Poetry

Poems from the stillness

---

All is Simple

All is simple look into the night
And the day is unmasked
A trillion stars glisten
In the naked sky

In the ignorance of the day
Blinded by a mere one star
The vastness lies concealed
Swallowed by delusions blinding light

You my child are far more than you can ever know
For you too are blinded by a light
In its absence look to darkness
The ancient emptiness that is your meaning

And in an instant you have seen
Your very soul opens up before you
A trillion universes flow in your emptiness
Your soul has bared itself to you

And though the sun will rise again as it must
You have seen the eons in the ancient sky
Forever more you will be night

---

All Things Must End

All things must end
Even change

I offer my soul to the darkness
That I may know of light
I pray to forgiveness
That I might be free of myself

My story is a simple one
I am the child who became a man
And now waits for old age to wield its axe
That my story be told

I who hoped am now hopeless
I who dreamed cannot find sleep
I who talked of mountains
Am a valley

Paralyzed by fear I waited
Intoxicated by want I became
Torn by two masters
I foundered

Frozen, a corpse
A dead man masquerading as life
Wrapped in a body
Dancing the enchanted moment

My rhapsody flows
From the baton of another
My symphony long forgotten
Traded for a tricksters trinket

Marooned in flesh
I have become my horizon
Ever watchful I wait a ships approach
For that is all that is left to me now

A sail, a mast, a ship, a dream
Hope is all I dare hope for

---

Ask a Blind Man

Ask a blind man what is light
Or a deaf man what is sound
And devoid of senses what is the world
Ask life, the very life in you, what it is
It replies by soaring, filling you
Laying siege to the kingdom
Claiming its hallowed ground

In answer to the question what is pain
I say pain is pain, it hurts
And then what is joy, what is love
What is a thought
From where did it come

Without the thought “I” what am I
What is a dream; from what volcano did it erupt
Spewing its imagery into me
Being me and I becoming

What is living
How does it differ from a dream
And when there is no dream, no imagery then what
What is what
What is empty
What is full
What
?
Still

---

Fire in a Forest

Like fire in a forest
Everything turns back to what it is
Without memory nothing is remembered
Without judgment nothing is judged
How can you judge what is natural
It happens, it is, regardless
How can you call the course of a stream
That has not yet sprung
Law that is not natural is unnatural
Crippling
A mountain upon a soul

A mind that has not known beauty is a wilderness
A mouth that has not kissed, craves
A fire that has not burned, waits
What will be, will be
The dam will burst
The only question
How much can it bear
How much pain before it shatters
And the river flows

---

From an Inkwell the World Flows

From an inkwell the world flows
From a thought the universe erupts
From a word creation speaks

Memories and dreams like clouds
Dance on the clearness
Reality in reality merely coming and going

Yesterday is tomorrow looking back at itself
Now is nothing but vacant emptiness
Silent stillness scurrying for cover
Lest it know itself

With painted harlots I trade trinkets
And wait for my day
When treasures craven jewel
Will blaze through me
As it surely must

Waiting it appears
Is the only truth
Of flesh and muck and men

---

Half Hearted in the Belly of the Night

Half hearted in the belly of the night
Searching for light craving darkness
Knowing deep that there’s nothing to know
Yet pursuing it rentlessy

Following blindly in ancient footsteps
I stumble where others stumbled
And drink of bliss where they too drank
Yet ever I thirst

An emptiness vaster than a desert
Hunts the scent of an ocean
That it be sated
From the rivers of its own depths

Somewhere in the belly of the night
A boy dreams of a homeland
And an ocean swells against the tide
That a desert might know its meaning

The ocean longs for pristine mountain streams
Clouds gather and circles return to nowhere
In stillness truth is often reveled
But only to itself

---

I’m Just Waiting on the Wind

I’m just waiting on the wind
What else is there to do
If it blows I’ll sail on it
And if it’s still I too am still
Hold out your hand and you hold your world
Let it go and it is gone
For all is in perceiving

If you are alone then all is against you
Your only hope is hopelessness
Your greatest friend the pain
That asks you to see

Why would the day rush the night
When it knows its time will come
And in as much why would you contrive or deceive
When what will be will be

There is no reason to be what you are not
Except whatever folly lures you
Till a day dawns when you know yourself
You will chase rainbows and idle dreams
Aspiring to whatever sparkles

All that glitters is not gold
And some that lie hidden more precious yet
Patience do you hear the wind
That only blows in stillness

---

It is the Planting

It’s the planting that allows the harvest
Without bait there is no catch
A foundation provides no shelter against the cold wind
Yet without foundation the fortress fall’s
Something must always be given for receiving to be possible

A foolish man sees only the harvest
The wise man’s heart longs to sow
A dream will remain a dream for as long as you dream
The day you buy is the day you sell
The day you sow is the day you reap
If you would but reap tell me what would you harvest

Marooned in the world of form
With each breath you draw you sow
It is the way of it
If you will not sow for feast then you sow for famine
The thought that shuns abundance is of lack
And just as life knows not of death
And joy immune to pain
The mystery that stillness soars
In seeing alone is solved

---

My Heart is Raw

My heart is raw
As a butchered night
Bleeding darkness

Dying to death
Fading to day and light
Exposed cowering in shadows

The awkward child
Pitied hidden
And I stomach sick, a mannequin

---

On Wings of the Wind

On wings of the wind I enter the night
Gliding on water
Dancing on time
Breathless
Galloping on the swelling tide
Into tomorrow always tomorrow
With my every breath I weave its web

A whip cracks a shadow falls
And I am not alone
Pursued I am driven
Haste ever haste
The ghost of a dreamer
Grasping at chance, craving
Has become my burden

On ever on
Through the valley of the night
Unseen velvet oceans
Lost homelands
Craven jewels
Sacrificed that yesterday
Might beget tomorrow

---

The Eyes of the Night

The eyes of the night
Search the dark for a soul
The dream that’s run dry
The bargain that’s sold

The bloom of a jewel
The oceans lost pearl
Ablaze in the night
Of a castaway world

Show me you own me
Sing me the song
The wind ore the ocean
Cries for waves that have gone

---

The Night Craves

The night craves the day to fill its aching soul
The day craves the night to penetrate its corpse
Man and woman flesh and space
Craving a touch that might quell
An emptiness that ever longs

The rain falls the sky cries
An ocean feasts a child’s return
While wise men debate the prattle of the rain
The fool unburdened ventures the high road
To that holy place that memory has forgotten

Only emptiness can be filled he whistles with the wind
And there before his mortal eyes
Full immersed in the throbbing flesh of empty
Groans in the rapture of eternal ecstasy

On talons of the night thought bleeds
And an eagle freed from its mortal cage soars
Filling a sky that was empty without it

---

The Wine Uncorked

A delicacy unsavoured
Brims with promise
The wine uncorked
Waits to delight
A bud unopened
Holds beauty untold it’s secret
And you more precious yet
Bubble over and hold back
Lest your divineness disappoint

Can foolishness be this foolish
Can water fail to quench a thirst
Can you ever be other than you are

Supreme
Cast from a star
Designed to delight
Faultless turning on a fault
And it your only flaw

Child of a god
Made man by thought of threat
Shine that night may know of day
This only is your purpose
This only is your reason