Thematic Poetry Previews (2)

​

All poems © Marie Faverio

​

​

*Philosophy and Moments of Being*

​

 

The Hermit

 

Amidst murmurs of leaves and grandeur of sun,

the hermit enjoys life unscathed

by the fake smiles of Vanity Fair.

No racing routine, no fuss.

The compass of change does not touch him,

his only goal the lost habit of happiness.

 

- Do not touch me. I am as fragile as life.

- Do not touch me. Light hurts those

who do not seek.

- Let the blue of the sky shelter me,

the fronds unafraid of boundaries.

- Let the sun and the moon

be my only lights, my precious guides.

 

Lulled to sleep by secretive moonlight,

the hermit doesn’t dream of money or glory,

skyscrapers or fake handshakes.

​

 

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

 

You see the light

at the end of the tunnel,

and run, run, run,

but when you reach the end

you realize it’s just a mirror,

and that the light

was on the other side,

just where you came from.

​

 

No Gravity

 

Rid yourself of gravity.

Fly, child, fly to the land

where the sun is allotted to everyone

and a singing madness

drenches the air.

 

The darkness has freezing hands here,

the moonflower refuses to bloom,

the ground is an ossuary.

 

Defeat gravity.

Let your feet off the ground.

There is life on the other side,

unforgivably green meadows,

the gaiety of flowers.

 

It is a place warm with home,

a place where doors can stay open,

a place with the ah-ness of things

all around.

 

Fly, child, fly.

​

 

The Shift Leader

 

The Shift Leader kicks in the night,

and lights go on to comfort the lonely,

high-strung artists, poets and other outsiders.

It is not an idyll, not here,

where trees are treated like strangers

and oxygen is the monopoly of greedy humans.

It is the reality of misfits

who cannot sing or play the music

at the frenzy of the clock’s baton.

 

Memories are nastier at night,

their fists don’t fondle, don’t love.

They keep the restless awake,

kick genius into gear.

How they enjoy their dirty games,

invincible as a serial killer or a Greek god.

 

The Shift Leader kicks out the night

and the Muses can finally rest.

The sun brags its presence,

and humdrum people get started.

​

 

Imagine

 

Imagine a world

free from hatred and revenge.

Now stop dreaming

and start fighting

to make it true.

 

Imagine a world

free from prejudices and bigotry.

Now stop dreaming

and start fighting

to make it reality.

 

Imagine a world

without ego,

a world where you are me

and I am you.

Now stop dreaming

and open your eyes.

 

Be a new Buddha.

Spread the message.

Spread the love.

You are me

and I am you

in this eternal present

camouflaged as time.

 

The magic of light

doesn’t need

the mania of prisms.

​

 

The Last Note

 

I have sung a song

nobody wanted to hear –

the song of Death,

the song of the bleeding self

wandering barefoot

in search of comfort,

wondering about the meaning of life,

this and that.

 

They stopped their ears

because they recognized themselves

in the pain of awareness.

They stopped their ears

because they wanted to believe

that they were loved

and that the seed can still grow

into a powerful flower.

 

They stopped their ears

and closed their eyes

and listened to the song in their heart,

blessed with the thrill of illusion.

 

I have sung a song

nobody wanted to hear.

Leaves and petals covered my sandals

as a reminder of my own mortality,

lulled by the breeze.

 

I looked up

and saw a dove

fly into infinity

the moment I struck

the last

note.

​

 

The Silence Inside

 

The silence inside

is the real bomb.

You stumble upon the debris

of your own self,

stunned,

chloroformed by misery.

 

There is nothing more to say,

not in terms of words.

Eyes are shut.

They don’t daydream any more,

blinded by the world’s

haversack of indifference

and subtly smiling arrogance.

 

Sometimes they stare

in astonishment,

without understanding

what is not to be understood.

Blindness (like ignorance)

can be a blessing

in a world revolting

around illogical everything.

 

If you walked

outside the cave

you wouldn’t understand

either

and would be blinded

to irreversible insanity.

​

 

Mobs of Stars

 

Among the mobs of stars,

not even one showing sympathy,

not even one stupefied with love,

not even one holding out palms of light

to elicit faith.

 

It is cold here, zero absolute.

It is a place bolted rigid by absence,

scarred by lack of love,

a place where not even celluloid smiles

stir the fain dust of hope.

 

Among the mobs of stars,

a staring face,

stupor perfected in indolence,

Henri Rousseau’s children on the leash.

 

Among the mobs of stars,

one, just one,

poking its way to the front,

mumbling a prophecy,

then rushing back

into oblivion.

