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"next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh say can you see by the dawn's early my country 'tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead
Holy being! I’ve often disturbed Your divine and golden repose; And you’ve heard much of life’s Deeper, more secret pains from me.
Forget it, forgive me! Like the clouds drifting By the peaceful moon, I too pass away, And you rest, radiant once more In all your beauty, O sweet sweet light!
A sluggard once approached a fasting saint And, baffled by dispair, made his complaint: "The devil is a highwayman, a thief, Who's ruined me and robbed me of belief." The saint replied, "Young man, the devil too Has made his way here to compain, of you. 'My province is the world,' I heard him say; 'Tell this new pilgrim of God's holy way To keep his hands off what is mine; if I Attack him it's because his fingers pry In my affairs; if he will leave me be, He's no concern of mine and can go free.'" (Attar)
It creates miracles. In its eyes limits are defined. It alone talks with me when others are afraid to come near,
when the last friend has turned his eyes away. It was with me in my grave and sang like the first storm, or as though all the flowers had burst into speech.
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said -- "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."
And it was at that age… poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don’t know how or when, no, they were not voices, they were not words, not silence, but from a street it called me, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among raging fires or returning alone, there it was, without a face, and it touched me.
I didn’t know what to say, my mouth had no way with names, my eyes were blind. Something knocked in my soul, fever or forgotten wings, and I made my own way, deciphering that fire, and I wrote the first, faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing; and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open, planets, palpitating plantations, the darkness perforated, riddled with arrows, fire, and flowers, the overpowering night, the universe.
And I, tiny being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss. I wheeled with the stars. My heart broke loose with the wind.
~ Pablo Neruda (translated by Alastair Reid)
... I love that line: "fever or forgotten wings" (!!!)
I wrote this rather suddenly in a strange moment of sudden inspiration in late 2011. Its a poem "addressed" to Plotinus, but really using him as the catalyst for something more personal... Its better read aloud...
RETURN: AN ODE
"I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All." ~ Plotinus
I
Fallen from Solitary to solitary: What was that first image To stir your singular eye
From sleep of inchoate multiplicity, A shoreline swept away into dark oceans, Never to return?
Facing a greater harmony, The polyphony of movement Recollected in the mind’s ear,
Beauty reflected herself in remote Music—reflected again in silence: What kept calling you on?
No echo of your name—it was Beyond name: in the earth, In the veins of the leaf,
In the raincloud, in the sun, The light behind the light. One Glimpse of the insistent thread
Gleaming in the labyrinthine world, And you could not but follow, retrace Footsteps yours and not yours.
An odyssey eastward, then inward And back again, a cartographer of the soul And the Soul, you returned
With maps of kosmos and microkosmos, The numinous vision: Not theory, but θεωρία.
II
Not the lotus, but its enfolding. It mirrors the plenary world Within its own emptiness.
I will not speak the icon’s silence, The hidden breath in flower and fruit: The unseen radix.
But the root was a door, and the door Was a sun—and where is there not This articulate luminescence,
Each expressed word a single Word? Upon its threshold, I felt a hunger Far older than an orphaned infant’s cry.
Not the lotus, but the dream of the lotus, Asleep in every hand. A pathway. The North Star.
I will not offer an image of an image Of the imageless—the marble stone Masks the divine face beyond
And within every face: emerging Forth, will I learn at last to see The transparency with its eyes?
Hear the primeval wind with its ears? Speak the Logos with its tongue? I have been a long time waiting.
Not the dream of the lotus, but The perfect flame, perfectly still, a flower Completely and simply: lotus.
III
And yet we could not sustain Your intenser gaze, enticed by claims Of facsimiled truths—or, drowned in aporia.
Ascent was all: cut away Everything. Failing eyesight, feverish scribe Of fire and flux, the poem flowing
Too nimbly now, almost indecipherable, Swifter than stuttering flesh can carry or speak: You had been a long time waiting.
Leaving the icons of the temple behind, The waking hour you sought was not A final cadence: a doorway opened
To a familiar but blazing shore and you, Intoning and intoning the hymn, even As the lyre strings snapped, useless:
The eye dazed by light scattered Over the ocean, light enfolded upward As a holy offering, light rising,
Rising from solitary to Solitary: The sun’s radial beams unravelling, eyelid And tripartate universe both flung apart,
Past the penumbra, past The blindness where no shadow stands, Past the irreducible mantra
Eternally spoken from the mouth Of being’s beginning: One one one one—
In a tiny piece of coloured glass my love was born And reds and golds and yellows were the colours of the dawn. Night brought on its purple cloak of velvet to the sky And the gulls go wheeling spinning on Jersey Thursday.
In a tiny piece of coloured glass my love was born And reds and golds and yellows were the colours of the dawn. Night brought on its purple cloak of velvet to the sky And the gulls go wheeling spinning on Jersey Thursday.
I've been feeling down I've been looking round the town For somebody just like me But the only ones I see Are the dummies in the window They spend their money on clothes It saddens me to think That the only ones I see are mannequins Looking stupid, being used and being thin And I don't know why I hang around with them
The way they act, I'd rather be fat than be confused The way they act, I'd rather be fat than be confused Than be me in a cage With a bottle of rage And a family like the mafia
I've been feeling blue And I don't know what to do And I never get a thrill And they threw me out of school 'Cause I swore at all the teachers Because they never teach us A thing I want to know We do Chemistry, Biology and Maths I want Poetry and Music and some laughs And I don't think it's an awful lot to ask
So won't you please get up off your knees, and let me go So won't you please get up off your knees, and let me go Cause I'm here in a cage With a bottle of rage And a family like the mafia
If my family tree goes back to the Romans Then I will change my name to Jones If my family tree goes back to Napolean Then I will change my name to Smith If my family tree goes back to the Romans Then I will change my name to Jones If you're looking at me to be an accountant Then you will look but you will never see If you're looking at me to start having babies Then you can wish because I'm not here to fool around You can wish because I'm not here to fool around You can wish because I'm not here to fool arou
I wrote this rather suddenly in a strange moment of sudden inspiration in late 2011. Its a poem "addressed" to Plotinus, but really using him as the catalyst for something more personal... Its better read aloud...
