It's like

It's like touching someone so lightly they don't even know.

It's like coaxing bubbles back to soapy liquid.

It's like shadowing the steps of an invisible spirit moving across the desert.

It's like diving through pauses into an ocean of silence.

It's like sketching wind.

It's like peeling a rainbow from the sky.

It's like smoking clouds.

It's like spinning a hula hoop and never stopping.

It's like being slow-cooked in a creative casserole.

It's like dancing with destiny, yet not letting her dictate all the moves.

It's like wedding fire and ice and drinking the result.

It's like making a shattered glass whole.

It's like juggling planets in an astrological circus.

It's like going backwards and forwards simultaneously.

It's like melting steel with your hands.

It's like injecting sunlight into your veins.

It's like calling back an avalanche from the top of a mountain.

It's like standing on the shoulders of a dozen dwarfs, to kiss an amorous giant.

It's like being swallowed by a cosmic lion.

It's like hitching a ride on the back of a fighter jet.

It's like lifting the top off a fertile volcano.

Part 2

It's like dancing with a cosmic lion, yet not letting him dictate all the moves.

It's like injecting fire and ice into your veins.

It's like being sliced by soapy liquid.

It's like juggling dwarfs in a miniature circus.

It's like diving through clouds into a sky of sound.

It's like melting a giant with your hands.

It's like touching a fighter jet so lightly the alarm doesn't go off.

It's like being slow-cooked in a fertile volcano.

It's like injecting dwarves into your veins.

It's like hitching a ride on the back of a cosmic lion.

It's like diving through soapy liquid.

It's like juggling hula hoops on the back of a fighter jet.

It's like wedding dwarves and giants and drinking the result.

It's like making a shattered lion whole.

It's like smoking ice whilst melting dwarfs in a fertile volcano.

It's like being sliced by a cosmic giant whilst juggling hula hoops in the desert.

It's like sketching lions whilst injecting a mountain into your veins, on the back of a fighter jet, and not letting the wind dictate all the moves.

And this is why, you should take out a subscription to Good Housekeeping magazine.

The clash of the cliches

The blindingly obvious met the glaring error in a darkly lit alley-way.

The atmosphere was tense.

A moment seemed like eternity.

The glaring error had bust his balls to get there on time and had arrived by the skin of his teeth.

He could murder a cold beer but had bigger fish to fry first.

So he said to the blindingly obvious, 'Fancy meeting you here. Come here often?'

The anger of the blindingly obvious lit his eyes like burning coals.

'You got a hell of a cheek addressing me like that. Didn't anyone ever tell you to respect your elders?'

A smile crept across the glaring error's face and he cracked his knuckles.

'At the end of the day, the truth will out. It will hit you like a ton of bricks.'

He knew he could pack a punch which could knock most people for six.

But he also knew what goes around comes around.

So he carried along his way. 

Out of the bottle

The genius is out of the bottle.
The cereal has bust the box.
The bun is baked in the oven.
The dogs have outrun the fox.

The milk bottle has smashed and run all over the floor.
The key has been turned to unlock the door.

The spirit has transcended the flesh.
The no has been beaten by the yes.

This instinct to exceed our containers.
The urge to cash in our retainers.

The jackpot has been hit.
The state is deemed fit.

Poet mix

William Blake was a baker and hated Yeats.
He used wheat to make bread for Keats.
In his imagination he dreamt of primordial times
when natives shaked spears at other tribes
and had poetical battles to find out
whose words were worth the most.

Walt Whitman waited while ee cummings came.
He waltzed wondrously
MEANWHILE
EEC regulations on cumin imports
wilted all cringers.

TS Eliot tessellates a lot.
Sell lions Tse tse slot.

Shelley hell she yell yesh.

Byron and on and on.
Bye bye.

Trustafarian's prayer

Our father, who art in the city.
Hallowed be thy bank account.
Thy income come,
thy will be inherited,
taking from you on earth,
as we take from you when you are in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread
and give us our VIP passes,
as we give them to our mates.

