this bleak & pretty dawn

The Storm

2008-03-01T08:28:00.001-08:00

Let words flow
Let blood rain down
Let feelings pour
Let hearts exhale

For, there is nothing we have built, you and I,
That can fill the emptiness within us;
There is nothing we have forged, you and I,
That will last the storms of change;
There is nothing we have done, you and I,
That will leave a mark upon these shifting sands.

Yet I remember,
For only in remembrance of Truth
do hearts find rest.

And as I walk through this city of
Meaningless hope, vain amusement,
I wonder
And I wish,
For I see through the facade,
I see through the dream.

Love is a song
That mesmerises my heart,
A desperate yearning,
An endless caress,
That holds you to me,
That protects you,
That kindles your soul with joy and peace.

Love is an intensity
That inflames my veins
And sets me to flight,
A wave of sacrifice,
Of blood and tears
That stretches my heart,
Wracks my heart.
Love is a burning,
An endless wish,
An eternal wish,
A Purity,
A Reality so Pure
It swallows me forever.

Everyday

2008-02-29T02:45:00.000-08:00

Everyday, I wake up
And I don’t know why.

Everyday, I go where the tides take me;
I talk, I laugh,
I walk, I work.
But inside, I know this means nothing.
Inside, I don’t know why.

Stark

2008-02-27T05:22:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I can see her
In the stillness of the breeze.
Sometimes I can hear her
In the whispering of the leaves.

It’s so weird, how it changes.

Sometimes I can taste her
In the richness of the sky.
Sometimes I embrace her
In the twinkling of my eye.

She is the rose of Love.

It’s too weird, how we move on,
How what is becomes only what once was,
Never to be again.

I wish I could taste the endless fruits
Of the Tree of Being
I’m hanging from like a broken dream,
And embrace the branches of that Real Dream which embraces all,
An Eternal Ground of Tenderness
That would catch me when I fall,
A Life so close, a Love so near,
It would cradle me when I call.

I gaze at the clouds, at their pure angelic serenity,
Upon the endlessness of the sky.
It reminds me of You.

It reminds me of the Home I never left,
That calls me,
That I’m calling.

It reminds me of You.

purgatory

2008-02-27T05:20:00.000-08:00

Through the pain of this world,
Are we compelled to struggle
And unfold our potentialities
So as to become truly human –
So as to truly be
In harmony with Being.

Through these seas of blood
Wrenched from the stricken veins of martyrs
The Earth is fertilized
And roses of love, wisdom and compassion
Unfold to kiss the Heavens
With guilded petals.

For our life in the world is like a fleeting hour.
Whatever has taken place in it up to the present is gone
And you do not feel its pleasure or pain.
As to that which is to come, you know nothing.
All that remains in your hand of your precious life
Is this ever-present moment.
Therefore use it for the purpose of knowing yourself
And knowing Reality,
And thereby living life as it is meant to be lived.

Fruits of the CIVILISED (part 2)

2007-09-01T03:20:00.000-07:00

Our political leaders are ignorant.
They claim to have the answers
Yet all they really have are eloquent slogans.
The only thing that differentiates us from them
Is their ability to talk smoothly
And make the most stinking pile of fresh SHIT,
Appear to be a gourmet dish.

We rely on them to figure out solutions to our problems.
Yet they have no insight into our problems.
They suffer from the same problems that we suffer from.
And if not, its because our lack
Is the money in their pockets.
Their only speciality is the art of eloquent deceit.

i.e. BULLSHIT

Yes, democracy has long been a sham,
A veil beneath which our masters
Play with their puppet-public,
Manufacturing consent
For yet another "Great Game"
Through our corporatised TV screens.

We, the people, have no “power”,
In the movement of society.
More importantly, we do not really want power.
We are happy to vote now and again, pretending vaguely that it achieves something
substantial.
We are content to choose between two or three
Rather lame political groups,
Who, in their ability to pretend to know everything
Tend to be pretty similar.

The problem is:
Society is ignorant.
Our politicians are ignorant.
Everyone is ignorant.
And in this supreme ignorance
We want power.
In this supreme ignorance
We want wealth.
In this supreme ignorance
We want nothing but the fulfilment of our every ignorant, pathetic whim.

To be a human being,
One must know what it means to be human
And then move towards that freely.
Yet we do not know what it means
And frankly, we couldn’t give a fuck.

Let us conclude this highly sophisticated discussion:

Is it not ridiculous, absurd and highly dangerous
That our institutions base their principles around
Absolutely NO UNDERSTANDING OF ANYTHING WHATSOEVER?
(other than what we want).
We, evidently, are highly immature.
We, obviously, need a drastic revision of our values.
We, manifestly, need to formulate this revision on a genuine insight into Reality.

The obscenity of being so blind at heart,
Drapes our restless toes in the blood of veiled ignorance.
Beauty is hidden from our searching, leprous fingers,
Clawing at the fabric of frustration.

People still die
And people still get raped
And people still starve
And people still get slaughtered.
And people still get exploited
And people still get bullied,
Trampled on,
Bulldozed into the cramp, invisible background of
Disease, poverty, injustice,
By the glossy hand of corruption,
A hand that makes the sign of peace,
Waves the flag of smiley faces and happiness,
Even while slick, smooth talking feet,
Crush billions of innocents.

We go to our gorgeous parties,
All dressed-up, made-up, pristine,
Covering the base impurity of mememe
That wants to be God,
But knows only how to WANT.

We waste away our (generally stolen) wealth
On making magnificent box-office hits
And forging perfect clothes, perfect hair, perfect smiles,
Perfect hands (to hide crushing feet).
Our precious thermonuclearmegabastards,
Are piled up in the secret pockets of our perfect politicians,
With their perfect business suits
And perfect speeches
And perfect policies.

What are you trying to hide with your image?
We spend centuries trying to perfect the outer shell,
Leaving the treasure beneath to rot in vain.
We have succeeded in painting a wonderful billboard,
Of ourselves and our “civilised” society
Even while two-thirds of the world
Rots in vain,
Even while we ourselves,
Bicker amongst each other
About petty nonentities and conflicting egoistic desires.

How “cool” and how “civilised”.

When death comes,
Let us be glad in knowing only that we have wasted our lives
In baseless assumption,
Presumptuous greed,
Utter ignorance
And rampant selfishness.
Let us be proud of our superior, civilised, modern, Western, secular selves,
And our wonderful ideologies, theories and philosophies,
Which have only contributed to helping the FEW grow fat
On the flesh of the MANY.

Fruits of the CIVILIZED

2007-09-01T03:19:00.000-07:00

So, how to be objective
When we are forever bombarded by the fragmentation of baseless consumerism, materialism,
So proud of itself, and its glorious achievements,
Displaying its trophies of wealth and power
To itself
And to its billions of victims, past and present,
Whose blood, sweat and bones still feed its hungry maw?

