BRAY MEDITATIONS
1.
I don’t ACT
I RE-ACT
To others, who are reacting themselves.
You are an actress
But your action is a reaction,
To a playwright,
Reacting to Shakespeare.
2.
I could have been more that this-
What I feel right now-
I could have,
But I am,
In this moment,
Only a molecule of humanity-
No concept of an atom
Let alone the whole caboodle!
3.
It is me
In here
Forgotten.
4.
The crows they nest lower than a dream.
As we speak of ecological mismanagement
Aeroplanes line up like buses, to land at Heathrow.
I am not blind to this, but I am blind, with little insight.
There is no health and safety department,
For the soul.
5.
I augment tradition
In the silicon chip of enthusiasm
That wanes in the perturbations
Of my motion.
It is a farcical force, compared
To one,
Do,
Ray,
Me,
Of sun.
6.
I am waiting for someone to ask about me.
But I do not ask myself, about me.
I choose to wallow in the turmoil of duality,
Or is it a naivety, that seeks re-cognition?
7.
It opens slowly, the book of lost dreams.
Scattered graphite scribbled, long forgotten illusions.
The pale, wan message of past experience
Blown, as autumn leaves in the wind,
Re-collected, on this yet unborn, spring day.
8.
It is over, the past in what is to come
All based now in unforgettable memory.
Am I different after all these years,
Or just the same?
9.
My moon wanes down the Great Bear
To the elixir of Orion’s sword
I beat a drum, internally.
Tapping endless thought
Opinion on all
In a microsecond.
Yet my eye, has little sight
For my performance.
An ocean smiles,
As I am sucked into another’s galaxy,
The random depths of their personalized vision.
10.
Am I a pawn
In a game
Of my own making?
11.
To be here, now
In the body
At the bottom, of a breath.
POSTSCRIPT.
I tried not to look
Nor make a stupid comment.
Yet watching you
Treading lighter than air
Over a freshly washed
Kitchen floor.
Tip-a-toeing
Like a dancer,
Sun as an aura
Enrapturing your presence
It came to me, my inability,
In at least fifteen years,
Never to be man enough
Communicate, the inspiration
Felt deep within,
By the simple grace
Of your movements.
KYOTO HAIKUS
1.
Water resonates
Summer falls,
At what price?
2.
People walk
Dream of being awake,
While sleeping.
3.
One breath,
Inhale a heart.
Exhale for the heavens.
CONUNDRUM
I’m setting myself up for heartache,
I’m down on my bended knees.
Its a foolhardy notion,
To follow this potion,
Or is it a moment to seize?
PEOPLE SEND ME PENS.
(1975)
People send me pens,
Because they think I’m a writer,
Or they think, I think, I’m a writer.
Maybe they would like me to think I’m a writer,
Or I would like them to think I’m a writer.
Should I become a writer,
‘Cos people send me pens?
What is the value of a pen?
To Woolworth’s £3.00.
To my Mother, a gift to a son,
To Elizabeth, an instrument of fate.
To Malcolm, a piece of magic.
To me?
People send me pens.
Yet I, the real me,
Would like to own,
The finest quill the Cosmos can offer,
To communicate to all people
The Art of Life, for Life’s sake.
But then people might think I’m a writer,
Or they might think I think I’m a writer.
Maybe, they might like me to think, I’m a writer,
Or I might like them, to think, I’m a writer.
Should I become a writer,
‘Cos people send me pens?
I am me, with a pen I communicate;
Who are you? –
What implement of fate holds your desire?
1990 A.D.
Ecology for Economy
Dispense with Das Kapital.
For what we’re about to receive,
When the ozone bursts a valve!
Oh blest are the meek
Who shall inherit this Earth,
Seas of vast pollutants,
Gaseous, moribund, air.
Killing off the planet,
With every stock we share.
Relativity for absolutes!
Humanity ‘aint square
We, all, a tiny circle,
Of the immeasurable, elsewhere.
EULOGY
Last remains of what you know
Caution steps along the road.
Furnish the depths to fill the tomb
With gifts to bear, into the womb.
JOHN LENNON
Pico seconds, faster than time.
