BeYond Fear

I kissed fear for a month

In anticipation of a single moment

It shook me, hummed in my veins

Heated my chest, prickled my arms

Terrorized my hips, weakened my knees

Constricted my lungs

Billowed into sadness

Clouded my thoughts

Brutalized my sleep

Punctuated every silence

I researched it deeply

But my mind would not quiet

I felt it deeply

But my heart would not quiet

I loved desperately

But I wondered

Who loved more,

Love or fear?

It mercilessly shattered

Moments of presence

Moments of fun

With that sneaky sensation

Of leaving your wallet

Leaving the stove on

Something’s not quite right

I hadn't spoken to fear

For some years

But back then

The dark had given way to aliens

Aliens to death, but finally

Death was provisionally defeated

So this latest visit

Again uninvited

Was yet familiar

A feature of so many

Sleepless nights past

This time I was fortunate

To have tasted infinity

To have faith in nothing

To know our connectedness

My brain grooved peace

So with fear making itself at home

I wavered

Between prickly fears

And transcendent peace

Between intrusive thoughts

And thoughtlessness

Between morbid curiosity

And existing in inspired moment

I was confident

To be supported

By the boundless

So I could intrude

On fear's intrusiveness

I could safely feel 
In heart and body

The doubtful quavering

It's silver crucible

Exposed my dependences

Fractured myths of independence

Broke my heart open every day

While yet providing opportunities

I mourned my loyalties

I mourned my statuses

I destroyed myself many times over

I resigned, I emptied myself

Day after day, I thought

Maybe if I bail enough of this holy boat

There will be nothing left to scare?

But wily fear continued

To color my world

Haunt my postures

Skew my perceptions

Plague my psyche

Bend me

And maybe it was this oscillation

Between tight and infinite

This polar codependency

All peaced or all feared

Alive or dead

Push or pull
Embodied or dissociated

That allowed fear to camp

Gratelessly in the living room

And so I reached out

With every intrusive thought

I crossed my legs

I reached out from my seat

While honoring the dark cloud surrounding

I sent search lights to the infinity beyond it

I held two imaginative cords

One to light, One to dark

My body conductor conducted

And I said to the darkness

Play here!

I give you

The largest playground possible

My body was not big enough

For your colonization

So I give you the universe

You can join with all of your brethren

In all of our bodies

Play a game larger

Than you knew you ever could

And fear thusly invited

With such a wide berth

Retreated from thought and emotion

Begging for attention no longer

Retreated to unbearable sensation

Somehow bearable, thus surrounded

Fear, tempted into a larger space

Expressed itself more basically

More essentially, more universally

In the presence of

The earth mother

The loving God

The irrelevating emptiness

My body was the vessel

At once I became cosmic

The universal fear

Grounded by the cosmos

My mourning transcendent

My shivering the atomic vibration

My healing transpersonal

My existence now

For all beings everywhere

I joined light and dark.

Cosmic lover crashed

Also uninvited

And said to fear

There is nothing at all I require

From you

I will wait lifetimes

I will give universes

For your flower to bloom

For collective healing

Somewhere, sometime

Has already happened

And so I am confident

It is happening.