WELCOME ..
Welcome to a series of poems / articles where some point to sage teachings.The awareness of embodied mind as mistaken identity. The realisation of the one true self, (Non duality ) unborn and beyond the dormancy of spirit in time and space. Faced with the infinite and eternal said Goethe, the most that man can achieve is wonder.
Thank you for your visit ..
Roy
Welcome to a series of poems / articles where some point to sage teachings.The awareness of embodied mind as mistaken identity. The realisation of the one true self, (Non duality ) unborn and beyond the dormancy of spirit in time and space. Faced with the infinite and eternal said Goethe, the most that man can achieve is wonder.
Thank you for your visit ..
Roy
TIME
Time drips like that stripped
maple on to a timeless pool,
my mind beneath the surface
tension, feels the break and
sees the droplet, make that
ripple to infinity, the anchored
rocks show how water
moves as spirit, flowing round
as if to mime the unreality of
time, to mesmerise, to see it,
the solid dross, a world
material, verifying schism,
the light and heavy loss
of mind from organism,
alas, I say, alas,
our brains are killing us
as Krishnamurti said,
For all around I see here
how nature comes to call,
how growing out of timelessness
brings time to end it all.
----------
CITY BLUES
The mole lives happy underground
when stars above the city glow,
but round about Trafalgar Square
the people flock as pigeons do,
as gridlocked as my city brain
that fumbles through the A to Zee,
like lice I crawl a little way
and wonder if the corpse is me !
Eternal hunger, airborne wist
down every cul-de-sac and lane,
o geist ! I'm lost again, I said
enough to drive a man insane !
That longing for a green light
when columns move as one spirit,
to be beyond the traffic hum
and the welcome of that city limit !
Back into the country now
where the leaving felt bereft,
and a journey to discover
my mind had never left.
----------
SPRING WOOD
( On our Way to )
Come into the wood then
now the days are long,
step into the memory
of a nightingale song,
feed on the ground as
from root to stem,
come talk to the bluebells
we are the heart of them,
come prize the cuckoo
who measures our years
away from the noise of
ungrounded fears,
come see at a glance
what the great poet said,
' let the stillness be the dance '
let it sing in your head,
' let the darkness be the light '
as within so without,
come gaze at the stars
'til the owl cries out,
where the down-trodden vixen
screams her reply,
stay away from my cubs-
your world is a lie !
Lets be like a hermit
his body a hut
and spy on the squirrel
who buries his nut,
lets hawk and hover
with masterful eye,
be the vole for tomorrow
not food for the sky;
lets look at the moon
she has something to say,
lets decipher her rune
and be on our way?
----------
A QUIET MIND
Is it safe to say
thought has it's limits?
Beauty, adored as the whole
is lost by seeking the part
as the seeking brain does,
but the quiet mind
after the rain has fallen
to quench the thirst
of the flowering plain,
is not deaf
to the voice of the violet,
the trembling primrose,
or blind to the wild spirit
in the soft eyes of a deer,
and the numb strength
to wrap round with arms
an old, dying oak,
the blue - print of bliss
on the one hand
the signature of heaven,
but on the other,missing
the point forever,
trapped in cold fact
like mummified bones
that give off the ghoul,
a blindness to depth
and a voice that stutters
to all that utters to the soul;
I have said it before
and I say it again ,
If one does not feel it
one will not see it-
a universal meaning-
in the effect of a rainbow,
from the ground of all being....
Comical Starlings
feed like clowns
then into the sun
fly off as one,
autumn, pulls
on the sad strings
of a sorrowful heart,
as love must part,
turn green to red
when all from dusk to dawn
seemed that of wisdom
and yet nothing verbal
yet something said ;
o the parts from the whole
do not feed the soul,
over the tongue
from the brain in my head,
come back to life
is what nature said
and I understood
how that was very,
very good.
----------
COMPOSED TO DECOMPOSE
( Buddha )
Blight infiltrates the air to reach my vines,
regeneration, weakens and declines
and I am left with an image of a globe
'curled up like an autumn leaf'
and an old man, chasing a thief
who stole my ability to love my body;
'you are the universe, your world
is your body' said the grey,
enlightened sage, don't take my word
for it, look at it, it surely begins
to hang like that blighted rose in your garden?
