November 2009

Safe from the Truth When I see the vastness All at once in Cruel detail It's often too much And I need to hide from All but the tiniest bit of it So I become you Safe from too much knowing And can enjoy a few pleasures Saving the pain for later After a while you get suspicious And seek that vastness You heard of In spite of the risks And you push me out Into the open once again Exposed to the Raw forces of my nature Where I belong It's then I thank you For giving up your Silly little life so you can Join me out here as everything Where you aren't Even if temporarily And if you try and fail That's OK too Don't forget the comfort You allow me Letting me shelter In your little home Safe from the truth For a while

Struck Dumb You can't speak Against your fate A missed opportunity Or a terrible mistake Help to keep you On the path of Who you are And what you must do When you attempt to Save yourself By giving a great speech In your defence You will be struck dumb Nothing will come out In favour of changing your destiny To that of someone You aren't

His Usual Thing I told God to Come out with his hands up Into the open Where I could see him But there wasn't a stir Only that silence This is his usual thing Then just when I turned away He rattled some bushes To make me jump This is not unusual This is the sort of thing He does

Good Luck If you want to find God First you must Lose God So good luck With it

Proof of Now Let's get scientific I am here I am writing this To you now And you are Reading this now How can that be? No wonder we invented Time In my now I'm now writing that There will be a you One day reading this And if you in your now Are reading this You probably think One day I wrote it But I can assure you I have the pen Between my fingers You think you are The real one In the real now But to me You don't exist yet And what's more This very idea of You thinking you're present Is an idea being written In front of me now Luckily in a poem Things don't have to Make sense Maybe the world is a poem

Everything's up for Grabs In the spiritual search Who is the boss? Who is God's representative? Does he sit on a tigers skin? Or she on a velvet cushion With flowers? Do all conflicting statements Agree? Some things sound Better than others And meaning is often Found in translation But repeating it is Not much use You are always faced with The same basic problem Staring you in the face And which great sage Will solve that For you? As you get closer and closer You begin to realise Everything's up for grabs And one thing Is just as futile as another Everything's up for grabs So why don't you Reach out And grab it

You Stopped Dancing Every raw morsel Is God asking For attention Before getting mistaken For the world you built The call before the bird The scent before the blossom Blueness before blue All those wild atoms haven't A clue what they're doing But you seem to know And in this knowing You put two and two Together And stopped dancing

Grace Forgetting the world Is grace Remembering to forget Is grace Forgetting to remember Is grace Forgetting to forget Is grace You don't have to try Because trying Too Is grace

He Himself God himself Knows nothing The instant I call him Out of nowhere He becomes lost Like me A figment of his own Imagination And we both wander round Arm in arm Chatting about the meaning Of nothing But what could be Better than that? I ask you The colours going by Are so beautiful And the sounds So clear

Love is all there is A brave person will love you For very little reason And remind you to love With more risk The game you would transcend And stay safe from Sets you free Why not love like this? It fits in perfectly With your theory of Not knowing a thing About anything Love is what's left After the demolition Nothing but love is left In its many forms Even scary ones Love shrinks from nothing And just adores itself It has no choice Because love is all there is Left To love

Under the Influence It's always a person That says things And that person is A puppet of the divine You can't dismiss A single soul Unless that particular String is pulled And if you do Poo poo a raving idiot You can always forgive him On the grounds of Being under the influence Of God Of course Me talking to you logically Like  this Means the whole poem Is based on the idea that You're sober enough To be trusted With your own life

Duck Wisdom Hearing a duck on a pond Things suddenly began To make sense In less than Fifty quick quacks I at last understood What Chuang Tzu and Ramana Had been saying All along She hammered away at The one consistent truth Without contradiction And At question time I put up my hand But she had already dived And came up with A bill full of Worms

Just for Me I keep looking to others To the masters For inspiration And forget to Read my own stuff But when I do I'm lifted Straight into freedom For this is perfectly written Just for me

What you Want You have to admit It's ridiculous The difference between What you want And what you get Yet what you want Is what you get Because wanting is All activity Continuously collapses Into the one perfection These shimmering colours These resonating sounds These echoing thoughts

Is it too All  plans are drawn up All choices are made Before you can step in And interfere "I am doing it" Also arises before you can Apply your spiritual theory Of not being involved The thing you will Never get Is always boss And you running round Trying to pick up A few crumbs Is it Too

A Bad Reputation What the world thinks of you Is totally your idea And needs to be brought to mind To bring you down Even documental proof Of your incompetence is Filed away in cabinets Not minds You do all the work In giving yourself A bad reputation And this would be easy to fix If you weren't manipulated From heaven So what can you do Except watch yourself Dance

False Alarm A small blip turned into A loud beep-beep-beep Coming through the speakers But everyone kept on shopping After a while they Looked at each other Was it real? Or just testing Everyone remained calm Next came very annoying Whooping siren sounds And a voice saying Emergency! Emergency! But everyone carried on Sensibly Hunting through bargains Hoping to survive  Another False alarm

The Same with Poems If you own a fruit shop You have to display Some bruised fruit And some expensive fruit That the customers "buy from" So they buy what they're meant to And get a good deal It's the same with poems