Dharma Traces

There's a song inside, a bit dust covered now,
quite long forgotten.
Ancient melody, ancient tongue ...
yet the message seems untouched by time.
Those mystic notes sound lost in the darkness,
surrounded by whispers of dark mystery
and sulphur tainted uncertainty ...
if you listen closely deep down in the blood
faint wisps of reason warn you ...
in fact, it calls you by name like a lover.
There are no real secrets in the world,
only things whose knowledge escapes from you
down avenues of fear and deceit.
If life seems to be one mystery after another
change the direction in which you move,
and give up clinging to that self you made.
You can't speak to the unknown,
you can't hold it tightly for yourself alone,
not if you'd wish to become a greater thing.
These things that fill both ear and eye
hold your soul captive for a great ransom;
and your ready willingness to make payment
without so much as a second thought
proves what little merit or value
you hold for the mysteries in your own heart.
I tell you this world is a cube,
and you race away looking for the corners.
I tell you the answer is quite evident,
and you tragically waste a lifetime pointlessly
explaining apathy to someone who doesn't care.
You really don't have to escape from it all, you know ...
Release comes from knowing your place,
not accepting the place others assign to you.
That dust covered, forgotten song tells you so ...

There is no reason to fear any changing, you know;
the reality that is shattered by dreaming
is better by far for it.
Every day that remains the same
is yet another day wasted on useless pattern,
and if you forget to pay attention,
you'll pay with your hopes.
There is no reason to fear any changing, you know;
the cries you give in the quiet darkness
are the key to your salvation ... or survival.
If you keep silent about the gentle killing
that comes along with trying to hide your love,
you'll never again smile without deception.
Should I offer you the Universe to have
for your very own,
would you accept or reject or laugh?
I can show you one way into the light ...
or I can show you a thousand ways;
it makes absolutely no difference in the end
if you are too terrified to move.
Hold my hand if that's what you feel you need,
but do not hold your breath
waiting for my love to pass like some mist,
or become something less ...
It stands forever apart from failing ...
and forever a part of you.

It's not the night that I fear, nor the darkness that comes -
it's the solitude and the endless round of thought
that brings me to that brink of infinite dreaming.
In this multiverse of dreaming I have traveled -
soaring above broken landscapes of discarded hopes,
plunging ever downwards to depths unknown
to hunt ... for solutions to my confusions;
hesitating between praying and preying ...
and between prayed for ...or preyed upon -
but in the end it remains the stuff of dreams.
It's not the night that I fear, nor the silence it births -
it's those cold shadows thrown across my path
that make my Mind stumble and falter.
Into the vast Ocean of Dreaming I have plunged -
diving deeply into frigid depths of uncertainty
to hunt ... for answers to my many questions.
Undecided between the answers that I get,
and the answers I desperately need to get ...
and the ones that I desperately need to believe.
Yet in the end ... the subtle difference is still
that delicate stuff that dwells in the place
that lies between dreaming and waking.

I stand in the shadows and I wait.
deeply hidden from your knowing,
I stand and I wait.
As if through a frigid, chilling mist
I hear you're calling from somewhere
a frightened plea sent deep
into the star speckled nightsky.
It falls upon deaf ears, or maybe on none,
yet somehow I am there.
Plenty of sight, but not one iota of vision;
and you STILL can't tell me
from a shadow!
I have only a single desire,
one chance at emotional retribution;
to bring you down and make you regret.
Take all those things that you had said,
and all of those things that you had done,
and throw them away from me!
No sense in feeling bitter any longer,
No point in that ego stroking
tossed aside attitude it seems.
What you are at this moment
can never hope to match what I shall be.
Take away all those words of love and trust
and toss them into the hearth
to burn, I don't really care anymore,
besides ... they were never yours
to begin with ... artifacts of animosity,
or couldn't you tell?

Crossing this great, grave, and despondent desert
of such common despair -
burning inside and out
from the intense effort of simply being ...
and your name is like a cool wind
springing up from nowhere to soothe.
Your kiss is like a wellspring colored like crystal,
bringing my parched spirit such release!
A trapping net woven of delicate dreaming
and remembering ... glistening with tears
subtley disguised as dew drops,
and I cast it into the River of Time;
hoping to catch something of value -
to you ... or to me ... to anyone at all.
It's darker than any night has the right to be ...
darker than any thought of those madmen
whose voices come like broken glass
as it skitters across cold, black lichened stone.
The skin is burning - Frozen fire with smoke
adrift like velvet and razorwire -
smoke thick and cloying like the temple braziers
filled with copal and teeth-clenching agony.
A thousand lifetimes pass in the span of one
solitary heartbeat and nothing remains for me
but the shimmering image of the moon
reflected in the puddle of tears at my feet...