​

 

Let Time Do Its Duty

 

Let time do its duty

with believers and other compliant

half-saints in white gowns.

 

Let it heal their wounds

with the balm of hope,

let it heal.

 

Let time do its duty

with the thick-skinned

who were never really wounded.

 

Let it heal their scratches

with the balm of I-don’t-care,

let it heal.

 

Let time try to do its duty

with those who usually

go to the wall –

 

the weak, the poets,

the tormented artists,

let it try.

 

Let it try to heal their wounds,

wounds that are too deep,

wounds that are too painful

for any balm.

 

These are the wounds

that stay,

the wounds that leave

a scar, a mark for life,

 

like the numbers tattooed

on the bodies of prisoners

in concentration camps.

These are the wounds that stay.

 

Let time try to help

because heal it can not.

Let it try to help.

 

Chorus in the distance:

 

Oh yes, let it try to help.

We need its help.

Our wounds are soar,

burning with awareness.

 

Let it try to help,

let it try to help.

 

(voices fading away)

​

 

The River

 

The sun rises

and sets.

Leaves unfold,

turn bright green,

then brown,

wither and die.

Then it starts

all over again.

Everything changes.

Nothing is permanent

but the Essence

that playfully manifests itself

in change.

 

Meanwhile,

Heraclitus’ river

keeps

flowing

relentlessly.

 

Most people float in the river

unaware of change,

until they see their sagging face

mirrored in the water,

desperately try

to swim against the current

and drown.

​

 

Stubborn Little Ray

 

Among a confusion of clouds,

a ray of light –

not the proverbial silver lining,

a real stubborn little ray

that made it through.

 

Isn’t it gorgeous?

​

 

A Bird Called Freedom

 

There is a bird outside.

The bird’s name is Freedom.

The bird is perched on a huge

dark tree called Oppression.

The bird used to sing

the most beautiful songs

but is now silent.

 

People go their way

around the huge dark tree,

unaware of Freedom,

eyes nailed to the ground,

a bit out of habit,

a bit out of boredom.

 

Freedom looks down for a second,

then hides her face under her wing

and falls asleep on a bare

branch of Oppression.

She doesn’t dream of anything,

absolutely anything.

​

 

Eternity

 

I had been looking

for eternity

in the sky,

but the daylight blinded me,

and at night I was distracted

by a monotonous moaning

that could have been

my own.

 

I had been looking

for eternity

in the sea,

but then someone shouted

“Shore!”,

and eternity was shattered

into nasty instants,

the ticking curse of the clock.

 

I had been looking

for eternity

in the mountains,

but then my mind kicked in

almost ferociously,

reminding me of shifts and drifts,

and once again I shrugged

in defeat.

 

Until one day,

a day that had started

like any other day,

eternity unexpectedly

came to me,

and we walked down

the path of light

hand in hand.

​

 

When the Silver Lining

 

There are times when the silver lining turns black,

strangling hope and all those weird feelings

people love to nurture;

other times it disappears

and you slip (or are kicked) into nimbus,

the grey zone from which not everybody comes back;

but occasionally (albeit rarely) it turns gold,

and you see the light face to face,

and it’s so beautiful you don’t even think of turning back,

and you don’t even remember the silver lining that turns black,

and just keep going until you run into the Truth and say hello.

​

 

To Know or Not to Know

 

If we knew in advance

we could be delighted,

stop striving and think

“It will be so anyway –

Fate has spoken in my favour.”

 

Or we could be terrified,

stop striving and think

“I am powerless against Fate anyway.

Sayonara.”

 

Either way

knowing would stop

the flow of life,

so, as Borges said, it is better

to ignore “los designios del universo”

and just feel comfortable with the fact

that the world is what it is (*shrug*).

 

Of course you need faith

to keep going without knowing why,

but that’s another poem.

​

 

Immensity

 

Immensity all around,

the angel’s wings sheltering the forgotten

from the wind of separation,

the wind whose words hurt.

 

Immensity all around,

a huge mantra shining upon old simplicities

and the taken-for-granted,

those little things that slipped down

the top of our priorities

for lack of time.

 

Immensity all around,

mother nature’s embrace,

her legacy to the children of heaven

who have yet to experience

bliss.

 

Immensity all around,

just for the sake of it –

because it is a damn good thing

to be unchained and breathe in

the Absolute.

​

 

Hypatia

 

She was beautiful.

She was smart.

She was ahead of her time.

She had made thinking

a way of life

and refused to stop questioning

when ordered to do so.

 

She had tried to reconcile

enemies, men and women,

different religions, different beliefs,

but dogmas are tough devils

with immense power over people

who are afraid of thinking.

