Spirituality | The Ghost of Monumental Silence

I Will Be Life

Posted on May 7, 2017 by tearche

I have no idea what inspired this poem. I write many poems in an almost endless stream of words. This is one such poem – sprawling its way to somewhere on a January day in 2016.

I Will Be Life

I am a red tornado
Rearranging the way things are.
I am a flying blue cobra
Ripping through the sky.
I am a white cloud
Stretching my fingers across the plains of love.

I am a sphere
Moving through all of creation.
I am a fractal wave
Waking on the shores of consciousness.

I am silence
Spiralling through the gardens of life.
I am a torturous scream
Rising from the fires that burn in hell.
I am a divine melody
That fills the body of all beings.

I am a small brown falcon
That hovers beyond the chaos below.
I am a small brown ant
Walking across the landscapes of the soul.

I am a mournful song
Echoing across the valleys of despair.
I am a joyful song
Celebrating the wonder of existence.

I am seven sombre monks
Guarding the doorway to the self.
I am eleven wise children
Standing with hands and hearts wide open.

I am a solid oak table
Holding up the weight of our suffering.
I am a pilgrims candle
Burning so that all might see.

I am a deep red wine
Opening the heart and setting fire to the senses.
I am a thousand grains of pepper
Exploding forgotten memories.

I am a raging violin
Leaping out from the tallest mountain.
I am a crying cello
Singing my way through the morning.

I am an unfathomable deep ocean
Carrying the creatures of dreams and nightmares.
I am a glorious green meadow
Filling life with an endless display of discovery.

I am the turbulent winds
That shred the architectures of suffering.
I am the inextinguishable and inexhaustible sun.
Always radiating from the core of all beings.

I am a towering sequoia
A bridge between Earth and sky.
I am an ancient gum
Who has endured and savoured everything.
I am the ancient lichen
Remapping the contours of rock and soil.

I am the bee sting
That wakes you up from your stupor.
I am the shark in your dream pools
Devouring your attachments and aversions.

I am the fellowship
That transcends all boundaries.
I am the tongue
That licks all wounds.
I am the ghost of memory
Reinventing what was.

I will be life
I am eternal.
I was the shadow
I held the thorns.
I’ve forgotten how to be wild.
I remember the things that really matter.
I am flawed but still I am perfect.
I am
I
am.

The Heartscape Of My Hands (The Mouth Of Our Hunger)

Posted on May 3, 2017 by tearche

Hands have always fascinated me and in 2005 I wrote this poem as a way of exploring human suffering.

The Heartscape Of My Hands (The Mouth Of Our Hunger)

I cast my hands around empty streets,
Sending my fingers in search of men at prayer.

See the heartscape of my hands,
They tell you more than I can say.

In me death is bound by division,
Touching the mouth of our hunger.

Yet you know we will always change,
Though we will always seem the same.

Hands hammered onto nails : Nails yielding from the martyrs song –
How he beholds the work of men.

Your blood flows into the sea of human kindness :
Mingled with the blood of hate –
Where side by side we thirst for the charms of his suffering.

Within us we see eyes raised above the self,
And from the human clock tick seasons which cannot be measured.

My eyes study their pupils my pupils study their eyes,
Each transfixed in the abyss of the other.

After dark period that lasted 5 years, I found myself in the mid 90’s struggling to make sense of my life and the identity that I had created for myself. I wrote this poem in 1995 as a kind of homage to the suffering of the poet (and the human being), who upon realizing the impermanance, futility and folly of life, considers the possibility of bringing an end to his invisible, unnoticed life. This poem also speaks about the lure and folly of ego in the world and the charm of perpetual seeking and the promise of enlightenment. But exactly what or who the prodigal charm bug is, I will leave it to you to decide !

The Prodigal Charm Bug

From the clutches of some forgotten dirge
We rise – Like the Symphony of the Songless Bird.
Almost unheard – The impassioned beatings of the heart,
Soar as quiet as the sun.

