Petals and Blood Poems by Gavin Harrison
Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance, when you’re perfectly free. —Rumi
“I
t is not unusual to find oneself drenched to the bone while walking in the early morning mists of Waipio Valley in Hawai‘i or the Ofafa Valley in Africa,” writes Gavin Harrison. “For me the adventure of Awakening has been mostly like that—a gradual soaking, with intermittent bolts of clarity, just like lightning piercing the depths of an African thunderstorm.” Harrison is the author of In the Lap of the Buddha and recently published a new book, Petals and Blood: Stories, Dharma & Poems of Ecstasy, Awakening & Annihilation where the poems below first appeared. For Harrison, “Awakening is a death in life, and a returning. Gone is the illusion of who and what I previously thought myself to be. The significance of the dream world I cherished has evaporated. Today I know that I am limitlessly larger than the smallness I once lived. At last I have returned to the innocence of my magical garden, seasoned and aged by the passage of time.”
OCCUPY YOUR HEART Raise a fist of freedom to the sky. CARLOS EYLES Kailua Kona, Hawai‘i, USA. www.carloseyles.com
Touch the ground as the Buddha did. Seize your birthright. Let the occupation begin. Occupy your heart and let the walls to your Loving come crumbling down. Occupy your indignation that anything less than Liberation will just not do. Occupy your willingness to never forget who you really, really are, ever again. Be true to your heart’s deepest longing. Lift your voice to the sky and shout your True Name to the heavens above. Occupy an honesty to this moment, and move from the Sacred Ground of your knowing. Emancipate your Love and Be all that you pray for. 30
Voice Male
And may this occupation be the one that ends all occupations, forever.
Raise your fist.
Remember the Big Bang, that great miracle of creation?
Grab the sky.
Something from nothing? You are this moment’s expression of that creative force. Occupy the force of nature that you are. And if anyone messes with your occupation, set up camp anywhere and everywhere. This is where the rubber hits the road.
Open.
Touch the ground. Seize your birthright. Unfurl great wings. Occupy all streets everywhere with your Loving.