Mind
Isolation Ward
Listen to how music
From across a still distance
Exercises both body and soul
As ripples of a needed newness
Redistribute their effects
Throughout the structure
Of my once disturbed
Conscious mind.
Thoughts of a Tightrope Walker
In a moment of indecision
The body sags
And flagpoles everywhere
Vibrate slowly with the Earth.
There is a problem
Caused by
Nothing
Surrounding the full stop.
Which each of us solves
As Creation
Once again
Creates.
Shock Waves
Shock waves
Coming from a new
Idea
Bridge the gap
Unbridged so far.
Time,
Once understood
Stands still.
And all the World
A Statue stands.
Me?
Velvet incredibilities tingling the mind
As sunlight catches mica in a paving stone.
Is this me, a mirror? Such silence here,
Such silence as gives birth to worlds
Unfolding in complexity.
And then creation’s catalytic itch
Throws out the answer once again:
In joy did thought first tremulous break
The quiet surface of mind’s still lake
To bring “me” into being.
Inside
Miira meditating. Photo Geoff Gay
In my wild garden
No part is played
By the toothed cog-wheel
Of the ticking clock.
There answers float
Like feathered seeds
Upon chance breezes.
For no time holds
As dear as this
The urges of my life
As each to my centre falls,
And falling folds,
And folding makes complete
That ancient wholeness.
Ode to Patangali
from the Planck telescope. ESA and the Planck Collaboration.
This golden egg of ripples now
We know we are a part of
Hanging in itself alone
Kaleidoscope of thought forms
Your sutras stitch the rule’s delight
I’m facing more than me now
And when the mind stuff settles down
Attention finds its form’s request
And miracles are mine now.
I Dreamed
And I dreamed…
I was spinning out into black space
where new born stars flare into joy
and fiery life.
There in deepest dark silence far beyond familiar things I was without orient while all around hissed the sum of all possibilities.
It was there after time had taken slow revenge on all that choses to limit itself
and the emptiness of lonely weariness had ceased to be separate from my own failings,
it came to me that I was inside myself and the stars were my thoughts
and time was my game
and space was my house
and history was my story
and the galaxies were the feelings I had left behind and the feelings I was going towards
and the moons were my unbending
and my failing to hide forever my joy
and the planets were my heart beats
and lovely to land upon
and the seas were my freedom
and the islands my hesitations in a flow of purpose and the fishes were my tounges
and the trees my grateful breath
and their greenness my cool restfulness
and the people were my friends
and also parts of myself
and I remembered the parts of my sleeping body, stretched, and awoke with a smile……
Such is the truth only not everyone knows it.
Remembering
In a heat haze
Each ripple an envelope
containing a dream.
Not a place or space
Better a roaring bliss
Issuing from nothing
and re-minding me.
I Write
I always write a step back
Making space for a process
A sort of glancing focus
To show me myself.
This is not innocence
Nor even spontaneity
But rather a habit
I had no need to learn.
Q.E.D.
Reveal
A veil
Remind
Re-mind
Remember
Re-member
Integrate
Understand
Understood
Realise
Real-ise
Cognisance
Cognate
Cognition
Cogito
ergo…
The High Wire
Bliss is the high wire
That sings the high note
That lifts the human heart
On rapid wings
To the limitless abundance
Of its birthright.
Hélas
Opening this paper to the light,
We find an open verdict
That informs the soul
Of uncertain portents.
And I, unredeemed and disparate,
Face a bifurcated void.
Hélas! for primordial Greek sunshine.
Reflections in a Bubble
The fair feelings,
the lovelinesses of your own time,
the landscapes and occasions
of your joy,
all are from yourself and of yourself,
your own creations always,
thus all nostalgia and deepest loss
come melting home to rest.
Da Capo
Coming into
again, and again,
eternally,
this life,
Putting on
without scruples,
without effort,
ineluctably,
this glove,
Entering
without judgment,
without fear,
seamlessly,
this new body.
Collapsing…
without losing,
without changing
joyfully,
this boundless freedom.
Discovering…
without limiting,
without compromising,
completely,
this original onlyness.
Coming into …
again
and again,
eternally,
this life.
To Be
In the night-room,
When my heart beats slow,
And darkness fogs the corners.
When all the questions are stark and bare,
When “I am” is all that matters:
Then you will find me brave and alone,
In a trap beyond comprehension.
