The Poem

There's a poem going to take shape here,
Just you wait and see

The pen is going to write something,
Something deep and profound,
Or possibly something witty,
Witty is okay, too

Any minute now …

Well, that was a long pause!
You can't see it, of course
It's hard to write a pause;
Writing anything at all fills in the pause
But blank paper is just skipped over by the hungry eye,
The eye does not care for the dramatic pause …

There goes another one

Ribbity-Jo

There once was a man who told a lie
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Jane
And he told it over and over again
Ribbity-Jo my darling

He told this lie so many times
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Joo
That he started to believe it true
Ribbity-Jo my darling

And having thus convinced himself
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Jye
It was no more for him a lie
Ribbity-Jo my darling

The moral of this song is clear
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Jow
And I'll tell you what it is right now
Ribbity-Jo my darling

The lie that causes greatest harm
Ribbity-Jo, Ribbity-Jeer
Is the truth we think we hold most dear
Ribbity-Jo my darling

A New Lord's prayer

Source of all
Dwelling in the field of potentiality beneath and within all things,
You, for whom the very search is Holy,
May every being act in accordance with the well-being of all
May the actions of all in this physical cosmos reflect the deeper order
Let us recognise that all that we have is a gift
Let forgiveness be the signature we leave in relationships with all
Gently remind us of the path we all should follow
And let our hearts be turned towards the best for all
Because love is the Way of the cosmos
And love is the both the means and the end
Through worlds without end.

words

words burst from my mouth
and circled like a swarm of angry bees

they found your heart

and impaled themselves there,
dying
their bitter toxin
swelling love's cruel wound

The Asterisks

In distant ages long since past
Before the horse and plough
Asterisks in great herds roamed
Where we are standing now

They stretched as far as eye can see
Across the black soil plains
And we can only mourn their fate,
Not one of them remains

When the white man first arrived
On this fatal shore
He hunted all those noble beats
Until there were no more

He ate their mighty haunches
He wore their furry pelts
He rubbed the oil from their bones
Upon his cuts and welts

They tried to keep the species on
In zoo captivity
But Asterisks will only breed
When they are running free

And so, in geologic terms
Before an eye had blinked
The Asterisk was added to
The list of those extinct

Pi

The number pi's a mystery
Both deep and most profound
He multiplies diameter
To find the whole way 'round
His decimal goes on and on
Never to repeat
Some say he is irrational
I think he's rather sweet

A collection of short poems

Crunch of gravel under the wheels on the neighbor’s driveway
Shifting, sliding, slipping steadily
Spread in random showers
A true Zen stone garden.

***

Grey clouds on the range
Humidity pressing on your shoulders
Like the cares of the world

***

Sitting on my veranda
I hear the birds in the Jacaranda
I hear the heavy rush of wheels on the main road
I know which I prefer

***

The road lies dormant at night
A sleeping beast dreaming dark dreams
Bitter burning on the tongue that flickers out to taste.


***

When I was at school
My father with razor bladed cutting tool
Carved into the blunt end of my pencils
Baring raw wood
On which he would write my name
Thief proof
Sometimes people are marked in much the same way.

***


Here in the hinterland
Hope grows slowly
A precious seed

The 'non-sense' of Dance

Think about dancing. What a strange practice to the fiercely rational mind! Partners in embrace, agitating on a floor with other couples, no destination in mind, and no purpose other than the enjoyment of the moment.

Think about ballroom dancing as done by Fred and Ginger. An elegance with no meaning or significance other than itself. Great beauty, high art, transient but glorious.

Dancing has rules. There are parameters. There are skills to be learned. One may dance poorly or well, but the pleasure in the participation may have little to do with the technicalities of the dance or the skills of the dancer. The aim is the process. Participation is the point.

Metaphor time. Maybe life is like the dance. We take to the floor for pleasure. There are rules but we gladly submit, for the pleasure. Although constrained, we are free in ways we cannot be in the mundane world of directions, destinations and goals.

Let’s dance!

Zombies!

