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Our Passing Existence

                        everything passes, everything changes ~ Bob Dylan

What I find precious is what I know to be brief. 

The seconds of breath that compose a cycle, the purple 

lilies climbing up the trellis outside the front door 

of my rented home, the curry I cooked and shared 

with my Buddhist Turkish neighbor. They say that 

in five billion years, the sun, in the center of this 

solar system, will run out of hydrogen. The Earth 

will grow cold by then, its geography unrecognizable, 

languaged by its slow separation. Everything passes, 

everything changes. Not just our sprouting lives 

which gasp for maybe a hundred years across 

canyons of dying stars, but also the taken for 

granted memories we assume will outlive us, by 

a lineage of seconds; the lover I greet daily arriving 

into my arms, the seemingly long stretch of war’s 

elegy, this obedient heart I claim as mine. To love 

you must already grieve. I keep praying that we may 

wake to the dirge of our passing existence. So possible 

and sad, so beautiful and real, so abundant with greed, 

so forgivable, so green. The glistening sun still singing. 

Determined to step into the eternal here. 

Mostly, to Hold One Another

                    after Danusha Laméris, "Small Kindnesses"

                    "mostly, we don’t want to harm each other”      

Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. 

Mostly, we just want to hold one another, to be 

held by the other. We want to know that our pain 

will one day slip, that our tomorrow has hopeful 

promise. That this body, and this life, are worthy 

of so much together. The headlines roar again; 

a gay man beheaded, a government paving its 

will, the steady beat of genocide, a forest 

battered by ignorance. I don’t bother to read 

the details. It’s all the same story; someone 

entitled exerts with forceful arrogance his body 

against the body Earth. #metoo, she weeps, 

in voiceless rage. Mostly, we just want to love 

another, to kiss away our days. To ride bikes 

with lovers along the Jordan River trail, where 

hundreds of swallows build their nests under 

a bridge. They hug their bodies to the wall 

regurgitating mud pellets. Mostly, all we want 

is a place to rest our heads under the night sky. 

Nestle in. Press ourselves into the Earth. 

Bhikkhu

                   n: an ordained buddhist monk,

                   a beggar, one who lives by alms 

You don’t need to put on a robe, renounce 

the luxury of a comforter, shave your head.

You don’t need to always be composed in 

measured mindful steps, or walk out the 

door with an empty bowl. All you need 

is to embody the spirit of a bhikkhu. 

Assume nothing is guaranteed. 

Humbly bow to whatever is given. 

Offer the spirit of gratitude regardless 

of what shows up. And then, after you’ve 

received enough, return home filled with 

harmony, and the strength of acceptance. 

Return freed, for maybe just this day, 

from the lash of desire, from the whip of 

ambition, belonging to the only certainty 

of your one life; 

                  you are not separate, not forever. 

Moudi Sbeity is the author of the memoir Habibi Means Beloved, and the poetry collection Alhamdulillah Anyway. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Orison’s Best Spiritual Literature. Moudi’s work focuses on themes of justice and liberation through a spiritual framework of compassion, forgiveness, and awe. 

Threads of Emptiness

A tear -- or a tear,
depending on your disposition --
glides down the page,

spinning golden threads
of sacred syllables,

breathing life anew,

and leaving an emptiness
that reflects
the nectar of truth.

Black Forest Gateau

The stillness is there, 

Under every rock, 

Even under the smallest stones, 

It watches silently,

If it could scream,

It would only whisper,

It was me all along, 

Sink into my velvety sponge.

Jacob Jochim is a philosophy and psychology postgraduate. He writes a scrambled mix of poetry, absurd and surreal fiction for children and adults, and non-fiction. 

Medium 

            Inspired by SUPERSTAR (Tiziano Ferro feat. Georgia)

My job description 

Is peculiar –

Provoking wonders 

without anyone noticing 

I am the superstar of

my own life

Despite the pain and

the black pants I am

Wearing on

the bleakest of days

Sometimes mania is

just a wrong word for my

really good mood.

When I am dancing

Everyone around me 

is smiling, too. 

Oh, they don’t know. 

Tanja Kummerfeld studied American and Italian Literature at the Universities of Hamburg and

Delaware. She is currently on a journey and doesn’t know yet where it will take her. Writing and

painting are ways of exploration for her. She is interested in the interactions of words and images

and how creativity is a tool to foster healing.

Not Everyone Can Be a Saint

While in the desert

of awakening,

I led people through

the vajra storm with me,

to turn their deserts

into gardens,

iron into gold.

I took people on a journey

of transforming

hells into heavens,

to heal their inner demons,

but I realised I wasn’t Midas,

nor did I ever want to be—

not everyone becomes gold or garden;

not everyone can be a saint.

Let the Roses Become You Too

How lonely it is to blossom

when no one can see

or smell the bloom?

