The Reasons Why You Came Here

  
  
          Spending so long planning
                                      where you’re standing,
 
          you forget the reasons why it
                                      is you came here;
 
          worse still, infection of the dreaded
                                      earth-sickness
 
          turns your thoughts to all the things
                                      you cannot leave behind:
 
          it’s the money, it’s the show, it’s all
                                      the things you’ve collected
 
          from the corners of your little world
                                      and you can’t let them go.
 
          Yet what is it that you came for?
                                     That something special
 
          you always had to believe in, that
                                      reason it is you came here… 
  
         could you really be so ill you’ve forgotten
                                      the touch of love?

Change

 
We should have intuited that change is best not be
avoided when it comes to call, crashing on us unsuspecting.
It’s only our normalcy, the complacency of our warmth
that steers us away into our regulatory corners.
 
So there’s nothing wrong then to be woken from
our catatonic slumber, our onanistic embrace,
to face the new dynamic world asunder…
 
Or so they say, or would like to say, I don’t know,
 
except that I’m restless if I stay too long, feels as if
I’m being left behind by the whole human race,
wherever they are heading.
 
If change is good, why do people die only a few miles
from where they first entered life, or fail to open their
windows on a sunny day, I don’t know…
 
 
                                                                                                23.5.04
                                                                                                18.36

Balance

                   
                   there’s no sentimentality
                             in my glass of wine,
 
                   only thoughts that come
                             and don’t stay long,
 
                   that don’t grow into wild
                             imaginative trees.
 
                   there’s no excess of scent
                             or colour in a rose
 
                   for beauty is knowing the balance
                             of what is enough.

SHELL

Like little sea creatures
In a shell we lay

pressed against
the pressured air ;

too silent to be moved,
showing ourselves

as the layered rock
shows earth's growth
from youth.

Tiny thumb prints of some desire
we wish to encapture

and keep between the flesh,

to seep from our pores
on every embrace

to smell the skin
on every kiss

like honest things.

HOW TO CAPTURE BEAUTY

‘How can I capture beauty?’
you ask me.

‘Be an open-hearted hunter’
I say

‘Who upon snaring a bird
throws it back to the sky.’

‘But why?’

‘For beauty holds dear only
to a master who can share.’

20.40
7.12.99

LOVE AGAIN

When you try to love,
Love tells you to love
And love again, you fool,

For love is an endlessly jealous beauty:

And the fools are us lovers,
Until we have loved enough
To be also the Beloved.

00.27
27.11.99

THE SPIRIT’S PLEA TO THE BODY

Why do you block the way
With your booze, you fool?

Can’t you see it’s difficult enough
To get through when you’re sober?

I need you clear, open, and receiving
If you want to hear my words at all.

It’s your choice, my friend: if you don’t
Want to play, I’m going home in silence.


3.25pm
1.1.99

The Ways in Which We Move

The ways in which we move through
Such moments that make us, we don’t
Realise their power til we’ve moved on.

They change us: moulded by a multitude
Of passing prods, breezes, touching events.
We’re not the same as when we started.

Who could have foretold, forewarned us?
Shouldn’t there be defence against such
Intrusions? I’m not my self anymore.

Then it dawns like a splintered vase unable
To be gathered: there never was a self. It
Was my protective illusion. My gatekeeper

Against the recognition of unwanted guests.
Yet the guests come, stay awhile before moving
On. And I take the scent left by the last guest

As my next aroma. Unknowingly I smell anew.
And with such smells do I move through,
Leaving my own mark for others to absorb.

We’re all permeable you see. We’re porous,
Ever changing. This is how we learn to come
Through, ignorantly unscathed. Yet now is

To learn the secret. We’re not the person of
Our own selves: we’re a mixture, painted by
The picture-moments we travel through,

And patched by so many forgotten pinches
Of memory. We’re so wonderfully rich – to
Think we’re one is a dullness that shames us.

00.16
8.12.03

So Much Trying To Waylay

So much more difficult than first supposed
to stay with that which sustains us, keeps us good,
as if so much is trying to waylay us.

And harder still to find the innocence within
the many layers of living, as if each
membrane of skin protects us against
the other; yet so feebly. We’re so different

and yet so similarly together.

We’re old before we learn what youth held,
or could have held if we had known.
So many moments so rarely celebrated in their time.

We’re offered only little space for our performance
that most of us come wholly unprepared.


23.40
6.12.03