Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child's?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.
__

"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

and for a moment
and for more than
moments
it all and everything
stopped
cold
dead in the tracks
of a memory
fleeting
whirling in the sounds
the echoes
and the sounds
of a warped
scream
or a song
or a laughing laugher
against the buffet
of the mind's wind
and the colour-rush
and the grainy
screen of inner views
gone
going, going
gone
forever
(in the blink of a mind's
eye)
going
gone
time escaped
and replaced
again
away it goes
and memory
bleeds
dry and sere
never returning burning
bridges
disappear and reappear
until the ashes
turn back into
coal.

You sit now
                        stranded,
moored to nothing,
          going nowhere,
your bilges dry,
your engines shut
down
and
         up
inside the salt-rusted
skin, pocked with rot,
where once you
sliced across
the water's top,
a vessel full
of
life,
bow and stern,
prop and anchor,
never
           ever
in your mindless
dreams believing
you would stop,
and
        no one
would even care-
no sailors,
no cargo,
no sunrises,
sunsets,
waves and beasts of the
                                               deep
to sound their fare-thee-wells,
no more those chimed
                 8 bells,
you,
now stopped,
docked
and
        alas,
forgot.
_
Derelict:
http://beautyineverything.com/5096209757

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
__
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me,
than a full frontal lobotomy,"
or so the saying goes,
as for me, myself and I, my friend,
I'd take both to soothe my woes!
__
Jack, the liquid lobotomist:
http://beautyineverything.com/5060607209

all i have left are brief, fleeting fantasies.

i see things i wish i could touch, and touch nothing that i see.

it makes no sense, none at all i know, as it's now all in vain.

i must learn to give myself up, i must give into the pain.

tears are trying to fall, yet the lions of rage stifle the flow.

i know i am going nowhere with nowhere going to go.

here's me taking a stroll now into that land of makingitallup.

this is my last less than a mile to go, falling down, falling up.

this is the invisible me who can no longer be seen or give talk.

this is me you don't see on the bymyself walk.

___
brief fantasy:
http://beautyineverything.com/5089079591

this is where i sit like stone,
knowing soon it shall be over,
all balled up and all alone,
wreathed in sickly crimson clover;
in a corner cold and stark,
where the pressure chokes my chest,
my mind's eye fizzles into dark,
i cannot eat nor find sweet rest.

i no longer see the pathways,
where i have strolled past fields of pain,
cloaked in shadowed sunless days,
walking weary in the chilling rains;
of torrid teardrops that always fail to fall,
stuck inside behind my bloodshot eyes,
between sight and dreams i scarce recall,
haunted by the sounds of ghostly cries.

i no longer feel the passions,
i had once did cling,
for there no longer comes a need to rise,
or open my mouth to sing.
__

I sit:
http://beautyineverything.com/175543419