Among The Skeletons Of The Sundials
Among the skeletons of the sundials
what deficits of time remain unlived, unfulfilled?
So much forfeited to what crowded it out.
And the more that was said, the more
fraudulent and incomplete what we wanted to sing.
Too many murmuring windows, too many
trashed doorways to the collusive shelters of the heart.
We saw the stars, and how few learned.
We went to war for reasons
that have forgotten us now
and though there were those
who sternly waited like iron gates
no one returned to their secret gardens
or the silence as they had left it.
I watched from an island as the sea flexed
into the muscle of my generation
to celebrate a dream that hasn't happened yet
and tear the veils off the multi-eyed spiders
and make them wince in a succession
of photo-op acid flashbacks
that stunted the weaving a moment or two.
It was what we could do, not what we did it for,
and the idealism of it all was merely
the afterthought of the alibi for the release
of so much sunamic energy that would sooner
walk on water in Jesus boots, than float
the way the usual bloated corpses did.
The earth shook and the bridges and cornerstones
sank into quicksand, and the black roses
of the La Brea tar pits swallowed their worms.
And then the profit margins of the corporations
went helical as a stairway to heaven
and heaven came down to earth, and money was made.
Love and understanding exploited
as natural human resources. Spiritual materialism.
Light My Fire became the enlightenment path to cars.
I was there. I still wear more scars than I do flowers.
And I can remember the day the sundials died
in aesthetic gardens of unconcern and though
I loved the colours and the creative efflorescence
of unconditioned minds here and there
who had avoided madness by an eyelash,
it was only our lack of years for a summer or two
that kept us from saying the word, pure, with filthy mouths.
Too early for the fountains to fester yet.
Too late to heed the omens of the sundials.
Alchemists of liberty, we had turned our iron cages
into golden ones and the doves shook against their bars
like philosophers who could still see the stars outside
that beckoned them to leave, the doors were open,
but stayed within the precincts of their lamps and candles,
like Luna moths and houseflies. And you
who see the tv sixties like the capstones
of ice bergs and pyramids, the all too human concerts
of the indefatigable music where the painted breasts
of the wild Pictish women from California
danced like the fruit of low hanging branches,
give some thought to the sweating horses of the past
and the number of flies that fell into the Milky Way.
So that purity doesn't appear like a ghost again
detached from the earth or swept clean of mirages
in a desert of stars that didn't keep our footprints very long.
You might have missed the greatest party on earth
but you didn't suffer the depressive hangover of the end
when the junkies sat up against the wall listening
to Jimi Hendrix kiss the sky for them all,
paralyzed in the shadows of their own gigantism
as the tragic heroes bemoaned how useless their deaths were
to those who were determined to live to the end of the play.
poem by Patrick White
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Every Path
Every path is as wide with compassion
as the planet that you're walking on
so there's really never any danger of falling off.
I didn't lie
and you didn't tell the truth:
two sins of omission
trying to fit lenses to clarity
like fashionable eyewear.
It's what people do
when they don't want to see too much.
And I'm sure you've recreated me in your own image long since
I discovered good-bye was older than eternity
and more absolute than space.
I remember you asking me once
after we'd finished making love in the red tide
as the breakers dashed their galaxies against the rocks
and we both sprawled there naked dripping with stars
what I thought a human was and I replied
an interpretation with a face.
And you asked why we were here
and I said to listen to the sea beside someone like you.
And later as we were walking back to the fire
you looked back at our footprints glowing in the sand
like tiny island universes following us
like dance-steps painted on the shore
and pulling yourself in tight against my arm
you whispered I think we're the music they're dancing to.
And ever since I've cherished
an ancient silence deep within me
whenever I've looked at the stars and thought of you.
I've burned a lot of bridges
since that night of doors
with thresholds that couldn't be crossed
and windows that turned their backs
on what they couldn't see through.
I should have thought by now
I might have forgotten you
but you're always the stranger
who shows up at the gate of the abyss
just as I'm about to enter
and throwing me a blindfolded kiss
says Here. Interpret this.
As if it were some kind of koan
you wanted me to break like a fortune-cookie
or Etruscan linear B
or the water of a womb that's letting go
like the dark night sea that still surrounds us
as if all these eras of time
that have driven past us like stars
driving past roadkill
on the ghost road of the Milky Way
could be clocked
by the heartbeat of an embryo
born posthumously in the past without a future.
