Generation of Men

A Generation of Men

A generation of men, that didn't cry

a generation that weren't allowed to

a generation of strong soldiers

a tough generation

a resilient generation

but those denied and unshed tears

at unchosen lives

at the unchosen losses

and unchosen traumas

would ferment in the hidden places

behind the barbed wire and wall

they would turn into hardened liver

and arteries that could not

contain the blood within

surging under the pressure of denial

of prohibited expression

Vulnerabilities disguised with swagger

and stiff stances, strong enough

to carry the weight of the defences

Hidden tears that would turn into

stiffened shoulders, clenched jaw;

clenched fists

red faced and threatening

railing against the meek and the mild

hawk-nosed and critical

of the trespasses of the child

The child in the mirror

that cannot be seen

that must not be seen

must be hidden behind smokescreens

and the toxic vices

that arise mists in which we can hide

or try

and when we have tried

and when we can no longer hide

we break

and break, but do not speak

we must not speak, we dare not speak

for we are

a generation of men, that didn't break

a generation that weren't allowed to

a generation of strong soldiers

a tough generation

a resilient generation

who will stay that way, until they

stand on the edge of bridges

cocooned in wombs of dope

or dead at the end of taut ropes

Amulets and Charms

I dwelled in the jungle. For a long time I dwelled in the jungle. I had forgotten how I got there, or where I had come from. There were many dangers in the jungle but I had learned to live there. I had set up snares and traps to protect myself from the creatures of the day and creatures of the night, and from the ghosts of the jungle. I had charms and amulets, to ward off the many evil and mischievous spirits. I was in the jungle and the jungle was in me. I knew nothing else. It was intense to dwell in the jungle. There was no time to remember, because in the jungle all your time is spent surviving. 

One day I found a stream

I was worried about predators at the stream, so it was only tentatively that I returned, watching from behind the tangles of vines and trees. There was something compelling about the stream. It looked and felt so different to the jungle, and it contained spirits of its own. 

One day, I began to follow the stream, but then was afraid I had gone too far, and afraid that I wouldn't be able to find my way back to the jungle, the dark jungle where I dwelled, the place that I knew, the spirits that I knew, the encantations that I knew by heart to keep me safe. 

I returned to the jungle. It felt even more dangerous and terrifying than it had before, and I grasped even more firmly to my charms, amulets and incantations. But, the spirits of the stream kept calling to me.

I would return to the stream several times, but I would return to my jungle. But one day the spirits of the stream called to me, and I followed the stream, until the trees changed, and the jungle became a forest. There was more light in the forest. There were still dangers in the forest, but it felt less oppressive, and less intense. I set up camp in the forest for a while, but I felt lost. The jungle had become such a part of me, and my way of living and surviving. I returned to the jungle, but it felt so terrifying, that I soon returned to the forest, by way of the stream. I started to follow the stream regularly, seeing where it led, and when I had followed it far enough, the stream became a river, with other streams converging and merging with it. There was a great power in the river. 

One day, I packed a small, light bag of belongings along with my amulets and charms, and followed the river, and the further that I followed it's course, the more and more light I could see as the trees thinned, and I could hear the birds of the forests all around me. Then, there was something else, a new smell. The air in the jungle was so humid, and the smells were heavy, damp and dense, but now, a different kind of smell came to me that was fresh, almost joyful, and the trees opened up onto a meadow full of wildflowers, and I walked to the end of the meadow, and at it's edge was a beach which bordered a great ocean. I sat on the beach by the ocean, remembering the jungle, remembering the forest, remembering the stream that became a river, that had led me here. The ocean called to me, and told me, that I was the jungle. The great ocean told me that I was also the stream, and I was also the powerful river that led me home, to the great ocean that was myself: my unfettered, uncurtailed, unhemmed in, undiminished, unadulterated, unshamed self. 

The ocean called to me again with crashing waves, and I threw my amulets and charms into it, and they were swallowed up in it, carried into its depths. The depths that were me, that were in me; from where the pebbles had come, that I had used to make them, to keep me safe from harm. It was me all along that had been keeping me safe from harm, in the terrifying jungles of my self. 

I sat with my self by the great ocean, and gave thanks to my self, knowing that I had loved my self all along.

The Ghost of Lack

Lack has haunted me

Like a ghost on my trails

Lurking in the corners of my insecurity

The ghost haunts me, and terrorises me,

But I am fixated by it, and cannot stop myself

Looking for it in every corner

So I carry a little box around with me

A little box of projections and presentations

Like a miniature museum

Of trophies and charms

To remind me of my lack

The things I don't have

The knowledge I don't have

The lifestyle I don't have

The friends I don't have

The lover I don't have

The craic I am not having

The little box, reminds me of who I am

The "I am" that was born from the lack

Left by the separation

When I fled my raw, unadulterated self

Into the arms of protective fictions

About who I am

But these gluey gleaming reminders

Of these fictions, become

Obstacles and diversions

That prevent the return

The return home

To the self that is ours

by birth right

The ghost of lack was maya

An illusion with no substance

But I used substances 

To fill the lack, the void

To protect me against it

To ward it off

And the ghost didn't go away

The ghost became more tangible

It was given body and substance

It became like a twisted guardian angel

An ever present apparition

An apparition that 

If you feed it, it grows

And demands more

But there is no lack

I am not lacking

I am everything I need

Narratives of Need

Maybe we do not need the objects of our needs, but need the need itself, and wrap ourselves up in them. With our needs, we play out dramas, of needs met or not met, and rely on our selves or others to meet those needs, or we blame them for not meeting them. 

Some play out the drama of self sufficiency. Self-sufficiency seems safer, less risky than relying on others. They long for freedom, but create their own prison of needs, and they will stay in that prison, and make it their home, as long as they can fulfil those needs and rely on no one else to meet them. If they then reach a point where they are unable to meet these needs, the myth of their independence evaporates, and they are brought back to the original pain of loss.

