Tuesday, 5 December 2017

Alive




Somewhere a hadeda is alive because it was nurtured and nourished,
from falling over, next door, on the bowling green.

It stayed and ate cat-food, announced hunger regularly at the front door,
even walking in, impatient for
that which gives life.

I am alive, too, and also impatient for
so much.

I have to say it with this body,
words are wind.

So when I dip into the
electric river, which is where I
live, bear with me.

Like a hadeda,
my voice can be unaccomplished,
so far as sophistication can be made to swell.

It's not the words, nor the larynx, pharynx or
any itemized spelling or sense of silly
speciality.

When you take off the socks and shoes of
pretence and walk,  just alive,
maybe humming something you remember,
you could know how
nothing is better than
now.


Monday, 27 November 2017

Dissecting God.




You have to deal with what's in front of you,
and the action you take is what
happens.

Yet God happens deep in these
human emotions,
urging the things we don't
know.

When you approach holiness,
it's wise to take of more than shoes.

Come naked, and
dance.

It's been done before.

But when you do that,
what are you saying?

I've been trying to tell myself something
about which I now
give up.

It can't be done.

What a music the body is.
I can hear it, and it's something in the
cosmos who knows.

Now, I'm not sure about where this wild
wind will take me.

I don't think it matters in ways we
understand.

When you take care with language do you
dissect God?

It's a double edged sword,
this knowing from which there's
no return.












Saturday, 18 November 2017

Touch




I'm surprised by what touch does.
Reaching out, or just
happening,
or something big, on purpose,
somehow it says more than language ever will,
and knows something more than a rush of
rationality.

They say
"this touches me".

It goes further, like fingers hunting a
hunger of knowing.

My body has never discovered itself,
it's a demanding and selfish island
that refuses to exist for
any one and especially any
order.

When you touch on purpose,
that's special.
And the meaning behind it carries on so
far, you won't guess.

I know about beauty that you see, hear, and smell
in the mornings of rain reaching deep into our earth:
but when drops touch, and tell secrets into
places that wait for  purpose,

that's where we arise.
Let's walk out onto this
loch.
It's about longing, isn't it?
How far do you think it
stretches out?




Thursday, 26 October 2017

Stopping time









Sometimes it happens, probably more often than we
think.
When we feel, that's more to the point.
I've watched it, compassion, companionship,
care and more,
coursing out, because the want of it
wells out, and there's no stopping it.

I'm not sure about time. We invented it
some cycles ago. It's a sure measure, yes,
but bodies say something else.

It's odd that a lightning touch
torches everything it strikes,
firing every surface it feels,
in it's fierce finding of
ourselves.

Some time ago we knew what might have been,
and in those moments we thought of
love.

That word turns into
windswept ways, seething in the
Cape southwester,
curling into growing waves that
crash against a daring walk along
the breaking water.

When you stop time,
you know more,
and the ocean agrees,
arguing aimlessly as it moves
incessantly.






Monday, 23 October 2017

When fear dies





There's something in the body you come to trust, eventually,
or not at all.
The timing is interesting, because crisis is what's at stake,
and too early or too late makes you miss the
merry-go-round,
and you might bump your
nose.

Let the people with whom you can be sincere be your
lighthouse, no matter who they are.

And let all you love take in all you are,
so that return will be
complete.

Uniqueness matters less than
music of communication.
When you hear that, and know unbearable vastness of which
you are part,
you sing,
even though your heart hasn't practiced, and your mouth hasn't
kissed.

I wish that our human dust would wake,
at last,
and realize something about the star-fire that
stares us in and from the face, while we're polite about
not noticing it.

Can star-fire die? Has anyone noticed that absolutely everything
is on fire
once you brush the wind's dust from your eyes,
and earth's seduction whispers things you look away from,
momentarily, to gaze at galaxies furious at your
indifference?

We call it beauty, but I think in another galactic language,
fear's removed for the sake of a
quicker
conversation.




Tuesday, 4 July 2017

The Cosmos Whisperer







When that flicker of forgetting comes across the
face of knowing,
and caverns of cosmos open up,
one to another,
I'm scared in the body but not in the soul.
 The caves of connection
cross too quickly for comprehension.