Some people have an empty smile
That does not reach their eyes
I am quite sure they do not know
They do not realise
It causes me to ponder
And it really makes me feel
That far from being fictional
Some zombies are quite real

My Nana

My Nana was the last of the real old ladies
She knew what it was to be an old lady and she rose to the occasion
Taking on the role and making it her own

She was an old lady a long time, her husband Frank dying young at 57
Her hair was white
She let it be white
She kept it tied up in a bun
Sometimes, if you stayed overnight, you saw her take it out of the bun and brush it, long, silky and with waves
She used bobby pins
Everyday

She wore old lady black shoes
Just one pair
She had bunions on her feet
They hurt
When she walked she tended to hobble, back bent
An old lady walk

She wore old lady dresses
And cardigans
All the time

She had a pet dog, Scamp, on whom she doted
He got old too, in sympathy I think
My God, did he smell bad
A spoiled nasty bad tempered dog
Maybe he had bunions too

You could walk over to Nana’s place
Around the golf course
Down Duncan Street
And she would always be glad to see you no matter how adolescent you were
Feed you sweet cakes
Slip you a dollar when you left
Sometimes because you did something for her
But often because you didn’t

She made jelly, with extra sugar
She kept a little jar of brown sugar that you could have a teaspoon of if you were good
She made pineapple syrup on the wood stove so that the whole house smelled like heaven will smell
She made roasts with the outside black but inside warm and heavy and fragrant
When I was older I cut the wood for that stove

She used to laugh, hold her hanky to her mouth and say things like ‘Jingy Joves!’
You don’t hear that enough anymore

I remember her washing in a copper boiler
I remember the ice man who used to call with a huge block of ice for the ice chest
I remember the dunny in the backyard
I remember digging pink sweet potatoes out of the rich soil and eating them raw
Of course all of this was when I was much younger

It seemed as I got older and bigger she got smaller and thinner
Almost as if her substance was going to form my flesh and bone
She lived alone in that one bedroom fibro house until she died, aged 83

For nearly 30 years she was an old lady
She wore it well

Where do I begin?

We base our language and much of our thought on the notion of separateness. We distinguish objects from their backgrounds. One of the most enduring separate objects is our selves. The idea that we are a separate entity from our environment and other beings is so deeply ingrained, we find it ludicrous to consider alternatives.

Yet when we examine this notion we find that it is physically and mentally without support. Our boundaries are fuzzy. We draw them arbitrarily. We superficially think that our 'self' begins at the boundary of our skin. Even an elementary grasp of physiology recognises the falsehood of this notion. Our skin boundary is porous allowing a flow of materials in and out of our bodies. We depend on our physical environment for our continuing existance. We are deeply emeshed in a physical web of flow between us and our environment and our fellow beings. To think we have a separate existence is like thinking our liver could decide to leave home to join a rock band.

Even within our skin the boundaries are fuzzy. Shrinking in size we see systems, organs, tissues, all of them, in some sense, 'us' and yet 'not us'. Finally, we see a mix of molecules and atoms. When did we pass the boundary from life to non-life? Are some carbon atoms us, are some not us? Where did we go?

Perhaps the idea of 'me' is a social convention. Perhaps the delusion of a separate subjective experience in a world of objects is what helps to create our suffering. Perhaps the ultimate liberation is to be liberated from ourselves. 'He that shall find his life will lose it'.

Aristotle

'We are what we repeatedly do'
Aristotle said that,
And I think that it's true

Of course, Aristotle has long become dust
As you and as I
Regrettably must

So, given the time you're going to be dead
When all has been done
When all has been said

Spend these precious moments the best you know how
Decide to start living
And do it
Right now!

The Green

The seething closeness after recent rain,
The trees relieved,
Ancient priests of Eden’s keep,
Steaming green,
Cleaned leaves gleaming,
Dreaming deep green dreams
Deeper than reason,
Sweet and seamless,
Vision dim but still seeing,
Being,
Easing into release.
Real ease,
Breezes teasing the healing leaf
No need of redeeming
Having never been deceived,
Never believing the freezing speech of winter,
But reaching easy agreement
With seed and spirit:
The keys of freedom.

Not appeasing or pleading
Or ill at ease and needy as we ever seem to be,
Greedy, feeding like unheeded, unimpeded centipedes and millipedes
The heat of receding sweetness leading us on,
Bleeding, feeble, diseased and dreamless,
Sleeping uneasily,
Fearing peace itself

But all our dear unheeded seers,
They see, they hear,
Each peered reading of leaf and stream
Leading to keening cries.
Kneeling here they grieve
For each reedy spear that disappears,
Receding out of reach.
They seek to teach
To intercede
To plead the clear weaving
Of flesh and seed,
But we jeer at their meaning.
We deem them unneeded
Merely peeling bells
Appealing to inflamed feeling
Interfering
While we,
We heave them beneath our feet
We feasting beasts,
We teeming blasphemers,
We least of these

Emergent Unity

Let's start with an atom. An atom has particular properties and characteristics. If we combine 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen we get a molecule of water. The molecule has different properties from the atoms that make it up. In large numbers, water molecules have a whole host of properties that make thinking of 'water' a valuable, real concept.

Next the cell. A number of complex interacting molecules is what a cell is. But a cell is 'alive', an emergent property that is not shared by its molecules. Put cells together and you organs and systems. Put those together and you have an organism like us. We have sentience and subjective experience, properties miles away from our constituent molecules.

Why should the enfolding of complexity end there? If we consider the super structure of the whole cosmos perhaps it has undreamt of capabilities and properties. Mystics throughout the ages have experienced ecstatic states where they experience the unity of all things. This is the realm of the sacred, the divine. This is might be what we call God.

Blessed

Blessed are those who stay afloat in a sea of doubt,
Not because they cling with desperation to the flotsam and jetsam of shipwrecked faith,
But because they let go.

Blessed are they who face themselves with a fierce honesty,
Who, with integrity, transform themselves,
Their life an art.

Blessed are they who inspire,
Whose lives burn with a glow that,
Though it may consume them,
Warms others who are near,
Comforted by that costly light.

Blessed are they who are honest in the face of deception,
Humble in the face of pride,
And tender in the face of violence.

Blessed are they who can speak from the heart,
Whose words, free from device, bear the fragrance of wet earth and grass.

Blessed are they who laugh,
Whose wit and playfulness can puncture the pompous and deflate the demi-god,
Not even sparing themselves from their trickster ways.

Blessed are they who sing,
Whose voices cannot be contained by simple speech or prose,
But who must rage and rejoice with Angel tongue.

Blessed are they,
For theirs is the kingdom of the earth (which is heaven).
They will partake of blood and sap and spit and sweat.
They will truly live.

Lunatic

There's a lunatic thumping around in my attic
Pounding the walls and upending the chairs
Although he's not evil but only deluded
I certainly hope that he won't come downstairs

I've tried to placate him with chocolate and whiskey
But it just doesn't seem he's so easily bought
He frantically leaps from one thing to another
This is harder by far than I would have thought

And so I must tame this crazy old lodger
Perhaps with hypnosis or possibly gin
He frightens the neighbours and occasionally smells
Now is the time I have to begin

And so I sat quietly and tried hard to calm him
I offered him drafts of sweet chamomile tea
And as we were talking it dawned on me slowly
This crazy old bugger was apparently me

Let's do lunch

A lion and a tiger went to lunch
Their meeting was well planned
They organised a limousine
And booked a marching band
They called upon a PR firm
Well versed in large events
Because the lion and tiger live
On different continents

Zeus

Zeus would sit on thunderclouds
And hurl the lightning down
Sipping cups of Jasmine tea
In his dressing gown

He had a brave and noble beard
That nestled on his face
When it wasn't playing poker
And off some other place

Jesus Again

Jesus never owned a gun
He never watched TV
He never played a baseball game
Or ate excessively
And though his land was occupied
He never urged revolt
And as I was thinking this
I realised with a jolt
If Americans who loudly claim
They love this Jesus guy
Were actually to meet Him
They'd punch Him in the eye!