No matter how the world evolves,
Whether true to life
Or spiralling in madness,
The life principle
Remains pure and untouched.
–
Invest your life
In its sweetness
And disregard the rest,
However seductive and convincing,
For only in love
–
Is sweetness manifest.
And if the world descends
Wholly into madness,
Still, life’s truth
Holds fast.
–
And if all obey the call to anger,
But your mind left last
And abiding in love,
It will not matter
And will surely be enough.
London is sweet
In June’s ownership.
Roses billow
From front gardens
In to quite, shady streets.
There is a cool breeze
Beneath the plane trees,
And reality flexes
With a deep breath
And a mind expanding.
I read in the paper
That rare orchids had materialised
On a green roof
Among towering edifices –
An astronomical improbable chance!
Someone was quoted saying it was miraculous.
It made me wonder
What other miracles
Are yet in store,
Idling just off stage,
Unseen in the formless realm,
Unexpressed possibility
Awaiting only
A nod of our head
And an invitation to be.
Now, right now
I dwell in future doom
In which
What could be
Sprawls out
As a dismal landscape.
I’m in pain,
A heaviness rides upon my back
The now
Is a polluted stream
With no hope
Or respite from darkness.
–
For some time
I believe this truth,
The fact darkening the now,
Which I think must be endless.
Then, I wonder,
I query this “truth”
Threatening to pull me asunder,
And lift the curling edge
Of my feeling,
Glimpsing a flicker of light.
–
Could this feeling really be
But the consequence of thought,
My thought
Projected out
And so colouring
The whole world?
Could this world
Be but a blank canvas
And my thought
The paint on the pallet
And the brush in my hand?
Could it really be
That I am master artist
Applying tint
And shade
To all I see,
Reality fluxing before my eyes
As thoughts
Conjure feelings
Morphing under the spell of my eye
And dancing to my every preconception?
–
And if so,
What does that mean for truth
And a “real world” out there,
And the me
Who thought himself buffeted
By forces beyond
And things
Other than himself?
The limited one
Who’s listened and learned
And thought
In all manner of spiralling pathways,
Listing reason, rejection, and facts
And one hundred and fifty failures,
Leading to failure
Number one hundred and fifty-one,
Says: you’re just not good enough.
And chatters, chatters, chatters on.
–
Yet, the one unlimited,
Says: speak
For your voice
Is a voice to be heard.
Go on always forward.
Write with the wind behind your pen,
Unleashing genius upon the page.
Let your life flow in ink
For the joy
Of ideas metamorphosed,
Ideas grasped from realms ethereal,
Buzzing alive in your head
And conducted
Into the matter of the book
That will be read
If you but put your whole mind behind
The creation of it,
Knowing the limited one
To be a friend enlisted,
His chatter a misused tool
Not a hindrance,
His ideas, gold,
If only directed,
His creative urge
Your own wand
Through which the magic unfolds,
Emboldening your life
And the script you must be
To be wholly yourself,
Holding firm to the pen that you love.
There is a scented trail
Waiting upon the breeze,
That, like a dog
You must follow.
For the scent is a smooth ribbon
Of being,
A substance made of love
That calls you by name
And feeds your every need
Until there is only wellbeing.
Kindness flows upon this cord,
Energy to hold your hand
And lead you to effortless life,
A voice breathing away your fears
And calling you to your self,
Your voice,
Calling you homeward bound.
The heart that is no heart,
Broken yet whole,
Fluid in the nothing,
Being in the free,
Disintegrated beyond particle
And solitude,
Blended and indistinct,
Dying and alive,
Timelessly destroyed,
Obliterated,
Overwhelmed
And pounded from existence
Into existence’s open arms,
Until nameless,
Until faceless,
Until placeless.
The Scots pine glows red-skinned
In the morning light.
He is always there,
Watching over my life.
Sometimes he stands out,
As beautiful as beauty itself,
And sometimes he is invisible.
Today, his presence is called
And warbled by the birds
Hopping among his branches.
The breeze too has its say
In the vibration of a myriad needles.
Turn away the eyes
And comfort the ears:
Let the news fade
So all the angry voices are quietened,
Their fear lessened,
Their turmoil stilled,
The mangled knot of fractions thought
Fermenting doom and worse
Popped in the corner and ignored.
What is the real news,
The new news
Born in the self centre,
In the place that is no place,
The voice speaking
Of heart
And love
And truth,
That we are more
Than these jagged thoughts
Blown out of all proportion
And enlarged
Into flagrant monsters?
We are more than this:
More in the quiet place,
The stillness,
The ever expanding space
Of new ideas
Made from nothing.
The time has come to acknowledge love
And its infinite yet subtle process,
It’s utter gift,
It’s ubiquitous and never failing availability;
For it is free for all to take their fill,
And given wholly
To ever single one of us.
Love is movement,
A gift,
Unowned
Yet given.
You can not hold it
Only ask
Or make a beautiful wish
Or speak a prayer
To expand and broaden the world.
It is not yours
But you may use it,
Feel the expansion
As it flows away,
Your life acknowledged
As it leaves,
Yourself made Infinitely fertile.
For as it is given
The well refills
The source expands
And you are changed,
Lighter for the affirmation,
Joyous because you are more,
Loving because you gave it all away.
Gentle, gentle, gentle light
You are the mother’s smile
Upon the newborn child,
A gift
In loving wonderment.
And who upon the earth
Is not lifted by this?
Whose heart is not afloat
Despite the wretched mires
Of fearful belief?
Whose heart does not beat
In time with this deeper song?
Thank you for this gentle light
Bathing both body and mind,
Infusing the raw matter
With the seed of life
And holding the heart aloft
In its rightful place,
In love’s essential spirit.
distilledvoice 