"separateness" poems
Last week, among friends black and white,
among some discussion of protests in Ferguson
and the related looting of stores, I invoked
the word. It was an admission, in a round
of confessions, of something about myself
that I didn't like: that I had perceived Michael Brown
in that way based on his possible participation
in a strong-armed robbery.
When Travon Martin was in the news,
I was inflamed like many others who wanted
George Zimmerman in jail for ******
The outcome of that trial was an injustice,
I was utterly certain. Why does this case
in Missouri feel different? More importantly,
Who is inside me that still wants to rise
in defiance of 48 years of learning how
to be a better person, a person without prejudices,
stereotyping, labeling of others, hurtful language?
Where is the hippie girl now? How does she live
with this other person? Am I Sterling, Gibson,
a hater and spewer of viciousness, a lover
of separation and separateness, that I should
invite damage to my own relationships
with those I love and cherish and respect?
What is a **** but a bully, and what is a bully
but someone who pushes words around like
weapons, spits them out indiscriminately,
so that they land on the already bruised heart
and set it on fire.
Whose heart, besides mine, now sits in smoke
and ash, with that word like a brand
still sore and permanent, having been spoken
aloud?
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 11:44 AM UTC
these games 2010 vancouver olympics are about performance under tremendous pressure more than they are about sport our expectations destroy us how do athletes possibly in training their entire lives cope with cameras nationalism corporate media mania? these distinguished people fallible humans with frail emotions doubts superstitions insecurities just like everyone else sustain skill phenomenal precision how do they sleep at night? carry on relationships with spouses family friends? endure eminent separateness loneliness? do gold medal winners become bloated rock stars conceited movie stars overpaid professional athletes? do losers become life’s could have been a contender drunk in obscurity casualties? what price in human terms these games? hey when joannie rochette hit ice prayer to mom i cried love watching sports this gorgeous display of human talent yet wonder about underlying meaning consequence sports or spectacle?
Feb 23, 2010
Feb 23, 2010 at 8:23 PM UTC
*"As the same fire assumes different shapes
When it consumes objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self take the shape
Of every creature in whom he is present."*
(Katha Upanishad II.2.9)
*"As the rivers flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were separate rivers,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they merge at last into pure Being.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that Shvetaketu, you are that."*
(Chandogya Upanishad IV.10.1-3)
*I don't understand,
Why, in this land,*
Where these sacred
scriptures were written,
Were so many religions born--
*I don't understand,
How, in this land,*
Were differences encouraged,
When the backbone of all life
Always was recognized as liberation--
The acknowledgement
Of all different religions, castes, creeds,
Really broke the deal you know...
Imagine, if all the cultures were mixed
Instead of being separated, unconnected, segregated;
And churned into a liberal philosophy
The Philosophy of Liberation (read: Moksha)
We'd have prevented so many wars,
All fought under the cloak of differences and disparities;
We could have averted
So much bloodshed,
So many innocent screams--
And these shudders down your spine right now?
They would be the product of fiction;
Not the echoes of cruel reality...
Aug 6, 2014
Aug 6, 2014 at 2:58 AM UTC
In the window of the pet shop
four small faces, lost.
Their owners, sick with worry,
want them found at any cost.
A quad of treasured family pets
roaming wild and free,
unmindful of the panic
they’re causing back in Leigh.
A sausage dog called Mini,
sleek and burnished dark.
She’s likely got a little voice
that is more squeak than bark.
Tinks: a sturdy Staffie,
with a plea on Facebook
praying for his safe return
his people beg you “have a look”
“in your sheds and garages,
or in the kids' playhouse.
You never know who could be there
‘cos he’s quiet as a mouse”.
A grumpy Border Terrier,
Underbitten, rough of coat
“Bill: a much loved dog, we miss him”
in shaky letters wrote.
And, last of all, would you believe
Someone’s lost their tortoise!
He’s been in the family since ‘77
(let’s hope he isn’t corpus).
For pets are no mere mortals,
nor fallible as we.
