Libra

The heart that beats in leaf of oak,

Deciphered and danced to

By those who can do,

Offers echo of original relationship.

Communal choirs still sing of love

In every cell and sobbing heart.

Can you sit enough

In the seat of your own unknowing,

To savour the sound

Of every pain and piece of flapping fantasy,

That falls through ages untouched by wind

Or blood-wet bursts of

Sun-splattered rain?

How can this be?

That rivers run and write their script

In land and lives alike? 

I feel their flow in my fields of flesh

And beg to ask what earth is moved

In suspension of murky memory?

The channel is clean

And yes I lean towards clear reflection.

So speed on well, my swollen friend.

Your flood is mine,

For my banks are breached with your generous spill.

What else can I do, but see you; 

You and your silt-lipped beauty?

The stones you swallow

Have kissed my hand; my salt becomes seasoning

To your billowing broth, froth-flaked

And ripple-filled with desire to greet the sea.

Yes, great oceans await.

I hold my breath and gulp

The dream awake.

Somewhere your fresh meets brine,

Stories swirl on heaving tides

For intercourse of Sun and Moon

Does shake this Earth and its bulging veins

Alive.

Even over the wave-break surge of separation

Your wash does froth

In white-foamed spumes of union.

This is the touch of genius,

To blend the brackish bilge,

Light and dark with star-depth symmetry

And send it splashing soft upon

Shores of oft-washed awareness.

And when the ocean calls from a far,

Wind-whipped and wet with wonder,

Who hears that voice

So steeped in unfathomable glory?

Listen and listen again.

For no pain can still such shattering

Scream-bent silence.

And when the tongue of love,

Spiral traced through ash and

Blood-brushed flecks of dust,

Comes licking the mist from thought

And seed-full thinking,

I sigh and wait for time to die

A death from natural causes.

Below those minutes and seconds

And hours,

The wish driven days who crawl then fall

In a tattered haze of sleep-smoke,

A massed rank of marriages

Uphold the law of eternal exchange.

Man becomes wife, wife becomes man, 

A shadow is shared, sliced and served

With all-consuming relish.

And in the tasting of such fat-rich fare, 

Thick with lumps of neglected nourishment,

Commitment coats the eager tongue

In layers seldom savoured.

Yes commitment! Yes a contract!

For those who breathe unseen by eyes unopened,

Do so very love the drip-feed drops

Of  committed conscious action.

And this saline solution,

Sweet salted with crystal beads 

Of enduring concentration,

Slakes the thirst of such spirits

As come to drink of our own

Forgiveness.

Drunk they become at our own reception.

Dance they do to the sound

Of unceasing intention.

Rise we can to take our vows

Oh brides and grooms

Make haste without hurry.

This is holy matrimony.

The scales are set and 

Upon that heart of scared hearts

They sit in sexless balance.

The Father, the Mother, the Sister 

The Brother

The Loved and the Lover

In midpoint merge;

A pivotal moment for all concerned.

Divorce [to use its maiden name]

Or separation [see the modern game]

Is but a choice of awareness annulled. 

For ever are the two entwined, 

Their fabrics stitched by a third

Behind the seams.

And the hand that sews still knows

That one was once three,

Yes physically, full of footsteps and

Three-fold thinking.

Now, in this autumn dance of Earth years,

Leaf strewn and red with

Dead-blessed bursts of decay,

Those who reach the chasm and leap,

Feel the Fall in mind smashed marrow, 

The trunk of the Tree,

Roots and crown and all.

So it is in the heart of no-mind’s land.

No thinking to hinder the rising and sinking

Of Sun’s ablaze in the final

Fires of love.

A love so perfect in imperfection; 

Alive in the dead-deeps hot with

Death’s affection.

Dreaming the dream awake,

It slumbers not as I give

My eyes to god.

“Awaken all you I have 

Rough shook and shaken;

My announcement is this:

You are never forsaken.

When blinded you groped and 

Gut-grabbed your way through

Mire and mud covered ribbons 

Of roadway, I held you in my

Earth.

Mine was the hand that stroked your land,

Pressing it, pinching it, pulling 

 Skin-deep patches together. 

And all this, all this, simply

Because I love you. Yes it’s true

That through the ink-pool pupils,

You teach me of myself.

