Poetry
My unfiltered heart and soul
Time II
I’m a psychedelic structure
An infinite fractal of complexity
Gently touching the dark with my light
To bring moments to life
Traditionally you melt me down
And pour me along the river
So that things can be experienced
One beat at a time
The tick tick tick of awareness
Noticing one thing. Then the next.
Confined within the banks of causality
I become a stream of marching ants
But if you can stop rationalising me away
And let me keep my shape, you will discover
What lives inside me
Is beyond your wildest imagination
Let me burst the banks of your mind
And unfold a landscape of synchronicities
It’s a different kind of logic here.
For Your Ears Only.
Can you hear
The silence of the void,
Imbuing atmosphere into experience.
The hum of the Universe;
Churning out reality.
The deafening grief
Of creation and destruction.
The melody of the fingers of the Divine
Floating across the keys of time.
Listen carefully to this one piece of advice:
Learn to listen to your own heart
And the heart of life
Tune-in to the most gentle wisps
Of your felt-sense of a moment. This moment.
Catch it with soft ears.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
You can’t talk your way
Into being a better listener.
The bottle neck is the one you stopped
Listening to years ago.
Has their voice ever been heard?
I’m here to tell you that what they have to say
Is important. Make space
To hold the fullness of their message
It’s a secret they can whisper
Only to you.
Meaning
It’s funny how something
Can haunt you like that
Does it mean something?
It remains a mystery for now
One track, one course of events
That gets scrambled
Come back afresh
A new beginning in each moment
The movement of the energy
Is almost impossible to put into words
Because it is too simple to be a story
It’s a texture
And a moment.
It just is.
When will the landscape become clear?
When the realities collide
And the tectonic plates land in place
The enormity of being met
With a wave of space-time
Pushing through the desire to hide
Let it destroy you and then
Find it all laid out:
It already came before you.
Take your time to take it in
Tell the Truth
Tell the truth
Even if it’s just to yourself
Find the thing you’re wrestling with
And set yourself the challenge
Of how honest you can be
Write a no-send letter
Or a journal entry
Delete it or burn it
It doesn’t matter
What matters is acknowledging the truth
And getting out of its way
Watch out for anything too simple or saccharine
Too complex or cynical
Truth is nuanced
It’s vulnerable
Straight-forward
Heart-felt
It usually includes some darkness
And some light
Some grief and some hope
The truth is very rarely final
And one of its strangest qualities is that telling it
Can be the fastest way to watch
It grow and morph into something new
Truth matters.
It is the same thing as freedom
And love
And when you can embody its essence
You create a portal for people to access it
Soul Sutra
You are the form
That emptiness expresses itself through
Does your emptiness sit peacefully on a pedestal
Seeking safety in its superior knowledge of the world?
Or does your emptiness dance through the gutters
Pouring through the cracks created in breaking hearts
Popping into life in the meeting of knowing eyes
Recognising that the things that matter most
Aren’t always the things that are valued
In a world that has lost its balance
If there is one thing that you can say about emptiness
It’s that it’s nothing like your preconceptions.
Emptiness takes no final form.
You are the form
That emptiness expresses itself through
And the Universe is yours to discover
True Nature II
In the seeing,
Only the thousands of years
Of implicit sediment;
Layer upon layer
Of opaque and transparent films
Between you and experience.
Piercing the next surface
To peel back the layer
The loneliness hurt more
Than the sharpness ever could
Even as we tear down
the stratified billboard posters
Pulling each other apart
With the same tension of the
Stories being told
Through the imagery
And mystery
We encounter
I am still waiting for you
in the middle
Uncover the fossils
Of all the things that came before
And let this carpet
Of heart-breaking intricacy
Blow you to pieces
While drawing you firmly
Into your core
This
Is who you were always
meant to be
The Biggest Mystery of All
We were made for each other
Pieces that don’t make sense on their own
Waiting for the right moment
For gravity to pull us together
And form our Universe
Beauty
Give me everything that is there
I want to savour the elements
That make you
I want to stand in your darkest corners
And love them until you realise
That no matter how fucked up you feel
You are a masterpiece
And without shadows, there is no depth
Take your time to remove your masks
The ones you designed to keep me
At a safe distance
Remembering that they aren’t you
Leave them behind to
Reveal the rawness that lies between us.
There is more beauty there than
Anywhere else you’ve ever known
The Story You Were Given
If you can hold your deepest pain
And rather than turning away from it
You take it all the way home
You carve a path for others to follow.