I've lived a very small life,
and this body wishes to be known,
yet the trying is so utterly
incomplete.

I have none of the assurance that other
bodies seem to know, and follow.

I've covered and copied much,
and called it learning. But lately the
cosmos whisperer has leant my way and
offered me paths I've never taken.
Maybe it's too late, perhaps the time for a story
has passed.

Yet the sea says something in the waterman of me,
and the sky knows the wind's answer,
and something in the dawn gold
gleams anticipation.

Tomorrow I'll take my warrior boat and listen.
I am already told I'll never come back but to the
ones I love.

That's difficult, almost impossible:
how do you know who you love unless you know
how to listen to
the cosmos whisperer?

I see there are many shades of light that declare,
and I hear the sky say water in many forms.

I've also heard of small winds whispering from
the mirror. Everything opens
should you want to enter.




Saturday, 10 June 2017

Bridge to water.




To connect one point to another,
like love, or connection,
someone has to walk on.

Someone has to cross the gap,
maybe walk on water,
in storms,
and still know quietness of
better depths.

When you come to the end of what you know
and the next feeling offers nothing but
uncertainty,
common sense and caution would want to make you
wait and see.
Stepping out could drown you.

I am no declarer of triumphant miracles:
I have never walked on chemistry that wouldn't
bear my weight and the muscles of my back
beat no wings,
and when I am angry my words
will make themselves known.

So is my bridge to water,
or to a particular point
that another might describe?

I have come to the end of my pier,
and jettison weight that would hold back.

I have no intention of swimming through this
winter of wet ideas.

I've walked through the forest to reach this place.
The water seems deep, from where I stand:
my obedient cells are ready to escape and cross
to another space where I shall re-learn
the old things that are the stones of bridges
against which water taps and laps
its blind way, passing beneath the arch that
covers the bright flow from the night's stars.

I know that my held-out hand
is not alone. The bridge that I wonder about
was built long ago.






Monday, 15 May 2017

Where God is



Don't talk about God.
If you're in the western world and you are of that
old class, still dealing with dogma and doctrine,
let me tell you,
it's over.

I'm quite prepared to speak for
all time.
It's over.

It's better to be real than right,
and every night terrifies me with new messages.

There are many stories,
and in how many of them am I?

And then there's the crucial one,
of the cross before which
all must come.

Well, I've waited there all  my life,
seriously looking for something real.

Let me tell you something:
you will find a voice of which
you could not dream.

Don't talk to me of God,
and about being right.

I have never been right,
nothing in my childhood knew about
right.

I am sorry for being right
every time I thought I was.

It's like springtide, rising, real,
spreading over things you thought
you knew.

If you have an idea of
where God is,
have a look into your early years,
and what was spoken to you
and what you received so much that it
echoes always in your knowing soul.

That will sort out your knowing quickly
when the first leaf of real autumn
falls slowly onto the skin of the sunset
you've always watched.

There's something really wicked about
being alive.

That's where you might feel
something much too big to be known
nudging your door's doubt.






Friday, 12 May 2017

Decision



It's difficult not to get wet when you're in the path of
pouring water,
yet I've known someone who decided
against the
heart.
What a surprise this was.
To stand not against but up to
everything you know and have the strength to
sense what carries on beyond that
decision.
I know water, and have swum every current and cross
that flows.
Is our decision real?
If I don't see it in the water's way
how would I know?

This is something that stops and thinks at the tectonic
edge.
If we love, does fire just below
know?
From where is the fire?

I have searched everywhere and
found you
yet you have not wanted to be found.

Well, water will pour down,
perfecting you body, no matter how
ignorantly I seek your
heart.

But hear, or feel, for a moment
how the thunder of inescapability
roars into us.







Wednesday, 10 May 2017

When light sleeps



The cosmos is normally a tumultous place
full of furious exchange,
Stars are truthful,
perhaps galaxies are gracious.
One living planet promises
nothing.
I don't know if there's another one;
it's not likely.

I have the sense that fire in the belly of
our birth is merely a brief reminder of
moving memories.
Not of the sentimental kind, no;
the finger points always to somewhere
I dread. Again and again in dreams,
light wakens, and the body tries to sleep
with certainties that slope towards those really
awkward places.

