Six New Poems

THE MATRIX

Is the prisoner the sullen man behind the bars,
or the one who wants to escape his mind-numbing job
or the creative housewife trapped in domestic troubles
or the tired passenger fed up with a long haul flight
or the adventurous teenager who hates college
or the obese woman trapped in a body she hates
or the elderly widower unable to escape fading eyesight
or the hard working man unemployed and stuck at home,
or a lonely child bound to an abusive household
or an oppressed family wanting to escape their country
or the new immigrant harassed by the authorities
or a wounded soul struggling with depression
or an inmate holding to the bars in desperate frustration?

Do we not have more in common than we realise?
Do we not share the walls of our life in strange ways?

Can we be free to attend to what is,
to see the bars as metal, not as a cell suffocating dignity,
to see the cell as a room in a crowded motel
to see wardens as personal attendants,
to listen and respond to the anguish of others and ourselves
and see the prison as a metaphor for humanity?

For that would increase our awareness,
for we would look beyond the walls of our interpretation
and the constructed prisons of our own mind.
We would be free to be at ease with the unfolding day
dissolving our rage against life
and the darkness of the desire to escape ourselves.

Then we could be content to enjoy the mansion of our daily life,
feel free to know our existence
and free to forget the world out there,
for when the voice of our anguish is truly heard
the fires raging in the heart begin to cool.

We would then all be ourselves, outside our caged life,
knowing freedom of the spirit,
and abiding out of the shell
of our mental resistance to ourselves
and each other,
putting an end to troubled days,
here and now.

A NATURAL EMBRACE

Male and female,
Younger and older,
Rooted and global
Capital city and small village
Parent and non- parent
Exploring into the heart of things and
Going beyond the edges of the universe
Whether at one end of Mother Earth
or at the other end
One is back home with Mother and so is the other
Back home experiencing the impact of
mother's milk, of daily nourishment,
and familiar perceptions.

One is in the northern hemisphere
One is in the southern hemisphere
One is experiencing early winter
One is experiencing early summer
Right now is Monday evening for one
Right now is Tuesday morning for the other
One wears warm , woollen clothes
and the other wears thin, cotton clothes
One goes to bed and one gets up
Our environment makes our day.

One heart takes a risk and proposes
and the other heart is challenged
May our hands reach around the world and touch.
Love is wide.
As wide as time and space
Love ensures that when nothing adds up
then everything adds up.
The universe is wide
But small in the Immensity of all things,
the wondrous galaxy in the heavens here
reveals itself in the falling snowflakes there.

NO PAST

I have fled from this moment
into something has gone by.
a moment of nostalgia,
a regret in the flush of passion.

I make these forays into
what happened,
these impressions and story-lines
arise as triumphs and regrets.
they show exposures of the self
in its unfolding form.

I claim the present is the fruit of
yesterday and today seems to have
becomes the outcome of what was.

Can I really dwell on what was.
Can I go back in time?

I cannot separate my past
from my impression of it.
what past is there to go back to?
I am left with this randomly selected
collection of impressions
masquerading as what was.

There is no past to go back into
leaving me nothing to face,
to work on, work out or work with,
there is a relief in all of this.

I have seen through the mythology
of having to deal with this and that
that I claim is my past coming
from the dredges of my unconscious
or with the sweet smell of my successes.

I do not have to be free from the past
I do not have to be infatuated with the past
there is no past that I can get to.
there is no past that can get to me
there is no past to be free from.

At last, I am no longer impressionable.

HOMAGE TO THE MIDDLE WAY TREATISE

Who is walking?
Is the walker separate from the walking?
Is there one activity going on,
namely just walking,
or are there two activities – walking and walker?

If there are two,
do they collide with each other or stay apart?
If there is only walking,
then who says it is walking?

Does the walker walk or not walk?
Can the walker go anywhere?
Since the walker is not the walk,
then is the walker left behind?

Does the walker start before the walking
or start when the foot first moves?
Does the walker start with the walking?
Or does the walking start with the walker?
Or do they start together?

Can you find the beginning of walking?
Can you find the beginning of the walker?
if you cannot find the moment that begins walking
then is it appropriate to refer to ‘walking?’
If you cannot pinpoint the walker
then is it appropriate to refer to one?

I believe I know that when i walk
I see the body is moving.
Am I also moving?

Does walking depend upon the
walker for walking?
If the walker is not walking
what has happened to the walker?

If there is no substance to the walker,
then there is no substance to the walking,
for only the walker can make walking significant.

There is no measurement to the liberating relief
of going beyond the walker and walking.

Having inquired into all that, I give up.
‘I’ must go out for a ‘walk.’

A POEM TO ETTY HILLESUM

I sat in that cafe off 6 Gabriel Metsustraat
with a cafe latte with the mind’s eye
turning to the ‘Angel of Amsterdam’
amidst the downpour of the September rain
and the weekday rush of humanity,
huddling in doorways in Amsterdam,
amidst raincoats and umbrellas.

I drifted back some 60 years,
to passionate Etty, 27, Jewish, diarist,
hurrying home dodging the jackboots
of an occupying army in 1942-43
- an invasion into the hearts, minds and bodies
of ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives..

Then, suddenly, I was pulled back into the present
to the rain, to the umbrellas and the hurrying commuters.
when out of the cafe’s radio came a soprano singing.
Con Te Partino.
it was sung as an angel sings to my soul.
tears came out of my eyes]
like sweet raindrops,
a response to the wonder of it all.

I felt the presence of Etty,
she was as close as the breath in my body.
and as the song came to its close
it stopped raining.
people no longer hurried in their freedom;
the jackboot was confined to the dustbin of history
while what remained was the spirit
of a triumphant young woman
who sang on her farewell journey to Auschwitz
having single-handedly defeated
the entire Fascist army.

Strongly recommended reading
‘An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork’
by Etty Hillesum. Published by Henry Holt. NY.
Etty was born January 15, 1914
(Kye, Christopher’s grandson, was born January 15, 2001)

WAKE UP!

Wake up! this extraordinary morning
ever fresh, while a stranger to myself
I have been born again into this mystery.
I am enveloped in this aurora of existence.

I am alive! I am happy!
not a creature of time and tasks
an innocent abroad in this mystical land,
I have woken up! The mystery has pulled me
into its wakefulness.
This sky! this world! this unformed tour de force!
I arise into your embrace; this immensity.

Wake up! This morning
let the eyelids flicker upon this silent sound,
while Vishnu rests in this milky world.
This darkness travels afar,
while this new day
searching my eyelids
giving shape to this strange world

I have been born anew
out of the innocence of my old existence
I cannot explain this happiness
that envelopes me
in this unbroken unfoldment.