The resilience of the human spirit never wanes but increasingly glows with an effulgent light. As long as there is a day, a tomorrow, a future, we will face it and do so with inexhaustible ardor.

Life pushes us in many directions, asks us to make sacrifices, it gives as much as it takes, but it continues to give as long as we have the one most precious gift of all, life. Though some shoes are more worn and weathered, lacking luster and polish, making the walk painful, difficult, and a humbling experience, still the triumph is that those of us walking in these shoes, continue to walk until their soles are scraped raw and their bare feet are calloused.

In their honor, we stand with gratitude for their sacrifice, for bearing the burdens of life that sometimes is unfathomable, and we extend a conscious mind with a helping hand to show them that they are not alone; that we stride together in times of difficulty and celebrate in times of joy; that their footprint continues to impress our minds long after they walk out of sight and we will cherish this memory of once walking together.

This is what the holidays mean to me. When I see the greatest in need with tattered clothing and a tarnished visage making an effort to smile despite their circumstances, standing with brittle shaking legs, and grasping their own shoulders to conserve warmth that rapidly escapes them. If they continue to stand, what can possibly knock me down and defeat my spirit?

When everything is taken away from you, even the cloth off your backs rendering you bare against the elements, the instinct is to curl up into a fetal position to cover yourself…until a kind stranger walks by with a blanket, lifts you up to your feet, and wraps you with the warmth of love. Every day reminds me to be that stranger, and especially the holidays when the disparity of joy and neglectful sadness are at their greatest. But I can be better at this…I can always be better…and so I strive to be.

I don’t need to compare myself with others and use that to modulate my sense of kindness. As long as I give until the point that I myself have the same needs, then I can never stray too far away from love, because the intimacy of the experience will always humbly remind me that, I too, am human; I am a part of this beautiful panorama called existence and my life is a spectacular speck of light on this unending reel.

Reunion
by kyjin

what gravity tears my chest open
to reveal a lover’s beating drum?
for i swim wounded and bleeding
in the seas of eternity
to find one i have sworn to love
in millennia past when i first
saw the design of my soul
reflected in your eyes
and from our union
my purpose was born.

the cruel contortionist
fearful of love’s divinity
weaves our tragic parting
soon you were stolen
from my woeful sight
leaving me in darkness.

I followed you
to the great abyss
returning each time
with a borrowed cloak
and you in another;
displaced in time
and separated by distance
as we wander lifetimes over,
seeking what we were
cursed never to find.

however our destiny was written
with the embers of the stars
by the one delicate hand
that draws our fate intertwining,
and even should time forbid
this cosmic embrace
our divine affinity
defies all impossibility

i have been asleep
under the spell of the grand illusionist
only now,
drowning in the sea of my own blood,
do i wake gasping for that holy breath
to save this cloak from ruin
because i have found you

nature inspired by our resolve
rebels against the tyranny of law:
our distance bridged by sympathetic space
our collision fixed by merciful time

here we are, two bodies, one soul
peering through our effervescent cloak
to see the reflection of our same design
our contrast renders fascination that
ignites the spark of a tender passion

what is a soul mate
but the mating of one soul?
strip away our flesh
and drain our blood
burn the veiling cloak
with our celestial fire
let our essence shine
through to all worlds
and the mending of our soul
be the destined reunion

In the darkest of night I thought my soul to be unassailable; that no matter what happened, whatever opposition I should face, I would be invulnerable. However, the light of dawn reveals my injured soul as a shattered kaleidoscope, broken into myriad save for the love that lends me its breath.

Two Friends
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

A certain person came to the Friend’s door
and knocked.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me.”
The Friend answered, “Go away. There’s no place
for raw meat at this table.”

The individual went wandering for a year.
Nothing but the fire of separation
can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned
completely cooked,
walked up and down in front of the Friend’s house,
gently knocked.
“Who is it?”
“You.”
“Please come in, my self,
there’s no place in this house for two.
The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through
the eye of the needle.
It’s a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end,
not a big ego-beast with baggage.”

Art, in essence, is formless, pure feeling, and genuine emotion, even when it is a product of artificial contrivances. True art surrenders the ego and allows the spirit to be liberated, stimulating the illumination of the soul.

It is timeless, eternal and non-eternal, existing and non-existing; transforms, evolves, while its splendor remains constant.

When we participate in the creation of art, we actively engage in the process of ‘asexual reproduction’; creating a legacy and perpetuating our unique existential signatures. Since [we] are masterful works of art, it follows that our inner drive compels us to gravitate toward the procreation of this universal imperative.

The Carrions
by Kyjin

rally the carrions to the labors of men preserve
for as in their gnawing rots the roots of rife
so too the piling wastes decay into the earth
thus creating the cycle that we know as life

thieves of time that rob men blindly of their youth
from the darkness and through ages until darkness
leeches like wool siphon through the blood of fools
feeding on their breath until they lie breathless

men share no less the floundering fate of stifled fish
that which suffering is muzzled by the gelatinous air
in stillness the restless renders the body fleshless
but its seeds of contagion with time blooms in splendor

the swoons of pestilence sway to nature’s resolve
when one’s intoxication venomous to another’s survival
her wrath is justly swift and sweeps from above
as a disarming plague inoculating the frenzied rivals

then come the invisible army of feeders
to grind away the remnants of existence
a pulp that again into the cycle enters

The Veil
by Kyjin

i look at the sky and wonder why
the sun never refuses to rise
its rays dancing across the horizon
slowly fading my memory of its motion

then bows down to greet its partner
stepping closer their bodies gather
in the ridge of light and darkness
gently swaying to twilight’s caresses

the heavens journey with arduous resolve
oblivious to the futility of its revolve,
fueled by the fiery passions of eternity,
seething from immolation its celestial body

yet eschews the pain of flesh-born affliction
because it is immune to the human condition
no greed, malice, envy, or pride to speak of
only the sublime nature of incorruptible love

as the blood that surges through our veins
transfuses life without claim of selfish gains
or the spirit that awakens our inanimate shell
to rise against the assault of the sleepless veil

i peer at the stars and ponder afar
aeons from one breath of each pulsar
how time drapes our existence in finite
obscuring our senses with limited sight