Good old Plotinus. He is amazing. Nice poem. I can appreciate it although much is over my head.
They pretend to know but no one knows what we know, they say the brainwaves control the highs and the lows, but tell that to the minds that are trying to fight their foes, yo the demons the ghosts as I’m sleeping I float to the high plains, gonna live forever just to see how long time takes, but now I’m back in the real world and I’m irate, animation beams, a generation dreams, but do the youth really take drugs or drugs take teens? I’m 18 and senile but still defy life, and what really defines strife? We’re just lovers in the twilight
No I don’t need no place in this world, I’m happy as I am
I kick flows that make you go woah phat, I’m broke down but won’t crack, tell myself I know that, mind of an old cat, fuck that don’t hold back, just pull out the Prozac, head under a cold tap, lithium trying to find equilibrium to find peace, the bad seed, lost in this world yo the black sheep, I’m lost in this world with dice men and beatniks, just a silhouette in the light off the street bricks, I’m sleepless, but the night breathes a freeness, a freeness you can’t find unless this world is seem-less, I don’t need shit, but don’t know where my life’s at, stood in the limelight but don’t know where the mic’s at
No I don’t need no place in this world, I’m happy as I am
So pull me in and push me out, twisting all the world around, but I know we’ll love again You’ve got one last chance so let it go, animate your twisted bones, and I’ll meet you at the end
No I don’t need no place in this world, I’m happy as I am
Sit up all night with ten fags and a cheap light, lost in the beat, ghosts dance in the streetlight, while you sleep tight I sail the stars at a steep height, bevy ready to lower my health down to knee height, pen full of ink, paper ready for the thoughts I think, I watch the smoke rise lyrics burning up like zinc, remember that bird the other night. Course I didn’t, and I doubt if she remembers me, oxygen deprived, I just sit and watch the embers breathe, 10 to 3, turn on the TV, another Big Brother 24 hour fake reality, read Heat, eat, sleep, watch the cakes and calories, fuck that I’d rather be living in Durkheim’s anomie, natural born killer like Mickey and Mallory, turning ink into gold yo this is alchemy, but I’m trying to find my mind in this twisted animation of life we’re living in
But I don’t need no place in this world, I’m happy as I am
Starlight fell into the eyes of the ancients, stirred the first gropings and tenuous wings. If there were a home for the gods, they claimed, it could only be here, high in these remote heavens, unmoved by human sorrow.
The navigators of antiquity mapped the intricate geometry of stars, planets and mysteries far beyond mortal hands, earnestly traced their own destinies, believed their lives bound with those of the gods.
The stars, as we have known them, guide no one. Yet, on a clear night, without supplication, we still turn toward the same heavens: while the gods have long been absent, the numinous wonder of it all remains.
As I was cleaning today, getting rid of stuff on my way to a minimalist lifestyle I came across a poem my ex wrote me about a year before we broke up. About 4 years old now.
I dont talk to her anymore as she wants nothing to do with me.
I dont want to share the poem, but I was very sad when I read it.
Its funny how powerful words can be. We broke up on a slighty bad note and the poem, for a good 15 mins made me forget all but the good times.
Ive been feeling upset all day....I'll get over it.
When the child was a child It walked with its arms swinging, wanted the brook to be a river, the river to be a torrent, and this puddle to be the sea.
When the child was a child, it didn’t know that it was a child, everything was soulful, and all souls were one.
When the child was a child, it had no opinion about anything, had no habits, it often sat cross-legged, took off running, had a cowlick in its hair, and made no faces when photographed.
When the child was a child, It was the time for these questions: Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Is life under the sun not just a dream? Is what I see and hear and smell not just an illusion of a world before the world? Given the facts of evil and people. does evil really exist? How can it be that I, who I am, didn’t exist before I came to be, and that, someday, I, who I am, will no longer be who I am?
When the child was a child, It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding, and on steamed cauliflower, and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.
When the child was a child, it awoke once in a strange bed, and now does so again and again. Many people, then, seemed beautiful, and now only a few do, by sheer luck.
It had visualized a clear image of Paradise, and now can at most guess, could not conceive of nothingness, and shudders today at the thought.
When the child was a child, It played with enthusiasm, and, now, has just as much excitement as then, but only when it concerns its work.
When the child was a child, It was enough for it to eat an apple, bread, And so it is even now.
When the child was a child, Berries filled its hand as only berries do, and do even now, Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw, and do even now, it had, on every mountaintop, the longing for a higher mountain yet, and in every city, the longing for an even greater city, and that is still so, It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees with an elation it still has today, has a shyness in front of strangers, and has that even now. It awaited the first snow, And waits that way even now.
When the child was a child, It threw a stick like a lance against a tree, And it quivers there still today.
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveler Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange garment Surprised at the earth And the love of one woman And the shamelessness of men As today writing after three days of rain Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease And bowing not knowing to what
Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself— inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars. And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are.