For it is obvious, is it not?
That these dreams we weave for our own amusement,
Are based only on the unquestionable principle of self-interest,
The single ultimate god of secularism,
Spawning a thousand ugly, beguiling faces.
It is obvious, that we act in blindness and lust,
Not thought, not reflection, not understanding.

And yet, we claim that this system of ours
Is so superior, and all-powerful.

And yet, we claim to uphold “moral” values
Even while the corpses of a million children
Topple, prey to international “aid”-programmes.

Is THIS the meaning of “rationality”?
Pointing at values we don’t believe in
To pretend to ourselves that it’s not our fault?
Or is this a sign of cunning, self-inflicted schizophrenia?
Or maybe, more likely,
We ease our guilt-trips with hefty self-propaganda.

How to be objective,
When we accept the ideological fabrications our politicians invent
To placate us, and continue their merry game
Of economic domination?
How to be objective
When we refuse to think for ourselves,
To investigate ourselves,
To reflect upon existence,
To notice the insanity of a system which idolises the status-quo?
How to be objective
When we remain utterly and complacently embedded
In our alienated worlds
Of friends, family, work, play, fun and sorrow?

We don’t want to know
Because in knowing, we would have to face our responsibility.
But whether we face it or not,

WE ARE RESPONSIBLE.

Schizophrenic

2007-09-01T03:16:00.000-07:00

How can a community of self-orientated freaks
Ever truly care for each other?

Our societies, built on this extreme liberalism,
This “mememe” ideology,
Preclude room for love, and concern for justice,
For real values other than our own
Empty, blind egos.

If only we tried
To understand and define life itself,
We might know that life only has its fulfilment in values
Beyond our isolated selves.

For we do not merely have rights,
But we have responsibilities:
The rights we each have a claim on
Are the responsibilities of us all to protect.
But what has become of the human race?

No longer do we recognise our responsibility to the world.
No longer do we see that the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters,
Who are starving, being slaughtered in supposedly distant lands,
Have anything to do with us.
Arrogance and indifference are our
Shameless mottoes.

The notion of the “human race”
And of “civilisation”
And of “modernisation”
And of “humanism”
Are nothing but media-driven ideological constructs
Which ease our lazy consciences.

We care nothing for them,
For the underprivileged,
For the blatantly deprived,
For the many who are born with their future
Pre-donated to the maw of Western greed.
Injustice and corruption, as widespread as they are,
Are no longer recognised as unwanted intrusions on the landscape of human
existence.

We have, instead, welcomed them in
And asked them to make themselves at home,
As long as they pay good rent.
It seems, as one race, one people,
We know only facets of ourselves.

Blood on my hands

2007-09-01T03:15:00.000-07:00

We play our little games,
Pursue our pointless pleasures,
Consume billions of pounds on parties and politics,
Waste our time boozing and shooting-up,
Drowning in these fashions, these illusory conventions we call “life”.

Two-thirds of the world lies helpless, hopeless,
Crushed beneath the dark hands of
Persecution, Oppression, Poverty, Pain, Injustice
(the hidden faces of the gods of secularism),
While the rest of us revel in unquestioned,
Unquestionable lifestyles,
Utterly divorced from Reality and any insight into It.

The Machine that feeds one-third of the world,
Bleeds the rest of it,
Though it pretends to care, to do all it can,
Pretends to uphold values like Peace, Justice, Unity and Love.

Who powers this Machine?
Who passes these rules and regulations,
These laws and norms,
But the ignorant hypocrites who,
In the name of “democracy” and “human rights” and “equal opportunity”,
Divide the human family into self-obsessed tribes,
Each attempting to devour the wealth that belongs to all?

Who devours the wealth of all,
Leaving an invisible majority
To suffer,
To rot,
To weep,
And to die, in vain?

We are sheep following one another.
We are slaves to our own ignorance,
Servants of our insane desires,
Worshippers of the empty idol of egoism.

Society is blind and lost,
Veiling itself from its own eyes.
The extent to which we have become
Materialistic, self-orientated creeps
Has made it impossible to realise the essence of Truth
And the values which express it,
Like Love, Justice and Unity.

We do not live by these values.
They are nothing to us but names which we have named,
Billboards which tell fairy-tales,
Long ridiculed in the “real world”,
Under the guise of upholding them.
We, instead, live according to what we “want”
And our lives revolve around the construction
Of ever new and illusory ways of pleasing ourselves to escape ourselves.

(Ch. 5) The Art of Living

2006-10-23T07:50:00.002-07:00

Art.
What is “art”?
At its most deep and basic level, art is expression.
Everything is art.
We are surrounded by art:

the way we talk; the way we eat; the way we smile;
The way we hate; the way we love; the way we work; the way we dream.
The way we act is simply an expression of what we are, or what we have let ourselves become. And in this sense, life is art.

Art, as a creative process, is often a
Conscious expression of an idea, a theme, an emotion, a perception.
Every move we make is art,
Conscious or unconscious.
The world we have all contributed to sculpting,
Which, in turn, sculpts us,
Is art, a reflection of the collective labyrinth of our hearts.

Art is about bringing out what is within,
A process of manifestation,
Since manifestation is the primary essence of expression.
Art is therefore the endeavour to know oneself,
To bring out what lies within, and to perceive it, to understand it.

In expressing a perception, a feeling, an idea,
One is portraying what is within oneself,
What one grasps with one’s consciousness,
To what is without oneself and within the “other”;
One is communicating, bridging the gap between hearts,
Dissolving separation.
Art is a striving towards a certain harmony between all beings, towards unity.
Art is the endeavour to become one with oneself,
To understand oneself,
By contemplating what is brought forth out of oneself in the creative process;
It is the endeavour to become one with others,
In the act of conveying to the heart of others,
What one’s own heart comprehends;
It is the endeavour for self-realisation,
And realisation of the unity of all hearts.

Art is a striving against that which separates and deludes,
A movement towards the attainment of the knowledge
That division and conflict are the overflow of illusion.
The perfection of art is the erosion of illusion
And the evolution of a pristine, unitary vision of life and reality.
The true artist is one who,
Perhaps unwittingly,
Is attempting to grind away the barriers of self-deceit within the soul,
To topple the walls of misunderstanding that divide all souls.
The true artist is one who,
Whether they know it or not,
Aims to dissolve all such fragmentation,
To heal the wounds scattered within and without,
To bring us to an unadulterated clarity,
A pristine awareness of the deep relationship
Which is the Root and Sky of all things.

The true artist is not merely one who paints,
Who composes songs,
Who sculpts,
Who writes poetry or prose,
But is someone who starkly perceives the fragmentation of their own being,
Of society,
And who, through art,
Seeks to draw their being - and all beings - together,
In the name of achieving the vision of Truth.

The true artist is one
Who carries the endeavour for the perfection of art
Into all spheres of life,
For it is only upon the vast canvas of Life Itself
That art can reach its fullest possible perfection,
That unity can have its fullest possible expression.

