living – Page 3 – radical druid

Abandon This Garbage: alcaics

Published on August 11, 2006

Oh wisdom seeking mendicant travelers,
your baggage and burdens are troubling handicaps;
they will not help you on your journey.
Abandon this garbage by the roadside.

If you would find some unforeseen adventure,
let drop your jaded world-weary illusions;
you have no need of those old crutches.
Use your own power to find the pathway.

Look inward, pilgrim: investigate carefully
what you have right now. Nothing is infinite
that has an ending, a start or finish;
if you see its edges, it’s not the source.

No dusty volume filling up shelving space
can provide answers; nor can just believing
in teachers, prophets, soldiers or saints.
The source of energy does not costume.

It is not waiting, patiently camouflaged
while you are wasting excuses and lifetimes.
It does its business, whether you are
singing in harmony or out of tune.

11 AUG 2006

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If all my days were whiled

Published on May 12, 2006

If all my days were whiled in hours of leisure,
their content by mere whim alone fulfilled,
perhaps I would not sense so keen a pleasure
as I do when a moment seems to still

into a whisper the world’s rush and roar,
and stretch a second’s span beyond its measure.
It’s likely I would want of time much more,
if all of it were made of these small treasures.

Would I want such a horde of precious minutes?
How would they wear if stored up in some vault?
It seems to me their worth would soon diminish
and leave behind regret, sorrow and fault.

Much better finding them just now and then;
like manna you have only now to spend.

12 MAY 2006

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This is a test.
I thought it best
to speak privately.
While the rest
of humankind
seethes at the breast
of Chaos,
suckling hot blood
from its chest,
let our shared words
somehow attest
to what is possible!
Let zest
for living fill us,
let us not leave
unexpressed
those great desires
that once impressed
us to make changes
to this world!
Let this bond be
our flag unfurled!

10 MAY 2006

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On the Professional Diarist

Published on April 23, 2006

There must be something more to it,
some sense behind the scenes,
a glimpse of meaning not quite shared,
or else my mind’s not keen
enough to understand the point
of merely keeping track
of each new day’s minutiae;
the long hours looking back
on what appears so trivial
would seem to waste, in turn,
great spans of time recording it;
who has such time to burn?

And why think such small moments
are something to be shared,
imagining some audience
is out there, and will care?
I wonder, in a thousand years,
will my old grocery list
of little peeves and daily notes
stand out from the great mist
and find interpretation
as the cipher that unlocks
the soul of this time that we’re in,
or if it’s just a crock.

23 APR 2006

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If You Want Love

Published on March 17, 2006

My father was an upright man who never went to church;
but he gave his word and that was that, he’d help you from a lurch.
He hated all self-righteousness and practiced what he’d preach;
when I asked him what made the good life he’d give me this speech:

Live as if there’s no hereafter if you want a Heaven here on earth;
Spend as if it’s your last dollar if you want to get your money’s worth;
Act like everyone knows something that it might be worthwhile to learn;
Love as if the world is ending if you want love in return.

My father died ten years ago; we laid him in the ground.
I don’t think anyone expected he’d be Heaven-bound.
When I think back on how he lived, I have to crack a smile
imagining their faces when they look in his file
and it says:

Someday may be good enough for some folks, he would say;
but if you want to change the world you’d better start today …

17 MAR 2006

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Life is What You Make It

Published on January 10, 2006

When I was a kid, I had a record (yeah, a plastic disk that spun around and was activated by an actual needle, producing sound waves that were amplified as electric signals through hot glass tubes and pushed out into the atmosphere through big ol’ speakers, not headphones) that included Guy Lombardo’s “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think)”. I always liked the song and what it seemed to suggest … for those who think that Tim McGraw’s song “Live Like You Were Dying” represents some new breakthrough in psychology, I would suggest checking it out. Anyway, I was sitting here watching a family of cardinals dining at the bird feeder in the backyard and enjoying the sunshine, and came up with the line “there’s no use in complaining, son, when life throws you a curve / we each get what we ask for, or at least, what we deserve.” And the rest of the song sprung (as in “spring has sprung / fall has fell / winter’s here / and it’s colder than … usual) from that.

Now, I suppose each of us chose
where we were born and raised,
just like we pick which songs to play
and what work fills our days.
I know it’s true that fortune moves
in strange and wondrous ways;
the lessons we require are given
’til the learning stays.

Good times and bad both come and go,
one day leads to the next;
you never know what’s coming
or just what you can expect.
There’s no use in complaining, though,
when life throws you a curve;
we each get what we asked for,
or at least what we deserve.

Life is what you make it
Don’t waste time knocking around
Don’t let your dreams split at the seams
Don’t let those teardrops drown
The sun that keeps on shining
Every morning until night
It may not be a perfect day
But it will be all right.

Geography and circumstance
are not just random luck;
and it’s no accident you drive
a Beamer or a truck.
Blue collar or accountant,
each has their own row to hoe,
and either fights the current
or learns to go with the flow.

There’s not much point in judging, then,
how the world has passed you by;
we each serve our own sentence,
a life’s span, and then we die.
So live like you want life to be,
and dance to your own drum;
who knows? tomorrow you might find
your lucky number’s come.

Life is what you make it
Don’t waste time spinning around
Don’t let love bloom around you
Without chasing a bit down
The sun will keep on shining
Every morning until night
It may not be a perfect day
But it will be all right.

10 JAN 2006

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Not Much of Everything

Published on October 18, 2005

What is belief except a means to reach
beyond the limits safe within our grasp
to learn from the unknown what it may teach?
If in that fertile darkness, courage fails,
as well as our illusions of defense,
what is there but belief until night pales?

Can faith alone provide, as some suppose,
sufficient armor against what we fear:
a deep pervading loneliness that grows
with every hour, behind our cheerful smiles;
a nagging doubt that we are each alone;
that substance fails, and there are merely styles?

It is belief that is our mooring rock:
the tenets that we hold as true and sure,
that mark us individuals, and shock
those who either grasp at fashion’s whims,
or sip from here or there, like butterflies;
the book of life we choose to read, not skim.

But separate belief from life, and it becomes
a rigid set of chains that bind the soul,
that does not fuel, but instead starts to numb
the senses to the underlying truth:
that what we see is only a small part,
akin to how old age is known to youth:

A lantern in the dark, but not the light;
a drop of canteen water, not the spring;
a packet of dry crackers, but not grain;
a piece, not very much, of everything.

18 OCT 2005

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Tag: living

Abandon This Garbage: alcaics

If all my days were whiled

Test

On the Professional Diarist

If You Want Love

Life is What You Make It

Not Much of Everything