SamadhiMuse » AAA – Recommended

1975-05-05 5 May 75 … the conversation

Dennis — Mon, 05 May 1975 08:00:00 +0000

                    5 May 75 ... the conversation

   Last night she talked to me and expressed more than I knew she held
     vessel of my love...
   Like night and day, I walk in and out of her influence
     and I'm torn by the winds of our love and thoughts,
       and she, for her love, bears as much.
   Until we know, we won't be free of this waiting
     and until we part or mend, we'll be torn of heart.
   Deal my mind cries... wait, my heart screams...
     hurry, my fears whisper... Rose my love says, ... Rose.
   She said maybe we'd never be happy,
     she said maybe the big hurt would be better
       than this waiting and a future filled with more hurts.
   And then she held me until not the winds of hell could touch me
     and whispered to me to do the best I could.
   She said if she could just know that I was coming back
     she could cope with anything... and I tried.
       I tried to make it work, to say it without cheating...
         but, I couldn't.
   There's no way to say for sure if you don't know
     unless you cheat or lie... I wanted to put her on hold...
       wait for me, I thought, don't get lost until I know...
         but we both know who would lose more this way.
   So strange... when I'm away I can't think of anything else
     for the emptiness that fills me so threateningly
   I move in dreams which wait to wake...
     I drift in these dreams, unfelt... unseen, spaced
   a traveler in a silent scream...
     moving in poses... through washed out scenes.
   She says I want my cake and to eat it too.
     That, like some child, I imagine a paradise here
       lying hidden from me here in my mundane life.
   I want love without hassles and problems...
     she doesn't... she doesn't want or imagine more.
        Our love is more than enough to make life good
   Is it that we're afraid that since we've only loved once
     that it wouldn't happen again if we split?
   And, are we avoiding the answer, either way,
     with this touch and go love of ours?
   Am I improving myself with all of this...
     or just ruining a good marriage?
   Do I know the answers and my pride blocks my sight
     of do I know and it's just fear that stays my hand
        or do I just not know?
   Is the way of the intellect just too hard for me...
     or is my common sense saving me?
   Am I just a fool chasing whimsical ideas
     or am I a coward,
        afraid to live my best dreams out?
   What am I...that I can feel her love like warm hands all over me
     and her arms like all the mothers in the world
        and think there's still more?
   What am I...that I can see how our love holds me
     because of my emotional need for love's security
        and not walk away from this material bond?
   Who am I...that I should have to answer...
     and who am I that I cannot?

                                 gallagher
                                 5 may 75 North Long Beach
                                 - late at night at Rose's apt.

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1978-01-09

Dennis — Mon, 09 Jan 1978 08:00:00 +0000

            Smile and flow, touch our cells
               streams of time bound in form, we
            the seeds of suns burn in our eyes
               cast in the relief of these moments
            children of chance, the best of nonsense
               laughing it all away
            we run on and down scarlet streamers
               universes dying to become real
            our cells are our templates, timeless
               behind these moments, our loves, our deaths
            I love our smiles which never cease
               and as our passion bears us again
                  the ground waits beneath us forever
                              gallagher
                              01-09-78 - about helen k.
                              long beach

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1983-02-07 Gerdas Knife

Dennis — Mon, 07 Feb 1983 08:00:00 +0000



                           Gerda's Knife

      I watched 'Winds of War' on TV and then turned out the light
         And, on the stairs, in the dark, ascending
            I saw your father's knife as it hung in your bedroom.

      Its white metal patient these many years
         since another sun shown on it
            in the days of the German Reich.

