• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog

The Middle Way

~ A journey between extremes

The Middle Way

Category Archives: Poetry

Last Waltz of the Sun

08 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Change, Compassion, Conspiracies, Corruption, Environment, Fear, Human, Memorial, News, Poetry, Politics, Sameness

≈ Leave a comment

what can we do when
off the glaciers sheer
and dams burst outward
to peasants in valley
so far away from you
hunched over a teak desk
looking tight for the line
of the feeders on bottom
As the Dome burns its effigy
in Democracy’s last waltz

like your life depended on it

26 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health, Migraines, Poetry, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

each word draws the poison
suffering and anger leach
angst and puffed the same
the way I rid yourself from me

ink lathered in blood on page
tear-soaked paper scraps
shriveled napkins tinged with rye
a collective act to ward off life

haikus of blotting all else

13 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Depression, Mental Health, Pain, Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Skull full of daggers,
shooting ache of burning. And
pain causes migraines —

enemy within
nails and scrape to outside out
blind shot of deaf thought

So, what’s been up?

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Brain Droppings, Cannabis, Depression, Emotional Intelligence, Grief, Growth, Human, Love, Medical Marijuana, Mental Health, Middle Way, Migraines, Open mind, Pain, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

This used to be a cohesive blog to some extent, until a few years ago. A few years ago I started to get migraines.

Actually, based on what I now know about migraines, I guess I’ve had them for most of my life. So the fact that I say it the way that I do means they got pretty bad. Bad enough to have screwed with every part of my life, in one way or another.

I always loved writing, but as the migraines got worse, the ability to string two thoughts together has gotten more difficult. Add to that the fact that most of it is written on a tiny little phone screen, and I fat-finger things when I trying to ride an epiphany and get the words out as fast as they roll through.

Then there was this thing I learned about that can go with migraines, called aphasia. I can ‘see’ exactly what it is that I want to say, but its word isn’t with it anymore. When I am writing and it happens, I give up. In daily life, I just come out with weird shit, like referring to a cutting board as ‘the under-the-knife block’. I get frustrated because I want the writing to be good. I’m starting to not care about that as much as i used to. Fuck it. If my typos bug you, there plenty of other blogs you can visit.

I’ve written a lot, but I think I deleted even more.

Poetry has helped me though. Because I don’t have to string thoughts. I have to evoke images and feelings, and tie them together in some sort of dance. And so, that’s been the majority of what I’ve been writing.

Many times I have tried to write about what I had been going through, only to delete it the next day when everything seemed to change again. If you know someone suffering migraines, you know what that means.

Much of it is related to chronic pain, and so a great deal of this involves dealing with that, when I wasn’t in migraine. And often with both at the same time. Although migraines tend to take over the show. Back pain is kind of like a guy who follows you everywhere playing a harmonica. He would be obnoxious and drive you crazy, right? But imagine if he were to then follow you into a Lou Reed concert or something. If you were even able to hear him, even then he would at best be mildly irritating. Migraines are like that. They’re so loud, they drown everything else out around them.

And with pain, comes pain management. And with pain management comes medicines. And I am in recovery. And it’s at that point that Pandora’s Box comes apart at the seams, as the scotch tape repairs let go again.

That’s been the juggle lately, anyway. Or at least it’s a good jumping off point for a few things.

haiku for help

11 Wednesday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Dandelion Break, Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

in meditation
i dropped a net on my words
can’t write anymore

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity

30 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Art, Change, Emotional Intelligence, Environment, Fear, Hate, Human, Indivisible, Music, Poetry, Politics, Putin, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

≈ Leave a comment

It seems that I tend to post this once in a while, and there’s usually good reason each time. Aside from the fact that this is one of my all-time favorite poems, for me it also calls up a reality check. I’m not alone in that fact, either. And, I have always loved the version that Joni Mitchell arranged, so today I am posting that with the text of the poem. Read deep.

We humans have enough of a history that shows how clearly we are capable of existential damage to each other, as well as our environment. I don’t believe there is anything particularly prophetic in this poem/song, but there are some huge reminders.


