Posts Tagged ‘People’

Wild Pear Beach

That day on Wild Pear Beach,
My mind and heart opened
Their windows to the sun and wind.
The keyboard of my soul’s art
Was unlocked to be played by each
Moment of my depths and heights.
And on the splendour of that lonely strand,
While hours passed, alone, and with my woman,
In me rose and fell
Creative play of mental flight,
Soaring and leaping through
Perceptions, vistas, hills and valleys
Of my inner life,
With strange wonder at that ancient shore.

Then down that rocky cliff path
Came my son and friend,
Not yet teens.
Still full of curiosity and labour free.
Straight to the sea they went,
Not seeing me along the beach
Among grand rocks.
Into the water’s edge,
Clambering, laughing and
Delving into pools and moving tide.
Finding what I could not see,
And putting into an old ice cream tub.

And lost timeless in that world
Of moving sea, of tidal pools,
Of wind and sun,
They dwelt the afternoon,
Until, seeing me my son came,
Battered tub in hands,
And stood before me, with open face.
And the keyboard of my mind
And heart played music
As I looked on the
Forming manhood of my boy,
Still with undimmed sparkling
Eyes of childhood.
Bright, shining with intelligence
And eager searching mind,
With big fingers full with strength,
Coloured by the sun and sea,
Holding that large tub
Into which his beautiful hand,
Swelling my heart,
Dived and moved
Amongst all manner
Of creatures from the ocean.
Moved as one of them
As they writhed and undulated,
Darted and swam.
Life amongst life.
Pinnacle of mind amongst
The foundations of existence.

And my son smiled at me without words,
And I understood in the life of me
What he was showing me
As a smile spread through me too.

Why

People are so strange.
I keep feeling that.
It keeps coming back to me
That people are strange.
But I am not sure what I mean by it.
Only slowly is understanding
Emerging out of my shadows.
As it comes I begin to see
That I am living in a world
Where there are so many walls.
People reach out and their fingers
Bang against the walls.
They are trying to touch each other.
They really want to connect,
But the walls come down,
Locking up their words,
Turning back their fingers,
Dissolving love and the need for love.
It leaves a great emptiness
And despair in the world and in us.
For we really want each other.
We really need and long
To hold each other,
And to love and give ourselves
One to another.
But the walls are so ridiculously
Important to people.
That is why I feel people are so strange.
Strange because they maintain
The very walls that
Create their misery.
They maintain the divisions
That separate them from each other.
They rebuild the barriers
That kill love.
They uphold the rights and wrongs
That are the bricks
Out of which the walls are built.
The shouldn’ts and shoulds
Keeping people apart.
The creeds and beliefs
Turning one against another.
The differences that separate
Instead of inspire.
So ask yourself why you say –
I must not!
Question why you say –
I should not!
Then ask yourself again – Why?
Say to yourself –
I must not because?
And once more – ask why?

The Twin

Something is happening out in the wind –
A door blows and the animals stir,
And the wind drops.
The light from my cottage
Spreads into the night
Giving shape to the darkness,
As I stand and I wait.

But something is restless
That I cannot see,
Out there in the formless gloom.
I look and I listen,
I’m still, and I’m waiting
To know what the wind stirred,
Making the animals move.

Then to my face comes
The breeze once more blowing
And fragments of blackness
Are moved in the black.

A flutter of clothing,
Unkempt hair blown sideways,
A ragged swept figure,
Alone in the night.

He moves not, but watches
As silent as I am,
A figure of blackness
Immersed in the gloom.

And twisted and frightened
By unknown conditions,
A twin, I stand watching
The man in the light.

The Torture of Words

I do not know what called me out.
Or maybe it was not a call but a push.
People insisted on speaking to me,
Wanting me to answer them,
Continually forcing words out of me
Till I was afraid for myself.
So I escaped into the street
Where it was dark
And less could be seen of me.
I became invisible,
So no one would talk to me.
What could be seen of me
Avoided them as much as possible,
Whimpering to those who came near,
“Do not hurt me.
Please do not hurt me anymore.
For I am a silence and a being,
And to make me speak and speak and speak
Is an agony.”
In this way I walked
Until I came to the quiet of the seashore.
Silent –
For the sound of the waves
Is part of the sea’s being.
While the voices of people
Are not of themselves,
But are a pain.
They are a wailing of untruth and fears.

