SamadhiMuse

      You can recognize your lovers
         by the fear that’s in their eyes
      you can recognize the one’s who’ll leave you
         when you begin to hear their lies
      you can recognize you friends now
         they’re the ones you never notice at all
      you can recognize anything you want
         you just look in the mirror and call.

                           gallagher
                           CSULB
                           07-08-76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

           Its an illusion, drink up your fill
            look in the mirror, its all what you will
            you’re just dreaming you’ve got time to kill
            you’ve only one time
               and it won’t sit still.

                              Long Beach
                              07-09-76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                        Bruce Malsom

      I’m less somehow, for his leaving, my spirit brother …
      same eyes as my eyes   same spirit as my spirit
      He’s gone into the world again, at this conjunction’s end, drifting
      amid the tides of change, each of ours alone.

      Same eyes as my eyes   same spirit as my spirit
      some part of me gone, my brother, some part …
      clear seeing, true spirit and grace until we meet again,
      thru illusion and change, immutable essences of that
      which makes us brothers, one.

                              gallagher
                              10 Aug 76 - about my friend
                              buena park, CA

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

            Late 20’s general panic comin’ down
            the easy living givin’ way to the constant frown
            worrying’ about jobs and what we’re going’ be
            the steady erosion of that centered concept, me.

            Maya ever beckons, beckons the pilgrims on
            to embrace their lifeless caricatures
            from which their souls have long been gone.

            I resist your involvement
            the blood sucking drain
            the ultimate material involvement
            in the giant corporate game.

                                    gallagher
                                    16 aug 76 - buena park

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         There’s no time, there is no reason
         I’m lost in the turn of the year.

         I want to cry out for some season
         where the wind blows slower apace.

         I cannot find what I’m here for
         and it seems the quest is lost
         amid the hurrying moments and fragments
         and, ah, how I fear this loss…

         Another life lost here on this rock
         speck in God’s eye
         another lesson to be learned once again then
         and still the wind refused to die.

         The hours and minutes fill up
         and the material world’s catching hold
         every time I look in the mirror
         I see I’m growing old.

         How, how did you catch me
         sly devil that you are
         in this place where the wind never slackens
         and only I can hear the mirror sigh.

         I’m not here to fill in the pattern
         or lay another stone on the way
         I want to live as if it mattered
         and when I die I want to go away.

                           gallagher
                           20 aug 76 - buena park

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         My friends and all our questions
         our eyes and all we say
         we’re all empty and full of the question
         we’re all alone with nothing to say.

         Bruce and Mike and Cher
         have come here as my friends
         and now that they’ve left again
         I’ve just some bits and ends.

         So empty of answers
         that questions no longer hold much lure
         I mourn my having to work now
         because I know that money’s no cure.

         The lesson’s get harder at childhood’s end
         I hope that we’re able, myself and friends
         to survive in a world without the words or time
         to grow older and wiser without feeling like crying.

                                 gallagher
                                 20 aug 76 - buena park

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         Empty   Empty   Empty
         not growing.
         Remembering, not knowing.
         Sad, about what?
         nothing…
         Mad about everything
         no alternative?
         look how the year walks by me
         no focus, who am I?…
         just the space around which
         the identification, Dennis Gallagher, exists
         in whatever form I last left it
         who am I, the one pressing in or out or both?
         what’s direction…
            complexity’s increase,
            knowledge’s gain,
            material’s owner?
         empty of even questions
            I exist and see only
            the falling leaves of years
            in the lines of my face
         what do I want
            what can I have?
         what will I do
            what can be done?
         do I have a choice
            am I not one?

                                    gallagher
                                    20 aug 76 - buena park

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

We’re all dying here of boredom and life’s mundaneness.
my friends call occasionally to see how it goes with me.
Their tiny voices, across the miles, empty and brave
ask, ‘how do you like your job…’
and they’d like to hear that I have the answer…
but they hang up as sad as they called,
when they hear its the same with me.

All the alternatives vanish into the vacuum left
where your dreams used to be.

When security and the real world claim you,
you begin to see yourself as you once saw others;
mice on the treadmills of industries, living dead.

Your muscles grow soft and your eyes lose their snap
and your feeling of self uniqueness becomes self disdain.

All the alternatives vanish into the vacuum left
where your dreams used to be.

                              gallagher
                              23 Aug 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

      I can’t seem to escape this falling feel
      in the quite moments when my awareness gets real
      it seems I’m falling thru the days like a leaf
      and I can’t seem to land to get some relief.

      Ah, why would I want to come to this place in my life
      so sad and confused and distressed by the knife.
      It never seemed to me that it’d be like this,
      the knife that divides our fun from our pain,
      and its come down on the wrong side again.

      I wonder, in flashes, as the days whirl by
      if I can get it back, the way that I got high,
      by looking in loving detail at all that went by.

                              gallagher
                              28 Aug 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         What strange weeds the winter leaves us here
         in the stark sunlight after our lusty cheer.
         And with what wondrous clarity the mirrors shine
         and show the one that was, against the one that’s left behind.

         I can’t see, but the clarity aches my eyes,
         through these transient passages wove with immoral cries.
         And we weave and wind our parts and thine
         just gamblers come to meet
         in a place where nothing lasts.

                                 gallagher
                                 7 September 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         I’m not sure where I’m going, save getting old.
         I can’t remember the dreams that held me
         through the passages of my twenties.

         The snow drifts in my door
         and the newspapers talk more to me.
         I think I’d like to be free
         but I can’t recall what it would mean.
         I’ve tried idealism, and then lust
         and seen nothing but history’s crust
         and brighter chrome.

