A Great Doubt

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A Great Doubt

A Journal

Amadn Mr


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Copyright Amadn Mr 2010

Cover Design Amadn Mr

Cover Art by Alan Watts (1971)Cover Font Broken 15 by Eduardo Recife

All Right Reserved


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Preface A stone in your shoe...

Imagine for a moment. Sitting holding a book, it doesnt

matter what book. This one will do if you like. You were

looking for something. In an idle moment an itching,something you forgot or omitted. Maybe the book will

remind you; maybe it will say it for you; maybe it will distract

you long enough that the itching stops. Youll be off on your

way again in no time, until the next time. Now, what was it?

Maybe nothing, boredom? Then memory persists, vaguerecollections of times when you were closer to it but, like

now, left it undone. You were closer to what? Youre in the

same fix again. Leave it, maybe thats better. Ah, but there it

is in the bathroom mirror, in your reflection, in shop

windows, in the photographs. They keep reminding you,

keep showing up, and keep asking questions. Different

clothes, longer hair, shorter hair, looking good, looking

older, on and on. You hear yourself talking and it sounds like

someone on television, or your parents, or old friends, or

your acquaintances hard to call them friends they hardly


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know you, not the old you, the dormant you. You have your

badges: job title, nationality, religious affiliation, political

party, taste in music, favoured team, etc. Various likes,

dislikes, justified prejudices you know the stuff. You tally it

up and youre still short. It was there, it was. You switch on

the television, more re-runs of the news. A politician is

avoiding the truth and being expedient. What should I say?

More health warnings and other threats, more news of

killing, cant get enough of it, can we? What have they

forgotten? A hundred thousand advertisements tell you how

to brand your life. They know what social group you belong

to and where your sympathies, allegiances and desires lie.Tell us what we want, you cry, and theyll give you

something to increase your value for a while. Thats service.

Then theres the online you to maintain: millions of users

hunched over monitors, fascinated by the light, ironing the

creases, lazily scrubbing the mat that will never be clean.Tap, tap, tap on the little tortoise, nobody home. When

youve had your fix you go out into the air and reality washes

over you, the to-ing and fro-ing. Where next?

Did you postpone it? Did you push it farther away? Or did

you change by addition again? Maybe that will do; identity is what you identify with. You are all these things added up,


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you added them up yourself. But was it all smash and grab,

were you being expedient, were you shopping for what works

and imitating it? Are you one of the unfinished people,

miming the words, making other peoples mistakes? Is that

you? No, maybe not.

Imagine then. What would it be like to lose all those

possessions that add up to the insatiable you? Why would

you want to quiet that hunger? What if you, designed by

committee that labours from morning to night with the

utmost effort, defected? You, who are always fulfilling orders,

always watched and watching, lest you deviate from the

humdrum. You, shaped by countless cues that told you whatto repeat and what to repress. What if you abandoned the

sort, rank and file mind that must have a quick answer and

solution to everything? How quiet it would be without the

facts and opinions that you mistake for truth. How far have

you gone, how much have you accepted, or lost or failed togain? How much have you accumulated, how heavy the load?

Your greatest burden, the weight of the past, the possessions

of the heart and the losses it never forgets. Oh, how that

burden can increase and slow the journey, how we treasure

our bag of rubbish like that is what distinguishes us. Somelove their little scars; they love to share them with the world


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or to stroke them in private, something to keep you

company.

What if the part that must always be filled is, in reality, all

you have left that is authentic? However much you fear it

and run from it, is that emptiness, not the sump of the soul,

but the source of it? Are the things you call you the barriers

holding back the silence, your defence and the source of all

your fears? For those who build their homes within the castle

walls, lesser beasts come to prey. Your enemies are more

abundant and closer. Your fears have no flesh and bones;

they reside in everyday events of no great consequence. The

stresses of your life are less tangible, less quantifiable; yourreadiness is futile against this enemy. Better camouflaged,

faster, ignoring safety routines, windows, walls and locks, it

attacks you in your home, in the night, in your sleep.

Imagine you left the safety of the castle walls, left behind its

politics and commerce, its laws and religions, its sciences andarts, and you travelled until, by accident or amnesia, you find

a mind that has no etiquette, allegiance or motive. That may

be what you miss so deeply and search for in all the wrong

ways and in all the wrong places. It is possible, but do you

dare to make the sacrifice? Think of the consequences! Noinner authority, no agent? You might say that would be


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chaos, nihilism, anarchy. Do not confuse a mind without

commandments with a mind hungry for disorder. It does not

reject possessions, only a mind that is possessed by them;

does not reject institutions, only the people who are

possessed by them. And so many seek to possess us, to think

and answer on our behalf have you spent one day noticing

how much? We too often lack the questions or too readily

accept other peoples answers when we should question

everything and not reject anything without question. Who

but those with answers seek to silence one with questions,

and who but one with questions may silence those with

answers? That is the reason, responsibility and morality of one who is awake.

I am reminded of those Zen and Taoist characters. What a

pity they are so few and you are so many. They could be so

uncouth and were sometimes mistaken for madmen, drunks

or idiots and would utter a profound truth or a vulgarism with such spontaneity that it might leave you scratching your

head as to which was which. Were they bound by

respectability and duty? They were not wantonly colliding

with social norms but simply being natural or had at least

given up a life of artifice. They were operating within society to the degree that society could accommodate their logic but


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the questioning of social norms is why Siddhrtha abdicated,

why Jesus was crucified, why Lao Tzu went into self-imposed

exile and why Socrates refused to and was poisoned? History

has known many such people and many more it does not

record. They had the audacity to question the institutions of

the mind and the errors of thought. In the kingdom of the

blind, the one-eyed man has a fierce gaze that asks a silent,

unsettling question. How will you protect yourself from it,

how will you once more conceal your nakedness? Perhaps

you bow before him, perhaps you kill him

Such people are travellers of a world you cannot imagine. No,

you will not find it there. You have your simple world of utility, where would you be without that? That world of

familiarity and habit is yours to defend. That world is reality

until a new model turns it on its head. It is a work in

progress, awaiting new facts, new goals and desires, new

instructions. It is a world of labels, a world of knowledge, auseful world, an ever receding mental construct. It is for

science to revise that work for eternity. Science has told us

things about life we cannot sense directly and has shown us

how different life is from how it appears superficially. It has

told us that what we sense is a fragment of what is but whatis cannot be reduced to symbols or completely known. What


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has knowledge added or subtracted from life? How would

those percentages run, by what measurement would you

solve that equation? Every time you read life you divide it

differently, will dividing it ever put humpty together again?

Will dividing it ever make up the difference? What Hinduism

and Buddhism call attachment is this process whereby we

dissect life in the hope of finding completion. Such a mind

cannot enjoy what it fears to lose and fears what it wants

most of all. Theres the rub, as they say.

Take for an example art and its usefulness. Doesnt art stand

at the pinnacle of civilization because it has no utility? Some

may try to defend its value by asserting the benefits of art tothe individual, society or the economy but are they missing

the point or trying to placate those who have no time,

patience or money for the impractical? Isnt art cheapened

when it is functional, when it plays to the audience? Do we

want to be flattered with a poorly hidden clich or bepresented with the cleverness of the artist? Is it art because

an ego made it or because we are told it is? Great art, in

whatever activity or medium you choose to call art, speaks

again and again as life progresses because it leaves for you to

finish that which you will only find outside it, in life. It asksus to sense what the artist saw in a moment of insight, in


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awareness. Great art asks to be abandoned; perhaps it is not

trying to say anything at all. Must all art await the stamp of

critical acceptance, popularity or fashion? Why would

anyone pay millions to possess what will never be theirs so

cheaply? By what art did they accumulate the wealth to wear

another persons talent and hope to know, by association

with it, the poverty that made it? Look at the institutions

that lay claim to those priceless thoughts.

Will you ever find things called truth, meaning or reality in

any institution? Will you ever find such things in pages like

these? You will find many truths, meanings and realities?

You can find new them in any culture and in the peoplearound you. They give you a feeling of substance and

continuity but what does this reality consist of? Have you

noticed the changing quality of it in various circumstances,

how its timbre shifts with your mood? Have you noticed how

you excite and suppress that reality and how all youractivities, how all you know shapes how you think and feel

and consequently what you see?

Looking at life with a little learning it is easier to find what

complies with your assumptions and quickly or even

unconsciously discard or overlook almost everything else. Itis easy to become drunk on your achievements and preach or


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force others to comply with the successfulness of your logic.

It is easy to label unfamiliar ideas and, in doing so, quickly

own them, dismiss them or cheapen them. It is easy to

defend your opinions and hold to the comfort and safety of

the status quo. It is more difficult to surrender the authority

of what you know or who you are. It takes courage to change,

to admit even a small defeat and replace an old belief with

something new. How much more courage it takes to unseat

the ego and question its many certainties, to surrender them

and not find new ones.

If you can see beyond the confusion of labels, if you attend to

life with unhindered eyes, you might find that a tyrant hasbeen overthrown and you have acceded to that which is

profoundest and most intelligent in you. Then the mind sees

truth and error co-existing in every thought. The labels are

just labels, none are complete or true. Only awareness, that

which is not a thing, can show you what you have lived apartfrom or struggled to understand in the riches of human

enquiry. In awareness we find our rest and action, can

anything be added to it that does not obstruct it?

Where is the dormant you that walks by a flickering flame

and hides from the sun? Where is that voice that so quietly comes to you in sleep and speaks even now? Where is that


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gentle heart that curses you for learning such harsh lessons?

Beyond which guarded door lies your unspoilt love, that

untouchable core? You have been looking in the marketplace

where life taught you all things of worth are to be found.

What you have sought is as your own breath. Let it in, let it

go, again, again, again, such is movement, such is life.

Interrupting that movement produces what Lao Tzu called

the ten thousand things, stalling it produces attachments,

resisting it produces fear and unhappiness. When you have

doubted all, questioned all, when you have gambled all

against the odds you will be left with nothing to call your

own. This is trust, faith, and self-belief. This many nameshave pointed towards.

Now the mind is like a waterwheel that thunders with the

torrent and is a perch for passing birds when the river is still.

The turmoil is no longer the minds lens but a screen where

the frantic misplaced souls that are shunted to and fro by necessity and chance are still played out; those who are in

constant dialogue and strife between what is inside them and

what outside. You wonder that this confusion still exists and

you once looked with their divided eyes.


