Muddling

No one knows the struggles

Behind the progress we display

Insecure and faking it

The masks that hides dismay

To steer a course for brighter shores

The fine path that we blaze

Navigate the unthinkable

Opaque, veiled in haze

Life in a nutshell

Leaves us a little crazed

No one makes it through this life unphased

Remember those years of innocence

Before we ever learned

About control or jealousy?

Before fingers got themselves burned

Nurture trust that eats like rust

Weakening the soul

Accept the things that I can change

Release what I can’t control

The messenger with an allegory

The parables learn and teach

The waves that ebb and ripple the sand

That collects beneath our feet

I saw you and you saw me

But did we ever really know?

Caught and carried by the winding river flow

Destiny and destinations

Real but also perceived fake

Walk on water, wintertime

Summer fall into the lake

I can tread water timelessly

But I would rather swim

Depths and layers, unfathomable

Insecure in your own skin

Abrasions on the elbows

As we climb for higher ground

Try to drink in the beauty that surrounds

I know where I come from

I know now where I’m at

Life is more about the lessons learned

Yet we sit here growing fat

I seek the movement, cradle rock,

That soothes us while we sleep

Lament missed opportunities

Savor the ones we reap

I’ve no clue where I’m headed

And with that, I feel ok,

As long as there is another day

I can see the beauty

Though vision sometimes blurs

Obscured by the vulgar

And reactions of a cur

Try to keep your head above

The waters volume’s flow

Now I know that I’m here

Direct me where to go

The universe is a fickle thing

We’ll never understand

A beach that made up of grains of sand

The rocks erode and crumble

Beneath aquatic flow

I know I’m here, impermanence,

but don’t know where to go

I feel frightened and excited

Simultaneously

Bend, yield like a windswept tree

Roots set solid in the earth

Fixed to where I’m found

Half our life is buried underground

Winter rips the leaves away

Endure a bitter sleep

Await the spring when

The sap begins to creep

Life restored

Stand on solid footing

The land that shapes the shore

Surrounded by a beauty you can’t ignore

Time is so transient

Yet you feel like standing still

Must make momentum and movement

And never lose our will.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Disdain for Winter

Disdain for Winter

Crispness cuts

Beneath my clothes

Burning ears and frozen nose

Thoughts transpose from summer mind

To winter’s grip and fold

The cold in my bones

Never abates

The mercury plunge;

Need to alleviate

The short dark days

With some sort of light of my own

The things in life we can’t control:

Getting sick or growing old

The weather and seasons past

Continuous momentum

Seems frozen, fast

The wrong moments lasting forever

This is how perception lies

Wind teared up, watery eyes

Being present, breath,

Nose drips on glove, slid on sleeve

The Tao teaches to go with the flow

Trapped in the cracks of ice-dammed river road

Paddles useless

Walk on water

Ego complex, messianic muse;

Waiting for the Spring

Which never really came this year,

Summer too

Dark, wet drear

Waiting for that time of year

For sun’s warmth upon my aging visage

Of singing birds and magpies call

So my limbs flow freely

Instead of stiff and dry

Thoreau’s Walden, Genesis’ Eden

The places I want to go

Walk along the Oceanside in San Diego or Mexico

A place of warmth, compassion and harmony

To mind the season’s as they come and go

The tuft of sheepdog fur

Massaged by my hand

Sat beneath full foliaged tree

A book, a drink, held in my hand

Blowing blooms of cloud into blue sky, free

And sit in the circle,

An equal part-

Not the begin or middle

The sound of kettle on the hob

Of bodhrans, pipes, guitars and fiddles

Away from the traffic’s roar

And congested streets which I deplore

The society that can be such a whore…

Need to alleviate

The short dark days

With some sort of light of my own

Nature is my source

To fan the spark is desirable,

With the right person of course!

Who will come with me along this way

Endure both bright and dismal day

To find piece in the affray

The heights of passion, lows of dismay?

Winter, welcome, again my terse old friend

Who marks the finality of Summer-Fall’s end

May the weary world rest while fixed

Within your grip

Until Springtime starts it’s hopeful drip

To bloom and blossom back to life

And mark the end of winter’s strife

As crispness cuts

Beneath my clothes

Burning ears and frozen nose

Grateful for every ounce of warmth

That radiate from parka, a smile

And the hope of acceptance.

Fan the spark into a flame; to light my way

And incandescence fill my being

As the universe guides my way

Stiff but yield unto icy current

Until a steady flow restores itself,

Unstuck,

And I begin to move freely once again.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Thoughts On the Second Anniversary of My Mother’s Death

Two years today

You returned to the source;

Mother, from whence I came

My origins contained

In the crematorium urn; reminder of

Our dusty nature-

How parts of us emit about our world, clinging to all that we encounter;

Always leaving some of our selves.

