The Tipping Point

Our patience with lizard skinned schemers,
The humble turned decadent,
entitled, malevolent and arrogant,
Insidious architects drawing margins
to elevate their earnings.
Preaching equality from throne rooms.
Their words of peace birthed
inside the barrel of a gun.
Those extractive, exhausting reprobates,
Those green card patriots,
Those "virtuous" devils who hide
in the shadows of faith.
It wore thinner than a razor's edge
and we turned livid.
Furious with them, then ourselves
for having ever fostered their ilk.
We stared out our windows,
then walked out our doors,
peered above our fences
and cried"no more. No More!"

Brothers

Brother, my eyes swim in a retreating light,
between the shadows of our twin plight.
our hearts gripped by winter's collar,
furious and blind, bleeding summer.

I ache for a return to those times,
when as brothers we'd trace
those hills and rooftops,
unknowing of this end.

For were our lives not writ
with the ignorant ink of men?
wrapped in traps of intellect,
wearing muted masks to cast illusions
of strength that fool none.

Hostage to our tragedies,
only to find fleeting solace,
at the bottom of a bottle,
estranged from feeling.

Yet even as we raised
our walls and our voices,
we were loved.
By the casualties of our silences,
beyond our deepest afflictions.
May we be candles to our children...

Unpacking the Ego

An excerpt from  my  speech on “Enabling Self-Determination” at the National Student Leadership Forum  2013- Canberra. 

Why was I doing this? What were the roots of my intentions? For while I still maintained a deep desire to lead a life of contribution …over the years, it seemed that my approach was contradictory.

It became clear to me upon examination that it (working on social projects) was an escape – a drug of sorts. My intentions on the surface were good…but the internal drivers of this call to action were not entirely altruistic. Quite simply I was doing it because I felt ugly, unworthy, small, insignificant, incapable…..working on these projects took me away from this personal reality. My father succumbing to alcoholism….my own depression…were all tucked away …unprocessed …because I felt good about myself when I could help others. It was distanced from my own self-loathing. Of course I started to see the toxicity of this approach both to myself and to those I purported to help….it was a dependency on dependency.  One ultimately blind to the real needs of others.

This period of personal growth was instrumental as I started to see how my own beliefs about myself were a fundamental contradiction of the change I wanted to see in the world. For who was I to speak  to anyone,  let alone  the most disenfranchised,  about self-belief, capability and hope if I had no authentic belief in it for myself? So if I asked myself what it would look like if I were to serve authentically  and this ..in short involved a lot of conversations…arguments…reflection and meditation ….and as a result some deep insights for my own life. A love and appreciation of myself…scars and all.  A sense that while  I wanted to live a life of contribution ….I wasn’t what I did …it was who I was that mattered. Layered into this was the realisation that I have many roles and relationship  in life…with myself, as a son, a brother, a friend, a partner, a…as a human being.

As I draw my sharing to a close I have two thoughts I’d thoughts I’d like to share ….

I have no doubt that contribution has been a major thread in the conversations you have been having here in this forum. In all my conversations with people across faiths and cultures, it seems clear that this is the key to living a deeply fulfilling life, one with meaning and purpose. Yet in the passionate pursuit of ways to contribute we need to be vigilant…mindful of our intentions.  We need to slow down and be real with ourselves, look in that metaphorical mirror and  exercise compassion towards ourselves ….this is a process and it never ends but I feel it is the most liberating , necessary action.  I do not feel there can be true love for others unless one loves self… I do not simply mean this as an intellectual ideas but as deeper acceptance . Look at ways to practice gratitude towards yourself and the very fact that you draw breath. Articulate your values and beliefs, share them …with complete honesty….be open and vulnerable. This gives others permission to do the same. In my case I maintain a personal mission statement that captures this the essence of my values and the roles I play I life.

Then we can consider the second part ….when contribution is no longer the central feature of one’s escape or psychological identity….it is an expression of purpose that can take so many forms. To use the idea of a mirror once more, I see deep contribution as being a process through which you can  hold a mirror so that others can see their own greatness. Their own power and vulnerability. Then it is not about you as a leader, an individual seeking fulfilment or identity through your own creation or achievements. It is an authentic exchange of our humanity.  This does not need to be an organisation, a project or a career…but it can be all of those things…there are opportunities for such leadership in daily living….right here in this room.The choice has been …is and will always be yours to make. So I urge you all to be a light on to yourself and thereon to others. Lead …by being.

True

Love... Do I even stand a chance?

Beneath your glowing veneer,

Where I meld with old fires

and those vapors of doubt.

For here I have been...

Suspended in forest green,

Watching timid hopes wake,

deep in the sweetest ache.

Tell me true...

Is there a tender thought of me,

safe from those flames?

Or is this a dreamer's lot?

For with you,

I have no bonds of breath.

These Streets

This evening as I walked along streets I've traced countless times before, a thought took hold. 'How wonderfully fragile and changeable the human mind is'. Years ago, upon these same streets I'd nurse tales of woe and be unkind to myself in the basement of my mind. As those streetlights glared back at me, I was a particle of dust , bereft of hope and significance. Even contribution was an act of existential guilt. All this heavy on my spine as I wearily trudged through the days. Yet through the days, the months and years that were to unfold... Came a new way of being. Seemingly through attrition, the roots of despair came to wither. Exposed by questions. Starved by the ascension of gratitude and choice. No longer frivolous intellectual notions but palpable truths of the day to day realities of living .As the grip of victimhood unraveled, there was space for new things to grow. New colours where there was only black and white. New layers above a greedy undertow. A life richer than binary choices. The capacity to receive love.