And sometimes it comes to me
like a glass eye rounded by the waves of its eyelid
washing up at my feet like a well-spoken memory
that lost its edge to the bluntness of time
there's nothing natural about human nature
because there's nothing supernatural about the divine.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Lightning Hits The Horns Of The Morning Snail
Lightning hits the horns of the morning snail
like the tines of a tuning fork
and the larkspur sees in the ashes of the holy one,
a tiny urn, no bigger than a cigar butt,
a deep connection to the stars
at the root of its ultramarine towers,
the ugly and despised become luminously beautiful
by what they've been touched by. Same
with candles, night, the human spirit, a poem
and the stars and planets
that ride the film of our eyes across the sky
or slide across the poppies of blood that bloom
on the other side of our eyelids in the sunshine
like blue sunspots and serpentine rainbows
on the deft wings of the houseflies aspiring
to penetrate the heights and mysteries of being
as if they approached God like an ineffable windowpane,
and the black mirrors of the oil slicks
that eclipse our faith in our transformative power
to change things. Two petals of violet cosmos,
two eyelids of a new way of looking at things,
swaying ethereally in the wind
as if they were keeping time
to a faint music they can hear
way back somewhere in their mind's eye, fall
and stick themselves to the back of a snail
inching its way along a garden path in metric
through a crosswalk of rococo shadows,
and who would have believed
something so low and slow could fly
if they hadn't seen it with their own eyes?
Show me anything your eyes have ever been deprived of,
however ugly, however visually tantalizing,
inside our out, even if you can count more than the usual three,
and I'll show you someone who hasn't learned
how to be grateful for the generosity
of the black hole they're living in
like one of the darlings of light.
Clarity isn't just a matter
of straightening out the wavelengths in your line of sight
and then looking upon everything you see
as if it were flatlining in parallel event horizons
everywhere you looked for signs of life
and came upon death, and mistook it for peace.
It isn't just a matter of contemplating sundials
in erratically disciplined Zen gardens
until you come to understand how to use the shadows
on behalf of your own spiritual insight
as readily as you've mastered your weapons of light.
No one's ever been purified by a holy war.
Not even the warrior minstrel of the forlorn hope.
You can exhaust a whole new generation of third eyes
trying to make it all one out of a lot of little separate pieces
that reflect the whole in every part
of your shattered chandeliers and mirrors,
that long pilgrimage, that fire walk of shining splinters
that dazzle you into believing it's skip to my lou my darling
all the way down a Milky Way of stars
from here like a fingerling of light
to there like a wild salmon of oceanic enlightenment.
Beauty isn't an essence you can extract from the ore
of who you are as a human like an existential alchemist
trying to distill the stars from the medium they're shining in
as if you were pulling a sword from a philosopher's stone.
All the shining spiritual metals, copper, silver, mercury, gold,
unless they're alloyed with the darker elements of earth,
are too soft for combat. Merlin relies
on the iron forge in his own blood to work his magic.
He knows a holy war is just an exorcism
on crusade against a seance. A calling
of the dead to the dead. Not the work
of the living spirit that resides
in the human divinity of everyone of us
like a birthright of shining
that's as indefensible and unassailable
as time and space. Clarity doesn't try to part the heavens
like a mansion into single rooms for every afterlife
that goes into exile looking for an excellence within itself
that knows how to keep a promise to the earth.
Knowing how to fall is half the art of rising.
Learning how to get up off
your knees, your prayer rugs, tatami mats
and all those flying carpets
that don't fly straight in any direction
with compassion for the human being you are
as you see yourself looking at you
through everyone else's eyes,
and hear creation being said within you
like the fleeting meanings of life
that shadow the life of meaning
as fast as it's being spoken
in the mother-tongue of everyone
who can look upon a morning snail
and hear how a grubby little buddha
of a sticky sacred syllable
that crosses your path in the morning
is saying you into existence twenty four seven
the way everything else is each other
in the wholly imaginable beauty
of a creative language that isn't
a tongue-tied stranger to anyone.
Look at any grain of dirt on whatever path you're on
and light it up with the shining
from the oil lamps of your own eyes
and you'll see how easy it is to enlighten
what's under your feet like the billions of stars
that spontaneously followed suit like wildflowers
once you got the first one lit and realized
in whatever direction you search and seek
the spirit isn't looking for the right road of thorns
to cut its feet on, or lacerate its knees on a holy stairwell.
Put a pair of cosmic wings on a morning snail
and the whole earth turns into a landing strip
of green boughs in blossom, even
when the fireflies take over the nightshift
like microcosmic demonic nightwatchmen.
Go ask the bees if you don't believe me.
They can read the petals of the secret starmaps
that bloom like love notes and shared recipes
for honey that tastes like a solar flare
transformed by the transactions of a spiritual atmosphere
that pearls this grain of nacreous earth
as surely as the air that breathes us does,
into auroral arrays of beauty and compassion.
If you can't love the veils, how are you ever
going to learn to love the face behind them
that smiles back at you in a likeness of yourself,
all eyes, and stars, flowers and nocturnal metaphors
for what you're looking at?
A morning snail with two petals of cosmos for wings,
with flashy grains of dirt on its back, each
a world within a world in its own right,
rising chromatically over their event horizons
as a sign of a significance of their own
as poignant as the silicates and stars they're reborn from,
delivering the mail at its own pace
as if its wings were two loveletters
addressed to itself by the wind personally
each sealed with a kiss
like two complementary eyes
you must look into deeply if you want to see
how the hourglass flowers in your gazing
like larkspur and shapeshifting desert stars.