I am the son and the heir Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar I am the son and heir Of nothing in particular
You shut your mouth How can you say I go about things the wrong way I am Human and I need to be loved Just like everybody else does
I am the son And the heir Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar I am the son and heir Of nothing in particular
You shut your mouth How can you say I go about things the wrong way I am Human and I need to be loved Just like everybody else does
There's a club, if you'd like to go You could meet somebody who really loves you So you go, and you stand on your own And you leave on your own And you go home And you cry And you want to die
When you say it's gonna happen now, When exactly do you mean? See I've already waited too long And all my hope is gone
I turn sideways to the sun keep my thoughts from everyone It's a jungle, I'm a freak Hear me talk, but never speak
So I'm stepping out of time because breaking is a crime And it may all be too late but I've no passion for this hate
That's the price of love (that's the price of love) Can you feel it (can you feel it) If we could buy it now (that's the price of love) how long would it last (that's the price of love)
And when this building is on fire these flames can't burn any higher I turn sideways to the sun and in a moment I am gone
That's the price of love (that's the price of love) Can you feel it (can you feel it) If we could buy it now (that's the price of love) how long would it last (that's the price of love)
That's the price of love (that's the price of love) Can you feel it (can you feel it) If we could buy it now (that's the price of love)
Take me out tonight Where there's music and there's people Who are young and alive Driving in your car I never never want to go home Because I haven't got one anymore
Take me out tonight Because I want to see people And I want to see life Driving in your car Oh please don't drop me home Because it's not my home, it's their home And I'm welcome no more
And if a double-decker bus Crashes into us To die by your side Is such a heavenly way to die And if a ten ton truck Kills the both of us To die by your side Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine
Take me out tonight Take me anywhere, I don't care I don't care, I don't care And in the darkened underpass I thought Oh God, my chance has come at last But then a strange fear gripped me And I just couldn't ask
Take me out tonight Oh take me anywhere, I don't care I don't care, I don't care Driving in your car I never never want to go home Because I haven't got one No, I haven't got one
And if a double-decker bus Crashes in to us To die by your side Is such a heavenly way to die And if a ten ton truck Kills the both of us To die by your side Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine
There is a light that never goes out There is a light that never goes out There is a light that never goes out There is a light that never goes out
"I am thy soul, Nikoptis. I have watched These five millennia, and they dead eyes Moved not, nor ever answer my desire, And thy light limbs, wherethrough I leapt aflame, Burn not with me nor any saffron thing.
See, the light grass sprang up to pillow thee, And kissed thee with a myriad grassy tongues; But not thou me.
I have read out the gold upon the wall, And wearied out my thought upon the signs. And there is no new thing in all this place.
I have been kind. See, I have left the jars sealed, Lest thou shouldst wake and whimper for thy wine. And all they robes I have kept smooth on thee.
O thou unmindful! How should I forget! --Even the river many days ago, The river, thou wast over young. And three souls came upon Thee -
And I came. And I flowed in upon thee, beat them off; I have been intimate with thee, known thy ways. Have I not touched thy palms and finger-tips, Flowed in, and through thee and about thy heels? How 'came I in'? Was I not thee and Thee?
And no sun comes to rest me in this place, And I am torn against the jagged dark, And no light beats upon me, and you say No word, day after day.
Oh! I could get me out, despite the marks And all their crafty work upon the door, Out through the glass-green fields . . . .
O him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;-- Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around-- Earth and her waters, and the depths of air-- Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings, The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods; rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all, Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,-- Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there: And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man-- Shall one by one be gathered to thy side By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves To that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
"Thanatopsis" is reprinted from Yale Book of American Verse. Ed. Thomas R. Lounsbury. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912.
Lovely poems! Well, I'll add to the theme of mortality:
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names, and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others fall: again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, lie down again and again among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end.
We live in our own world, A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge. And though you probe and pry With analytic eye, And eavesdrop all our talk With an amused look, You cannot find the centre Where we dance, where we play, Where life is still asleep Under the closed flower, Under the smooth shell Of eggs in the cupped nest That mock the faded blue Of your remoter heaven.
Watched Sylvia last night, which inspired me to write this.
"forgetfulness"
I'd forgotten the love and the passion and the promises the selfishness the lies and the beautiful way you have of telling them It feels like I'd waited for you for eternity then one day you were just there as if you'd fell from heaven like a bolt of lightning rending my life asunder And I was willingly deceived Because I understood you I saw into your soul your pain your lust your despair your childlike innocence your insatiable desire to be acknowledged It was as if we were one In you I saw my reflection and I was seduced We were cut from the same cloth Almost as if we were meant to be the other's undoing Our passion was like the fires of hell unquenchable merciless And their all-consuming flames made our betrayals that much sweeter I'd forgotten Because it was the only way to survive without you Remembering was like a tidal wave of emotions smashing down upon my fragile countenance again and again with such savage and unrelenting fury I was completely shattered And my sole yearning was to forget once more the love and the passion and the promises the selfishness the lies and the beautiful way you have of telling them To sail down the river of forgetfulness and crash into the waiting arms of oblivion
…all is transformed, all is sacred, every room is the center of the world, it’s still the first night, and the first day, the world is born when two people kiss, a drop of light from transparent juices, the room cracks half-open like a fruit or explodes in silence like a star, and the laws chewed away by the rats, the iron bars of the banks and jails, the paper bars, the barbed wire, the rubber stamps, the pricks and goads, the droning one-note sermon on war, the mellifluous scorpion in a cap and gown, the top-hatted tiger, chairman of the board of the Red Cross and the Vegetarian Society, the schoolmaster donkey, the crocodile cast in the role of savior, father of the people, the Boss, the shark, the architect of the future, the uniformed pig, the favorite son of the Church who washes his blackened dentures in holy water and takes classes in civics and conversational English, the invisible walls, the rotten masks that divide one man from another, one man from himself, they crumble for one enormous moment and we glimpse the unity that we lost, the desolation of being man, and all its glories, sharing bread and sun and death, the forgotten astonishment of being alive;
to love is to battle, if two kiss the world changes, desires take flesh, thoughts take flesh, wings sprout on the backs of the slave, the world is real and tangible, wine is wine, bread regains its savor, water is water, to love is to battle, to open doors, to cease to be a ghost with a number forever in chains, forever condemned by a faceless master; the world changes if two look at each other and see, to love is to undress our names…
A few words I just sent to my mrs, sunday evening blues when she goes back to her house and I'm still here at mine. Hopefully soon my house will sell and we can be together properly.