I live in ships that try to sail, on planes circling
impossible landings, and in faces I know that have
forgotten me.

I should remember that sometimes
light sleeps.

I've walked often between midnight and morning.
What I've heard then tells me that sometmes
light sleeps.

And in the quietness of whispered messages in
mornings to come, there's a story of how
light sleeps.

It's not a secret, nothing ever is.
It's just that in the quietest earth of all,
in special places, one of which I know,
light sleeps.



Saturday, 6 May 2017

Path




They told me about a path,
somehow I've forgotten it,
it was strict and didn't feel
real.
There were so many rules, concepts and
cruel requirements.
I couldn't meet them, and have worried about being a
failure ever since.
An arrow of light often comes to
penetrate my heart. It
hurtles up and down my neck
and stirs something unpredictable in the
body.
I'm not sure about this idea they call my
body.
It's a rich and amazing experience,
but what of the path?
I wonder where it goes.
I also wonder why
each step slows me down.
There are many paths, I'm sure,
some slow in winter others sure in
summer.
Where I am,
it's one step at a time,
and the leaves are falling,
and growing.
I can't tell the difference
although I know seasons well.
Some of my friends have
died, and some of my
family, too. 

I ask:
speak to me.
Perhaps then,
I will recognize
what I should.

Which path opens?
Tomorrow morning when the first bird
sings, and someone is
executed
I know my path.

I have every sword known to man,
also the two-edged one known only to
God.

I don't know if there's time to take in
smells and seekings of plants that
grow along the pathway.

That will help when we are
wounded, maybe dying.

Perhaps the path grows the way,
maybe the undergrowth
knows more.

For myself, I put the scalpal into
langauge.
When I see blood I know I am on the right
path. 
How it grows when we least expect anything,
and how the heart shouts out words that have
nothing to do with wisdom.
And the silence that surrounds every word:
what does it reveal?
Pick a stone and keep it somewhere
in its own
silent path.
You will begin to know
if the fishing is good. 





Sunday, 30 April 2017

God's signature



At your finger tips you have the very
face of God.
Perhaps you have come across theology.
It's not helpful

The music of the cosmos needs players,
and that's us.

What we touch and what
touches us to make lives sound
more than superficial
is obvious:

each moment is a print and
each small purpose
declares something known as the word of
love.

What an empty word this is,
aching for something to fill the omega.
We seek an epigenesis
and really, everything points to that individual
print of person in the making.

Not many of us die
complete.

I wonder how many signatures there have to be and
how many times God signs
our human document before
a name ripens enough to reveal
something worth satisfaction.

Each baby is different,
every life distinct,
and the ink of my heart writes
hesitantly until I know the power of God's
print urging something strong
out of my soul.

Don't look for an articled God who is a
Western noun.

One cell, one atom of your body is enough for
belief. Your miracle is the same as
mine.




Thursday, 27 April 2017

Mowing the lawn


Long ago I helped my godfather to
mow the lawn.
We pushed the machine across an amiable
surface.
We sweated together in Swiss sunlight and
I can't remember if we spoke
but my body remembers
everything.

Up, turn, around, and the pattern of everything
falls into place.
When places, dreams and returning things
cut across your temporary grass,
what is that jet tearing across the sky?
What is that scream that grass
closes as it
grows?

My godfather knew something
I still want to find in his kindness of'
pushing that lawn-mower and me.

After we had sweated in Swiss sunlight,
beside the slope down to the cellar I
remember well,
what a complex darkness of rooms
that was!
He cut bread, poured a cold drink,
and sliced onions, because the work was done and
we could eat for morning's work. 

Something tells me I must get up early
in the mornings of now because
grass is growing,
growing fast.

Not really for myself, anymore,
but for my children, and their children, too.
It's not so much about cutting it back,
but about a tidiness I'd prefer.
I don't mind sweating in Swiss sunlight when you know that
grass and onions and bread add up
to something simple and good.

