Midlife

What happens
When the heart breaks
Repeatedly?
How does one continue to feel?
When feeling is risky…
So painful…

Pain is an indication
Of unresolved grief
When there has been no
Acknowledgement of hurt caused
No apology. No gesture. No words…
That rushed in to soothe the pain

Pretence, resolution…
Explaining the other’s motives
In a sort of quasi goodness–
Are the defences used
To shield oneself
From the pain.

In inhibiting the pain
One also inhibits feeling
A collateral damage…
Life now is understood as a function.
That must be carried out.
Its difficulties endured.

Feelings get used strategically
At anniversaries, birthday parties, on Instagram.
But emotions are kept at bay.
Keep the heart functioning optimally.
Work on its efficiency.
Keep the pace on the treadmill.

When Rain Falls

Rain falls to the earth
Soils settle…some shift
Changes are occurring.

Rain falls to the earth
Soils settle…some shift
I need a strong foothold.

Rain falls to the earth
Soils settle…some shift
I must now sense my path

Mistakes are Milestones

What mistakes am I making?
What mistakes have I made?

Is regret even a reasonable emotion?
…When you know that you’re on a journey

If you didn’t take a path
That you could have
Does it matter?

Destinations are just stops
…Milestones that you arrive to
And then move on.

They’re not permanent
…You’re not permanent

Concern is just a desire for permanency.

Let go of the need
To predetermine outcomes
Make better judgments
After you have made the bad ones.

Live life
The way it’s intended to be lived.

About Endings

The pain of an ending
Is never so much
As when you know it.

And yet the sobs are silent
Muffled as they are
By the gags of normalcy.

Decency ensures
That the lines on your face
Are drawn into a smile…

That pretends to keep you social
While ensuring
That your façade reveals nothing.

You are close, yet far
In continuation
But discontinued.

Remembered
But not needed
Loved, but relegated.

‘Forever’ is no one’s destiny
It can only be our prayer
…Our hope.

And hope- we forget
-Can only convey us…
It makes no promises.

Separate we must.
All beginnings must end
All journeys must traverse a destiny.

Art and Design

Our days are ever-developing patterns
Of activity, of attention
Of thought, of belief
Of hope, of feeling
Of organization, of comfort
Of sustenance, of communication
Of staying connected
And of togetherness.

Humanity is the art
That emerges from
Intelligent Design.

Indescribable

I am most uneasy
With others’ descriptions of me.
I feel limited…constrained…
Flattened to two dimensions;
Defined and imprisoned…
My space to be
Taken away from me.
My gaucheness will now
Become a slip.
Or, take for example, my forgetting things
This will be seen as something uncharacteristic…
-A change of heart?
-A change in the chemical balance of my brain?
-A sign of self-neglect?

Descriptions-
As generous as they are (if they are good),
Diminish your essence
And leave you instead
With a grand idea
That which, can perhaps survive
But never really live.
That which can grip you
But never become as easy
As your breath.
The inability to see oneself
Is the design of freedom.
You’re free to be
The unknowable and the indescribable.

What Matters

When the minute
Inspires the hour;
And the hour
Builds the day;
And the days
Deliver the week;
And the weeks
Accomplish the month;
And the months
Grow the years;
And the years
Create a lifetime…

You realize-
It’s the little things
That matter.

Work

Your work is an expression
Of your vitality, your sensitivity
And your intelligence.
These are all invested
And then enriched through work.

To see work as enslavement
Is debasing and depressing.
If you see yourself as exploited
You will resist work
It will become distasteful.

If it incites greed and ambition
It becomes corrupted.
You lose perspective
And begin to believe that work is a means
To acquiring place and privilege.

Work is incomplete
If it doesn’t involve inner work-
An understanding of our limitations,
Courageously facing our fears
And conversing with our insecurities.

Work in essence,
Is a means of self-discovery.
Your work itself lays the path
That you must walk on
To experience true fulfilment.

And in and through the journey
Leave behind the illusions
Of need and inadequacy…
And also,
Of eminence and accomplishment.

The Aesthetics of Education

Ugliness is an hour
In the perception of beauty.
The ugliness of darkness,
Pride, arrogance and dishonesty
Will pass…

All facades will fall
And you will find yourself
Standing exposed…
Your ignorance, you will come to see,
Was faking it as knowledge.

While you were busy learning
How to do, how to act
How to think and how to be
Those lessons were futile and
Meaningless…till you learned how to see.

But learning how to see
Is a becoming…
It is arriving to a point
Where you’re able to tell the difference
Between reality and concept.

It involves a return
To a no-man’s land
Where all the knowledge
That you have acquired
Stands in vain.

When your satisfactions
Have become your discontent
Your truth is now false
And the certainty of your ideas
Have become an ideological noose.

You wish to be liberated
From fashionable ideas
And to look at
What you don’t know
For recourse…

Your ignorance then transforms…
From being the nakedness
That you were ashamed of-
It becomes the very means
By which you will learn.

When false knowledge is dropped
A superficial ignorance too breaks…
You come to see that
True knowledge lies in understanding
What you’re ignorant about.

It’s our ignorance
That teaches us what
We must know.
It introduces us to our human-ness
And thereafter our promise.

A good education
Will free you of conclusion
You will learn how to learn
And therefore, learn how to be
And therein, learn how to see.