27 pm
Original Sin Survivor
for all the others
Asked to take the fall for the fall of man I have done my best but no longer can Nor longer will because it made me ill Wearing poorly designed depravity Forced on me finding it did not suit me Because the curse of Adam does not fit
I fail to feel depraved whatever I do Because I had nothing to do with it
So crafty preachers trolling for control Find someone else to take advantage of The sin is yours and is not of my soul You shout but I will not listen to you As having escaped you I go my way Understanding your misunderstanding
I spent most of my lifetime suffering Before I realized I could resist
But the God who is love in spite of you The God I remember in November To whom if I should die before I wake I grew up praying for my soul to take Beckoning to me as you turned away Released me from the living death you had For me when he decided I go mad Escaping the hell you defend so well Since you feel you need hell for heaven's sake And for it to exist you must persist That same God you forgot remembered me And did me a favor or that is how I think of it after going mad now
Setting me free to see differently Returning me to the garden today Where I am innocent though you are not Here in November now to remember In the garden of the God you forgot Learning by the tree of knowledge to see My mother did not give me sin but love
And what you gave me was the memory Of your own sin which would not let me go But I had to go when I came to know You as the enemies of love you are
As you controlled by tears so now I win Though bittersweet the right to laugh at last Simply by seeing the absurdity Of your outgrown unoriginal sin And now as I see you a size too small I who believed in the lies you told me See how you believed in nothing at all
So keep your apple I have found a star Inside of me where your sin used to be And free now find that I am of the sky Of the sea of the earth and of the fire
Recovering from growing up too fast And free to pray beyond the games you play My star is rising as I see my way By the light you hid and tried to deny In your perversion of the heart's desire When the sin was yours originally