They’re up there on a pedestal,
in anthropomorphic fantasy.
Then one day they disappear,
our soppy hearts turn wretched.
No stick to throw, and if we did
none to go and fetch it.
On centre stage of family life
entangled in our tribe.
No separateness of species,
always by our side.
So if you’re there, or round about
And you should chance to see
Mini, Tinks or Billy
or a tortoise in his mid-thirties.
Tell the little pet shop -
it’s better late than never -
to mend an aching, wretched heart
who thought their best friend gone forever.
Jul 26, 2013
Jul 26, 2013 at 7:09 PM UTC
Think about it,
She off-handedly remarks:
Formality is separateness
Lost in one of the nebulous folds
Of my cerebellum
I acknowledge her comment with a thousand yard stare
Eagle eyed, I surf a warm updraft
To rise above it all
But I can't slip the prison of pre-conception
Amuse me, she says.
Whisper me your pretty little lyrics,
Sing me your song
You have one of the most interesting faces I’ve ever met
I brazenly tell her, and
My minds eye is full of anticipation
I know it’s pedantic
I am not so romantic
Maybe we should not peel back the veneer, but
A peak
It’s inexplicable
Naive and unassuming, with
Bashful sincerity, and
An enduring patience
Awaken: open your eyes
The serpent goddess counsels
And you will find your way
Aug 17, 2018
Aug 17, 2018 at 3:51 AM UTC
Those words that were coined as a cliche mean more than we shall ever guess.
We need not understand them until the adrenaline wears off like the lipstick of a pale moon's night.
Change becomes so inert, it feels as though we are watching Neptune orbit the sun.
We tie a knot and leap.
Days and nights pass in a tangle
Such as a tumbleweed hitting our tire on a warm desert car ride.
The peaks and valleys we ride create a rhythm that plays to the metronome of the heart.
They can make us sick some times,
While other times we can't help but stare in amazement at such imperfectly beautiful things.
I wish I could take it all with me:
The land, the sky, the scent
I never want to face myself again because of where I ventured to before it all.
I find myself high up on a mountain, hearing the memories of the earth as well as the memories my own spherical entities have held and let go, all at the same time.
As I make my way down from the peak to another valley, I realise I do not have enough room to hold such masterpieces..within my frontal lobe or my backseat window.
For I am not alone. I began this journey as a we.
However what I took from it all was specifically mine.
We are united in our separateness.
With each scene passing us by, we notify ourselves change has set in. Maybe not all together outwardly but intermittently internally.
The first cut is the deepest and although we are attuned to what's going on in our outside world, our inner world has already began rebuilding itself without us even acknowledging it.
It may take reading a list of cliches on a mountain for us to the recognize the small change, but it is there, like an unforeseen star in the night
sky.
Feb 4, 2014
Feb 4, 2014 at 1:15 AM UTC
think I shall be springtime; such clumsy
scent of the world collapsing not with nets
but hands not upon trellis but bodies –
sleep shall carry us to inches
of terrible speech such somnolent world senses
quietness in the rivers of our blood;
how murmurously veritable moment
leaps forth ripe in the air of such splendidness
when it was not mountains
but your breasts deep within the Earth of me
and I rain cleaving the scent of the world
into two separateness until the
enormously nude moon plunges within;
I shall be a tree
and you, a rose or springtide, or everything
that
blooms, withers,
dances – new beginnings;
Jan 19, 2016
Jan 19, 2016 at 8:39 AM UTC
You cut a dashing figure
between em and en and
oh, by the way
Your abbreviated smile
has me wondering what
it stands for
as I place my finger on
your ellipsis … you lead me on,
there is no doubt
I feel left out
But as we track and kern
our forms, ascending,
make ligatures to avoid
an overlap of strokes
a diphthong doth emerge
o’er our line o’ type
and what was once
paragraphed into separateness,
our thoughts juxtaposed
begins to merge
(bind in parentheses)
you’n’me make syncope
and, once the story forms,
the digraphs make shapes
with our mouths.
