{Our body, our freedom}
Internal monologue:
We bang against the bars and doors of our prison cells
Our bodies
Our cell mates
Our guards
Believing our body is the trap.
Assuming life is trap
Our world is trap
Dreaming…
If only I…
If only this part were…
If only…
The words echo hollow
Our bodies are not our prisons
They are our shimmers
They are the places of our salvation
If we learned to turn off the judge and jury
Ignore the prosecutor and defendant
Our own internal courtroom
Our damnation
The degree we judge ourselves
The degree we live in hell
The degree we live in the courtroom
Face the fear
Venture past the judge’s Chambers
Observe the oak paneling
The marble floors
See the steel lining the walls and ceilings
The locks
And smile
For the moment you observe
You, for the first moment
Are on the other side
Don’t stop now
You have one more lock to pick
Artist Note: I was feeling like a freed prisoner, realizing that the only person guarding the prison cell, was the person inside the cell…me.
It’s Not About the Paint
They spoke
I listened
That’s all
And heard what I needed to hear
To defend
Become defensive
Resist
Become aggressive passive aggressively
How dare they attack my person
How dare they take a stance
Who do they think they are don’t they know I…
)Have fears
And wants
And needs(
Really I need them to know that I…
)Wait(
#Who am I?#
Question coming from a void
When we slow to hear it
Solipsisticly back to the point paint
Walls with my words
Left devilishly in my brain pan
Help them better understand my position
Not realizing
That my reaction is not me
Not realizing that their words are not them
Fears cover the unreal realities of our constructed walls we paint on with our never-ending thoughts
Chewing through books and schedules and time
Believing all at once that our minds thoughts and feelings are us
But they aren’t
When we stop
to be
Present in this moment
Present in the possibility
Present the moment we let down our guard
And stop
Surrender
‘No’ our egos shout
‘No FU i need to take a stance’
‘Defend my position’
‘Watch this house burn to the ground we’ve built together’
Not stopping to realize the implications of the fear based actions
Our egos——————-the line
Not stopping to enjoy the joy of the human in front of you
Their form felt in the room
The space between
Which is no space and all space at once
Allow their humanity to drip from their mouths
Into paint pail
To lather on walls
To design patterns
Cause our home
Together
That aren’t walls or memories or anything we can touch
They are beauty and truth and openness
And peace
When we stop letting “us” run amok in our heads
And hear the moment for what it is
Truth
(Que Tibetan cymbals)
Fear
Blocked
unblocked
blocking and tackling
the fear that resides at the center of everything
the fear that frustrates and alludes
eludes the finest investigative instruments
the surgeons scalpel
the surgical table
the open heart surgery
the knife
that cuts deep
and delicately
edging atom from paper thin layers
from one another
the onion
from the skin
if only we didn’t see
and couldn’t know
and therefore could hide for eternity
but we have been doing that for eternity
and now is our time
to arrive
at the conclusion
the destination
the train station
departing where we arrived
and arriving where we departed
sign saying no vacancy
when reality posts the posting of the truth
we never left
we have always been right where we started
without moving a muscle
without bending a brain cell
we have built a house in the sunshine
only to bar the doors
and lose the light
we don’t need to push hard
just put your hand on the door knob
and step outside
why not?…it don’t cost nothin’
better yet, all we need to do is surrender
and realize we can let it come to we
let the sun melt the walls of the house down
but that is not we.
we live to push ourselves…to drive the extreme boundaries
to push until exhaustion
and then maybe
in exhaustion
we will realize
all we need to do is release
and then, the light will seep in
Artists Note: Over the last couple days, I feel like something has been blocked, and when that happens, I have learned that I just need to write. I was pushing my boundaries to see if I could get some light to seep in.