And what do you expect or suppose
when all composed must decompose?
A long sabbatical from heaven-knows where
will quite naturally, come to it's end,
sooner rather than later, if man
does not learn to love his body
which is the world he lives in.
----------
JUST LOOK
Look back
into the past tense-
let stars see their magnificence,
concatenations
tell the story,
they gave man eyes
to see their glory,
break through the blue
oblivious skies,
wonder how they prize
your brain, your eyes,
one's worldy self -
that ego - hoax,
looks through a veil
of locked up tears
bound round with thought
in vault-like fears;
while inward and invisible
nothing reigns of ' me ' ,
' I ' am-ness wears the crown
it has no boundary ;
that kaleidoscope of stars
such art, so masterful,
effect, far greater
than it's cause, so pause
and look as ' now '-
don't think but feel
what you may see,
their light is spent
to find the art in me
which means the art
in me and you.
----------
PRODIGAL CYCLE
He followed the cart - wheels
from the ruts of an old track
until he saw an old sign saying,
' faith is this way, flesh is that',
yet with one eye, looking for
a hill with a high beacon
tugging at his heart-felt truth
he also felt so divested, and left
alas, his flesh behind for spirit,
left too the patient burning stars,
embodied by a burning sun,
the tired, endless journey of
the earth, the sun and moon,
the whole panoply of man,
of time weighed down upon him;
faint music caught his hearing
on a breeze and drew him closer
to find a care-free, ghostly carousel,
as then , to see his true embodiment
as subtle and refined, as beautiful as they
who waved with such heart- felt recognition,
and what could one begin to say
when all was light as thistle-down in May;
what he had found is always 'now'
and what is 'now' is always what it is
and it was his,my friend, and it was his,
not with a future or a past, the very first,
the very last, with no below and no above
the vast vitality of life, the very womb of love;
him onward then, effortlessly onward
along a blissful avenue of fading regret
and yet, what he saw he had become-
a kind of nameless Greek-like temple,
where all inside gave simple understanding,
though coming out,forgetting what he knew
was not the first of deja vu when falling,
falling, falling to an earthly memory,
down on down through oblivious skies
to gestate in another kind of womb,
as once again, knowing absolutely
nothing, to barely see a world afresh
through dim and distant, infant eyes.
----------
THE GREAT UNSUSTAINABLE
( IN )
I contemplate when drinking tea
how tannin sticks and stains the cup,
does life have meaning anymore
when up is down and down is up,
as thought constructs it's rigid world
give weightlessness a moment's pause,
would looking in as stars shine out
incline man to attend his cause?
Is this his never ending crux
through all the cost he must survive
imposing fixity on flux
in order to arrive?
For brain is worshipped by the brain
though quiet stillness nurtures mind,
when all that chatter in the skull
ensures the failure of mankind,
for trapped inside a thinking loop
with such bright add-ons now and then,
as history repeats itself
to catch and bring him back again,
the walls are high around his brain.
Mystery, the food of mind
must touch the infinite and mend
man broken on his turning world
his still point now he must attend.
And still I contemplate with tea
how tannin sticks and stains my cup,
does life have meaning anymore
when up is down and down is up
and where again do I begin
when inside out is outside in
----------
THE DANCE OF ONE
Through neural wires I touch the ground
from feet to knees unto a brain
though I am abstract there as mind
the very ground of that domain.
I whirl and dance and lose my bliss,
find ' hide and seek ' a way to play,
eternity is what I am
and time to me is what I say;
though thought is always my domain
they crowd to make me nought-
I cannot die to lose myself
from that which I have thought,
the more I hear the more absurd
my thoughts would make of me,
and when I wake up from this trance
disrupt the rythmn of my dance
I'll live to dream again and find
another way, to dance another day.
