mantra for your body

for today and tomorrow, whole or in pieces

when you are alone, pull yourself inside out 
through the belly button. wear your face 
upside down and greet yourself like a stranger. 
say hello, i hope you are well, may you find peace 
and freedom from suffering. hello, i hope you are well, 
may you find peace and freedom from suffering.
do this all day long until the new face and the old 
can spread their corners in sync.  hello, hello

busy yourself 
pull yourself into a new world
which is this same world seen through new eyes
pull your mind into a new state
which is the constant state and roots itself in joy

                 how are you?

                 i am waiting
                 in the garden of space and time. i gorge myself 
                 on very sweet fruit. i let the juice of peaches, 
                 cherries, pomegranates flood my face and erode 
	         rivers into my skin. i swallow the pits and ask them
	         to sprout through the almost-not hole in my side (which in
                 itself is a mirror), the hole in my side which is the only 
                 marker of time in the garden and warns me that i am 
	         running out. when i find myself slipping away 
                 i get rid of worry, it is then that i can find my way back  
	         to myself. when i find myself weary i curl up like a very small 
                 animal in the arms of bigger me and let her rock me to sleep.
                 there is no horrible mystery of life, there is nothing 
	         to discover that cannot be found by peering through 
	         the now-peephole in my side. what would you like to see?
	         some immeasurable darkness being repaired, something 
	         that is forcing itself out of the nothing 	
                                                                                        hello

i hope you are welling.
i hope you find pieces 
of me along your breast 
i hope you are learning to part,
to drop pieces of yourself 
before they rot, to peel yourself 
raw, to squeeze yourself dry, 
i hope you find time to give
back to yourself when you are gaping
when you are gargled, when you are
glaring and gnarled. when you are gouged, 
i hope you are able to build a room 
within your body where you can retreat 
and delight in the solitude, in the cavernous-ness 
of your chest. may you allow it to stretch. 
may you allow yourself to reach out and feel no 
constraints and have no fear of what lies beyond. 
may you breathe in the emptiness and 
allow yourself to be full of it. may you fructify
your heart with visions of bloated tongues
may you allow the tongues to beat, to find pulse
may you allow the bloom to push against your ribs
may you surrender your ribs to transcendence
may you surrender your stomach to satisfaction
may you surrender your fingers to one who needs a hand
may you find warmth in the hand that now holds
your own and bring it to your cheek and recognize
you are the one in need and you are the one who shares 
willingly you are the holder and the held and you are the one 
who is free in self-sustenance and you are the one in this moment
and you are a new one in the next and you are the one
with many faces so you may always respond to a smile
with a bigger smile and you may walk towards yourself
inward and outward and you are the foreign one
you may meet and feel as if you are connected to yourself
in ways that may not be tracked by the human eye
and you are the one offering warmth to your shoulders
when the warmth of the sun is distant and you are the one 
and you are one of the many and you are the many 
and you are many and you are the me and we are and we are 
and we say hello, i hope you are well, may you find peace 
and freedom from suffering. hello, we hope you are well,
may you find peace and freedom from suffering. hello,
we hope me are well, may i find peace and freedom 
from suffering. hello, we hope we are well, may we find
peace and freedom from suffering.