 

Thinking can hurt,

it can turn your life upside down,

it can ruthlessly reveal

what you don’t want to know.

 

So the powerful ones (priests et al.)

simply decided not to think,

to stop their ears to the unsettling truth

and stick to what they had been taught

without questioning.

If the Book said so it had to be true.

 

And so Hypatia was murdered

without even a trial.

The powerful ones had won,

non-thinking had been awarded

the golden sceptre with the cutting edge.

 

Hypatia died a martyr.

Her legacy lives on

forever.

​

 

The Hand (2)

 

A hand searching in a thorn bush

to find the hand of a friend

it has lost to fate and malice,

a hand not afraid of cuts

because it knows blood will set it free.

 

The hand dives into the thorns

like a soul diving into the light.

It rips off spikes, pricks and needles

because like Shoyo Roku it knows

that flowers bloom on withered trees

and among thorns,

and that pain is the prelude to joy.

 

Whether the hand found

the other hand

remains unknown,

but there are rumours that a blue bird

from a mysterious land far, far away

came down to perch on the bleeding hand

and sang its most beautiful song.

​

 

You or They?

 

You help if they help you.

You love if they love you.

You forgive if they forgive you.

So who’s going to start?

You or they?                                           

When will the snap of a hug crack the air?

When will the scorpion in the brain

stop its death dance?

 

The heart’s tracks are complicated.

and the heresy of honour

is a crooked sign at the crossroad.

The quizzing eye doubts,

the crying heart asks,

and the answer is right there –

 

the defeat of pride,

unfolding your rugged self

into the blossom of love,

just like that.

 

Help, love, forgive

without asking why.

Love doesn’t need a reason

Better to love without a reason

than to have to say sorry with a reason.

​

 

Words

 

“Perhaps” is a tentative word,

the road-crossing that leaves you

puzzled

amidst a chaos of sounds

and fingers pointing

in all directions.

 

“Tomorrow” is the word

of those who fear

and those who hope,

the key to the building

you are raising

in the present.

 

“Yesterday” is the word

of those who justify,

those who complain

and those who remember,

the token in the pocket.

 

“Never” is the word

of those who have laid down the sword

and closed the door to the future,

the full stop without a following.

 

“Forever” is the word

of those who believe,

the plain on the other side of the valley,

the lump in the throat

turned into a song of praise.

 

“Love” is the word

of those who have reached the goal,

blown the barrier to the other

to pluck life back

by choice.

​

 

The Search

 

She searched for happiness

here and there,

up the mountains

and down the bottom of the sea,

in the heart of field flowers

and in the luxury of Buckingham Palace,

in the simple wisdom of fairy tales

and in the most complex existentialism.

 

Her shoes were worn out,

her heart’s song had become as low

as a mourning bell, the devil’s tuba.

So her shoes now became her bare skin,

her song the leaves’ whisper,

which she followed even in the absence of trees

because there was still a tiny branch

with tiny budding leaves

in her heart’s garden.

 

The weather didn’t listen

to the heart’s reasons or to Pascal,

but she didn’t listen to it either

and kept going.

Until one day,

her eyes blind with tiredness,

her bare feet bleeding

from the thorns on her path,

she looked up

 

and saw a cloud so bright it shone,

and a ladder running through it,

and in spite of her crippling mood

she started climbing the ladder

because the urge inside

was now stronger than ever,

and the song inside

a whole chorus of hallelujahs.

 

She soon disappeared

in the breast of heaven

and was never to be seen again,

but it is reported

she found what she was looking for.

​

 

Hints

 

The flower blooms

on a withered branch,

through a crack in the pavement,

fighting for life,

singing the undanced cadences

of chance and hope.

 

It pokes us with hints,

but we still don’t understand,

our mind infested with the urgency of money

and happenings caged in the here and now,

fingers locked in greed

or pointed in accusation

of those who dare to demur.

 

We shake off hints

with a dismissive gesture,

almost a shrug,

and go back to our farrago of feelings,

the imbroglio that rules on a foam throne,

undisputed.

​

 

Small Things

 

There is much of the everyday in life,

but it is small things

that are the closest to an answer,

the daily unobserved,

the hidden to the inquisitive eye.

 

The truth doesn’t unfold its wings

in the questions that cram the mind,

but in the stalled moment

begging for attention,

causing an inward teetering

that is the premise to the ultimate light.

 

It is small things

that prickle heart and mind

into the marriage that is the ultimate answer,

the gentle mandate to survive in spite of all,

the trigger to a knack of living.

 

There is much of the everyday in life,

but it is small things

that help approach the edge,

dissolving the recalcitrant horizon of grief.

