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Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts

Sunday, October 13, 2013

The Two Books



In a dream you went to heaven and stood
   in a room of light and mist
Nothing else was in the room
   but two tables of stone
Upon each table a thick book lay
   ready to be opened

The Angel of Truth came in and stood
   between the volumes both
‘What are these books you guard so close?
   and why are they bound so thick?’

‘They are books of truth. In them
   you will see events, none false!
‘All recorded exactly as
   they happened, as they are!’

Your eyes, they glowed—to see the truth!
   To understand what’s REAL
To know what had happened in the world
   untainted by man’s emotion

‘It is, however, given to you,
   to read but one, but one’

Hesitation. Only one?
   ‘What is the difference between?’

‘One book has every word
   of hate, of spite, of ill
‘spoken by men concerning you
   hid from your eye and ear’

The blood, it flowed into your neck
   Surely there’d been many

‘The other has every word of good
   men spoke of you in secret
‘The both are true, by my right hand
   inscribed. Now you may choose’

Your mind a swirling mess of thought
   If I open the first one at last
I will know the liars who smile to my face
   and scorn behind my back

Oh, the power! I would know
   those bastards for who they are!
Finally the covers would be removed
   And what’s in the second book?

Only the good? Why even bother?
   Yes, it would be lovely to know
the nice things they say. But how naïve
   to want to see only the good

‘Think well upon it,’ said the angel
   'Those quoted in each book
'may not be whom you expect
   the words to have come from

'For know! the human mouth is weak
   as is the human heart’

If I open the first, I will likely find
   my dearest friends, my mates
And know the words they spoke in shame
   but spoke none the same

But in this knowing my heart will turn
   each word a seed of angst
Planted in hurt and volatile ground
I will be turned against all I love
   and against all who love me

In the second the voices will be the same
   but quoted in moments of courage
For isn’t a kind word more difficult to speak?
   Their words will be food to my soul

To know that even the antagonists
   have stood up in my favor
But… your eye still lingered on the first
   will that tome not serve me better?

The angel saw your thoughts and strife,
   and spoke in gentle tone,
‘You want to know the absolute?'
   Your eyes said, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

‘The problem lies in what thing
   you consider to be “true”.
'For in the mind-bound earthly life
   of inconsistency,
'of fractured thoughts and paradox,
   there is no WHOLE truth'

‘All is split in two, as you
   see these volumes twain
'The good is true, the evil is true
   to either you can subscribe'

‘The REAL truth is not forcibly
   that which happened so or not
'TRUE are those things which draw your heart
   to the Father of it all'

‘For to know the ill, it may be real,
   but, how does it serve you?
'It will cause only a further ill,
   and further evil still

‘But to know the good, if only half
   your heart will fill with strength
'to change even the other half
   into good for your own sake

‘In either book is power,
   the power of knowledge unknown
'But one of them will dry your soul,
   the other make it grow

‘Now choose.’

I didn’t see which book you cracked,
   the choice was terribly hard
But I hope you missed the things I said
   against you on the side

Though it is true, I said them all
   still somehow it is not
I spoke them in a moment of
   falsehood to me and you

The truth is that no matter what
   deep inside, I love you

Thursday, September 26, 2013

What is More?

And the human consciousness
so beautiful, so vast
Too great to be destroyed by a body
Doth hover over us
Like a great iceberg in the water
Inverted, where sky is water and water is sky

Peering out beneath the surface
Only a splinter of itself into the air
Concealing its wholeness above that filmy passage
In the thick and darkly waters above

So exists a splinter of the human being
inside a brain, inside a body
The rest, who knows?
The rest is more
And when one dies they are born into the more
And begin to live in that incomprehensible more-ness

And when THAT life is expired
They are born into even more
Further and further
As the universe
Self-creating
Unspiraling
Unraveling
Endlessly

And this is the mystery of infinity
This is the meaning of forever--eternal

"But shut up your pen, for it writes only emptiness"

"It tries to express what is more, the eternal"

"Has not religion done this?"

"All the sacred writings, how feebly they express this"

"Will man do better?"

"Never"

"If you know the secret, will you not pass it on?"

"Will I invent a new religion?"

"Will you?"

"That is impossible, for as feeble as it is
it is the highest form of expression of the secrets
It is the door"

Friday, May 10, 2013

People

You will find that people
Are not as certain as they appear
Nor as uncertain

They are not as kind as they appear
Nor as unkind

They are not as attentive as they appear
Nor as distracted

Not as rich
Nor as poor

Not as busy
Nor as idle

Not as good
Nor as evil

Not as believing
Nor as faithless

Not as pious
Nor as pagan

Not as similar
Nor as different

People, people, my dear
How elusive they