The moment of gravity – Like conscience embodied.
But conscience is second in consequence.
Know not I – This circle of cells;
Enlightened you will be – That final hour when it hath come.
When I shall Dethrone the Emperor.
Many amongst the crowd aspired to play a part,
But only upon the chosen doth light fall !
Come not will you with me – Cross legged we’ll dine with white knights.

How does it feel to end life
Swooning into the arms of death ?
Soon I will know – Dragging the impossible to the lair of the body !
Believe me : This is the privilege of the poet,
Like the serpent that weeps – I suffer an illness that plagues the soul !

As the storm settles through your heart,
In one sense the soul will turn another page –
Descending into battle with a candle,
Like the lasting of my memory.

See the tree of life towering over us,
Like the blackbird’s wing – Stretched over the sun,
Branched fingers creeping through our eyes.

And I curse the beast that warps the heart.
Running – You opened the deity – In thy Art of Rage.
Collapsing, is this – The Sinking Ship of Life.
Whilst heaved, my breast lingers – And I am an Unseen Angel.

Enriched, the solemn giant am I.
A broken Warrior reborn – Piloting consciousness to the very edge.
The dog of my glory – Like the spectre’s shadow.
The moat of Angels and Fools still spinning.

The unprotected heart beats in my chest.
The agonies touch deep within.
And I am withered,
As translucent as the sky.
Lighter than my shadow.

For so long I have cheated the worms of their feast.
And so now : “I Feed Them Commedia”.
The Pulsar within me as aimless as night !

The Many Faces of Love

Posted on April 27, 2017 by tearche

I think this is self explanatory. It refelects my own experience of love.

The Many Faces of Love

1. Puppy Love

Her voice trails at the end of the phone
Angel of perfection
Cannot live without her.

2. Tension of Opposites

He loves her body with haste and fury
They scream in pleasure and pain
Man rages with and without her.

3. Family

One plus one becomes three
Great joy in small discoveries
Child becomes the glue of their meaning.

4. Bad Habits (The Critic in Us)

Preferences slowly rise to the fore
She has what he does not
The eye sees only what it wants to see.

5. True Love

He looks past the small irritations
She sees him through the eye of her heart
They find something greater than each of them.

6. The Gaps She Weaves

He is complete without her
But together there is something else
One day the gaps will speak more loudly than words.

7. Till Death

They are blind together but together they see
Always there for each other
Death will remind them of the gift of their love.

Heart of the Mountain of the Eagle

Posted on April 27, 2017 by tearche

In 2004 we had a fire on the nearby sacred mountain Burra Burra (Mountain of the Eagle), which was started by a lady who lit fire to the toilet paper she had used to wipe her arse ! The fire burned 2/3rds of the mountain, cracked ancient petroglyphs, destroyed ancient grey box trees, burned wildlife and sent the spirits of the Aboriginal people (who had become my teachers and friends) away. I wrote this poem in 2007 as a homage to the people of Burra Burra. It is the first poem in a sequence of poems written at that time to remember my deceased friends and my favourite mountain.

Heart of the Mountain of the Eagle

Buurra waau,
Buurra burra wirrin kyinnya.

The Soul of the Mountain of the Crow
Sent me to the Heart of the Mountain of the Eagle for kinship of a white man.

And I found a place among your people.
Some where across the landscape of souls
I found this place and called it home.
You held me as a child
And nourished me with the dreamtime.
You entered me
And found my tender wounds.
You gathered sticks and leaves
To mend my broken heart.
In you I found my place among the stars
And in your fire I remembered where I came from.
On a cold hard rock you buried my fingers
And in love you healed my wounds.
My place is among you as yours is in my heart.

The Soul of the Mountain is Crying
Her Heart is Broken and her People are leaving.

Let it go
Set it free
And I will hold your memory,
Just as you held me.

Ovations of a Greening Spring

Posted on April 27, 2017 by tearche

I have always loved the natural world. In 2006 I moved away from the inland home that I had loved to the coast (and have moved back again). I so missed the land that I knew so well, that I grieved my separation from it. In 2006-2007 I wrote a series of poems about teh natural world taht helped me to deal with my grief for both the place, animals and plants and Aboriginal spirits (with whom I had relationships with). This poem from 2007 was written to convey something of the suffering of animals and the nature of impermanance.

