What does it mean to be in the moment?
To be present, truly
For your mind to not be wondering,
Second guessing,
Pausing...
For when I ask myself, "am I present?", I realise I am not
For if I were, I would not have asked
So how can I know myself to be present,
If I cannot ask?

Change is the only static thing
When the question is asked
Is it changing, or is it the same
The answer will always be
The same, for it is always
Changing. So you must stay
The same within the change
And as such, be always changing

To act in indecision
Which may peter down the road
Of a life not deserved
Or to act in a decision that hurts
Immediately and strongly
But may lead, later,
to a life all the happier  

For is a break
To that mythical better place
A better chance than none at all?

I sometimes wonder
If all is for naught
And every step
Towards the hallowed garden
Is a step away from me

"Everyone tries their best"

It is no wonder then, that everyone's best seems to dissipate with a single
gust of wind

The collective effort of 8 billion
people - or however many of us there are now - is simply too much for the world to handle. We are too straddled with overtimes, unrequited love, building a body
that is more attractive
than our perceptions
will allow, and a multitude of insane,
other, 'productive' tasks:
mindlessly absorbing ourselves into the depths of the internet
so there is no space for the efforts
of any others: it is that grindset mindset,
the continuous, unending, unceasing
flow that is inevitably lost on these winds
of time. Every well intentioned effort
simply flutters and flys and flees away
on a single whimsical gust.
Never noticed. Or seen.

This absurd cacophony of effort wilts
away into silence, as if dropped
from an old willow tree in the shade
of a grey autumn eve. Once a great canopy of lush, productive, hard-working
leaves, it was soon ripped,
from a tree who no longer needed
it, and carried by the harsh
November wind - to fall and rot
and disintegrate into the groggy
earth with all the others
piled on one another in some pitiless
heap, waiting to be trodden
on and shat
on by a passing poodle wearing a pink coat.

You find yourself alone, oh, so alone you are,
Hiding from that horrid grasp
Of breath; a roaring rasp of air
As panic rears its child of lurid dreams;
Whispering to you in a muttered verse:
“oh, so alone you are, unbeknownst to those you love,
Accept the embrace –
That warm, loving embrace –
Of solitude beyond the grave!”
You whisper to yourself,
Calming. Soothing. Let your breath breathe,
In silent, Consistent, steady beats
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Let the forest hide your fear,
You know no one can hurt you here,
Wrapped around a cloth of silk,
You embrace solitude like mother’s milk.

The comforting gaze of a fire ablaze;
A roaring rasp of flame.
It nestles softly in a nest of cherry,
Kissing the eyes of new-born child laying in the grasp
Of a common saying:
“let the lost be lost!”
And so it was, the destined child in a house ablaze
Finds itself in the comforting embrace
Of lustful licking flames
Who bring the child to a peace everlasting.

What is this feeling
that fills my soul?
The dull ache of a relationship
that has wilted and withered
before the first stem,
or leaf, disturbed the soil under
which it rested.

I swore the seed had already sprouted -
its fresh tender stem, vulnerable
and needy, had burst
forth into the vivid piercing
light of the sun, gobbling
up it's nutrients and crying
for more.

Here
There
Everywhere
Look around and see
There is everything
For you, and for me
The world is at your fingertips
So see
See it all
It belongs to you,
As it does to me
The infinite and everything
Touch it,
Feel it,
Become part of it,
Become absorbed in it,
It is as real as you
Or me
Since it is everything
Breathe it,
Become it,
Can you feel it?
The vast swathes of everything

Shimmering light, gleaning
In my eye, million
Shades of green
Among the trees
What is it
That I see?
When I look at you,
Is it a reflection of me?
Or an abstraction of you?
Is it really you,
That I am looking at,
Or am I looking at me,
Through a part of you?

Wandering lines of water
Lost, flowing through the glass; not
known not certain,

A fragment of a lost source, vanished from begotten source,
Etching lines, deep lines, an impression into
Glass with a responsibility, a sire to
That which ridicules the world that
Stands avast in light that wanders past the eyes,
Eyes of wonder,
Peering to that beyond yonder,

A world of ink, flowing through the vast
Cacophony of falling waves, crashing, raging,
Violet indignation.
Cursing the gazing sun that holds the world
In yonder;
A pair of open arms,
Closed
To the passion that precedes the red velvet that amasses in the east.
An army that shall never cease.
They ponder on silent dreams as they plough
Through the sea that never fails
To open up the arms of isolation.

Finding the words to let flow –
Such a difficult thing to know –
To accept the fact that they may be inadequate
Or that your failings may be more than simply adequate
For opening up your mind and soul
To allow the world to know
More about yourself – than you would deem
To know about yourself – a whisper to an insight
More profound and more elaborate than the whole worlds sight –

So find yourself, in a pitied endeavour,
A repetitive task that scrounges the dirt like
A beast of some withered forest path
Screeching an echoed laugh
Your words floating, oh nothing worth mentioning
Across to nothing worthy to mention
A harrowing dimension
Of endings, non-existing,
Calming yet sadistic
Feeling oh so reminiscent
Of paths beyond reminiscence
And rambles that hold no meaning
Beyond the words at their conceiving

So don’t reconcile yourself
You ****** defender
You’re nothing but a severed member  
A piece of soul so worth forgetting
That the soul troubles existence
In a setting beyond that which can reconcile
The peace in your heart, you imbecile
Leave me in a peace worth forgetting.

When did children lose their love of learning?

When they were told to conform,
To forget their being,
To discard interests, agency, creativity

My own complicity
In the stifling of identity

Authenticity, a digression of the self,
A dissolution of swarming
Complexities

When did I gain my love of learning?

The burning crucible
Of curiosity

Set aflame by rejection of conformity

Constraints, curriculum, crushing expectations
and a world disintegrating
fires of digressions

When is conformity an expression of authenticity?

When is authenticity just another form of conformity?

Inspiration is a hard thing to grasp
When you mind is empty
Like a field of grass
Yet filled within this field
Is nothing but countless hills
Rolling and moving and slowing
Soothing this lush green meadow
A massage to help the mind to help it mellow
Making it shallower and less
Convoluted. Not so complex, not seething in
Interpreted meanings and stained allusions to
Past confusions, not waves that pummel the grassy shores
Seizing those hills in frothy exhalations, seeming so
Unseemly to those guardian hills
Holding those pleasant fields and pleasant thoughts
Safe while the waves wash among the grass
And become those hills now washed with sea

And then my mind turned blue.

I turn to seek a moment
of contemplative silence
I expect the trees
to sway in the wind.
It is a still day

Passing wind,
a swarm of air
caressing skin
so sweetly
let you meet me
let you hold me
in that prancing wind
that tricks you
makes you think
that the piercing cold -
daggers through your soul
cannot hold you any more tightly
than that smooth summer air
so fall back
and rejoice
in those dancing waves
of wind
a hurried chance
till summer comes rolling
rearing above tepid clouds
to greet in
exalted expectations
that searing blow
of a summer prance