In the excruciating monochrome of daily chores, the savage and the predatory feed. Ignorance and deception move hand in hand, enfolding their barren forms into human thought and action. Across the land, familiar pairings of victim and oppressor engage in their carnal battles of distraction. The avoidance of generations unravels at the seams. Fast, fleshy temptations slice through the hollow loop of the modern and the mundane - this mortal vessel is vulnerable to the call of oblivion. Parasitic, painful and strange: here is the splendour and obscenity of our descent into the material. We dwell in boundless landscapes of futility, stifled by the immensity of despair. In subservience, such fathomless sadness. In vanity, such beautiful diversion. The weight of the unfelt rests heavy on sensing shoulders - it is hard to be in this realm. Set apart in the intimacy of suffering, we remain at liberty to learn. 4th July, England.
I alone – Fernando Pessoa
Ah, só eu sei
Ah, só eu sei
Ah, só eu sei
Quanto dói meu coração
Sem fé nem lei,
Sem melodia nem razão.
Só eu, só eu,
E não o posso dizer
Porque sentir é como o céu,
Vê-se mas não há nele que ver.
I know, I alone
I know, I alone
How much it hurts, this heart
With no faith nor law
Nor melody nor thought.
Only I, only I
And none of this can I say
Because feeling is like the sky -
Seen, nothing in it to see.
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Portugal, 1932.
Cursed and yet free
I say now quite frankly to friend and to foe, the end is upon us, the tide it ebbs low. As insipid weakness breaks open the cracks, in dreamland and daylight we see what we lack. The bare brittle ego, the nation, the tribe, the scared, cornered beast with claws out to survive. In this polarised climate of love, hate and quirks, each shall be given in line with their works. For labourers chosen and heeding the call, a place of great balance comes after their fall. The beam of divinity cuts to the bone, shatters their selves and collapses their homes. Bloodied they rise from the dust with a cry, to continue the gauntlet of arrows and lies, where the star and the pebble, the brook and the tree, guide them to touching the One found in three. As souls born of light, here in darkness they see the template of paradise, cursed and yet free. For N.K.
Frail Skin
Frail skin holds the organs
in pink bags of flesh.
Incredible really,
this vessel enmeshed.
It comes with no manual,
it lives and it breathes,
it hastens to dying
and actions my deeds.
Expanding through feeling
with soul wings it flies,
to learning and vision
my vehicle gives rise.
This matter in motion,
a here and a there,
and loving brings to it
the Truth all stripped bare.
Look at these fingers,
they move as I ask!
And when I flow through them
they dance with each task.
A one-off uniqueness,
a fine joyful mess,
a tangle of loveliness,
chaos and rest.
For those who come closer
I offer my best,
embracing them wholly
I find myself blessed.
For M.W.
The privilege of pain
On the shore of a lake I sink to my knees, with blood condensed from the coarse weight of being. The earth subsides, and a burning tide flows into me. Like a bloated vessel I crack. Alone and broken, the brittle form built of fallacies and frailties cannot play with the flames. Every pore opens, scalded as certainty retreats. No singular thread of resistance remains. I stand unhoused in dislocation. Listen. The privilege of pain has blazed through me. As she lifts, a flicker of light beams through the haze. Refined, I rise and weigh my memories. Look! They are lighter too.
Healing
I have found myself asking for guidance often of late. With thought absent, I pick a book from the shelf and allow my fingers to choose a page. Time and again, guidance comes. The divine hand waves to greet me. Even when the days have a hard edge, small confirmations like these encourage my faith to grow.
Healing
I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly,
that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self,
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can
help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance,
long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the
freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.
by D.H. Lawrence
Being a walking question mark 