Ovations of a Greening Spring

Yes
I have seen empires of dirt sail skyward and heavenly silk descending.
Yes
I have seen ants wrestle with the gods and spiders that fall upon the earth.

But no hand of man has eased their toil
Or lifted the weight of their suffering.

The angels of the apocalypse dance silently
With a mob of homeless kangaroos.
And in the world between
Dead men and women sing songs to the god of fire.

From amidst the storm blue catharsis of a broken sky
Come swarms as unending as the path of history itself.

The seasons within twist and turn between head and heart
And shed their wings in the tall green grass.
Crimson flowers fall from the small victories of hope and denial
And shattered creatures reassemble.

From the greatest depths of man’s tormented soul
Come a flurry of nameless prayers.

Through bitter harsh words and gentle sideways glances
I at last see the tall ovations of a greening spring.
And the earth remains a place of restless change
The transparency of all life shimmering like a halo from the sun.

Oh father earth I hear you
Your screaming whisper has not gone unnoticed.

My heart open to all life as it really is here and now
I feel the cry of the ailing beast within.
And I know that some things will disappear forever
While man watches on lamenting what he cannot change.

We touch the web and we know that we are one
Ever onwards to some place far away.

The harmonic chords of love
Tame the vehicles of change inside this flesh.
And I know as all animals do
That nothing stays the same.

Oh mother earth ever yearning for the web to bind us.
Keep on turning that we might awake from our slumber.

Yes
I shall remember all life as it was.
Yes
I shall remember when we were one.

The Ghost Of Monumental Silence

Posted on April 26, 2017 by tearche

I have used my life in part, to understand the nature of reality, the nature of mind and the nature of suffering. In this poem, written in 2000, I explore God and it’s relationship to mind, suffering and memory. You may however find your own meaning in this poem.

I borrowed this title for the title of this blog because I like it and because I felt that this poem pretty much sums up much of what I want to say in poetry.

The Ghost Of Monumental Silence

‘Twas the twilight of the frogs and a black mosquito symphony called,
When my eyes walked there – to that cauldron of scorpions –
The journey – twisted, like a lean road through a hedgehogs back.

I am the accident that sired meaning – The little ripples of death,
Having put away prophecies with blood – I am crazing myself in a word –
Now in my inhuman way – I am like a dusty parable.

Bearing the bodies of my dreams to you –
These cells embellished with suffering –
Their eyes reappearing – the only hope of empty men.

Whaled like a beach – Like solace, spawned from tasteless dust.
Ideas are beheaded – dawning forever, in the partitions of the eye.

At sunrise they leap from their cradles – broken before the light,
And in your mind, cataracts wicked and unmoving –
Prey like a snake upon the mouse – The sun dividing itself inside of me.

Ah, the pleasure of the mind is to say nothing,
Mystical intelligence – circling from the whole of my wake –
Oceans of creation, breaking like freak textures of the mind.

But the notes of your certainty bring a vengeance – to The One –
He, who feels – wisdom in His eyes – as You stare into My open hand –
The Who of the How – The Ghost of Monumental Silence.

The Great Force

Posted on April 26, 2017 by tearche

A reflection from 2015 on the great force within and the power it has to shape all reality.

The Great Force

The force arises,
As if from nowhere.
In its wave,
Come murder, death and destruction.

From far, far away,
A force of equal strength arises
And thrusts its wave into the other.
Between two waves,
Come murder, death and destruction.

But beyond them,
A far more powerful force arises.
A force that stems from understanding and love.
It’s game is small – attending to root causes and shifting power.

The great force cannot be extinguished.
It does not live in time
But dwells in the heart of all living things.
It seeks vitality through difference and sameness
And it does not take sides,
Because it knows no right and no wrong.
Only how things happen.

The great force moves however fast or slow it needs to,
Through the minds hearts, actions, speech and feelings
Of all living things.
It has no name and needs no name.
Yet it has been called countless things.