The perfection of the art of living,
Which embraces, transcends and includes all modes of art,
Is the goal of the true artist.
Real art lies not in painting,
Not in writing,
Not in singing,
But in living,
For it is only in living that life has its purest and most meaningful expression.

Thus, the deepest and most crucial question
The artist must constantly seek insight into
Is that which asks,
“What is the meaning, the purpose, the reality,
That life itself is supposed to express,
What is the supreme ineffable mystery that alone is worthy of expression?”

It is a meaning that overflows from the Supreme Unity
Which embraces all things,
That the true artist intuitively seeks to unveil.
The artist is contantly searching for insight into this,
Not merely in the various modes of art recognised by a culture,
But in life itself,
For it is the perfection of living that is true art.

Art is the endeavour for love:
For in striving to know oneself, to know the other,
To reveal oneself to oneself, to reveal oneself to the other,
In striving to unite all
In the apprehension of what is within and without,
One is striving to give expression to the relationship,
The Compassion, the Majesty, the Beauty,
Which is the Root and Sky of all things.

A work of art reflects,
In some way,
The artist who worked it.
In any creative act there is a symbol of some dimension of the artist’s being.
Any expression is a manifestation of a living depth that yearns to be known.
Art is an expression of the yearning to be known and to know.
Art is the recognition that only in relationship are we real as individuals.
Art is the realisation that reality is perfect relationship, endless compassion, all-embracing Unity.

We are all unconscious artists,
Carving our lives brutally in the sensitive flesh of Nature.
We should learn not to carve, but to flow with the secret song of Truth
That guides the Universe we are so divorced from.
We wonder why life can be so brutal,
But is it not sheer ignorance of the sovereignty of harmony,
That guides our driven fingers to contruct this wasteland of egoism we call “life”?
Reality repays humanity with what humanity itself strives to be.
Who is to blame for unnoticed injustice and corruption,
Except the lame artist
Who paints, who sings, who writes,
Who works, rests and plays
Without knowing why?
Who is to blame for ignorance, suffering and disharmony,
Except the divided humanity that knows not what it means to be human?
Who would deny the reality of the pain of those without shelter?
Those whose stomachs bulge in malnutrition?
Those whose hearts ache in hopelessness?
Those who are poverty-stricken?
Starving?
Thirsty?
Bereaved?
Orphaned?
Oppressed?
Those who are the victims of a sick system?
Those who surround us, yet remain invisible?

Is it not the blind artist of humanity, that maims its Mother,
That maims itself, in the name of fun, pleasure and power,
That cuts at its own body,
Deaf to its own howls of torment, horror and despair?

Blind to the blood that streams down our stricken cheeks,
Deaf to our cries that yearn for mercy and hope,
Dumb because the intoxicated drug-soaked sponge of our consciousness
Keeps us ignorant of the truth,
Drunk, uncoordinated, incoherent.

And when Truth chooses to awaken this “artist”,
And surely It shall,
What will stop us from beholding the Beauty, the Majesty, of Truth Itself,
What will prevent us from trembling in terror
At the realisation of our pettiness, our blindness,
What will halt us on our reckoning with Justice,
With our own wounds, our own scars, our own insanity?
For life is but a dream on the way to death,
And death, an awakening unto the reality of life.

Nature is the work of the
Ultimate Artist,
All things dance to Its secret melody
Of harmony, wisdom and peace.
And we are Its vicegerents,
Come to paint the only picture worth painting.

But so far have we fallen
From Truth’s sweet embrace,
So low have we become
Compared to the height of love’s glory.

Die before ye die:
Awaken to reality from the dream of your life,
Before death rips open your eyelids
And you can do nothing but behold the Truth
Of Love and Justice
That shows you what you are
And what you have become.

What have we made of life?
For us, life is a dream that we weave for ourselves
In a haze of ignorant assumption.
Life is a labyrinth of need and desire,
Of pain and pleasure,
Of work and play,
So predictable in its small pointless surprises.
So many things have we invented to pass the time,
So many goals, so many amusements, so many tasks,
On the foundations of some ineffable drive to be.
(To be what? What does it mean to be?)

We know not the Aim
So we invent our own ones.
We know not the Path
So we tread where we like.
We are scattered about in our isolated dreams,
Tossed to and fro by tides of our own making.
The world we have sculpted is a manifestation of what we have become.
We are surrounded by a symbol of ourselves.
These ugly cities and trash-ridden slums,
These wasted villages and smoke-filled skies,
These heart-hungry bullets and blood-thirsty bombs,
These money-craving business men and war-torn nations,
These luxurious decadent elites and oppressed poverty-stricken masses,
Are but facets of the world
That is but a reflection of the hearts which sustain it.
We are swamped in the pointlessness of our own art,
Immersed in the relativity of our own values,
Caught in the web of our own confusion.

We are so ignorant and yet we do not even acknowledge
Our own ignorance.

The drug that soaks the sponge of our minds
Is our own global self-portrait, self-deceit.
We are blinded by our own reflection,
Bombarded by the emergent insanity of our collective vanity.
Our language, our culture, our politics, our economics, our ideals, our norms,
Express the fragmentation at the very core of our being.

Art without the spirit of its own nature -
To become awake -
Is but perversion and blindness.

True art
Art that is true to itself
Is meditation,
Its goal being insight into oneself,
And mutual compassion.
A work of art is a window into the soul of the artist.
True art is a bridge between hearts,
A purging of the impurity of illusions that divide people.
Art is a resurrection of inner depth,
Inward plenitude,
An eruption of emotion,
Of intense tranquility,
A flower plucked from a land of forgotten dreams.

What is this land of forgotten dreams?

It is but the reality of our relationship,
Our unity as brothers, as sisters,
Our oneness
Through the Unity that embraces all things.
Art is remembrance.

Our art reflects what we become, and what we are devoted to.
But we are artists, who know not why.
We paint our history a schizophrenic portrait
Because we know not why, we know not how
And we do not care.

Chapter 5. This House of Death

2006-10-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

We think we are alive,
But in our ignorance of life,
We fail to truly live.

Hence, in truth,
We are corpses,
Subsisting only on self-deceit.

(Ch. 4) Liberation

2006-10-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

Only when you are free of yourself
Can you be yourself.

Only when you forsake yourself
Do you find yourself.

Only in the bondage of unity
Does freedom take flight.

(Ch. 4) Buried

2006-10-20T22:50:00.001-07:00

The joy and innocence of childhood
Have been buried with our love.
But we don’t mourn at the funeral.
Instead, we party the night away,
Like madmen,
Oblivious of the execution that tomorrow will bring.
If we weren’t so oblivious,
We’d realise that the door to our cell had been open all the time.

(Ch. 4) Idiocy

2006-10-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

I woke that day
With my head in the sand.
I refused the dream of love
So I dived for the dust instead.
It’s hard to cleanse your heart of impurity
When your heart’s impurity is the blood of the world’s veins.

