I have lacked imagination

where it has been vital

to practice in the sacred

as the manifestation

of empathy

that imagination

is meant to be

I could not see

what was not seen

nor hear what was 

not said 

but was there 

in the grasp

of conceptualization 

waiting where the mind

holds the memory 

of cosmic interconnection

and when needed most

I could not recall

my way to understanding 

because it is easy 

to forget

when we take 

for granted

the effort it takes

to hold knowing

beyond the knowing

within the mind

and practice in

the heart

I have fallen too often

from what required

a sacrifice to reach

and grabbed a hold

instead

of how fear can twist

the perception

of what one must give

and what there is 

for one to take

and if love could not

be found

in the appropriation

of imagination

it is because

love was not what 

was coming through

though it was always there

choked off and trying 

to softly sing

suffocated 

through the noise

of phantoms screaming

for what they deemed

was theirs

but all my heart

is reaching now

for stars it cannot touch

as if in the magic of the light

amends could be made

to remove the wounds

already cut

but there is no

turning back the clocks

to dull the blades of time

that have carried the rotations

of what goes through

the mind

when imagination 

has been jacked

by the opposite

of the way the sacred

tells the story

when one remembers

that hearing is 

not the act of waiting

but of seeking 

through the heart

and all that I can do

is pray the demons

silence now

so that even if 

the time to have these

songs be known 

has passed and had its day

I can find my way

at last to the empathetic

of imagination's 

sacred form