This is the story you were given
Two Years // Ten Thousand Lifetimes
When time dropped away
It fell like a sheet of glass on concrete.
Picking my way through it in barefeet
Might have been ok
If space hadn’t gone too.
Drowning in the shards
With every inhale
There is a scary moment in the ocean
Where you get pulled into the washing machine
You lose sight of which way is up
And you’re not sure if you’ll ever reach the surface again
When it’s the shattered weight of existence
There is no up
Or surface
Crushed to death
Wishing to be crushed to death
Anything but this again
And again, and again, and again
And again, and ag…..
Piecing time back together wasn’t an option
Buried
Dedicated to Rob Burbea, Alan Watts and other spirit guides who I believed I was communicating with in my head
A seed buried in the core of the cosmos
Waiting for someone to reach it
Darkness so consuming
It was impossible to go together
But I couldn’t do it alone
So I believed that it was in you, too
Waiting for the apple tree
To start growing out of your stomach
There is no root of suffering
Life is not a dandelion that you pull out and discard
Below us is an infinite complexity of entanglement
The roots are inextricable from
The fungus, insects, rot and earth
Without all this darkness there is no growth
No creativity, no life
Whose fault is it
That it hurts so much to be buried?
Alone
The part of me that is drowning
Will make it to dry land
And the day that it does
Will not be a heart-warming rescue
But a desolating collapse
Into an abandoned shoreline
Where I will pick myself up
And begin the long, cold walk
Hell II
Drop
Drop
Drop
Drop
Drop
Drop
Drop
Down
And so far in
To the core of your heart
That you reach the part where its molten iron
Flows at 6,000 degrees c
And everything that your senses touch
Melts into a single flowing experience
Stop sneaking out and round the back
Enter the gates of Hades
With your head held high
And remember that it is the devil himself
Who most needs your love
So that he can stop pointing the finger
At who or what is to blame
For that which is painful or difficult in this world
And can find the strength
To meet himself with courage.
Cross this gate with love and you will return
An unstoppable force of life
Wonderland
Waking up to only this moment
Is like falling down the rabbit hole
You enter a world where everything is
Simultaneously exactly as it should be
And beautifully brimming with possibility
An interconnected wonderland
Where every cell exudes pleasure
At the delight of being here now
Time stretches out into a gloopy daydream
Of endless now or immediate forever
Eyes glowing at the excitement of
Experiencing so viscerally this magical realm
We call the Universe
But what they don’t tell you in the meditation hall
Is that most people aren’t willing
To drink the potion that will lead them down the rabbit hole
And the story of Alice in Wonderland
Without any other characters
Would eventually become the story of a girl
Wandering endlessly through an experience
That everyone else was too busy or afraid
To notice even exists
The Unknown
Life is an expression of creativity
And creativity can only exist
If there is uncertainty:
This is what holds the space for life to grow into
Every moment
The Universe is both creating and unfolding itself
All at once
Falling into the next moment:
The entirety of life taking a step forward
Into the unknown
Together.
Karma
Karma will show you how
You need to show up for your challenges
If you want to be able to move past them.
Difficult thoughts, emotions and feelings
Will get stuck inside of you
If you can’t find a way to release them
But one of the most fundamentally important things
To grasp about karma is this:
You do not deserve the hand you’ve been given
And those same thoughts, emotions and feelings
Don’t belong to you.
All of that pain and stress and difficulty is arising
From a history that started long before you were born
And from an environment
That is shaped by forces we don’t control
Trauma is written into our fabric.
Our beings are an extension
Of a moment so explosive it created space-time
Can you imagine the noise that made?
And the feeling of being torn into this world.
The most incredible thing about this
Is that human beings have arisen out of this Universe
With the capacity to take all of that
Brutal and terrifying life force
And occasionally turn it into something
That makes you shed a tear
Or burst out laughing
Or just stop and pause for a moment.
This is alchemy in action.
Transforming chaos and darkness
Into joy and understanding
Happens moment by moment
Conversation by conversation.