The world’s veins have pumped media-propaganda
Into oblivion’s hungry maw,
Since we pretended to live.
This world of ours is the world within our twisted hearts.

Are you sick of your self yet?

(Ch. 4) Open Palm

2006-10-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

We’ve painted history a messy portrait,
A disfigured mangle of tragic beauty.
We don’t know what we’re reaching for
From the gallery of archetypes that reigns over our hearts.
Which is why we can’t reach.

(Ch. 4) If You Want

2006-10-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

If you want
I can tell you why I feel so empty.

I’ll tell you anyway.

Though I can still smile,
Still “have a laugh”, as they say,
What these eyes, these ears, this heart have witnessed,
Has sobered me inside.

The way we live;

The way we only care about
fun and livelihood and status and power and wealth
And “achievement” and all the other gods of secularism;

The way we don’t tolerate real love, real compassion,
Real pain;

The way we don’t care about the Truth, and fail
to wonder what it all means,
As if we have some kind of irrefutable proof that there is no meaning;

The way we are so indifferent to our brothers, our sisters,
Being slaughtered, raped, abandoned to decadence;

The way I spend my days trying to bear the blood pouring from our slit
wrists;

The way I try to work the sorrow out of my heart;

The way I try to shed the skin of my soul that
Carries these persistent burning scars;

The way life seems more of a burden every hour,
Because we’ve laden it with pointless lies
Of a system so sick,
Lies that occupy our entire spaced-out attention.

I don’t know why we live the way we do -- though in a sense I do.
But I don’t want this.
I don't think many of us do.

But if you want
We can build crystal wings
Out of the fresh tears of compassionate hearts,
And fly away to the depths of Wisdom,
Soar to the shade of Truth,
And live in understanding.

(Chapter 4.) Tunnel

2006-10-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

I’m searching for

something

That can fill this emptiness.
I’m searching for fulfilment,

Though, somehow, I know that
Only by forsaking fulfilment
Will I be fulfilled.

(Ch. 3) Epitaph

2006-09-30T02:54:00.000-07:00

What’s most important in life
Is learning,
Understanding,
Caring,
Knowing.
What’s most important in life
Is friendship,
Joy,
Sorrow,
Love.
What’s most important in life
Is peace,
Justice,
Wisdom,
In all: surrender to Truth.
This, alone, is the meaning of purity.

(Ch. 3) What it Means

2006-09-30T02:53:00.000-07:00

All nature surrenders to Reality.
Everyday, every night,
Reality is harmonising with itself
And only where there is harmony can there be growth,
A step towards perfection.

Life is, naturally, about living.
But we know not what it means to live.
How, then, can we truly live
In such utter ignorance?

I really feel
That only love can set us free.
But I know that most of us
Know nothing of love -
We only know that we are blind and lonely,
Or else we know nothing except that we crave for MORE.

It is only our loveless hearts,
Our indifference to anything other than our own
Pointless desires
That legitimises slaughter and oppression.

But love is not a mere sentiment.
It is to live in light of the Truth,
In light of the unity of all things
Through the living Mystery of Existence Itself.

(Ch. 3) They Say

2006-09-30T02:51:00.000-07:00

They say that love is blind.
But do they know what love is?
Ask them. They will falter and wonder,
And be unable to answer.

They know not what love is,
And they call love “blind”.
In fact, it is their own hearts which are blind,
While love is sight.
For love is the cognition of
The unity of being,
For what they call “love”
Is nothing but idolisation.

Love is an opening of the soul
Unto the Source of Purity.
It is the recognition
Of hearts and their unity.
It is the infinite caring
For the other’s well-being.
It is to heal the past
And live the dream.
Love is a power
That blossoms within
An overflow of tenderness
That washes away sins.
Love is a melody
That praises the Pure,
A vision of Reality
To which all things are lured.

Love is an awakening of the spirit,
Though the blind ones would fail to understand,

Love, in fact, is Purity,
And to love is to be purified by the Source,
And to be loved is to be free
From all bondage to the cage of materiality.

(Ch. 3) Broke

2006-09-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

The night is still and whispering
As the fabric of faded memories,
Half-remembered dreams,
Bury me in my pit of awareness.

A strange, sweet melancholy is touching my heart,
Permeating each breath I take.
It diffuses within me, into something hopeless.

I’ve wondered and wandered,
Shackled ingeniously by my own ignorance.
And yet, caved in beneath my world - my fleeting truth
Of dawning loss -
My heart pumps oceans of grief
Through confused veins
As I recall again, the torn tapestry of pain and salvation
That was once my home and sanctuary.
But the cosmos is dancing
To the Mystery’s secret melody.
I cannot decipher its beauty.
I cannot lift this elusive veil.

Inside, a vast emptiness fills me,
Fills the gap between scattered feelings.
Each feeling is a waterfall of intensity,
A waterfall of emotion
That leaves me dry.

I am lonely
Because most of us are blind,
And content in our self-imposed blindness
To wallow in illusions of our own fabrication.

But we wallow at the expense of a billion innocent, screaming flowers,
Cut down by the scythe of over-consumption,
Harvested to fill the bellies of the few.
Men, women and children weep
Because their hope has been taken
In the name of the “national interest” of
A luxurious minority.
And still we fail to understand the beauty,
Still we fail to hear nature’s melody,
Beckoning us to contemplation,
Calling us to see through it
Into the Beyond which sustains it
And permeates it.

So what is the point of living like this?
Without meaning, without purpose,
Only vain illusions
We worship to keep from facing the terror of boredom.

What is the point?

(Ch. 3) My Lost Beloved

2006-09-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

Days are weary,
Caught in the sorrow of lost fervour.

I spoke once to the sky,
But she speaks to me no longer.

All dreams have been left to dissipate,
They wither away like unwatered flowers.

No solace lies awaiting me,
While each second passes like an hour.

History is a land of hopes and dreams
Turned to bitter stone.

Tomorrow is merely molten steel,
Yet to be forged.

I walk among the ruins of my beloved History,
Weeping.

I swim within the boiling turmoil of Tomorrow,
Hoping.

Redemption lies far off, beyond the grasp of my tired eyes,
But I call for it anyway, in desperation,
Waiting for these bleeding scars to be healed and replaced
With unmolested flesh.

I have been waiting for too long already.
I have been waiting for too long, God help me.

… so would you like to know my pain?
Let me explain…

This tender rose,
Its scent so pure and sweet,
I admire it from a distance
As it stands,
So beautiful and innocent,
Beckoning to the endless sky
With silken petals laden lightly with morning dew.

But as I stand,
A man emerges from unknown shadows.
He walks to the flower
And caresses it gently,
Then he squeezes its petals,
And begins to pluck them off
One by one.

I scream at him to stop,
As each pluck sends shivers of agony
Trembling down my spine.

He doesn’t seem to hear me
As he proceeds to wrench the rose
From its roots.