Feet Fingers Soul Mind
Feet Fingers fix things mechanisms tools
Soul center light being
Mind top think
we equate think to highest form
Because on top
Number one
Primary driver of who we are, why we exist
Mistake
Primary, soul
Hard to access using brain logic
Use all senses
Doors open
upon entry
Been looking in the wrong places for centuries
Misinterpret words, writings
Try to apply logic, things we can touch
All is illusion and shifting
The truth in its essence, is only known when we hear it with our souls
We don’t trade feet and fingers for soul or mind
Neither is it soul or mind
It is all things
As in nature
Imbalance is absence is death is annihilation
Other ecosystems die in absence of one species
A link in the chain
Soul as important link in chain as mind as feet and fingers
Looking inward to see soul sounds selfish
It will be the first selfless thing you do
Peer in
You will not unknow
Teachers
children wife grandparents friends Associates relatives coworkers people on the sidewalk flowers sun raindrops snowflakes puppies snakes rivers and riverbanks
teachers if
I allow them to be
fleeting moments
catching glimpses momentary
lapses into teachable moments momentary
ignites the Fuller understanding
dreams of reality
reality not quite dreams
truce drips from their actions
truth drips from my reaction
hold in the knowing
hold in the known
Hold in the unknown
spoken and unspoken
frankness firmness Love & Faith transparency desire
guideposts
Teach me
Write in white chalk on blackboard
words that don’t mean what they mean
Sit in desk
just run through hallways with Locker lines
hold backpacks with mind stuff
truth in fiction lying up against each other
lying up against my back
Lying up against my being
Cool
sit in school
pay attention
my child walks up in front of the classroom and I learn
my wife walks in front of the classroom and I learn
my mother walks in front of the classroom and I learn
my father walks in front of the classroom and I learn
my wife walks in front of the classroom and I learn
My friends walk up in front of the classroom and I learn
A flower plants itself in front of the classroom and I learn
The geese honk and blurt at each other and I learn
My country walks up in front of the classroom and I learn
Our world walks up in front of the classroom and I learn
not from their words but from who they are they speak silently to me
their position at the center of My space
of our space
image burned in the center of that space
the space between time and reality confusions
posters on walls platitudes
Positions on views of the world
worldview’s plastered from Floor to ceiling Windows looking out never looking at the windows
cuz I’m focused on the person in front of me
time will come for focus on the windows and what lies Beyond
in time I will be able to look at both teacher and nature through window through my window through our windows
In time I will learn
Dismiss
Dismiss me if you wish
These pleasantries I’m peddling
Seem like echoes from the cave walls of a human on a high horse
Like someone who has never touched pain or poverty
But pain and poverty touch rich and poor alike
And maybe you are right
Maybe my experience isn’t your experience
But no experience is like the other
Even people from the same family
Don’t experience events in the same way ever
So don’t be too quick to dismiss my message as just one more salvation pitch
That’s not what I’m selling
And even if it was
It’s not for everyone
Not because it isn’t for them
It is
But most will dismiss
While something in my words
Tugs at their inner fibres
At their strings
Knowing they have subtly been a puppet
To the brain, the puppet master
Deriving devilish pleasure
Flipping the script
Making sure we think we are in control
When all we are doing
Is mind numbingly pressing a remote control
With no batteries
Thinking we are using a battering ram to get our way
When really the assault and battery is happening to us
But we are too used to getting our ass kicked to know any different
So, dismiss me if you wish
For only in the center of darkness
Only at the peak of pain
Do the cracks of light peek through
When you realize you are not your experiences…you observe them
The best place that epiphanies come
From is right at the center
Of pain
And fear
And anguish
Artists Note: This is probably head trash, but I am sure, as with all creativity, there will be those that accept my words, those that dismiss my words and those that fall somewhere in between. With that, and listening to some spoken word about a lot of pain, this came to light.
When We Finally Realize We Built All We Need
It’s time for us to all wake up
We’ve built businesses
And empires
Soaring sky scrapers
And hovels in slums
Institutions and institutional knowledge
Cathedrals temples and religion
And all have done good things
holy and wholesome things
Now, as we start reaching the Pinnacle of our soaring existence
What’s next?
Identity crises abound
Why?
We have more than we ever have had
We should be sated
But we aren’t
We use things to patch identity holes in our lives
Why?
Because the unseen patch is hard to put our finger on
And businesses, government, non-profits and religion
Are doing the best they can to patch the identity holes
We exist in
Because we ask them to
Because we don’t know what we don’t know
But we do know
And we sense that what we grasp for is fleeting
And our fleet feet can’t catch up with the pain we feel
When feeling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anymore
Every other thing in our lives lets us down
And we forget to look to ourselves
Because our selves
Are built on the things outside ourselves
Are selves built on sand
And flash floods are happening more frequently
So internalize the existence you have
Realize it’s been you all along
You are your own freedom
You can deliver yourself from evil
When?