If you don't want to live your whole life
like a scar looking for a wound you can believe in.
Even a morning snail, if you've got the eyes for it,
can make a trail of the silver veil it leaves in its wake
like a smeared mirror on the path to enlightenment.
If you only love the light at moonrise,
and despise what's fallen into the dirt
like so many windfalls of
demons, stars, snails, angels, apples and humans before it,
your life is not adjusted to the time-zone you're living in
and your heart keeps missing a beat
you go endlessly wandering over the earth to look for
through the gardens on the moon
and the starfields above
when everywhere and always
it's been right under your feet all the time
like a snail path shining like the Milky Way
on the garden walkway through
the blue and white stars of the larkspur
like lightning in the morning
that flashes from your own eyes.
poem by Patrick White
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My Home Remains Sky
I will not return to earth
Once on the earth and the earth turned me down, only briefly with
I went back to the sky, I'm in heaven where my original
In the sky more beautiful in the sky over calm
Actually I had stayed at home on earth
Even now I miss her
But on earth I could scarcely recognize the permanence
So I'm just one or two times to the earth
I am the son of heaven who loves the sky
High and difficult to reach, or do not think anyone
After the sky I'm difficult and not easy to come back to earth
Only the rain was the tears that tell of the earth
Echoed devastated what is on earth
And I will continue in the sky
Before there was earth is really for me
Earth friendly and beautiful for me
So that's what eternity will tell their own
And we both lost in eternity swallow
Silence swallowed, swallowed by the beauty
Swallowed by time, into the night and day
Swallowed by love and affection both of us forever
poem by Irvan Hermawan Saichu
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The Creation of the Moon
The man cut his throat and left his head there.
The others went to get it.
When they got there they put the head in a sack.
Farther on the head fell out onto the ground.
They put the head back in the sack.
Farther on the head fell out again.
Around the first sack they put a second one that
was thicker.
But the head fell out just the same.
It should be explained that they were taking the head
to show to the others.
They did not put the head back in the sack.
They left it in the middle of the road.
They went away.
They crossed the river.
But the head followed them.
They climbed up a tree full of fruit
to see whether it would go past.
The head stopped at the foot of the tree
and asked them for some fruit.
So the men shook the tree.
The head went to get the fruit.
Then it asked for some more.
So the men shook the tree
so that the fruit fell into the water.
The head said it couldn't get the fruit from there.
So the men threw the fruit a long way
to make the head go a long way to get it so they could go.
While the head was getting the fruit
the men got down from the tree and went on.
The head came back and looked at the tree
and didn't see anybody
so went on rolling down the road.
The men had stopped to wait
to see whether the head would follow them.
They saw the head come rolling.
They ran.
They got to their hut they told the others that the head
was rolling after them and to shut the door.
All the huts were closed tight.
When it got there the head commanded them to open the doors.
The owners would not open them because they were afraid.
So the head started to think what it would turn into.
If it turned into water they would drink it.
If it turned into earth they would walk on it.
If it turned into a house they would live in it.
If it turned into a steer they would kill it and eat it.
If it turned into a cow they would milk it.
If it turned into a bean they would cook it.
If it turned into the sun
When men were cold it would heat them.
If it turned into rain the grass would grow and the
animals would crop it.
So it thought, and it said, "I will turn into the moon."
It called, "Open the doors, I want to get my things."
They would not open them.
The head cried. It called out, "At least give me
my two balls of twine."
They threw out the two balls of twine through a hole.
It took them and threw them into the sky.
It asked them to throw it a little stick too
to roll the thread around so it could climb up.
Then it said, "I can climb, I am going to the sky."
It started to climb.
The men opened the doors right away.
The head went on climbing.
The men shouted, "You going to the sky, head?"
It didn't answer.
As soon as it got to the Sun
it turned into the Moon.
Toward evening the Moon was white, it was beautiful.
And the men were surprised
to see that the head had turned into the Moon.
This Island Earth
When will we know love?
When will we listen to heaven above?
And how will we return?
Someone said that weve been tempting fate
But I believe this song just wouldnt come if its too late.
Chorus:
When will we see a light upon the ocean.
Shining like a star
That leads us ever onward
Theres a new world waiting
When will we see rebirth
This island earth
Maybe our moment is gone
Maybe weve stood and watched
A moment too long
So why do I believe?
