Author Archive

Waiting

I ache deep down from so much waiting.
Waiting for time to pass.
Waiting for your lover to call you.
Waiting for the bus, the train, the plane.
Waiting for the doctor to see you.
Waiting to be picked.
Waiting to see if what you did is traced to you.
Waiting for recognition.
Waiting for the pain to go away.
Waiting for the letter to come.
Waiting to see if you have been discovered.
Waiting for the baby to be born.
Waiting for your efforts to be successful.
Waiting for the big win.
Waiting for someone to love you.
Waiting for the sun to rise.
Waiting for them to show how much they care.
Waiting for it to end.
Waiting for your mum to come home.
Waiting to grow up.
Waiting for your seeds to grow.
Waiting for tomorrow.
Waiting for your turn.
Waiting for that person you fancy to finish work.
Waiting for the sun to shine.
Waiting for the right moment.
Waiting to get paid.
Waiting for help to come.
Waiting for the phone to ring.
Waiting for the rain to come.
Waiting for someone to stop talking.
Waiting for it to start.
Waiting to see if they will come back.
Waiting for the verdict.
Waiting for the lights to come on.
Waiting to get out.
Waiting for the results.
Waiting for it to happen.
Waiting for the heartache to subside.
Waiting for the lift to come.
Waiting for inspiration.
Waiting for the shop to open.
Waiting for someone to fill your loneliness.
Waiting for the flood to subside.
Waiting for your date to come.
Waiting for the deal to go through.
Waiting for the paint to dry.
Waiting for another chance.
Waiting to go to sleep.
Waiting to be served.
Waiting for the next punch.
Waiting without hope.
Waiting to get through the traffic jam.
Waiting for the holidays.
Waiting to see if the treatment works.
Waiting for the tide to turn.
Waiting for the rain to stop.
Waiting for the bell to ring.
Just waiting!

This Day

Sunrise.
A new day.
The same, unexpected, change,
Expectations amiss, completed,
Again, no more.
Will I live or die today?
Shall I abandon, renew,
Hold fast, retreat, reach beyond
Or dig my grave?
Who will I know
This sun day?
Passing faces? Glancing blows?
Connections below knowing?
Melding?
Giving and opening wounds?

This day the mist blurs the edges of distant trees and buildings.
Today as early as it is, I have already fed the winter birds,
Eaten an apple and some dried apricots, explored
Hundreds of possibilities and chosen directions.
Minute by minute I have added my brush strokes to
The ever forming canvas of life.
Willing to feel, to hurt, to love.
Ready to strive and sweat, to be perplexed and to find ways through with companions.
To go, to turn back, to pause, to explore a path,
To allow a hand in mine, and someone held close.
To be defeated and exhausted,
And rejoice in the participation.

To stand before the day forever emerging and never formed,
And say, Amen.

The Way of Things

I listened,
And the grasses
Moved in their own
Whispers
As the world
And all the seeds of
This moment
Were in labour together
Creating what is to come,
And flowing with
The way of things.

Wave On A Shoreless Sea

I am a wave on a shoreless sea.
From no beginning
I travel to no goal,
Making my movements stillness.
Constantly I am arriving
And departing,
Being born and dying.
I am always with you
And yet have never been.

I am a feather blowing in the wind,
Reality my conception that I am.
The idea of self a mask
Of many pieces made,
Which at a touch disintegrates
Into specks moved and eddied
By the cosmic wind,
With no star a final backdrop
And no thought a finite wall.

Sometimes I am uncertain
In this infinity.
Yet even in uncertainty
I AM
A feather blowing in the wind
From a mosaic mask
Always with you
Never taking form
Moving in stillness
As a wave on a shoreless sea.

“When the conditioned ego is broken down, what remains is pure being immersed in the matrix of spacetime. The view that the whole universe vibrates in a quantum mechanical flux becomes apparent and the conditioned queues that the brain uses to arrive at human perceived reality, cease to exist. Since all matter is composed of waves of energy, the artificially imposed boundaries between the “senses” no longer are distinct. That’s why all things appear to move and flow and colors may be smelled or heard. However, the essential experience is the “mystical” knowledge of “feeling” oneness with the universe (God). If all human beings experienced this just once, human consciousness would change for the better irreversibly”. By Patrick Austin

The Trackless Way

Somehow I stood upon the Mount,
Standing upon the edge,
Looking into the abyss.
Turning, I gazed back
Upon the way I had come.
I could see
The ruined churches and mosques,
The libraries and schools,
Where people forever searched
Through the river of books,
Or the spoken word.
I called to them
As loudly as I could,
“Why are you searching
For the Real
In all these frozen words?
Why wander through
The never-ending labyrinth
Of emotions, thoughts and beliefs?
For they are like
Photographs of the Real,
Capturing only moments,
Fragments of it?”
And I could see
The people in those labyrinths,
Setting up the photographs
Those words engraved
Like holy icons.
They fought over them,
As if their photograph
Held in its fragment
More of the Real
Than any other –
Or sold them,
Like treasures,
One to another.
And I, turning to the abyss,
Emerged from my chrysalis,
Broke open the cocoon
Of words and beliefs
I had formed about me,
Spread my wings and flew,
Melting into the abyss.

The Snake

Slippery, slithering, sliding, snake.
Life, shifting, searching, seeking you out.
Eyes unblinking, fixed upon you.
Movement, energy, feelings too.

From under the earth the snake has come,
Carrying poison into your blood?
Bringing power out of the mud?
Passions and anger,
Laughter and love,
Shine in the eyes
Still looking in yours.

What do you see in the light of those eyes?
What poisons have you
Brewed up in your soul?
What resentment or passion
Or unheard cries?
What tears unshed
Through someone’s lies?

If this is the snake
That has bitten your chest;
If this is the creature
That poisoned your breast,
Suck out the vile nectar,
Draw out the bad brew
In that way there is
The redemption of you.

The Runt

My dog Vincent was a runt.
He was mine from when he was a pup,
So anxious that on our first walk
He would only go a hundred yards
From our house before he sat,
And refused to go any further.
Each day he would chance a bit more,
Until he would follow me anywhere.
He grew into a big dog,
An Alsatian, but always less fire than other dogs.
And one ear never stood up
Into Alsatian prick-eared alertness.
So he always gave the impression
Of a plant that forever stays limp
For lack of vital energy
That floods the system direct.
But he was a clever dog.
I guess runts have to be
To travel life with less resources.
I taught him how to shut doors,
And to implicitly obey commands,
So he could walk the London streets
With me unleashed without risk.
And runts are often very lovable,
With unusual characters.
Maybe they need more love than most,
And so have appealing ways.

And I am a runt —
So loved my dog with understanding.
Born small, premature,
Struggled to stay alive,
But made it through.
Like Vincent, I’ve developed strategies
To face a weaklings anxious heart.
I found the switch for frantic anger
While I was still young,
To frighten larger predators.
Within myself I created
Rooms and treasures
To compensate my outer lack.
But unlike Vincent
I have no flop ear to tell the world
I am without the vital force
To make me prick-eared.
And so, my prick-eared,
Prick centred friends,
It is hard for me when
You tell me I should be this —
I should do that —
And that my tiredness is in my mind.

Now look at me!
I say with pride —
I am a runt!
I am not prick-eared.
But I am here,
Not hiding in a corner.
I do not turn back
At the hundred yards.
But I walk my own road.

The Possible

I caught it here today,
That state, that realisation,
That shifting constant Possible
Of fragrant inspiration.

If words were numbers,
Lining up to form their different meanings,
There’s never any end to all the ways
Those numbered words could reach out to our feelings.

To shift a four from here to here,
And put a nine in there,
Is what lies in the poet’s art
To form those poems fair.

And when you catch that Possible,
It opens up to you,
The vibrant garden words grow in,
Infinite, varied, new.

The New Wine

In the basement I have been lain,
Waiting only to be opened.
Though I am lain long
I am the new wine.
You will know when you drink
For I am the harvest
Of all ripe life.

I am the red blood of the many.
Fallen or torn from the vine
I am the spirit of multitudinous life.
The essence of my being
I give to you.