Oct 22, 2020
Oct 22, 2020 at 4:53 PM UTC
wine stains on the shelf
a flash of irritation ended
coverless on the couch
separateness lingers into morning
politeness papers over open wounds
where repairs could have been made
memory wire refuses to uncoil
we'd overwound the pound-shop threads
of our connection
scraped each filament to fronds
that could part at any moment
but didn't
we argue our differences, forget
to celebrate our samenesses
sensing barriers
where none are
Feb 21, 2014
Feb 21, 2014 at 6:32 AM UTC
Those blessed with children
already know something
of the fellowship
kinship brings when
gathered indiscriminately;
how the rightness of place and time
wraps itself around,
makes a gift to hang
on the Christmas tree of memory.
In this house
lives a tangible presence
of past coming-togethers:
long long days of comfortable conversations,
warm greetings passed on the stairs.
See here - that dear head bent over a crossword,
and through a window, look!, a child in the garden;
Always, always - the kitchen laughter.
And spreading between all this
a glue of music
binding with its miracle formula
the separateness of strings and fingers.
In the joy of Opus 20.No.2
(played between friends)
an intensity of action and reaction
sings; born out of listening
with calm intent and
with selfless attention given -
one to another.
Sep 21, 2012
Sep 21, 2012 at 1:30 AM UTC
and the dissipated night has begun to
fade from memories vision
along with its bone-weary malingerers
they huddle next to the rain soaked street
and chatter in quick quiet words
and animated gestures
about the hurrying passers by
but as the day wearys of its own labours
and begins its goodbyes
they fall to silent stationary watching
each lost in the raindrops
each drifting away in the separateness
each thinking of aspects of her haunted face
and about
the devout men hunched
over their labours
far in the abyss of night
deep in silence
the sharp ringing of hammer and chisel
the scratching on pen on paper
the whisper of brush stroke upon canvas
her opulent eyes watch the creations they labour upon
gather in the colours and the sensations of each
consumes the beauty of the hearts by
devouring with her soft skin
while her bone-weary malingerers slouch in the corner
with their quick quiet conversation nimbly dances
around her bent ear
and convinces her to abandon these perilous waters
she floats to the door as only a beautiful woman can
stumbling drunk but still appearing to the masses as regal
her malingerers follow close at hand
and as each crusades for her leather hands caress
a hundred devout men cease their labours
and look up at her departing entourage
with the envy only a devout man can feel
in unison a whisper quiet sigh escapes them
and stirs the flags of empire that hang from the walls
her opulent eyes decorate the mind
but its her hand that carves the soul
now years later having abandon her perilous ways
she is the only one huddled there by the rain soaked street
begging the the kind of change that isnt made up of coins'
and making quick quiet chatter within her own mind
as night and days shuffle before her throne of rain
and the world in its own way pays homage
to her regal decay
the rain soaked street pauses
from time to time
and she watches from her perch
no sadness skates behind her eyes
a life not necessarily well lived
but lived nevertheless
Nov 7, 2013
Nov 7, 2013 at 7:20 PM UTC
You have a Wednesday stuck to your oversized, hand-me-down, turtle-neck sweater.
The one with a hole in the elbow of your right sleeve.
It was hand stitched by a real machine, but not in Ireland.
You have a Wednesday snagged. Perhaps a loose thread became entangled, midweek ?
And now you have Wednesday, everywhere you go....
I only mention, because I noticed...
And it totally goes with that Monday
In your eyes.
Is that your Existential Crisis; parked right outside ?
I hope you fed the meter.
I can see where you spent your spiritual currency.
From every angle, simplicity of design !
Just a chasm and no plot. Elegant lines -
That wind up vanishing from the ' Unspeakable Frame '
Beyond the Border of What You Dare Think...
I have one just like that !
But mine has a concrete hunch about the whole thing.
A suspicion engine
So nothingness can't seem to live without me. But -
I see you have that thing you just hope isn't the truth
And I used to have that -
But now I just have a Headache.
