Author Archive

The Dance

Standing before God movement came upon me, flowing into a dance, for Life came through me and danced me, and the dance was the history of my soul. Seeking independence and self-assertion I had risen up against the influences of my Father in heaven and waged war against him. But such was his might I crumpled slowly before him, though I fought desperately. And I lay crushed, yet not completely, for my right arm was strong and withheld him; and a great fire rose in me and I stood, yes, even under the weight of God. With the strength of my manhood I rose up and cast God down and was full.

Then came upon me the devils from my own underworld, as fear pressing up from below, and again I waged war, and pressed them back, prisoners of my will.

Standing before the great multitude of my within I raised my hand in victory, middle fingers pressed against the palm; index and little finger raised in the sign of one who has fought and been victorious. But as I stood before the throng with right arm raised, I knew of a sudden I had been wounded during the battle, and my left hand pressed to my heart as my life fled from me.

And I slowly fell upon the floor of that arena, and knew death. Death lay upon me like sleep, and I dropped willingly into its arms for an uncertain age. But there came in the darkness of death a silent visitor, unformed, unseen, not known, yet felt. For the silence gathered me together out of the darkness. It drew my essence out of the vast ocean of unknowing. Yes, though I had melted like fragrance in the breeze, or ice into the lake, yet It knew me and gathered me out of Itself for very love of me, and brought me forth.

I know! Oh yes I know, for Love showed me, that even if we wage war against Heaven itself, and scatter in dust and destruction the bright atoms of our being like stars across the voids, yet will God gather us from the tideless shore of death, and give us light.

For in the silent womb of death Life came to me and with its wonder stirred me. And it rose up in me, lifting me from death itself, flooding me with life, emerging me from the grave dancing and rising up.

I am a wondrous plant.
A seed in the womb of time.
And you shall know me for what I am,
The very sperm of God.
Raised from darkness to light,
Into the Everlasting.
For winning we lose and are wounded,
And dying we come to life.

The Chinaman

Living is like garden.
Only rain make beautiful flowers grow.
Make heart like cup to catch tears, and life full of wonder.
When cup of heart full, many dry gardens waiting.
Of all good things, friends best.
Friends like sunny day.
Sun may go away, storm may come, but sun always come back.
Of all good friends, he best who walk in rain with you.
He say, “Man who walk in rain without clothes, doesn’t get wet coat.”
Then you laugh at rain, and friend laugh with you, and say, “Man whose coat already wet, not mind walking through river.”
Laughing puffs much wind out of man’s chest, making man smaller.
Man with much wind puffed up in chest, much smaller when laughing.
Proud man who laugh much loses pride.
Humble man who makes chest big loses fear.
Silly old Chinese man know much wisdom through being such fool.
Fool knows much because he know nothing.
Knowing nothing, Chinese fool ready to believe anything.
Yet being such great fool, in the end believes nothing.
Chinese fool, being nothing, he ready to be anything.
Friend. Old Chinese man have heart like cup, head like hole in pocket, all thinking fall out, and much laughter fall out of mouth.
Look in my head, you see nothing.
Look in mouth, and all you see is happiness.

The Anthill

When I emerged from the anthill
The aloneness woke me.
I had been so immersed
In the atmosphere of the hill,
In the influence of it,
That only on standing
Outside of it
Did I discover its effect.

As I stood there
Looking down at myself
I saw with a shock
My body itself had
Been shaped by
Living so long
In the stink of the place.
I didnt really have a dick,
Not one that was my own anyway.
The hierarchy took care of that.
I was just a working class ant after all,
So I had the body for that.

Simple really I suppose.
But when you are swimming
In the mind stuff of the colony
You dont know there is anything else.
After all, my father,
And his father,
And so on backwards
For generations
Had been bred in the anthill.
Not surprising our body and mind
Were shaped by it.
So what could an individual
Ant do standing alone
Outside the hill?
After all, I was still an ant.