Someone said
That the truths too much to take
But tell me how we can face it
If we only want to look the other way
Chorus
To a new beginning
Shine for all its worth
This island earth
Why, what will we say to the angry child,
Try to explain away her fears while were crying burning tears
Maybe its time to cry the tear that matters
Chorus
Oh as we sail
Through the stars
Were alive on this island of ours
song performed by by Kenny Loggins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Here On Earth …, There In Heaven…
Here on earth imperfection, there in heaven perfection
Here on earth discontent, there in heaven content
Here on earth disgrace, there in heaven grace
Here on earth disease, there in heaven ease
Here on earth hatred, there in heaven love
Here on earth war, there in heaven peace
Here on earth decay, there in heaven freshness
Here on earth selfish, there in heaven selfless
Here on earth oppression, there in heaven liberty
Here on earth agonize, there in heaven relax
It’s either on earth, or in heaven
The decision, all yours
poem by Obed Akuma
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The Practical Uses Of Poetry
Not to be practical, not
to mean, be, do,
no more than the wind
to insist upon itself, to
move like the wind,
like a disembodied intelligence
over the mindfields
practicing the twin disciplines
of light and rain,
scattering the mystic pollen
of intuitive seeds
that bloom like roseate fire
in the shadowless gardens of the abyss
arranging the cosmos like a wild bouquet
in the blood vase of the human heart.
To remind us
we're not fireflies or stars
stuck on a chromosome
of intellectual flypaper,
a buzzing that will stop,
but a passion of native iron
in the arms of alien oxygen,
urged into creative consummation
by carbon.
Free as water, free as God
the night she put the universe on
like make-up
to attend to the beginning of everything
with a cosmic efflorescence of fireworks,
to speak for the stones, the stars, the trees,
to say them into being,
to say us, to whisper us
into the enormity of her solitude,
the inconceivability of her darkness,
a secret she couldn't keep anymore.
Experience is a child playing,
not function, not a job, not a career.
What's practical about singing alone
because the mysterious nightbird
has come like a blossom of joy
to the bough of the tree in winter?
Or must dancing have a use,
music be enchained to the stone ear of utility?
Bleeding isn't very practical either
but how would you ever know
you were a rose scarred by your own thorns
if you didn't?
Sooner renounce the sweetness
of the star-flavoured summer night air
or teach the wind a compass and a map,
the sky to consult a control tower
than try to grind the stars of poetry
with a stone and an ox
into a function and a fee.
The wages of poetry are always a gift
that takes the recipient by surprise
with the beauty of its subtlety
and a coin as true as the moon.
Who asks to be paid
to dance alone with God?
And even the abyss
has provided you with a world
like a passport to anywhere you want to go.
Among the birds and the leaves
flowing along with this pilgrimage of stars
to shrines that are older than knowing,
if the sun or the moon
should open your voice like a flower
in the deep woods
to hear you singing in the light,
and you are urged into poetry
through a gate as open as the cosmos,
and you discover colours have echoes
and the notes of your song
are a palette of gardens,
and everything you paint with your picture-music
is the portrait of someone you're becoming
until you look like everyone
from the inside out,
every passion
the longing of a planet
to burn with life,
and the deepest watershed of your humanity
is itself
the fountain
where the goddess drinks from her own reflection,
and you understand
that the word in the morning
is the word at the end of the day,
and that the life that adorns your body within
is the wine of the worlds
in a cup of clay
encrusted with stars
and you are the delirium the dream seeks,
the lightning and lucidity of the dark sage
your roots consult like a storm,
would you then look upon the first crescent of the moon
and try to fix it to a plough,
would you look forever
into the wells of now
like the eyes of a lover
who combs out the tresses of the willow like the wind
as if he played the whole of the night
on the blue guitar of your heart,
would you renounce the music as impractical?
To walk through this world aware,
with a spear of moonlight through your heart
like a poet, to feel
everything a human can feel
and have the courage and the art
to sing
the joys and sorrows,
the gardens and intimate hells alike
with compassion and understanding,
even when you often don't understand
because the shadow of the world
eclipses your eyes,
or the windows are saturated with pain,
to be able to do that, to be that
is beyond assessing
because there is no intention to life
or the running of the river
or the unspooling of a poem
that conceives of its seeing as progress.
What the eye writes
on these pages of percipient sky
that bring the world to a focus in us
is not a reality in advance
of the dream that shadows it.
poem by Patrick White
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A Love With No Regret
I look at the exit door and i see her,
With the mirage of her shadows from afar.
I look at the past and i see her smile,
A smile that lasted for a while.
She was once my heaven grace,
Now leaving with no trace.
She was my last solution,
But now irritate like pollution.
She once brought happiness,
Now that happiness is lost in this time of darkness.
I thought she was sent from heaven,
Made with all the beauties of heaven.
But i was so wrong of her,
Cos she was never αs amazing like the stars.
I once thought we would have a great future,
Each time i stare at her picture.
I once thought that she could be a great wife,
And that together we would have a wonderful life.
I once gave her my heart,
When we began from the start.
I wonder how it all went wrong,
That made us not to last long.
Then i realised that we were never meant for each other,
For there is no future with us together.
Now she is gone for good,
Far away from my neighbourhood.
I will cherish the moment we had,
Those moment that weren't bad.
I will never forget how happy we were,
That made us forget about our fears.
Those times that gave us joy and fulfillment,
That also brought us contemptment.
I can look back now with no regret,
That i met someone like you on earth.
For you thought me a lesson,
That will open doors to more blessing.
