I saunter parallel to these pews,
dragging my fraying fingers along the tops.
Reaching for a wooden comfort, but
instead I’m pricked.
I shake the splinter and splutter the blood off.
Wearing my head high, I finish my descent
up the holy steps.
My mother stands,
stuck
looking past me and out the stained window,
letting it strike her into a silhouette.
The priest exclaims
New Beginnings!
My mother
matches his declaration two seconds too late.
My dad nods his head,
the final vote of the jury locked in.

With guilt and god on my side,
I take the holy plunge.
My head falls in,
harshly.
I’m aching for a numinous experience,
only to suffocate from the darkness
that comes with this reality
I will breathe into.
My head may be under the aquatic illusion of renewal
but my feet stay planted on the
fractured  ground.

I am forced to look past the daze of illusion.
Because in the light
I can clearly see the greys left in our destruction.
I look back and my finger has bled
all over the back of this dress.
New Beginnings!
I exclaim,
with a red stain grained into my backside,
but an empty canvas in the front.

With my hair slicked back I hear a
mumble.
You look just like your mother,
And maybe I do
hold her eyes
but I can see
what she can not.
The graying dreams that my parents are dis alluded to.
Their skeletons in the attic or the
boxes of dresses in the basement,
even though today I wear one.
I will look at the destruction created behind us
and not walk with them.

Because in this holy light
her eyes bask and only look
chocolate at its best.
And in this dim shadow
mine shine like amber honey.

As dressed in paltry kinds of satin
Maya ambles through the corridors,
Carressed in faulty rinds of pattern
By her handled wooden shutter doors:

She chants with song along the matins
From my shruberry here... as afore,
Enchants the throng among and battens
On my shuddery cheer, evermore!

A hard reset
Just turn it off
and on again

A reboot
Control, alt, delete
and then the task manager

A factory restore
A blank screen
a fresh start

Tabula rasa
The clean slate
is a myth

We come in to the world wailing
Live wailing, or wanting to wail
and then the death rattle

Yet, in a world of robots
Fluorescence and computers
we long for that factory reset

The great do-over doesn't come
The ability to create anew arrives every moment
We choose it or we don't

Control, alt, delete
Should be
Surrender, function, create

Clean my cache
Delete my history
surrendering to the mystery

This human doing needs a reboot
An upgrade, if you will
to being a human being

Why do we sit?
"Om" she chanted, the spritely tween she was.
Oh, the sovereingty of those at peace?
"sure" her older sibling said.
Why do we sit to look within? Does it make us strong?
What else makes us powerful?
Speaking, acting.
Does thinking make us powerful.
yes.
Does thinking, speaking, and acting create a lot of unrest?
It can.
Thus, we stop thinking, stop speaking, and stop acting.
"Isn't that what sleep is for?"
Yes. Do you sometimes dream in sleep?
yes.
Sitting in meditation, no thought, voice, or act, induces a dream state, but you are awake.
Do you like sometimes the feeling of dreams? yes?
This ecstasy one feels in a good dream is the same as in meditation.
But to see visions and have feelings like in a dream is only a biproduct of meditation.
So why do we meditate? "?"
TO go beyond, beyond acting, speaking, thinking, even beyond feeling and seeing.
This beyond can only be experienced for oneself.
It comes in many forms.
What is central to it is that you exist before it,
and you exist after it, but after you experience
it, you feel like a new you, a truly awakened you.

Anew
is not to wipe the embarrassing stains of the past
anew is to take them with you
wave them like a flag
wear them as a reminder of your former self
a new beginning
is often wrapped in the rags of an old ending