But lead us not into temptation
of getting a job
and deliver us from employers.

For thou art the sugar Daddy,
the power and the glory,
forever and ever.
Our Dad.

The Quickening

The rotation of life-cycles
reaches a higher pitch.
The tailoring of life's seams
reaches a more detailed stitch.

Things multiply.

Lift out of solid, stolid patterns
into a quickening.

Coaxed away from safe spots.
From fixed feelings
into a flowering,
a blossoming,
a quickening
into faster vibrations.

Fingers first

Fingers first.
As the tips touch the surface water
the frame is freezed.

She leans back,
into her deep sofa,
stretching her legs out long
and gazes at the diver's pose
abstracted from his flow
to handstand on the sea's fake floor.

Carelessly playing with the remote control,
she tap-taps the play and pause button
so he disappears down
in
a
series
of
incremental
steps.

The water's reaction uprises in slow motion.

She bathes in the assumed glory of one who can control nature,
through the precise manipulations of a video-reel.

This is the rhyme

This is the rhyme which got away.
The rhyme which took its time.
The rhyme whose chimes you can't quite grasp.

This is the rhyme which flickers at the surface of your subconscious.
The rhyme which is delivered through random ticker-tape feed.
The rhyme which comes unexpectedly from spilt seed.

This is the rhyme which is lost in the midsts of the past.
The rhyme which evokes the sublime.
The rhyme whose rhythm goes deep into the body's memory.

This is the rhyme which smiles when you make a faux pas.
The rhyme which is not controlled.
The rhyme which academics do not extol.

This is the rhyme which winks quite contrary to expectation.
The rhyme which gives you pause for thought.
The rhyme which the clauses of the contract do not cover.

This is the rhyme which the forecast did not predict.
The rhyme which breaks the clouds on an overcast day.
The rhyme lying in your pocket, which was not meant to be there.

This is the rhyme which taps you on the shoulder.
The rhyme which laps at your shoreline incessantly until recognised.
The rhyme which fractures received wisdom into bouquets of blossoming truths.

This is the rhyme which, against the odds, knows you better than most.
The rhyme which was buried in a field for no good reason.
The rhyme which was hidden in a world with a narrow script.

This is the rhyme whose only crime was to shame those out of line.
The rhyme which speaks of calamity only as a call to action.
The rhyme which weakens the cocksure and strengthens the cautious.

This is the rhyme which dances out of time to all but the most graceful music.
The rhyme which everyone sees but very few notice.
The rhyme which beckons with a crooked finger towards new possibility.

This is the rhyme which speaks to all, including those who listen.

Black love

Black love swarms
                  slides
                  reaches into me.

Darkening.
Heartening.

Black holes
of velvet feeling.

Black deepening.
Black love
seeps into me.

Don't bite the dust

Don't bite the dust.

Even when the wind whips up a storm in the dust-bowl,
and particles threaten to assail your being,
blind to all but loose grey matter,
keep your sights on the rainbow fruits,
the green-grass fields,
the lemon-shine sun
and the blue-shone sky.

Don't bite the dust
in a legal ceremony
or a lowered coffin,
but turn around to other pathways
and let your feet rule the dirt,
making sometime prints and patterns
before you glimpse the dust annul your treads
in the rear-view mirror.

Others around you may succumb to a limited vision
which ends in dust,
believing in a wind-down universe,
but move your spirit which wants to move
and keep the cells dancing
whichever way they like to go.

Don't bite the dust.
Keep walking.
Eat tasty things.
Brush off dead-skin, stray hairs and dandruff
onto the floor of existence
and keep walking,
regenerating,
resisting the lure of dusty dissolution.

She bites

She bites,
tight-clenched hand on neck,
a bloodless vampire.

Sometimes pain lightens the load,
so relaxation and enjoyment
are augmented by an awareness of possible danger,
probable games but you never know.

She bites,
life keeping us on our toes.

Eagle sweeps through the sky,
some birds seem nice
and some are only following their nature.

