Outside The Window Snow Was Sailing Through The Sky

Outside the window snow was sailing through the sky.

The slope of the side of the mountain dissolved before the eye.

Clouds came crowding down while wind carried the flurries high.

The white surf washed against grey granite bulks til nothing there was dry.

And this was a scene in a dream.

Tinted window went from floor to past eye.

The scene was a scene in a dream.

Like on a screen of a world beyond I.

The strength of the mountain was like the slope of one shoulder.

The head was in the clouds above reach.

And the rolling snow caught by the wind was a spirit.

Waves of light pouring down and along a shining beach.

The height and the light and the cold and the cloud.

The flurry and the falling and the rolling and pouring.

So where was the heart as this weather made its way?

Where was the watcher inside in the foreground?

What company did he keep in warm room by the window?

Did the fire in the hearth tint the window and surrounds?

I remember the distraction of the beautiful scene.

The softness and the swirl and the whiteness and kindness.

The slope so smooth like some tilted horizon.

The slow-motion presence of this world beyond mine.

But I was listening to the words I was making in response.

Feeling utterly unable to trust in their labels.

What conjurations I could speak could compare with this beauty?

And it cried out for justice for at least one or two words.

Dissolving inside in the challenge of this beauty I spoke.

The words something ‘awareness’ and ‘consciousness’ too came out.

And a feeling inside multiplied just behind the words and within.

Not talking ‘about’ but being the very words that came forth.

‘Awareness’ and ‘consciousness’ filled the room like a wave.

A warm-coloured ocean radiating and carrying smiles.

And the eye for who I was in the dream expanded outward,

Becoming a circle of friends and the window and outside.

3-9-11

Awakening to Memory (1980)

(Note: refers to a time when, awaking from chaotic dreams of medieval chaos and ruin, I recalled a happy memory to calm me. I remembered a time at the lights in Newmarket with my lover, when she asked for her ‘drug’, and I kissed her, thinking impulsively she meant ‘me’. Two guys in a van behind us clapped – such romantic spirit? My lover explained after that it was a cigarette she meant. In the poem this memory is translated into medieval garb from the dream traces).

Carrouselled past Shavian

Flowersellers, to days of when

Medieval knights and damsels

Fled from evil sights to castles,

And past bombardment of quaking towers

The last enchantment, for waking now,

My dreams have gone, and I’ve lost the battle,

And streams of consciousness now grapple

With thoughts of sleep and safety’s shore

For fraught with deep pangs greatly more

Of love and loneliness, my mind

A dove on a lonely quest to find

A memory

Of when we

Were carefree

And laughing

Reminisced when, on trusty steed,

The damsel was kissed, when just such a deed

Was requested of the prince, who confused the words

In the message rather, since it amused the bards

In the minstrel troupe behind, who clapped for more

And the damsel looked blind to what the kiss was for.

Not a kiss was the request for the task, nor a hug,

But for Turkish cigarettes when she asked for her ‘drug’.

And awakening to memory, I welcome reality.

In taking you with me in my dreams, you are in me.

1980.

Being Under and Down

Knew that sensation of being under and down

Shedding light skin rubbed smudged bunching dull edges

Infinitude left in the moment carries right right the way down

Inner thighs the bruised breath the head rests near the bevel

Undone beneath brow ridge the eye suns in the sundown

Cast arcs reaching far past the cave where heart gauges

Thumps fear beats the loudest the darkest is down

Prise prison til lengthen the sentence lies down

Narrow scent sent long long hallways serious sound

Check echoes of memory the trail follows the ground down

Shoulders relay it follows rolling train of the serpentine spine

Phantom arms yearn for knowledge from every ledge down

No hips hold such blood vesselled in delicate harbour

Sorrow shifts levels tails ripples in destinies down

Marrow and morrow and endless days laying down

Subterranean terrors near carefully sharpened sense

Eyes are streaming dreams in the darkened way down

Shutters of shadows flashing light waves listing in rhymes

Borrowed burrowed furrowed the body smoothes it down

The groove grows the road ploughs rows tossed in dust

Childhead turns in undertows mid time laid down

30 - 11 - 10

Talk of Such Things

Talk of things where one holds one’s breath.
Walls of citadels dusty with the desert’s wrath.
Face of fear, and death is stalking the streets.
I cover my heart now aware it is heaving red meat.

Night is swarming with locusts and lies.
All appearances wear a disguise.
In darkened doorway does my body give in,
Disappear in my chest and grow thin.

Eyelids shade like a camel’s wisdom.
I ride on the storm from my fabulous prison.
A troubled genii in a bottle’s throttled torment.
But the blood clutches the feet on the pavement.

The singular eye turns a gurney of gyres.
Golgotha is its claim and desire.
What witness am I that I’m caught in this web
While the light of the world rose into red?

The wash over me clears my mind of illusion.
Such imaginal memories seem not a delusion.
Wouldst my heart drip with red and the light lift my lungs.
Wouldst my breath give away and such speech light my tongue.

Past Life Memories With My Father

1.

We sat upon the temple steps
Overlooking the marketplace.
Casual, side by side, on the uppermost step,
So that neither would presume to sit higher.
And yet still the dark mystery behind,
The large doors, the smaller one inset like a jewel.
Only at times of great festivals
Would the larger doors be opened wide.
Then the crowds jubilant and wild
Would bridge the distinction made
By these soft low steps of stone.
In my hands, forearms resting on knees,
I finger a stalk of straw, blown by winds
That gust occasionally through the city gates
Lifting feathers and dust from the streets below.
I turn the stalk as I turn my mind,
Sifting the dry contents of fields forever turned to hay.
You too are unsure where to look.
But your hand gestures to stay my meandering
And point out something that occurs below.
Ah yes, this stalk is yet no cryptic key.
I stab the air in vain and flick it away with my wrist.
Whatever, we must stay present with this.

2.

Maddened fireflies assail the lanternlight.
The envy of these motherfuckers might
Come to grief with little distinction
Other than their own extinction.

3.

Bearded we might
Scuttle down priory hallways,
One leading the other by the elbow
As though in flight.
Cloistered amid the booklined walls
We try to recall where we have read
What might beckon the other from the night.
Something seen when the moon was passing
The leadlight window framed above.
The hands turn thin sheaves of manuscript
As though we know there's little time.
And who could say what was discovered,
How much the two friends dared to share,
The ages lost and yet in passing,
Who now knows what's next in line?

4.

Sorry, the train began on time.
The words were planned that were to rhyme.
The sense is now what's left behind
Once thoughts have been committed to line.
Some missed the junction, went astray,
Like you and I from day to day.
What use regret and guilt and shame,
The many thin grey shades of blame.
The most is what is left today,
To bring it forth else fade away.


28 - 11 - 96

A Dream About Counselling Work

My brother, Steve, and I, talking to a guy.
There's some work he wants to offer us.
(Steve's been struggling around work issues too).
The guy's a brilliant young biologist.

He's been working with trout, growing them large,
He says, up to eighty kilos.
Wow, that's one heavy lifting job, I joke,
Imagining giving them the heave-ho.

The guy knows my joke, but knows me better,
The cap-tipping banter of one anxious about work.
Of course, I'm working with them when they're lighter,
He says, and I, in a sudden realization, know my quirk
Of finding in images the heart of the matter.
I look inside again to what my soul calls me to.

And sunlight flashes on scales of silver,
As I lift heavy fishes and pour them on through,
To slip into streams from their large holding tanks,
And I know this is the work I will do.