In a tangle that makes it impossible to be,
And impossible to leave –
The night-room.
Pegasus
The bell tolls
and the planes and spirals
of this sound
sweep and turn
through the spaces and fibres
of my brain,
and all the fixtures and forces
of the stable world
seem as far below me
as houses from an aeroplane,
as I cling barely seated
to this bucking horse
and cry:
My God, I can see You in all this,
You clever, clever One!
Fifty Years
Fifty years to realise
By the simple assumption of silence
That there is no significance
Without connection to the Whole.
That without reference to the Source
All is fact not meaning
All is machine-determined and purposeless
And purpose itself without definition
And a lifetime of thinking
Did not answer the real questions.
And a lifetime of thinking
Did not answer the real questions.
Just one moment to realise
By the simple assumption of silence
That it is impossible
To directly connect completely
With the manifold
That attention can only map to a point
That a mind can only refer to its source
And only through the source to the manfold.
Thus the world is only valued from the Source.
And Wisdom is eternally ready-made in Being.
And a lifetime of thinking
Did not answer the real questions.
And a lifetime of thinking
Did not answer the real questions.
Focal Point
As I have come
Into existence,
Then I am,
Inevitably,
A focal point
For coherent perception.
And all that I perceive,
Because coherent,
Is inevitably Unity
Unity inevitably Symmetry
Symmetry inevitably Tautology
Tautology inevitably Truth.
I become – because I am
Joy Came
Joy came…
stepping lightly, lightly
in my heart.
It brought no importunity,
no presumption.
Just a changed complexion
on all my mind’s curves.
A sea change…
that touched every atom
of my world,
and left me – differently – myself.
Home Field
The high sierra of the sky
Where crystal ice lies diatribed
Against the blue
And all the fertile forms
Dance sparkling in those depths,
Tangent to infinities
Field of mind.
The Screenshot of Individuality.
A flash in the pan
A glance in a mirror
“What is there?”
Brings its own answer:
A life in Time.
Witnessing
The blazing internal architectures of a wood fire,
Catalysed by the roaring resonance of flame and draught,
Fall on the retina of man and become primordial,
Banishing from the witness all taint of self:
A radiant event wrapped in tremendous silence,
A Unity defined precisely by Nothing Else,
That delivers the giddy shock of Being.
Real
All that happens comes up against you:
Threatening, receding, advancing, beautiful.
But it’s all just the stuff that you are seeing,
And this “you” is also part of that seen,
And only the seeing is real.
Epitaph for an Isolated Soul
Though pain and physical torment thread
A part of his unbending fate,
No anguish of contrasting life and death,
Could dim the singularity of his isolated life.
And when the dissolution into silent death
Resolved at last the paradox of individual life,
That exit was the final shape of mind.
As it was at its beginning.
(And at this final snuff of life,
He fell not sleeping into a final night,
But wide awake into what he was before
A self that knows only itself alone.)
Thus the mind that cannot go beyond the appearance of itself,
And sees the appearance of itself as its real self,
Inhabits a complete world with apparently nothing missing,
Trapped in the colourblind’s monochrome.
No Space Left
So you’ve taken a drug,
And now you know you’re alive.
It’s a point of no return.
You’ll never be the same again.
You now know there’s no meaning.
You’re the ring bearer,
Exiled from the normal world,
Forever on the outside looking in.
If such huge changes are made by a mere chemical,
How can there be any real inner meaning in life?
Isn’t it all fashioned from the same fabric?
And this happening to kids who are 14, 15, 16 years old?
And so meaning can no longer be important.
The self is no longer defined by its world.
The self becomes simply the witness.
No space left!
Aeternitatis
That which is not known can never be,
nor can that which changes
hold itself apart from the sea of being.
Thus a life, though fleeting in time,
is lit throughout by knowingness,
which can never be erased by passing,
for that which is real does not happen.
An experience cannot live of itself
But needs the eternal
to come to meet it
else it is lost like tears in the rain.
Old Error
He gasped as the Old Error
Hit him in the gut.
Gasp stretched to stammer
As thoughts jammed
In transit to speech.
Suffocating in their bottleneck.
The Cul de Sac Mistake
Locked in a solid cave of bone
With two small windows in the dome
Until the life force ebbs to clay
And maggotts eat that brain away.