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,

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.