If I had a lawn to mow in Africa,
where drought is normal,
and grass isn't
and onion is your staple diet, perhaps,
and not a treat with your godfather,
the steps taken over that land needing
something called love
are mine.
I am looking back to all my days,
and claiming them without
distinction of where the sun was
when I was there.








Wednesday, 26 April 2017

That death is not failure.




I think I'm beginning to learn the biggest lesson of my life. One has little control of what happens to you, especially as you learn what goes together and what doesn't in the early years. Neurons are neurons, and they are both forceful and forgiving in the dialogue between the whole and the sum of its parts.
For the whole of my life, thus far, I have been trying not to die. What this means is that at the age of about five or six, I took one horrified look at death, and knowing what I thought I knew about it, then, that it meant eternal failure and punishment of the worst unimaginable kind, that I wasn't going there.
I actually remember the attitude drawing up inside me, like some kind of austere refusal, aligning with elegant living, holding aloof from the decay and ugliness of physical dissolution. It also smelt bad. That was the messy part. The emotional part was worse. I was heading for a trap from which I could never escape: the devil and his demons were fully in charge of my dying, death and whatever came after, and unless I performed a magical trick, which intellectually, I still attempt, I would stick there not for a long time, but for eternity.
It's a bad situation and outlook for a five-year-old. My parents and everyone else agreed that to avoid this lost eternity,as they put it, I needed to give my heart to Jesus, and be saved.
I was a good boy, needing approval and acceptance, and not wanting to go somewhere dreadful for ever, so I told the preacher one eveing the words everyone needed me to say.
I am still wondering what I meant then, because I couldn't have known. Those words, no matter how ignorant I was of what I was saying, have stood me in good stead, because my heart hasn't changed much.
In my early years these things became associated: death, failure and damnation. I was unfortunate to have as teacher and principal of my primary school, one misguided, cruel and abominable woman who hammered home the fear of failure, linked directly to the fear of physical pain. On a daily basis I observed the terror and trauma of children subjected to her impatience and rage. I knew what awaited me, should I fail in anything at all.
The pattern was put, and has persisted. I have avoided anticipating my death. The aftermath has been too much too contemplate.
But after my mother-in-law died, at the end of October, last year, something shifted. Something in my body recognized that this was the end of failure.
It was time to speak up.

If I reach into my veriest place of communicating, I would say this: sure, if you make an attempt in respect of something and it doesn't work out, you could say it failed.
But does life itself fail? Does the cosmos somehow fail, just because I will die one day? Does evil really triumph because of physiological dissolution? Is one's life an empty vessel, full of pathos, at the end?

I have this to say: there is no ending. Sure, many moments are irreversible, but that's different. There is no cosmic ending. The tree has not ended because of autumn. Earth does not die in winter. God does not make a mindless sacrifice to save God in vain. Fervour, formality and faith do not dream the same dream.
There is no defeat in death. Sure, there's sense of separation, vulnerability of self and plenty of preverbal anxiety because only priests and doctors are allowed to make ultimate pronoucements.

So let me make my pronouncement: that death is not failure, not at any level. Those who cause unnecessary death are evil, if such is their intent. Life is indeed beyond precious.
But for those who weep, or wonder, or drag woundedness into remaining steps of life, I would say
"but this is natural. How could it be otherwise? Embrace this depth of unknowingness and rejoice in it, because this frees you as nothing else does."

So while I have tried, thus far, not to die because of fear of failure, I turn now to living because I am sure that Presence guiding and granting all things is not a damning one but  gracious and generous spirit that seeks out so much more than we can think of or imagine. And if we stop to feel, however fleetingly, the impossible utterances the heart affirms before words can, we can sense the surprise of that which can never fail.



Monday, 24 April 2017

Holding hands



When there's not much left, and your heart wants to say
much more, and all that's left is cynical,
I'll hold your hand.
I can't do more than that.
I have walked many nights to
reach you,
and perhaps,
I have further to go.
But now you know,somewhat,
how far I have come
and how much  further my heart can go.
There's a song in this, and some-one will
sing it slow.

Hold my hand now,
it will always last.
Hold it fast,
it will touch and know
forever now.

It will touch and know
forever now.


