Meaning

The Forest

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Through the Forest,
                             through
a thousand years of struggle,
 

I finally find the clearing
but see nothing,
                            only
empty space & the remains
of all those who’ve been here before.

 

There is nothing here for me
                                          so
I’ll continue to wander through the trees
until
I can see
              the sky,
where
true beauty &
meaning
hide as
I lose myself in the story
I read yet still
don’t understand.

 

The Damned

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Consider that colour is given to us
in plentitude
from games played by light &,

that the liquidity of water is
a feature of a particular performance
between specific particles
bonding with each other
                        & yet
no individual actor has
the property of ‘being wet’.

What does that mean to you?

If it means nothing,
congratulations:

you can thrive in this world, but
if you strove to find any semblance
of pattern
        or symbol,

you’re fucked.

Sand Mandala

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For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness

Keeping Quiet – Pablo Naruda

 

Using water to gild wild flowers with gold leaf
for hours.

The technique requires practise that few will ever
master,

                            yet still you keep trying,
while the world around you ignores all that you
want to
                            give: a delicate gift;

desperate attempt to prove that you still exist,

before a silence, so intense
descends, just as you have been dreaming of
                            ever since

your first fascination
                            with gold leaf & flowers.

The Myth

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In the beginning
                there were two Lovers & one Mother.

The Lovers believed in her dreams & she
believed that memory hides like
                                shadows in light,
like death in life.

The Lovers soon decided that
they wanted pretty lies
                                &,
equating beauty with simplicity,
demanded a story explaining everything.

So the Mother told them
that songbirds never remain in cages
without dreams of escaping;

                                that agape love
is a concept only a virgin could conceive of,
because rejection is integral
to all romance;

                                that others
must be sacrificed to indifference
or love means nothing; fabric stretched too thin
always tears apart at the seams.

The Lovers rejected this:
                                they wanted comforting,
to believe in their selflessness
& inherent goodness.

So they ignored the Mother, searched
for a new teacher & found the Father.

The Father took the little songbirds &
plucked out all their feathers;
broke their necks
to make them
appreciate
                                the sky,

& refused to answer any questions

including “why?”.

Writing

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You want to put the barrel of the gun in their mouth,
to stop the noise drowning the music out;

in thrall to the curvatures described by birds in flight
& feelings inscribed in nameless street lights.

You want a language defiant of time:

                                    indelible lines,
chords of memory
                                    transcendental & sublime,

the contingencies of life unified
into one
        single

                song.

You want what you cannot have:

an abstract/visceral expression of all that

unknowable,
                                    ephemeral

sound enclosed within bones
where the brain sits
& compels you to this
                                    futile release:

the fading gaze of a caged beast,

never the same as its first raw moment
of existence.