Lost Between These Walls

No home and no job.  I am ensconced in chaos.  I'd like to feel I wear it well, but I fear I am not the person I wish I was.  I am a seeker of freedom and no walls enclose me, yet I am litterally building them up as you read this.  Everything we create must be maintained.  Man's creation requires his constant re-creation of creation.  

Just as the pyramids are slowly grinding down into sand, so my identity slowly disintegrates even as I try to grasp at the grains as they fly away.

I cannot re-create what I thought I was, but I still long for the illusion of that past self...

It used to be that I looked towards the immediacy of the future and saw myself in everything -saw everything as myself, saw God, saw Identity, saw One.  Now I look forward and see nothing - uncertainty, Being, Void. 

Buddhists try to rid themselves of ego.  "No-self"they call it.  But the most enlightened among them admit that this is impossible.  Even the egoless always has a minimal presence.  A minimal ego that lets there be an attaining of "no-self".  The smaller the ego, the harder it is to shatter.  If it shatters, however, the void bears down that much harder and the seeker of light finds darkness that much more blinding...

Patriotism

         Hello all! I have been neglecting my poetry in favor of song writing recently and, while this means i haven't produced any poetry, I have been writing lyrics.  I just moved to Richmond VA and as a consequence i have neither much means (or even a job) with which to make a recording (rent a recording studio and/or buy recording equipment) of the songs I have written, but I will get on it as soon as I have the means.

         This song is about the deep spiritual nature that undergirds American patriotism.  Unlike most other countries -some bound together by bonds of race and blood, others existing as the careless footprints of deceased empires- American patriotism stems from a call to action by one's own conscience.  What makes one's blood American is not its connection or faith towards its dead past -to one's ethnic heritage and family roots for instance-, but rather the fact that it is real, living, blood whose pulse cries out for freedom.  This is why people can come here from all four corners of the globe and become Americans regardless of color or creed.

          Finally, I feel compelled to point out that, though many of my fellow countrymen were lucky enough to be born in this land of freedom, many are not truly American.  They do not want and, in fact, work to oppose freedom.  Most unknowingly, but some with conscious intent.  This latter group can be found in its greatest concentration high up in the USA government and its corresponding crony-capitalist mega-corporations.

          Do not misunderstand me.  I am not calling for violence against anyone (in the final verse of this song, the line "my blood falls on this soil", emphasizes individual self-sacrifice and not a commitment to violence against others).  I am merely calling attention to the precarious nature of our union as well as the fact that it is in our day to day lives that we must change the world rather than looking to government to make these changes for us.

The Calling

My blood calls to the soil

Of a land I long to see

Where all my kindred spirits

Would dance in harmony

My brother’s of the forest

My sister’s of the sea

My father is of freedom made

And mother: love of humanity

And we fade

We’ll come again

Does your blood call to this soil

Of this land you long to see

Where all our kindred spirits

Once lived in prosperity

This land is of the forest

This land is of the sea

This land was once of freedom made

Now lives in slavery

And we fade

We’ll come again

My blood falls on this soil

In hopes of liberty

That all my kindred spirits

Would have a place to be

I am of the forest

I am of the sea

Faith in freedom I’ll proclaim

That all might love like me

And we fade

We’ll rise again…

Feelspeak

And some days I even think I could understand such things...
Feelspeak
Some days poetry flows from the tounge:
A feeling that rushes over me.
Lips appointed to speak the sentiment
Of thoughts that touch their every second.

Some days my words dissolve into the voices of the crowd:
Superfluous thoughts
That drift towards their disappearance
Like tears that meld with the rain.

Some days I fight for words I cannot say.
Like a wintered city wrapped in silence,
Yearning for its morning life,
Stands empty in our sleep.

Some days I translate the silent langugage
Given by the future as it slips into the past
And leaves a trace in the words I speak
That barely points at what I feel.

The They

I am The They.  I am not defined by The They: I define myself by The They. 

They bind themselves to
Their instrument of binding
In their ignorance:

Man conceals the thought
Of love from the openness
Of present freedom.

You are this freedom
That confronts your eyes with sight.
This is why I'm here