Monday, 17 April 2017

Crying out




If you grew up in a world where
crying out
was discouraged,
better know that everything else
does.
The table of elements, for example,
horrifies itself by making allies across
impossible events.

Take the body, for another example,
an impossible vehicle for living,
yet what a living it is,
and so much depends.

If you'd surprise yourself, just a little,
and look under the lining of language,
behind the curtain of contrived care,
beneath the carpet of courage on which
we'd all prefer to walk:
and recognize the face that
we avoid:
we might see our own,
and hear our voice for the first time
crying out something really simple
we've never learnt to say.

One note of music, then the gap before the next,
when you know it,
tells me this.

I have heard it crying out,
saying the very
impossible.

I have no problem
believing it because I
hear the heart.
It sings its own way
without trying
and the orchestra is having fun
following some composer's fascination
before going home
to known smells and rain
rattling down on the roof of
everything,






Saturday, 8 April 2017

Waiting for rain.






He was told about rain before
he had langauge, so when language
came, as it does, without the
bigger picture,
he had no understanding
of what to expect.

I have waited with him for
sixty-one years.
"Is it like wearing clothes?" he asked. "They say
it's all over your skin if it's heavy."

My heart is heavy for him.
He waits for a story he wants and expects.
It will never come.

I've walked in rain, lots of showers, storms and
silly drizzles. Perplexed puddles, reflective ripples running on
pavements. Soaked, shivering, steaming.

Who doesn't know rain?
If you live in a desert, that's something else,
but he lives among us.

He waits, watching the sky, checking at least
each hour, even in dreams,
and speaks to me anxiously.

I'm not sure what advice to give.
I could suggest don't wait, anticipate.
Don't ask, receive.

But I sense he's gone through every part of
that.

I'm not sure about accompanying him
much longer.
It rains where I live, and when you realize that wisdom and
wetness aren't the same,
there isn't much you can do with words.
Still, he's a friend, and the longer he waits,
the more I sense the story
of what he wants.







Saturday, 18 March 2017

Passing on


They speak of it as
passing on.
I haven't found a better way of saying
what it means.

But I surely know that when you
piece things together once the box has been
overturned,
you make sense in a
bigger way or
 not at all.

It's the bigger way that catches
my attention.

Passing?
What sort of idea is that?

I was baptised into Christ's body
three times.
I was on a quest.

I was also accepted as a Buddhist even though
I hadn't applied.

So words don't scare me.

I don't think you pass on.
I have so many dear friends and family
telling me something I can't quite
hear.

I have something in the heart that
touches what I can't possibly describe in
words.

I see it often,
and hear it, every hour,
but I can't say how it leaps
back into a believable world.

I am holding hands with a multitude of people who have
moved me, in so many ways, and
I am simply grateful.

I think we're all going on,
not passing. 




Friday, 17 March 2017

Asking God






There's something real we do
when we know that things aren't
working out,
whether in relationships,
money, or meaning.

It's when you've nowhere left to
go.

What a strange place to be.

You feel as though you've walked through
everywhere, and when you dream at night,
they come back.

Sometimes the ships leave,
sometimes the snakes suggest
deception neither you nor the next generation
comprehends.

You get the sense that everything
fails.

Eventually, no matter how you word it,
you ask God.

It's not about what they've taught you,
it's straightforwardly the language of the
heart.

Nothing tidy about that.

When you ask God,
everyone and everything is
present.

It's not, as they say, a big ask,
it's an all ask.

When you do that,
how does it feel?

I have asked God a few times,
and the question has become
bigger, and I have learnt, unwillingly,
to drop the desires of my dreams,
and to awaken to what
I can't.

I am sorry about this,
this not waking to currents and concerns,
all of which I should have known better. 

Sometimes I think I am still in
mediaeval times, killing my stupid
enemies.
They simply come back.

It's better to stop trying, perhaps,
and ask God.
It's where I am now.



Monday, 6 March 2017

Language-snake




I'm not sure who said what at
the very beginning,
yet I do know that language,
although a beautiful beast,
has poison in its teeth
some of the time.

I've never been scared of snakes,
sometimes thought of having one
as a pet,
but I realize that's
out of the question.

I am scared of what's in
a snake's heart,
I confess,
and now's the time to clarify that
mistake.

Nothing's the matter with a snake's heart,
and everything is rattled in the language of
the human heart.

If you want to speak from a split tongue,
death in the tooth, and a glib body,
and a shiny skin,
and you're a snake,
I'll pay respect.

Put the same stuff together in a human
and I'm not so sure.
Better to avoid,
if you can.

I've crept around enough,
avoiding trouble, and putting up with
problems of pain that don't go away and
grow.

When I put distance between language and
living,
I can grasp why they made the serpent
responsible.

We can't do naked language, it's too
vulnerable. Cover up with fig-leaves, and
try to re-create your garden. That's serious work.

Yet I have a kind of snake in my
tongue. It knows more than I do,
and can say something that my body
is assured of.

I'm not sure if I'm a friend,
but I have no fear oof its coiling breath
and its cooling heat:
it's family of the dragon,
they say,
so I am hesitant.

When I attend to the language-snake,
it's not only about listening,
but also knowing what's looking
into your eyes.


Sunday, 5 March 2017

Switch






It's important to know that life isn't on or
off.
What they say, and what we see about babies and
dead bodies isn't final.
Humans have a dreadful way of making statements that
aren't true. Belief is a bad way to go.

Sure, what you encounter as experience doesn't
add up. Something is always
missing.

I'd say take care to consider the
switch that's silent and
swift, in the background.

Do you have friends?
And how does their loyalty
like you?

If you're looking for one true story to
sort out your life,
mind the switch.

I've found one such
real answer in the wind of
words my thinking can't remember.

The switch changes everything
in the guts:
at that level, who'd dare to declare
love?

When words don't make sense,
other things do,
and I have found them.

Don't make a mistake,
the switch isn 't petty and human,
when you find a big change, perhaps
not of your making,
something else works
to sort out the spirit of self
you can't describe. 


Wednesday, 1 March 2017

Looking through the window



It takes some years, perhaps your
whole life, to realize that deep hopes
won't materialize.

On Robben Island, I looked through the bars
that another man had considered for decades,
and come through, counting the cost and pain of
that perusal.

In my own growing up I wanted joy they said God gave,
and now that my body is beyond belief,
I am trying the catch
that keeps the window closed.

Sometimes you want to feel the ice air
take you by the face,
reddening nose, cheeks and ears to a
robust sense that disguises itself as
reality.

I am glad my children know how to
breathe, one was born six weeks early.
That was something to
get through.

They're meant to live after being
born,
and when a system of stupidity
stops them,
how do we speak out? How do we
save the situation?

There's a sword we're scared to grasp
in our current world, the one that cuts through multi-
edged truth. We've move moved on from two.

When I take a step back, and consider how the cry of
fairness slaps God's face,
I know that I look through many windows
that have been put there on purpose,
to keep you out.

But the prison of vision is a strange one:
it generates the singing of children who may be
taught words and tune, yet in their very voices
something fierce declares more than their
sweet tones.

And when I hear that,
my heart is also wild,
turning all my understanding
into rapids that refuse
failure of movement.



Tuesday, 28 February 2017

Peanuts in shells



I grew up in a world where peanuts were in shells:
you had to do the work to get them out,
share with squirrels in the Company Gardens,
then take the train home,
and walk the necessary steps
to your family door.

I have tried to shell my computer,
but nothing's inside
there.

The data's unbelievable, really,
hardly makes sense.

And there's little to bite into.
If you can smell a single peanut
in that forest of mumbled trees,
good luck to you.

They told me a black cat meant
bad luck. I tried licking that tongue-
twister.

I'd sit down with a real person, if I could
find one, and shell a few things, with that
special one, and find a taste that belongs
to us.

You can screen a candidate but not
a friend.
And I will never accept that the loving things
in living
can be computed.
And now I go to make a sandwich
the content of which
you will never guess.

I'll share it with a friend, as I once did,
long ago
in the shadow of a telescope
glancing up at a night sky,
while I bit into a hunger of
chutney and cheese.
At two in the morning, that's not bad.