The sperm and egg that begat my flesh and bone;

The universal spirit slides

Intentions and abundance

This is our life; brief in this case, vase, this form, this vehicle

But long after the dust is sealed by sandy tegument

Or polished, smooth urn rests

Our actions; our only true possession

Carries a legacy;

The DNA/RNA weave, serpent like ouroboros

Rainbows and rain; flowers mashed by manic storms

Slamming seeds into earth;

Violence of the big bang begets the beauty that abounds

In the brevity that is our moment; connecting us all

Immortal.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

The Bittersweet of Getting On…

Sit inside

Black outside

early morning

Pane

reflects my image and fluorescent light

Glare glazes out the stars

The morning black as night

Simplest of all similes

The smoothness of the glass

Clues cast cloudy imagery- curvature

The lens I wear to read and write words

The one that blocks the winter wind

The one that says the earth is flat

And there’s no one reasonable to defend

My coffee cup

Sits there steaming

Sat upon my desk

Distracting me from everything

JFW’s Infinite Jest

How come so much bitterness,

And not more bittersweet?

Smell the scent of burning toast

Time to be getting on…..

Edmonton, AB Canada

Peaceful Journey

Each footfall

Is where you are going

The contradiction of movement and the present

Frames flicker as each moment

Begets the next; perpetual being

Briefly then gone but

Still here, caught from cagey eye corner

The complexity of motion when the present

Remains constant but

Nothing is standing still…. What matter is it whether my sole strikes

Mountain summit? Beginning, ending or middle of the trail?

Here is where we will always be

And Shiva destroys our illusions

Of permanence; “All that remains the same is change”

Om namah Shiviya

To be unsettled; to settle;

Convention’s contradictions

Always moving but always here

The dimensions helix-serpent coil around matter and thought

Wherein there is light

Penetrating dark

To be and not to be and to be again

Breath’s perpetual mating with universe

Until last one is drawn and we disperse;

Shape shift of form

Into new configurations;

No dying, death; all is life in flux

The great illusion we call life;

Often a tormentor, as we view through

Gushing water; rapids on the retina; emotions defining us

When they should be cast into the salient sea of tears

But, when we encounter the clarity of peace

Through pranayama – the breath unites us secure

And we can see that we have both always and never been;

The illusions of our perceptions flirtations with reality

And through the moments we reincarnate an infinite cycle

Within a universe that has created us and all things;

Breathe, be, see the light

That our life-force is; our truest nature;

Free of body and possession –  Spirit fueled

Shalom, salam, shanti, peace

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Breath of Being

Breath of Being

Follow the breath;

Friction of inhale

Through nose lining, warm and chaffing throat

With a gentleness like the river that flows through the valley;

Lungs expand with

Elastic tension, a tepid humidity, rising chest lifting torso

As if a balloonist rises in their craft

Belly inflates like a balloon

Hold and release…release…

In the positive and universal energy-

Exhale, disseminating the stress and shards of self

Back into

Infinite universe

To be re-charged

And join with the whole.

This connects me to you and eradicated space;

Joined as one;

Our minds and energy navigate

The flurry of elements conjoining all things

We are one

Connected by space,

United in breath

Connected through our energy

And our part within the circle’s infinite loop

That which divides us

Is as much an illusion

As all life tends to be;

The projector of our narrative;

The ego-self

That makes many believe

We are the circle’s center

Like the finger inside a ring

Separate from the object, easily removed

But denial begets not truth

And our beliefs are subjective to our journey

And we must realise

The worthlessness of material things

In our self-completion;

Our perspective shifts back to the breath

And that which unites;

The light… the light….

The light within us all

Requires the breath

As we are the fuel, hope sparks our fire

The breath fans the passion for life

And illuminates

To illustrate

The beauty in and of all things.

Follow the breath;

Friction of inhale

Through nose lining, warm and chaffing throat

With a gentleness like the river that flows through the valley;

Lungs expand with

Elastic tension, a tepid humidity, rising chest lifting torso

As if a balloonist rises in their craft

Belly inflates like a balloon

Hold and release…release…

In the positive and universal energy-

Exhale, disseminating the stress and shards of self

Back into

Infinite universe

To be re-charged

And join with the whole.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Gratitude

Reality

I Am Water

Rain drop to river joins,
Routed to the sea
The drop journeys
But stays self-same
One can not be lost
When to the source
We are rejoined
Though our salientness
May alter and our
Temperature may adjust by degrees
Even when solid ice or wafting steam;
Mist or fog
The drop remains itself
The memory of water
Imprinted with silt and varied terrain;
Demonstrates to stone the stronger
Where soft sacrifices the solid, stone
Erode and shaping landscape
But without malice
For the flow and motion is what we are,
Like landscapes ever changing
Forced upon flames to extinguish the furnace of fires flickering energy
Spread into the atmosphere, the universe,
Earth, air and ocean
There within it all
A constant
The self free of rigidity
As even the most
Solid of ice surrenders itself
After holding for a short while
Vapor, condensation, the drop reforms
Falling to the earth,
Flow to the river
And join the sea
This is our unity
The whole that binds is as well
The surging surf or refreshing shower
The nourishments to all living things
I am water
Eternal I shall flow.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Nietzsche on the Mountain