It arises where it is most needed –
Spontaneously
But there are few who recognise it
And even fewer who know how to express it.

It is there,
In the darkest moments of human history
And there in the greatest natural catastrophes.
It is there,
In the dawning of the ages of awakening
And there when all life is thriving.
It is there,
In the glory of the day light
And in the secrets of night.

The great force is ever unfolding
And always renewing.
It has no preferences
But illuminates all choices.

When all that man perceives,
Turns to darkness
And all that he feels is despair.
The great force will continue playing away inside him,
Waiting for just the right moment to emerge.

When enough humans feel despair,
A great emergence will leap forth from within
And the great force will forge the way.
Always ready to bring man to his knees
And lift him up into the light.
Where at last he can see what he is
And let the great force blossom inside him.

The Great Knowing

Posted on April 26, 2017 by tearche

A reflection from 2015 on the nature of the self in sleep and waking.

The Great Knowing

Here in the depths of sleep,
There is movement between the I and the Iless.

Darkness rolls me over,
In the seen and the unseen.

Monsters reach out to ensnare me
And demons rise from so long ago.

Ghosts wait to remind me of who I was and what I have forgotten
And skeletons dance loudly inside the hidden cupboards.

The light drifts between them,
Like sunshine moving through fog.

Here and there an angel lifts me out of the darkness,
Showing me the reasons I cannot see.

From within the darkest waves,
Old men and old women take my hand and steer the way.

They are always scarred and ugly,
But their hearts are pure and free.

All the kingdoms of heaven and hell mean nothing to the free.

They speak to me with eyes that whisper.

Telling me not to be afraid and not to desire salvation.

The I and the Iless continue to rise and fall,
While the great knowing embraces them all.
The darkness gives birth to webs of delusion, prisons of fear and uncertainty and terrors of the separate self.
The light offers up the rooms of its many mansions,
Its vistas of peace and perfection and wonders of the infinite within.

The old ones have seen it all
And recognise the I and the Iless in a moment of truth.
They come from many kingdoms but belong to no kingdom at all.
No projection binds them or deceives them.
They have no temptation, no heaven, no hell.

Sometimes I see them,
Between the doors of perception,
Inside heaven or inside hell.
But just when I reach them,
The I fades away and all is forgotten.

The Iless awakens and erases the play.

Only the great knowing remembers.

Nailing Smoke To The Wall (Mask)

Posted on April 26, 2017 by tearche

I wrote this poem in 1996, at a time in my life where I was trying to make sense of my past and my identity. I have always been fascinating by time, memory and mystery and how they play out in our lives. In this poem I play around with the mystery and reality of memory and impermanance.

Nailing Smoke To The Wall (Mask)

In the arm I drift :
Overtures into overtures chaos into chaos,
Dreams into dreams.
Earth forever turning humanity standing still.
Oceans ebb and flow across the translucent mirrors of my soul.
Two bridges converge into one – thoughts creaking actions sleeping;
The doors of my childhood museum come crashing down –
The little boy inside me smiling like a crescent moon :
I remember ! I remember ! How could I forget ?

Of all these things that I have seen and all these places that I have been
Nothing lasts forever.
Human identity
Scored in the notes of my heart.
Woe,
‘tis time who yanks upon my twisted yoke –
In this reign of the I,
‘tis time who cradles this callous tide of memories –
In this rain of the eye.

Each time that I look – at this web that I weave
I see a god within
And I know :
Each man is a mask Each mask is a man.
Fate seals the lips of immortality,
Yet the mystery which flickers and fades will never unfold,
Always beckoning like night which trails through the eyes.
Feasting upon our human frailties,
While we dance among Adam’s ribs.

And so I plant the seed of hope on ambitions tongue,
The whining winds of fear ruffle the webs in my eyes
And I am licking wounds that bind the seal of space,
Trying to nail smoke to the wall.
Soon, this mortal linkage will disassemble
While I, perish beneath the ruins of memory.
Must I ask you : What mystery will remain when I am dead ?
And of the angel called memory : Quis custodiet ipsos custudes ?
(Who will guard the guard himself ?)