----------
TO KNOW
Behind the eyelid of your eye
spread out, like mare - tails in the sky,
at altitude, reach round her girth
and you will be the soul of earth,
beatitude will then imbue
the still point of the world in you;
when there is only one, make haste -
it's taste is all you need to taste,
'the sound of one hand clapping' 'now '
is all you ever need to hear,
is all you ever need, to know.
----------
ASLEEP
(Contrary to what is understood)
If all the world we see
is limited to human sense,
and we must always move to be
outside the present tense,
as if in vortices
forever spiralling around
until we are the eye within
the stillness of the ground,
enlightenment would then be this,
so like a world asleep, to seem
awakened from the deepest dream
----------
The mole lives happy underground
when stars above the city glow,
but round about Trafalgar Square
the people flock as pigeons do,
as gridlocked as my city brain
that fumbles through the A to Zee,
like lice I crawl a little way
and wonder if the corpse is me !
Eternal hunger, airborne wist
down every cul-de-sac and lane,
o geist ! I'm lost again, I said
enough to drive a man insane !
That longing for a green light
when columns move as one spirit,
to be beyond the traffic hum
and the welcome of that city limit !
Back into the country now
where the leaving felt bereft,
and a journey to discover
my mind had never left.
----------
SPRING WOOD
( On our Way to )
Come into the wood then
now the days are long,
step into the memory
of a nightingale song,
feed on the ground as
from root to stem,
come talk to the bluebells
we are the heart of them,
come prize the cuckoo
who measures our years
away from the noise of
ungrounded fears,
come see at a glance
what the great poet said,
' let the stillness be the dance '
let it sing in your head,
' let the darkness be the light '
as within so without,
come gaze at the stars
'til the owl cries out,
where the down-trodden vixen
screams her reply,
stay away from my cubs-
your world is a lie !
Lets be like a hermit
his body a hut
and spy on the squirrel
who buries his nut,
lets hawk and hover
with masterful eye,
be the vole for tomorrow
not food for the sky;
lets look at the moon
she has something to say,
lets decipher her rune
and be on our way?
----------
A QUIET MIND
Is it safe to say
thought has it's limits?
Beauty, adored as the whole
is lost by seeking the part
as the seeking brain does,
but the quiet mind
after the rain has fallen
to quench the thirst
of the flowering plain,
is not deaf
to the voice of the violet,
the trembling primrose,
or blind to the wild spirit
in the soft eyes of a deer,
and the numb strength
to wrap round with arms
an old, dying oak,
the blue - print of bliss
on the one hand
the signature of heaven,
but on the other,missing
the point forever,
trapped in cold fact
like mummified bones
that give off the ghoul,
a blindness to depth
and a voice that stutters
to all that utters to the soul;
I have said it before
and I say it again ,
If one does not feel it
one will not see it-
a universal meaning-
in the effect of a rainbow,
from the ground of all being....
Comical Starlings
feed like clowns
then into the sun
fly off as one,
autumn, pulls
on the sad strings
of a sorrowful heart,
as love must part,
turn green to red
when all from dusk to dawn
seemed that of wisdom
and yet nothing verbal
yet something said ;
o the parts from the whole
do not feed the soul,
over the tongue
from the brain in my head,
come back to life
is what nature said
and I understood
how that was very,
very good.
----------
COMPOSED TO DECOMPOSE
( Buddha )
Blight infiltrates the air to reach my vines,
regeneration, weakens and declines
and I am left with an image of a globe
'curled up like an autumn leaf'
and an old man, chasing a thief
who stole my ability to love my body;
'you are the universe, your world
is your body' said the grey,
enlightened sage, don't take my word
for it, look at it, it surely begins
to hang like that blighted rose in your garden?
And what do you expect or suppose
when all composed must decompose?
A long sabbatical from heaven-knows where
will quite naturally, come to it's end,
sooner rather than later, if man
does not learn to love his body
which is the world he lives in.
