The Shadow of War

[Boss]

Being dragged by a will that's not his own,
he calls out to the Cosmos; nothing.
He hasn't the strength. He cries often.

Yet it persists - amid the greed, the fake
identity and breasts, the self-centredness;
this dead culture. The semi-real children
having to guess at who Dad is, or at how
much more they can possess.

He is so confused, but theories smell
worse than shit, now. It is power; and
every word they shoot at him is desirous
of it.

Honour is cast out. Peace is turned off.

They have all the advantage, they have
such sophisticated fire-power.

But they do not know dignity, and they
cannot sense love.

He breathes.

[mat james]

He breathes.

But the bastards make him breathe polluted air
so he sucks slowly
not enough to live
not enough to die
not enough
not enough
not...

gills will do for now

[Boss]

James, can I count on you to fight?

[Boss]

Sacred.

It answers to
the morning mist,
it trips up on
a rainbow.
It lives beneath
the underside,
it spills all down
your blouse.
It puts up with
the policies,
it debunks them
in a flash.
It listens to
a soothsayer,
it sings into
a night.
It is man
firm and just,
it is woman
ripe and true.
It is child baking
mud cake,
it is dog all
in the rain.
It is graffiti on
the old bridge,
it is a moon’s
imperfect kiss.
It is a tadpole
in a rock pool,
it is compassion
for yourself.
It is a candle
and a prayer mat,
it is the heartbeat
of your youth.
It is the buoyancy
of humpbacks,
it is a golden syrup
dumpling.
It is ritual un-
encumbered,
it is love inside
the fray.

[mat james]

James, can I count on you to fight?

????

Life is a struggle for all. Everyone fights, Boss.
We all have our cross.

"...can I count on you to fight?"

"Kill, therefore, with the sword of reason
the doubt that lies buried in thy heart;
be one in self-harmony,
...arise great warrior, arise
and fight thou thy fight".

(Krishna speaks to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita)

you can be the judge; that's your game.

Mat.

[Boss]

You have no idea... I am sorry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOJmBI-ZgN4

Boss

[mat james]

I hear you Boss.
This is a beautiful version of the song; thanks.
It seems at times that as soon as we open our mouths; we are misunderstood.
Same goes for writing poems, I suppose.

I saw "Fiddler on the roof" last night" and thought of you Boss; and your heritage.
"Tradition".
It is a great fortune that you have this gem to hold onto.

...and what a great version Topol does of "If I were a rich man." I just love the way he dances the beam (raised board walk)to that tune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhVP6Pi24zE


Mat.

[Boss]

The learned one was told that God was sure
to appear driving a car.

He looked through encyclopaedias, car maga-
zines, from the overpass, at car shows. He
studied Volvo’s, Ford’s, Mazda’s, and VW’s.
He knew engine capacities, 2 litres, 6 cylinders,
coupes and sedans. Red ones, toy ones, small
ones, old ones. Drove them, built them, raced
them. Turbo’s, rotaries, fuel–injectors.

He watched, he studied, he waited for 40 years.

Then, one day, God rode by on a 1975 blue
Yamaha 250 motorcycle; headlight on, helmet
black.

The learned one looked for the next car.

The end,
Adam

[Boss]

I’m stranded here
I have no lover
Haven’t held a woman
In years
It’s difficult in the rain
Everything out of focus
Or cold
Or missing
I swim in an ocean
At night
There is no island
No boat or pier
Just deep black water
Some memory faded
A smile
Her old hippy top
A weatherboard house
A cocker spaniel
A tom cat
I lay with her
But I appreciated nothing
I was lost in a dream
Even before Cohen
Long before that
I read everything
From Meher Baba
To Joseph Campbell
Alice Miller
To The Qu’ran
I had to know
Truth was imperative
And I forgot her
She was a stranger
Someone to talk to
Not with
She’s been gone
Such a long time
I have lived alone
In my heart
I’ve paid a heavy price
If it be your will
Did you have to punish
So emphatically
So completely?
I hold up a flame
On Friday nights
I pray the very few
Hebrew prayers I know
But nothing happens
If it be your will
How I once fought it
How I once fought
But now I am weak
Tender
Almost broken
There is no war in here
Not even a shadow
Just a sad man
Lonely and lost
And stranded

[mat james]

That's a difficult one to comment on boss.
I wish you could stumble on a pinch of optimism somewhere in your banquet of impulses.

Kind regards, Mat.

[Boss]

Kind regards back at you Mat,
Boss

[Cate]

This is a painful poem Adam.
It's moving and contains a type of beauty despite the feeling of loss.

[Boss]

Thanks Cate, thanks for the reply. This poem emanated from
deep inside my heart. You are right, it is painful – but aren’t
there many aspects of life that are painful?

Mat, I am a counterbalance to much of what goes on here.

Have some trust in me – I may surprise you.

Boss

[Boss]

For you, Dad – I know you’d disagree,
but there was a part of you that wouldn’t

----------------------------------------------------

Facing Up

We all have our cross

I have no cross, Mat; I have a Holocaust

Adam

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13.75 billion years

The Universe is estimated to be 13,750,000,000 years old. For many years I thought we were about 18 billion years old – this was according to Joseph Campbell – but I stumbled on to a programme around 2004 where Paul Davies, an eminent Australian scientist, was being interviewed. He explained the 13.7 billion years position.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe . Even though I did Physics in my HSC, I don’t pretend to comprehend much of this. However, I can envisage a Big Bang of Creation. From nothing, fire; and hence the beginning of time. For me, Genesis 1:1-5 fits this quite well:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now the earth
was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep;
and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.
And God said: ’Let there be light.’ And there was light. And God saw
the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And
There was evening and there was morning, one day

Judaism is at the year 5771, Christianity the year 2011 and according to Islam it is the year 1432. Other religions/cultures have different times/years. Some of you may have noticed I fairly persistently use the year 13,700,000,025 in place of 2011, for example. Well I used to. Now I will be using 13,750,000,025. I know it is an approximation but it is the best we have. For now, and for convenience, I use the Gregorian calendar – the calendar of Rome. But who knows in the future? In the year 13,750,000,007 (1993) I decided that 1986 would be the year 18 billion - now 13,750,000,000. Try typing or writing that.

In essence, that’s about how old you are…

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Orphans

I see the orphans everywhere.
They have mums and dads,
Kid sisters and dishwashers.
They have Capitalism’s dreams
On their backs. They listen to
Their Dad’s stories as evening
Pushes through. School starts
Tomorrow. They’ll learn of
James Cook and Bradman. Be
Immersed in Western culture,
Western thought. They’ll play
Cricket at lunch, eat bruised ban-
Anas, drink Powerade or the like.
A new Mazda will pick them up
After mum finishes work. They
Are the government’s dream:
Bronzed Aussie kids. But they are
Orphaned from Sacred, they know
Not its heart. Atheist dad spends
A fortune on Christmas lights. No
One really knows why, except that
Next door does it. Orphaned from
Holy or Sensitivity or Peace, they
Are the soldiers of the future; not
Wide-eyed or exuberant, they are
Already lost, lost by their mother’s
Inability to love and her need to
Control. Lost to the sky and the
Mountain, to the Koori law and
Dance. Lost to the emu spirit, the
Song of the river, dusk. They see
Dad leave each morning, off to
Business, they digest the normalcy.
They understand money, they get
It as presents. Biko and Gandhi
And Luther King are not spoken
Of; it would upset the status quo.
They are orphans, so alone; so
Orphaned from themselves. Just
Towing someone else’s truth.

Just towing someone else.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Something Optimistic

We are not near the end, only the beginning. We are coming together, not drifting apart. The key is G-d; how to hear Him, how to know Him in your own heart. You can appeal to Krishna or Abraham or Jesus or Mohammed, you can study all you like. But can you hear Him as you drive at night in February summer, the wind bearing down, doing 100 KPH on the open road? Can you hear Him when you watch a black bird flit around an old gum tree? Can you hear Him in the depths of a Saturday afternoon? Indeed, is He there when you stumble upon your woman at night’s end? You cannot marginalize it, decode it, dissect it, delineate it. You cannot ascertain crystal truth from Jungian dreamscape, an ancient Persian poem. For you were born with it - it resides within, it is already there. A child hears it, an illiterate man in his fifties in Tanzania hears it; so too will the whole entire world.

Not some day far off in the future, but soon. For a new day is imminent - a day where everyone eats, a day when no gun sounds again, a day where women are safe and respected and delight in their difference to men. Where children won’t fear hatred and violence and injustice anymore. Where men are decent. Where divorce is extinct. Where there is relevant ritual - ritual rich and sacred and common to every soul inhaling breath on our earth. Where dance comes to life; when we really pound our feet to the cosmic beat, when we gyrate to the universe’s rhythmic whir.