Every time you leave me I feel empty inside, I know my place in life is by your side, It doesn't matter what we do or where we go, My love, respect and appreciation for you only grows,
I miss you my darling, I feel it in my heart, I want to be with you and never apart, Come share your life with me and I'll be your man, To love you and cherish you, to cuddle and hold hands.
not much chance, completely cut loose from purpose, he was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere and it began to snow and the bus stopped at a little cafe in the hills and the passengers entered. he sat at the counter with the others, he ordered and the food arrived. the meal was particularly good and the coffee. the waitress was unlike the women he had known. she was unaffected, there was a natural humor which came from her. the fry cook said crazy things. the dishwasher. in back, laughed, a good clean pleasant laugh. the young man watched the snow through the windows. he wanted to stay in that cafe forever. the curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there, that it would always stay beautiful there. then the bus driver told the passengers that it was time to board. the young man thought, I'll just sit here, I'll just stay here. but then he rose and followed the others into the bus. he found his seat and looked at the cafe through the bus window. then the bus moved off, down a curve, downward, out of the hills. the young man looked straight forward. he heard the other passengers speaking of other things, or they were reading or attempting to sleep. they had not noticed the magic. the young man put his head to one side, closed his eyes, pretended to sleep. there was nothing else to do- just to listen to the sound of the engine, the sound of the tires in the snow.
Sunflower Sutra I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry. Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery. The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily. Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust-- --I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past-- and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye-- corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb, leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear, Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then! The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives, all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial-- modern--all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown-- and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos--all these entangled in your mummied roots--and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form! A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze! How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul? Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive? You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower! And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not! So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter, and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul too, and anyone who'll listen, --We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed by our own seed & golden hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision. Allen Ginsberg
And an old priest said, 'Speak to us of Religion.' And he said: Have I spoken this day of aught else? Is not religion all deeds and all reflection, And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom? Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations? Who can spread his hours before him, saying, 'This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?' All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self. He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked. The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin. And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage. The freest song comes not through bars and wires. And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn. Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all. Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute, The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight. For in revery you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures. And take with you all men: For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair. And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.
-Khalil Gibran -------------------------- Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours. you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals: not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me instantly -- you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath.
Here's one of my own online book of poetry. By the way you don't have to buy the book as I have made the settings so you can just read, as for me my poetry is a gift of thought to my fellow human beings.
Hey guys, really cool thread - love it @riverflow, superb stuff of your own, and so many other talented writers too :-)
Here is a link to a Buddhist blog I've been doing for a while, specifically thought I'd share this link as it's to a poem I wrote in Sarnath (the birthplace of Buddhism) whilst on pilgrimage last year. The post talks briefly talks about the pilgrimage and different reflections as I come up to the anniversary etc...
The poem itself is here, just incase anyone has problems with mobile devices etc...
"Say What You Like..."
The Indian roads, it's true, are Nothing if not splendid and They are not splendid.
Rarely great, Potholed and piss-poor, The barely-tarmaced high seas throw up Clouds of noxious dust. Death-wish Drivers with Dashboard Divinities, Seemingly looking to Meet their maker, (Ahead of schedule and Face-first, Through the windscreen) Flashing past induce Involuntary profanity as we Loose the other wing-mirror...
Time-forgotten towns with neither name nor hope, Destitution interspersed with Incongruous serenity, Rice fields and respite.
Drawn ever deeper you push on, Surely not far to go now? 100 miles, and ten times as many Minutes to master. The constant lurching motion wreaking Havoc on senses unguarded, Frayed into bug-eyed delirium from successive "sleeps", On equally fractious beds.
Oh, and then at night there are the trains... Or the traffic. Or a Whitsun Wedding. Or a blearily bleating unwatched tv. Or hounds, hopelessly howling, Pissing and shitting themselves lifeless, (Not unlike their owners, should either be so lucky!)
Or all of the above.
At once.
I remember sleep. - I used to have it.
But say what you like: The trains exhilarate, The dogs (almost) never growl, The traffic is awareness personified, and The people always smile, (Once YOU have made the effort first). The food is always phenomenal, The company exemplary, The price is always right, or less..
Here amongst the scattered dreams of yesteryear, Cast aside like old grain, You find India; Wonderfully woeful at times, But with a persistent insistence to lend her assistance, And extend Grace and Gratitude's slender brown hands.
In destitution lies hope, In riches, the void. In Sarnath, my heart...
Awww...I miss him here. Since I got a couple PM's about @riverflow, I'll pass on the message here. He's fine....just on a Sabbatical... Getting poetry written and dealing with a case of pink eye. Ouch...... Metta to you Josh. May you come back well.
This is a collaboration between myself and Francis de Aguilar I wrote and recited the poem whilst Francis composed the excellent music and arranged the piece and produced this video.
We did this to support and raise awareness of Aftermath PTSD...
So please if you could share this video, to help raise awareness of about PTSD, so that suffers will know that their not alone and that folk really care.
Comments
And be off key!
Abandon sacred
Harmony.
Sing loud and in
That singing see
The untamed heart,
This smile in me.
I tangled with
the world to
let it go
but couldn’t free
it: so I made
words
to wrestle in my
stead and went
off silent to
the quick flow
of brooks, the
slow flow of stone
~ A.R. Ammons
Holy being! I’ve often disturbed
Your divine and golden repose;
And you’ve heard much of life’s
Deeper, more secret pains from me.
Forget it, forgive me! Like the clouds drifting
By the peaceful moon, I too pass away,
And you rest, radiant once more
In all your beauty, O sweet sweet light!
