I Am Not…

 

I am not the white woman you see before you

 

or the Jewish Holocaust survivor

 

but I have felt the chains of bondage

 

and the whipping stings of oppression.

 

 

I am not the starving Ethiopian child

 

or the fat cat oil tycoon

 

but I have hungered for justice for a millennium or more

 

and torched the fertile fields of my brothers.

 

I have the blood of my victims on my hands

 

and stolen purity and innocence from children.

  

 

I know my perpetrator well, for I stand in a long

 

line of victims in-waiting,

 

our agreements to dance this dance

 

made soon after the Big Bang.

 

 

 I am a soul older than earth herself and

 

I cannot be contained by the historical flesh

 

that marks this life or that.

 

I am not white or black,

 

red or brown.

 

 I am differentiated soul stuff

 

Light reflecting more slowly than you thought possible,

 

Vibrating illusion so you can see me,

 

feel me and call me by “a name.”

 

 

But I am not that name either.

 

I am not Muslim, Jew or Catholic.

 

And yet I am all of these and more.

 

 

 

I have danced the right handed

 

spinning of the Sufis and tested my strength

 

through faithful fasting.

 

I have torn the flesh of my hands and knees

 

making holy pilgrimage and

 

I have hung from several crosses.

 

 

But I am not my worshipping poses

 

or chants of sacred texts.

 

I am not pleasure or pain and yet,

 

those are the sensations I yearn for.

 

This flesh, I know, thinks too small.

 

This flesh wants only to live, to stay

 

in this sensual container for as long as I dream,

 

attaching itself like a parasite to the ticking of the clock.

 

 

 

For my faith is simply rhythm and body

 

and presence and thought

 

making consequences.

 

Not good. Not evil.

 

Simply cause. Simply effect.

 

 

I cause to know myself better,

 

to see the consequences of my choices

 

And to tune in to others resonating

 

in harmony or dissonance to my tuning fork.

 

And I know all of you.

 

Not as you appear before me now.

 

But as the same slow light dangling from a silver string.

 

I know you beyond your beliefs, beyond your illness

 

and childish stories of victory and defeat.

 

 

And in that place beyond feeling,

 

we dance.

 

In that place beyond hearing,

 

we sing.

 

In that deep knowing of who we truly are,

 

we love.

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