The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Searching for clovers

27 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

sunny saturday stroll boy wanders
behind along he follows them all
far enough for the steps and snippets
close enough to wander me alone

they veer right as life carries on
he goes left onto a thickets of field
lost in a world between his two toes
seeking for clover by candlelight heals

looking up dazed to see the big “huh?”
two decades gone on – a third in the dust
friends have proceeded to go onto their homes
the lone candle carried now a torch of “I must”

the handle is scarred, corroded from whether
covered and scored in thousands of nots
burnt from the years for a lighthouse to keep
magpied with memories, a touchstone it’s fraught

stumbling off from his pedestal down
armed with epiphanies, blind to all else
amazed that a world still turns for those left
as friendships go grey, spring blurs to fall

pickup the pieces, repair what you may
clover-full field now all gone to seed
to continue is life, learning the way
with pain as a crown and love as a creed

Mani

24 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Death, Emotional Intelligence, Growth, Human, Love, Memorial, Mental Health, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Spirituality, Women

≈ Leave a comment

(for Cathy)

living out of the jewel in your heart
love, your connection to each
a filigreed heart for mother and child
fierce in your fight with unjustness

silhouetted by the hallway’s glow 
an Angel Trumpet on the breeze 
the gauze of your gown hued deep in joy 
barefoot to the earth, a smile to sky

you love like a martyr, taking on pain 
those in your grace, you cast a pure light 
together we draw, when you become near 
each fragment made whole by balm

pictures and paintings on walls
in every place you are missed
I wait again to smell your scent &
a crushing hug to bind my heart

devolving

23 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Buddhism, Depression, Emotional Intelligence, Grief, Human, Love, Middle Way, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Spirituality

≈ Leave a comment

a cosmic pulse goes out from you
like a sunspot on my mind
stirring and interfering with myself
and the ways I live and die

veering down an antique canyon
searching through rubble and pictures
for you, thru you, i come to them
regret rains down like foam

a testament to eternality
and the permanence of love
families go on, friends are gone
when the strings of you unwind

the gordian knot of grief, it shivers
resonates itself through space and time
the 7th dimension of too much hurt
revolves in time with Yamantaka

guilt nurtures the hounds

19 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Anxiety, Depression, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Human, Love, Meditation, Memorial, Mental Health, Poetry, Prayer, Recovery, Spirituality

≈ Leave a comment

turning and spinning
towards the center and back
esteem hits below the belt
love only takes one more

the inevitability of karmic debt
meets the prayers of the saints
halfway to providence and back
I should have learned it then

the silence I long sought inside
now returned an echo of dense
that old son of a bitch is dead
chattering on from his grave

chance took my chance away
with misery born of longing
solitude’s underbelly exposed
while guilt slow nurtures the hounds

← Older posts

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016

Categories

  • Anxiety
  • Art
  • Book Review
  • Brain Droppings
  • Buddhism
  • Cannabis
  • Change
  • Clowns
  • Comcast
  • Compassion
  • Conspiracies
  • Coronavirus
  • Corruption
  • Dandelion Break
  • Death
  • Democratic Socialism
  • Depression
  • Dingleberries
  • Ego
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Environment
  • Existential Risk
  • Fatherhood
  • Fear
  • First Amendment
  • FSM
  • Fucking Hannity
  • Grateful Dead
  • Grief
  • Growth
  • Guns
  • Hate
  • Healthcare
  • Heroin
  • Human
  • Indivisible
  • Islam
  • Kids
  • Love
  • Lying (oops, I meant ‘mistruthing’)
  • Making Sense of Guns
  • Male superiority
  • Medical Marijuana
  • Meditation
  • Memorial
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Way
  • Migraines
  • Moscow Mitch
  • Music
  • News
  • Nipples
  • Open mind
  • Pain
  • Patriotism
  • Pledge
  • Poetry
  • Politics
  • Prayer
  • Psychedelics
  • Putin
  • Quantum
  • Race
  • Recovery
  • Revolution
  • Sameness
  • Sex
  • Spirituality
  • Suicide
  • Tax the Church
  • Tech
  • Terrorism
  • Trump-Hole
  • Uncategorized
  • Women
  • Writing
  • Zappa

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy