Every work of your hand is just a finger in the dam.
No escape from this fatherless place.
All our fruits are seedless.
All our efforts are needless.
Not a test of our diligence but our impotence,
Its but a breath.
My senses deceive as much as they reveal.
I can’t believe in everything that I can feel.
Plug my senses and I still exist.
Stop my heart but there’s still a pulse in my wrist.
I’ve never know the feeling of a dream, outgrown.
Reap the burden of the seed unsown.
Perhaps I’ve been missing it piece by piece
Every night while I sleep.
Is this not what life is?
A bearing of weight
And the contrast of the weightless day.
Burden and treasure.
Memories reminded and forgotten.
Pain and pleasure.
It’s not the weight that we bear that we measure.
Not the difference.
But the lack of indifference.
Like singing in a silent room.
We need open space to bloom.
I have never felt a dream outgrown.
I can’t un-know a thing I’ve always known.
Everything I see is me.
Shut out all my senses and I’m still alive
The blind can see, just not like me.
Add a dimension and see thoughts take shape.
It’s our only escape from this nearly forsaken place.
It’s not He, but we, that forsake.
What cannot be taught must grow to be known.
All that we wish to know lies half-asleep and alone,
But when inquired, its awake and you know.
Hollow and shallow, I swallow.
And with grinding teeth, stop to sleep.
I hold my breath to sense proximity of life to death.
In the present tense calamity and virtue reign.
Like a shower curtain shields one from the rain,
The roof over our head only houses the pain.
The curiosity that killed you is giving me the will to live.
Creative, wing-ed bird, my mind, you’ve tried to give me flight
But pinned between a gravestone and the bitter tongue I’ve tied.
I know now; that which grows old must eventually die.
Time is our condition.
We grow ripe, then rot with age.
In an instant I’ve fixed it.
We’re saved!
Then swept away.
You’ve said my efforts matter most.
Now, tell me, are we even close?
I traveled further in a pen-stroke than your mind had ever gone.
But I cast a bigger shadow with all I said than what I’ve done.
You’ve said my efforts matter most.
Now, tell me, are we even close?
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.
When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.
Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;
For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered
When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.
- Khalil Gibran
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your
laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your
tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your
being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very
cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your
spirit, the very wood that was hollowed
with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into
your heart and you shall find it is only that
which has given you sorrow that is giving
you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in
your heart, and you shall see that in truth
you are weeping for that which has been
your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than
sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is
the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits
alone with you at your board, remember
that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales be-
tween your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at
standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to
weigh his gold and his silver, needs must
your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
“Strobe” by Friendly Fires
I can’t help myself but move when I catch wind of a jam like this.
With contempt, at familiar things, I groan
In discontent
Now, an attempt at life alone
Set the train in motion
Caged bird fly
Loose the leash of stagnation
Your idle hands can try
Ball and chain of habit
Repetition’s at it again
Escape from the badlands
Move again.
Breathing fresh air in
Young legs and heart
Water’s warm at the rivers bend
Set the train in motion
Caged bird fly
Loose the leash of stagnation
Your idle hands can try
Ball and chain of habit
Repetition’s at it again
Escape from the badlands
Move again.
Labor looms and exhaustion adds
Adventure gone
Structure, again, my comrade.
Too soon forgotten,
Comfort in a familiar face,
Recalling the time or place,
Reliving glory days.
Before the winds of change and pace.
Habit creeps and bland befriends
Lukewarm, the mood
I’ve settled in
I’ve set the train in motion
Let the caged bird fly
Loosed the leash of stagnation
My idle hands have tried.
Ball and chain habit
Repetition’s at it again
Escaped from the badlands
I gotta move again.
When pale the grass and again, my skin.
God forbid,
I’ll move again.
A fool am I, God.
An absent-minded fool.
Absorbed in senescence.
Sapless in my feeble, dried-up frame.
My avaricious limbs groan to my children, “I wish your bones were as fragile as my own!”
A mortal am I to the dreamer, and a wretch to my son.
Though of this world I am free and to this bed I am bound no longer,
My efforts, neither here nor there, yield irresolution.
Unembodied, my mind is freed of rationality and regard.
Though my thoughts wander in repose. Routine, a wall of stone and mortar, is uncompromising.
In review, I pace the grounds within and let the past besiege me.
In contemplation I resolve that, for this prodigal, dreams were of little consequence.
Their yield, though priceless, is of little worth to this caged bird.
No longer carried by the wind, I’ve become little but the dust beneath my feet.
“Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.”
Proverbs 17:28
“The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a bubbling brook.”
Proverbs 18:4
