Sung to the tune of Amazing Grace (after a few beers, perhaps, or 15 minutes of spinning in place):

Monkey shines
my shoes tonight.

Monkey sings the blues tonight.

Monkey swings
behind the bars in my private zoo

tonight.

And when he feels the time
is right

Monkey climbs upon my back
and whispers in my ear. . .

Hey now, Monkey,
what you're sayin',
I don't wanna' hear!

No more stories of horrors
and glories too long deferred.

No idle chat from monkey lips
chronicling my decay!

No matter that every word
whispered on banana breath
I, myself, taught you to say.

Oh, Monkey shine my shoes tonight.

Monkey, please
shut up and sing the blues tonight.

Monkey let me loose tonight,
at least until the morning light
from this private zoo

where, like you, I am
a prisoner
though I hold the key.

I am.

A pillar of fire.

A lion of flame.

The phallus of the sun.

Avatar of Yang.

You are.

An ocean of limitless Grace.

The Lamb that tames the lion's flames.

The secret Yoni from which all begins.

Avatar of Yin.

We are.


Thank you, Sarah, for those soft, cool spaces where Love erases you and me and writes instead, we.

Buddha made of stone
meditating in the rain. . .


There are moments of startling clarity,
wherein the moment itself ceases
to exist
and all things
stand revealed
as one formerly concealed.

Radiant.
Eternal.
Now.

Then there are, more frequent by far,
those moments wherein I feel
not unlike a Buddha made of stone:

gray and opaque,
unable to get in from the rain.