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The main part of what follows began when I was in my early

twenties (at least what is recorded here). It was an unedited,

very private outpouring that was not experienced at the time

as something positive, perhaps only necessary, unavoidable

or inevitable. The language was sometimes raw and hurried

as I tried to describe something persistent yet all too easily

obscured again. Then, in the late 1990s, it dropped off, so to

say, and that was the end of it for some years. Many of the

passages I knew by heart anyway and the experiences of

those days would occasionally drift in and out of memory, so

they were neither disturbed nor forgotten but always there

was something in them I could not account for.In 2006 I read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. For a while it

sparked the old wandering curiosity in me. I went on to read

several books on Eastern philosophies and much else. I read

everything I once avoided when I had thought myself

discerning. Now, no longer seeking something to adornmyself with, I enjoyed the fantastical for what it was and

appreciated the phrases that spoke to me. One book led to

another: everything from the sublime to the ridiculous to the

academic. Again and again, amidst the rhymes and riddles,

the doctrine and exercises, their themes described to me what I had poured out, in different language, all of those


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years before. They talked of residing in the Tao (La0 Tzu),

The Unborn (Chn/Ze n), tman (Hinduism), The Grail

(Celtic/European mythology), born in the spirit (Jesus), The

Philosophers Stone (alchemy), self-remembering (G. I.

Gurdjieff), positive disintegration (K. Dbrowski). To my

mind, these seemingly disparate philosophies are unique in

their ethnic or cultural language and symbolism but in

essence they describe the same human journey. They exist

because a few human minds have tried to make sensible

something that is beyond common sense. I will not attempt

here to sift the specifics of how or why their descriptions are

different or the same. An academic could exhaust a lifetimediscussing and verifying, building each step of the ladder by

quoting texts and experts and daring occasionally to make an

unsubstantiated leap of imagination. I could fill a book with

quotes that speak to me and add a bibliography that would

busy you for years but it is for you to find your own proof, if you need it, and what speaks to you. At the heart of these

texts I saw common threads that sing of awakening and a

shedding of ignorance, futility, conflict and illusion. There

are many symbols and metaphors. If you approach them with

preconceptions they will always be closed to you. If youapproach with openness you might decipher them and


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comprehend the idea. If you approach with understanding

they will be transparent to you. Is it religion or science? Does

it remake you more than human or is it a realisation of

human potential? Is it a timeless, sublime overflowing that

some call bliss or a wondering movement with the mundane.

Is it found in desolate isolation or in the midst of human

affairs? Can you know where to look for it or must you

stumble upon it when the map is lost or put aside? Does it

strike you like a lightning bolt or is it something the years

teach you?

My agenda when reading these subjects was not to

differentiate them or unify them but to develop anappreciation of why the goals of these traditions were so

similar and why they recommend to others a path to achieve

them. I would never have recommended my careless path to

another person. I used to say that if you couldnt explain

something to a child without making a fool of yourself, then you were talking nonsense. How could I describe all this to a

child when I had struggled to explain it to myself? It is

foolishness to try. A child has not yet learned the complex

rules that govern the adult world and the adult mind; they

still see life every day, not some dull replica of yesterday.They have not strayed so far from unspoilt assumptions to


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accept a society that is not only rich and colourful but also

brutal. With any luck, they are still ignorant of how it can be

so stupid and can expect such stupidity of you. You need not

try and describe such things to a child because they have not

yet pillared a shelter so high on such dubious supports.

I cannot recommend the paths suggested by any system or

tradition. I cannot endorse any techniques as I have practised

none. I cannot say if they offer more than a different kind of

belonging. I can say that many of their authors have depicted

some of the most rarefied expressions of how it is to be aware

and what that journey is like. Their words are strange,

unfamiliar, easily mistaken for truisms. Imbibed deeply they are a tonic for the favourite ailment of humankind, for its

lingering malaise, for a condition that has the indecency to

wound but not kill. These words address those who have

already begun to ask if there is any other way to be. Those

who have awoken to find a world that is not theirs, whoquestion its prescribed patterns of behaviour and cannot

shrug off that feeling but seek a spontaneous existence.

Those who suspect the deception they perpetrate on others

but on themselves most of all that these habits of thought

which they have collected describe the individual and his/herenvironment. It is for those who have begun to doubt


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identity itself. Can you name a human error that was not

caused by identification with a false notion? Every day people

are offended by abstractions or assert their own. Ambitions,

relationships, human lives have risen and fallen like

fireworks on misplaced identity. We obstruct so much that is

sensible and allow so much that harms us.

For me, all of this literature was at the same time an

affirmation and a dismissal of what I had thought a very

individual experience. My private document was, after all,

public knowledge. Every spontaneous expression had been

written many times before and more profoundly and

beautifully than I could have described it. Yet in them Ifound a reason to remove the last burden, that of silence.

Why should one person question anothers choices? Can you

know why they made those choices or what they see that you

do not? Do you know where their path leads or where your

own does? Yet isnt the scourge of identity that we will notlet people choose for themselves, that what we do not

understand in others is a persistent irritation. We would

consign others to a life of unhappiness to satisfy our second

hand principles. We would leave lifes only satisfaction that

they, like us, follow the many, lost to time, wearing the knees


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out of our trousers. We are, different or the same, finding

ways to be.

What if the kindest insult we can raise is to frustrate

assertions and prejudices at every turn, whether by a friendly

joke to the well-meaning or by curt shock of logic to the

arrogant. What if the best we can do is to pour ice on the

warm waters of conformity? What if the best we can do is to

proclaim, by example, that life is not blunt, unformed

material to be flattened and beaten into shape and bent to

human will. Life is a sharp, subtle, sophisticated thing that

requires the hands of an artist, hands that know when to

push and when to yield to the material. Do you have thatbold, faithful touch? Do you employ that art?

A book is perhaps the most direct way to reach minds like

the one at work here. A book is sought out, willingly and

actively participated in and can be discarded at any time. I

know now that many have had experiences similar to what isdescribed here and many have responded differently and

been compelled to file it in some cultural niche or claim

some prize. To do so would be to turn away at the defining

moment or to bargain awareness for a more distinguished

illusion. It is interesting and compelling to find comparisonsbut it is a hesitant mind that finds only fragments of


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familiarity. Anyone might find niches for the metaphors, but

there are none to file away what they describe, that

indefinable sense that, like a wild flower, only lives in you

and fades as soon as you try to give it to another.

For me, it will never belong to any religious, philosophical or

cultural tradition it was fundamentally a relinquishing of

such things, and in time realising that was not a loss. As I

wrote then, stay broken, wholeness is a mask . Yet nothing is

wanting in that which you do not seek to complete, perfect

or make use of. For anyone like me, that realisation never

comes until you have tried so hard, plumbed so deep, been

shaken so utterly, that the keenness of your seeking minddestroys all that you identified with. Better to find if there

are any gentler, safer ways to that repose. By it, lostless,

ungained, insperate.


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The mind turns back to imagine an empty harbour and a

readymade vessel of inadequate design, over-laden with duty

and doctrine, art and literature. Imagine the drama of its

failed launch into disputed waters, watch as it pitches wildly,

clumsily sloughing its cargo before, by some uncertain

fortune, it rights itself. Imagine its impudent silhouette

drifting out to sea, the otiose nobility of it.

Here is that process then, in earnest, gathered from pocket

sketch pads. I have tried and failed to order them

chronologically but this is of no consequence. The Lament

was written retrospectively in 1998 using various fragments

from the previous years and I have broken this up again tofill in the blanks to some extent. Other fragments I have used

in this preface. I have given titles to those entries that had

none and have added a short introduction, Setting the Scene .

Try to see beyond the pomp and wordage, see beyond

readings and perhaps you might glimpse, or remember, thediscarded, useless and unremarkable.

Amadn Mr

May 2010


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The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be

single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

Matthew 6:22 (KJV)

At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you

doubt fully, you will awaken fully.

Hakuin

From the withered tree, a flower blooms.

Zen Proverb


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Setting the Scene

It is morning, for example. Amidst the life-seeking and soul-

searching glory of this city, division is painted in primary

colours. The news will tell us the score if we bother to look at

it today.

The terrace houses my friends and I live in date from the late

years of the 19th century. The decor was modern in nineteen

seventy-something. A brown, once vibrantly ornate carpet,

worn flat; brown and orange striped wool curtains; a sofa

covered in similar material that would look as handsome on

top of a skip but it gave up the ghost years ago and the

absence of sound spring or beam makes it as comfortable as a

deck chair to sit on and a hammock to sleep on. Lampshades

in paisley patterns of red, cream and, yes, brown. The walls

although plain have nonetheless been jazzed up with African

silks, postcards and art prints. The whole place is scattered

with battered paperback editions of the best writers to

elevate or trash the English language, stacks of cassette tapes,

CDs and LPs of equally rare taste. The table is a shanty town

of cigarette boxes, tobacco pouches and strewn papers. There

are at least two full ashtrays (stolen from a pub) and another

two receptacles of uncertain function that are known to all as

ashtrays. They jostle for space amongst every mug and glass


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the house possesses and wine bottles and beer cans. Two

guitars lean, one against a chair, the other on a pile of coats.

Somebody Ive never seen before walks past to put the kettle

on and we chat. Daylight enters via the kitchen the curtains

are rarely drawn in the living room this early it ruins the

ambience and calls morning a little too abruptly. When they

are opened the den-like cosiness of it all looks vacant and

untidy.

The many people who come and go here are a mix of

professionals, unemployed and students, mostly students.

Everyone is in revolt against something, becoming

something. We all have a talent, be it mad or sublime. It may be for art or music, a quick wit, a curious turn of phrase or

some less definable eccentricity of personality. Anyone else is

just taking up space. We talk a lot, here, or in quiet pubs, on

into the early hours, flushing the nonsense and running with

a good concept until were going in circles and call it a night.Everyone seems to know something youve never

encountered before. We are all experts in politics and

religion but speak of neither. There is always something

happening, a session, a gig, an excursion. The less notice, the

better; we find the money somehow and we share what wecant afford. If all else fails, we go out in yesterdays clothes


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and see what happens; maybe nothing, but theres a fair

chance well bump into someone with a plan.

Between times Im out, walking for miles around galleries

and gardens, detouring through unfamiliar streets to see

where it takes me, and then on to another house. None of

them are a home but all are familiar and welcoming and all

the while, inside, something uninvited calls. When its quiet

and the words come, I write them down.


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1993

Morning Train

The alarm wakes me at 4:45 in the dark attic. This is not my room. This is not my bed or my memories on these walls. It

is cold. The sea roars at the shore, the timeless, ceaseless sea

roars at the shore. The wind pushes and pulls, rattling the

wooden walls and windows and the lampposts along the

promenade that ring like cowbells. The whole house isasleep, huddled and dreaming. I get out of bed, pack and

creep downstairs and into the living room. I step over and

around the scattered litter and possessions of whoever came

and went or stayed last night. One of the girls is sleeping on

the sofa by the door. I pause and look down as I leave. She wakes and looks up in fear at the silhouette in the doorway

and the sea, suddenly, alarmingly loud. I whisper consolingly

and go quickly up to the road, crunching gravel, disturbed by

the fright on her face. I am alone. No living thing stirs, the

streets are deserted, the houses still. I pass a building site, a


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cranes long arm lies outstretched and bent, its claw cupped

towards an abandoned head, the compass views from its

cabin boarded with no view of the broken red clay, the junk,

the unfinished walls graffitied with clichs of who loves who,

supports who, hates who. I hear something and look around

and notice a seabird lies dead in the rubble, no obvious sign

of a crime. I wonder if it might have just died, its heartbeats

having counted out, and drifted, silently dropped and thud

into a ready-made bombsite with only me as a witness. I

hurry on and catch the early train and sit in an empty

carriage. We move off along the coast and into the

countryside, beyond the day, behind the night. Cows stand infields of mist, only a breath of colour in dawns cold blue

light. More fields, hedges and fields, hedges and fields.