But now I'm thinking all the way back to
peanuts, unshelled,  and my life's story-teller,
on the train back home.
I remember, she hurt her finger in a
slammed train-door, steel on skin.
And I hurt, too, for that finger,
all these years later,
wanting to get that inner thing out
in a world that no longer
separates the work from the wonder
of that inner thing,
even if it's a
peanut.





Monday, 27 February 2017

Before the beginning



I've been forced often enough to test
my thinking mind.
Even after trying hard, I can't say I understand
much.
I've been made to feel my feeling mind in cruel ways,
and encouraged also, in kindness.
I learnt about the bridge between body and mind
in that kindness, and I still have the key.

I have a confession:
my body believes
nothing,
yet knows that
before its conception
the heavenscape we call God
was, and still is home.

When death baffled me completely,
I asked Christ for truth,
and learnt that Logos has little to do
with language, and that most of us
miss meaning almost entirely.

What moves us is something we can't
say.

Before the beginning,
I Am.

The scales of biological basics inform me
each morning that my percentages of
bone, tissue, water and density
declare what I seem to be alone in
saying to the other side of skin:

we sense beginnings, and endings, they're
important.

But even more telling is the truth of what goes on
before the beginnings and after the endings.

We don't really have to wonder, because we've been to
these stations, and the fear of them
isn't necessary.

Tomorrow morning, before we make coffee,
'and after the final mouthful,
let's go the whole way,
weep for humanity,
and try again.





Thursday, 16 February 2017

When the body speaks.



The language I speak is seldom from the heart because
no-one taught me that.
Neurons are tuned to current news
as soon as they are born. 

There are two languages that speak through me:
the formal one my brain and tongue conspire,
together with a history,
and one other private one
that's me.

When the body speaks,
it's not brain and tongue,
larynx and voice-box
echoing idioms and idiots.

The body hungers, aches, angers and
pleasures each season and circumstance,
and lives joylessly, or carelessly,
or seeks the secret we call
love.

The heart is the one
real place,
reflected in the face,
no matter how good a liar
you are.

When the body speaks
it's different to the
patter and purpose of others.
It knows not something,
but everything.

We don't go there, easily, because the heart has something to say about
living and dying.
It's a language few want to learn.

When my body speaks,
I am surprised to learn that
the heart is feared more than the tongue's
temperature.
The two-edged sword isn't wanted
in a world of swirling words.

If humans have one heart that beats for all,
as I was taught,
and I think that this is true,
I look carefully at each and every face,
and consider how the core of you
goes on.

Some could easily toss this aside,
and say it doesn't add to anything real.
But I would say that when the body speaks,
that what you feel
has a way of hurtling through  heart,
past brain, tongue, langauge, learning
to places 
intended to heal.










Wednesday, 15 February 2017

Beacon



Within each one of us there's a
signal. Some will be tuned to it,
others not.
Sometimes it's a brightness,
sometimes an
ache.
The soul is
what it is.

The beacon of what I know and
love
is sure,
and recently I have found the black water of
knowledge to be a
better reflection
of the facts against the
fictions.

I was told about so many truths that turned out to be
rippling waves, carrying
your beacon.

And when I asked who you were,
and how to meet you,
the sea said something in the language of
itself,
and the travelling light spoke in
silence.

Yet I am filled with your signal,
the mother of every message,
and I wonder why my heart is filled with
so much missing
when you are close.




Monday, 13 February 2017

Referee








He stamped his foot, raised his hand and called
"That's it!"
and in that split second
something quite else
was decided in me.

The game went on, quickly,
but something in my universe was
changed,
my neurons knew that
I would catch up with this
impatient image.

How suddenly a ball can change
direction!







Saturday, 11 February 2017

O taste and see




Is the surface wet? my friend always asked.
He lived on the slopes of a high mountain from where
he gazed at the ocean of our home.
He had a condition that immobilized him
there. I admired his house, it was extravagant, yet comforting
to him, and also me.

It's not really a question, I'd reply.
If you touch it, you enter it,
you can't avoid wetness when you're
that close. And the surface isn't what
it seems. It just looks like that.

But he was never satisfied. He'd gaze and ponder,
wondering what the actual feeling was.
Here, I'd say, put your hands under the tap,
you know what that's like.
Not the same, he'd mutter,
that's my own water.
I want to feel the ocean.

