Posts Tagged ‘Life’s Sunshine and Rain’

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.

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

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