The blood of innocence is spilled,
Because the flower of love
Is uprooted by the careless hand of one
Who is outcast from Nature,
In his ignorance and selfishness.

The flower of my dreams
Was plucked from my heart
And ever since I have been bleeding inside
And screaming,
For redemption.

Screaming
For redemption.

And thus, my life is a broken vessel -

My love, the blood that has spilled from within
Onto the blistered concrete.
My dreams, the shattered remnants
Left behind.
My hope, the stench as this liquid putrefies
Into nothingness.
Because it is “man” who has come
And raped this earth,
Plucking its fruits until the trees
Are crooked and barren,
Until the soil is reduced to dry grit,
Until the animals weep while
Their homes are crushed
In the name of “man’s” pleasure and comfort,
In the name of the human ego.

But not only this.

Because it is this world built by “man”, this civilization,
That stole my beloved from me,
And caged her within a dream that seemed could never be:

This world,
It mocks Love,
And tramples on her children.

And now the sacred blood
Of the lovers of Love
Is swallowed greedily
By this careless society
With its system sick
And its culture crooked.

And that is why I am always bleeding…
O my friend! Do you understand?

Do you understand?

(Ch. 3) The Future

2006-09-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

Another politician preaches
Of a new world order,
A new reign of peace and security
To rival all other ages.

LIAR:

Your “future” is a hole of twisted deception,
The child of an agony,
Blind to itself.

I’m roaming your pretty streets,
Your proud city of pain and ignorance,
In futility, searching for the Truth you hope to forget.
The Truth of how you are raping this earth
Until it bleeds itself dead.
The Truth of how you are slaughtering millions of innocents
With the scythe of the “free” market, and your twisted structural “reforms”.

But your lies have stolen the eyes of my heart,
Your rantings punctured the Truth in my soul
And now I cannot feel.

Like your home and sanctuary,
I have become
Numb to life, to reality.

(Ch. 3) My Tainted Blood

2006-09-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

Frustrated and chained
To the weight of frustration,
The grief of its persistency
Chews my seething brain.

Do you know why?
Do you see?

Or has the sickness of the system
Blinded your love?
Has the sickness of the world
Become the sickness of your heart?

What will it take my careless friend,
To cleanse us of ourselves,
To purge us of our tainted blood?

(Ch. 3) Pretty Flame

2006-09-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

Everything is burning
And we’re throwing ourselves on the flames,
Stoking the fire with a thousand limbs.
Still chained to the endless mayhem of twisted pleasure,
Soiled fuses merging with a convulsing mass
Of one for one
Against the all.

No one stops to
Think or breathe or care or love.

The pain of self-obsession pummels inside,
Breaking.
I can feel it,
The urge to emerge
With a blistered heart
And a broken hand.

Our blistered hands clutch our broken hearts,
As we watch the soiled flower of love
Wither within its pretty flame.

We’re soaked in delusion,
A pretence of love, shrouding the truth of self-worship.
Pointless pleasure-seeking makes the world go round,
Because we’re towing the wreckage of dusted rainbows
Into the fire of dirty dreams.
Unfulfilled, though we may not know it,
We reach for what we cannot grasp
And hang by the rope cast to save ourselves.

We’re riding destiny, mad and blind,
And now destiny’s hand is mad and blind.

Chapter 3. Confused Waking Dreams

2006-09-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

Intensity
Became me.
I was high and powerful on
The relentless force of evolution,
Yet weak and empty, when I thought of our world.

The dream of life
Began to change me.
Silent convulsions warped my soul
As I floated into some kind of awakening,
Ever wondering.

(Ch. 2) Carousel

2006-09-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

I tug the luminous yellow curtains aside
And the world outside my window bursts into my room
With a bright boom of glaring light,
Chasming skies,
Cotton clouds and
Life in general.
The sparkling energy of existence throws off the blanket of sleep
From my once dormant mind, a welcome intrusion.
I vault over the king-size bed, fling my cupboard open
And grab a pile of clothes from the

dark depths

Within.
Through a half-open drawer, my searching hands grasp
Bundles of fuming socks, until at last,
A single solitary pair of

gleaming

White socks, lays emanating a bright, almost holy aura
At the bottom of the drawer.

I pull them out and wield them triumphantly over my head,
Clutching them like a prize,
Surrounded by a mountain of
Peculiar smelling footwear.
Like magic,
I find myself dressed and ready to let rip.
I hurtle out of the door and leap onto the first step

except

The step isn’t there
Never is
Never was
Never will be
And I open my mouth to scream, but

Everything I am is engulfed
By the Void,
The plane of non-existence,
The empty limbo of dreams, and
I can say, “Farewell!” to my visions of victory,
Growth,
New levels of comprehension,
Because I’m falling,
Into myself,
Into some kind of oblivion of egoism, into -

And then I wake up.
I stare at the old clock on the wall,
Uncomprehendingly,
Sweating.
Slowly,
I begin to drift back to sleep, before
I realise.

I’m late.

A voice says, what the hell, go back to sleep.
Another voice says, I’m late.
Someone else says, do I really care.
Then a voice tells me to ignore someone else and get on with my life.
Someone else pulls out an axe and tells some other voice to shut-up or die.
Another voice pulls out a bazooka and grins insanely.
The first voice pulls out a tank of nuclear warheads, drooling, beginning to breathe heavily.
Another voice pulls out -

I jump up, wide awake.
“I’m late!” I cry, escalating through the ceiling.

And then I wake up.
I wonder why I keep waking up all the time,
Lying in bed.
I just want to sleep,

regenerate

Explore the depths of reality beyond normal perceptions.
I’m totally awake, but I don’t want to get up.
Suddenly,
I hear a resonating howl from downstairs.
Someone screams, “Fire! Fire!”
My head pops out from under the sheets.
The door is flung open and my dad runs in wielding
A red fire-extinguisher.
He points the nozzle at my face, screaming, “Fire! Fire!”
Like a raving loony.
A bright, raging flame blasts from the hose into
My shocked face.

And then I wake up.
I am beginning to become seriously pissed off with this
Waking up business.
The phone is shrieking, like a hysterical mouse.
I clamber wearily out of bed and labour towards the phone.
My tired aching limbs push me onwards
Through the sea of destruction,
Through the torn mountains of aging books,
Through the fuming mounds of moldy socks,
Through the shattered wrecks of furniture,
Through the slicing, jagged edges of scattered stationary,
Through all the other monuments that inhabit
The unknown lands of my bedroom.
And through all this,
The phone,
That shrieks from its hell-hole of tidiness,
Screaming its pleading call from its disgustingly organised shelf,
Bellows from its dreaded expanse of mind-withering neatness.

My trembling hand reaches out to grasp the vibrating receiver.