The Plate

Stand up to the plate she said.
Are you ready to stand at the plate?
Being British, I thought,
Perhaps this is the firing line?

But she is asking me,
Am I ready for this.
Can I stand there with her
With everything I am capable of?

This must be American talk,
And I wonder who will be
Pitching against me
To test my skill.

So I stand there
And decline the bat.
This is about how I will face
What is thrown at me.

I remember now.
I am not facing an enemy
Just responding to an event
With everything I can be.

The Ant

I am alone in the room.
I cannot even hear voices,
People moving
Or cars passing.
The floor is bare and wooden.
There is a tablet
On the floor – a brown one.
I hardly noticed it at first,
But something draws me back.

Now I see what it is.
There is an ant on the tablet.
Just one ant on one tablet
On all that bare floor.
Where has it come from?
Where will it go?
All the time and unknown to me,
Things are happening.

Santhe

I was at the cabin on the island.
The dogs were about,
Indoors and out.
Mike and Win,
Santhe and her children.

I was at the cabin on the island.
The children were about,
Indoors and out,
And Santhe met me then
And looked at me again.

I was on the island at the cabin,
With dogs and kids and
People all around,
Indoors and out
I moved about
And looked at Santhe
Once again.

Then in the cabin
Santhe looked at me
And I at her.
No words were in or out,
Or all about.

No words for where I was,
Not in or out the cabin,
Not on the island
But travelled elsewhere
By the moments glance.

Moved years ago
To when small Santhe
Stretched her tiny arms to me
And I in large hands held her
Hearing no words.

And with no words
She, who was not yet Santhe
Spoke, and I, hearing no words,
Was spoken to by
Who was not yet Santhe –
The Mystery.

So she who was Santhe
Gazed as who was not Santhe
While I was in the cabin, not.
People about, no.
Spoken to, never.

Reminded in the cabin,
Out of it,
About,
In or out
Holding the Mystery.

Remembered holding
In large hands
The love –
Fragile, tiny, Everything.
In or out or all about.

Puddleworld

It wasn’t very light
As I walked home
With my school books.
But there was enough bright cloud
For me to see the puddle.
And something moved in it —
A big thing there inside it.
Strange that it was dark
And it was light.
And it was deep enough
For me to see a tree
Upside down in its world.

I stood away from the edge
In case I should fall in,
Scared because I was underneath
The tree and face
That looked back at me.
It was a boy,
With too dim a face for me
To know him.

And then I saw it —
A bird floating
Deep down in that
Up place of the puddleworld.
And the bird flew away –
With my breath.

People

I had asked for so many days.
So many hours,
What is in me of help for others?
What is there of myself
To give to them?
Then Win stood before me,
And opening my eyes
I saw the loneliness,
The pain and envy of others
And erupted into an attempt to help.
I went to Ann,
But found I had nothing
That could be of use to her.
So searched other faces,
Wondering about them
And about myself.
So the hours passed,
No nearer any answer to my question,
And decided to go home.
I put on my coat to go,
Looking once more
At the faces of the people around me,
Still wondering.
Then looking at Grant,
A feeling grew and grew –
We are all just Life,
Struggling to be.
This essence we are
Has no other reason to go on
And there is nothing else.
In simply being, there is strength and love.
Uncertainty robs us of that strength.
With certainty life and strength flows from us.

While with Ann
I saw her face change.
It suggested all the women
Who have meant anything to me –
Particularly my wife,
And a secret love.
Ann said I looked strong and a rogue.
Then I left Ann and sat alone.
Things were rising in me
Like spring water
In the floods.

Sylvia asked me
What I thought of her.
I told her I felt she was full of love,
But it seemed to me
All stuck at a teenage level.
She was saying I was “booful”
And I was sure
What she really wanted was a pin-up.