----------
JUST LOOK
Look back
into the past tense-
let stars see their magnificence,
concatenations
tell the story,
they gave man eyes
to see their glory,
break through the blue
oblivious skies,
wonder how they prize
your brain, your eyes,
one's worldy self -
that ego - hoax,
looks through a veil
of locked up tears
bound round with thought
in vault-like fears;
while inward and invisible
nothing reigns of ' me ' ,
' I ' am-ness wears the crown
it has no boundary ;
that kaleidoscope of stars
such art, so masterful,
effect, far greater
than it's cause, so pause
and look as ' now '-
don't think but feel
what you may see,
their light is spent
to find the art in me
which means the art
in me and you.
----------
PRODIGAL CYCLE
He followed the cart - wheels
from the ruts of an old track
until he saw an old sign saying,
' faith is this way, flesh is that',
yet with one eye, looking for
a hill with a high beacon
tugging at his heart-felt truth
he also felt so divested, and left
alas, his flesh behind for spirit,
left too the patient burning stars,
embodied by a burning sun,
the tired, endless journey of
the earth, the sun and moon,
the whole panoply of man,
of time weighed down upon him;
faint music caught his hearing
on a breeze and drew him closer
to find a care-free, ghostly carousel,
as then , to see his true embodiment
as subtle and refined, as beautiful as they
who waved with such heart- felt recognition,
and what could one begin to say
when all was light as thistle-down in May;
what he had found is always 'now'
and what is 'now' is always what it is
and it was his,my friend, and it was his,
not with a future or a past, the very first,
the very last, with no below and no above
the vast vitality of life, the very womb of love;
him onward then, effortlessly onward
along a blissful avenue of fading regret
and yet, what he saw he had become-
a kind of nameless Greek-like temple,
where all inside gave simple understanding,
though coming out,forgetting what he knew
was not the first of deja vu when falling,
falling, falling to an earthly memory,
down on down through oblivious skies
to gestate in another kind of womb,
as once again, knowing absolutely
nothing, to barely see a world afresh
through dim and distant, infant eyes.
----------
THE GREAT UNSUSTAINABLE
( IN )
I contemplate when drinking tea
how tannin sticks and stains the cup,
does life have meaning anymore
when up is down and down is up,
as thought constructs it's rigid world
give weightlessness a moment's pause,
would looking in as stars shine out
incline man to attend his cause?
Is this his never ending crux
through all the cost he must survive
imposing fixity on flux
in order to arrive?
For brain is worshipped by the brain
though quiet stillness nurtures mind,
when all that chatter in the skull
ensures the failure of mankind,
for trapped inside a thinking loop
with such bright add-ons now and then,
as history repeats itself
to catch and bring him back again,
the walls are high around his brain.
Mystery, the food of mind
must touch the infinite and mend
man broken on his turning world
his still point now he must attend.
And still I contemplate with tea
how tannin sticks and stains my cup,
does life have meaning anymore
when up is down and down is up
and where again do I begin
when inside out is outside in
----------
THE DANCE OF ONE
Through neural wires I touch the ground
from feet to knees unto a brain
though I am abstract there as mind
the very ground of that domain.
I whirl and dance and lose my bliss,
find ' hide and seek ' a way to play,
eternity is what I am
and time to me is what I say;
though thought is always my domain
they crowd to make me nought-
I cannot die to lose myself
from that which I have thought,
the more I hear the more absurd
my thoughts would make of me,
and when I wake up from this trance
disrupt the rythmn of my dance
I'll live to dream again and find
another way, to dance another day.
----------
TO KNOW
Behind the eyelid of your eye
spread out, like mare - tails in the sky,
at altitude, reach round her girth
and you will be the soul of earth,
beatitude will then imbue
the still point of the world in you;
when there is only one, make haste -
it's taste is all you need to taste,
'the sound of one hand clapping' 'now '
is all you ever need to hear,
is all you ever need, to know.
----------
ASLEEP
(Contrary to what is understood)
If all the world we see
is limited to human sense,
and we must always move to be
outside the present tense,
as if in vortices
forever spiralling around
until we are the eye within
the stillness of the ground,
enlightenment would then be this,
so like a world asleep, to seem
awakened from the deepest dream
----------
All poetry and text copyright © Roy K. Austin
No photographs or other material to be reproduced elsewhere without permission.
Please ask.. 2013. All rights reserved
