give me a true gift

from the within of you

un-tinseled and air-fresh

show me a moist heart

drenched and blood red

wet from your eyes

i'll give you a kiss

warming with my lips

wrap you in joy

wider than a smile

you'll think it's Easter night

you'll hear the birds in flight

you'll see them stop to nest

in the crevice of your breast

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

-Are not all our experiences distorted?  We receive our knowledge of the world, of others and ourselves only from the monstrous and distorted shadows cast upon the back of Plato's case.  Life is like scratching an itch (and let us not forget that there are intellectual itches). Experience, then, "is the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of our appetites...and the desire for truth becomes the desire to master reality rather than experience it."

-The problem with many popular therapies is that they feed our appetites rather than give us a way of experiencing the world.  They promise far more than they can deliver.  It is hard (when you're hurting and unhappy) to distinguish between genuine growth and the development of a mere coping mechanism.  Maybe the shallow therapies are right?  Helping needy and unhappy people cope isn't such a bad thing.  Better the adherence to a vital lie than to a painful truth; better to take lots of aspirin rather than find the cause of the pain.  Perhaps it is best not to dig too deeply?  Psychoanalysis is a long, hard road.  The radical therapy of the Gospel involves drastic surgery.  Perhaps it is only for those who are not wise in the world's terms, or for believers who stumble into it by ''accident."