The abyss stares harshly

Back at me

Just like Nietzsche said

Tried to climb the mountaintop

Now I cling, slight slip

I’m dead

You pushed me forth

Up to the peak but

Pushed me off the ledge

Crimping on my only hold

Into manikin crack, fingers wedged

The crag is cold

The wind is harsh

The altitude is steep

No matter how hard I try

I don’t understand

The fate I’ve reaped

Rocks crumble

Like my spirit

Awash in cascading scree

The air is thin

I cannot breath

Envious of the trees

That cling to cliff

With little soil

Little nurturing do they enjoy

I should have so much more

In this life – not possessions- but qualitative joy

As I fall into the void

They bend and withstand

Taoist in their nature

Spiny needles are blades to the brutal breezes

That scorch and scour

Cut and gouge raw the resilient rock

These metamorphic walls

My bloodied fingers can set me free; release-

Can’t endure this futility

The falling flight

Would make me free

For a final fatal moment

“We love life not because

We are used to living but

Because we are used to loving”

Is what Nietzsche said

But I am not a superman

Already I feel dead

“No one can construct

For you

The bridge upon which

Precisely you must cross

The stream of life,

No one

But yourself

Alone” said Fred

“Whatever is done for love

Always occurs beyond

Good and evil”

But it’s love or “love” that stranded me here

Clinging for what,

I don’t even know anymore

“One can promise actions,

But not feelings,

For the latter are involuntary.

He who promises to love forever,

Hate forever or be forever faithful

To someone is promising something

That is not in his power”

Thus Nietzsche spake

He went mad, meandering mountain moraine and passage tracks

I feel myself follow in his tread

Stepping in shit, to where I now hang

And cling and cry for reprieve

To be relieved

Of the heaviness flexing my fingers

And pressuring waxy palms

Slipping,

scraped and scabbed

Burned by the glacial reflected sun

This is all too familiar

Too familiar

Too familiar to me.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Break-up

 Numbed mind

Feels little pain

Vacuum of emptiness

And rejection stings

Like a fish hook in the heart

Brutally ripped free.

The fight has been long; a half a century

Hooked, led, let-down lies

Wooden spoons and spit and abuse

Never good enough for anyone,

Not even myself

Some see beauty, they don’t see the sweatshop floor

Where long hours laboring

Without light; cramped knuckles, bruised from

Beating the walls of such a confined space.

This is where I have been produced and where I am deposited, worthless, every evening-

This has been my life; a product no one wants;

Like all things – disposable

Even my boot finds that single mound of shit

Upon which to tread within a vast field from man’s best friend;

Symbol for my life

Trying to see the beauty;

But everything lets me down;

Too many facts for this to be just self-pity

So why do I continue; persist – carry forward?

Because it’s all I know.

There isn’t a drag deep enough or a bottle with sufficient volume

To make me ok;

Chocking on them as I do platitudes and well-meant messages of:

Hang in there, you’re so great, look at all you have…

….to have…

I have material wealth and moderate health, save the PTSD

But our actions are our only possession;

Relationships and experiences are what truly bring life joy

And that is where my deprivation sits,

Smothering my mindful breaths.

My introvert mind;

Blinded and terror of shallow small talk

I need substance;

A life like a rich novel

Where is the evidence to love one’s self

When no one else seems to? Don’t they see

This brutal contradiction?

So much lip service and inspirational quotes that

Simply affirm your brokenness…

I wish I could adjust healthily to this profoundly sick society; but,

Like Krishnamurti says, that is not a measure of good health.

I don’t care. I want to be stupid and live blindly

Because being awake only leads

To greater disappointment

And unreachable dreams

…can’t afford to dream, can’t afford not to

So for now I just am. Let

The ocean

Take me on its ebb and flow;

Toss me through the current

To either drown or wash up on a distant shore

Well beyond the earth’s curve

Away from all and myself

To crave the peace of the drowning man,

But my body isn’t ready for that quite yet

The cuttings of my remains remain on the floor,

Hoping someone will collect my scraps and transform them into something joyful,

Loved and living;

My scraps are tattered yet rich.

In all things there lies potential;

Stitch me up, tattoo my story with the needle

And, just perhaps, a light will turn on and I

Will see Confucius’ message that

“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone see it”

It transformed the albatross laden Mariner

In Coleridge’s Rhyme,

But my albatross still weighs heavily on my neck

Dropping like lead into the sea not quite yet

As Life and Death roll the dice

And I remain to tell of this wretched tale.

Edmonton, AB, Canada