      I could hear flags whipping, red and black,
         against the green of trees
            and the gray of building stones

      and, for a moment, felt the eyes of countless men
         as their hands caressed its handle's symbol
            and reveled in the power and purpose of a God given cause

      and then, these many years later, through chances too rare to say,
         I came and found it there in your room
            waiting patiently through all my childhood and travels

      A time machine from another land
         another time
            that almost changed my world

      I look at old photos, black and white,
         and so much time seems too stand between me and those images
            but with your father's knife

      I could hear the flags whispering
         in the crisp air of that unique time
            and feel their dreams across the years

                                    GALLAGHER
                                    7 Feb 83
                                    San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1983-07-06 Morning Thunder

Dennis — Wed, 06 Jul 1983 08:00:00 +0000

                     Morning Thunder
         The dawn thunders over the Buddha hall
         as the army of orange gathers once more
         for Satsang with the Master
         and we, who are we, my heart probes
         ditch diggers and doctors
         dark gypsies and fine spun high born
         faces born of any crowd
         save the filter of their hearts
         which has passed them thru
         to where the dawn comes like a lover
         over the Oregon desert
         and the gift of enlightenment
         is a real promise.
                           gallagher
                           06 july 83 - Rajneeshpuram

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1984-06-01

Dennis — Fri, 01 Jun 1984 08:00:00 +0000

Mists of time around me, sweeping.
A lamp in the moving fog
of some greater darkness, I.
Impressions of progress and decay, fragmented
small glimmers of understanding
against the animal’s short run.
Film spliced, images racing, overlaid
in bursts of light and shadow.
But what cares the screen beneath.
We run unarmed, to battles unwinable
and our love’s the only comfort taken
and our small awarenesses
the only progress made.
Death and pain and dissolution and decay.
We are motes in the vortex of life’s sink.
Our children only a momentary reverse.
Come the mists and darkness, I wait …
weathered and drawn in animal skin
receptive to an unknown God.
Rose and Danny and Chris
and these lines on my face
and those on these papers I’ve traced
these are the only measures I can discern
of what I’ve wrought
in this time and mist and darkness.

gallagher
1 jun 84
Irvine, CA

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1984-06-24 For the pictures

Dennis — Sun, 24 Jun 1984 08:00:00 +0000

For the pictures

In the gray half light I saw the picture patterns she’d hung;
imperishable for this moment, and so fragile for all the rest.
Someday, I may remember these, that tonight I can see.
Somewhere, down the imponderable paths our lives wind,
I may be dropped into another world far from this
and Rose’s pictures and Danny’s manhood and Chris’ cheeks
may all be photographs and memories then …
indeed…we all will be, someday.

So this moment … I cannot stop it, cannot delay it
and I cannot waste it, least I regret.

So easy to lose it against hungers or moods or fatigue.
The kindness and love we give and receive…
it seems so mixed with the mundane and the trivial sometimes.

But all the lessons of our lives wait before us;
lessons from which no one escapes alive.

What more could God give us than the people we love
and the passion of living out our lives with them
in family/friend chains of living change?

gallagher
24 jun 84

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1984-06-27

Dennis — Wed, 27 Jun 1984 08:00:00 +0000


      Cloistered in your American T.V. family dream
        of homecoming queens and morals
           and sanitary friends without sin
              you are ... as solid as oak.

      Though the deeper you, as yet,
         is untouched by her mortal kin.

      Our eyes meet ... and exchange
        a seeker and his seen
           an ingenue and a chaser of his dreams.

      Every glimmer of the potential lover within you
        talks to me where my magic
           and the child wait against the night.

      My sweet all-American princess
        whose about to find the inner key
           just let me be standing in your pathway
             when you opt for crazy, wild and free.

                        gallagher
                        27 jun 84
                        Irvine

1984-11-28

Dennis — Wed, 28 Nov 1984 08:00:00 +0000

Balance, the poised and easy flexing
to meet experience as it comes
Tai Chi on the high seas
while the lightening rips.

No fear to act, none to wait,
each as appropriate.

Will to avoid the ocean of error
least you never hear
the thunder’s laughter.

gallagher
28 Nov 84

1985-03-11 11 p.m.

