The "Perfect World"

God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods, hear me:

Gentle Destiny that watchest over us, mad, wandering spirits, hear me:

I dwell in the midst of a perfect race, I the most imperfect.

I, a human chaos, a nebula of confused elements, I move amongst finished worlds -- peoples of complete laws and pure order, whose thoughts are assorted, whose dreams are arranged, and whose visions are enrolled and registered.

Their virtues, O God, are measured, their sins are weighed, and even the countless things that pass in the dim twilight of neither sin nor virtue are recorded and catalogued.

Only Breath

 

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,

not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.

Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East or the West,

not out of the ocean or up from the ground,

not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.

I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or in the next,

did not descend from Adam and Eve,

or any origin story.

The Strangest Creature on Earth

You're like a scorpion, my brother,
you live in cowardly darkness
    like a scorpion.
You're like a sparrow, my brother,
always in a sparrow's flutter.
You're like a clam, my brother,
closed like a clam, content,
And you're frightening, my brother,
    like the mouth of an extinct volcano.

Faces

I have seen a face with a thousand countenances,

and a face that was but a single countenance

as if held in a mould.

I have seen a face whose sheen I could look

through to the ugliness beneath, and

a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how

beautiful it was.