I'm crushing on your Ayn Rand funeral parties
And that outrageous, bobble-head Doubting Thomas on your dashed hope.
Let's sit at that table by the window
And stare at each other as long as the window has nothing in it.
That should give us aeons to get to know each other.
There's no Law that says " I'm sorry for being such a stupid Law "
So without pause, we should defy our Separateness.
I'll ask for a clean fork in the road
And we'll see what that get's me....
Ah-ha !
I finally got a laugh
That didn't come from inside my skull.
A laugh that had good taste in men, and no idea where it came from -
But remembers how the couch made the carpet work.
The Abyss goes with everything, but you left it in the closet...
You know -Why unpack ?
That laugh was naked.
It gave me those Goosebumps
That can beat up Other Goosebumps.
Would you like to have some chai ?
Sep 20, 2011
Sep 20, 2011 at 5:26 PM UTC
We are dilluted
Polluted by our sense of separateness
Deluded into thinking
That kinship is a shrinking circle
A stinking cesspool
Generations of veneration of
Lines and boundaries
But bones buried under history
Connect you and me
Her and him
Us and them
No matter what country
Or century we live in
Dec 5, 2014
Dec 5, 2014 at 1:45 PM UTC
We are now left to hard media only
I can play you raw on my strings
and hear what you say
I can draw you on a paper and feel your touch
I can color your space and embrace your aura
Your pain is mine if you give me some
not to worry it won't hurt
The pain you have is a reflection of what I've already filtered out of you
before delivering it back to you
It's only fairness
this much is not much
as much as you can have
I know you so well
You know that thousand years is too long to carry a child
even for the one with thousand bellies my child
It was not only for my cleansing our meeting
I was not the only cursed one
You are not born of me and No not for me
I be your sin if you make me your masterpiece
The face of the scary the manipulated energy
has imprisoned the fairy so the prince can save her?
The prisoner stays in prison until she realizes she is in prison
until she falls in love with the prince
then the impurity of the entanglement disappears turns to a breeze
an unpetrified ****** in the openness of a field stands
The bewildered is freed and is free now
The curse melts to particles of bliss
The prince dies she becomes flesh and blood
for the first time after the time gone for one and the last lifetime
Alone she will walk this road until the end until they reunite in the spirit world
Joy she has knowing the fact
Joy she should take and give and learn
in this short lifetime of separateness and the corporal to bear and cherish
cause he may feel
for him she will be happy so he can feel
for him she learns joy so she can carry it to eternity
for him she sees a butterfly rubbing against the anther
and for him she smiles now
Feb 12, 2015
Feb 12, 2015 at 7:38 AM UTC
Black tulips on the marbled floor
have no place here.
They remind others of how we existed
suitable only for that dark journey,
by those deemed more worthy,
under whose azure skies,
only their abodes could shimmer
for we can have no part .
Leaves mottled in their separateness
turn our seasons
into days of lanquidity,
out stretched briars
tear at the stolen codex.
surmising exoteric warnings,
that magpies again steal,
under whose inciting night
can we wade this walkway.
Jun 20, 2012
Jun 20, 2012 at 6:24 PM UTC
The rivers of the world all tend to flow toward the sea
and the love of the lover with the beloved longs to be.
In merging and uniting our sense of separateness disappears
and that feeling of oneness experienced removes all our fears.
___________________________________________________
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 11:28 PM UTC
For G.S.L.
1.
Lover:
Write, we must of the moons we spent
Weaving our alien languages together
Deriving meaning from each other
by what it meant for us
to be home in our shell.
Words we've bound each other with
With histories of our forefathers,
How we delved in the intricacies of the mind
Carefully, and as surely as the waves
Caressing the shores from distant seas.
Coupled with the cresting of the wave,
An ocean's promise lies in wait.
To you I am like the soil that does not empty
Its thirst for answers from the rain.
Yet you cannot give me access to your inner paths
So instead, I have knelt down in silence
and cupped your hermit house to my ear.
You have found speech for words you cannot say.
2.