~ Friedrich Hölderlin
(translated by Nick Hoff)
And, baffled by dispair, made his complaint:
"The devil is a highwayman, a thief,
Who's ruined me and robbed me of belief."
The saint replied, "Young man, the devil too
Has made his way here to compain, of you.
'My province is the world,' I heard him say;
'Tell this new pilgrim of God's holy way
To keep his hands off what is mine; if I
Attack him it's because his fingers pry
In my affairs; if he will leave me be,
He's no concern of mine and can go free.'"
(Attar)
For Dmitri Shostakovich
It creates miracles.
In its eyes limits are defined.
It alone talks with me
when others are afraid to come near,
when the last friend has turned his eyes away.
It was with me in my grave
and sang like the first storm,
or as though all the flowers had burst into speech.
~ Anna Akhmatova
[translator unknown]
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
And it was at that age… poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, not silence,
but from a street it called me,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among raging fires
or returning alone,
there it was, without a face,
and it touched me.
I didn’t know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind.
Something knocked in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first, faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing;
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
the darkness perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire, and flowers,
the overpowering night, the universe.
And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose with the wind.
~ Pablo Neruda
(translated by Alastair Reid)
... I love that line: "fever or forgotten wings" (!!!)
I wrote this rather suddenly in a strange moment of sudden inspiration in late 2011. Its a poem "addressed" to Plotinus, but really using him as the catalyst for something more personal... Its better read aloud...
RETURN: AN ODE
"I am striving to give back the Divine in myself
to the Divine in the All." ~ Plotinus
I
Fallen from Solitary to solitary:
What was that first image
To stir your singular eye
From sleep of inchoate multiplicity,
A shoreline swept away into dark oceans,
Never to return?
Facing a greater harmony,
The polyphony of movement
Recollected in the mind’s ear,
Beauty reflected herself in remote
Music—reflected again in silence:
What kept calling you on?
No echo of your name—it was
Beyond name: in the earth,
In the veins of the leaf,
In the raincloud, in the sun,
The light behind the light. One
Glimpse of the insistent thread
Gleaming in the labyrinthine world,
And you could not but follow, retrace
Footsteps yours and not yours.
An odyssey eastward, then inward
And back again, a cartographer of the soul
And the Soul, you returned
With maps of kosmos and microkosmos,
The numinous vision:
Not theory, but θεωρία.
II
Not the lotus, but its enfolding.
It mirrors the plenary world
Within its own emptiness.
I will not speak the icon’s silence,
The hidden breath in flower and fruit:
The unseen radix.
But the root was a door, and the door
Was a sun—and where is there not
This articulate luminescence,
Each expressed word a single Word?
Upon its threshold, I felt a hunger
Far older than an orphaned infant’s cry.
Not the lotus, but the dream of the lotus,
Asleep in every hand. A pathway.
The North Star.
I will not offer an image of an image
Of the imageless—the marble stone
Masks the divine face beyond
And within every face: emerging
Forth, will I learn at last to see
The transparency with its eyes?
Hear the primeval wind with its ears?
Speak the Logos with its tongue?
I have been a long time waiting.
Not the dream of the lotus, but
The perfect flame, perfectly still, a flower
Completely and simply: lotus.
III
And yet we could not sustain
Your intenser gaze, enticed by claims
Of facsimiled truths—or, drowned in aporia.
Ascent was all: cut away
Everything. Failing eyesight, feverish scribe
Of fire and flux, the poem flowing
Too nimbly now, almost indecipherable,
Swifter than stuttering flesh can carry or speak:
You had been a long time waiting.
Leaving the icons of the temple behind,
The waking hour you sought was not
A final cadence: a doorway opened
To a familiar but blazing shore and you,
Intoning and intoning the hymn, even
As the lyre strings snapped, useless:
The eye dazed by light scattered
Over the ocean, light enfolded upward
As a holy offering, light rising,
Rising from solitary to Solitary:
The sun’s radial beams unravelling, eyelid
And tripartate universe both flung apart,
Past the penumbra, past
The blindness where no shadow stands,
Past the irreducible mantra
Eternally spoken from the mouth
Of being’s beginning:
One one one one—
One.
~ Joshua Sellers
Donovan
From the album fairytale
In a tiny piece of coloured glass my love was born
And reds and golds and yellows were the colours of the dawn.
Night brought on its purple cloak of velvet to the sky
And the gulls go wheeling spinning on Jersey Thursday.
In a tiny piece of coloured glass my love was born
And reds and golds and yellows were the colours of the dawn.
Night brought on its purple cloak of velvet to the sky
And the gulls go wheeling spinning on Jersey Thursday.
I've been feeling down
I've been looking round the town
For somebody just like me
But the only ones I see
Are the dummies in the window
They spend their money on clothes
It saddens me to think
That the only ones I see are mannequins
Looking stupid, being used and being thin
And I don't know why I hang around with them
The way they act, I'd rather be fat than be confused
The way they act, I'd rather be fat than be confused
Than be me in a cage
With a bottle of rage
And a family like the mafia
I've been feeling blue
And I don't know what to do
And I never get a thrill
And they threw me out of school
'Cause I swore at all the teachers
Because they never teach us
A thing I want to know
We do Chemistry, Biology and Maths
I want Poetry and Music and some laughs
And I don't think it's an awful lot to ask
So won't you please get up off your knees, and let me go
So won't you please get up off your knees, and let me go
Cause I'm here in a cage
With a bottle of rage
And a family like the mafia
If my family tree goes back to the Romans
Then I will change my name to Jones
If my family tree goes back to Napolean
Then I will change my name to Smith
If my family tree goes back to the Romans
Then I will change my name to Jones
If you're looking at me to be an accountant
Then you will look but you will never see
If you're looking at me to start having babies
Then you can wish because I'm not here to fool around
You can wish because I'm not here to fool around
You can wish because I'm not here to fool arou
Twisted Animation
They pretend to know but no one knows what we know,
they say the brainwaves control the highs and the lows,
but tell that to the minds that are trying to fight their foes,
yo the demons the ghosts as I’m sleeping I float to the high plains,
gonna live forever just to see how long time takes,
but now I’m back in the real world and I’m irate,
animation beams, a generation dreams,
but do the youth really take drugs or drugs take teens?