 

It is small things

that offer an othering of perception,

the key to the whole,

which is one and many.

 

There is pure light in small things.

Pure light.

​

 

Why Creep?

 

Why creep

if you have wings to fly?

It’s up in the sky

that you can swallow pure light

and pencil your own story

where blue meets blue

and life teems with the unexpected.

 

Why creep

if you can stretch your wings

to breathe in freedom and feel empowered

by the sight of the world below,

drifting into distance like memories,

teeming with silence?

 

Why creep

if you can unfold your wings

to embrace eternity

and defeat the there-ness of things,

cracking meaning out of husks of sunshine?

It only takes a gesture

to burst into light.

​

 

After Psalm 118:21-24

 

The stone rejected by the builders

will be the cornerstone,

and on the cornerstone

sliding shadows

in the hour of the collapsing

horizon

will slip off the edge

to welcome the errant

arrows of Truth.

 

Wings will sheer off

into moonlight,

time will stop,

smiles will arch again on faces

beholding the cornerstone.

​

 

The Poets’ Return

 

Plato won.

We have been kicked out

of his Republic,

our Republic,

our country,

we, the spinoffs of the mind,

the dark disorders of the mood,

the useless poets.

 

We have been kicked out

because we knew too much,

because we were dangerous,

bad omens

full of muddy nostalgias

and a certain radiance

that frightened the leaders

reluctant to share their halo.

 

We have been kicked out

because we were harbingers of truth

refusing to tap

into the reservoir of conformity

to get our point across,

our genies unstoppered,

refusing to shut up,

like a choir of cicadas in summer.

From outside the walls of civilization,

under a muggy sun

crying for attention,

we plan our return

quietly,

a sense of victory

already clamping our hearts.

​

 

On the Spur of the Moment

 

I saw a butterfly

delve into a blossom.

I cried for joy like a child,

turned to tell my friend,

but there was no friend

around.

​

 

A Tale of Mind and Magic

 

The Mind,

the wandering wayfarer

shrugging to the gods,

didn’t listen to Magic,

who found him begging

at the street’s corner,

close to starvation.

 

Begging for an answer

he couldn’t find

in the straight tracks of thought

scorching the dust of imagination,

leading to the huge pit of dread

full of hurling woes and cellos of moans,

the pit with no stars reflected in it,

no face,

void absolute.

 

- Come with me to the land

of the everlasting sun -,

said Magic.

But the Mind kept his eyes

nailed to the ground,

following flickering shadows

sprinkled with dust.

He didn’t even say “hello”.

 

Magic stroked his hair

gently,

with uncalculated kindness,

and whispered a few words

into the Mind’s ear,

 

but the Mind kept his eyes

nailed to the ground,

staring at his own tears

falling soundless

on the asphalt of the city,

like a prayer.

 

Magic bent over

to see the Mind’s face,

and recognized herself

in his eyes,

only much older.

 

Magic ran away,

shaking off

the cold ashes of her future,

running for her life,

determined to outsmart fate.

 

She didn’t turn back.

The future of the Mind

is uncertain.

​

 

The Place

 

You cannot force praise

with titles and honours,

or a row of awards in your cabinet.

You cannot turn eyes upwards

by blinding them with artificial light.

 

Stop haunting and vaunting,

look around you -

see those seekers holding lanterns?

Join them.

 

Leave the drawer’s darkness

and celluloid smiles behind,

start searching for the place

alive with light and wings,

the breakaway place braced

against the bolts of sorrow.

 

Relax into being.

Breathe.

 

​

Song to an Unborn Child

 

Child, beautiful child,

- Always keep to the Way without welting your pace

- Never make wrong your right

- Learn that sometimes you have to thrash up waves

to reach the other side

- Go on tiptoe to see beyond the hunched horizon

- Stop to seize the moment

- Learn to distinguish between fair and foul

Child, beautiful child,

- Don’t sink in the mud and murk of the world

- Drink dew instead of dregs,

and love your brother and sister,

no matter how they treat you,

no matter how clichéd this sounds.

Child, beautiful child,

I love you.

 

​

The Torment of Tantalus

 

Struggling and scrambling

all your life,

never getting over the edge,

twilight tints encroaching

on the battlefield

to remind you of the impending

end of suffering,

then shifting away again –

the torment of Tantalus.

​

 

Good Old Diogenes

 

He knew the trick,

the good old philosopher

unbothered by life and its fuss,

the tub-dweller bankrupting heaven

with a few staves,

he knew the trick.

 

The light of the lamp failed,

the righteous man was not found,

yet among the shards of shattered dreams

he found a clue.