Well, it did seem crazy
To be told what to do
And even what to think
By the queen and king of the colony.
I could at least look around
And make up my own mind
About what was going on.
So I explored around
And saw we had been bred
To be dominated by the leaders.
Bred to believe
Certain ants had every right
To get more of the sacred nectar
Than the worker ants.

And I thought to myself,
“Hey this cant be right.
Who built this hill anyway?”
So the first thing I did
Was to make a few marks
On the walls inside the colony.
The practical reason being that
Inside the place you get lulled
Into forgetting,
And into conforming
To the old ‘Status Quo’.

So the marks were to
Keep me awake.
They also stopped a
Few other ants too.
Made them wave their
Antennae about a bit,
Wondering what
The hell it meant.

Well, anyway, it feels
Strange sometimes
Wandering around the hill
Doing my own thing.
Once you get the hang of it though,
You can easily get your needs
Without drawing much attention
To yourself.
What I want to say though,
Is that if you find yourself
In the same situation,
Wave your antennae at me.
Give me a signal.

The Ancient Shrine

To create in any manner that connects;
To fashion something that is more
Than ones own small self
Has known itself to be,
Is with passion free
To sing and kneel and dance
And know all manner of things
Within an ancient Shrine.

In that place
The dead arise and speak.
The future creates itself.
Walls fade and
All immensity
And all creatures
Worship with you
And are one
In the bright spirit
To which all give praise.

That’s Life

Johnny Spendor just got
A science place at university.
He worked a lot
And managed it against adversity.

Miss Barbara Telling who taught him,
Died of Hodgkin’s disease soon after.
She was just thirty-three and very slim.
Johnny owed a lot to Barbara and missed her.
That’s life!

Susan got polio when she was young,
And never walked quite right again.
But she used pain like a ladder’s rung,
And made despair a gain.

Despite her walk she was a beauty.
A woman, radiant and profound.
Three lovely children linking her to duty.
Somehow she had turned her life around.
That’s life!

Danny got chewed up even while still little.
Beaten before he even crawled.
His manhood heart grew solitary and brittle,
His soul had scars as if he had been mauled.

Dan found a way of draining out his aches.
He learned that from each one he gained a skill.
Forging medals from the heartbreaks,
Wearing them proudly, eyes bright still.
That’s life!

It isn’t just the good things that give riches.
Not only light and love make dreams come true.
The darkness and the pain are also treasures.
Even the beaten and the injured can come through.

Life is not a should be, or a why not,
It’s not a hope for, or a why can’t I?
More like what’s happening, what you’ve got,
Everything that comes, live or die.
That’s life.

Small Lives

The house martins
Here in their Adobe nests,
With such fervent endeavour
Furnish their home
With feathers
For their precious eggs.
Then came the day
When four tiny heads
Reached above the nest rim,
Eager with open mouths,
Thrusting with zest to live.
Each day some change.
The growth of feather stubs.
The spreading wings.
Then suddenly a morning
With but two small beaks
Above the nest rim.
And there upon the ground,
A small limp body
That had been full
Of eagerness to live.
All thrusting zest
Now dead.
And as I look
Upon the tiny form,
My heart remembers
Those small lives,
Sometimes in bent
Or premature bodies,
Who do not fall
Dead from the nest,
But survive among us.
Those kids with bright eyes,
And often crooked smiles,
Who live,
Smaller and less robust,
But in some ways
Still with zest.
I remember too,
My own small self,
Born too early,
Yet cherished,
And sixty five years later
Standing here
Before this small lost life,
To shed a tear
For its passing.

The Hand of Life

Though I am small in the hand of Life,
I am a part of things,
In contact with the beings
Who are my companions.

Through shy, quick eyes
We look upon each other,
And with the same Elusive awareness
Know that we exist.

Tony Crisp

I Had a Vision

This morning, as I stood in surrender, I had a vision.

I have tried to describe what that vision was in feeble words, for the vision came again later in the day.

The vision was of death within life, of life within death.

How duped we have been, looking behind the curtains of the stage to discover its secrets, when all the time the passion and the drama, the hidden and the revealed are here in the auditorium, here with you and me.