         There’s more, but I’m not sure what.
         I’ve been adrift so long
         I can’t recall what it means to stand
         grounded and know something…anything.

         In some attempt to chart the river,
         I’ve been swept away.
         And I’m not sure just what it is I want or need
         but I wish I’d find it, I need to find that seed.

         I can see the snowdrifts piled so high
         beneath the arc-lit sun that wheels so swiftly now
         that the calendar pages fairly strobe.

                              gallagher
                              7 september 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                          Dying highs

            It doesn’t matter what you do to yourself
            it all comes to the same end;
            cafeine speeds you up,
            grass slows you down.
            The lack of sleep fogs you up
            and math clears you out.
            Its all part of the same game
            going down to where you die.

            You been running all you life…running down.
            What does it matter how you do it?
            Its just like the illusion that
            there’s somewhere to get to
            There’s nothing to hold onto, either.
            We’re dying constantly in an endless
            progression to nowhere
            although we struggle to believe otherwise.

            We’re always trapped here, in the now,
            and we fail to see it as the window it is
            into the greater truth
            with all its beginnings and endings.
            Somehow, though we’re given the power
            to imagine almost anything,
            we find it the hardest to imagine the truth.

                                    gallagher
                                    13 september 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         Ever receding, certain years seem to call me
         their music pulls my memories out
         and I wonder at the spans I see
         between me, now and then.
         I wasn’t crazier, just more naive then.

         Imagination has few bounds
         when you know nothing of the way.
         The years churn behind me now as I enter the rapids
         and blind faith grows ever more poignant
         when I hear them on the radio.

                                    gallagher
                                    14 september 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         I may be poor but I can see what I’m looking at
         when it comes time to judge where I’m at.
         Taking it serious leads me only
         to the blindness of the material world.
         What have I got to loose
         when I haven’t got anything but seeing and living?

         Let me fly on what vision’s mine.
         I’ve got nothing else but the death
         everyone else has.
         Yeah, and it’s sweet to walk alone
         taking it all on.

                                 gallagher
                                 3 Oct 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

            Tinkering it all away,
            the forms, the becomings, the being.

            I swing in the wind of it
            and it sings in my chimes,
            while I, the hung man,
            wave feebly about in it.

            Its life and all its doings
            fooling (flowing) around with me.
            Godot told me once
            it would be like this.

            How hard we labor at our communications
            and our art.
            As if to bridge the unbridgeable
            and its realization,
            to hide the mysteries.

            Its a balance, somehow,
            our refinement of art and
            our appreciation of the chaos.

            Zen monks, art students revel in it.
            They want it all now; the clarity and the chaos.

            It much nicer to seek it than run
            when you’ve seen where running leads.

                                    gallagher
                                    8 Oct 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         There’s no enjoyment of this life in them.
         Its a straight and narrow purgatory
         waiting here for the next life.
         Life is a trial, all provided with love,
         by the Lord to test one’s faith.

         Its love, love your brothers and sisters
         without passion, comfort and befriend them,
         with eyes full of blind love,
         be meek and modest and remember
         that if what you’re doing feels good
         it must be a sin.

         Come together in church halls
         and speak the language of the reborn
         and raise your hands and voices up
         asking for a sign but never allowing a doubt.

         Be patient and accepting,
         though its beyond all knowing,
         for surely a Lord,
         who would have you give up everything
         in this life,
         must have some reward for you
         in the next, right?

                                    gallagher
                                    Oct 15, 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

            I just don’t know anymore the things I used to,
            before I climbed life’s questions
            and found the mountains beyond that ever rise,
            that rise until you can hear eternity
            in the wind there.

            I no longer climb,
            there’s no need to waste the time.
            The mountains march away from me
            and I can only just begin to see
            that God’s hand that shaped this rugged land.

            Somehow the wind empties me
            of the wondering drive that always drove me on
            and now I just wait and listen.

                                    gallagher
                                    21 Oct 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

        Why does it seem that this world
         is always opposite my dreams?

         I don’t want to, I’m not willing to,
         to become less of me
         to become more of
         what passes for the successful man.

         And yet love’s even more
         impossible to avoid.

         I’m always redrawn to the razor’s edge
         for decision and find no alternative.

         There’s nothing I want so much
         as my freedom to enjoy life as I wish
         but there is nothing to replace love
         and the hole it leaves, …nothing.

         Paradox.

         Why do I come here again
         to the ragged edge between joy and sorrow
         where it all gets so real
         at such an apparent cost.

         Heaven’s gain is heaven’s loss.

                                 gallagher
                                 25 Oct 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

      Once upon a time she would’ve stayed no matter what
      but now I’m the one who’s afraid of being alone.

      Most of the men she’d meet are looking for their mothers
      and the rest, their lovers
      and she knows it…
      she could make it in that world.

      But I’m not so sure about me
      I’m looking for love without bonds or chains
      and deep down
      I know my chances are not good.

      This growing up seems to get narrower by the day
      and its getting truer all the time
      that you’ve got to grow apace with your Karma
      or lose the freedom of your spirit.

                              gallagher
                              26 Oct 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         Walking blind except when I’m fooling myself
         I know too much, think too much
         and in the steady erosion of my ignorance
         I perish and cry out; dust to dust.

         I’m nothing more than what I am not.
         I’m nothing more than the choices I’ve had.
         I’m nothing more than a question constantly asked.

         And I try, like original sin, to answer.
         I’m an aching void when my knowing leaves me
         confronting the unknown without
         as blind as a baby reborn.

                                    gallagher
                                    26 Oct 76

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —