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Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

LOST 1

My white winged soul is over the sea,

Low over the silver waters,

Far from sight, for duty

And the hope of peace.

Gone from this world,

Gone from the next,

Spiralling down to earth

To scour the debris of other’s joy.

There is some small joy in loss,

But not this loss.

Settled and content were we,

As rocks on a sun-warmed hillside

( the popping of gorse, the dust of heather,

the impermanent river of skylarks).

Settled and content, rippled in sheltered shade

(the hum of bees, the dance of gnats).

But each change brings irrevocable change.

Worlds end at every whim,

The ruins dreaming in emptied desolation.

Time, a syncopated stutter

To relive or forget in themes.

The moment before death –

An unravelling of strategy and excuses.

Something pure there, something silent,

Something wrapped beneath the pain and sorrow,

Something unutterably sweet, something eternal flickers

Before the moment and the light dies.

Before the terrible glorious cauldron darkness,

The seething dice thrown before dawn

Where we have lost our voices

And must learn to sing again,

Sound by sound.

—

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A PERPETUAL DREAMING

.

far away, among the mountains

that uphold the sky,

.

there are those

who forever walk on tiptoe

.

and only whisper,

so as not to wake

.

the sleeping god

that dreams the universe is real.

.

the lullaby of cascading rivers,

the jade clear ice fields,

.

the resounding sapphire sky

with silent wheeling eagles

.

and murmuring chant

from the womb dark temples

.

to keep that sleeper wrapped

in the folds of wonder.

.

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PROLOGUE (dark druid arts)

I have sat down and tasted the words of the dead.

What do they taste of, the words of the dead?

They taste of the feathers of owls and the scent of old books.

They taste of domed silent libraries and the flow of a million minds.

They taste of iron and the flower of blood as it fills the mouth.

They taste of mud and rain and scythed grasses.

They taste of the forbidden, of the forgotten,

of the bitter and the everlasting.

They taste of answers and riddles and orifices.

I have sat down and watched them

As the old words make pictures,

As they attempt to communicate their forgotten truths

and the lying stories, and the power of breath and the power of song.

2

Let these sounds revolve slow:

The seed that sucks in water swells

Reaches out to worlds unseen

New airs moving, new sense, new scenes.

Becoming is leaving behind in darkness

That which feeds us still.

Moving out, moving out, peeling the familiar.

These fragments to be held without adjustment,

Without conclusion, as it were,

And if we were not shaping, as it were,

As if we knew somewhere deep already:

The old languages of the blood,

The old languages of potent dreaming.

—

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N THE BLOOD

How long does it need to be in the blood

Before it becomes poetry?

How long must it seethe ‘til it yields

A single drop reflecting new truth the old way?

How long mirroring, remembering, discarding,

Disregarding its own and other fashions

Until it forgets the watchers and turns in

To be just itself alone?

A single gnat swims unevenly

Through a still midnight room.

That is what life is, usually.

The wind outside, a faint electric hum,

The tick of clock and cooling fire.

The words sink down

A mulch of debris.

Nothing can be returned now.

It must move on and feed others,

Seek new flesh, bend new tongues.

It will pulse,

A thin capillary pull

To go on its way.

—

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CARN INGLI HAIKU

—

We are lost in its blue distance.

Carn Ingli praised by cuckoos.

—

A gathering of sunlight.

In the shadows of Carn Ingli

Even the near becomes distant.

Humming bees.

—

Some hills watch you for miles,

Knowing who you are, where you have been.

Carn Ingli, perched above the world.

—

A flock of blue stones:

Cracked open are their doors.

Crowned in heather and whin

Is silent Carn Ingli.

—

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THE HEALED SKY

The healed sky

Blue as the calm gaze

Of the Medicine Buddha.

May all beings find peace.

—

The healed sky.

Wherever we go

The chanting of honey bees.

—

The healed sky.

A deeper peace creeps in,

Silence no longer a threat.

—

The healed sky.

Eternal mind

Ever returning to life.

–

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ON THE HILL OF ARBERTH

Shall we climb the yonder green mound?

Expand our view to the wide unseen horizon,

See wonders, see the unattainable brilliance?

I shall tell you a story where the darkness shines

As bright as the glory of day,

Where the horror shouts loud enough

To wake the doorkeeper between worlds,

Where the pictures come as clues to other strange things,

Where places reconstruct in cellular aggregations

Down the spine and the tides of new air

Tingles with the riddles of a new way

To lose certainty and find a better truth.

Rest now.

Time and space is full already with this world.

Watch as patterns shift.

In shadows and slowed moments

Other worlds can show themselves,

The other that is not the other.

( the woodpigeon’s grey cool song

And the deep green wind between the hills).

It is so full, so full.

Let go the river downwards.

Just below, just below the known

Are the vast halls of golden brocade,

The sapphire cool pavements, as it were.

Wait, unframing, un-naming.

Roads are small patterns of consistency.

Mingle the words of in and out.

Lay one on another without choosing.

Climb the green rise and see what might be seen:

Distance, shimmer, dazed,

What is there is elsewhere.

Soften and dissolve the sight –

That is the way, ( a voice says), to see outside.

The mirror ripples, water turns to rock.

The slow creatures stop to dream,

The warm air chants with bees’ hum.

One step without moving.

There is an art to it akin to drunkenness and despair.

Waiting, not wanting control, dissolving slightly,

Wavering a haze of possibility.

Silence. The deep is the dream

That dreams you here.

—

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The Stones Of Words In The Rivers Of Meaning

‘Sacred’

Is the most precious thing.

That which is unpartitioned.

That reaches roads longed for.

That unfurls sky landscapes unbounded.

That is the most precious.

That fills and empties and makes whole possible.

That wraps meaning in glory and silence.

That goes beyond meaning to mean more.

That flows beyond edges still singing.

That is utter silence enfolding, accepting.

That swells and feeds and gives succour.

That cannot be defined by limitations.

That is beyond and within.

The engine of breath,

The longing to exterminate failure.

To awaken, to sparkle, to feel more, to perceive more.

To stand on the edge of a precipice,

To leap and let go and not care.

To recalibrate, to forget.

To sing eternally.

To be welcomed home.

To be unsullied.

To become the story.

To be magnified.

An infinite expanse of meaning,

A means to go beyond here.

The awen – an inflowing and an outflowing.

Exhilaration.

It can possess but cannot be possessed.

That which carries us away.

Exponential expansion of fractal geometries.

Everlasting metaphor.

Edge of the mysterious void.

Extinction of destruction.

Edges dissolve

And we expand

Into the sacred more.

—

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Two Bowls

Two bowls

The wind blows out the daylight

Which, anyway, was grey and blurred.

The rain coming and going

And the logs keeping us warm.

The way time starts and stops

Depending on whether

You are looking at it, or not.

A world tree and a spell,

Two bowls that I have carved today

That I will feel in my muscles tomorrow.

These dreams are my offerings to a world

That dreams.

—

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RAINBOW WINGS

When the cloud is not down on the hill

there is no magic.

When everything is so clear,

nothing is seen.

The sound of the river,

what voices does it carry?

How can it be unravelled?

I shall tell you a truth

that is mine alone,

a truth of gold and silver

as pure as dream

and as radiantly unscathed.

A truth of rainbow-sheened wings,

roofing a golden palace,

dispersed by a breath,

by a doubt, by a breeze.

The truth no one believes –

that is the way to touch the Real.

The truth that cannot possibly be true,

that is laughed out of every hall,

that truth is the truth that can change the universe.

—

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