Secret Life

Look at my hands now.
These hands that write,
That are instruments of
my fate also.

They are hands that nobody knows.
Their vision is obscure to others.
My hands work like this in
Their own secret life.

One day I hope they will unite.

Fragments from 'The Man Who Died of Love' - No 3

(3)


Music is your breath, your soul, your voice. In the churches of XXXXXX I can hear you call in endless whispers of longing and love. You fill the walls with your sound and they echo this radiance back to me as if they too were in conspiracy with your love.

We are all in collusion with this secret you keep hidden only for the precious few. And did you choose me, O beloved? Am I worthy to be loved beyond all previous loves?

Am I beyond the lovers of revolution and change? Am I beyond the love of conscripts devoted to their country’s cause? Oh bounteous one, never let me lie alone.

If I am without you yet am favoured in this world by all prestige and fame, I am still alone: and yet if I am left alone and unwanted by this world but honoured by your love, I will never be alone.

I am just a man drinking in your tavern of grace and made drunk by the wine of your love. If I am clumsy in my drunkenness then forgive this fool.

Forgive this fool for the man that he was. Forgive this fool for the man that I am.

I am made to be nothing beside you.

(The man died several years ago)

Fragments from 'The Man Who Died of Love' - No 8

(8)

I am a copy, a fake. Listen to me my dear: I am not real. I am an illusion; all that you see is but a reflection of something else. I am just a surface, the thin film of a water pool thinking itself to have depth. There is no depth in me but the thinness of my skin.

In your eyes I see a lake beyond: water of endless glistening that drowns me in my breathlessness. How can I become like you? How can the mimicry of my life lose itself to find the original art? How can this mystery be done, my love?

Can you share with me your secret? I am dying here without knowing; there is no real life for a copycat. There is no true beauty for a fake.

I am a forger. I once convinced myself that I was the great artist, now I know I was only a forger of his name.

How can your mysteries be known, my love; how can the deceiver lose his deception?

Must I wait long for an answer?

(The man died several years ago)

DUMBNESS

I shall look into your face and remember you
Even when you thought I doubted your existence.

How could you think I was unawares just
Because I played dumb all these years?

Of course I am dumb.




14.48
7/11/05

THE CROSS

I light candles and arrange the room like an alter

For nothing other than the pleasure of your presence

And my absence.


Welcome to a world where all worlds blur,

Where no distinctions are made between here and now,

The there and then. We all mingle like party thieves,

Crashing the great event.


So I light the candles daily. I am your human prayer.

I see you above my shoulders, an unseen figure not there.

And I love the strength you provide me. You are the cross

I haven’t learnt to bear.


18.25
5/11/05

THE EMBRACE

Of the embrace,


We teach of times to love. We hope of the goodness.

There is a war raging. There are battle cries. Many will die.

Many must fall for the other soldiers to forge ahead.

There will be chronic times to face. Times of dishevelment.


Out of this can come times of the new embrace.

Lord – is this our sacrifice?


Is this our embrace?



18.12
5/11/05

OH DEAR

Out to sea again.

Afloat on the waves again.

Splashing for the fun again.

Making silly sounds again.


A boy in the unknown again.

Loving the wetness again.

Crazy in the race again.

Greedy in the salt again.


Going slightly nowhere.

Always heading somewhere.

There’s nothing to stop me here.

Everything to fool me. Oh dear.


18.07
5/11/05

I FOR SURE

I want you to know that
I don’t understand why the rain
Makes my face wet when it touches.

Does it have to touch?

Whose hand guides nature?
Is the cause of blowing leaves,
Of falling leaves,

That scatter like thin seeds,
Seen as veiled hope for next season?

I don’t fully understand the seasons.
They run, not like children
But aged men of old, wizened by wisdom,

Calloused by experience and passing time.
All will come to pass, yet who knows the
Direction the wind will blow?

I for sure do not.

17.41
5/11/05

A few words left lingering from paens past...

Our faces speak and our eyes listen. True love loves lovers and true lovers melt form.

When I am with you sleep does not disturb us, and without you I am sleepless.

I am a copy, a fake. Listen to me my dear: I am not real. I am an illusion; all that you see is but a reflection of something else. I am just a surface, the thin film of a water pool thinking itself to have depth. There is no depth in me but the thinness of my skin.

In your eyes I see a lake beyond: water of endless glistening that drowns me in my breathlessness. How can I become like you? How can the mimicry of my life lose itself to find the original art? How can this mystery be done, my love?

Can you share with me your secret? I am dying here without knowing; there is no real life for a copycat. There is no true beauty for a fake.

