Archive for the ‘2017’ Category

2017-08-26 – Red China Blues

Tuesday, September 26th, 2017
 
We are as cheap as the pigs bound for slaughter,
   in those corners of the world
      where we are just objects to others.

Everything you might think important;
   how many times has it all been swept away
      down the long road of your many lives?

I can see the execution yard,
   the concrete and the stains,
and I can see the men who fire the rounds
   waiting for their shift to end
so they can seek their evening meal
   and the warmth of their woman.

Enormous uncaring forces move around us
   and we can only hope they will not gaze upon us.

Our dreams and our children survive
   only by the simple good fortune
of where we were born;
   far from the fires of hell
that move through the forests
   of some of our lives.

Every minute I breath free and unharmed
   is a gift - in a world such as this.

You know, in China, the family of the executed
   must pay for the cost of the bullet.
But here, safe, I only have to read the book
   that tells the story.

gallagher
26Aug17
Christchurch, New Zealand
- after reading Red China Blues by Jan Wong

— Copyright 1965-2017 by Dennis Gallagher —

2017-10-12 – Do you, Mister Jones?

Thursday, October 12th, 2017

When the boundaries loosen,
we find all of life is magical.
Or is it; you cannot tell.

And that’s where the blade meets the flesh
and where courage finds its feet.

There’s something happening but you don’t know
what it is, do you, Mister Jones?”

The mortality, the pointlessness and the magic of creation
all dance around us in a place we cannot name.
Perhaps, our hearts understand; in the way
that an embrace informs the embracer?

But always, behind, the mind wants to make it something;
give it a name, connect its past to its future.

Out here, in this eruption of existence,
the fascinations swarm and beguile us.
But, always, between our thoughts,
the eternal OM endlessly sings and hisses.

Here, in our momentary small awarenesses,
we come and go like shadows.
Most of us never realizing,
that we are simply This.

And none of us ever truly free
of the profound mystery
except through our beliefs
in our our illusions.

gallagher
11 Oct 2017
Christchurch

— Copyright 1965-2017 by Dennis Gallagher —

2017-12-15 – The need to know

Sunday, December 17th, 2017

The innate desire to ‘know’ pushes us
to come to closure with what we currently have.
Thus, we say it is a ‘game’.
Thus, we say there is no ‘free-will’.
And all of this to avoid the endless mystery
that gathers around us as we dispel
our other explanatory illusions.

gallagher
15dec17 – South of Oamaru
— Copyright 1965-2017 by Dennis Gallagher —