In spite of all that happened you will still remain in my heart,
For when you left you never tore it apart.
My door of friendship will always remain open,
Anytime you want our love story book to be reopen.
poem by Stanley Oguh
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Earth Day Every Day (Celebrate)
This song appears on two albums, and was first released on the earth songs album. it is also on the albums the very best of john denver (single cd) and the john denver collection - sunshine on m
Ulder.
Celebrate morning
The cry of a loon on a lake in the night
The dreams that are born in the dawn's early light
Celebrate morning
Celebrate living
The laughter that sings in the heart of a child
The freedom that flies at the call of the wild
Celebrate living
Celebrate evening
The stars that appear in the loss of the sun
Whispering winds, we are one, we are one...
Celebrate earth day, every day
Celebrate earth day, every day
Celebrate land and sea
Celebrate you and me
Celebrate earth day, every day
Words and music by john denver
song performed by by John Denver
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Earth Day Every Day
This song appears on two albums, and was first released on the earth songs album. it is also on the albums the very best of john denver (single cd) and the john denver collection - sunshine on m
Ulder.
Celebrate morning
The cry of a loon on a lake in the night
The dreams that are born in the dawn's early light
Celebrate morning
Celebrate living
The laughter that sings in the heart of a child
The freedom that flies at the call of the wild
Celebrate living
Celebrate evening
The stars that appear in the loss of the sun
Whispering winds, we are one, we are one...
Celebrate earth day, every day
Celebrate earth day, every day
Celebrate land and sea
Celebrate you and me
Celebrate earth day, every day
Words and music by john denver
song performed by by John Denver
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Science-fiction Cradlesong
By and by Man will try
To get out into the sky,
Sailing far beyond the air
From Down and Here to Up and There.
Stars and sky, sky and stars
Make us feel the prison bars.
Suppose it done. Now we ride
Closed in steel, up there, outside
Through our port-holes see the vast
Heaven-scape go rushing past.
Shall we? All that meets the eye
Is sky and stars, stars and sky.
Points of light with black between
Hang like a painted scene
Motionless, no nearer there
Than on Earth, everywhere
Equidistant from our ship.
Heaven has given us the slip.
Hush, be still. Outer space
Is a concept, not a place.
Try no more. Where we are
Never can be sky or star.
From prison, in a prison, we fly;
There's no way into the sky.
poem by Clive Staples Lewis
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A Blissful Thought Of Heaven!
Heaven of transparent clouds cover full Moon tonight
Drowning me in dreaming thoughts of glossy white!
Fragrance of choicest flowers and melodious music
Make me dance among freshly blossoming flowers
Like the butter fly flies from flower to flower tasting
Nectar to disseminate love everywhere to enjoy bliss!
Without the dance of heavenly damsels it is incomplete;
The Stars of heaven are the dancing queens of Universe
Entertaining the lonesome poets and philosophers ever!
The spiraling nebula of Milky Way provides spiral stairs
To go down the heaven to the misty snow mountains of
World of paradise full of hills and valleys with water falls
Growing into streams and rivers to mingle with the ocean!
Life and love can be seen romantically flourishing here only
For birds, animals and humans to survive eternally long!
The map of heaven down to the Earth the soul travels
And returns after becoming perfect to the abode of heaven!
Until then how many troubles and tribulations all face
To get a clean chit and a ticket to the heaven all long, long!
poem by Ramesh T A
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If You're Braver Than I Am
If you're braver than I am
it's only because you're more desparate you said
and I broke down laughing in tears
as you were tripping on mushrooms
and I was starting to peak on acid.
Why should you love me at all you asked
and I said I like to take subjective risks
and I can still light up at the smile you gave me
because you thought I thought you were dangerous.
Have you stayed dangerous over the years?
Did you ever find enlightenment?
Or have all those Doors of Perception we stepped through
way back then to expand our cosmic consciousness
by crossing all our thresholds
and dotting all our taboos
closed like space behind you?
Have you made your return address a point of view
you can live with
and turned those beautiful Hispanic eyes
into late night windows
that don't see anything that ever goes down in the neighbourhood?
Is your seeing still ambidextrous
or have you shut your eyes to the world
so they're more wall than window
and there's only one way of looking in?
Sometimes I think that night I dropped acid with you
on China Beach under the stars
estranged by the flames and shadows and smoke
of a cedar fire eager to burn its first heretic
I got so high I've never come down
and though forty-four years have passed
I'm still nineteen back there somewhere with you.
Even my mother used to say in frustration
when she couldn't win the argument
that I had a way of turning things upside-down.
That may well be so
but I'd still rather be an oxymoron
that can see all sides of things at once
like a multi-faceted jewel turning in the light
in front of a mirror
that doesn't know which one of its infinite profiles to choose
and doesn't,
than suffer the Great Reversal of the Hourglass
and end up walking on my head
and thinking with my feet
just so everybody would think I was normal.
I'm still nineteen back there somewhere with you
and the fire we lit that night
like something ephemeral
among so much that was eternal
keeps flaring up in me like a phoenix that's never gone out.