In the vision it was so clear, this moment, the standing, kneeling, sitting, making love or cooking, so distinct in time, so separate from others, so apart from all else, I saw as the small mark on the painting that has its meaning – no its existence – out of all else in the landscape of its surroundings. And more than this, out of the substance and history of the canvas, and the substance of the earth from which it emerged.

If only I could show you that glimpse of all things standing together in the same moment; of the dead here as the other side of the same coin – of the unseen as present in all that is made real or done or said.

I live now, here, apparently alone, yet through the vision I saw every tiny step around my cottage, every moment of dressing or cleaning, as integral with an immensity of all that has been, and still is, in every action.

This is the wonder, that whatever common thing you care to give attention to, is at the same time exalted. It is here in this unique moment, yet indistinguishable from all that has been before it.

Look at me! Look at you! Flesh gradually turning to decay, moving inexorably to putrefaction. Yet here, somehow intimately part of what is rotting is love, is the exaltation of thought, the splendid cry of a voice rising in a pure note above all this decay.

The woman who bleeds out of the unclean hole she gives birth from, is yet the very mystery of life resurrecting itself – of love transcending its origins.

And in the midst of our nothingness there shines out of us something that can never be contained or held hostage to what passes away.

Ground Swell

Did you feel that?!
Seemed like the ground moved.
Not like a shake or quake,
More like a swell,
A rolling shifting in slow motion.
Then it was gone.

So I ran to a hill
Beyond my house,
Where I could see things
On a grander scale.
And there it was,
So slow you would miss it
If you stared straight at it.

Waves were rolling across the landscape.
Dear God — it was powerful to watch,
To see it building up,
To glimpse the changes it was moving toward.
And as I looked,
I saw the tension of that groundswell
Mounting in the West.
I felt the earth move again,
And saw at last the people in their millions
Powering the waves.

Frustration, tension, energy,
Forming like an earthquake
Looking for the trigger,
The direction, the release for that terrible,
Wonderful energy to flow.
People, the sea, the earth,
All one thing.
No separation.
Bodies, mind, energy,
The earth and sea moving as one.

Then, on the horizon I could see it coming.
I saw that awe-full power,
Shifting and transforming
The shape of things.
Pushing over the old forms.
Like some new strength of a growing thing,
Splitting open rocks,
And pushing obstacles aside.
Truly a wonder.
Somehow no more destructive than Spring,
Breaking open the old seed cases,
And transforming into the new.

And here it comes –
People finding a focus for their longing for change.
Finding a trigger of release
To shatter the old imprisonment
Of manipulation by a system
Needing ever greater production and destruction –
Ever greater conflict with opposing views.

Here it comes –
That transcending moment
Of a catalyst — a union
Of millions seeking release —
A focus for that new life —
Technological breakthrough —
A ground swell
Changing the face of things.

Art by Julie Haile

The Garden of Your Face

I saw death in a mans face. But maybe I was only recognising my own death. If there had been more life in me, would I not have seen life in the same face?

Or are growth and decay but two parts of some other thing that is neither living nor rotting, but both? Are they the bits that show of something I have not glimpsed? Or maybe a thought is a glimpse, a preparatory type of knowing. A thought might be the first grasping of an outline too subtle for us yet to see in its complexity and wholeness.

And yet, a few uncertainties – the tentative emotions felt in sensing what is not yet seen of the mystery I am – leave something with me. For I have wondered at your face, pondered on the common lines. I have looked at your fingers and all the parts of you I have seen and felt.

But more than these, it is your features that concern me. For I have seen the ill line of your nose when you were sleeping – or the sweet eagerness of the mouth when you walked to me. Also I have seen the lines of bitterness and uncertainty, as clear as cunning or laughter in other faces.

Yet none of your faces, or the faces of others are what I thought they were. For I can only ever see in them what I have seen in myself. A child cannot know despair upon the parent face until it has felt despair upon its own.

