Seven more Poems

Christopher Titmuss

I talked with a person whose dreams for life had collapsed and could not comprehend what had gone wrong. It was not easy for the person to see that the collapse of the dream meant a new opportunity.

A SHATTERED DREAM

Broken promises torment the imagination
through a shattered dream,
splintered like broken glass
into countless reflections of angst.

distorting the sense of wholeness
clinging to burdened thoughts,
clinging to faults,
clinging to blame,
to bitter acrimony from yesterday into today,
unhelpful, unwanted and undeserved.

exposing collapsed centres of inner movement
unexamined defences to this impersonal harassment
until the willingness comes to let things be
and beginner’s mind taken to heart.

in our shattered dream,
we see the way to a new beginning.

THE MAN YOU MARRIED

The husband of a woman started an affair with another woman within a few months of getting married. The husband, a practicing Buddhist, told his wife that she was clinging to monogamy. For more than a year, she thought he might be right until she woke up.

The man you married never truly existed
The man in your heart hid you from
the man who lived in front of you.
You thought the inner was the outer,
that the man within was the outer man.
You lived and died in your error
torn to pieces in the imagined story of the heart.

You both announced your sacred vows to the gallery
of smiling loved ones, while he smiled
at them all with empty sincerity
and let his view kiss you.

You married your dream while he
whispered his love upon the soft breasts of
another woman.
You thought you could win him back
but you had never met him.
You ignored the road signs
that led to the confrontation
of the inner and outer.
The power of reality crushed your dream.

You who thought you lived your dream,
but you only lived your nightmare.
What is this meditation that takes no
notice of reality?
What is this illusion that defies
the meeting of the inner and the outer?
You married your dream and blamed your non-dream.
You grieve for what you lost in the mirror.

Believing in the power of your connection,
you stayed hooked and you found out
what you never wanted to see,
oh, the narcissism of it all.

The sea has finally washed away your
carefully constructed sandcastles,
washed away the form of your identity
leaving only infinite grains of sand
along a scattered beach.

Love the Non-Dual!

WORDS FROM THE LIPS

Some men and women find it hard to express love through language or may show hesitation to reveal any love thus keeping a distance

She is not used to love’s language,
to letting such words
fall easily from her lips
like raindrops hanging off
the leaves in an Indian monsoon.

No, she is not used to going beyond
the defined lines, and measured expression,
Not used to offer the risk of tender meaning.
She hesitates to let the heart
stand at the edge of the unknown
where feelings mingle with the breath
and risk gives shape
to something shapeless.

She wants to be loved from afar,
embraced from a safe distance,
so that time and space serve
as protective barriers that shields
her against an unexpected greeting.

Tangible weight of seriousness
still linger in regions of her soul.

Allow the Eros of the moment.

Fly freely into the moments of intimacy,
as if there was no hereafter.

I can see the night sky
lit up behind her in a sea
of sparkling candles.

WHO WILL YOU LISTEN TO?

We easily find ourselves in the grip of the voices of family, friends as well as our conditioned reactions from the past. These judgemental and demanding voices easily paralyse us.

Who will you listen to when the voices
swirl all around you;
that always think they know what is best
for you,
as though you can fix your security
upon the plaintiff
whim of others.

These voices will never encourage
you to walk your own path,
to make your acts of crazy wisdom,
and to find out what matters
through expressions of
rebelliousness foolishness.

The wind that sways
through the summer fields
the song of the skylark
hovering in the afternoon sky
and the gallop of the horse
across green pastures
- listen here and
to the cry of the crestfallen,
and the voice of freedom
somewhere deep down in your being.

Catch the wind that reminds you of
your liberation from the doldrums
of a formed life,
catch the song that refuses to submit
to the land of the living dead.

Throw off your wish to please that
clamour of appeals that keep telling you
to imitate them, and their confined existence.

Let yourself enter deeper and deeper into
the new and the unknown
until these wearisome voices have
become the faintest of echoes
from another lifetime.

ONCE SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED

It is not easy facing the end of a relationship, especially if the signals were ignored.

The fruits of past endeavours hang on the branch
until they have exhausted themselves
in their own weight

Once something has happened, it signals
that it is all over, the green light,
has turned to red
so that the continuity of the flow
has ground to a halt.

Once something has broken, has snapped
then the unfolding connection
has fallen apart with no pieces to pick up
so that everything has changed, altered
unrecognisably so.

What was once redeemable
through the reheatable furnace of the heart
has become irredeemable.
Once the love, that spark that lit the fire
has gone out, then the nostalgic memory
becomes an irrelevancy.

The inner voice clamours to comprehend
this dissolution of a long standing embrace,
while facing resistance to the emptiness
that carries nothing of the old.

What has finally happened
ought never to have happened
yet the outcome is the inevitable consequence
of what was revealed and unrevealed
in the pathways of the past.

This sudden announcement of closure
with its shock, or at least surprise
confirms the missed signals -
overlooking the spoken and the unspoken
along the rough and hewed out track.

The deepest love carries within its embrace
the unredeemable and that is all
that is to be remembered and reveals
a strong shadow in bright sunlight.

We can never take each other for granted.

POINTLESS

During a retreat in Bodh Gaya, India, a dedicated yogi said he could no find no point, no purpose to life. He had come to a rather despairing view that life was pointless. I told him it was an opportunity for him to celebrate this view, not reject it

There is no point to life,
nor of itself,
for it knows not its direction,
where it is going,
nor where it has come from.
It cannot move from where it is,
yet it never stands still;
it is a strange thing,
this unfolding process
that neither stands still
nor goes anywhere
nor abides in random togetherness.

Yet, we who call ourselves humans
remain deluded in giving a point
to the pointless,
who sing a song of purpose
while playing second fiddle
in an orchestra
without a conductor.

There is no point to existence,
no purpose in abstracting something
to what cannot lead anywhere
nor abide where it is.

There is a relief to all of this,
for it dissolves the pressure
to be here
or to be somewhere else
that is not here.

There is no point in being here
and there is no point to being anywhere else,
no wonder there is only time to dance!

WALKING MEDITATION

Let me walk up and down slowly,
mindfully, step by step.
for life is a short step into the unknown
and it will take me there
whether I like it or not.

Not surprisingly, I walk up and down
knowing there is nowhere to go,
nor to come from.
for I know that one thing seems certain
I cannot go where I am already.
to imagine otherwise
means living in the rut of dark deception.

This walking meditation path runs to five metres
and it takes two and a half minutes
to make this journey that truly leads nowhere.
It is truly remarkable to walk
up and down. for it offers nothing tangible,
nothing to show for the fruit of this effort.

There is no significant difference
between one step and the next.
it doesn’t matter what direction I walk in
Whether from A to B or from B to A,
Going to and returning to,
foot comes up, moves through the air,
touches the ground,
starting and finishing,
not a step counts for anything,
not a movement counts for anything.

It’s rather liberating to see through the notions
of walking up and down, moment to moment.
quietly content, knowing that I have no reason
to do it and no reason not to do it.