Editor's note: Linmayu Appavu gave an extraordinary dance and poetry performance  at LFAC on January 23, 2010.

I wrote this poem during a trip to Myopic Books in December.  I was standing on the balcony between the first and second floors and found myself remembering the space as one from a recent dream.  As I began to speak the words of the poem softly (as I had nothing in my hands to write with), messages from Spirit began to flood me, giving clarity to my strange life, pointing the way to unknowable mysteries. 

I hadn't intended to use it in my improvisational performance at LFAC, but it came up at just the right moment.  I remember feeling the words return to me, and a sense of heat and light surrounding me.  Making it real, making it public, somehow giving birth to the energies contained in the poem.

The world shifted, just a tiny bit, last night, towards the direction of peace and authenticity for all people.  I hope to create many more such shifts in the future.

Amidst ancient bookshelves
on a balcony that leads to nowhere,
green stairs twist upwards
leading to mysterious world.

To a world I have seen once before
To a world I have seen in a dream.

I had come here seeking remnants
of a world that I had lost.
I had come here seeking remnants
of a life that I had lost.

Track lights on the black painted ceiling
call back the memory of the stage I used to dance on
when I was young and fierce and filled with buried rage
and the future was one big happy question mark.

I have seen that buried dreams return,
but only on their own time
only in their own way.
Only after I have let them go.
Only after I have given up.

Surrendering to that Force
which knows what to bring in every moment,
this is when I remember
that life is relentless in its way,
and I must again find the strength
to tear out that piece of my flesh,
offer it once again as a sacrifice on the altar,
and wait for it to be reborn,
returned to my body,
as pure white lotus petals.