Others play out the drama of having needs that are some one else's responsibility to meet. They are well aware of the need they have; the hungers, the cravings, but will not supply themselves with the means to sate those needs, and wander around in the unpredictable forest of people, hoping to discover the world to be adundant, and able to provide. But sometimes the fantasy of the abundant forest, disappears like a mirage, to reveal no oasis, but a barren desert of despair; a land that doesn't care.

Others so revile the idea of needing anything, they will create mansions of adundance, hoarding wealth like a magic charm. They despise the needy, the spongers, the scroungers. They distance themselves from them, and live behind walls and gates, to separate themselves, and to hold back the flood waters of their own deepest darkest fear.

Yet, we don't even need the need. Not the object, not the idols, not the amulets and charms, or the need itself. They are an illusion that we use. They are a suffering, that we often wear like a badge of honour, a badge that reaffirms our identity, and we will continue to persevere dutifully down the road of our particular sufferings. 

However, sometimes people find an object who's power is so great that it consumes them, it swallows up the person whole, gobbles them up and devours them. That is a need of another category. Some people, are so traumatised by life and living, and having been born, and feel so homeless in the world, that they want to lose themselves in the darkness of wombs, or in the ultimate womb of death. 

They need to be swallowed up, because when they are swallowed up, the pain is swallowed up, the loss is swallowed up, the despair is swallowed up, the helplessness is swallowed up, and the terror of vulnerability is swallowed up. 

They give themselves up, and sacrifice themselves on the alter of that God.

Some Gods are monsters. 

Interrogating the Soul

It is easy to slide away from compassionate self-inquiry, and slip into a type of self-analysis that is much more like an interrogation of the soul, and lose the lightness, and perspective, as if demanding something from ourselves that could never come through force, only drawn out under the gaze of love, or teased out by curiosity. The holding space of new, potentially healing words, can become a prison that defines and confines rather than liberates.

You don't even know how you got there. One minute you were on a lovely winding country road, then you ended up on a crazy busy highway, as if the vehicle of your brain went into self-drive and took you away from the places where you could hear the still small voice of your soul, to a place too hectic for healing, and it is now time to take hold of the wheel and guide yourself back to the beauty, back to the place of compassion, and back to love.

Staycation

It is easier to fly away, than to stay. It is so tempting, to not be here. It is easier to fly away from ourselves, with all its thoughts and feelings, to somewhere else where we do not need to pay them any attention, or acknowledge they exist, as if those feelings were annoying children, or children that we pretend aren't even our own. Who's damn kids are these anyway??

So we jet off into the hazy skies of distractions, that we don't even consider to be distractions; just the necessary elements of life that we must tend to: work to be done, children to be looked after, bins to be put out, dinners to be made, laundry to be done, friends to be met, tv shows to be caught up on, purchases to be made, sleep to be slept, holidays to be had.

We fly into the haze, to another place that is not our place, into a vacation that is no holiday at all; like one of those trips, that ends up exhausting and exasperating, as we drag ourselves and our other or others around, ticking off the to-do-list of the successful tourist, with no time to waste, and nothing to be left out, ready for the next social presentation, because we need to make sure that everyone knows we had a good time, when really what we did was a good job. We return home exhausted and get back into it, into the bustle of our lives, the necessary bustle of our lives, the bustle that we complain about but couldn't live without. Afterall, where would we be without it?

Maybe it is time to come home. Come back home. To return, from places that are not our place. To descend from the hazy skies, and the bustle of our lives, and come in to land. To ground ourselves in the ordinary landscape of our souls. A place where we can listen to those fucking annoying kids, and learn to accept them as our own, maybe even love them. A place where the feelings that once felt like terrorists threatening the benevolent order, actually start to sound more like prophetic voices that point to the oppressive tyranny you had been living under all this time. A regime where you couldn't breathe; you could not breathe, and your soul could not stir. Even then, you had the prophet locked up and silenced, her writings burned or redacted, but her words were already in the aether of your mind, and you could not unhear her words, and the ember within you was finding air in them.

That ember glowed, in your darkest places, and it would burn you sometimes when you weren't looking where you were going. You would be on your own, lost in a screen, and a stranger would tap you on the shoulder. The strange feeling, of a feeling. The strange feeling of a true feeling, of a feeling that is yours and only yours, and all of a sudden you are no longer delighted that the sad man, with the horrible story, had the voice of an angel and was picked by the judges, because now it is as if the test has arrived, and those kids are your kids. The kids you denied, disowned and disavowed; that were neglected, because life is so hard and you have been trying to cope, but they do not want to be ignored any longer. They want to be seen, to be known, to find themselves in your gaze and be found acceptable. They are calling you to come home to them.

It is time to come back home. To stay. To fall in love with what is already here, and always was.

Ring of Steel

You have a ring of steel around your heart
but there are forces within you
that are colluding
secretly
covertly
to terrorise you
to disrupt you

shadow feelings
ghostly apparition feelings
armed with the kryptonite
that threatens to weaken your defences

you want to assassinate these feelings
before they get you in the underbelly
leaving you softened and vulnerable

being vulnerable is something you must never show

and you cannot get your hands around
those feelings
to choke the life out of them,
and you cannot muster your strength

being strong is not how you win this war

but all you know is how to be strong
you are concrete, and steel,
fences and razor wire.

yet, the only way you can win this war
is with openness

yet, the only way you can win this war
is with vulnerability

yes, the only way you can win this war

is on bended knee,
with head
leaning in to
hear with humility
the voice of the other
who's voice 
you have sought
for so long to smother

yes, the only way you can win this war
is with love