Hallway to Nowhere

Category: poetry

  • Give Me Shelter (Poem-Feb 5 PouncePunk Art Challenge)

    Where do I find my home?

    If external and anchored to a particular place, persons, or circumstance,

    I always live in a temporary abode, a shifting unstable shelter.

    Eventually I will be homeless, as will we all.

    If internal and built with sturdy foundations shored by constant reinforcement,

    I have a much different type of dwelling, a flexible steady residence.

    If you place your happiness in that which can be taken from you,

    You will lose your happiness.

    Love where you are; love those around you; love what you love, in any way.

    I do so and find comfort in all of these.

    They will change and even pass away,

    So I cherish them for their fleeting presence.

    My hearthstone is placed in another realm,

    Connected to all around, until it crumbles also,

    Impermanent as I am.

  • The Game (Poem-Feb 4 PouncePunk Art Challenge)

    Here is the game:

    I give you a rock, large and heavy.

    You get to carry it up this mountain.

    I’ll meet you at the top ridge,

    Take your rock, and hurl it back down the mountain.

    We’ll repeat this process over and over and over.

    Are you tired yet?

  • What Is Simple? (Poem-Feb 3 PouncePunk Art Challenge)

    Life used to be so simple.

    Really? Or does blinkered memory make it so?

    Just being alive, no matter your situation, entails mess.

    Complications always arise,

    And our control is often more limited than we imagine.

    If we learn to handle the uncertain ground that is existence,

    Then we can find meaning and connection.

    We can let go of fear and instead face change

    With openness, resoluteness, and acceptance.

    What if we turn the fight into a dance?

    Hear songs of kindness, joy, and community rather than tunes of cruelty, misery, and division?

    The hard road of suffering is our common path, but how we travel it depends on us.

    Pay attention. The choice is mine and yours and ours.

    It can begin with a single breath.

  • Emotion (Poem-Feb 2 PouncePunk Art Challenge)

    You are neither my definition nor my master.

    I have learned to consider you thus:

    Shades of color passing through transparent glass,

    Washes to be examined with curiosity and intent.

    I see you vividly in your depth and complexity

    And experience whatever you bring to the moment.

    But always I remember that you are temporary

    And leave no lasting impression.

    I can choose not to embrace delusion and attachment.

  • Emotion (Poem-Feb 2 PouncePunk Art Challenge)

    She looked at me with cold blue eyes,

    Empty of feeling like glittering ice.

    She lifted her hand and drew down her sleeve.

    With her other, she pointed and said:

    You want to cut here and thus for this to work.

    Next time make sure you get it right.

    Still showing no emotion,

    She left me lying in the strange bed

    With all the wreckage I had wrought.

    I also displayed no emotion.

    But grief bled from my bandaged arms.

  • Bowing To The Bones (Poem-Feb 1 PouncePunk Art Challenge)

    These days I live close to the bone.

    This is no mere phrase.

    The face that looks at me from the mirror

    Is ever older and gives a glance of skull;

    The body that moves or not

    Is ever thinner and juts with skeletal outline.

    I could say this be not my choice,

    Citing illness and age.

    But we all face this end,

    Whatever the appearance.

    No amount of flesh or care or luck will spare us.

    So I cherish my circumstance as valuable,

    A visible reminder not to waste my time.

  • She Wanted My Heart (Poem)

    Once, long ago, she wanted my heart.

    I gave her a cup of tea and a poem.

    She tied a cord of red thread around my wrist

    And wept before she left.

    What did that mean?

  • Skeletons (Poem)

    We are all living with rattling skeletons

    That come to us from multiples lives.

    (Not just our personal one but those of the different spaces we inhabit-

    Land, religion, culture, gender, species and countless other such.)

    The question becomes,

    What do we do with these and all they represent?

    Some choose to acknowledge them,

    Make friends, and even dance.

    Others pretend not even to see their existence,

    Or stuff them in the cellars to shift and creak.

    Many spend their years running in fear

    From the certain voice (deep within)

    That we are all speeding towards a mirror.

    And when we gaze into this, we will see?

    Skeletons gazing back.

    Have you learned to dance yet?

  • Thoughts on the First Seal

    How would it be, to change our vision?

    We often ask (ourselves or god or the the universe)

    Why did this happen?

    We see an event as a particular discrete thing

    And usually when we query thus,

    Feel that it be extraordinary in some way.

    Often we seek some divine aid or give thanks for that perceived intervention.

    Consider if you will this possibility:

    There are no miracles nor curses. The playing field is level.

    A joyous birth equals a tragic death. The discovery of a vaccine equals the manufacture of a deadly weapon.

    And all equal the purchase of a cup of coffee.

    THESE ARE ALL ORDINARY. Shocking to write.

    Each came about in the same manner, with innumerable causes.

    They have no special quality in and of themselves,

    Though they do carry weight and impact, which we ourselves assign.

    We are the ones who decide what counts as remarkable,

    Either for reasons of evil or good, while we claim signs from some deity.

    If we choose to see this and acknowledge

    That everything is mundane and therefore also terrible and therefore also glorious,

    Then we can (perhaps) take a better path.

  • Brevity (Poem)

    We walk in bone fields of unknown dead

    And crush the shards of countless shattered dreams

    With each careless step.

    Occasionally someone stops,

    To whisper on the wind to those forgotten,

    “I remember. I remember.”

    A bird flying overhead might reply:

    “You have been those bones.

    Pick up whatever dreams you’ve lost and go on your way.

    You will forget again soon.”

    For a brief moment, the sun becomes radiant,

    And the earth shifts.