It is from heart that all desires arise
so therein too they must be satisfied,
which requires our ego to vaporise,
whence light of God in cave of heart is spied.
We affirm we have been, seen and so known,
God as the supreme light that lights all lights,
which is also called light of Self full blown,
commingled with throb of bliss that delights.
Smaller than an atom, vaster than space,
this wisdom is imbibed when heart is pure,
mode embrace and release at a slow pace,
heart lotus in full bloom and yet demure.
In life’s game of hide and seek, God’s been found
in the cave of our heart, free and unbound.
The recent, decent, authorised remaster -
now deeper, fuller, meaningfully vaster,
it’s done its fifty years – this one’s a laster!
I don’t care if you’re reggaeton or Rasta,
you worship Satan, Seti, Zoroaster -
just play this baby for your priest or pastor –
it’s early Fleetwood Mac, but cooler, faster –
so get it grooving on your ghetto blaster!
Abandon Grand Theft Auto, drop your Dune,
and scrap your Patti Smith and Patti Boone:
just get more Gilmour (boy, that boy can croon!)
and Roger Waters, nicely out of tune:
the rest is paltry. Daltrey’s picayune.
I’ll meet you on the Dark Side of the Moon!
If there were no tomorrow
I would have no sorrow
The life I have had
Has made me glad
If there were no tomorrow
I have lived on time that was borrowed
The joy of knowing
Has kept me going
The lives that have touched me
Are vaster than the seas
Every person, place, or thing
Was brought on a doves wing
For everyone that has touched my life
Was a lesson and not out of strife
For tomorrow is never promised
So live your life and be honest
Every second, of every day
We always have time and pause to say
The words, laughter, and memories
Could fill a book for centuries
("Nonbinary", 2023, original encaustic)
You’ll Never Come Back…
Thrown into an ocean
Deeper and vaster than thought
Carried on waves of sound
Waves of light
Propelled on waves of bliss
Through a portal
That has no name
No place
No time
But here and now
Washed up on a shore
After the storm
Bathed in warmth
Exhausted of all content
Left alone
At the heart of it all
Connected to it all
Without a doubt
Someone whispers
Somewhere
Just beyond sight
“You’ll never come back”
And in an instant
I am thrown into doubt
Back to what!?
To this timeless place
Or what I left behind?
And then in the next
Caught up in those waves
Propelled
Life goes on
Same as it ever was
Forever changed
Forever fresh
Forever
(9/27/23)
When sage people drinking drinks
Which called "daily heavenly truths,"
They getting higher,
Better,stronger
And vaster.
July 25/2023
I couldn’t …
shatter the pane
or fly, either
couldn’t press weary wings to wind …
and glide
for they were bound -
wrapped like a leper in a crowd
and just as unclean -
just as … withered …
pain is shadow, deep
and sometimes a vaster darkness
is it’s only clemency
sometimes we drown
to know our dearest breath
or dangle by a moonbeam in the dead of night
to bring the dew …
for then,
there is only the sake of agony -
a whisper turned to screams that no
one else can hear …
but thunder called just the same -
brought the soldiers, running
a needle for salvation,
and an abyss …
all it’s own.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, April 16, 2023
Fifty-year old pastor Archibald
And already the vessel is bald
Now cold not red heat would the priest scald;
Now 'irritable'when he is called...
For twenty years now A Pastor:
Would not sit on chairs denied castor;
Claims a pastor:Better Doctor,
Against every demon: Victor
Before ordination shooting star,
No speeding sprinter was faster,
His knowledge of the game vaster;
So much the case that he was master
But right now caged up by Arthritis,
Real blows exchanging with Mastitis
A time-and- again Hepatitis...
It has been growing anxieties.
I just realized, that
most of my poems
are about love – Albeit,
not the physical aspects
of love – I mean, how often
we need to feel one another
up? For the different aspects
of love may be infinite: starting
with the Touchy-feely, sinking us
deeper, beyond – penetrating
membranes of surface moisture
to far vaster
thermal seas –
Strains are carefully prevented with a tangle.
Were you eager for me to return to my angle?
It restored its fiery vigor due to the treble hook.
As a result, I wiggle akin a fish in the hope of a look.
In this yet another piece, rusty tones overrule.
On a grimy patio, a rusted-out rock bewails.
Your deft touch lashed a pale face balky.
Worries that don't seem to act away quickly.
Your anile escape boots are no longer active.
There was a recent rise of a rich perspective.
A pair of delicate slippers were subtly conveyed.
It's two sizes vaster and boasts a range-wide.
The earthy angst of your cramped spine.
Waning whine faded by a support divine.