Sylvia was the only one
Left in the room.
Her face looked large and strong.
Earlier a Dori Previn song
Had been playing,
“She forgot she had not
Paid for her own.”
Tombstone, that is.
Sylvia had asked me,
“What did she say?
She forgot she had not got a face?”
She murmured
Something else about her face,
I said,
“It’s to do with your face.
What lies behind it?
You misheard the words,
So it’s important.”
Her only response was to say
My face was shining,
That I was like St George,
Or some great figure.
I was a colossus,
Shining with love.
I felt myself slipping into accepting
Her projection,
But noticed, and remained myself,
Not a colossus of love,
Or a world helper –
Just me on my way home.

Outside, in the larger hall,
I saw Barbara and knew
She was walking about
As if she were pregnant –
Because she so longed to be.
Andy was there
Dancing slowly to the music,
And I could see
He was really a woman.
So I asked him
If he was a woman inside.
He agreed,
And it cleared away
A hard feeling I had concerning him.
I had always felt uncertainty.
Knowing the woman inside him
Left me more connected with him.

Grant called out of me
The deep flow of compassion and love,
From my ordinary humanness
To his ordinary humanness.
It arose out of the recognition
We were both fallible,
Wonderful, human creatures –
Life, struggling, falling, getting up,
And going on.
In us, in me,
Arose the feeling of that strength
That goes on,
Faces what comes,
Loves on,
Lives on,
Grows on.

I watched Chris.
He was jigging about.
He and Roland were touching
The same mystery of existence
I had seen in Grant.
We bubbled over to each other
And laughed as we made contact.
Ann looked at us.
Her face and eyes
Showed intense curiosity,
But then she turned in on herself,
Because of shame or guilt
At not being in on what we were doing.
Yet we were not excluding her.

Then Paul stared at me
And I suddenly felt myself
Being a leader figure,
A messiah who could help others,
But fought it and pulled out,
Becoming me again, on my way home.

I went to say goodbye to
Win and Pete.
I tried to explain,
But words weren’t easy to find
That would hold everything.
Looking at Pete
I tried to understand who he was.
He was moving vaguely to the music.
(It was Moody Blues.)
His eyes darted to mine,
Then away.
He knew I was watching him
But was avoiding contact
Lest I saw him as he was.
But it didn’t matter to me.
Knowing what a heap of crap I am,
Enables me to see with love;
Not expecting perfection.
The miracle of human struggle,
The journey we all share
Is wonder enough.

Win was holding her baby,
And unexpectedly it reached out to me,
So I held her in my arms.
This little female child wasn’t yet a person,
Just life, growing, becoming, emerging.
Yet life, through the baby,
Communicated with me.
It was asking me
To go on being,
Go on for its sake.
It was very moving.

Life was not asking me
To go on for any particular thing –
Only to go on living
With as full an outflow,
As certain an outflow as I am capable of.

Then I walked home,
Looking at people,
Full of certainty about flowing out.
I had nothing different
Or amazing to offer,
But I had and was me,
And that, although not different or better,
Is amazing and wonderful.
And people really looked
And said hello to me,
Much more than usual, I thought.
And walking the High Street,
I looked in the slot machine arcade.
The man running it looked dead,
But the children on the machines
Were living through great adventures,
Meeting challenges with courage
As they worked the controls.
They were really alive, young, and lovely.

As I neared home
The strongest feeling
Of the day arose.
Tears wanted to flow,
Held back because of people
On the street.
I felt myself a man,
And I was going home.
Home wasn’t just a house
That B and I had made a home.
It was such a great thing,
A wondrous thing.
I knew I loved B as deeply
As I loved anybody.
I wanted to share that with her.
When I opened the door though,
Her eyes and manner
Were full of suspicion and closed off.
But I had a lovely thing in me,
And I wanted to share it.
I played with my youngest son.
He immediately began to connect,
And he played a game
Of looking down into my body,
Peering through my mouth
And down my neck,
Saying I was full of rubbish.
I asked him if he could see
Anything good down there.
He said, “Rubbish.” Then, “Balls and
Tomatoes.”

