What Poetry Taught Me

In life It's not the sweetness That will build you Sugar is sweet But it will destroy you Words are beautiful But they can destroy you It's not the sourness of life That contains lessons of bitterness It's the sweeter part of life That is sprinkled with toxins Don't look at emptiness And be fearful Look at emptiness And see beyond your imagination Don't look at the mirror And see yourself Hold the mirror And be your true self It's not always easy To undress ourselves And be naked of our thoughts (ego) It's sometimes embarrassing To look foolish But it's inside foolishness That you will find your true being Let go of your ego Find your madness It's not the logical things in life That will open the door to your heart It's the sparkling molecules of nothingness That will fill your heart with happiness It's the blanket of darkness That brings a new day Don't be tempted To swallow everything you see or hear Sometimes it's the knowledge That is full of toxins Our body, mind and soul Are not templates of our physicality But garments of knowing It's the deeper knowledge Not coming out of the five senses But buried inside our consciousness That makes the framework of true reality Logic is a construct of our mindset Yes, it's helpful most of the time But it has limitations Especially when it comes to the truth It's not a path to a deeper knowledge of the truth It's a layer on the outer part of awareness Poetry taught me to remove my blindness And helped me to drink from the river of life Not with my mouth or mind But with my heart Awareness is knowing your way, path and destiny Knowledge is knowing a subset of your environment Poetry taught me to be aware of that which I don't know And to hold that which I know inside a microscope Poetry is the petri-dish of consciousness Where we can grow knowledge Out of nothingness And see the petals of life Begin to form And the canopy of life bloom It's a beautiful experience To be inside the magical laboratory of Poetry ©