You realize the fact that you already have
Been your own salvation
On more than one occasion
Stop judging yourself for the times
The hurricanes came
And touched down close to you
Funnel clouds and full blown alike
Those will always come
And be close
Realize
They breezed by you
Recognize
That it didn’t destroy you
Because the you that you think it almost destroyed
Is not the you you think
Yeah, you. The real you, you know who I’m talking to
You don’t need those thoughts
You don’t need that body
They are shimmers in the distance
Observe all of it
Aware of existence
And wisdom beyond thought
Awake
It’s time
Artists Note: It struck be that we are surrounded by institutions, where we go to ‘find ourselves’, because we think that others have the answers…
Ageless
Fear
Inadequacy. Inadequately exploring my inadequacy
Driving a dynamite truck through a petroleum plant
Unearthing the abstract fear facts of my life legislatively
Mind prosecutor and defendant
Hyperloop circle jerk
Family will falter since I can’t provide
I falter not finding my calling
Calling for Daddy others for advice help
My life rope strangling the life out of my potential
Knowing I need the deeds they did to guide me
It takes a village
To build me
To reinforce my mental inadequacy
When all along they are leaving breadcrumbs
Candy
Sugarsweet lollypops
Joy
Find the breadcrumbs back to myself
Understanding the candy was trickery
Understand that if the inadequacy was truth my life wouldn’t be what it is with love and bonds and fulfillment
Forget success…it will come and go. I have companions on this journey with me
Blazing the path with me
Relying on me and I on them
One day soon…I will believe it
One day soon I will embed it inscribe it
Where?
Why don’t I believe it now inscribe it now imbibe it now figure it out now find out somehow
I just learned of it
It took 38 years to recognize
It will take 38 more to undo
Or maybe there is some life hacks
Bullshit
Wisdom will finally creep into my creaky bones when I finally recognize the words on this page and
That
Will
Be
Okay
Because then, finally, I will be wise
But that won’t preclude me from the attempt to accept my fear and place it in it’s appropriate place alongside me for now behind me forever because I can name it and naming it means I can work on it and working on it means that one day, when I am 76, will i understand these words(?).
Artist Note: In realizing some insights and knowledge gained by the shift in my world, I started to reflect on the fact that while I feel like I am learning much at a fast pace, it might take me a really long time to actually understand my newfound awareness.
Infinite Focus
The moments
“These are the moments I rush ‘cause I’m alive
The are the moments I remember all my life”
What if we were able to be in those moments for an eternity though they eventually passed
Moments momentary because of this relative importance
What if we allowed our selves the freedom to pass into those moments with full abandon
Our minds only able to watch the hair follicles of our loved ones
Enlighten with their smile
Watch pupils dilate as the spoke not listening to the words but feeling their emotion with completeness
Feeling special they were sharing
The mind not ready reads this with dismissal
The mind knowing reads this with curiosity
If curious, seek
You will find
The seeds have been planned your whole life
They will bloom
And you will tend that garden
When you are ready
Don’t get back to the busynesses of lyfe
Allow this moment, this awakeness to penetrate your consciousness
Pen your papers
Focus your lens
Your eye
Your minds eye
Your priority guide
Your inner compass
Your guru
Your Yoda
You
If you listen and let guide
Take staff
Don hat
Journey along a path only you can determine and walk
You will have fellowship and companionship
You are love
Happiness is the essence of you
When you allow the universe as it is to shine through
To realize you have no control
An illusion
A structure you place as false
Real walls you boxed your life into
Boxed your life into, packed up and moved out
Punch drunk by punches
Right hooks and uppercuts you call realityandtruthandlife
Ancient holy men, shaman, present humans
Describe the realities and we spend our lives plugging our ears
“la, la, la, I can’t hear you”
Their words float across the eons
The pages
We close our senses
Telling ourselves that the wanting and acquisition of things is important is easier is more fun
Land, title, deed
Deeds and actions
Actions the only thing we have a smidge of control over
We determine the more actions the better
Actions against an inevitably immovable object is irrelevant
For ourselves first
For me (my oxygen mask)
Then we
Then others
Awake with eyes that seek and understand
Are impartial to the getting of external things
Allowing only the universe to exist as it is
And to line up our realities, our perceptions of realities to line up to that universe that exists for us in this moment and never again
Artist Note: I started to understand the depth that each moment can bring, and what it meant to go beyond what was being said, to all the other things happening in that moment, that we can only ever feel and know.