Clarity doesn't turn a lie into the truth.
And enlightenment might be so blissed out
it celebrates its own ignorance
because everything is perfect just as it is
but I still think there's more sincerity in the search
than there is in the finding.
I still think life is a mystery that surpasses its own wonder.
I still think every moment contains the whole of space
without beginning or end
like a water droplet contains the whole of the sea.
I still think that whenever people touch one another gently
they leave their fingerprints on the window
like constellations on the sky
that prove our identities are as indelible as light.
I still think there's something more alluringly mystical about action
than there is in the undynamic peace of contemplation.
But the best is to make love as we did that night
as a tantric mode of creative annihilation
that showed the drugs we were on
like flying carpets
what it was like for once
to get so euphorically high on us
the next time they saw us coming
they'd just say yes.
poem by Patrick White
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If The Night Were To Remember Me
If the night were to remember me
among all these shadows of lucidity,
for the firefly I burned to become,
for the corpse of the candle I am,
By the scars on the window I swear
By these constellations on my arm
I'm still learning to wear
as if I deserved them,
I always kept faith with the wonder;
even if I took the river
and left the road I was on
to go the rest of the way alone
as if it were better off without me
and fire on the water in fall
enraptured by the mystery
I was nothing at all
but the shadows of objects in a mirror
that taught me how to disappear,
a phoenix among the waterbirds,
a breathless secret in a gust of words.
Even the diamonds grow old.
And the light that shines through them.
And the eye that stares and beholds
the message that answers the medium
like the future ghost of tomorrow
of why joy thrives on sorrow
and our deathmasks hide our happiness
where we'd never think to guess
here arrayed before us
this unseen paradise
everywhere just as it is
in all its wretched blessedness.
I've looked for grace in the curse.
I've eaten the afterbirth of the worst
Taken sanctuary in the shadows
of abandoned embassy windows
keeping an eye on me in the dark.
Smothered in the ghost dust of stars
trying to make a fresh start
I've exchanged old wounds for new scars
just to blow on the fire a bit
to gratify the heretic
his penchant for martyrdom
and mine for creative delirium.
Ask me why and I'd say
that was my nature back then.
I didn't know any other way
to avoid being Zen about Zen.
Now I don't give a damn.
A true human is not human.
Better to avoid both
as pirated copies of the same truth.
Let go, give up, bye bye,
or cling to the dream in the doorway,
and nothing is purged or clarified.
Words are born with nothing to say.
Insight doesn't condition chaos.
Seeking a way out of the cosmos
is just another way of finding
a new way to stay that's binding.
poem by Patrick White
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And Though It's Dark And Cold Now
And though it’s dark and cold now
in this ice palace of broken windows
that don’t know whether to bite their lips
or cut their wrists like a suicide
that took it one step too far
like an eclipse that went into exile
I remember the swell and release
of your breasts in moonlight,
rising and falling like a lunar tide.
I remember coiling my finger around
the soft chestnut tendrils of your hair
as if I were dialling a long distance call
to someone I knew light years from here
who was living her dream
like the black sheep of a shepherd moon
she was giving her life up to.
You were an atmosphere on the nightshift
on the intensive care unit of a hospital
applying a cool poultice of moonlight
to the volcanic burns
of more terminal passions
than I ever aroused in you.
Or thought I ever could.
Though time stopped
dead in its tracks like a coma
whenever I was around you
and everything the good doctors
found incurably bad about me
suddenly went into remission,
I knew I was merely
a minor miracle in your life.
Intermission. Time out. One day
every four years to tune up the calendar
A blue moon in late October
after the harvest’s in
and the small birds
are gleaning the rags of a garden.
Canada geese in the cornfields
shredding the last documents
of an abandoned embassy heading south.
We were Indian summer
together for awhile both knowing
the frost would come soon enough
and one morning I would wake up
and look through the window
on your side of the bed
and say, hey, look, it’s snowing
and you wouldn’t be there.
And when the time came, you weren’t.
And I spent the next six years of my life
numb with understanding
in the snake pit of a Zen morphine drip
blessing the beauty of the knife
and the wound you left me with
like a thorn of light under the eyelids
of a new moon in full eclipse.
An eyepatch over the third eye
of an enlightened planet
that felt just like any other
starless night on earth without you.
And though I hurt like a lamp
that couldn’t see you
even when the sun shone at midnight
I knew enough about attachment even then
not to hold up hope
like a cage to the wind.
I never laid a trap line
along the path you took to leave.
I let the silence and the solitude
I returned to like a night bird
to a white-out deep in the woods
efface your footprints in the snow.
I knew I had to stay.
And I knew you had to go.
That one mile east is one mile west
like two feet going in opposite directions
down a road that doesn’t have any.
And though sometimes I look
at the moon these days
and say to myself
what a little scar it is
to cover so much
that’s dark and wounded
about the human heart,
I still haven’t changed the broken windows
I often find myself standing before
to take a long, good, hard,
dark, radiant look at life
to see if it’s still crying outside,
for a thermal-paned, fire-walled website
prophetically updating the virtual weather.
