Note – Many times when I mention Soul or my Soul I am writing about a real internal dialogue.  This one is particularly harsh but sometimes being honest requires it.  This was written during a time when I felt particularly tired of me, tired of the search, tired of the same old same old.  Anger, even brutality spoken forcefully and truthfully is needed to cut through long held ties to falseness in oneself.  No offence is intended but on occasion offence is exactly what is needed.  The journey encompasses the full range of human emotion and experience.  None can be avoided.  And on that day this was my prayer.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” ~ Carl Jung

I am so fucking tired of this stupid shit!

I am tired of the ineffective words and ideas which have no power.

Creator change me, rearrange me.

I am broken and without merit.

Perhaps there may be something left if it could be put back together in a new way.

A new life is needed.

I am walking death, and weakness and chaos.

Yet I Yearn.

At times I demand.

At times I beg.

At times I despair all and wish for death.

Yet I Yearn.

Damn the wanting.

Damn the yearning.

Kill me quickly that I might rise again.

Fuck You my Soul, You cruel bitch.

You seduce,

You tempt, but You do not satisfy.

You tease and mock and are wanton in the public display or Your whore-like desire.

There is a cunt in You.

There is a virgin maiden there also.

I need redemption worse than any other.

And yet I Yearn.

 

 

 

Grace and the freedom to choose. There is no past or future. There is only now. All else is illusion. The past can repeat itself but it does so in the present moment. Tomorrow never makes its way into today. There is only now. Jesus said “The Kingdom is among you (now) Can you not perceive it?” Other religions teach a similar concept.

(Chorus)
The page is blank again
You’ve wiped it blank it’s clean
Today I can begin again
Here between the Holy and (the) obscene
(Paul’s – the things I want to do I don’t. . . who will save me from this body of death?)

(Past – We can choose to live here with no power and in shame trapped by the illusion of the past.)

Your grace is new each day
But the past still clouds my mind
Failures, fears, insecurities, still
Creep (rise, sneak, loom?) up from behind

(Future – We can live in the present timid and shrinking back in fear of what may come. Inaction and indecision is a feeble surrender to the tired and stale addiction of what has been.)

Your grace is new each day
And my future is not yet cast
I go out knowing not where I go
And I seek my life’s true path

(Now – The present moment is eternal. Here exists the portal through which the Kingdom may come. It is the only avenue through which the Real/Eternal may enter the Shadowlands (reference C.S. Lewis.) Conscious choice, action, refraining from action, wakefulness, etc. is the only state of being which is indeed Life. All else is walking death. It is my delight, my privilege, and my responsibility to write my story. To abdicate is to live outside of creativity, reality, Life, and/or the will of God.)

Your grace is new each day
And each day I get to choose
I’m the one who writes or not
I light or not the fuse

(Bridge – Grace is Reality. It is the nature of the universe. Yet like childish, cynical, deaf, dumb and blind fools we starve to death in the midst of a feast. We trade unlimited treasure for stale bread and brackish water. We attempt to create a life out of the illusions of past and future and all the while the power waits at our beck and call.)

In Your Grace I live and (and move and) have my being
Your Grace is the air I breathe
My mind seems weak and progress slow
(Please) Help me awake, help me believe.

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I recently met a new friend.  His name is Matt and he is the force behind a blog dedicated to Beat poetry.  His blog is called Beat Company.  I encourage all of you to stop by and say hello. Tell him Plato sent you. I am enjoying getting to know him and really enjoy his posts.  He was kind enough to include some of my work in a recent post centered around the concept of time.  You can find his post Time here.  Keep up the great work Matt!  Be Groovy!

For those who may be interested:  One of the benefits of the new blog theme is that I can make it do (at least some of) what I want it to.  There is a simpler menu system now on the home page.  I have put most of the live music under one tab called “Jazzy Spoken word – Beat Poetry.”  There is part of me that is still pleasantly surprised that some of you really enjoy it and have asked for easier access.  It is something that evolved out of the audio recordings I do with my poetry.  My grown children are excellent musicians and some of my good friends are too.  One day we met at the house.  I cooked pasta and served good wine and we just started playing.  It is all improv with the spoken word and the musicians responding back and forth.  I was amazed at some of the results.  Eventually we would like to re-record some of these as well as produce some new ones.  The recordings were done in a fairly primitive fashion but perhaps that is part of their charm.  There are a couple on the way and I will post them as soon as they are ready.

 

The theme and purpose of this blog is about finding one’s Groove.  That word may have specific connotations for some that traps it inside a narrow range of meaning.  What I mean by the word has less to do with being “groovy” than it does with finding ones particular purpose, or way, or expression of their singular authentic Soul.  I think that expression should be slightly weird and out of culture’s box.  Not for weird’s sake but rather for the sake of being authentic to who we are.  I believe that our dissatisfaction with living arises out of not being aware and/or true to the essence of our being.  The association with Plato comes from his idea that there is Real and we live in the shadows of it.  My take on that is that there is a Truth that is calling us into authentic living and existence.  There are many different motifs such as the journey, pilgrimage, calling, etc.  I like a musical metaphor where one is moving out of dissonance into harmony.  There are some scientific ideas such as String Theory, Quantum Physics, even mathematics that when understood at the higher levels seem to call for beauty and symmetry.  Spirituality, Religion, even Science now say that we at the core are conscious energy manifesting on this material plane at a certain frequency or frequencies.  I am not saying anything new that has not been alluded to since saying has begun, just in my own way.  I wish for you the joy of finding your own particular voice or way or Groove to do this thing we call life.

These ideas are in Plato’s Groove theme song found under the Jazzy menu.  Here’s a shortcut.  Plato’s Groove

 

Be Groovy!