Cities keep us closed in,
in comfort and technological marvel,
and we apologise for touching strangers,
a laughable polity,
a daft way to keep the peace.

This

This is post-harmony,
for those who found their place in the sun
and realise the sun burns some days,
holding a tension between warmth and furnace.
Safety may be an illusion,
yet we throw out nets
to keep us fed.

She bites,
catching sharks,
showing fierce animals her power and her kindness,
throwing them back into deep waters,
having met their eyes and
stared out the strange energy
of human enterprise:
our wayward dreams,
our wild projects,
our dark passions bubbling up
through placid smiles,
our lines of capture
thrown into open seas.
Reeling in the bounty
to see what bit the booty.

She bites,
perhaps just to remind me,
that sometimes things are fucked up:
there is no ocean without waves,
there is no calm without storm,
there is no static without disturbance,
there is no attraction without frisson,
there is no text without punctuation.

What's the punchline?

She bites,
sharp indentations,
a jagged harp
plays jarring harmonies.

She bites,
to remind me.

Sometimes thunder strikes.
Stay aware.

Flickering

Flickering.

Flickering.

Shards.

Flickering.

Sparks.

Flickering. Flickering. Flickering.

Glimpse.

Flickering. Flickering.

Sparkle.

Flickering. Flickering. Flickering.

Snatches.

Flickering. Flickering.

Warmer.

Flickering.

Flash.

Flickering.

Burst.

Flickering.

Blaze.

All together. 

Curved lines

Have now self-published a pamphlet of my poetry called 'Curved lines'. It contains 31 poems including 'The Story of Truth and Fiction'. It is being produced in Brighton - can post one to you or meet you if we are in a similar location at a similar time or it is available in one of several spots:
1) Cambridge market on Thursdays on the poetry stall
2) Cambridge market on Mondays and Tuesdays on Fay Wright's creative stall
3) CB1 cafe on Mill Road
If you would like to get a copy please email me at nickstibbs@gmail.com and we can sort something out. Also email me if you'd like to go on a mailing list to get information about future publications and performances. And get in touch if you'd like to sell the pamphlet in a shop, website, stall, fair or cafe.
I hope to produce a Volume 2 with another set of poems shortly, as well as a book-size edition with a comprehensive selection, as well as illustrations.

Dreamfeel

Unravelling at the dreams.
Fabric patches thrown all over the place.
Society's divides look at each other.
Archetypes stand as staging posts along the way.

Know the bottom and top.

And all sides.
Seas and castles.
Kings and rascals.

Unwrap the infinite parcel.  

Feel silence.
Let the wind blow through you
and embrace the cold.
Unfold.

Be the sun.
The eternal summer 

shining through all seasons.

Let go of dreams and dive in.
Make a splash that waters 

the budding shoots
poking up from fertile 

and not so fertile soils.

Leave.
Walk out.
Weave your own pattern.
Divorce your doubt.
Say no to the golden handshake
and offer your soul to the All.

Fall from traps of ideals
and seal your lips
from tonguing foolish words.
Let truth seep out of
eyes wide open.
Feel whatever is.
This.

See everything,
processions of events,
dancing a dance

that responds to your steps

to varying degrees.

Grab another dancer

and touch a different 

slice of the universe

for a while.

Smile.

Nothing's forever
and on it goes.

How two oscillate

Many moons ago, a mystic madman sat down
to count the number of waterdrops cycling
between sky, rivers and seas.

He walked a thousand pathways
and seeing the world's waters
from many different angles
and time-frames,
until
one afternoon,
he was sat on a riverbank,
watching the insistent rain
pummel the water's surface,
when he saw a single drop

hang
      .

suspended from his hat.

Entranced by its pregnant pause
in movement,
its presence sucked him
into an archetypal realm
of water
where
the molecular structure
of two hydrogen atoms
and one oxygen
were displayed
in virgin wonder.

Forever spelling
the rules of the game,
he realised all water was
stamped with this signature of fusion.

Every drop emanated from its elegant entanglement.

The fool lost his quest
and became a wise evangelist
of the answer,
which was everywhere and without quantity.