Hell for leather, at a quarter past nine.
The old, old adage must surely be true.
There’s something happening, beyond me and you.
MEDITATIONS
1.
I am – Ego
One- is Soul/Sole,
We are To-Get-Her.
2.
If a human,
Being human,
Disturbs human space,
Then humanity,
Will cease to be.
3.
Under the Yum-Yum tree,
Contemplating a navel or three!
4.
We are all travelers on an ocean of e/motion
Voyaging on unchart’d seas
Of time and space.
SCULPTOR. (B.F.)
(October 1988)
Eyes like a lilting leprechaun,
Moulding wax from old Byzantium.
Bi-Actuals: emerald wisps will,
Delicate footprints, silver flair,
Marble membranes, bronzed infinite skill.
Grafting artefacts, altered states:
This, the heart laid bare,
One verse for a Leaping Hare.
POEM FOR BRIDGE
(2003)
Be not afraid
Of all that life befell you.
Let not the horror
Of existence
Destroy all.
Be you
As it may,
But all ways,
Let the color shine
Within the glow
Of your emotion.
Had I known you,
Earlier,
Perhaps,
Dare I think,
About how
Other knots
Might have been tied?
Only that I know
With all and everything
Within;
That had I held you
Close
As a younger man,
The moment of this breath,
We call life,
Would have sparkled
Brighter,
Than every memory
I hold
Beneath this chest,
Wherein my heart reaches
And cries,
For all the love
I see
Within your eyes.
MY BROTHER AND I
(23/11/89)
Awaiting aeroplanes for separate destinations,
My brother and I
Walk together
Through the old streets of Palma.
An advert tempts us toward an exhibition
Showing 15th century instruments of torture.
We visit, instead,
A commemoration.
Old photographs from World War Two.
This war began 1939
Who cares now?
Aliens
We leave the cathedral gallery.
Born in another time, we fight another battle.
My brother and I,
Holding court on a park bench.
Two from one womb,
Immersed by our own private, interlocking, part.
The family from which we came,
And the families before us,
That keep us a part,
Off springing our own branches.
It seems a miracle
And yet so common,
This touch of the centuries.
How many other brothers and sisters,
Together have trudged these cobbles,
Wondering if they have the where with all,
To sustain, their remaining years,
Without instruments of torture,
Or World War Two?
Neither pilot, nor inquisitor,
Knew of ‘crack’ ‘d ozone layers.
All the battles each generation faces.
It’s only ourselves we punish with oppression,
Not just the oppressed, but so too, the oppressor.
Cultures divide, civilizations decay,
But my brother and I, bonded in blood,
See colour beyond set definition.
Look at all the brothers and sisters
In the world, who stood their ground,
Countless times in countless years,
That we, two, at this decades end,
Can be united,
Awaiting aeroplanes for separate destinations
POEM ON MY 33rd BIRTHDAY.
When you look back on the pages,
Of some half completed book,
When you contemplate,
Its twist and change,
And the age its teller took.
To unravel countless cases,
To weave a central theme,
To bewitch you with its reverie,
To sniff its inner dream
And to wrap you up in a wisdom
That you don’t quite understand.
It’s not a lot to read half a book
And contemplate its style.
For the story is half woven,
The tale has made its due,
Like a life that’s found a meaning
You know what you’re going through.
And you lean your head out forward,
To taste what you’ve to come,
But the words already written
Chapter verse and song.
And you’ve ploughed a furrow on your brow,
You’ve planted a seed that points a way,
For you’ve heard it now,
Spoken clear,
In that first half of living
Such an inner sense beginning.
When you look back on the pages
Of a half completed book
When you contemplate its twists and change
And the age its teller took.
THE CRUSADES
Evening scrawled red on roof tops.
It is colder than they tell us.
The mish-mash of a warming planet.
Does anyone, other than myself, see a continuity of war,
Begun a 1000 years ago?
THREE MOTIONS IN A MOMENT.
1.
My own derision
At the foothills
Of my own mountain.
I range imagination
Beyond clouds to stars
And back again,
All in the blink
Of a camels eye.
2.
