Oh, this garment of flesh,
a temporary crèche for our souls
as we polish the jewels
of awareness.
Beloved friend,
you came and you went
from this earth plane,
fearlessly dancing on the edges
of timelessness and time,
quietly poised
on the molten ledges
where sanity unfolds
into a multi-dimensional
spectrum.
And:
no one came and no one left.
A thousand faces appeared
and disappeared
through the filters of others’
perceptions and projections.
(A pickpocket in the presence
of Quan Yin will see only her pockets.)
Needles in your sweet, strong arms
the rush of heroin
giving you the temporary bliss
you so craved. Yes,
there are hundreds of ways
to kneel and kiss the sky.
Songs sang inside you
like ancient mantras
long-forgotten by many.
You blessed the world
with your stark honesty
and an undefended heart,
often misunderstood.
Jesus, they say, was hanged.
Other Christs, like you,
are crucified
by others’ madness
and contempt.
How perfect
that your body
was found
in a public bathroom.
It may as well have been
a shrine or church or an ashram.
You saw no differences,
only the indivisible Oneness
of all things.
You bore an invisible cross
with impeccable dignity,
crying outmost often in silence
only to be met with
benign indifference
(or was it malignant?)
and the judgments of those
addicted to self-righteousness—
hostages of their own ignorance.
One particular Buddha
sat beneath a Bodhi tree.
Other Buddhas, like you,
(in a sangha stigmatized
with its own scarlet letters,)
walk among asphalt
and concrete shadows
awakening to the same realizations—
seeking refuge nonetheless.
Some are held, others not, in mercy’s
bittersweet embrace.
To you, dear friend,
I bow in gratitude
for the gifts,
the many gifts you offered me.
And now?
Your loved ones
will decipher
or not
through the dark sepals
of their own anguish
the luminosity
you leave behind,
and are,
like brailled sonatas
in a star-filled sky.
3Pamela Michelle, Terri Dionne Lieberman and 1 other1 CommentLikeCommentShare