Calmly, the day arrived and everything, everyone moves in

accord with that feeling.


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1995 1998

The Lament I

Only a traveller can tell the story of a winters sleep, only atraveller can awake to a world where a fraction of what exists

there can be communicated. Only a traveller must venture to

cast a quick, cold eye into the unretrievance and imagine for

them the journeying feet that have set astray and may once

more discover a road beneath them, a geography aroundthem and a horizon as a place to return to. Nameless, they

are so many and so many later it is hard to distinguish the

form I take from those I serve.


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Note To Self

Exhausting energy, tearing at the disposition for meaning.

Alone in the skull, always reaching out. What else but to

extinguish the light and halt the march of duty on desire.

Finding time to evaluate experience, to educate my instincts.

Time in the world interior to that I touch. That inner world

so often polluted by fear and the threat of isolation. Out

amongst friends again, living at the boundaries where our

inner worlds meet and action is not dictated. Still too often

found outside the garden by the temptation to possess it or

be possessed.


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Where Now

Where can I direct this?

This gaunt animal existence;

Where something this bright evening?

My soul burns constant,

With all the air to nourish it,

No wind disturbs it.

And doesn't it happen like this?

That I have nowhere to take this,

No one, not yet,

So here I sit,

On my bed,

Writing,

To not be led,

Staring and blank,

To the sugar water fish bowl.

Quit now before the text spirals,

As all of life moves ever on,

Now and now but never so far away,

Never beyond a glance this way or there.

So here a page and a little more ink,

I let it rest here.


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Roundelay

How is this and do you like this?

Difference is movement,

Again only different.

And enough this?

Do I become less if it is?

Perfect? No, but better?

Again, when is it ever?

Enough ever?

Again and on, on from the same.

Where now? Again or on?

Good now and bad now and why?

To move enough?

Oh roundelay, sing a new refrain.


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Sing!

Sing for gods sake, gild this rust, tinsel this junk, draw little

pictures, delicately colour some damned story of how it is.

Breathe a sigh in recognition of all the verbose homages to

disappointment, loss, misfortune, humble acceptance and

subsequent gratitude. Smirk at the self-same who suffer from

terminal adolescence and call it the bittersweet fruit of

experience. Build shoddy edifices of filth, sculpt rank tributes

in the name of truth and beauty. You fool, you've too much

talent to be bored, it's ennui, existential angst. You're the soil

that feeds the rose-petalled ignorance of their so-called

'society' man! Join in the wish-fulfilment, join the thrashing

egos, join the tourists all mere currency, dealing and being

dealt, aye sing!


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Another Monologue

Remember again, after the words, the atmosphere, the

moments, glimpsing me as I can only imagine, in a trance,

head bowed, talking from, about those spaces, points of

meaning and connection. Your face and all possible others

my guide as to whom I confess. I give them this characters

voice, his truth. I sit back and listen too, estranged. It's

difficult to distinguish if this is clarity, words coming truly

from myself, or am I performing some ritual, ripping the veil

of familiarity from your eyes, transported to a temporal

landscape, plundering the tabernacle of your soul, weaving a

tapestry of words to pigment the pale print of experience?

Questions come through and the voice continues, the words

pour forth, drawing your arid ears to me, splashing, burning,

invigorating. A series of gestures sear the air, I conjure your

pain, scatter your doubt, here is real intent. I exploit the

space we occupy, borrow movement, change, become some

figure constructed from within, my outer self-forgotten

again. I am different now, aware of this new dimension of

tongue and breath, the thickness of voice, the thinness of air.

Meaning cannot be framed in this hypnotic, out-of-time

experience, lost in lostness. No, not that, immersed in

fluidity. I glance up for a moment, into your smooth blue


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grey eyes, deep into the darkness, closer now to me each

time. Words conclude, a drink is taken, a cigarette lit, a long

breath and silence. Notice now the glass, the sensation of

smoke-filled lungs, of table, walls, decor, bodies, people, a

restrained passing look, a casual remark or joke. Tonight this

keeps you warm, disturbs your sleep.


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The Lament II

Is it my story? It feels like my own as I approach it. Or is it

theirs or some distant self, in another life, speaking to me in

ways I never learned, of things I never saw, or experienced or

could translate? Some dusk I hope it leads me to a Golgotha

where I can bury these thoughts. In an age from then some

creature may find a welcome shelter there and come and go

as it pleases. Until that uncertain time this graven head fiend

warms its walls, sweeps its floor and settles down, charged

with a duty beyond achievement.

And still it rains, still Im quickened, still the words come and

go, thus...

