Are You Experienced ?
An instant here,
a dayglow dream -
I pushed into the land of light
and witnessed there a subtle flight
of myriads of tiny jewels
which sparkled in the luminous night.
Another time
I taste again
that taste which soothes away my brain,
inside that space no longer circumscribed
the drapery unfolds
and light's etheric dance
melts the shadows of the cold.
And then once more I hear the sound
So ancient, trembling in the ground,
So near, so far, it comes to be,
the echo of eternity
whose music is of you in me.
A scent from out of earthly range
drifts slowly on the wind of change
A haunting message for the sense
a trickling through the memory
a hint of a half-forgotten story.
And then my touch felt many things
Yet feeling through this sense still rings
talking of unity with all,
while objects slip and graze between
the blurry outlines of a dream.
***
I tried to write beyond the sense
of every other day's experience,
my words laugh and their echoes rhyme
they seek to find a shape for times
like coalescing sheep
which bleat and try to flee
as intuition nudges watchfully.
For peace lives in a pathless land
yet gently rests in every hand,
whilst Truth is yet another word
and seeming vague,
yet truer than the lines
our rulers made.
Revisions
Cut the clack - into the nineties sprawl
comes a melody, it's very like the one
that echoed for a while
in the old decade, but this one halts,
looks behind, sniffs its own tracks,
lifts its head and howls and brays.
It must have been the sight of those words
dripping their honeyed cure,
those revisions of the moment
scrawly pencil muffled
on the sheet faced lies...
and again, I must confront
my present "truth"
and set it out for your jaundiced eyebrow.
It's gotta be time
to correct
a few false impressions,
a handful of misplaced notes etc.
The Cry of Merlin.
My house is a house of dreams
but real - I see it
standing, austere yet vibrant
upon the craggy shoulder of a high mountain
or the slope of a long green valley...
But who can remember the dreams of another?
Putting their own to one side,
They might say -
"This day there are wells to dig
and jugs to mend,
the night must be left
to its own devices."
My house is a structure of the unseen,
the uninvited,
It is easy to forget the way home
for though paths to the door
are numerous,
they are quickly disguised
under bramble and thorn -
how many times have I arrived
at the front door
bleeding and unsteady.
How tempting to stay
within those curved beams
which lace the translucent walls
where the lights of a million years
sparkle and drift in sublime purpose,
but this world
is for my sense alone.
Is anyone to understand
the distant sound
that makes a man stop
and crane his ear
for a long second.
Again I leave this house of dreams
grasping new clothes reluctantly,
looking once more
for other sounds -
and chances to share
the subliminal music
of a heavenly sphere.
After Literary Launches.
Who wants truth
and who can give it?
As they circle around
tables of crisps and books
engaging each other
in rituals
of symbolic exchange
waiting for the cue
that indicates
"Ah but there is much
more to me than
that which
you can
see."
...can you bear
to dance within
two inches of
the outer edges
of this display -
"Ah...it was the pain then..."
Yes...it made you
retract into
a semblance of
the cultural average -
it made you avert your eyes
and leave a sentence
hanging in midstream -
the examination of
outer image - he fails,
she passes...inspection
of 'propriety' and
the rest of our
cruel concealment
of the naked soul.
That's living here and now
in circles...
My heart is weary
of this...the pain
strikes me like the
arrows of circumstance,
and my ignorant
'innocence' reflects back
from this social mirror...
an alien face
something different
a mutation for the future
or the sick fringe
of a struggling species?
Aloha! Can I celebrate
this difference?
Countdown to the Future
It seems to be a global thing
ticking off the hours, minutes and days
towards an event, a numerical landmark,
a signal for change.
Cultures gear up in a frenzy
of sponsored mediafests,
and the single human alone
adrift on the seas of shifting social trends,
strains to a glimpse
of a far off horizon,
where the parts of history
fall into place
with a promise of ordinary certainty.
Somewhere
Here and Now is very far away -
As an idea I caught it once
Flapping from the pages of a picture book.
It caught me once and then again
As I looked for it in situations
where essence was a foreground thing
and background was the world.
(We talk in living colours)
( The walls of the room resonate)
It's a long time ago
and foggy days
have fallen on
the contours of change.
We range over wide fields
and the magic shriek is heard
hither,
is seen only
as a shape vanishing
Now and here
somewhere.
Once in Youth club
Amused...in deadly seriousness
the game of love and life is played
with a kind of taught serenity,
oodles of common sense
penetrate and withdraw
with a silky motion,
Truth: "a pathless land"
enigmatic
the change of hidden perspective
oodles...dream, a machine,
a quasi-autonomous structure.
Flaws and gaps
rents in the horizon
we flounder and scrub
up to our knees...
An opening...reversed effort
into anti-fugue,
a structured relay
combining past endeavours
putting them on the line,
the chair leg
watches (to know)
a veil.