So if I have not seen flowers, have not seen buses, or high trees, or known something of myself, these I will not see in you. My foot may crush the flower’s unknown perfume. Buses can roll upon me to hurt. The leafy trees can fall, or myself go by unseen.

But even though I have only glimpsed flowers, felt the rough barked trees in darkness, ridden on buses as a child, seen myself veiled in dreams, yet do I know that inasmuch as I can glimpse flowers, in as much do I see them in the secret garden of a common face.

Seasons

There are Sun seasons,
Seasons of the heart,
Seasons of hope and despair.
Sometimes winter comes
In the spring of youth.
Even children can be
Blighted by despair.
The roots of hope
Are slashed.
The subtle feelings
Of connections severed.
You stand alone,
Or so it seems.
The garden of childhood
Burnt and dry.
The flowers
That were there to pick,
Shriveled,
Stems cut
To bleed and die —
Or poisoned
By some foreign agent.
Unless —
A caring watcher
Stays the flow,
Brings water,
Laves the poison
And sees value
In a life that
Was not wanted.
And I
Do not know
The way to bring
Back the sense
Of being part of things,
Of having links,
And meaning.
I only know
It is a season,
And can pass.

And things come
That tear
The heart and mind.
Perhaps a child
Is torn
From off the family tree.
Such loss that
Bleeds from you
The sap of life
And will.
Or you lose
Your Man or Woman.
And what is life
Without them?
Without the quiet
Moments of gaze,
The touch of hands
And sleeping company
In the night hours.
All gone.
Swept away
Into the past.
One day
The turning point
Around which revolved
Love present.
Love past.
Today — misery.
And yet,
The gain,
The loss,
Seen from the vantage
Of countless years,
Are seasons.

And when the years pass,
Carrying you into Autumn
And age is upon you
Like a cloak,
Turning your body threadbare,
Even if the spirit
Still shines its light,
Then is the time
To remember
How season follows season.
Winter finally fades
To spring.
Spring passes too.
And so the seasons
Of your life roll on,
As surely as the planets
Round the sun.
And this whole life,
With all its
Shades and sunshine,
Rains and dry,
Is also but a season,
And will roll on.

Level

All level,
Like foot turned sand
Washed over by the sea.
Or ploughed earth,
Grown filled with grasses.
Level as my feelings
Renewed with love;
As the winter frost on a still night.

At a level,
Where the footpath below
Has lost its contours
And rough places.
At a level,
Where memories come back blessed.

Nothing contradicts,
Not for a while.
No past regrets disturb,
Or future fears turmoil.
Only benediction from oneself,
For what disturbs has been released.

Hush.
Pause a while in rest,
While you are at a level.

My Christmas

I dreamt that I was walking through the pathways of my life, passing by the years standing like trees along the track. Backwards I searched through valleys, and sometimes upon a height I saw my way stretched out, the long forgotten pattern of my life across the land. And I looked for the seed of me, to see why I had grown such as I had. Why love or fear or think such as I do.

And yes, there in the pattern of my strength’s footsteps I found the crevasses, the fallen trunks across my way, even the delights which drew me on or changed my onward questing of the years. Yes, I found too the seed of me left in my mother’s shy eager strength by my fathers longing for her love. I saw in the seed the faces of who my mother loved in secret, and who my father drew with him into her arms. Yet that was not my Christmas, for in the very centre of the seed, in the midst of their longing and secret loves and fears stood Life.

Suddenly my way fled beyond the trees, further yet than their roots, higher than their growing tips or dead branches; deeper than time I went into the dream of my Christmas. And I stood with tears before love – love in the very kernel of my seed, which had at my conception laid bare the treasures in the sperm and ovum of my start; led their tiny selves to risk their death and burst asunder in flagrant giving to become me. Love which led my mother to grow beyond herself in my nativity, and my father to care beyond his personal need to raise me; the love which readies every parent hearing it to die for their young.

And I was Christmas, the birth of love into the world and the tragedy and beauty of human life. I was eternal love frightened of dying, life itself uncertain; God doubting God’s existence. And if I am the miraculous anxious about my value, struggling to pay bills, and at odds with myself, such is the wonder of me, such were my tears before love – before myself.