Beloved:
I am like the shallow portion
of the sea where you can clearly
observe the rocks and stones
That cut, as well as the coral
that thrive Like fiery coals attracting fish.
We are of different tongues,
Yet despite the separateness
Our strangeness connected us to each other.
You have raised old foundations
And pulled the sea to come to me.
There i knelt on uneven sands
Confident that your own voice
Will lead us to the birthing dawn.
Now it is not just the sea that divides us
but the very same wildness, that impetuosity
that gleamed at dawn, Which led me to you.
Where now is the cradle
for the pearl of the night?
How you have drifted away
I cannot know.
Birthed from sand, Foundations crumble.
Your words are carried away with the rising
Of the tides. Numbing the island in me
Leaving a mark visible only in old maps,
Which sunk the moment you left.
On the very same shore
I see you searching still.
- 13 November 2015
Nov 13, 2015
Nov 13, 2015 at 10:57 AM UTC
The leaf
Waves to me
From outside -
Silver drops
Of water sit on its
Cool green surface
In voiceless eloquence
The nascent scent is fresh
Wild
And real
Redolent with memories and truths of early days
That evade language
And pulse on a transcendent level
My unsettled heart knows
And easily resonates with this diurnal rhythm
That existed before the word
Near the beginning
Of what could have been
Before the way was lost -
And then the drops turn to
Rain and dark
Tears
That stain the window
I sit before
In this self imposed prison
Of a shabby life
Ruled by social torture and
The sly manipulation of machines and
Things beyond dead -
We exist
Together in separateness
Pleasantly shackled
In this irrelevant circus of celebrity, destruction and death
As senses dull
Bodies die
And
Potential decays
Outside
Wind caresses the trees
And multitudes of leaves quiver -
The body
Knows wrong and
The body
Sings strong
With senses keen and
Mind resolute on escape
Anger blooms full in my heart
That I raise and swing -
Chains break - walls burst -
And glass melts
Into the earth as
Rain wakes exhausted flesh
To the rising thunder
Of what will be
For the body knows
In the poetry
Of a leaf
Waits revolution
Sep 2, 2010
Sep 2, 2010 at 12:32 PM UTC
You have a Wednesday stuck to your over-sized, hand-me-down, turtle-neck sweater.
The one with a hole in the elbow of your right sleeve.
It was hand stitched by a real machine, but not in Ireland.
You have a Wednesday snagged. Perhaps a loose thread became entangled, midweek ?
And now you have Wednesday, everywhere you go....
I only mention, because I noticed...
And it totally goes with that Monday
In your eyes.
Is that your Existential Crisis; parked right outside ?
I hope you fed the meter.
I can see where you spent your spiritual currency.
From every angle, simplicity of design !
Just a chasm and no plot. Elegant lines -
That wind up vanishing from the ' Unspeakable Frame '
Beyond the Border of What You Dare Think...
I have one just like that !
But mine has a concrete hunch about the whole thing.
A suspicion engine
So nothingness can't seem to live without me. But -
I see you have that thing you just hope isn't the truth
And I used to have that -
But now I just have a Headache.
I'm crushing on your Ayn Rand funeral parties
And that outrageous, bobble-head Doubting Thomas on your dashed hope.
Let's sit at that table by the window
And stare at each other as long as the window has nothing in it.
That should give us aeons to get to know each other.
There's no Law that says " I'm sorry for being such a stupid Law "
So without pause, we should defy our Separateness.
I'll ask for a clean fork in the road
And we'll see what that get's me....
Ah-ha !
I finally got a laugh
That didn't come from inside my skull.
A laugh that had good taste in men, and no idea where it came from -
But remembers how the couch made the carpet work.
The Abyss goes with everything, but you left it in the closet...
You know -Why unpack ?
That laugh was naked.
It gave me those Goosebumps
That can beat up Other Goosebumps.
Would you like to have some chai ?
Mar 19, 2013
Mar 19, 2013 at 11:17 AM UTC
The valley holds on, to ******
of moon, behind the trees.
It is dark and clouds are meditating.