Intelligence
Knowledge Seekers
Fools of the modern age
Builders and collectors of intellect
I speak as one of you
Intelligence gatherers
We will not gather enough new thought
New information
New data
To structure our way out of this mess
This new old world order
This perfectly imperfect world
As it is
As it should be
There is a level beyond knowledge
It is ancient and
It is ours
You already possess it
Yet your…our mind seeks external
Thinking driving your belief
That only those things that others know will save YouMeWe from suffering
Line your pockets
Save the future of humanity
Create a better world
Your intentions are noble
Your actions redundant
We humans are already on a path
We have been for eons
Your/Our knowledge will not save us
We don’t need saving
We don’t need building
We are
All
We will ever need
Seek this instead and you will save yourself who is all that ever needed saving
Artist Note: I realized that there is more to wisdom than pure intelligence. It is hard to describe…
Two Halves of the Same Whole
My mind split into two halves of the same whole
One thinking
One being
The thinking a portion of the larger being
Existing
Expanding
Ever present
Feeling, sensing, allowing, pliant
Seeing…mind behind the eyes
With a time delay
Censorship without the filters
Consciously cognizant of the pace and place
With time and without
Knowing at every moment, where I am is where I am
Know that what I am doing is exactly what I am
Confident
Confidence beyond what that word means
Or has come to mean
Meaning that in the meaning, we rely on, confidence only belies a portion of the feeling I feel
A smidge
Some say peace
Others…calm
I recognize that the state I am in is the state I should be in and only here and now by here and now is the present presence I should feel and be and know
The feeling that comes next will come as it should
When it should
And I will know because it’s time will come
I am no longer anxious for the future, because now the future is present
The thinker thinks this is a tumor pressing on my brain
I laugh knowing it isn’t, and if it is, I will be to the specialist no sooner or later than I should be
The thinker cautions me that this might be lunacy
I laugh twice, as the lunatics allow the thinker to run their minds
Fear and spite are the drivers of lunacy
Peace and joy are the drivers of this
Artists Note: I stood by a river, and as the water was rushing by me, I realized how to describe an event that happened, and wasn’t going anywhere. This is my wrestling with the impact in my life, and facing a fear/lie i was telling myself.
The Earthquake
Two tectonic plates, pressing together, in constant conflict with each other
Glacial pressure massive forces
Pressure
Me vs constructed me
Id vs ego
True self vs the illusion I created
I listened to the truth for years
I suffered- am suffering- mind feverish for more
Who we think we are, is not who we are
Fabrication…our mind Trickster…constructing walls where there are…
We have blueprints…we are blueprints
Our mind…our thinker…a contractor
Framing walls, mounting sinks, hanging lights
In conflict with the plans
Aligned with the plans
Building as fast as we give it the materials to do so
Zoning and code gave it permission to build within certain parameters
But there were no inspectors
Or there are (we just ignore them, or aren’t ready)
Until the earthquake hits
A level 9 on the Richter scale
Mind unmoored
All these buildings I thought where in the right places, built well
Now discover, some built on sand
Some too tall with shoddy reinforcement
Some, the entrance doesn’t face the street
Okay. Time to rebuild
Reconstruct the mind
First, in the most obvious
First on main Street type places…the ones I like to go, feel comfortable in
When those are rebuilt paying more attention to the blueprints, With a more aware contractor
When the time comes, I will get to the sketchy parts of town…the dark places…the places I don’t want to go
And rebuild there
My mind will tell me I’ve run out of money or there are no more materials or we can’t build here
The inspectors will come out in droves, slowing or attempting to slow down progress
A truer me
Then, will I need the courage to believe in my contractor study the blueprints, and rebuild slowly…carefully this time
Build it well, as I am
And be
Who I always have been
Artist Note: Knowing that things would never be the same, lead me to realize, in order to reconstruct, i needed to start my work. The only place to start, is where the fear is most obvious, and then work from there.
Public Service Poetry 