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.

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.

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.