Like origami unfolded I lay this fictional life bare, my mind a

canvas, this canvas a lens. For years I looked on tainted

reflections of life and through them at my own. It was my

blighted birthright, from the cradle to the lull of ritual. A

world at once perfect, yet where morals are policed by the

devils you know, and so to preserve them. All fallen before an

impossible mystery, hunched over their incantations with the

burden of the Cyrenean, another payment on a mortgaged

soul. The cold stone walls reverberate with creaking cartilage

and the idle engine of want.


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Spellbound

Textful days, page filled, turned to, lived with. I behaved with

their stiff-collared sang-froid, their intellectualism, the dry

stoical eye and protracted lips. Poised, waiting for the banal

traffic of clapped-out ideas to halt before the peacock struts

his oh so sweeping statements and pretty ideas.

Uncertainties embellished on high, raised to axiomatic

status, reduced to mere decoration to disguise the dust that

gathers about their heart, that quickens the pulse and clouds

the brain, the cataract that obscures true observation,

acceptance, and understanding.

Perhaps Ive gazed too long at these tainted reflections and

through them at my own.

What have I to say now?


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Waiting

Here you are laid bare, observed half-hidden and unresolved.

Prostrate, here, and still, over-exposed in pale light.

Emaciated vigour, shivering limbs all unfolded. Your flimsy

bandages would fall away at the gentlest touch. Some subtle

suggestion binds them to you, creating an illusion of

wholeness, from a distance, of vitality.


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Something Unspoken

Sitting there at rest,

Again aware of,

The uninvited,

From the dark of sleep,

Still the residue,

Grown in the quiet.

It crawls up your throat,

Choking utterance.

Will to equal it,

So unconvincing.

If I could catch it,

Night sleeping or day dreaming,

As it caught and catches me,

Then no more the enemy.


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Wordscoming

s a t i n d a r k o f n i g h t s h a

d e a n d s h a d o w s w a i t i n go n w o r d s i n a r t i c u l a t i

o n m o d e a c t i v a t e d p o s s

i b l y a s u i t c l o s e t o c h e

s t a r t f u l l y s c r i b e u n d

e s c r i b a b l e i n c h i l d l i

k e u n f r e e f o r m l e s s b o r

e d o m t o b e a m a n g l e a m a z

e i n m i n d l e t i t i n e r r a n

t h o u s e d a t e k n o w l e d g e

o f n e g a t i o n w i n c e d f r o

m n e v e r a g a i n p o i s o n e d


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The Precipice

It comes most readily in that relaxed early morning or late

night, lethargy giving way to lucidity, fuelled with a little

nicotine.

Standing on the precipice of delirium, looking ahead and not

below and giddy at the expanse of possible thought. Then I

might sleep, my head a heavy stone and so embedded with

things that it is hard to extract from it, to keep its heart

molten, fluid in wakefulness. Creating something to carry

with me, those thoughts, that mood, to garnish the day, add

wonder to sense. You grab what windows of presence you

can, wrought from a sea of absence, furnished from the swell

of reverie.


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Fugnose

ssiskin holyboo rickety doo wumph rinkle here de bee

woncen singadink ristle a kingshin dona betta comsir teta

bloom sang a ring du bope singe righty ho here we go a word

in year pease ach but werze me words gong sensa silly billyo

hmmnn shhha fink man fink yah I mean to say away now

here you oh you high blink yes yes lovelovelove and sunny

plexus tickle wehe shup pu pup nyin woh there chool me

mema sinky now we go aho what ayou yew saying to me

gotta go werd you comfrum yer hear now now bybye though

uhu ok bumpt into some old finker must be mad nowsee

howhee fought


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The Lament III

He says that you will soon leave this place you're in, this

place that is his day and night. These thoughts that bear you

up weigh him down. Who will assist one who walks alone,

collecting more dust than he can shake off as he travels

amongst the weary and weakens? I began to acknowledge in

them that which I had commanded without, denied within.

Wisdom falters, courage fails.

Star-guided through the dark trenches of the mind, a guide

to those who fall from one who never leaves, who lives to

explore its alleys and secret avenues, its cellars, its vistas, its

exits. He dreams of escape but has found no one the equal of

these walls, so rich with the idleness of a species. Unlike

most but like a few, he came willingly, in search of

something meaningful. He dreams of an old country but it is

his duty now, to these recesses of the mind to weigh in words

the burden of those he's read, to walk paths under new stars,

where no thought or image is written and no answer given,

and write his own there. This last part of your journey is

yours alone.


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The Road to Lessness

Fields of coarse tobacco, dusks light ribbons between hills of

white pepper and gunpowder. Shaved trees reach out to the

heaving clouds for nourishment, autumns confetti about

their feet. No faint life but my own silently visits.

Resolve

Such a bitter sleep was my sleep because I am asked to

dream, to unthinking dream, unthinking remember,

unthinking forget. But it is not unthinking through this painI go.


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Revolt

Torn from the living, in that boundless silence, my errant

imagination exhumes the monstrous voices that had once

been my stay, once welcomed. Now run amok, they indulge

themselves. The more I struggle to contain them, the more

they exert their influence, their power over me.

If these creatures destroy you it is by your hand. This is the

self-destructive ego realised, your terrible conscience, and

with the courage of purgation, you must accept its anger and

its judgement. This is your revenge against your own foolish

hopes.

Consumed

Caught in the blaze, transfixed, in abandon, in some drunken

haze of annihilation. Wanting at some dark, mute level,

screaming to be purged by the light that rushes to consume

me, can I fix it in my gaze?


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Little Robin

Little robin sees the sky,

Just beyond the windowpane,

A narrow gap from the air,

Panics as I try to help,

Fluttering about my face.