Dennis — Mon, 11 Mar 1985 08:02:00 +0000

                                                11 p.m.
                                                11 Mar 85
                                                Monday
      Dear Kathy,
           I'm back at my place after the weekend down south.
      Walking into these rooms tonight gave me such an ache.  I wrote
      a poem (enclosed) to deal with the feelings.  I'm listening to
      George Winston and thinking about you.
           When I saw you for those brief months after I came back
      from Canada I was impressed (and worried) at the changes in
      you.  Now, after two more years, I'm just impressed, not
      worried.  But, you know, even back seven years ago, in 78/79,
      you used to give me this same ache inside.  I've seen so much
      and done so much since then that I should have long since
      outgrown the days when you could get to my emotions.  But I
      haven't.  As I grow, you grow.
           I don't know quite what it is you do to me or why.
      Sometimes I think you were intended to be my mate in this life
      and, if I'd have stayed in Long Beach instead of joining the
      service, we'd have connected.  Other times I think it must be
      something binding us together from past lives.  Both of us
      Irish.  Perhaps we've lived together before and loved each
      other deeply.
           I look at you and I see so much I like.  And I wonder how
      it is that you are so inaccessible to me.  ...and my fantasies
      run away with me.  I thought a lot about you this weekend.
           This life is so beautiful.  I would rather have these
      aches and bursts of sunlite love and parting than not to feel.
      I want to kneel before the experiences of my life and cup them
      to my lips and drink them, with passion.
           And you, dear sister, lover of mine.  I would drink much
      of you.  If....  And what this IF is, I don't know. But it
      keeps me on the edges of your life.  Tasting an ache I cannot
      name.
           It's not 'love'.  Or, rather, it's not 'just' love.  I've
      loved before and I will again.  It's more a deep sense of both
      recognition and loss at the same time.
           I wish you were here, now, and could tell me what you
      think of these things.
           But, I should be considerate of you.  By the time this
      reaches you, you will be deep into the process of sorting out
      what you're going to do with your marriage and Tim.  I doubt an
      impassioned note from me will be of much aid.  But, dear lady,
      I'm not writing this to give you a burden...nor to provoke a
      reply.  I'm writing to unburden myself of some of these
      feelings ... to you, for you ... a gift.  A sharing.  You're
      the only one I would care to have understand my feelings.  And
      I want to share them with you but I don't want to burden you.
           What do I want?  I want to have you in my life.  I had
      almost forgotten your magic ... and now I remember so clear.
      And, of you, what do I want?  I have no right to say, nor have
      I been asked but....
           I want you to press on without cigarettes.  Find a very
      deep self-love and respect for your divinity (for Christ
      potentially lives in each of us) and realize your body is the
      temple within which you worship him.
           I want you to continue to grow.  Grow outside of society's
      structures (marriage).  Grow outside of other people's
      structures and insecurities (Tim's confining your freedom to
      express love).  Continue to go where the going gets hard.  It's
      there that the knife edges of your life and growth get
      sharpened.
           Allow yourself to know God is there and cares for you
      through everything.  He shares every ache, regret, passion and
      charity that passes through your heart and he loves you,
      absolutely, through it all.  If you could learn to do the same
      you would be so much closer to God.
           Know, too, that there are others in this life scattered
      through the years of your life.  People, like me, who will love
      you and applaud you and your efforts to grow and free
      yourself.  That will lend love and compassion freely to another
      soul who dares to try to find more in this life than marriage,
      television and possessions.
           But, most of all I want you to know that you have the
      ability to find the secret of inner joy that freedom brings in
      this life.  All of what I've said, above, about God and love
      and courage and friends is part of it.
           Do NOT settle for less.
           I will get the poems and pictures together soon.  I will
      also probably wait a week or so and then call you.
           Enclosed, you will find the patio shot we talked about and
      a picture of Chris.  Look at him a moment and you will see how
      much I love him.
                                       Love,

1985-03-28

Dennis — Thu, 28 Mar 1985 08:00:00 +0000

            Rich beyond all measure
            we stand blind in the midst.
            The light of God shines through us
            and around us in every form
            and we go aching
            from mood to mood
            and place to place
            in search of His peace and joy.
            He must smile with compassion
            at children such as we
            who, in the wheat fields of His love,
            cannot find the harvest
            nor simply love the sun.
                              gallagher
                              28 March 1985
            after yet another listening of Gibran's, The Prophet.