Kiss Your Demons

 

This is a good morning to kiss your demons.

Give them the kiss that Jesus gave Mary at the tomb.

Don't drive them away or they must return.

Why fear them? They are only your dark angels.

Lust is not a demon but a dark angel of moon sap.

Anger is not a demon but a dark angel of healing fire

flickering in your pons. Grief is a dark angel

bearing seven oceans of love in one jar.

The angel of Depression keeps vigil with Wisdom,

binding her Tartarean bones in nutritious mycelia.

Kiss one, and free the other.

Addiction is a dark angel bringing gifts

under a broken wing, using the other to help you fly,

for one of yours is broken too.

Bow to your dark angels, embody them.

Breathe them until they become sighs.

Possess them, or they possess you.

Exhale boldly and they vanish

in the blue sky of awakening, a swirl

of hummingbirds, a sound of tree frogs

discussing everything under the sun.

But beware of the Enlightened One with no dark angel,

who leads you into the shadow that hides from itself.

Kiss him too, then depart.

Let the names and teeth marks of your dark angels,

hieroglyphs scrawled in the veins of your liver,

neurons twisted into Sumerian runes, spells 

thrumming your medulla, rippling the gristle

in your omphalos, untangle their tongues 

and sing themselves back to silence.

Let the wickless flame of your lips consume

all your dark angels, and lick your spine clean

with the kiss of soul upon soul.

Now swim down the river of amazement 

that flows from the cavern of your hidden grief

over scars of stone.

This is the starless wine of ancient midnights

fermenting the sun of tomorrow.

This is the wine Christ saves for the end of the feast.

How do I know?

I am kissed.



 

Art by Laura Santi, from Buddha Weekly,
Heruka in union with Vajrayogini