We spoke of swimming, sharks, seals, dolphins and
currents with their causeways of cold and warmth
circling our planet, having made it what it is. Crabs, seaweed,
wrecks, rocks and deep things we'll never see for ourselves.

And always his question:
is the surface wet?

We saw shimmering dawns, gleaming sunsets,
days of dreaming and nights when city lights were stars
against the moon's speech, uttering some mysterious thing
onto that surface of which he required something
I couldn't answer.

I had always wished for ways to take him down to
find out for himself.

Is the surface wet?
Exasperated, I'd say, if you plunged in,
you'd know the difference between surface and
sea.

But that was unkind, he had a condition whereby he
couldn't leave his home.
And I liked his home, too.

When I now walk the beaches, and look towards where
his house has been,
and feel spray dart against face, eyes, and ears,
and I open my central self
to his question, and oceans turn so many ways
within,
I am tempted to swim out as far as I can go
as an answer to
the surface of his query.

It's easy if you've been there,
but difficult to explain.












Tuesday, 10 January 2017

If language should go




If language should go the other way,
I reckon I know what it would say:
sun to galaxy, star to moon,
tomorrow is yesterday, now is soon.
If money is mother, then father is dead,
notice the sign once you've banged your head.
You only grow when you're in the ground,
you learn to speak when you can't make a sound.

When up is around and down is through,
take great care of last century's truth.
None of it's yours, it will never be mine,
all of it's owned by the lie of time.

If  presence of fear is the absence of you
just open your hand: there's the cosmic glue.
The dance is the plan, there's no floor at all:
we drift across to another hall.
But there the music is not what we like
so we keep on searching throughout the night.

Moon to finger, sunset to birth
and nothing at all to planet Earth.
Mother to meaning, daughter to wedding,
father arriving and maid to bedding.

So from is for never and go is stop.
R is for random and H is for hop.
L is for learning and Z is for gravy
B is for finding the shade of the navy.

If language would go the other way,
I think I know what it should say.
M is for meaning and S for escape,
T for breaking the winner's tape.

If language could go the other way
I have no doubt what it would say.










Friday, 6 January 2017

Waterfall




I don't think that water understands
commitment.

I don't think that bodies have to
believe.

When you love,
you run towards that
focus:

it's blessed whether it's a
cause, child, or
bird somehow
settling in your sphere of
knowing.

I have many waterfalls
rushing,
within,
and  I am constantly
tipping beyond all
language.

Rather than nothing, I am
too much and can't be held back
willingly.

Some have called it impatience
but this movement within and about me
doesn't agree.




Wednesday, 4 January 2017

Sleep, dream.





I know you, and we're walking through something
not so solitary,
but we don't take dreams
seriously.

When we wake, every morning,
recognition rises,
and that makes a kind of
meaning.

Sleep into that deep dream we don't
know about.
Although we do, I've heard a message,
but that's very
private.

Around us, beware, right now there are
fires, and fears running riot.

Well, fire may consume,
but fear,
that's  a part of many dreams that may be
dismissed.

I have a new voice that helps me
to discover this.

We need to sleep.
In the dreaming
things happen,
I can't describe them all.

But our bodies are filled,
renewed.

Thats's not a sense of reality worth
watching,

It happens
all the time.











Tuesday, 3 January 2017

Through the door.



You may have been told you arrive and
leave the planet, and the doors are
birth and death.

I have a different sense:
you, yourself are the door through which
universal fire stares out,
seeing itself in everyday sunlight,
searching itself in stars that are long-gone,
circling itself in uncountable constellations.

Have you listened to the comforting crackle
of wintry sparks and embers in the grate?
Take a moment to hear the sun:
it may be possible to learn the message of that
savage sound beating in the skin.

The heat of your body has to come from somewhere,
the heart's hinges are not entirely
up to us.

Standing in the doorway,
I know that geometry has gone to every shape and place and
come back to where I am.
The mathematics of time can't
explain my constant centigrade,
and neither can I.

It doesn't make sense to wait
for death. We come and
go in ways that have
much to say.