 

Do not seek any more,

do not seek in the kerb-and-gutter

prosaicness of life, its pleasantly

stupid lies and chequered freedom.

 

Reason’s click-clack won’t help,

nor will sham lamps.

The spark in the mind is stronger

than the flash in the jar,

it unleashes images that don’t go out

at the flick of a finger,

pinprick visions and sounds that stick.

So he laid down the sword and the lamp

and found the blameless white

he had been looking for

among the poor stepping barefoot into reality,

not the gloved applause of robed ministers,

their ball-and-chain bugbears.

 

There were no dark flowers

or sieved smiles

in his new private Eden.

He slept with his face

to the East.

 

​

Okaying Life

 

The centre you seek,

that sparkling little thing that unriddles the Idea,

won’t listen to reason’s blah blah blah,

the Faustian fustian whose touch

topples the fierce incantations of childhood’s songs

fluting from the tree-tops.

It won’t swamp the alchemist’s Cimmerian

chamber with sham suns.

 

It defies the ramparts of logic

with all its clashing confinements

blazing with unbelief and unhooked moons,

the savage scrutiny of the untiring mind

occasionally throwing in a chuckle

for good measure.

 

The centre shifts through the meanders of the mind

like grapes beyond Tantalus’ grip,

yet the stratagems of the spirit close the circle

and slide the centre to its proper place,

okaying life like a Bourdelle figure.

 

The bees come booming

when the mechanical nightingale

stops its click-clack.

​

 

I Asked

 

I asked the panther:

“Why did you do it?”

“I was hungry”,

he answered.

I asked the hyena:

“Why did you do it?”

“I had to feed my cubs”,

she answered.

I asked the snake:

“Why did you do it?”

“I had to fulfil a plan”,

he answered.

I asked man:

“Why did you do it?”

“Out of greed”,

he answered.

​

 

A Fastidious Vision

 

Spurred by a fastidious vision,

I walk down the off-beat path of an urgent purpose

at the crossfire of light and shadow,

leaving the business of words behind me

under the hard stare of possibility

and a babel of papers.

 

The clock taps out its usual dark message

of death and loneliness,

loneliness and death.

It doesn’t sound like a refrain any more.

It drums on the senses like a priest,

with the insistence of hope,

hands pining up

in the guise of a last-minute prayer.

 

The vision assures me there is more to life

than coffined petals and sealed eyes,

or crossed hands holding a gilt-edged Bible

with a nice bookmark,

more than jails of shapes and montage of suns.

Should I believe this unfrocked minister

hinting at something grandiose

poking forth meanings like buds,

tolls released from form and sound?

 

The clock keeps spitting out its composed rage

over vowels of sorrow refusing to swell

into fallacy of words,

in and out of trance like a poet.

It doesn’t believe in visions any more,

or perhaps it just doesn’t care,

oppressed by a sense of columns and tiredness,

the irksome regularity of the Swiss dream.

 

The rattling lid in the kitchen

suggests with the ludicrous democracy of politicians

that time is real after all.

Harsh angles soften in the twilight,

and the phone is off the hook.

​

 

Fragile Theatre

 

When night steps down

and wild flowers recede

into the blessed calm of oblivion

like a hand forsaking desire, -

pallid under the cracked moon

shot with hints of blue,

the world resembles a pastoral

alien to tension of light

and gods drunk

with distillation of thunder.

 

Shakes of leaves abate,

the unattainable perfection of thought

relaxes into the breathless peace

of void of mind,

whose positivity consists

in the negation of the will.

 

Impartial to things of stone

losing their stoniness

in the black stringency of night,

images dwell in the untextured air

like replicas of reality,

and yet the real imitation

is reality,

not the images.

 

At the edge of night,

the fragile theatre of life

crumbles to dust of light

and dark,

embracing each other

like Chinese symbols

uncaged into being.

​

 

Siddhartha

 

Perplexed at the suddenness of life,

he sat under a tree and waited.

Days, weeks, months elapsed

in a crescendo of consciousness,

cautiously stealing

into illumination of power,

interstellar distances

from the shifting regions of the mind.

The skeletal geometry of reason collapsed

under the gravitational pull of light,

revelations unscrolled like wings of doves.

Embalmed in indifference,

blind to the panic of red and yellow,

he waited.

Things lost their contours

in the uncoiling syntax of the self,

aching with inertia the mind forgot

the exponential sorrow of being.

Under a secular tree

bending under shadows of time,

he waited.

Wrecks of dust and bones

faded into relieving nothingness,

the explicit blue of the sky

pulled itself through vacuum of thoughts,

thriving into sways of light.

Siddhartha waited,

but he didn’t know

because he had lost

the concept of time.