You and Me
by Charity Joy Bell
(June 18, 2009)

In my castle
Of many rooms
And towers
The sun shines bright
And inside and outside
All of the world
Is for me

In my castle
Many rooms are locked
Many towers are chained
I’ve thrown away the keys
Never wanting to remember
For every day
The sunshine raptures me

In my castle
One day you stood
I saw you
You had all the keys
To all the rooms
To all the towers
You found each key for me

In my castle
I stood-afraid
Where did you find those keys?
Must I go back?
What’s behind those doors?
I have forgotten
Can’t I just let the sunshine rapture me?

In my castle
You said “We must”
And then you walked towards the doors
You climbed the stairs
You lit the barren hallways
I followed close behind you
You led the way for me

In my castle
I remembered
Behind those doors
The fallen trees The cracked walls
The lost boats The drifting bottles
Then I remembered-yes I remembered
You held up the lantern for me

In my castle
Behind those doors
I looked at you
You took my hand
My tears fell down
As I remembered
Because you remembered for me

In my castle
Up in the towers
The dead leaves rustled beneath my feet
As I remembered
My tears fell down
I became broken better
You remade my heart for me

In my castle
Today no doors are locked
Today no towers are chained up
All the windows are open
I no longer wait
To be raptured by the sunlight
You rapture my heart for me

In my castle
Every day
I learn something new
You teach me to remember
Every day
You remake my heart some more
You rebuild my heart for me

In my castle
Sometimes if I forget again
Promise me that you’ll never
Promise me that you’ll be
In the barren hallways
Carrying the keys
And lighting the way for me

©2009 Charity Joy Bell. All rights reserved.

Lifetimes
by Charity Joy Bell
(November 25, 2009)

In our eternal existence, who has the right to say that we only have one lifetime to live?

I think it is our mortal minds that put that lid on top of our vision, our beliefs. Our mortal instincts of logic, reasoning, become a lid screwed tightly onto our beliefs, trying to contain the magnitude of our existence.

Some of us go through our lifetimes keeping the lid in place. And even fastening it on tighter.

But I have taken the lid off and thrown it away! All away! Because I want to live this lifetime with no top end- and no bottom end! I want to breathe on the knowledge, the understanding, the passions, the lusts, the love, everything- that I have lived in all of my lifetimes before- I want to breathe on, breathe from- all of that. And then I want to feed on all the visions that I can have of many more lifetimes I will live after this one. I want to feed on the passions I know I will have, the love I know is mine, the many lusts and many joys that are all for my taking, the safety, the true love, that are anew and are awaiting me… I want to feed on all of that, today!

And so if I were a bottle…I would have no cork screwed into the top of me…and no bottom at the end of me. And so ordinary people would look at me and say to themselves “What use is there for a bottle like that?” But then the gods and God would look at me and say “Look at this funnel! This beautiful funnel of light!”

In the world today…there ought to be more funnels!

We like to think that eternity is something that we can see when we look up into the sky. Something that is far away. Out there. Something that we are not yet a part of. But the reality is that we are there- we are in the middle of it all. We are on one of the gazillions of planets in the universe- and we are there. We are here. We have eternity. Eternity is all around us. And it is inside us. What we must do is let it flow through us. Never-ending. Unfathomable. Never bound. Always flowing. Through us.

Eternity.

Lifetimes.


©2009 Charity Joy Bell. All rights reserved.

All Of It
by Charity Joy Bell
(November 7, ’09)

I am tired of listening to people who talk about love, and say they are in love, and act as if they know love.

You should think that the more and more something is used and re-used, the more the something would become familiar. The more it would become known. The more it would become conceivable. Reachable. Mundane.

But then there is love. And the more and more that people say that they have it-that they know it- the more and more that I see how really different it is. Not at all like what people believe it to be.

Because I know that love is a spirit so strong, so defiant, so powerful, so beautiful, so unpredictable, and so very overwhelming and consuming, that it would not ever allow itself to be put into a box, to be molded into a frame, to become something of someone’s ownership.

True love is not something we can define in a book- it would eat the pages. True love is not something we can lock into a box- it would burn it to ashes.

I would like to say that true love is something that we do not possess- but that possesses us. Because that would complete a definition. But. I think that having true love in your heart is already a romance in itself. It is the possession of your whole being as you are consumed with the flames of passion and desire- but then it is also the possession and eating up of a life force on which your soul feeds.

And so, one is in love.

I know not of any true love other than this love. Than this in its mere becoming is already a full romance!

If you do not look at yourself and see yourself possessed and overtaken and consumed- whether in a soft and gentle manner or a raging and seething one- if you do not feed on this love as the source of your living soul- whether a soothingly sweet feeding or a suddenly gluttonous one- then I am not interested in this love that you say that you have.

What is the reason to live life, at all, if this is not all of it?

©2009 Charity Joy Bell. All rights reserved.