Melting poles

If we keep burning oil, petrol, methane and so on,
the greenhouse effect of accumulated atmospheric gases
will multiply surface temperatures of the earth,
continuing to melt the ice-caps at either pole,
revealing yet more oil reserves to be burnt
which will in turn exacerbate the issue.

The ice from the landmass will fill the seas,
raising ocean-levels, reclaiming land
and the water will begin to acidify,
poisoning more life.

And the answer is not for all the nice people to take one flight a year
and limit their use of cars, because unfortunately,
the nice people are outnumbered by the ignorant, the despotic and the uncaring.

The answer is made of stronger stuff.

Being nice is at one pole of possibility.
Being nasty is at the other.
We need to melt the poles of personality to find the middle
and then act from there.

Beautiful heresies

Poetry is a vehicle for beautiful heresies.

Through picking up a pen,
(and remember Christ warned against scribes),
each poet exercises the power of choice,
through a combination of sublime inspiration
and linguistic selectivity,
to devise rhymes and lines which best express
their own personal Divine vision.

Displacing the authority of dogmas and catechisms,
evaporating the lingering spoken structures
of set creeds
and chants,
which encrust the air,
to open up fresh pathways,
unique channels
which faith leans into;
sciences scurry to uncover;
intuition hints at
and philosophies debate.

The best a poet can do is know when to stop
and urge the audience to listen.

Measurements

There is a difference between distance and the idea of distance.

The latter is an ideal unit which we agree to find meaningful..

The former is an impossibility, based on fluctuating standards,
set in relativity, whose identity might as well be zero, for all the meaning it has.

Nevertheless, we persist & in our persistence,
life is made workable and laughable
on analysis.

Such is the paradox of pragmatism.

Flatland

Flatland is the status quo.

Flatland is without a scale of value.

Flatland always agrees.

Flatland does not check the change given.

Flatland is into fate, but not destiny.

Flatland does not understand consequences.

Flatland sees situations, but not possibilities.

Flatland cannot tolerate difference.

Flatland wants a peaceful life.

Flatland is always tuned into the same channel.

Flatland puts faith in creeds rather than desires.

Flatland rules because a Flatland is easy.

Flatland seems to be vertical when awake,
but actually may as well be horizontal asleep.

Flatland does not comprehend your problems.

Difficulties

It is becoming increasingly difficult living in a world system
that does not listen.

Is incapable of response.
Is set on delusion.
Defends its choices.
Believes in death
& the means to go there
wrapping it all in a cloak of niceness.

The world is a mix of mediocrity,
terror, depravity & brute force,
punctuated by flares of brilliance
& tenderness, attempting to transcend.

Battle

The enemy is not in a distant castle,
underground HQ
or shadowy alleyway
but in your everyday interactions.

As is the friend.

And the two are often very mixed up.

Whenever you let untruth hang in the air
without challenge,
unless your confidence is very strong and arch,
the enemy has won.

Whenever the love you desire to experience is not expressed,
the enemy has won.

Whenever your integrity is diminished,
the enemy has won.

The battlefield is the here and now.
There are snipers everywhere
& the finishing point is your heart & dreams.

A theology of smoke

Heaven and hell are relative and changing.

Some people's heavens are others hells.

Some like easy-pickings, others the hard sell.

God is heavenothingness.

The One is a smoke-ring,
absent-mindedly blown from human lips,
illuminated for a moment
by lamplight,
meaning nothing
yet we are emtranced by its transinent completeness,
before it dissipates into the air of the room.

Architecture and design are all we are left with
and the hard back of the chair against our backs.

Turning back to the feast from which he came,
the fellow exclaims 'And yet, and yet, there is all this!'

Drunk on the senses - awash with synaptic bursts
fusing language with sensation -
the existential fireworks of enlightened enjoyment
fizz like sparkles held by a gleeful child,
only to burn to the end,
suddenly extinguished
& the disappointing stick is all that is left.

Onwards to the next game, the next adventure.

More. More. Endless bliss.