These motions of hand
And pen
The rythmic glide
Of nib on paper
This communion
So older than
A Xristian
Yet wiser for its use.
This silence
This movement
Paper, pen, ink
All ruling
Mind you.
3.
If I were at a distance
Then you were faster.
If there is an instance
Then be the dancer.
Igniting a passion
Now there’s the rub.
Not base infidelity
But treble free love.
If I were insistent
And you were the rave
I would cry out to resistance
I’m not drowning its a wave!
YOUTH CULTURE FROM A DISTANCE
In the jungle and the ghetto,
Pre-fab sprouting desires,
Or ancient rituals,
Rubbed by animal fats.
All in ever change;
Closing ranks on microscopic
Features. Wasted wanton passages.
Daubing graffiti artists
Ricochet reflection,
Into the ‘I’ of each beholder.
A PRIVATE PART OF IBIZA
A private part of Ibiza
Is not a testicle
Nor a dish of succulent
Female nudity.
A private part of Ibiza
Is the left overs in your head
That beats a crazy rythme
Twixt the living and the dead.
Its a twist and shift of color,
For the twinkling of the turf,
Turns brown to green to golden
In the magic of this Earth.
OSCULATION
(San Juan 1989)
Not only the tail of an Ostrich
Is flummoxed by flight.
You sound a slow bellow
Like a south facing fellow.
Time-
The timing of windows.
Four square dimensions
Aero-dynamic footwear.
A man with Martian eyes
Living like a rat on Vedra.
Steel contours for the vertebrae
Under cover cleavage
Bloody Mary’s in a dark kitchen
Looking out at the light.
“Infra-strictures that’s what my old lady needs,
“Tied up and strung from a tree.”
The red headed A.I.D.’s carrier
Puckered his lips at the prospect.
A man with a giant physique but a mind
Light enough to tip toe.
Reaction in revolution,
Revolution in reaction.
An incoming Rabbi
Disguised as a hippy
Twangs the guitar
His companion’s mixed root
Keeps the tight beat of Puerto Rico
Via New York City
And Vietnam.
In its rhythm.
Old Hats
Calling spirit
Short shift for the faint hearted.
Bruised lips brace a metal harmonica
Bad news Bobby,
Blowing in the wind.
Electrocuted men
Like stuttering marionettes
A who’s in whose world
Musique hypnosis.
Timing-
The time of windows;
Looking in at where one’s been,
Without the clutter of being there…
Not only the tale of an ostrich
Is flummoxed by flight.
You sound a slow bellow
Like a South facing fellow.
Go forth west winds blow
Be Free
In repose,
Osculate.
RARETON HOTEL
(Santa Monica 4.31.81)
When you bleed on it
You know it
When you get the sheets rust brown
With your unconceived shit
Then you know it.
Agonise, scrutinise, dissect inside
Bleed baby bleed
For me…
Hurt’s a masquerading notion,
Some incestuous promotion
An ill-conceived commotion,
And this potion…
Bleeds -red-rust-
Like some woman on the bed,
Covered red-Covered red.
Moon mad by broken skies
Santa Monica
As the acid arrives
And the loosened ties of womanhood
Bleeds crystal.
FOR MY GODSON
(1980)
My nephew, only three,
Talks with me
Like one adult to another
We converse
On what may be.
As a one year old
My nephew was attacked
By a brain disease.
During our dialogue
He asks me:
‘What’s it like to die?’
And I notice, in his eye,
That already he has met
The reaper, who with his scythe,
Harvests the human lot,
Of all shape, colour, creed, and size.
I see, in his eyes,
That once upon a time
Monsters invaded his aching brain
He saw anxious faces,
Weird traces of surrealism,
Pulsated through his uncontrollable organs.
He became temporarily ensconced
In the pain
Of being insane.
I wonder what shapes appeared before him
How he visualised
The skeleton crossed angel
That merely shook his hand
And passed on
Through shadow land,
Leaving my nephew
Already haunted forever
By the memory
Of his brief encounter
With death.
“Uncle Robin what’s it like to die?”
I have no reply
Except to stare
With my eye
And let him know
From an inner glow
That all men turn to stone
And he,
Is not alone.
