[Thespiritexpress] Confessions of a Marginal Mystic (a poem by Ed Balldinger)

[Riantee Rand]

A mind bender indeed this marginal mystic, as I extract (with great difficulty), the essence of who he is in the decomposition of the language we know, to arrive at the resolution that breathes us all.

> On Feb 24, 2026, at 20:21, Toni Bernbaum via Thespiritexpress <thespiritexpress at lists.mcn.org> wrote:
> 
> Thank you, Ed,  for this confession of a marginal mystic…..wow ( i love the title)……every line makes me stop to listen…….
> its inspired me to write up my own “should” confessional! And so fortuitous that you didn’t miss the seventh circle of the third heaven!
> This poem is a mind bender!  I should read it one more time!
> 
>> On Feb 24, 2026, at 3:49 PM, Ed Balldinger via Thespiritexpress <thespiritexpress at lists.mcn.org> wrote:
>> 
>> As requested by one, some, a few, or nearly all of the above to be shared on the ever lively Spirit Express, this is a poem I read before our Recognition Sutras study today.  It's a poem from my 2009 book of poetry, "From Cavity's Kitchen to the Bone Comber's Home"... 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Confessions of a Marginal Mystic
>>  
>> I should have knelt in the tower
>> of marginal love much longer than I did.
>>  
>> I should have danced until my feet
>> were numb from moving in step.
>>  
>> I should have spun like a junk monkey
>> on the marble floors of decimation.  
>>  
>> I should have split each hair into quarter shanks
>> to prove the accuracy of my own axe.
>>  
>> In the grainy angularity of a circular
>> dissension, I fell down – face forward –
>> out of a temple and into a shell
>> where over and under, I generally dwell.
>>  
>> I should have drained the desert dry of all
>> its liquid dew when once I had the chance.
>>  
>> I should have purified all my altered states
>> on the altar of figurative speech.    
>>  
>> I should have breached the wall that
>> held me like a garden tilled in deep grief soil.
>>  
>> I should have broken out and trickled down in
>> streams that flow less damned than this one does.
>>  
>> Of the insolvent knave who’s prone to
>> steer, there is no direction given here –
>> one part Dervish; two parts lore; three
>> parts left as we who came before.
>>  
>> I could have slashed a razor gash
>> into the granite rock of my own spotless tomb.
>>  
>> I could have chosen one less cloak to wrap
>> myself within, spending all my pent up heat,
>>  
>> but I could not miss the seventh circle of a
>> third heaven, when the mystic within me heard
>>           the voice of God,
>> and I stopped –
>> to listen for once… 
>>  
>> Edgar Z. Balldinger
>>                                 January 26, 2004
>>                                  © Nublin’s Pub, 2004 
>> 
>> 
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