I hold my breath and grasp it,

No need to be frightened now,

Open! Out! Take into the air!

My quiet breath, quiet breath.


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The Unretrievance

A heaving and sighing sea pours into a black vortex. I am

pulled around its all-consuming centre. Crashing around me

are the possessions that once crowded my room; the books,

the art, the trophies and trinkets. I half-swim, half-grab

amongst them for something to keep me afloat, but watch

helpless as one by one they are torn from me. In that loss

something thunders and cracks, a high-speed flickering reel

of images, beyond my conscious grasping, rush, flush from

my crowded mind, on and on. My body turns silently, vacant,

transfixed by the total destruction, stripped bare, utterly

alone. Is this madness, what is there now? My brains arebarren stuff, a tissue of thoughts feeling substantial and what

is that to lose?

Void

A matt black globe courses timelessly, a figment of

nothingness. Grim gouged sockets gaze oblivious after the

perished seed that founders in the vast intangible.

Amen, he sweeps the void about his skirts.


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Twilight

An aura of suspension gathers around you, lungs leaden with

sluggish air. Thought yielding now, thickening flow, velvet

dark silt stirs. Beneath a heavy brow eyes burn a myopic

flame, pupils pulse and eclipse, a halo of shifting autumnal

colours. Fluttering lips frame a traitorous kiss and taste again

the quickening.


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Lotus

My eyes unhooded, besotted,

I have again my nothing.

Aweigh in this unfathomable,

Black rags reel in a balmy sky.

A draught of ethereal air enters,

A horse croaking accompanies,

My crying breath cast out.

I shudder, cough and vomit,

Grubs fall from my lips.

A fading obligation orbits my skull,

Some tourniquet constricts my brow.

One hand claws the earth;

I wipe my mouth with the other clenched fist,

Tawny skin, black nails,

Rotting cloth hangs from my wrist.

I arise automatic,

Spilling petals and twigs,

Limbs carry me to the roots of a tree.

I begin again the urbane ritual,

My clothes fall about my knees,

I bathe the scars of the plough,

Behold the face turning, returning.


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I am a stranger to the watcher,

The flick of his liquorice tongue,

'I am the worlds fugitive, what beckons me?'


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The Lament IV

From this mirror to the world where desire is acted out am I

gone and lost a thousand times, and these words, my guide

and sometime tormentor, beyond me for how long? I

unknotted a tangled soul that some colour might illuminate

this damned story borne of listless passion and the whey of

idealism. Such a fiction I dared to dream and gaze and watch

it turn so rotten and twilight come too soon. Who is such a

man but a dream made flesh and so easily forgotten?


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1999

Spring I

Crisp and crash towards blue sky, walking amidst the

rooftops, in easy reach of the mountains, clear in the neardistance. Elevated and quickened by the sweet cold air on

raspberry tongue and silken lung. Experiencing the touch of

all the colour of the world, bathed in calm scent and a

narrative of textures, and the only sounds, welcome

punctuations and stirrings of occasional thoughts of nourgent consequence that drift off amidst the immediacy of a

soul sensing day dusking.


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Spring II

The weather decides the mood today; hazy mountains, milk-

white sunless sky, and the air soft and warm. I head for home

through the quiet suburban avenues; the occasional car

passes slowly, the sound of tyres on tarmac most audible.

Looking into dark interiors: this one someone sitting at a

table, this one preserved for guests, this one a study lined

with books obscured by large plants. Across the junction and

past the cottages with their shuttered windows, wooden

garages and trees with twisted trunks and blossoming in

orange and pink and lavender, the birds hidden and singing

among the branches. On past The Lyric and across the river,

singing aloud. Long rows of terraced houses and narrow

alleyways and to the house. Out again in no time and no

buses around so walking again, another bridge downriver,

looking at the slow rippling water. Past the old house on the

corner, ruined render and brickwork, windowless, great tufts

of grass on its sills; a pigeon struts along its chimney top.

Into town, detouring by the old church; flowers are being

brought in. Good day for it. Sounds of workers on a new

construction; I look in through the green gauze and the dust,

lamps dimly illuminating progress. Through the market,

switching off the chatter of the people strolling, sitting


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around. Enjoyed the eyes of a friend for a few minutes and

then on to the union; sat in that little cavern with coffee and

cigarettes. A day when the tide comes in over memories, a

stirring calm, a thought to how I was and how it ended. It is

spring, life is in the air, everywhere, between the bricks of the

old house, in the trees nesting. Faces awake from winter.


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Graduate

You wouldn't recognize this picture. The overlapping

shadows of fifteen hundred lights on a clear ocean of floor

and some hundred bodies cling to the walls in the same

stupid costume and then I see you across the hall in that

green silk dress, like a beacon. I set out, my body some alien

extension, out of sight, in manual control beneath tunnel

vision. The incomprehensible expanse around me bulges,

exerts arbitrary elastic forces on my limbs. Flapping trouser

legs with clown feet kick imaginary footballs with each step,

stifling shirt with swinging baboon arms, my long neck sways

to a charmers tune, my indecisive facial muscles, the

peculiar angles they choose when I glance three-quarters in a

mirror. Her face at last and her smile, I hang on it like

washing and casually say hi.