To drink is to be moved within –
To open yourself to penetration.
I am the light in the flesh,
The way of reconciliation.
I am poured out to renew all things.
The past will be buried
And born anew today
Without regret.

All may drink
For I am plenty.
All class, all creed
May quench their thirst .

The Messiah

I am the Christ.
Oh Christ, I am the Messiah.
Dear God, pardon me,
For I am my own saviour.
I am my own salvation.
Here to forgive my own sins.
Coming to heal my own illness.
My peace I give unto you.
And I will raise the dead.
For I must take up my bed and walk.

Tony Crisp

Meanwhile

The silence creeps under my door,
Gentle as the moon rising.
It enfolds me
Until I smile
With the expression
Of a child at peace.
So deep –
And rising.

The Impossible

To a baby, walking and not wetting its pants is impossible,
But with many a fall and accident it manages the unattainable.
It is a god in its achievement.
To talk, to fly heavier than air planes,
To walk on the Moon, were all impossible.
We challenge the impossible every day.
Over and over we fall back into defeat.
Many lie there broken.
Yet with the next moment
Along come youngsters
With no more sense than grasshoppers,
And because they don’t know
What the difference is between right and left,
Do the impossible.
Out of the infinite potential,
The great unknown,
They draw something new.
With hope, with folly,
With a wisdom they gain
From who knows where,
They demand MORE.
And it’s a common everyday sort of miracle.
Mothers do it constantly for their children –
Transcending themselves.
Lovers go through hell and heaven for each other,
And flower beyond who they were.
You and I grow old on it as our daily bread,
Yet fail to see how holy it is.
And if we turn away from it,
It is because it offers no certainties,
Gives no authority,
Claims no reward.
It is the spiritual life of people on the street.
And our dreams remember, even if we fail.
For this is the body and blood of the human spirit.

The High Pasture

My watch showed half-past four
And thirty seconds.

Then thinking many thoughts of you
I looked again – it had not moved.
Nor did it as I watched
Forever in that timeless moment.

And so I wandered
In that High Pasture
Where no time passes
Thinking all that could
Be thought of you.

And as no time passed,
I looked at me,
Seeing all possibilities,
All brightness
Even to an angel.

Then all darkness
From drunken pit
To murderer,
All of them mine
If I so wished.

Then shining
Ever changing
Never formed
Into the ending
And beginning,
The destruction and creation.

Into the timeless moment
Of blissful loss
Where I am no more
And still its
Half past four.

The Glory

I had walked this same path countless times before, but this day I noticed something different.

Yes, it is the same path leading up from the street I live in. It still leaves the main road to rise between the country cottages lining the unpaved stony lane. It still takes me under overhanging yew trees in the lonely graveyard, devoid now of the chapel that has become a house.

In rain, in fervent sun, in despair and in joy, alone, or with my dog; or better yet, with H. I had walked so many times from the stony road to the narrow footpath. If it were summer and wet, the long grasses would crowd the rutted path, soaking my shoes and trousers.

The path runs halfway up the river valley following the course of the Misbourne. Below it lie the long wonderful gardens of the old High Street houses, rich and splendid. Above it gently rising are the farm meadows of pasture, the wheat, and wooded tops of hills.

The seasons, the mood I am in, my age, through the years, have brought constant change to it all. For it is more than a path. It is the geography and historic measure of my soul. Its length and breadth hold landmarks of my becoming. That old barn there is where, as a child, I first dared enter someone else’s property to see what it held, and found treasures of ordinary things wonderfully new to me.

There, down the valley, beneath that stable loft, I first glimpsed the top of a woman’s soft thighs as she climbed the ladder to the loft. How I came to be there I have no memory. But the beauty of her naked thighs I cannot forget.

And that stretch of lane passing the school is where I dared go beyond the boundaries of my childhood fears. I dared to walk further, and go into the unknown, to sail over the edge of my world and survive.

On that path there, between the houses, I knew the smells of bruised elder, and the incense of privet in bloom. Over in that distant copse I discovered where the nightjars nested, and where the grass snakes writhed by the lake.

