Archive for 2015

2015-03-23 – Cambrian Explosion

Wednesday, March 25th, 2015 
 
Maybe, in human affairs
it happens as it does
in biological evolution.

A massive die-off occurs
and results in many open niches 
and something like the Cambrian Explosion 
occurs as nature or people
fill in the empty spaces.

In human affairs, wars and revolutions
take the place of nature's 
cataclysmic comets and meteors.

After WWII, there was a redistribution of
enormous amounts of wealth and opportunity
that diffused through a system
rendered porous by all the war's destruction.

Education and knowledge of the world
and it workings, poured out into the formerly
low and middle income populace
and they were no longer the sole domain
of the rich and privileged.

And we, the newly educated and newly freed,
became the human equivalents
of the denizens radiating from
the Cambrian Explosion.

But, as in biology, empty niches always
fill in again as they are reoccupied
by the more competitive among us.

The wealth and freedom 
that were liberated by war
for wide distribution
have begun to be gathered in again
by the ever present acquisitors.

But this time there are differences.
This time we are not 
the peasants of the Middle Ages
who have never seen past the end 
of our lord's properties.
This time many of us have read widely 
and know of the human history
of greed and domination that lies 
in endless repetition behind us.

This time we can see that 
which is beginning to enclose us 
yet again. 

We see the Neoliberals ascending 
our political hierarchies 
funded by the multinational corporations
who are weaving quasi-legal nets 
around national governments
with their faux free-trade agreements.

We see our news media being controlled
to shape what we see and hear.

We listen to the constant propaganda
of advertisement that encourages us 
to look the other way 
as it dazzles us 
with materialistic trinkets.

But knowledge is power
and this time we can see the causal links,
we can see the closing nets,
we can see the propaganda of confusion
creeping around us and
seeking to marginalize us
for the benefit of the acquisitors
as they seek to make us again
into their servants.

Knowledge has awoken us
and this time we will resist.

gallagher
23Mar15
Christchurch

— Copyright 1965-2015 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 2015, AAA - Recommended, Christchurch, Political | No Comments »

2015-05-23 – The One

Tuesday, May 26th, 2015 
 
1 - Overview

When you see everything move, 
   it is inarticulate beyond all words; the future.

They say you cannot put your foot into the same river twice,
   but I say that anywhere you touch the river, you create illusion,
      for the river cannot be stopped, named or divided.

At the limit, it is nothing less 
   than the movement of every particle, entwined.
And at any level of generalization, 
   it is less than the truth.

The river is both the future and the past, now.
   One seeming to yield and one seeming to become
      and both of them non-existent.

And this moment, with every particle's movement frozen mid-vector,
   still implies the future as a function of the past.

Only now, in this moment, do cause and effect touch,
   only now, in this moment, does existence exist,
      and only now, in this moment, 
         does the idea of creation have substance.

These words, 'Past, Present and Future', they divide us
   from the burning river's fire, from Shiva's blinding light.


2 - The Monkey's Despair

Be still, small mind, we want to seek the future
   through the river's fire and the impossible divisions.

We want to touch the pulse and read the tea leaves
   and see where the river is taking us.

Monkey-like, we look into this perfect mirror 
   and see nothing
until we reach out and touch the surface
   and the ripples begin to flow.

Somewhere, in these distortions, as in a crystal ball,
   the images begin to come 
of cities, armies and civilizations,
   rising and falling. 
And all of history 
   pours out, 
overwhelming us in a moment,
   until we are rendered dumb by detail.

If the words and the concepts 
   and the constructions we have
but touch the truth of it, 
   they are all made void.

All of our transient symbols 
   are washed away by an existence
that is simply 
   impermeable.
Just as patterns in the sand 
   are simply destroyed by the sea.


3 - At the Coal Face

Riveted by our senses in a world where you cannot just sit,
   we are all motes in a whorl made of womb born grit.

One becomes two and two becomes pain,
   action and reaction 
and our egos are born 
   and we take a name.
We arrive in confusion 
   and the play begins again.

Oh where in this causality 
   shall we apply the spade?

Blind from the womb, 
   each as dumb as the last,
we're up against the coal face 
   having learned little 
      from our past.

(this is a work in progress begun may 23rd, 2015 in Montreal, Canada)

gallagher

— Copyright 1965-2015 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 2015, Do Review, Spiritual, Vancouver | No Comments »

2015-10-03 – Even This….

Sunday, October 4th, 2015 
 
The Camera pans across a barren beach scape
   a place seen in a moment of time. 
A wind moves empty through the scene
  and  tuffs of grass stir amid the tableau of land and sea
      that never seems to change.

Dead friends walk there amid the multitudes
   that have come and gone.
Their names transient; like the stirring grass
   beneath the moving bowl of a never ending sky.

Truly, we are not here - we only imagine we are.

And the more one is here, the less one is,
   until the edges of your beginnings and endings
begin to blur like the impossibility
   of separating one unchanging day from the next.

Quiet descends on the dead 
   and they go we know not where.
And, in our deep meditations we pursue them;
   rivers circling between the sea and the sky.

The turning of life's wheel is mostly about
   the enduring, mutating and evolving patterns of DNA
and so very little about the names and dreams
   of the momentary instantiations that we are.

And yet we are here 
   with our names and thoughts
and yet we are here 
   with our philosophies and our meanings.

We watch the sand and the dust of each other
   blow away in time's erosion
and yet even this,
   even this can be embraced.

gallagher
03 October 2015
Christchurch, New Zealand

— Copyright 1965-2015 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 2015, Catalyst2, Christchurch, Culturium-II, Poetry Collective, Spiritual | No Comments »