The phone stops ringing.
“O, fu-”

And then I wake up.
My eyes are shut.
Zipped shut.
Buttoned shut.
I reach up to unzip and unbutton them.
My hand doesn’t move.
I reach up again, straining
To no avail.
I try to get up
But still, I lie there.
I struggle

struggle

With the useless husk of flesh, bone and sinew that is my body,
Grapple with it for control,
Pushing,
Straining.
It occurs to me.
Within a world-wind of thoughts,
A single idea,
One in a boundless infinity,
Surfaces, escapes the humdrum of madness
And meanders to consciousness.
A striking, blinding impact of shock
Crushes me into myself,
Grinds me into a pulp of energy,
A mesh of mangled, pulsing-

And then I wake up.
I am in a crowded, bleak, dirty, ugly street. It is noisy.
I am striding down the pavement beside a red haired woman.
She is quite pretty, but she looks unreal, cartoony,
Like something out of a comic-book.
She is wearing some sort of futuristic looking suit
Of metallic blue, with a few yellow strips here and there.
I ask her about my situation: why I keep waking up out into
Weird dreams.
She looks at me with her warm eyes.
“You are trapped,” she says. “You are the-”
I hear some trumpets trumpet victoriously
“- Dream Warrior, who passes through the dimensions of psyche to discover Truth.
You cannot escape, unless you are worthy of escape.”
“Sounds cool,” I reply, surprised at the fact that I am not surprised.
“But why ‘Dream Warrior’, of all names?” I laugh loudly.
“Dream Warrior,” I chuckle,

contemplating

The name. I giggle stupidly for a while.
“What a corny name. Why don’t they call me ‘Freddy Crooger: the Nice One’? Ha! Ha!”
I laugh crazily at my rather crap joke. The woman lifts a hand,
Stopping me. Her hair is not red, I realise, it’s actually a very dark shade of brown.
“You start working now, for tomorrow,” she says, stripping off her suit,
“Is Judgement Day.” She is now wearing a blue raincoat with yellow stripes.
I stare incredulously.
Suddenly, the ground rumbles.
Everyone is screaming and fleeing from something in wild terror.
The woman smiles at me and points. I follow her finger.
I see a band
Playing a song.
The drummer pulls out a revolver and points it at the lead singer
Who is thrashing a guitar and

yelling

Into a microphone.
The bullet whistles towards him, but suddenly swerves towards
Me.
I scream at my female companion.
I scream at my female companion again.
She shows me her hands and says, profoundly: “Bullet-proof nail-varnish.”
I scream as the bullet
Embeds itself in my right-eye,
In a spray of mucus and blood and flesh and pus and bones and skin and brains and -

And then I wake up.
My friend is on the floor, a bullet in his right-eye.
O no.
I have to find a way to stop the cycle.
I can’t believe it.
I can’t believe it.
My friend is on the floor
And I can smell the blood, the smoke.
I glance around me and see myself in a street, an alley.
All is
dark

And I can barely see.
I rise and step into the black.

And then I wake up.
I walk onto the bus, pay the fare and step up to the man
On the seat,
Visions of vengeance pulsing in my heart.
“Hello,” I say, pulling out a jar of tippex.
I unscrew it as he turns to me.
“What do you want, terrorist PAKI????” he smirks.
I can see the disgust on his face,
Smell the arrogance on his breath,
Taste the mirth in his voice.
I can

remember

“Here,” I say, offering him the open jar of white liquid.
“A gift from me to you.”
He turns to his mates and laughs, so I shove his head into the window.
The glass shatters
And I can feel the cold wind
Blasting into my tired eyes,
As I empty the jar into his inviting ear.
Suddenly, I am dragged to the floor in a flurry of
Hands and swearing.

I feel a boot slam into my chest
And the wind is kicked out of me.
My arms and legs are held down and a fist

cracks

Into my jaw.
“You nutters!” I scream. “You’ve lost it! You deserve every thing you bloody g-”
Another fist crumples my nose and I realise I am

crying

Again, again, the blows come powering
And I writhe
On the floor of the bus.
“Help!” I cry, but no one comes and
I can taste my blood,
My pain.
Then a leg comes loose and I throw it between someone’s eyes.
A muffled groan, a twist and I come

free

I roll to my feet and spin round before tripping backwards
Onto the floor.
Someone falls onto me and
Sudden agony arcs through my stomach.
I yell and recoil, grabbing wildly at my abdomen.
Wetness and more pain and I clutch at something cold and hard,
Smash it into my attacker, throwing him off me.
And then I stagger to my feet, shrieking insanely,
Waving the object I hold, randomly, in front of me.
Everything is hazy,
Blurring away, as I
Stumble,
Throw the thing in my hand at someone,
Fall to my knees,
Tears gushing from my eyes.
Then someone’s boot is in my skull
And I feel rage and blood and hurting -

And then I wake up.
I don’t understand.
I don’t understand.
Where is everyone?
Why will no one help?
“Put your hand into the fire,” says a voice.
I can see the flame as it writhes beguilingly,
Feel its flickering heat painting my face with sweat.
“Put your hand into the fire,” says the voice.
I reach out towards the fire with my right hand,
The warmth cosily oozing up my fingertips, as they
Flex in hesitation.
“Put your hand into the fire.”
The flame seems to offer warmth, security, escape.
I shove my hand in -

And then I wake up
And nothing’s secure.
I’m turning in the water, turning
And everywhere I look is the same.
I hold my breath for a few fleeting seconds
Before my lungs give way.
A sudden rush of water,
Inhaling,
I am poisoned,
I am drowning,
Immersed in the elixir of life,
I am drowning.

Immersed in the elixir of life,
We are drowning,
Unaware of what haven lies
Beyond the surface
Of our chaotic ignorance.

(Ch. 2) Barely Awake

2006-08-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

Mysteries
Which none wish to solve
Or even perceive, consider,
Emanate from the
Beyond.

I’m reaching through the Mystery with polished eyes,
Into the
Beyond,
To become one with something beyond becoming.

It feels like this almost all the time,
As if my mind is open to
Something more real than what I know.

I’m yearning for regeneration,
A jam with Death,
Inflamed and drained
As my bleeding heart
Pumps void into my twisted, tangled veins.
It feels like my bones have been vacuumed.

Chapter 2. Born Again

2006-08-30T16:25:00.000-07:00

I saw that the Mystery I sought to know
Was the same as Life Itself.
I guess I began to be a little wise.
But these small evolutions
Only seemed to mutate my heart in other ways.

Confusion was now stamped on my mutated forehead,
And on everything I touched.
But still,
I saw through my friends.
I saw through our world.
I saw through myself.

The World was wonderful.
Our world was bleak.

Bleak.
Each realisation stretched my bones,
Until life became a symbolic dream,
Nightmare, dream,
Nightmare, dream...

(Ch. 1) Beyond the Womb

2006-08-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

So I step out of myself for a while,
To reflect on this world into which we’ve all been thrown.
And I dream.
I dream of life,
So far, yet so near.
I dream of death
And I fear death.
I fear this Unknown beyond my comprehension.