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2000

Open window

Out of the emptiness a voice without substance, an image

develops of such simplicity; a vast sky where the clouds havepaused for a moment. The trees cut out in the foreground

seem to share the same repose. A slow tide of grass, a

glistening stream, the shifting shapes of fish swimming

beneath the surface. A flower grows alone, it is an impossible

blue. It awakens me to the cold red clay on my feet. I stand weightlessly erect, my clothes shifting with the complex

rhythm of the breeze. I see this from a distance and close my

eyes, feel the movement of the trees. Petals, soft as

snowflakes, drift slower than gravity, slower than time to the

earth. Their perfume, an unnameable sensation, fills my

chest, an energy that reaches into my temples, releasing

tears. Inhale. My warmth is emptied, filled with cold air. The

sun shines warm on my skin, on the earth, wanting through

the mist the frosted hills. Feel my hands through my hair and


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exhale, watch as I walk, the brush of grass sweeps and sways

around me, erasing my path, silent as the breeze.


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2006 2010

Easter Story

It is evening. A young man sits with his back to a tree, head

bowed. Hearing footsteps, he looks up to see a girl running

back to the group. She has left an egg on the ground. He

smiles and lifts it in his hand; it is quite hot. With adept

hands he cracks a large piece of shell away and plucks out the

cooked egg and eats. This is his first meal today. He feels the

dust, blown by the wind, speckle his face. He looks up at the

first few stars of the night. The same dust freckles the inside

of the eggshell still in his hand. He smiles and quietly

watches the group sitting around, a couple here watching

him curiously, others chatting, laughing, singing. This is a

story for tomorrow perhaps.

The professor sits in the old leather armchair in his study.

On a few shelves here are his published essays, articles and

books. The remainder of the wall is filled with the classic andcontemporary works of various sciences and photos with him


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alongside some of the authors of these. A little girl rushes in

and stops at a respectful distance, Happy Easter, granddad.

He smiles, thank you, darling and off she runs. He has never

been fond of chocolate and opens the large bottom drawer of

his desk. There are two thick folders to one side where neatly

filed are years of work that once scattered less prosperous

walls and desks and he knows now will never be completed.

He gives these the faintest glance and decides not to put

away the gift. He unwraps the foil and presses the thick

chocolate with his frail hands; nothing. He smashes it with

his fist, collapsing a quarter of the shell. He picks out the

larger pieces and looks in at the smooth interior of the shelland a little pile of colourful, sugar-coated sweets. He looks

up and out at the garden and, uncharacteristically,

inexplicably, he shudders, sobs bitterly.


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The Potter

Once there was a potter whose daughter announced that she

was to marry in three months time. He decided that he

would gift her a beautiful storage jar with the most elaborate

ornamentation his craft had taught him and the finest paints

he could afford. In the quiet of the evening, after his days

work was complete, he would continue with his masterpiece

whilst his old blind dog slept by his feet. When tiredness

danced in his head, he would place it on the workbench and

cover it with a cloth in case his daughter might see it and

spoil the surprise. After two months the jar had been fired

and the delicately painted relief work was nearing

completion. He stepped back to admire his work and woke

the old dog that must have been dreaming. It leapt up in

fright and ran blindly about the workshop crashing into the

workbench. The man watched, frozen in horror, as the jar fell

and was impaled on a pair of tongs. He picked it up and

looked at the glow from his lamp through neat holes

punched in each side. He sat it down and screamed from the

soles of his feet, Come here so I can kill you, but the dog was

gone. It would know better than to return tonight.

For days the man could not bear to enter his workshop. He

cancelled all orders, telling his clients that he had taken ill.


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He was ill, consumed with anger, frustration and self-pity.

He found it impossible to share the excitement of the

wedding preparations. Consolations were silenced with more

anger. In one such moment he sat alone in the garden when

his turmoil was disturbed by a gentle humming. How can

that woman be so happy, he thought, can I not have a

minutes peace? Shut up in there, will you?, but still it

continued. He stormed into the house, searching from room

to room. No one was home except his dog, which shrank

from a dismissive boot. He paused by the workshop, Ive told

them a hundred times not to go in here. Opening the door,

familiar smells greeted him, familiar quiet, familiarapparatus, tools waiting expectantly. Then again, the simple

music stirred the air. He followed the source of it to the open

window in his workshop. There sat the jar on the windowsill.

He stood before it, thinking of the hours he laboured over it;

it was beautiful but ruined. Not even fit for a pisspot, hemuttered in disgust. For the third time the song came and in

amazement he realised what it was. The wind breathed

through the jar and with its subtle shift in direction the pitch

rose and fell. In a moment his shattered contentment was

made good and his work complete. Come here so I can kiss you he cried, rushing out of the door. The poor animal,


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thinking him insane, fled from the house and his master still

in pursuit, laughing uncontrollably.

That evening the potter sat down and carefully applied

precious leaf; golden rays of the sun emitting from one side

of the jar and a silver halo of moonlight on the other. What

luck that was, he wondered. The old blind dog shrugged its

eyebrows.


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The Blade

Some see only a story and read no meaning

Some think it unremarkable and never seek it

Some think it foolish and mock the mention of it

Some think it evil and chasten against it

Some worship it beyond comprehension

Some follow it but it leaves no path

Some claim to know it and sell the dream of it

Some sensed its presence and fear the memory of it

Some it has touched and made mad

None have stolen it or bought or won it

It brings no rewards though all seek its treasures

It has no power yet no effort can equal it

It is not in memory and not in hope

It is not in want or reckoning

It is passed to none yet to anyone found

It cannot be owned yet all possess it

It renders whole those who receive it

It rents asunder those who resist it

Any may ignore it but none escape it


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Haiku

Loose the fool upon your back

Throw your stinking corpse

Rest pilgrim, rest weary ass


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A Great Doubt

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