Legs Wide Open

The problem is always contraction.

The solution: to relax open, to spread open.

You go fast to avoid the contraction,

You hold your breath from the contraction.

The breath-holding makes it feel like there is a flock of birds trying to break out of your chest.

We call that anxiety:

Contraction, contraction, contraction.

We lock the bad in 

(stagnant swamp water)

And the good out

(the fresh spring of Eros)

Because of contraction.

Our nervous system locks 

and the emergency messaging comes in:

“Get the hell out of here”

“Don’t move”

“Beat the shit out of *that*,” “Destroy all incoming—“

From this contraction.

Our muscles hurt and our hearts are clenched because we contract

We contract because our muscles hurt and our hearts are clenched

You get the idea.

It’s circular, a merry-go-round we might call samsara,

If we wanted to get fancy.

And because of that, we don’t have room

We don’t have vast open space.

We kick people out of our interior by judging them

Out of our lives by asserting, asserting, asserting all the things 

that, were we not in contraction,  

Would just keep moving along

With nothing to see.

We can’t even make it into our birthright,

The inner world where we can decipher what that feeling is

What is ours and what is theirs

We have to rely on the auto-responders of reactivity:

“I want this”

“I don’t want that”

“I can’t register that”

It reduces us to simpletons

Pushed and pulled by invisible forces 

Angry at politics, craving love, not noticing our neighbor’s ache.

This cramp is what we mistake ourselves to be

When in fact, it’s the thief and the imposter

That (irony of all ironies) cares only about the preservation of itself

At our expense.

Punch line: You’re host to a misery-making cramp that, 

Identity thief that it is, 

Passes as you (even to you) 

And spends your last psychic cent, 

Bankrupting you and then blaming you.

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad,

If it weren’t the source of suffering,

If it weren’t so pervasive it becomes the swamp water we swim in.

This is why it is no small thing

This is why it is not trivial 

When I say open and supple is the way.

Open and supple can receive the world and release the world

Like a good healthy breath

Or the tides on a beach.

This is why I say:

The real revolution will be fought 

On our backs

With legs wide open⁩.