We are all an expression of the fabric of the Universe
And if you have the capacity
To take something terrible from your experience
And turn it into something meaningful
Know that the Universe will be grateful for your service
Essence
I love that every person I know
Has a unique essence about them
A certain them-ness
That only they can evoke
Buddha Nature
Buddha nature, God, the laws of physics
Whatever your belief system
It doesn’t exist within you or without you
It emerges from your interactions
We are all emerging from the same stuff
Every moment our beings being manifested
From a soup of energy and atoms and meaning and love
But you only exist because you are different
From the things around you;
It is these differences that define you
Making you who you are
Theories can help you understand the world
But only you can stand up in this Universe
Face to face with the beings and places
That you get the joy and sorrow
Of encountering in this lifetime
And feel the things you feel
Do the things you do
And hope for the things you hope for
I hope you discover beauty, love and meaning
In this unrelenting unfolding of life-force
That could be a devastation
Of how things aren’t exactly how you want them to be
Or could be a celebration
Of life and what it means to share in that
With people and places
All made of the same stuff
And all expressing it so differently
There is a Story in You
It can be helpful to let go of your stories
Once in a while
Not to foresake them
But to be able to come back to them
With a fresh pair of eyes
And understand that things aren’t always as they seem,
When you are caught up in the struggle of survival
If it wasn’t for the plotline,
All that life would be
Is a series of unrelated frames
Flashing in and out
No sense or meaning would be made of it
For anyone or anything
Stories are part of the fundamental structure
Of the Universe
And a story can only exist
If there is a challenge to overcome
A sorrow to experience
Or a great love to be felt
Cultivate the capacity
To keep turning the pages
Even when what you find is despair and pain
And you will find
That the joy in life does not come from arriving at a destination
But from reaching deep down inside yourself
And expressing whatever it is
That you find there.
There is a story inside you
That begs to be told
Life is a Poem
Brains like to turn lives into essays
Bodies prefer to tell stories
But hearts create a life that reads like poetry
Not always structured or logical
Sometimes a bit crap.
A series of moments that capture your attention
Evoking something fleeting
And if it is sincere or funny enough
And catches you at just the right moment
Everything can suddenly be turned on its head
Falling
What’s it like to fall in love
With the entire Universe?
There’s no difference between
The big and the small.
It’s just a place where
Everything always flows
Like liquid magic
But it doesn’t mean anything
When there’s no-one to share it with.
And the only way to find peace
With being on the outside looking in
Is to let love rise out
Of the deepest pain
And to keep on giving
Broken
I’d rather be shattered
And thinking of you
Than be pretending I’m whole
And trying to forget
Only This Moment
Run your fingers
Down my throat
Between my ribs
And past my belly button
Take our breath away
With this moment
So full of desire
That we are entirely satisfied
Inside Your Eyes
I’ve tried to undo that moment
A thousand times
Falling into your eyes
And remembering who I am
How am I supposed to live
When I can’t return
To the only place
That has ever felt like home
Labyrinth
I was so surprised that
What I found at the centre of me was…
You
I reran the labyrinth
Returning home for the thousandth time
How could it still be you?
Even once I’d torn down the walls
With my bare hands
And dragged my exhausted body
Over the rubble
I found an empty space
With your name graffitied across the ruins
The memory of your soul
Is so firmly planted in my core
That I cannot separate where I begin
And you end
Last Connection
When the walls are caving in
And the ground is disappearing
And my body becomes a battle ground
Again
And I have nothing left to give
It’s you that I imagine
Your hands
Running down the side of my waist
And your eyes
Brushing mine
Inspiring an endless love
That has carried me through hell
And out the other side
Where things are better
But you are still not here.
A love so abundant
There is no edge
Creates the pain of a separation
With no escape
I miss you.
Depths
Leave space for life to surface
From the unknown depths of you
Find someone who is comfortable
Swimming in your uncertainties
Open into each other’s mysteries
And understand that this
Is the most sacred place you will ever stand
The Song
Outside the gravity of causality
Moments dance more freely;
Fingers across the keys of a piano
Not past and future, but chords and melodies
It’s not this then that
It’s this. And this. And this again.
It’s how the entire song
Spins magic into experience
Spins experience into magic
Pulling on the strings of your being
Until the resistance is harmonised
And there is only the song.
The Universe Bared its Soul to Me
It takes a while for someone
To unfold the depths of their being
“How did it feel?
To be hidden like that
For so long.”
It said, “I didn’t even know myself.”
Devotion
Your true desires have a pulse
They aren’t a part of you
That needs to be suffocated
Or shunned
They are your calling
Your prayer to being alive
Just the thought of it
Makes the cells of your body
Ooze passion
What does that to you?
Choose that. And choose it again.
And choose it again.
That is a life well lived.