Dust to be Dusted

We are all Dust waiting for the touch of the Featherduster.
For life sweeps the lucky ones gently into Dustpan purgatory,
While the unlucky are sucked through the hell of the Dustbuster.
Life finally places us with all the other Dust in the Dustbin.

Some finer Dust escapes into the Sacred Gardens,
To paradise where weary allergic angels tread
Under Dusty Halos, tethered and tame as camels.
Most sneeze once with a Bless You, Brother,
Some curse in silence, smiling holy smiles of eternal penitence.

The Master Gardener uses all the Dust in this Desert,
Watering each soulful dune with her tears -
She prays for another flower worth saving from the mud.

Being Human

I think before I am.
I am before I do.
I am soul before I am dressed in fresh flesh.
I am remade whole before I’m born again.

I’m waterborne before I’m airborne by arms bearing arms.
I’m carried as hand luggage before I can carry myself.

I hold myself up before I can carry you, my child.
I hold you close before I lose you to your being.
I let you go before I let myself go to ground, spent.
I am not what broken thing I think I was before.
I am before and I am ever after now.
I have always been human before.

I wear myself thin before the crowds.
I am not what I am - before I was, I will be again.

Beauty is the world (the world is in you).

Beautiful people surround you
(your perfect circle has no corners).

Words rise up from your soul bathed in beauty
(the ear is home to hammer, anvil, drum).

Your brief life is purposeful and gorgeous
(your oiled bones only dance at the joints with muscle).

You exist eternally in swallowed tales
(you feed your own stomach with stories).

Beautiful person, be who you are
(be the hidden and be the found).

Be the illusion of reality and the reality
(for fantasy feeds the real world).