Look at Me

I invite you to look at me.

Really. Look at me.

Close your eyes.

Let your mind see what they would never let you.

See beyond these walls made of flesh.

Peer through the open doorway of this corporeal tabernacle.

Like a child, stealing a glimpse of some forbidden secret.

I ask you 

To look at me.

Really look at me.

Come to that place where my hidden me awaits your inquisitive you,

That place inside us where fears toss and turn,

Where passions live and burn,

Where God’s fingertips can be seen plucking at heartstrings.

Look at me.

Look into me.

Learn me.

Recognize yourself in me and myself in you.

Understand that inside of us burns a brilliant moon,

Watcher of dreams,

Stirrer of souls,

That perfect yet simple light

Desperate for a release.

Longing,

Longing to be seen, if only for a moment.

Give in to it.

Let it show its true worth.

Let yours find, glowing inside me, its equal.

In that inner solitude within each of us where a little piece of the universe has found for itself a dwelling place,

We find ourselves.

Truly aware of what, who, and why we are:

Supple sparks flung from a singular seminal flame 

Truth from beauty, and beauty from truth,

Musician and instrument,

They are as one.

Here I stand:

A hopelessly flawed masterpiece

Molded by the hands of my father, under the watch of my mother,

Anxiously offering myself to you.

You need to just look at me.

Join me.

Know that there are days.

There are days when I feel like I no longer know myself.

Know that, like you, I too have my coarse edges,

Glorious imperfections,

Giving this world something to grasp onto.

Giving us all something to grasp

Onto.

Share this with me.

See what I see.

Feel my thoughts, like an idle breeze or a familiar presence.

Wed your curiosities to my peculiarities.

Let that life-giving breath of God that whispers in each of your breasts find its echo reverberating in mine.

I need you to look at me.

Understand that this dance,

It cannot be danced alone. 

Understand that the space between you and me

Is no bigger or more meaningful than the space between the oceans,

Or between the days,

Or between the fingers, on the hands

On the hands that raise us up.

Join me.

Like the streams join the rivers join the sea,

Join me,

Where I end and us begins.

Listen,

If we want, we can take a stroll through a dream.

With bare backs and naked feet,

Forget all the things we carry by day;

Move beyond the visible.

Leave your understanding behind – like that last fleeting thought that slips your grasp as sunlight coaxes you from slumber.

Unfetter your raw self.

Flex those muscles which we seldom use.

Contort and squeeze your inner dreamer into the spaces this world tells us we cannot fit.

Through the keyhole, past the dam, lies the real world.

We will find us there.

We will find us there.

If you would join me…

© Axel Cooper, 2012

View Through the Keyhole, at Cooper's Wood
Photo by David Antiss from Wikimedia Commons