16

The feeling comes of being clothed
within another person’s poisoned skin.

Stepping out with them makes
me wear their mantle, their overall.

Robed ‘n’ dressed into a life that restrains,
I do not wish to wear such garments.

Spending too long with the shadow puppets who
ply their toxic life to my soulful play.

Come, shun the human fallout, and rejoice
in the sun of glorious hearty ruminations;

gleam in the sun of shunned garments,
seeming in the good of gunned sharments.

15

Here for the party, here for the push,
here for the leap, here for the leaving.

Putting the players into precise position,
arranging, re-arranging the strategic battle lines.

Increasing paranoia, rising climatic fear,
they plan to infect us, inject us, poison the Piper’s heart.

Yet we’ve been in on the game for a long time,
from the very beginnings of our serpent past.

They have the scheming, we have the subtlety,
they have slyness, we have the Heart…

14

And when you wander into unknown places,
what fears betray you?

Walking through spaces of sadness and despair
make a soul weaker, yet is the trick of those tying
us to earthbound robes.

My friends, the secret is out, the secret is here:
It is they who fear – fear our laughter and our passing:
‘what is it you say?’ we ask, as we stroll past
their sentry guards and threshold dwellers.

Do not linger long in their armoury
or they will kit you out in
sharpest steel finery.

Leave them sneaking through bastard bog-holes,
dirty fingers for dirty nose-holes, as we stroll past
their sentry guards and threshold dwellers;

Ragged in light and gossamer dress.

13

Buried inside me, I feel you stir as a growing foetus

that kicks and gurgles, blowing through an umbilical cord

of sweat and love.

There is some great design that stands monumental,

immersed throughout our human threads,

frozen blood music like snowflakes.

Immersed throughout the cosmos like a piercing love intention.

And the great soul expands as stars breathe,

as an infinitude of shiny breaths giving life

that is endless in all directions.

And the waste that humans make hangs

like dusty corners in rooms of retreat and torture:

Outside the sun glows gloriously,

awaiting our turned faces to catch the warming glow

of gratitude and told-you- so’s…

12

Is there a space for the place I need to freeze?

If I run through the motions, my emotions, hurriedly,
I run the machine, not my-Self….

Take time out

Step back…

…into carved space, curved place in time,

Against existing in scattered fragments, I gather my

speckled selves like shattered shells on a distant shore,

unity forlorn, unity loving.

11

Autumnal yellow, pale green leaves
do not ask from where the wind comes and sings,

they sway, or drip with pooled water, dangle
in crisp sun particles.

Energy does not retreat nor deny; tis no traitor,
does not turn its back,

only turns in cycles and continues.

Such leaves asking not nor querying why

yet falling when time to play their part.

A part of knowing the great embeddedness of things.

10

The answers are embedded all around,
Carried by us too beneath our skin,
adopted by the plasma of our cells…
… all bubbling up and waiting.

The ancient voices call out to us, awaiting an echo…
yet we fall silent: a chamber without resonance,
a call we fail to repeat…

and I’m desperate to sing now,
dying to make a sound…just a sound…

will anything be heard?

Of course, of course…
nothing is left unsung.

No melody at night is alone…

9

I came down these roads dreaming like a king,
twisting through the avenues as if they were a game…
many books filled the way, ran like the wine over my lips;
the days were an apprenticeship to some kind of glorious renewal -
I wanted the glory of finishing the path like all the heroes of myth…

I didn’t know of Perseus at the time yet like Perseus I was…
Glorified goat-climbing, capricornious up the mountainside…


Some things have not changed … still some kingly dreams…
Hoping to be less vainglorious in the endeavours to reach,


To push through the veils that cling like beeswax upon the skin…
To begin, to begin always, yet moving beyond… winged...

8

Not missing you, I don’t miss you.
Missing is a shawl that drapes and hangs
over us like chain mail.

So I see you as the missing
...in the spaces I don’t miss…

fostered remnants of air trapped between stitches…

I love everything about us all,
and dismiss what needn’t be or claims to be,
or that which lingers …

I don’t suppose we linger…
not like pilgrims waiting on
for the golden miracle
to dispel their aging doubts.

We are not disabled,

unless we forget ourselves.
Unless we miss ourselves.

7

Inexpressible.

So why do I write? Can it be contained… I wonder,
as journeys pile upon each footprint, traces of places
provided for our learning…

I am building a doppelganger of myself –
I will donate it to the world.

Take this other me and fill it with all the false personalities.
You’ll never suckle the milk of the true spirit-foetus … not yet,
anyway…

for the time being I’m working in my laboratory
like a modern day Fulcanelli:

I am building a doppelganger of myself –
I will donate it to the world …

Eventually!