Later we walked to my mother’s.
I felt so much positive certainty
Flowing out from me.
And from this
I held my woman,
And knew that though ordinary,
I shone with life.
And that Life in me looked out at other people.
And they looked back
And responded.
Even a woman who usually ignored me
Looked almost opened mouthed and said hello.

Our dog Merlin was with us
And three big dogs rushed out at him.
He cowered and
It looked like a fight might develop;
But I simply said to him,
“Good dog. You’re okay.”
Suddenly the whole situation changed.
He knew he had my strength behind him,
And although there were three against one,
He stood his ground,
Sniffed, and the dogs
No longer growled or sought to attack.

It was an impressive lesson.
From it I saw how terribly uncertain
Of herself B is,
And how desperately
She needs my strength behind her,
As do Merlin and the children.

When at my parents
I looked deeply at my son D who was there.
He said, “Don’t do that,” and laughed.
Then I began to play spontaneously
And said I knew where he was –
He was hiding inside,
And we both broke into
That joyful laughter of contact.
I knew I had seen D’s core.
I found him a joyful sunny child.
I recognised I had met D
In this way before.
That was why my boys
Loved to play ‘Tigers’,
During which I carry them on my back
And crawl around the house
Roaring like a beast.
It’s not the game they like,
It is the way we meet core to core.
Any game would do
If it did that.

I went into another room.
Mark showed me his new trousers.
His posture, manner, face,
All showed me how
He also needed my strength
My loving acceptance,
To help him face the problems
Of growing into a man.

It seemed to me that day,
The fundamental question
Our children, friends and relatives
Ask us is – “Am I okay?
Do you love me as I am?”

On the Death of my Mother’s Sister Cath

I am asking and praying –
I am singing aloud my request and prayer.
I call upon God for more.
For I am tired of feeding on crumbs
As delightful as they might be.
But there is no response.
I have called all these years
In vain, though I have sung and cried,
Even though I have danced and loved,
Crumbs come to me,
Scattered not by God but the wind.

You are a false God,
An ancient hope erected.
And I turn from you
Watching others cry
That you are a faithful God.
But my turning away is as difficult
As the parting from my mother
In my manhood
And the death of my father in middle life.

Yet I turn.
And I stand under the sky
And I sing under the Moon.
I do not squirm like an ant on the earth
But stamp my feet firmly
To declare my existence.
It is lonely here without you
But I exist thus
In the great space of the world
Holding my cry to you
Wondering where to put its strength.

Were not people calling
Before my father’s fathers?
All those voices raised to the sky
And I must take my heart into action
Alone, without you.
I see the idols and the holy names,
The hopes and images of the world
Like a great cloud, an ocean of memories
In which we all live for our birth
And our comfort from the cold dark.
All the dreams our ancestors
Gave life to, vital in the cloud
In which we dream anew,
And call out the ancient rituals,
Clasped to its breast.

The ocean of consciousness
In which all swim
And I, in my work
Have placed my head under its waves
And seen the spirits of the dead.
They pull our feet
And they speak through us,
So of this I write.
I speak too of
All else that lies in the ocean.

There is the dark
Where all the terrors
Held in human hearts
Have form and
Land on which to breed.
There is the light.
The gods, the images of love,
Hope of angels and fairies,
Saviours and mothers,
Reside here to be called upon.

Here is creation.
Here is destruction.
Here the images of birth.
Here the images of death.
An ocean of them from all times.
In here all dream.
And into this passes
My mother’s sister,
As passed my own father and mother
As I too must pass.

So I call upon the bright
Blessed images
That men and women
Created for their
Healers and helpers, their stay.
Be with my mother’s sister
As she slips into the ocean deep.
Come too the sweet hopes,
The fragile, foolish dreams
We all fashion.
So easily torn,
So unreal,
Yet from them are
Forged great forces of love,
Courage that shapes our very earth.

This mystery I bow before –
That the tenderest
Is the most strong,
And the most strong
Falls to rust and division.
So this I place with the departing life.
And I weep for the loss of the living
And offer it them,
The exquisite life
Of forlorn hope.

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Tony Crisp

Posts Tagged ‘People’