You reach me and into me.

Far inside I see through you,

Glimpsing unmentionable moments

Without end, tip-toeing and trampling

Into cell-soldered arc-lights 

Of welded bliss I know as my heart.

Yours are the tears I string as dew

On cobwebs brushed dripping

With starlight and shadows of Suns

To come.

Yours is the blood I squeeze from my heart,

Fat raindrops bleeding back to me.

For through you I strive to

Break the bounds of my heavenly

Hijacked creation.”

Virgo

The reach of the outstretched 

Hand to heaven and Earth,

Stretching for the touch

Of love and star-strewn mystery.

My services are offered

As a rose is placed

On the burning altar of life,

Blood-red and beating

With urgency of final breath.

Only when breasts are torn

And gathered anew

Can tears of unspeakable sadness

Wipe the air clean with their

Salty sweetness.

This is the stuff of dreams;

Of broken promises and stones left unturned.

Yet somewhere, between the rocks

And scattered seeds,

Love lurks and sings its lonely song.

What can I offer

You pulsing heart of life?

My breath and daily death?

Bone and beating echoes

Of an original kiss?

Yours is the face I turn to, 

The eyes that shine in 

My own.

The light that holds all darkness.

How is it that this can be?

Stories within stories

And worlds within worlds, 

That wrestle attention

From installed thinking.

Unavoidable is the decay,

Of flesh and fat-wrapped sections.

Yet desperately I must know

What it is I can do.

What is it?

This is the beautiful risk,

Raised voices screaming yes to ‘yet’. 

Uncertainty is all I can fall on,

Trust and take to the bed of my heart, 

As slip I do beneath such waves

That pounding, kiss shores of infinity.

I drown in desperation to serve.

I know I must,

Or turn to dust.

This much is clear.

To pay the debt,

[Dead-reckoned each end of day]

That taking of life’s fat Marrow accrues,

Is the privilege of my heart.

Come then, rain and shine,

The oak and pine;

Space there is

In every nook and cranny.

For from the gaps pours liquid light

Bent bright with a love of living.

Bathe and be baptised

In water that whets the soul

And draws spirit to its oft-licked lips.

This is the Mother and Father

Whose offspring flood this world

With a ransacked meaning.

Their games are deep and deadly,

Announcing  intent

To bring birth in this world

Of a child so free of self-pity,

That flowers bloom in the 

Wake of its swollen footfalls. 

This is THE treasure

Of ancient repute,

Whose polished shimmer still

Is but a raped reflection

Of that I cannot call to word.

Only in silence.

So come, lend an ear

[And heart if you can]

To this voice of ages.

‘Serve and serve and serve again

For when you go

I know not when’.

Now is always the time, 

In past, present or future,

Whose tense is really a tension;

The agitated state of possible departure,

Feeding flames of naked purpose, 

When all is stripped to

The very bone. 

The walls are high and mighty.

I myself built them

And only I can remove them,

Brick by brick.

This in my choice

And yes I choose it.

And now what chomping challenges

Are safe within these boundaries?

I’ve set the guard

To walk the walls and sing

If shadows dark the horizon.

I sleep with one eye open,

A hungry sword by my side,

Whose cut is deep [so very deep]

To the very depths of forgiveness.

Of what am I afraid?

The most painful death

Is NOT living,

A killing of the fear

And fullness of a breaking heart

That longs to swim in the tides

Of your salted bloodstream.

So why cut corn before

Ripeness splits its sides wide open

And stone-dead kill its chance

Of fertile ground?

Your haste for happiness

Keeps you unhappy.

The tail you chase

Will never be clamped 

Between teeth so dark with 

Resignation. 

And when weeds raise their weary heads,

Amongst massed ranks of intended crop,

Please hold their right 

To bathe in the light,

In the rise and fall of your unbidden breath.

For flowers who crown

Their heads with thorns

Reward the still determined bee

With nectar of a noble kind.

Again and again he comes,

To drink his fill and dance

 A drunken ode 

To the sugary delight of intent.

His heart he follows 

To dust encrusted chambers,

Rich with the pollen of deep determination.

And he carries his prize unknown,

With measured beats

Of wings that shine with the 

Stretched polish of

Trustful tension.