Overspill of poetry

May I poem over you?

These lines are not straight.

Poetry, though not necessarily feminine
is somewhat youthful,
even when feeling tired and jaded.

In the battle between the bent and the rigid,
the flexible steps out of the war-zone
& dances trhough new pathways.

I am saturated with poetry,
sometimes,
seeping out of my pores.

My eyes speak poetry & all reality-things respond with their own lyrical charm.

Where?

Somewhere, past nowhere,
in the opposite direction to anywhere,
there.

In this particular spot not yet known,
she stares,
a figment of my imagination still.

Looking intently, curious, waiting, somewhere,
in a land unexplained yet somehow existent.

The poet and the audience

The question, which may be asked,
is did I, the poet, write the poem,
to be heard specifically by you,
one potential listener,
out of 7 billion potentials?

Poets, functional autistics,
to varying degrees,
write alone
or in company.

Perhaps the musty solitude of an outpost lighthouse,
solitary bearers of the literary flame

or in that peculiar social space called,
the writing workshop, where fellow obsessives and aspirants
(who fancy the idea of being a writer, but are not enslaved by it),
sit in circles,
pretending to be interested in each others' work,
whilst the facilitator suffers all torments,
and thinks of the fee as she searches
amidst scrambled arrangements
for intimations of beauty and meaning.

Perhaps I knew of one and two,
who would be here, who promised to be here,
all other considerations factored in,
and perhaps I wrote this poem particularly for them.

And perhaps my autistic edges are softened
in anticipation and enactment of the poem being received,
travelling the airwaves of history,
as choice phrases or gestures ascend into
the neon lights of immortality
or at the very least we all go home,
with one more piece to the puzzle;
a few steps further,
deeper into the ocean of language,
in which we all live, move and speak our being.

Speaking of dreams

Tell me your dreams.

The ones you have at night
when you've laid your hopes
and fear to rest.

Talk to me in images.
Hit me with archetypes.

Unconscious narratives that
startle and haunt.

Do all this,
because in doing so,
we will help give birth
to the shadow of the world,
speaking the language of the soul,
because without dreams spoken aloud
the air becomes too thin,
too parched,
strangled by lies.

Body divine

Human bodies are divine.

Stick with the flesh & the energy that animates it.

Eyes size up other eyes,
beyond the great white expanse,
travelling through different shades,
into the dazzling darkness
to see the elusive light
which is only revealed
when we meet on equal terms.

Human bodies are divine.
Eyes, hands, hearts, feet.

Settle into your suit. Your comfort. Your flesh.

Unconscious uprisings

Insurgents today succeeded in forcing the CEO to sneeze as she delivered the annual report to an audience of 48.

In the war against the unconscious, armed with social etiquette and stiffened resolve, daily battles are fought to suppress giggles, yawns, farts & burps.

The red scare of blushing breaks through when there is suspicion of inauthenticity.

Love does not care what you do for a living. These things are very secondary.

Magic is multiple

Fairy tales teach us there is a wicked witch or sorcerer, attempting to destroy our lives through magical spells which trap us in delusion or despair but what they do not say, is that magic is multiple, fragmented amongst a million players, all casting spells on one another.

Theologians talk about 'the banality of evil' but truly, no adjective can summarise the nature of the assorted magicians ranging through these realms. Some spells paint themselves as so good it is  hard to spot what they deny and some that seem horrible, may be our greatest deliverers.

Taste as many wines as you like. Weigh up every stone offered and see if it is of value to you.

Pay particular attention to what most people exclude and decide for yourself.

The greatest spell ever unleashed on the world is the idea that other people know better than you - attempting to paly on your potential for doubt, confusion, subservience, repression and enslavement to externalities.

Pay attention to your own instincts and ideas. They exist for a reason.

Always winter but never Christmas

In a land where it was always winter but never Christmas.

Where old men told jokes without a punchline.

Wives stuck in a perpetual preparation for going out,
trying on an endless procession of dresses.

Families gathered round a table,
spoke a never-ending grace.