Written: October 21, 2021
I have always asked myself
what it means to exist and laugh
in this very brief and mysterious tale
that we simply call life...
fearing the force of an unexpected gale;
there a few lucky ones
and the ones who aren't,
continue their journey...
hoping in Divine Mercy,
never tripping on stones!
Brighten up, sky and show us
a resplendent light after long darkness;
get rid of every cloud and reveal
His merciful face that has
more compassion and kindness
than the wretched living who lack zeal!
There won't always be sunshine
through the days we'll be living,
don't believe that when it rains
the heart is saddened and cries,
instead thank God because so many flowers
will grow giving us more joy, more smiles:
will our hope keep on growing?
Look further up, a beautiful rainbow
after the flight of a gentle dove
can be seen across the bluest and widest sky,
aren't its lovely colors wonderfully
painted by that invisible hand above?
I have always asked myself
what it means to exist and laugh
in this universe that is vaster than
the senses that limit us, not our vision;
what will be the wonders
awaiting us and thrilling us?
A picture that has outlasted time
allows memory to remain sublime;
wide smiles on sun-tanned faces,
bare feet on warm sand dunes!
The windless and gleaming sea
seemed vaster than the greenest lea;
white sails enhanced the spectacle
approaching the illuminated horizon
and they would return at early sundown
loaded with fish that would still wiggle!
Childhood saw the same beach with empty shells,
the same footprints deeper than long furrows;
ah, none of them remained after the torrential rain
wiped them away...such was the youth of vagrant men!
A picture that outlasted time
reminds of an era where wine
was a celebration at dinnertime...
turkey dripping with spicy brine,
glasses filled with Southern sunshine!
It is never hard to master the art of losing with so many things filled with intent and loss without disaster.
We lose somethings every day and accept the fluster like the door keys with a bad passing hour.
We practice loss further as we continue to lose to a pandemic, teaching us how to master the art of being faced with death every day.
I lost my grandparents' belongings and continue to look with the hope to find what is now lost and with that, a house is also lost with all its belongings.
I lost lives, lovely ones. I even began to vaster some artifacts I owned which followed like the streams of the river.
I collect thoughts and memories as I miss each one of them every day and this like no dream is no disaster.
I have no joking voice or gesture of the pain I encountered as I master the art of loss for what I encounter is a disaster
Poet
Masego Nkuna
War
In a kingdom full of combatants I heard a naval, military struggling
Combat
I am non violent And I am recovering
Death shall bring troops
'War!' said I, 'thing of jihad.'
Do they believe in God
Quite odd
And those eyes have all the warmongering
Wars
Great war - great war - great war!
Only this and a nuclear winter
Snowing atomic gluserian
That antiwar, antiwar campaign
War
I remember I was feuding
And the clans never advocating
I crave the antagonistic, calorific awareness
awareness calorific, the antagonistic I crave
War
Eagerly I looked for the disaster
War
It was castor, alabaster, vaster!
Not
I crave the warlike, war-torn warship
My conflict, I could not awaken hatred bliss
Do not enlist
Still is planing, still is planing
In there stepped a medievalist 'red army faction'
God makes love, man makes
War
8/11/20
written word by James Edward Lee Sr. 2020 ©
Sometimes the
lines between
happiness and sorrow
love and hate
are thin (barely visible
to the naked heart) –
(a healthy heart
needing more than
a steady-beat
to be truly healthy) –
hearts not created
merely for pumping;
nor for expressing
exclusively within
the Body-visceral
while excluding
the vaster realm
of metaphysical being
(confined within a cage of bone)
(drowning in its own
oxygen rich fluids)
No, the heart truly
reaches out -- beyond
muscular attributes:
exceeds surface
perimeters of flesh
and blood –
transcending
the core-less Atheist
concept, absent a
spirit and soul
for greater inspiration…
refutes the materialist,
who sees only
superficial reality,
excluding the essence
of divine interaction
and miraculous manifestation –
The heart I speak
stretches the rulers
of medical Measures –
remains an enigma to science,
and by contrast -- the light
apposing dark-sided men
who reject Christian-unity daily
as did those prosecutors
of The Son of Man
who rejected Christ love
and His revelation
of Divine Source
and Holy Trinity….
"The Sleeping Man at the Picnic"
What dreams this man has
to escape a world
where his humanity
is a contagion
soldier ants swagger
holding gangster guns
he’s counting numbers
to avoid the dream
of the one he
shares with
the innocence
of children
Outside the turmoil
we are a pin prick
of light in the
eye of God’s needle
Inside us
the threads of
a road to an
interior universe
so much vaster
unexplored
Our lives
are optical
illusions
We are
all sleeping
at the Picnic
Lost
in the purpose of dreaming
Searching
for the rhetoric in meaning
(LadyLabyrinth / 2020)
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