I’m 18 and senile but still defy life, and what really defines strife?
We’re just lovers in the twilight
No I don’t need no place in this world, I’m happy as I am
I kick flows that make you go woah phat,
I’m broke down but won’t crack,
tell myself I know that, mind of an old cat, fuck that don’t hold back,
just pull out the Prozac, head under a cold tap,
lithium trying to find equilibrium to find peace,
the bad seed, lost in this world yo the black sheep,
I’m lost in this world with dice men and beatniks,
just a silhouette in the light off the street bricks,
I’m sleepless, but the night breathes a freeness,
a freeness you can’t find unless this world is seem-less,
I don’t need shit, but don’t know where my life’s at,
stood in the limelight but don’t know where the mic’s at
No I don’t need no place in this world, I’m happy as I am
So pull me in and push me out, twisting all the world around,
but I know we’ll love again
You’ve got one last chance so let it go, animate your twisted bones,
and I’ll meet you at the end
No I don’t need no place in this world, I’m happy as I am
Sit up all night with ten fags and a cheap light,
lost in the beat, ghosts dance in the streetlight,
while you sleep tight I sail the stars at a steep height,
bevy ready to lower my health down to knee height,
pen full of ink, paper ready for the thoughts I think,
I watch the smoke rise lyrics burning up like zinc,
remember that bird the other night. Course I didn’t,
and I doubt if she remembers me,
oxygen deprived, I just sit and watch the embers breathe,
10 to 3, turn on the TV, another Big Brother 24 hour fake reality,
read Heat, eat, sleep, watch the cakes and calories,
fuck that I’d rather be living in Durkheim’s anomie,
natural born killer like Mickey and Mallory,
turning ink into gold yo this is alchemy,
but I’m trying to find my mind in this twisted animation of life we’re living in
But I don’t need no place in this world, I’m happy as I am
THE HEAVENS DECLARE
Starlight fell into the eyes of the ancients,
stirred the first gropings and tenuous wings.
If there were a home for the gods, they claimed,
it could only be here, high in these remote
heavens, unmoved by human sorrow.
The navigators of antiquity mapped
the intricate geometry of stars, planets and
mysteries far beyond mortal hands,
earnestly traced their own destinies, believed
their lives bound with those of the gods.
The stars, as we have known them, guide no one.
Yet, on a clear night, without supplication,
we still turn toward the same heavens:
while the gods have long been absent,
the numinous wonder of it all remains.
~ Joshua Sellers
I dont talk to her anymore as she wants nothing to do with me.
I dont want to share the poem, but I was very sad when I read it.
Its funny how powerful words can be. We broke up on a slighty bad note and the poem, for a good 15 mins made me forget all but the good times.
Ive been feeling upset all day....I'll get over it.
When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.
When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.
When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.
When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?
When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.
When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.
It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.
When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.
When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, bread,
And so it is even now.
When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.
When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.
~ Peter Handke
...from Wim Winders' film Wings of Desire.
Out of the debris of dying stars,
this rain of particles
that waters the waste with brightness…
The sea-wave of atoms hurrying home,
collapse of the giant,
unstable guest who cannot stay…
The sun’s heart reddens and expands,
his mighty aspiration is lasting,
as the shell of his substance
one day will be white with frost.
In the radiant field of Orion
great hordes of stars are forming,
just as we see every night,
fiery and faithful to the end.
Out of the cold and fleeing dust
that is never and always,
the silence and waste to come…
This arm, this hand,
my voice, your face, this love.
~ John Haines
His story of glory
sat under a tree,
Unbehooved* to move
not even to pee.
He was clear of fear
and free from desire,
His camp it was blank
not even a fire.
No water did swig beneath that great fig
that one who would find,
That most noble of treasures
the key to the mind.
The surprise in your eyes
at this poem to know,
Not the drama of Gotama
but a sheep named Bob Snow.
*creative license.
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what
~W.S. Merwin
Climb these silent hills,
face this ocean, inhuman:
brittle light splintering
against the forehead:
clutching a handful
of stillborn words,
there remains only
the lucid trail ahead,
crawling through
these wrecked eyelids:
how much there is
to unspeak, to unremember,
to unravel the bitter secret
of a mute star.
Joshua Sellers
Christchurch, New Zealand
April 2007
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
~ Mark Strand
I am the son
and the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
Of nothing in particular
You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does
I am the son
And the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
Of nothing in particular
You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does
There's a club, if you'd like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go, and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home
And you cry
And you want to die
When you say it's gonna happen now,
When exactly do you mean?