6

Arms that wrap around in tentacles of embrace, as flesh crushed, skin ripped, and pressure pursed against flesh, and more flesh……body sinks into bodies in a moment of respite.The body can be a reprieve for the aches that canker and curse; flesh to bolster against the bane of mighty human winds: come into a peaceful place of tenderness – did I mention my body?

No…it is only a bed for weary bones and head, tis never a replacement for Spirit. Both may lie like heaven’s lovers in loyal embrace. There is no shame in loving if the loving is fair – make no demands. Press for no forced engagements, encounters … slip into spaces where the air is clear.

No time for mockery now: touch of bodies, ease of heart…soft spirits lie and murmur sweet.

5

Do not be deceived by the tempting moments of apathy,

lurking like gaping holes, like soldier wounds…

there is strength in pressing against the spaces of uncertainty,

in honouring and accepting the passages that bridge more

momentous occasions…

every step is a statement, every breath a victory,

and every affirmation an intention towards a unity…

4

The light glides phosphorescent across the skin of numerous souls,
touching in its moments those cloistered memories within…

a remembrance carried around and not shaken off,
despite the days of darkness when light is lacking…

it remains like gold in the mine. I have myths dancing through me
as caricatures of some forgotten plays…as endless actors

in a play that never ceases…
what time does another day begin?

Can I caress the endless light as if a lover in her nakedness…
in her beauty skin? I want to crash like pearl-divers into the depths

of some hidden retreat that keeps the secret of our forbidden spice…
I hear silence like a shower now…

it rains on this road of determined feet…
I will not, I will not, I will not retreat…

3

We are here for life lessons, to learn from the encounters we cross. Like a map from a bygone time, we have previously planned those moments that test us, or bring us joy.

How many of our own moments are accidental…? Is misery the reserve of miserable sods, or insufferability the sanctity of cantankerous cods?

Sometimes its chemical…other times biological. Ahhh…yet the spirit works through every blip of the hormonal nodes, frosting or clearing the glass of our vision…

I have no doubt of its existence, of its presence within me. Around me. Friends and colleagues of calibre mark my passing, and aid my journey. They speak in tongues difficult to decipher by the reasoned brain. With intuition such things are discerned…

Hear me now, as I write these words and look out from my window onto the wet sunlit street below. Is it right that it should rain today?

2

Don’t be fooled by what isn’t, for everything is. There are uncertainties that lie like doormats treaded underfoot; they only wait for a dull mind to adopt them as lonely children.

Be as light as light, and as brave as the wind. Our only failure is our own doubt. There is nothing than cannot be removed, although don’t rely on a painless passage. How did you pay for the tickets?

I am trying to reach for the Pleiades, yet surrounded by concrete. Battered in matter and heaviness. No fear, I will go on.

1

The days have been filled with a different silence, both caged yet free... I surround myself with music, with smoky smells, with days of wine and the sounds of birds...

I am thirsty for your nearness; battered time in sips.

Moving on with enough space to visit places of past retreat.
Yet there is no room for nostalgia…as the way ahead
beckons me forward like a concubine...

Can you visit me?
Do you know my location, here amidst the conifers
that blanket the shade. Am I in a field that can be found?

Find me? Mistress of myself… is this to be done…?

Dead Flower

The weight of your beauty
Brought you down,

Forced you to crumble,
Your stalk snapping

As you succumbed to what
You could not keep aloft.

My dear dead flower: you
Uplifted yourself without support.

You aimed high, towards sun in sky,
Yet without aid or dutiful crutch.

And so thy fall is all the more fallow,
For it was a useless loss.


11.39
5.4.06

NOT OF THIS WORLD, BUT

Not of this world
yet still living inside of it.

Still here
despite my accusations
and my alienation
and my walking shadow.

Not of this world
yet still dressing in its clothes,
still wearing its material robes
and still trying hard to define
love within its folds

despite my curses
and frail condemnation

as though I were a beast
that could not run
but instead turns in necessity
to defend his territory.

7.13pm
10/9/94

A LITTLE DEATH

The need to die a little in order to understand how to live:

To nearly die, the edge of dying; towards the brink of death,
the edge of living that pummels us for the passion for life.

Such a nearness of death that exists with exuberance for life.


Life should not become a lethargy, trudging through as we do mud.

We are so far from being dreamweavers, from making us understood..
Take this body and break it into beautiful pieces: make this drunken soul mad…

Make this trespasser glad.


12.42
6.2.06

OUR REDUNDANCY

A perfume lingers in all things: this is their radiance.

Like halos, all inner scents glow.

Light fingers of finery, life reaching out,
And we are brought into the forgery,

A hologram of complicit pieces, we
Share the conspiracy in our sleep.

Moving through our assumptions, our
Errors, we forget there is no gain nor loss.

Nothing matters beyond the becoming:

Our redundancy is the source of our success.


12.58
26.2.06