Fragile, yes. Yet nothing detracts

From the serious urge to 

Slake a thirst of parched and

Porous yearning. 

This is the risk. To sip 

And slide into crushing awareness.

To strip the flesh and bone, the aching bones, 

Brittle as they may be.

For some who plunge

Beneath still ocean waves,

The drowning is weighted with drama;

A life-fight struggle for breath

Silver-bubbled and slick

With a spastic stretching

For self-preservation.

But what really is there to preserve?

What endures when worms 

Do squirm their way through vacant plots

Of flesh and shrivelled sinew?

This is the question.

 The Alpha and Omega

Of all enquiries.

I may claim I know not the answer,

Yet lying is easy 

And an option attractive to 

That victim victorious.

And you know of the ostrich who buried

His head in the sand,

Buried his heart too

And wept because his day was

Draped in darkness.

If only that bird

With such burning eyes

Had managed to see

What the clouds in the skies 

Were holding for him. 

Their silver silhouetted support,

Brimful and burning with

Bright-shine of impossible beauty,

Blinding to all but those

Who open their eyes wide

For all to fall into,

Was ever and always available.

Their vaporous  forms 

Of finely folded artistry, floating 

Yet fixed to knitted networks

Of essential threads,

Holds memory of pathways to glory.

A remembrance of routes

Alive with the tremor

Of those who trod before

And after

Your arrival at the starting line.

The ways remain open

Tarmac and toll-free.

Yet the traveller’s advised

That certain roads are for certain codes

Of sliver-stamped behaviour.

For rivers run to the sea

And some highways and byways crawl

And then fall into

Dead-ended obscurity,

Smothered by so many signposts.

Which way;

When so many stand and signal

Direction?

Which one;

When so many stretch and grab 

Attention?

‘Follow me. No, follow me.

YOUR WAY IS MY WAY’.

“Silence!” I shout.

An act of war and

Defiance openly declared.

Flags are raised in the midst

Of chaotic clamour,

Inch by desperate inch.

And there,

In storm or breathless

Death of wind, 

They fly in the face

Of all experience, 

Tattered and torn, yet raised

And ready to greet the dawn

Of Love’s illumination. 

6.1

The Function Part 3

The Function Part 2

The Function Part 1

Out really means In

Out of the mind and into the body

A phrase commonly found in a vast range of both ancient and modern spiritual, esoteric and metaphysical literature is that which refers to 'out of body experience'. Although descriptions of this phenomena vary quite widely according to the framework within which it is experienced [i.e. religious, shamanic, scientific etc] a common thread running through all the variations of description promotes the belief that it involves some form of soul or spirit journey out of the physical body into a more mystical or spiritual dimension of our nature.

 Laying aside any so called religious or spiritual connotations to this experience, evidence collected from many people who have had near death experiences through accidents or severe trauma, supports the idea that some kind of journey is made out of the body into a quite different and typically unknown aspect of our existence.

There exists, however, a very different approach to the whole subject which challenges the very roots of the ordinarily accepted explanation, whatever the context or framework it is given in. 

On a recent journey to northern Scotland, I was walking along a beach in the company of a friend. After some minutes, we entered a very playful state, inspiring each other to align with an ecstatic frequency that had indicated its availability for connection. Our walk and talk became pure gibberish, free of the fear of concern regarding members of the public walking near us. The uncontrollable laughter that ensued was merely a gateway into a location of silence and great stillness. 

As I walked inside this quiet state, a rolling bank of clouds, spectacularly alive in their luminosity, attracted my attention. As I gazed into them, I suddenly realised that 'out of body experience' is actually the constant everyday experience of the mass majority of humans physically inhabiting planet Earth. What is considered to be ordinary reality is in fact a constant out of body experience, which continues for most people until the moment of death. It is a state in which any awareness of the energetic matrix from which All pours forth is continually snuffed out like a spluttering candle.

The more I breathed into this information, the more I could see that what is normally described as being an out of body experience is really a journey into the original body, into the void that is our true authentic nature and reality. Out really means in and soul journeys are more accurately understood as the retrieval of memories of an awareness of a infinitely multidimensional body. Our eyes do not look out, they look in, wide open and shining with the full force of remembrance.