See I've already waited too long
And all my hope is gone
~Morrissey
New Order
I turn sideways to the sun
keep my thoughts from everyone
It's a jungle, I'm a freak
Hear me talk, but never speak
So I'm stepping out of time
because breaking is a crime
And it may all be too late
but I've no passion for this hate
That's the price of love (that's the price of love)
Can you feel it (can you feel it)
If we could buy it now (that's the price of love)
how long would it last (that's the price of love)
And when this building is on fire
these flames can't burn any higher
I turn sideways to the sun
and in a moment I am gone
That's the price of love (that's the price of love)
Can you feel it (can you feel it)
If we could buy it now (that's the price of love)
how long would it last (that's the price of love)
That's the price of love (that's the price of love)
Can you feel it (can you feel it)
If we could buy it now (that's the price of love)
There is a Light and it Never Goes Out
Morrissey
Take me out tonight
Where there's music and there's people
Who are young and alive
Driving in your car
I never never want to go home
Because I haven't got one anymore
Take me out tonight
Because I want to see people
And I want to see life
Driving in your car
Oh please don't drop me home
Because it's not my home, it's their home
And I'm welcome no more
And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine
Take me out tonight
Take me anywhere, I don't care
I don't care, I don't care
And in the darkened underpass
I thought Oh God, my chance has come at last
But then a strange fear gripped me
And I just couldn't ask
Take me out tonight
Oh take me anywhere, I don't care
I don't care, I don't care
Driving in your car
I never never want to go home
Because I haven't got one
No, I haven't got one
And if a double-decker bus
Crashes in to us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine
There is a light that never goes out
There is a light that never goes out
There is a light that never goes out
There is a light that never goes out
- Ezra Pound
"I am thy soul, Nikoptis. I have watched
These five millennia, and they dead eyes
Moved not, nor ever answer my desire,
And thy light limbs, wherethrough I leapt aflame,
Burn not with me nor any saffron thing.
See, the light grass sprang up to pillow thee,
And kissed thee with a myriad grassy tongues;
But not thou me.
I have read out the gold upon the wall,
And wearied out my thought upon the signs.
And there is no new thing in all this place.
I have been kind. See, I have left the jars sealed,
Lest thou shouldst wake and whimper for thy wine.
And all they robes I have kept smooth on thee.
O thou unmindful! How should I forget!
--Even the river many days ago,
The river, thou wast over young.
And three souls came upon Thee -
And I came.
And I flowed in upon thee, beat them off;
I have been intimate with thee, known thy ways.
Have I not touched thy palms and finger-tips,
Flowed in, and through thee and about thy heels?
How 'came I in'? Was I not thee and Thee?
And no sun comes to rest me in this place,
And I am torn against the jagged dark,
And no light beats upon me, and you say
No word, day after day.
Oh! I could get me out, despite the marks
And all their crafty work upon the door,
Out through the glass-green fields . . . .
...
Yet it is quiet here:
I do not go."
by: William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
O him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
"Thanatopsis" is reprinted from Yale Book of American Verse. Ed. Thomas R. Lounsbury. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912.
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
- William Shakespeare
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.
~ R.S. Thomas
roast the dragon of hell for me
Cecil
throw the atheist into heaven
and bananas into porridge
for me Cecil
for me
you have no head and peer
Cecil
the clowns rattle their cages
starving ghosties, fed up on blood
sweat and years
You are Nothing to me
and I am everything for You
:vimp:
doing nothing
Spring comes
the grass grows by itself.'
Basho. 1644-1694.
"forgetfulness"
I'd forgotten
the love and the passion and the promises
the selfishness
the lies
and the beautiful way you have of telling them
It feels like I'd waited for you for eternity
then one day
you were just there
as if you'd fell from heaven like a bolt of lightning
rending my life
asunder
And I was willingly deceived
Because I understood you
I saw into your soul
your pain
your lust
your despair
your childlike innocence
your insatiable desire to be acknowledged
It was as if we were one
In you I saw my reflection
and I was
seduced
We were cut from the same cloth
Almost as if we were meant to be
the other's
undoing
Our passion was like the fires of hell
unquenchable
merciless
And their all-consuming flames made our betrayals
that much sweeter
I'd forgotten
Because it was the only way to survive
without
you
Remembering was like a tidal wave of emotions
smashing down upon my fragile countenance
again and again
with such savage and unrelenting fury
I was completely
shattered
And my sole yearning was to forget
once more
the love and the passion and the promises
the selfishness
the lies
and the beautiful way you have of telling them
To sail down the river of forgetfulness
and crash
into the waiting arms
of oblivion
a song
sung me
strung me
noted tuneless, chorded, strummed
a song
played me
heard silent melody
fretting
a lute, a flute
a rhythm away
sound
a way silence
Listen
Listen
you are singing
Singing
…all is transformed, all is sacred,
every room is the center of the world,
it’s still the first night, and the first day,
the world is born when two people kiss,
a drop of light from transparent juices,
the room cracks half-open like a fruit
or explodes in silence like a star,
and the laws chewed away by the rats,
the iron bars of the banks and jails,
the paper bars, the barbed wire,
the rubber stamps, the pricks and goads,
the droning one-note sermon on war,
the mellifluous scorpion in a cap and gown,
the top-hatted tiger, chairman of the board
of the Red Cross and the Vegetarian Society,
the schoolmaster donkey, the crocodile cast
in the role of savior, father of the people,
the Boss, the shark, the architect of the future,
the uniformed pig, the favorite son
of the Church who washes his blackened dentures
in holy water and takes classes in civics
and conversational English, the invisible walls,
the rotten masks that divide one man
from another, one man from himself,
they crumble
for one enormous moment and we glimpse
the unity that we lost, the desolation
of being man, and all its glories,
sharing bread and sun and death,
the forgotten astonishment of being alive;
to love is to battle, if two kiss
the world changes, desires take flesh,
thoughts take flesh, wings sprout
on the backs of the slave, the world is real
and tangible, wine is wine, bread
regains its savor, water is water,
to love is to battle, to open doors,
to cease to be a ghost with a number
forever in chains, forever condemned
by a faceless master;
the world changes
if two look at each other and see,
to love is to undress our names…
~ Octavio Paz
Horses have four legs birds but only two.