You think of a perfect horror
and a poisoned arrow flies straight
into heart of a blissful sun.
It is red, splattered on the wounded sky,
scrorched by shrill cries of crows.
It is dawn.
You feel intense *********** of separateness,
from the beauty of a drop,
reflecting the wholeness of an ocean.
The stress starts breaking you.
Can you take me to my home, into abeyance?
My wakefulness, reaching by silence?
Mar 26, 2017
Mar 26, 2017 at 9:08 PM UTC
People want to be free. We all long for that freedom of our souls,minds, and bodies. As we strive in this world. Even though we might think we are free we are captive in a strange land and that we are struggling desperately to get out of. In this struggle to be free we can sometimes hurt ourselves and other people around us but we are all searching and longing for freedom. Freedom from pain. Freedom from fear and hate and freedom from the isolation and separateness that can suffocate us with it's grip. Ultimately no matter what we might do to free ourselves there is only one answer and one solution. It is God. When you have God he takes away your pain and fear and separation and replaces it with hope and healing and love that can truly help you to find what your heart has been longing for all along.
Jul 5, 2013
Jul 5, 2013 at 1:58 AM UTC
The leaf
Waves to me
From outside -
Silver drops
Of water sit on its
Cool green surface
In voiceless eloquence
The scent is fresh
Wild
Real
Redolent with memories and truths of early days
That evade language
And pulse on a lower level -
My unsettled heart
Resonates with this rhythm
That existed before the word
Near the beginning
Of what could have been
Before the way was lost -
Then the drops turn to
Rain and dark tears
That stain the window
I sit before
In this self-imposed prison
Of a shabby life
Ruled by social torture and
The sly manipulation of machines and
Things beyond dead -
We exist
Together in separateness
Pleasantly shackled
In this circus of celebrity, destruction and death
As senses dull
Bodies die
And
Potential decays -
Outside
Wind caresses the trees
And multitudes of leaves quiver -
The body
Knows wrong
The body
Sings strong
With senses keen and
Mind resolute on escape
Anger blooms full in my heart
That I raise and swing -
Chains break - walls burst -
And glass melts
Into the earth as
Rain wakes exhausted flesh
To the rising thunder
Of what will be
For the body knows
In the poetry
Of a leaf
Waits revolution
Apr 13, 2013
Apr 13, 2013 at 8:25 PM UTC
Memory –
Its so vast
Deep oceans of voices
Tapering off to separate compartments
Of silence –
Together in separateness we cross
The darkness at dislocated speeds
(a cough from here & there among the
silent passengers – coughs of blood & sickness)
The engine accelerates in thunder
And flesh makes love to steel...
Some of us –
Lost in vacant pools of thunder
While others –
The past expels me, repels me...
Nov 8, 2009
Nov 8, 2009 at 8:04 PM UTC
We walked and smoked
an old, worn out joint
in between a school and church.
Inappropriately, how we did
most things.
We talked about life
and where we should be,
and why aren’t we there?
And why is there a chain
between us?
The wall is gone, but the chain?
It's strong, it weighed me down all day.
Running my hand along the metal
loops, my fingers dancing on our
disconnection.
Gliding over our separateness.
Back and forth we walked
chains and walls and years
separate us. We met in the
wrong lifetime.
We walked and smoked
the moment burnt and gone and the high, gone too.
And to him, I was one joint.
To me, he was a forest fire.
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 11:08 PM UTC
With sant, build me up
Wishing, could get you out of me
Like fog goes out of my mouth when I breathe
Beating heart, bleeding fast
Healing your heart while seeking your cure
Condition of my madness, over your craziness
Oh your arms, I still remember their warmness
Wasn't aware of this separateness
Yet im left between your darkness
No light, no height but your shine still hides in my eyes
I still feel it, oh I know its out of my touch so is it still out of my reach?
Reckless yet so restless my soul been
Rip me off or recolour my dark soul
Call me an insane or call me sucker but whatever I'm now its just for love, oh my lover
that's the insanity of my love.
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 2:12 AM UTC