Far across the valley, up high on that distant hill near the reservoir, H. and I tumbled among the fir trees, and loved each other on the carpet of leaves. Then, in the quietness following our love, we looked up and saw four fox cubs playing, almost near enough to touch.

Today though, I am standing admiring a tree. It is a giant elm, gnarled, weathered, its bark broken in places, leaving a hollow interior. What history this tree knows. What relationships it holds, and what storms survived.

But it is not the tree that has called me. Or, maybe it is the tree, the smell of elder flowers, the privet, my woman’s lips on mine, the summer, the winter – all. And in the mood of that wholeness I walk on, turning up Cherry Lane, up into the hills as evening spreads its quiet.

Standing in a high meadow, looking back into the valley as the light fails, there is a great richness in the light places and the shadows, the contours, the folds of hills hiding people and their dwellings. So is my life rich when I do not stand too close, and distance enables its tapestry to be seen.

And in the middle of it all, there is something out of which the weaving and the colours come. All the hues are there, but only some are used.

Is this my life? The deep blues of this night hiding the details of the valley—is that my life?

The quiet here is like music. And I look up, and the heavens are ablaze with an extraordinary number of stars. I am breathless with the wonder of them, with the singing I can hear.

Can you hear it! Can you hear the song of the heavens? The stars are pouring out glory upon us. Glory to you! Glory to me! The earth is bathed in glory. Wonder falls upon us.

My gaze returns to the valley. It is alive with lights. Hundreds of people are in the streets gazing at the marvel of the heavens, drinking in the new wine.

Transformation is upon us!

The Deep Night

For Helen

When I was a child,
The night called me from sleep.
It would speak to me from beyond
The window of my room,
Until I sat on the sill,
And listened and looked upon it.

And the night was deeper
Than the stars,
And older than time.
There was no beginning
Or end to it.
There had been no evening,
And there would be no morning
To this night,
Or to its still beauty.

This night was mine alone.
For no creature stirred.
No sounds disturbed
My possession of it.
It was a world
Only I knew,
In which I could walk
The streets of my own
Mind and heart.

I could explore
The woods and rivers
Of all that was in me
To create.
And by the light
Of the silent moon,
Know the magic
In the deeps of the night.

The Dark Creature

I am a creature of darkness,
Walking the long cool night
I look in at other mens houses,
Stood well away from the light.
I see them dull from their working,
Sat in a chair half asleep,
And I’m glad I’m not them
Till it hurts me,
Glad I’m not them till I weep.

I am a creature of darkness,
Walking a rising field,
Moved by waves of feeling,
Waves to which I yield.
I’m lonely despite the shadows
Like fear that run by my side,
I’m lonely despite the darkness,
In which I am lost and can hide.

I’m lonely to share my vision
Of things I can see in the dark,
With someone who’ll hear what I’m saying,
With someone who will hark
To the deep dark unuttered sayings,
The things that rise in the gut,
With a girl who’s as lonely as I am
And just as much of a slut.

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Tony Crisp

Author Archive

Waiting

This Day

The Way of Things

Wave On A Shoreless Sea

The Trackless Way

The Snake

The Runt

The Possible

The New Wine

The Messiah

I am the Christ.
Oh Christ, I am the Messiah.
Dear God, pardon me,
For I am my own saviour.
I am my own salvation.
Here to forgive my own sins.
Coming to heal my own illness.
My peace I give unto you.
And I will raise the dead.
For I must take up my bed and walk.

Meanwhile

The Impossible

The High Pasture

The Glory

The Deep Night

The Dark Creature

About Dreamhawk

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Disclosure

Tony Crisp

Author Archive

I am the Christ. Oh Christ, I am the Messiah. Dear God, pardon me, For I am my own saviour. I am my own salvation. Here to forgive my own sins. Coming to heal my own illness. My peace I give unto you. And I will raise the dead. For I must take up my bed and walk.

Features & Articles

Disclosure

I am the Christ.
Oh Christ, I am the Messiah.
Dear God, pardon me,
For I am my own saviour.
I am my own salvation.
Here to forgive my own sins.
Coming to heal my own illness.
My peace I give unto you.
And I will raise the dead.
For I must take up my bed and walk.