Do not worry, that hand-me-down ‘ancient Western code’ – its wars, its promises, its weaknesses - is doomed. But what will replace it? How to disassemble such a system steeped in a history designed purely for the rich to be in control? BP, The World Bank, The House of Windsor – how to demolish it all so young kids can go to school instead of hunting through rubbish tips in poverty stricken cities all over the world, instead of eating rats for dinner?

There is a way – and each of us knows it.

I write sad, dejected poems/prose because I’m sickened by the current state of affairs. Far from being proud of our institutions, our progress, we should hang our heads in shame. The truth is, ‘we asked for signs, the signs were sent, the birth betrayed, the marriage spent, the widowhood of every single government, signs for all to see’. But who sees it? We are so engaged, even seduced by Western materialism and its propaganda. It allows us; in fact it entices us, to turn a blind eye. However, deep in our hearts, most of us are aware of the inequality, the hopeless imbalance.

I know my shame because across the world there are people
dying I pretend I don’t know. This is that shame of looking
in a mirror at a face pretending it knows nothing of the dying
even as its honesty is killed - Christopher Gilbert

Until every Human being on this planet, every one, has opportunities akin to mine, I will never submit to ‘the economy game’ and as much as I can, I will debunk it as ‘rich-man’s poison’ and tell others that we just can’t go there, that we cannot continue on that path. And I will tell the thousand or so men who are in ‘absolute control’ of everything right now from their boardrooms, and palaces, and government houses, and religious institutions; that their end is in sight. That, very soon, the whole damned house is going to fall down.

Can you hear Him now?

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Confession

I’ve been hard and I’ve been hating
Like Mike Tyson emanating
But I’ve known about a truth some twenty years
It came to me one morning
Blue light it was a-dawning
I won’t tell you any more ‘cos you’re my peers

You would mock and you would laugh
Play a kookaburra’s part
You would think me bloody dippy, bloody mad
It was Christ I think he said
That a prophet won’t be fed
In his home town won’t be praised or won’t be had

So I remain this Boss
And I’m kind of at a loss
I’ve been seething, bad remarking to a few
But it isn’t really me
Won’t you listen, can’t you see
I’m a Christian and/or Muslim and/or Jew

But so much more than this
We are Human, we all piss
We’re connected to each other and the stars
And all of us have faults
Store our money in our vaults
Burn our fossil-fuels for power and for cars

I’ve often seemed aloof
So I offer up a truce
I’ll try to see ‘the bright side of the road’
But my life is hardly fun
Haven’t felt much cosy sun
A thundercloud can kill when it unloads

If you’re Imaginary or Mat
If you’re Lizzy or her cat
There’s something more to Boss than meets the eye
It’s in his ancient history
In deep prophetic mystery
It’s written in Salinger’s, ‘‘Catcher in the Rye’

I’m going on sabbatical
Of this I am fanatical
I have to break some wisdom into shape
I reckon I’ll be back soon
The next big juicy full moon
In my bag of tricks I bet there’ll be mistakes

So tell me, who’s a ‘ten’?
If you find him tell me when
I’ve been a liar and a cheat and such a fool
Still I’ll be giving it my darndest
While she sleeps there in her harness
At times she is as stubborn as a mule!

-----------------------------------------------

Rich people suicide, too

In the end it is not mansion
pedigree or luck

It is happiness

And for that
you gotta love yourself

This is your birthright

----------------------------------------------

In peace,
Boss

[Cate]

I like this post ... although I do drive a Mazda and my husband is a devote atheist who decks our house in soft blue lights in the winter - he drives a bike.

13.75 billion years

The Universe is estimated to be 13,750,000,000 years old. For many years I thought we were about 18 billion years old – this was according to Joseph Campbell – but I stumbled on to a programme around 2004 where Paul Davies, an eminent Australian scientist, was being interviewed. He explained the 13.7 billion years position.
...In essence, that’s about how old you are…

I like this Adam … this is something that I often think about … that we are essentially (our bodies that is) made up of little bits and pieces borrowed from the earth, from the stars and from each other.
I like how you’ve taken this right back to the big bang and to Genesis.
At one time we were one … and now we are fractured, but we are still of one.

I had wondered about that number in your posts before.