I’m still throwing stones
with loveletters attached to your absence
like the moon through the windows
of a glass palace in an ice-age
I know will thaw by itself in time
like the whirling Castle of Arianrhod,
the hot gem of Celtic heaven shining
in the afterlife of the Northern Crown
down upon these small human acts
of estranged encounters with our own kind
where we meet each other in passing
at the gate of a cosmic garden
that no one was tending at the time,
and long after the one has gone their way
and the other has gone inside.
Long after the flowers have died
that were strewn across
each others’s paths through life
like the spring on a windy night;
no matter how vulnerable it makes us
to being a prime candidate
among many with their sensible shoes on
to firewalk barefoot
on a starmap of burning thorns
into the darkness of enlightenment
to stay attached to the unattainable
the way we both were to the same stars.
Even when the morning glory
overruns the New England asters,
we leave the gates thereafter open
as if the whole heart of the dark matter
of why we love and suffer, bloom
and come to fruition
in the light of each other
as if the aurora borealis
that mystified our nights on earth
with the sheen of cool Persian silks of insight
blowing over the flesh and blood of mystic serpents
then die back into our brief lifespan
like a solar flare back into its sunspots
were still hanging
on one star
one eye
one wing
one prayer
one hinge.
poem by Patrick White
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Awards For Greatness
Not all can get awards though deserving;
Some luck and pluck too decides awardees;
The heart knows if he/she truly deserves;
The rest remain unsung all life on earth!
Awards on earth are not the ultimate;
The greatest feats are forgotten by men;
The greatest men, women are things of past;
Achievers who get lime-light aren't greatest!
All things on earth return to dust with time;
Most famous monuments become rubble;
Even rivers do change their course often;
Nothing is permanent in earthly life!
The luckiest deserving get awards;
The less lucky can't make up to life's peak;
The unlucky forget what awards mean;
A toiling few cannot think of such things!
Yet, human toil must get recognition;
Awards, rewards encourage achievements;
A few are born with silver-spoon in mouth;
The rest great slip into oblivion!
Yet, hopelessness need not fill any mind;
A few are heros/heroines on earth;
A few are great on earth and in heaven;
A few turn greatest only in heaven!
poem by John Celes
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Indian Summer
Barry gibb/larry gatlin
You were a lady - like lady I was a boy running wild
The way that you used everything that God gave you
I gave you my heart like a child, one moment you took me to heaven
Took me back to earth and then before I woke up to the fact I was small you took me back to heaven again
And I remember the indian summer how you held me, how you loved me (loved me loved me)
The world may give me a million reasons but reasons dont make it wrong
Every lesson I learned has a price in return I was lost in my youth and to tell you the truth
I was empty and you filled me with a glow of love a loving loves may die
Just to hear you that sees me through, oh what Id give to re-live all the indian summers with you
So many hearts have been broken (dum dum dum dum-by do wah)
You had no trouble with mine like a fool I was there for the taking (but then)
It was only a matter of time you can lie in the sun with the warm wind blowing
Just knowing youve already paid but you cant live alone in an indian summer at 110 in the shade
And I remember (and I remember) the indian summer
How you held me in the moonlight
We were riding along on a silver dream never dreaming it off our head
And if Id known Id lose you the moment I found you Id love you all over again
Cos Im still empty (Im still empty) come fill me ( come fill me)
With a fire of love your flame will follow flame cos its all I want to do
Oh what Id give to re-live all the indian summers with you
Oh what Id give to re-live all the indian summers with you
Oh what Id give to re-live all the indian summers with you
Oh what Id give to re-live all the indian summers with you-oooooooooooooooooo
song performed by by Roy Orbison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Love And Peace For Always!
While there are stars that shine on high
At night when day is done,
Remember God who made that sky
And named stars one-by-one...
While there are worlds beyond this Earth,
With new worlds being born,
Remember God still knows your worth,
So please don't feel forlorn...
While there are rainbows now and then
That span from left-to-right,
Remember God gave sight to men
That we might know delight...
While there are eagles gliding past
And doves that bill and coo,
Remember God whose love is vast,
For He says, 'I love you! '
While you aren't perfect, know this truth,
Forgiveness can be yours,
Remember God provides the proof
With Heaven's open doors...
While He awaits your precious prayers
That honour Jesus' Name,
Remember God declares He cares,
Forever more the same...
While sweet romance is born of dance
And music by the score,
Remember God can still enhance
Each chance for sweet amour...
While you may feel life's let you down
And shattered all your schemes,
Remember God will melt each frown
As you succumb to dreams...
While there's a Heaven to be gained
With angels all around,
Remember God has yet ordained
Lost souls can still be found...
While pardon's there, so highly prized,
Through all nights and all days,
Remember God and Jesus Christ!
Always! Always! Always!