I am a forger. I once convinced myself that I was the great artist, now I know I was only a forger of his name.

How can your mysteries be known, my love; how can the deceiver lose his deception?

Must I wait long for an answer?

The undone too

The present moment lasts all our life
and still it is very short.

Fingerprints return to dust eventually –
is this what we want to hold onto?

We mark ourselves by our own passing,
our own internal grading.

I have no regrets in anything that I have done,
and bless the undone too.



23.23
20.8.05

The Promise

We are in chaos now
and the world asks for our sanity.

Amidst the turmoil that is to come
we must form the islands of harmony
to weather the coming storm.

The rain of confusion will press against
us like a skin of irritable insanity
that raises the waves of emotions.

In all of this there are shifts
to a greater morn, yet work is needed
now to quell that which follows a fall.

We are coming to the rage of our chaos now
and those of us who made our promises
will be called upon to perform.


16.56
16.8.05

Some short early pieces - all from 1992-95

A STRANGER WITHIN


A man who lives on the outside of his skin
forever
is he who dies being a stranger within.




WITHIN THE HEART


The truly man of calm is he
who has a silent turmoil within
his heart.



INSIDE THE HEAD


Place not one vision between the eyes
but the whole vision inside the head.



RULER


Many wish to be an earthly Ruler, yet
such Rulers rule with a sadness in heart.





BLOODHOUND


I see your face in Everyone.
I see you in All.

I haven't found your body yet.
I'm following the Call.

MAN OF BEING

I'm looking
for someone

to shred away
the skin

as if it were flaky
porcelain,

to pull out the tender
flesh below,

the rarest of reddened
sinews,

and bring the neglected insides
to the top

like a man wearing his
tissues

tendons and bones as
his mask.

A glorious man of being.


An early poem from around 1992

Moon in Arcos

I left the moon in Arcos behind
as I flew above the skyline
of a reddened-yellow field of light;

this was a flight from one shifted moment
to the next like a transition that calls
us forth upon another journey.

We shall be known by our actions
in all times

and thus must mark our own passing
in appropriate ways.


15.34
16.8.05

We struggle

So much for the answers, so much for the quest;

did I say I hear voices in my chest?

We have our blueprint, our very own design:

we sigh, longing to hear amongst the grind

of our daily binds, screechings of white noise.



00.11
30.7.05

Losing time

Here I am;
drinking music, playing wine,
losing time.

I didn’t come here for the fish bowl,
or the food plate, or the sofa.

Comfort and pleasure can be had
yet I have no wish to engrain them.

I did not come here for this.
I did not come here for this.


00.03
30.7.05

Let it come down

An early dawn rises after a dark night,

just as our own personal djinns are purged

through effort into a new cleansed state.

So too will the world soul be plunged into its

own infernal chaos before light is drawn from

its well of deep reserves and a new epoch

is created from the ashes of a long history of

struggle and strife. Everything will know itself

in order to pass beyond its own weakness.

In the end it is a great plan, a great love.

A wonderful human, divine purpose.

Let it come down.

21.26

10.7.05

Everybody’s place

As Icarus flies overhead, as wax melts and sunbeams burn,

so too do the brutal acts burn our own flesh and kin:

is this the world we, as single soul, must live within?

If even an individual limb becomes torn from our great body,

so too does each single limb on our own frame ache, as if each

sinew and tendon trembles from the wound of a global gash.

As above, so below. And as over there, so here too.

There is nothing separate, nothing new.

That which affects each other affects us all.

The way forward, to transcend, is a global call.

Each thought, step, sacrifice, gets counted: each atrocity

creates a scar upon our species face. This is not the place

nor time for such ancient, archaic understandings.

Life is in transition – our fate is now in position

for a most memorable move. It is everybody’s place.

15.58

7.7.05

The day London was blasted

Singers of song

I am the dreamer I have known all along:

I created the song.

I am the wanderer I have met all along:

I wrote the script.

We know what we have always known, yet

left unkindled as a smouldering night-fire –

we are the writers of our own destiny.

We are the singers of our own tune.

Sing out, sing loud, sing on: don’t cower

from fear of misplacing the words.

Life snaps into play like a metronome,

each beat a burst into being, each tick, tock,

a heartbeat of our own begging clock,

desiring to be known, to be known.

Sing out, sing loud, sing strong.

22.34

5.7.05

Too easy

Sometimes it’s hard to be good.

But what choice do we have? The alternative

Is not something I wish to consider.

I make such dilemmas here very simple: my own

Kind of black and white. But what choice do I have?

It makes sense that having no choice is often the

greatest freedom of all. Yet this path is too simple

to be easy.

01.47

20.5.05