C H I P . . .

The mother
Acutely aware of the pain
Of childbirth
Soon forgets.

The child--
But dimly aware at the time
Remembers all his life
The shock of being born.



PAIN . . .

Nature forwards her instructions
Through your errors
And your pain.

Welcome these signals
And heed well their message
For in their interpretation
And implementation
Lies your particular road
To freedom and joy.



SEPARATION . . .

Time--
A swift and misty trail
With few pauses
And no stopovers.

How false our sense
Of travelling with people
On this strange pathway
Which lies nowhere.

Here is a daughter
Who sees her mother
And speaks with her
Yet retains a sense of separation--
Of vast and unbridgeable separation.

A generation later
This daughter
Now a mother
Suddenly understands--
She is now
Where her mother stood.

And the voice
Which failed to span the years
With meaning
Now sounds across the gulf--
A faint and poignant echo
Rich in significance
Bright with insight.



NOT NOW . . .

The world is full of fearful people
Trying to run away from themselves
Their thoughts roaming lazily
Through the changeless gardens
Of the past
Not in search of data
To serve the present
But in an ineffectual attempt
To escape the insistent claims
Of this moment.

Others hopefully project
The patterns of their desire
On the blank screen of the future
Not in the creative sense
Which serves the present
By sensitizing the instrument
To opportunities--
But in a destructive manner
Which removes the keen edge of desire
Leaving behind a dull hunger
With insufficient power
To motivate present action.



S T A T I C . . .

Unconsciousness bears a freight of woe
Composed of pain and nonsense
Idle words and thoughtless phrases
Imprinted on a mind
Made sensitive by fear
And uncritical by pain.

Throughout life
These forgotten fragments of error
Protected from inquiry by concentric shells
Of resistant ignorance
Become increasingly encysted.

Like indigestible pellets of poison
They fester
Producing tiny trickles of menace
Which cloud the senses
And clog the channels
Of life's process.

These little fragments of fright
Live like idiot parasites
Among the control circuits of each man's mind
Feeding into the intelligible message
Of his behavior
A chattering static
Of nonsense and irrationality.



LABYRINTH . . .

The central mystery of sex
Lies at the heart of a labyrinth
Of contact and caress
Having neither direct
Nor unique Approaches.

The time consumed in tracing this maze
Invites the slow interlacing of spirit--
The quiet merging of minds
Under the spell of a single goal--
The quivering readiness of bodies
In which each tiny nerve-end
Strains outward for closer contact
With the loved one.

In this moment
Man's longing to close the gap
Which separates him from
That other Is fulfilled for a fleeting instant.
The chill of aloneness disappears--
The universe contracts
To encompass
Two bodies so cunningly intertwined
Two minds so singly intent
Two spirits so blissfully merged
As to constitute one fabric
And a single design.



PORTAL . . .

Sex is like the basting thread
Which holds the fabric of two lives In juxtaposition
While the finer stitching
Of shared happiness
Makes them one.

Between innocents
Uncontaminated by clumsy
Or unintended teaching
The simultaneous orgasm
Comes as the terminal discovery
In an ecstatic exploration
Among the bypaths
Of intimate play-

Play which comes naturally
Only as the culmination
Of a growing togetherness
In which the tensions of strangeness
Yield gradually to a tender familiarity.



MIRROR . . .

Love of another
Without love of self Is not love
But longing and loneliness.

And this longing
Being negative
Produces a negative reflection--
The needy are not needed.

Love of self
Brings health and beauty
And a fullness of living
Out of which It becomes feasible to give.

And giving
Being positive
Is irresistible.

But note carefully
That the reflection of your gifts--
Though compounded in quantity--
Is true to its origins in quality.

So that it happens
When you give
What you no longer want
You may well get back
That which you no longer need.
But if you give
That which you treasure most
Your heart can never be empty.



STAND ASIDE . . .

Love is not to be apportioned
By any man-made pattern.
Nothing you can do
Will make you love
The man who hates himself.

And if In guilt and self-reproach
You ply him with lesser gifts
He simply has more to carry
On his road
Toward self-discovery.

Best stand aside
And in one operation
Believe yourself of guilt
And him of obligation.

For the end is not in doubt--
To each one In some place and at some time
Truth and knowledge and self
Stand revealed In full glory.

And you can find the way
For no one but yourself.



TORTURE . . .

How quickly people sense
The dying of that glow.
How easily they turn away.
Even old friends
Feel the chill of loss
And avoid me.

Tell me Darling
Do you hurt too?
Are we In some incredible stupidity
Inflicting unnecessary torture
On each other?

Or has some cosmic cycle turned
Some distant error fruited
Some juggernaut of compensation
Claimed its measured pain?

Or is it simply
That we are yet too fragile
To long support
So bright a flame?



CONSENT . . .

It would be well
If we could regard death
As our animal cousins do
In fear of its immediacy
In casual disregard
Of its lurking presence
In the flux of probability.

Let the date and manner
Of our appointments in Samara
Lie unconcernedly in the laps of the gods.
Let a reasonable prudence
Cull out the higher risks
And clothe us in the bright protection
Of full awareness
But let no dwelling on these odds
Overstretch the strings
Of that harp
On which the hand of life
Plucks out the counterpoint
Of our joys and sorrows.



G O D S . . .

The agnostic's reiterated affirmation
Of ignorance
May make learning difficult.

The atheist's rigid denial of any God
Leaves him a godless world In which to live
A world which will faithfully reflect to him
Whatever godless properties
His imagination creates.

The fundamentalist's bearded fairy-god
Never-here, always there
Gives rise to fairy-tale consequences
Of dubious utility.

The God of the institutionalized church
Must be a limited God
Whose boundaries are defined
By the area of agreement
Among the church's controlling members.

And those minor Gods
Who represent the sectarian fragments
Of mother church
Serve more often as the subjects
Of acrimonious debate
Than as givers of life
And the guides to salvation.



G O D . . .

From one viewpoint
God is described
As the creator.

Yet, paradoxically
It is equally true
That God is the creation
Of each man.

So--
Each man being singular
It must follow
That each man's God Is unique.

The collective God--
The idea of which can only arise
From the similarities abstracted
From specific, individual Gods--
Must therefore be indefinitely limited
By comparison.

The power and the glory of God--
If perceived at all--
Must come to each individual
In the character and the keeping
Of his own awareness.



T E S T A M E N T . . .

A time is coming
When an integration
Of things now known
Will point clearly
And directly
To man's salvation.

Some of you will see
The end of hate
Will feel the lifting
Of irrational fear.

The long sleep of mankind
Nears its end.
The last nightmare
Is unwinding its
Tangled web of horror.

One by one
The sons of man
Will waken
And laughing
Go to work
Together.


Also, on this website, see Primal Poetry by SueJo and Primal Poetry by Vicki Engelhardt and Jane Lewis



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