Denis Martindale, copyright, February 2012.
We can hear the word of the Lord on
Revelation TV on UK Sky Digital 581
as well as the WATCH NOW link on
the revelationtv-dot-com website...
poem by Denis Martindale
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When The Geriatric Drunk Next Door
When the geriatric drunk next door who was
raising chihuahuas to make a living,
but couldn't part with one them when it came time to sell
came over one day in my childhood,
shaking like an aspen leaf in the fall,
going through withdrawal, to ask if he could borrow
a few bucks, I watched my mother give him five
of the last ten she had to raise four kids
for half of the rest of the month before
the next welfare check arrived, and say,
Here. Don't hurt yourself. Something to ease the pain.
Though she didn't drink and he'd been drinking too long
to turn the herd that had trampled him around.
She didn't judge. She didn't try to give advice.
She didn't belittle the man in the way she gave.
She didn't count how much the giving took off her plate.
She wasn't indulging her progressive, liberal, altruism.
She wasn't breaking loaves and fishes on a hillside
or trying to win a popular election.
She just gave like the sea, the earth, the sky,
like fire gives heat and light, all in one easy action
of a heart that has suffered enough on its own to know
we're all in the same lifeboat on the moon
white-water rafting through the rapids of a waterclock.
And that has been my religion ever since.
Though I've never said anything to her about it.
How much I loved her in that moment
of compassionate tenderness, how she pulled
one thread out of the straitjacket of despair in his eyes,
and rewove it not on a loom like the moon but a harp
into a flying carpet of joy so another human
in as much of a mess in her own way as he was
could gain some altitude for a little while above the misery,
and hang on to at least one single wavelength of threadbare radiance
that could still fall on the shit everybody was living in
and turn it into a flower. Indelible,
the understanding in their eyes when he
looked at her incredulously for a moment
and she knew exactly what he meant
as she laughed at herself with a soft, wry smile
as if she'd just seen the sacred fool behind her best sentiment.
That was the whole of enlightenment to me.
The beginning of a spontaneous discipline
and still is, though it's sometimes bitter to practise,
when your giving is mistaken for having been taken
and you lament how many people can't tell the difference
between a theft and a gift anymore. How they deprive themselves
of so many jewels of inestimable value,
and that human touch that can pour the heart like gold
from the darkest of ores, the deepest of mines,
or bring meteors to shed hot tears like diamonds upon impact.
Or oxygen and the bases of protein.
Though it be a nuclear winter outside.
Though the bride was left standing at the altar
and there was no one there to lift the veils of Isis
to see the stars in the eyes of the Queen of Heaven even at nadir
like a chance someone wasn't willing to take.
Though common sense dictate a rational sacrifice,
and Ayn Rand and the Union of Spiritual Snakeoil Salesmen
preach that you've got to learn to love yourself first
as if you had a self to nurture that wasn't rooted
like a mirage in a desert in an hourglass that poured
through your fingers like water when you tried to grasp
the delusion of the flower. Though all the mystics
try to annihilate what doesn't exist to see God as she really is
as they come before her like busy, busy bees
with money in their pockets and honey in their hives
and all their martyrdom proves to be just another mode of suicide.
You can give a piece of garbage you've picked
out of a dumpster like the bruised fruits of the earth,
and when you give it to someone you can eat
from the Tree of Life with impunity without having to choose
between the serpent and the apple, the evil and the good,
or the knowledge you must suffer to be understood
as a human, who can gain altitude by erring on the side
of someone else's plight without even wearing wings,
to the wonderment of the angels and demons alike,
and occasionally, like me, your angry, eldest son,
who didn't know until that one moment whether
he should approach the world like a fist
with teethmarks on the knuckles, or
an open palm with lifelines thrown out to another
like billions of umbilical cords woven like a strong rope
into a mother who didn't need to build an ark to be a lifeboat.
Who could see lucidly through a glass darkly
the veils of her own nebulosity breaking out of the fog
like the search lanterns of the stars
out of the most ancient mystery of love
hidden in her heart without the aid of a teacher or telescope.
poem by Patrick White
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Under My Feet
Its a hard life
Never let yourself get down
You may never get back
You may never ever turn it round
You may say it took you by surprise
Never ending
Never changing
I didnt see through your disguise
It took my breath away
Under my feet
The earth shook
Under my feet
The earth just fell away
Under my feet
Gave way
Did you ever want to take a chance
Never thought the time would come round
Quite so fast
Would you walk right thro that wall
And keep on walking till you
Couldnt stand on your feet no more
But you came and took me by surprise
When you stole up on me
I didnt see thro your disguise
It took my breath away
Under my feet
The earth shook
Under my feet
The earth just fell away
Under my feet - gave way
Where were you
When I needed you
Where were you
When I needed you
Where were you
Where were you - Im holding on
Under my feet
The earth shook
Under my feet
The earth just fell away
Under my feet - gave way
Under my feet
The earth shook
Right under my feet
Gave way
song performed by by Moody Blues
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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