The food set before them but never eaten.

A town which was marked by traffic lights
which never went green, but flashed alternately between red and amber.

Couples locked into a first date in which they could never steal a moment alone.

A place of rain but no rainbow,
truth without kindness,
study but no learning,
travel without arrival,
caught in a pathetic process
of always beginning and never moving.

Addicted to anticipation,
drunk on novelty,
somehow reward is banished
into a realm of fantasy,
& only possibility is entertained,
but no specific guests are invited,
much less come to eat.

The religion of promise without delivery
has erected temples all through this land,
and worshippers are locked into
pitiful prayers of supplication,
with no intention of doing what it takes
to get there.

Fear has struck a fateful blow to the land
and its inhabitants live in a circular prison, which 
always believing in the next day
but never making it different to the one before.

The eternal now grips life and locks the population in a hamster wheel of delusion.

The extra mile

A backdrop of economy which
allows flourishes of gluttony.

Baking bread from scratch.
Enjoy the physicality.

Exploring the breath of possibility,
deciding for yourself.

Learning to draw a line for yourself.
Learning to jump over other people's lines.

Knowing when to be silent.
Knowing when to be vocal.

Using one's imagination to take advantage of situations.

Knowing when to let go into guidance or open-eyed faith.

Knowing when to study the map
and when to take directions.

Folding up clothes after laundry..

Enjoy the extra mile.

Appreciate each mouthful.

Breathing.

Poetry's bliss

Tongues feel each others mouths
lungs breathe between them the same air.

Ideas milled into communal space,
leaving no trace,
of fence of apartheid.

No, nothing hides
here,
where
there
is only movement
and only stillness.

Poetry's bliss,
having shed its 'I's
to see
everywhere
mirrors of difference
reflecting infinite shards
of presence,
mutual invitations to kiss.

No competition

To compete is so effete.

The prize for the wise
is mutual enjoyment
of each others grace.

No race for us gentlemen -
that's left for the insecure and anxious,
who set arbitrary finishing lines
& time their climb,
whilst we luxuriate
in the circle of life,
constantly arriving
at ever new yet familiar places.

Many ways of seeing

When perceiving any vision, any statement, any plan,
let its shadow aspect flick into sight.

With the two-fold vision things can become clearer.

Turn the vision upside down
to see how its architecture stands reversed.

Cut it up and re-arrange the pieces.
See how it might grow or diminish,
extending or exaggerating parts,
amputating other limbs.

Bend it, twist it, scramble it, 
see what possibilities unfold
from what is given.

Stretch its potential until it
becomes transluscent.

Watch it burst into nothing.

Then come back to what you see before you.

Opinions and facts

Opinions are curved.
Facts are straight.

Opinions hover restlessly in the air,
whereas facts are tied to places and dates.

Opinions are fighting a battle
which will never be won.
Facts and their shadow-sisters, lies
are ammunition which add to the fun.

When the personal meets the actual,
light sparkles in our eyes.
Opinions and facts coalesce
in the arrangements of the wise.

Opinions may never agree
but can find co-existence on earth.
So facts lay scattered all around
caring not about value or worth.

Look twice

We are,
as a species,
a strange kettle of fish,
but having said that,
the phrase kettle of fish
is a very strange phrase.

Everything looked at twice,
has the veneer of inexplicable beingness.
A stone.
A lampshade.
Noses.
Clouds.
It is no wonder people go mad
because there is a lack of forums
for people to just go '..um...'
and come to absolutely no conclusions

We put labels on things - price tags, frames, theories, designs, names, boxes.
But really we are just cutting ourselves up and building traps.
Trees are indifferent to our opinions.
We trick ourselves that we enjoy compliments but actually,
we want to enjoy ACTION.

The sooner humanity embraces its strangeness.
The peculiar simplicity of the world and its particularities.
Of our desires and of our nature.

Always looking twice - first with educated eyes, evaluating eyes.
Secondly with the eyes of a cat.
The eyes of a mystic.
The eyes of an infant.
The sooner we do that,
the sooner the fun will really begin.