In an endless sky of dreams undealt,
The air is alive with the scent of living.
Everything talks to me;
The unreachable stars;
The cool, crisp grass;
The soaring rivers;
They sing in endless delight
At the fact that they exist,
Glowing like the evening sun,
Because life is a dream
And we are naught but dreamers,
Tiny cuts in an endless scar.

But this world we have built remains a sordid place,
A haze of twisted memories,
A mist of toxic, mingled emotions,
A cradle of birth and death
And crooked lives of bland lust, desire,
Unfulfilled cravings for something MORE,
Something which burns the mind,
Inflames the soul,
That opens our closed worlds of twisted dreams
And mingled memories,
Unto Existence.

Yet,
Every day is a resurrection
In a world where we love only to hate
And laugh.
We yearn for purpose,
But worship frustration,
Each of us a merry leaf,
Scattered by the winds of reformation.

It sometimes seems that time carves everything out of everyone.

Global hypocrisy makes me
Hurl and spit,
Laugh and puke.
For I am watching as friends return to dust.
Watching as friends are
Freely hurled by the winds
And spat by the rains,
Screaming for the world as friends
Turn to fools,
Prey to the vulture of ignorant idiocy.
Running and raging as friends
Scavenge off themselves
And slaughter one another
In the name of the ego.
Small pleasures explode into caverns of horrible sorrow,
Self-inflicted to fulfil vague needs for fulfilment.
Vicious circles clash
And we feed off ourselves, in the name of the gods of secularism:
Power, Wealth, Territory, Status.

So, I can’t help but wish for a better world
And a better hope
And a better love,
As I watch us all
Dance with one another
In the name of ourselves,
Round and round our global carousel,
Victims of gleeful parody.

Time is a healer,
And fate, an inflicter.

I watch as we dance,
Freaks for fun
And nothing else.
I feel so bitter
At a world of beings so ignorant,
Who sit and think they know everything
There is to know.
Even while half of them are dying in
“Far off lands”.

In the name of Power, Wealth, Territory and Status,
Our leaders grin,
And swing the blunt scythe of greedy insanity.

In the name of their gods,
They murder, slaughter, devour the flesh of
A thousand screaming flowers.

Liberation seems too far down a lonely path,
Because we cling to an emptiness -
To what must inevitably pass.
Ruled by one another, thoughts and emotions,
We cage ourselves in the name of fulfilment,
Grabbing at every fleeting pleasure.

There is no turning back.
In this world of backward beings,There is no turning back.

(Ch. 1) .... zonked...

2006-08-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

No one
Thinks about what I think about.
Or maybe I’m wrong.
Because I can’t take the confusion,
The pressure of trying to understand,
Because people are pathetic
And I’m one of them,
One of you,
And everything messes me up
While I mess up everything.
But no one understands,
So full of ourselves,
Worshipping our fragile egos.
But it doesn’t matter.
Nothing really matters
Though everything’s important.
I wish...
I wish I knew what to wish for.

(Ch. 1) In the Mirror

2006-08-28T01:45:00.000-07:00

But I’m no saint either:

Because in the Mirror
Every fresh morning,
I see the Ogre of my Nightmares
Stare into my dopey eyes.
The drooling, hulking, ugly truth,
Shifting its stinking, bony bulk of

Wasted torn muscle,
Rubbery, dripping skin.

The creature that seems dormant within me,
The seether,
The hater,
The user,
The egoistic moron.

I squint into the Ogre’s eyes,
They should be mine
But they aren’t.
So whose are they?
These eyes that stare back.
The dark, soulless orbs
Of something within me
But NOT ME,
Stare into whose eyes?

Yes, this sordid civilization is built
From the blindness of a billion empty souls,A billion hearts of broken stone.

(Ch. 1) But Still...

2006-08-28T01:44:00.000-07:00

But still, all I cared about
Was going out and having fun,
And being with friends,
And the Mystery was far, far away
In a shoe-box underneath my bed.
Nothing mattered but the “joy” of the moment,
The excitement of being “free”.

Of couse,
I couldn’t carry on like that forever.
Time had to drag us onwards
Into new truths.

As the joy and the pain crystallised in my heart,
I began to see through them,
Though they engulfed me, and I them.

There was something else.
I was remembering the Mystery of Existence Itself,
And every feeling, every thought, was calling me to that.
But I was so confused about who I was and
Who I’d be
And
Why we were
And
Why the news was always so horrendous,
And
Why none of us seemed to care about anything
Apart from what we were doing.

One thing that’s always frightened me,
Is how little we love anymore,
How little we care
For our fellow creatures,For anything other than our empty egos.

(Ch. 1) A Tortured Dawning

2006-08-27T05:19:00.000-07:00

But if the ones who dominated this sorry globe wouldn’t mind
We could be so much more.

Because the pain of a million children, cries
For alleviation.
Because the blood this system spills is thick;
The milk we aid our fellows with, sour;
The sky we dazzle our dreams with, empty;

We burn and we lose,
Our priorities twisted.
In our confusion we forge laws,
Under the guise of freedom,
That chain us to this international machine.
In our desperation we invent pleasures,
Fleeting dreams that pass the time.
And still we refuse to stop and wonder
What on earth it all means.

I was wondering what it all means.
So I visited the wise ones,
Appointed by those who dominate our globe,
And asked them to teach me.
They told me to go to school
And become broadminded;
Go to university and
Learn how to live.

Some of them told me that life is a joke,
“So have a laugh while you last”.
Some of them told me that life is so tragic,
“So end it all now, before someone else does for you.”
Some only boasted that they were so cool,
“So follow the leader, like the dog that you are.”
Some simply shrugged and said,
“Forge your own path.”
The “Wise” Men Of The West told me lots of things
That proved to me only that wisdom was a rare gem
Belonging to no one I had yet met.

But I thought about it all,
About what it all means,
Tired of listening to the existentialists,
Preaching of bad-faith and authenticity;
Weary of the evangelists,
Talking, naively, of redemption and salvation.
I thought about this roller-coaster of dreaming,
That we call “life”,
Which we ride blind,
Only to finish and then get back in line,
Waiting again for another rush
Of joyous pointlessness.

Standing and thinking,
I felt so out of place,
Since most people down here don’t like thinking,
Stuck in their respective ruts
Of stoned conviction.

I wondered:
When we’ve nothing left but tattered memories
Of time burned away
And a future whose destination is
To kiss the maw of Death Itself,
Is there any hope?
People say that one man’s power is vastly limited.
Can I prove them wrong?
Can I catch the napalm
Before it smothers the universe?
Can I break free of me?
Maybe it’s me whose changed,
Or me whose not responding,
Or me whose twisted inside out,
A loose, awkward knot of tangled feeling
And gutless charge,
Maybe I’m worth as much as the scum I judge and condemn,
Maybe I’m just a hypocrite who thrives on
Self-deceit.

But I couldn’t deny that the world made me sick.
It sickened my soul
To know where I was.
I thought to myself:
These nations party away,
While they boast of the triumph of civilization,
Even while the “civil”
War upon each other,
Rage, hate, murder, rape;
Even while “intelligent species”
Slaughter one another
For ravaged gardens of territory,
Urinating on nature
And on one another.
In despair, I moped my way to the library,
Hungry to nourish my intellect and soul,
Aching to know if there was some system, some method
Of being human.
I pulled out a book on political history,
Desperate to witness the fruits of past peoples.
What I found did not impress me.
I saw what they had done only decades ago,
They who dominate this sorry globe.

They crucified innocence,
In the name of oil, minerals and territory,
Contentedly revelled in the pain of millions.
They enslaved whole peoples,
Swam in an ocean of their blood,
Guzzled from a waterfall of crimson oppression
And crushing agony.
They stomped on the brittle skulls of the truly wise,
Hollowed the bones of the trembling weak,
Feasted on mangled brains and minced flesh,
In the name of their sordid Empire,
Which has culminated in this global system
Of Third World doom and First World supremacy,
A Pax-Westannica

“Such doom?” I hear you cry.
“Such despair!?” I hear you scream.
I hear me scream.

I closed the book in horror, thinking,
“Why?” is the word which nobody speaks,
Because we’re afraid of the answer.
Of ourselves,
Fearful of thought and the Truth it may reveal.

I mourned:
We’re searching for MORE,
Though whatever we do, nothing seems to relieve the poverty
Of ignorance and egoism.
We’re searching for fulfilment,
But we are greeted with the hand of frustration,
For nothing we feel seems to mirror eternity.

I wept:
Brothers and sisters, no one I had known,
Plummeting, prey to luxurious greed!
Does anyone weep for this injustice?
Does anyone cry for this oppression?

I concluded:
Freedom is slaughtered
On the altar of greed.
Noble lore and noble love,
So gradually twisted.
Everything is forgotten
But ourselves,
Whom we worship.
We worship ourselves,
And in doing so, we worship the blood of
Slaughtered humanity
In a land of slaughtered freedom.
This is the Nuclear Age,
Where the pain of inner poverty reigns over all,
Where the ego is the sacred deity.

(Ch. 1) Waking Release

2006-08-27T05:17:00.000-07:00

It always happens this way.
Driven by a thirst,
A craving for MORE.
Our “progress” is relentless,
Even though it only leads us to more
Thermonuclearmegabastards
And more contradiction
Between the minority who grow sick on overconsumption,
And the majority who waste in malnutrition, physical and spiritual.

I yearned to release myself from this
Wonderful mess we call “modernisation”,
That is so blind to its own self-mutilation,
And so proud of its carefully applied make-up,
Adorned in the name of self-deceit.

So I begged to be beaten into something more than me.
Something MORE
Than a loser who only wants MORE.
So I set out on a journey,
A trek into the maw of truth itself,
To uncover the real nature of this proud world of “modernity”,
And to understand the Reality which we so easily forget.

(Ch. 1) Come Back

2006-08-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

“I don’t believe you,” they said.
And he went to the canyon
And told them his dreams,
Showed them the omens,
Pointed at the portents.
“I don’t believe you,” they said.
And he pointed at the ground,
Showed them the fire in his soul,
Told them where the oasis could be found.
“I don’t believe you,” they said.
And he screamed at them,
Ranted, raved.
He wailed and wept and sliced out his heart,
Gave it to them
As it bled.
“I don’t believe you,” they said.
And he painted the Truth all over their faces,
All over his hands,
Wrote it in the wind,
Hurled it at them from the top of the canyon.
“I don’t believe you”, said Mother.
“I don’t believe you”, said Father.
“I don’t believe you”, said Sister.
“I don’t believe you”, said Brother.
“I don’t believe you”, said Friend.
“I don’t believe you”, said Foe.
“I don’t believe you”, said Man, said Woman, said The World.

And they turned and walked,
Turned and walked.
So he stood there, in the wilderness,
A bastion to himself,
Standing and staring
At nothing at all.

Standing and staring
At nothing at all.

Chapter 1: Birth Pangs

2006-08-27T04:12:00.000-07:00

....I didn’t know it then,
But beneath the veil of appearances we
Tend to call “everyday life”,
Reality was gathering the seeds of my future.
I had crawled through this town
In youthful naivety,
Never pausing to wonder.
But foreign feelings began to blossom
In the virgin soil of my soul
And skies of confusion erupted open.
Suddenly, there was this huge question-mark
Stamped on my forehead
And on most things.

All I knew was that everything was a very beautiful,
Very tear-jerking mystery.
Thus, began my march into the Mystery,
And into Life Itself....

Opening

2006-08-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

Today, more than ever, it is essential to reflect upon human life, its possibilities, its objectives, and its relation to the reality in which it finds itself. Ignorance and arrogance have led humanity down too many roads whose only end is oblivion; many a human civilisation has faced the consequences of its blindness to life in its own collapse. Will the present one do any better? No one can answer this question - it is up to us to make or break our destiny.

I've been writing poetry since a kid, and have since amassed a voluminous collection. Not sure if it's any "good" by conventional literary standards, but they contain my reflections on human life as I have experienced it. As such, they are often very personal; but at the same time they are a record of my own soul's journey through this wretched civilisation, whose back is broken due the weight of its own insanity.

So I've decided to start posting one or several poems a day. In my files, they've been generally organised on a temporal basis, and therefore reflect to some extent my own development. Throughout, I'm intensely concerned with existential, social and spiritual issues; the struggle to maintain one’s sanity in the face of the escalating crisis of modernity (or postmodernity as some would call it), when so few people understand - or care to understand - the most pressing issues of their own existence. They begin by chronicling my own personal awakening, and record the accompanying emotional confusion and intellectual wrangling. As they continue, you can get a sense of how I began to appreciate the spiritual core of human experience. Much of the politically-oriented material was written almost entirely during a visit to that exemplar of Third World devastation, Bangladesh (where I'm from ethnically) in the summer of 1999.

Thus, these poems are, for me, essentially a record of my most significant experiences, and of what those experiences have helped me to learn about life. They are reflections of the corruption and injustice that has taken root in our world; lamentations on the suffering and sorrow of the masses who live oppressed in the global system that is responsible for their suffering.

They are attempts to come to grips with Reality; the purpose of human existence; the meaning and value of life, of love, and of pain. They are cries in the wilderness that call for global revolution in the Name of Love, Truth and Justice; shouts of resistance in the face of oppression and tyranny.

They are songs of mourning for the love that we have burned away; for the Purpose of which we are so ignorant; for the justice that we have forsaken in greed; for the beauty that has been raped by our great ‘civilization’.

I hope, ultimately, that they are remembrances of Being, prayers for the future, recollections of the unity of human hearts, and dirges that call out the Truth, steadfastly, without fear, manifestations of that revolutionary spiritual defiance which flows as sacred blood from the wounds of martyrs.