Stuck

We are stuck,
We cannot move,
Held fast like glue,
We are stuck,
Locked in the past,
Trapped, held fast,
We are stuck,
No flow,
No get up and go,
We are stuck,
Inaction feels safe,

No danger of mistake,
We are stuck,
No risk of offence,
No need for defence,
We are stuck,
Oh fuck! We are stuck.

The catharsis of poetry

When I started writing the poem below I was struggling to process some pretty deep and dark emotions. I was swirling around in that little pit of despair that we all get a bit stuck in from time to time. What I am discovering however is that poetry is a great form of catharsis, it is my string out of the labyrinth. Each time I meet my Minotaur I fear him a little less. The journey into the labrynith is always an adventure and yes a challenge, or perhaps I should say it's a quest.

Minotaur
I am broken, so broken, shattered,
a thousand shards scattered,
I am beyond repair,
lost in my darkness, my despair,
It rains,
a ceaseless never ending pain,
Burning, scolding, unrelenting,
demon tears forever tormenting,
There is no place to hide,
in this labyrinth where fear resides,
Blind ends, closed doors,
I finally meet my Minotaur.

Poetry and the state of being

A good friend recently said to me that I must be very relaxed when I write poetry. Up until that point I had never really considered my state of being when I write. After pondering the thought for a while I quickly realised I am frequently anything but relaxed. No quite the opposite in fact. I write when I am deeply moved. An event, person or place must stir my emotions to such a level that it connects with my whole being, it touches my very soul. The emotions maybe good or bad although I don't personally subscribe to the belief that any are truly bad it's how we process them that frequently causes us problems. Anyway thank you Mark for shining a light upon my emotional landscape of poetry writing.

Winter Trees

There is an inherent beauty in the starkness of winter trees. Uncloaked of their leafy apparel the bark of bare trunks and branches resonates a true raw beauty. Outside my bedroom window is a stand of poplars. They are some sixty feet or more tall. In autumn before the heart shaped leaves cascade down I have on occasion bemoaned their height as they blocked out the last hour of golden autumnal sun. This morning however I find myself full of remorse for such a thought. Brushed by the palette of the rising sun the stand is a blaze. Flaming tongues of red reaching upwards to lick a clear blue canvas as if to taste and melt the frosty morning air. Over the past month I have been entranced by these poplar silhouettes and nature's ever changing palette. Earlier in the week after a long lie in I was greeted to a vision of pure gold embroidered on a cloth of finest grey. It was the calm before the storm.

Peace

I am an Enneagram type 9, the Peacemaker. Perhaps that is why I have tolerated so much over the years; mistakingly believing it would help me maintain my own peace! On a whim I decided to look up the term on Google and am reliably informed by The Free Dictionary that a peacemaker is:

- One that makes peace, especially by settling disputes
- A person who establishes peace, especially between others
- A conciliator, make-peace, pacifier, reconciler, go-between, intermediary, mediator

I also discover to my amazement and revulsion that a peacemaker is a belt-fed machine gun capable of firing more than 500 rounds per minute; used by United States troops in World War II and the Korean War

I ponder the last point, a gun called a peacemaker. Does a gun really bring peace or is it what my long suffering English teacher would have reliably informed me was an oxymoron. Yes I would agree that after you have blasted every living thing into oblivion you could argue you have removed all animal and human threat to your survival and peace may reign but at what cost? Sat amidst the bloodbath of the massacre you waged in the name of peace are you truly at peace? History has taught us that war rarely brings prolonged peace.

The peace we win is merely a manifestation of our own inner landscape. How long will peace reside there? Can you live with what you did in the name of peace? Have all your fears and negative thoughts finally been eradicated? The reality I suspect is that peace will only remain as long as you permit it. Once you allow the next toxic thought to take root in your inner garden and you tend and cultivate it with fear you are once again in danger of manifesting your own inner reality. The cycle, the gestalt will begin again, you have not learned the lesson of unconditional love.

So how can we maintain peace? I hear some smart arse, well in my case a demon monkey in my mind, helpfully suggest I turn the gun upon myself. How will that help? What sort of energy will that send into the universal consciousness? Time for some research into the practices and teachings of the ancient eastern civilisations and the realms of meta physics. Another step on my own inner journey.

Our Stories

Distance does not cause the rift,
that casts us oh so painfully adrift,
It's not the words we fail to say,
or loving deeds we struggle to convey,
No my love, we reside in different books,
Lost in our dramas we're not free to look,
I can't see you and you can't see me,
We only see what we wish would be.

Lessons Learnt

As 2014 drew to a close I started to think about what the over riding lesson was that I had been trying to learn during the year. There is always one I reckon, the one you keep repeating over and over. You would think we would notice that we keep finding ourselves in the same situations, having the same thoughts, repeating the same patterns but no we frequently seem oblivious. It's as though we are asleep.

Rather than ruminating over all the negative situations I had found myself in over the past twelve months, a sure recipe for getting lost in my mind labyrinth, I decided instead to think about my poems. Why? I'm not really sure, perhaps it was what my good friend Peter would call pre-symbolic thought - the thought before you squeeze it into words.

So I reflected over all the poems I had written during the last year and paused at each one for a brief moment to feel what energy resonated within me. What was I doing? I was looking for the one poem that triggered something in both my heart and my solar plexus. The heart because I wanted to feel with my soul and my solar plexus because this place is linked to my sense of self, my ego, It is connected to both power and fear. It's that spot that triggers those mind monkeys. The pesky little fuckers who pop up every now and then to help you do such an excellent job of self sabotage.

Well it didn't take me long to find the one poem and I had to laugh at the synchronicity and irony behind the title - Letting go.

Sometimes in life things aren't meant to be,
as it is with you and me,
And though lost and hurt in my despair,
a shattered heart, bleeding, aching, for repair,
I'm not the missing piece of which you speak,
I cannot make you whole, complete,
You see my love, you are already whole,
all pieces reside within your soul,
The lesson for me is letting go,
and through this act peace can grow,
My love for you was always meant to be,
but not to hold you fast, no, it was to set you free.

Yes 2014 had been very much a lesson about letting go and as the year drew to an end I found myself thinking about how tightly I held on to things that were no longer healthy, that did not help me grow. I'm surprised my knuckles hadn't turned white with the extent of my clinging. Well it's time to give my knuckles a well earned rest and to stop prolonging my suffering. Why do we do that? If a friend was suffering we would have compassion for them but yet we struggle to have compassion for ourselves. I'm not a big believer in setting New Years Resolutions, probably because I fear failure. Well maybe this year I should at least put out the intention to be compassionate to myself and when I don't quite hit the mark give myself a big hug and not let the demon monkeys beat me too hard with a stick.

Wishing you all unconditional love for 2015 xx.