Eternity and time

Time pulls at eternity,
rivers running under slumbering clouds.
Eternity smiles happily.
Time dreams of happiness,
but is too busy to feel it, 

apart from brief slivers of elation 

and hints of a contentment to come.

Eternity doesn't know the joke,
yet is always laughing.
Time knows the joke only too well,
but doesn't get the punchline.

Time ascends to Eternity by letting go of its usual flow.

Eternity falls into Time, 

because it wants to know what it is 

to be heavy and have to move.

Eternity is in every drop of time,
latent peace
set adrift on a sequence of struggles.

Sea shells

See patterns
in SEA SHELLS.
She sells magic
by the ounce.

On the corner,
blowing songs
on her conch.
Sea shanties that weigh in
at a dozen
for your heart's desire.

I know men who have tried
to steal her away.

But they could not see patterns
in sea shells.

So they missed the magic.

And she remains,
on the corner,
blowing songs
on her conch.

Freud's fixations

Freud thought it was unhealthy to have an oral fixation.
This indicated arrested development at a previous stage.
Yet what part of us participates in as much pleasure as our mouth?

We taste, we speak, we kiss, we lick, we whistle, we suck, we pout, we smile.

Truly, if eyes are the window of the soul then the mouth is the front-door.

Freud's great mistake was his own fixation on pathology rather than health.

Heaven knows what his own hang-ups were.
Better scholars than I might be able to explain
but I hear he had a liking for cocaine,
so that suggests to me he had a nasal fixation.

Very conveniently, he never mentioned that in his writing, did he?

We define ourselves by what we exclude.

Stick with the illusion

Don't try to understand me.
Some mysteries disappoint
if you try to unravel them.
Sometimes the charm is in the illusion.
The charade of faces
tell a funny tale
and we shouldn't wish for more
otherwise we will certainly
discover
far
far less.

Silicon rule

If you stop and listen very carefully,
you will hear the hum of a thousand computers.

Electric fizz.

The quiet usurper of life over the past two hundred years.

No longer do we hear of the animating spirit, the elan vital.

Now it is all hertz and watts and whatnot.

Man has been conquered by silicon invaders - a technical demiurge has created a virtual space,
where human bodies lock onto LCD screens
and feed on information
whilst imagining they are learning about the world
and interacting with people.

This is a subtle trickery & no doubt many of us have been fooled.

If you stop and listen you can hear the hum of a thousand computers.
The revenge of the geeks.

Together

Only the wise child is immortal.

Only the person who chooses both black and white can truly inhabit the board.

Only those words spoken without a hint of uncertainty, anxiety or regret can enter the corridors of eternity.

Only the intention that engages a whole being can move into victory.

Only the heart which does not want to possess can meet as a true lover.

Only prayer spoken from the soul will reach the ears of the Beloved.

Would it were otherwise. Our efforts would not be in vain and we would be surrounded by success.

But it is as it is and whilst there appears to be many, there are actually only a few.

Words and not-words

If you cannot write with your body, you are dead.

If you cannot feel a well of ink in your belly, simmering, bubbling and churning,
the flow of your life will run dry and stagnate.

Because words divorced from not-words create a prison-world ruled by hands and heads,

 whilst the rest are repressed - to become a body invisible - a myth which is only half-believed and rarely experienced.

Children are told to create a signature,
and in that process, 

something is formed and something is lost.

Every new word we learn activates a latent capacity to perceive more of the world,
yet each new word moves us further into a cave of language,
whilst the bright dumb light of supernal being calls us back,
to bathe in the wordlessness of our Edenic beginnings.

The Scriptures have mislead us.
Things did not begin with a word
much less The Word,
but with something primal.
A gasp, a sigh, a groan, an ecstatic cry,
which underscores 

all our erudite and entrapping attempts
to wed what we perceive to language,
& breaks through in ums, ers and pregnant pauses

- the anarchy of silence - 

sounds without definition
tease open the structures of meaning to let in
blasts of impossible wonder.

Chimes of the sublime