My Christmas was the beginning of time; the beginning seers call the Creator and scientists name the Big Bang. But my heart sang its own story in which the Explosion and the Creator were One; where the Explosion had life, and the One was my parent. For I, in the way of dreams, was that ONE, which had died out of loneliness to become many – to be you and me and the stars. For one can never be other than single – and that great explosion rippling into our multiplicity was its willing death that we might be.

That was the dream of my Christmas.

The Long Journey

The journey was long
With unremembered days
Of travelling the unforgiving landscape.
Journeying alone, it seemed,
For I had met none walking this same path.
It was not hard, nor was it easy.
And now the evening was upon me,
Calling me to rest.

And there, in that moist and wooded dell,
I put my burden down,
And brought a fire to life for warmth.
I ate what food I had,
Then with the warmth and comfort,
The fancy in me wandered free.
Buried needs and pains cavorted in the flames.
Bitter cups were emptied and refilled,
Until the ancient passion took me once again.

There in the night, with furtive moves,
I took from out my pack the thing of dread.
Unwound the wretched rags
With falling tears.
Out from me, into the darkness,
Came the call for that dark god.
Again, again, I shouted to the night.
The name we know so well,
With anguish loud I called.

Against a tree,
I stood the fearsome thing,
And knelt before it, passion wracked.
Hopeful and afraid,
Pleading there,
For that dark god to favour me.
I called, as you have called,
To that, which with a glance or word,
Could raise or crush,
Could give life or destroy.

I knew the magic as of old.
It’s in us all,
That forbidden rite to raise the dead,
To call back into life the thing we lost,
And make it speak to us again.

So, on my knees before that lifeless form,
I called his name to bring him from the dead.
“Father! Father! Hear me now,” I cried.
And with his ghastly face,
He looked upon me mute.
And I, with never-ending hope,
Appealed once more.
“Dear Father — oh dear God —
Please say you love me.
For pity’s sake dispel these years of pain.”

So cried I in the dark.
So wept my tears
In silent night, without response,
Until, passion in me spent,
I wrapped that bundle in its rags,
And in the dawn walked on.

With You

I am standing with you
By this graveside.
I cannot take away
The pain and loss you feel,
But I can be with you
And share that crushing load.
I am here and weep also.
Take my hand,
Stranger though
I may be,
For I am standing with you
So you do not mourn alone.

Neat Answers

Have you seen the new store,
Down at the mall?
It’s simply called Neat Answers.
It’s got a great display,
Can’t take your eyes away.
Everything you need is there
To deal with life today.
It’s like a Chinese restaurant,
All numbered neat and clean,
All the equipment ready,
To get you through the day.

There’s something there for everyone.
It’s definitely for you!
They’ve got all the neat answers,
That help to pull you through.
Neat answer No 1,
Bestseller on the list,
Is called —
‘I Think I’ll Have a Drink!’
It comes with glass and bottle,
And is cheaper than you think.

Neat answer No 2,
Almost sells as well.
‘Come Read the Bible,
Escape the Flames of Hell’,
Is what they call it,
An easy one to sell.
There’s one called
Make Love to Your Neighbour.
One wrapped in black,
Called, ‘Pull The Plug.’
Or, ‘Join The Moonies’
Seemed like fun,
Better than,
‘Take Up Jogging Son.’

I’m not quite sure,
Which one I would choose.
Not, ‘Wank off Every Day.’
Nor even the popular,
‘Stand Up and Have Your Say.’
But there is one that intrigues me.
It’s very small you see.
It’s wrapped in shiny cellophane,
And simply says,
‘ It’s Me!

Tony Crisp

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Tony Crisp

Author Archive

The Dance

The Chinaman

The Anthill

The Ancient Shrine

That’s Life

Small Lives

The Hand of Life

I Had a Vision

Ground Swell

The Garden of Your Face

Seasons

Level

My Christmas

The Long Journey

With You

Neat Answers

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Dream Dictionary

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