Get swept away by the wind;

let the roses become you too.

Petals are all the asteroids

in a solo afternoon.

Wisteria and glistening streams

take over my consciousness,

leaving me at one with the world,

like a goddess of wind

has rushed through the tombs

and everything is alive all at once.

I am a lover of beauty now,

as well as being the rose.

How beautiful we smell.

How fast our water rushes.

How tremendous is our laughter

lifting through the trees.

Julia Douglas-Mann is a poet whose work explores spirituality, mental health, consciousness, nature, and the search for meaning. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Edge of Humanity Magazine, Pocket Poet, and Pure Haiku. 

The Heart's Best Blood

In the end, I suppose, the heart’s best blood

Is much more like a river than a flood:

Flowing through meadows and around the bends

Over rocks and over mud until it finally descends

Into some unfathomable ocean where all of us

Are gathered in a final erosion we cannot comprehend. 

The gift is returned to the giver. And the sea

Sees us again as it did when we first began:

The salt in our veins offers this testimony.

And whether we have wed or shunned holy

Or unholy matrimony, there is something to be said 

For longevity. Something to be read in the river

And the brook. For as St. Augustine put it:

Nature is a great book written without ink. 

And I have been truly smitten by these thoughts 

I can’t unthink. In the end, I do rather suppose

My heart’s best blood has never been my own. 

It belongs to you, dear reader, my forever corazón.

Daniel Klawitter is a Denver-based poet, a religious brother in the ecumenical Order of St. Luke, and the lead singer/lyricist of the indie folk/rock band Mining for Rain. His book, Where Sunday Used to Be (Wipf & Stock/Resource Publications, 2022) won the Colorado Author's League Book Award for Poetry. 

Surely Mystery

If there is a hole in the pocket of darkness, a seed will seek mystery 

and her brothers and sisters willingly follow on the heels of mystery.

A mother sees into her newborn’s eyes and instantly knows her given name.

Mine had no such clarity; many weeks passed while my name remained mystery.

My desire for answers gathers like a herd of wild buffalo grazing.

Any unexpected noise and a thousand hooves stampede into mystery.

Tell me doctor, what will cure me of my aching desire for certainty? 

Nothing? Surely something can sooth my pain, perhaps a teaspoon of mystery?

So many strings to grab whose ends I cannot see. Loose ends tied to the unknown 

and the one golden thread I am careful not to lose leads me through mystery. 

Brothers and sisters, I too was once a seed born curiously uncertain 

of what I would become: still patiently waiting in unfolding mystery.

The Music Knows My Name

Tell me the names of the songs 

you like to sing, 

the songs you like to hum.

I will learn them, sing them 

to you, and hum them with you. 

So when you no longer re-

member who I am, the music 

will tell you my name 

and put us together again.

Mark Jodon is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Miles of Silence (Kelsay Books 2024) and Day of the Speckled Trout (Transcendent Zero Press 2015). Mark has work forthcoming in Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts. He is an Iconoclast Artist (www.iconoclast artists.org) and serves on the boards of Image Journal and Performing Arts Houston. Mark lives in Houston, Texas. 

Grief

Where does grief reside?
Where in the pause, the sigh, the fear?
Does it flow in the blood, ooze from a cell?
Rip the vital organs with impenetrable sadness?

Where does it live?
Its very existence seems immortal.
Is it within the body, fossiled in the mind
or on the coattails of spirit?

There is no room to place grief in,
no shelf for it to sit on
no closet to contain it
Yet, its vapor, its touch, its smell, its sight
is just there. Everywhere.

Is grief born with our first breath?
the first cry as we catapult   

from the loss of one world to our next?

The grief of a baby to somehow find comfort

Comfort soothes the sadness

but the seeds of grief are sown.

Grief floats in expectations. Grief lurks in blame.

Grief pounces on insufficiency. Grief crawls in suggestions.

Grief strangles in anger and resentment.

Grief sobs in unrequited love. Grief suffocates the heart in loss.

Grief opens its eyes in faith. Grief is embedded in grace.

Grief is absorbed in love.

Dr. Michele Cohen Axelrod is a retired chiropractor and nurse. She believes that words are a quieter path to continue healing work for herself and others. 

The Calling Card

Right this way please.

The name of this rose

all giving love—

confounded

by our expectations of one another.

I’m sorry,

this is beyond me:

make you fit into my plan.

I don’t think this what love is.

Well let’s go somewhere else,

the love that moves mountains,

and it doesn’t need the mountain to do anything.

Can we get there?

Let’s hope so.

Poetry writing and the spiritual path are partners for Donny Duke. Donny cannot separate himself from his poems. He meets the world there, whether or not it meets him. A poem, like a dream, is where he is. Both his poems and dreams come from the depths inside.