Every time you leave me I feel empty inside,
I know my place in life is by your side,
It doesn't matter what we do or where we go,
My love, respect and appreciation for you only grows,
I miss you my darling, I feel it in my heart,
I want to be with you and never apart,
Come share your life with me and I'll be your man,
To love you and cherish you, to cuddle and hold hands.
not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the way to somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers
entered.
he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the
food arrived.
the meal was
particularly
good
and the
coffee.
the waitress was
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a natural
humor which came
from her.
the fry cook said
crazy things.
the dishwasher.
in back,
laughed, a good
clean
pleasant
laugh.
the young man watched
the snow through the
windows.
he wanted to stay
in that cafe
forever.
the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was
beautiful
there,
that it would always
stay beautiful
there.
then the bus driver
told the passengers
that it was time
to board.
the young man
thought, I'll just sit
here, I'll just stay
here.
but then
he rose and followed
the others into the
bus.
he found his seat
and looked at the cafe
through the bus
window.
then the bus moved
off, down a curve,
downward, out of
the hills.
the young man
looked straight
forward.
he heard the other
passengers
speaking
of other things,
or they were
reading
or
attempting to
sleep.
they had not
noticed
the
magic.
the young man
put his head to
one side,
closed his
eyes,
pretended to
sleep.
there was nothing
else to do-
just to listen to the
sound of the
engine,
the sound of the
tires
in the
snow.
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,
surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves
rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes
Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black
treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel
knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck
and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog
and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays
obliterated on its hairy head like a dried
wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human
locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance
of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
modern--all that civilization spotting your
crazy golden crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
more could I name, the smoked ashes of some
cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the
milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs
& sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye
to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
grime, while you cursed the heavens of the
railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
flower? when did you look at your skin and
decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?
the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and
shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck
it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul
too, and anyone who'll listen,
--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed
by our own seed & golden hairy naked
accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black
formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our
eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening
sitdown vision.
Allen Ginsberg
Berkeley, 1955
[LINK]
And he said:
Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, 'This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?'
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self.
He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute,
The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.
For in revery you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.
And take with you all men:
For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.
And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.
-Khalil Gibran
--------------------------
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but
vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me
instantly --
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.
-Kabir
middle of me
and I can do nothing
but become the moon.”
— Nayyirah Waheed
bookemon.com/book-profile/night-waves/321168
A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.
L. In valleys of springs of rivers
Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun.
IN valleys of springs of rivers,
By Ony and Teme and Clun,
The country for easy livers,
The quietest under the sun,
We still had sorrows to lighten,
One could not be always glad,
And lads knew trouble at Knighton
When I was a Knighton lad.
By bridges that Thames runs under,
In London, the town built ill,
’Tis sure small matter for wonder
If sorrow is with one still.
And if as a lad grows older
The troubles he bears are more,
He carries his griefs on a shoulder
That handselled them long before.
Where shall one halt to deliver
This luggage I ’d lief set down?
Not Thames, not Teme is the river,
Nor London nor Knighton the town:
’Tis a long way further than Knighton,
A quieter place than Clun,
Where doomsday may thunder and lighten
And little ’twill matter to one.
You hurt me with your words
I liked you
You hurt me with your hands
I liked you
You came to me at night
You liked me
You whispered to me sweetly
You liked me
They hurt me with their words
I liked them
They hurt me with their hands
I liked them
They came to me at night
They liked me
They whispered to me sweetly
They liked me
I hurt you with my words
You loved me
I hurt you with my hands
You loved me
You came to me at night
I hurt you
You whispered to me sweetly
I hurt you
You left
It hurts to understand
Here is a link to a Buddhist blog I've been doing for a while, specifically thought I'd share this link as it's to a poem I wrote in Sarnath (the birthplace of Buddhism) whilst on pilgrimage last year. The post talks briefly talks about the pilgrimage and different reflections as I come up to the anniversary etc...
thedharma-farmer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/back-to-business-dharma-farmer-walks.html
The poem itself is here, just incase anyone has problems with mobile devices etc...
"Say What You Like..."
The Indian roads, it's true, are
Nothing if not splendid and
They are not splendid.
Rarely great,
Potholed and piss-poor,
The barely-tarmaced high seas throw up
Clouds of noxious dust.
Death-wish Drivers with
Dashboard Divinities,
Seemingly looking to
Meet their maker,
(Ahead of schedule and
Face-first,
Through the windscreen)
Flashing past induce
Involuntary profanity as we
Loose the other wing-mirror...
Time-forgotten towns with neither name nor hope,
Destitution interspersed with
Incongruous serenity,
Rice fields and respite.
Drawn ever deeper you push on,
Surely not far to go now?
100 miles, and ten times as many
Minutes to master.
The constant lurching motion wreaking
Havoc on senses unguarded,
Frayed into bug-eyed delirium from successive "sleeps",
On equally fractious beds.
Oh, and then at night there are the trains...
Or the traffic.
Or a Whitsun Wedding.
Or a blearily bleating unwatched tv.
Or hounds, hopelessly howling,
Pissing and shitting themselves lifeless,
(Not unlike their owners, should either be so lucky!)
Or all of the above.
At once.
I remember sleep.
- I used to have it.
But say what you like:
The trains exhilarate,
The dogs (almost) never growl,
The traffic is awareness personified, and
The people always smile,
(Once YOU have made the effort first).
The food is always phenomenal,
The company exemplary,
The price is always right, or less..
Here amongst the scattered dreams of yesteryear,
Cast aside like old grain,
You find India;
Wonderfully woeful at times,
But with a persistent insistence to lend her assistance,
And extend Grace and Gratitude's slender brown hands.
In destitution lies hope,
In riches, the void.
In Sarnath, my heart...
Since I got a couple PM's about @riverflow, I'll pass on
the message here. He's fine....just on a Sabbatical...
Getting poetry written and dealing with a case of pink
eye. Ouch...... Metta to you Josh.
May you come back well.
This is a collaboration between myself and Francis de Aguilar
I wrote and recited the poem whilst Francis composed the excellent music and arranged the piece and produced this video.
We did this to support and raise awareness of Aftermath PTSD...
So please if you could share this video, to help raise awareness of about PTSD, so that suffers will know that their not alone and that folk really care.
Thank you.