January Poet Aaron Quist
Follow Your Bliss
In the way that water
never follows a path uphill,
so is the way that your soul
never leads you astray, if
only you would listen to its
simple guidance.
In the way that silence
never speaks without need,
so is the way that your prayers
never need answered in words,
if only you would breathe
a breath deeper than the last.
In the way that love
never doubts itself with hate,
so is the way that your purpose
never questions its reason to be,
if only you would embrace
what bliss its existence can create.
For the way, is the way, is the way.
This way, is that way, is The Way
— The exact same Way.
Fistfuls of Water
Tormented
by this simple thing
that I want to tell you—
a vague and slippery word .
It’s an orb of light, perfected
and polished within my mind,
so whole atop the tip of my tongue,
and yet I can’t seem to sing it aloud
or think it through like any mere thought.
It’s like clinging onto a bizarre dream
for the briefest moment after waking,
knowing it will be whisked away from memory
with a single blink, in yet another distraction.
It’s like trying to grip a fistful of water
and form it into something beautiful,
as if it were a clay to be molded.
It’s like a silence growing ever sick of itself —
a slow evolution of language, and in turn,
of our reality.
The Twitch of Its Tail
I am
inspired by nothing —
the real and absolute
Nothing.
It’s the search
for a color
darker than black,
brighter than white,
and so definitively
beyond
the spectrum of
any eye
that keeps leading me on,
yet calls me onward.
It’s the trail
of jeweled breadcrumbs
dropped by
a cheeky muse
that guides me through
the labyrinth,
teasing me with
the insanities of
enlightenment.
It’s the impossible
ideal of a love
so pure and so rare
that keeps me
spinning
my karmic wheels,
time and time
again.
It’s the space between
you and me—
that real and absolute
nothing—
that keeps me
reaching for
the tail twitching
just around the corner.
Currents
I surrender
to a mind without
state or set, formless
like a wind whose current
gives new meaning to
any simple idea
of flow.
My thoughts
become beyond fluid,
coasting like a leaf
atop a meadow stream,
oozing like stardust
across the cosmos —
a grace for grace’s sake.
My desires
become someone else’s,
like a divine will uninterrupted
by any question of
who, what, when, where,
or why — so be it.
My soul
becomes a single drop
from an entire ocean
as it arcs through the air,
hurled from the crest
of a wave — a flash of freedom
before the fall back down.
And my surrender
surrenders further,
letting this life become a
deeper dream within a
mind even greater, and
ever the more given to
letting go of itself—
a peace beyond
words.
Here,
all slithers seamlessly
like the line dividing
yin from yang.
Stepless Stones
Our lines
of brushstroke
and verse
are too linear to
simply follow them
along.
Our
right-left-
up-down
is The Other’s
ennui.
It wants
the winding
of garden paths.
It wants
the zigging
of a subtle zag.
It wants
the fat curvature
of renaissance thighs.
It wants
the smooth swoops
of a cuckoo in flight.
It wants
an impossible twist
of the light.
And it needs
a new direction —
dimensionless, utterly alive,
and dancing across the clouds
like a saucer at the speed of
magic.