What contrast upon the same streets, within the same skin. What capacity we have to shape and shift our perceptions. But is not only human to forget this power we wield? How vigilant and compassionate we must be to ourselves and others as we scale the mountains and swim through the oceans of circumstance.

The Divide

Who decides which side of the divide we reside in?

Were the lines drawn on primordial earth

or is this the unfolding of the lottery of birth.

Collapsed upon a chair, gripped by fever

The scales of justice weigh down against her.

A statistic in a maligned welfare trend.

Name tarnished, fate condemned

Single mother of two on minimum wage,

Piecing together a dream in a sweltering cage.

For young that can rise  & be proud to stand

Above the  cost of  birth with a poor hand.

Outside malls, crowds line up for iphones and ipads,

Willing hostages,  to marketing and expensive fads,

A  generation raised by TV on ritalin and  fast food,

Proud children of Gekko because "greed is good"

Self worth outsourced , income outspent

No time for introspection , to examine discontent.

Some claw  up the rungs , no values to represent.

Inherit the keys to palaces, pull the strings above the scene,

Ancient story on repeat,   power a drug  through poverty obscene.

On the corner across a street

Where they say the" vagrants" meet,

With  hands stretched out towards a fire,

A  community in these times deemed dire.

A brother questions  the point of it all,

This business  of  robbing Peter to pay Paul,

Through  jobs with no meaning

for  debt with no ceiling.

I killed in Afghanistan for peace at home

Now I'm forgotten , my welcome worn,

Tell me it's true, this spin about a meritocracy,

Show  me a place where sweat and blood is currency.

Oh who decides which side

of the divide we reside in?

Were the lines drawn on primordial earth,

or is this the unfolding of the lottery of birth.

Black Mirror

Themes of death seepedinto my dreams as a child. Streams of existential guilt flowing into scenes of judgement and descents into an eviscerating infinity. Over and over.

Maturity first bred weariness, Deep in teenage flux, twisting through the purpose of my time, Preordained or to be determined? My thoughts anchored in morbidity. "For I did not choose to be"

Alas I did not implode, but rather, Surrendered to the fevers of thought, A victim reduced to mere survival, till the burden set me free. Now impassioned by mortality I see...

It was a black mirror to peer inside, To find joy where I once cried.

Identity

The endless possibility of my identity,Bound by a chain of bittersweet recollections, Am I a mere vessel for the past in the present? Like an oak adding layers over years, Tall and mighty yet clinging to sapling dreams.

Am I bound by your memories? As a son, a brother, a friend, a lover. Time can be the mind's corrupt governor, Knotting memories into your being, That occupy the present and taint your heart with the fear of repetition, And an unjust weariness that belittles life's essence.

Am I a memory of self-unfolding?

If I am to be a vessel, May it not be to ancient whispers, lacquered with incessant after-thought. May I instead be a host to my own humanity, Alive to the decay that darkness brings Through shadows that impersonate life.

You've been hiding in the undertow, Let me see the face hidden from my own eyes. May I be ever present in the now, For that is all there will ever be of me.

Melpomene

Drawing breath from the depths of a dream,
you swim beneath the solitude of skin,
to the primal pulse of my mind's eye,
where I yearn for your fugitive lips.

Your language, not of the tongue,
swells with the promise of home.
And my eyes hunger upon wake,
through the doubt of day,
for the mere sight of you...

Yet words are but the surface,
shimmering arrows to the wind,
there is no labour in tenderness,
only the ache of our separation.
For your beauty is a feeling that flows,
like the seasons through the trees.

Of Blank Pages

The blank page before me is a white ocean of melancholy. Do I dare fill its expanse and deprive it of its gleam? For it is a mere mess of words that I have to offer, the scribblings of a pen. As I sit here in this park, starring at this page, a strange automation takes hold. One where one's mind is beset with the relentless emotional spectrum of days gone by.How laughable it must be, at the age of twenty four, reflecting upon life as if it's zenith was an exclamation mark that I never caught sight of. Or perhaps it is the inevitable damnation of the thinker's soul, to examine fruitlessly, the beauty, the pain and the deficiencies of the past. Yet it is in this arrest that I often feel more alive, more so than when called upon by my name in this peaceful but stagnant present.

This bench has known little but quiet accommodation and these blades of grass are green with purpose. The afternoon sun's dreamy glow filters through the canopy as dust dances through its beams. The air is patient with me, keeping me company with its gentle cooling motion.

I am not detached from this beauty, at least not as much as I suppose. Contentment is the colour absent in this palette and I miss it's serenity with each passing moment. In these moments of stillness, when honesty fills every pore...I contemplate the source of these shades of dark that render me so desolate. And it spills before me, in a wave witnessed by no one but this page, no longer blank.

It would be easy to imagine. How my heart could cease to emanate love as it does in my daydreams. For what we call a heart is a mere space in our minds and our minds are volatile. If love is sealed within us, protected from harm, how many cracks does it take? Before it leaks out and that sacred space is parched and replaced with sorrow? I know not...I tremble at the thought of such things. I see my bruises, they are in my eyes as they glisten and my voice as it softens. I can speak of the toll of years and it would mean little to anyone but myself. But life is such, our stories beneath the skin.

I want to love another without refrain, how plain it sounds, but inescapably true. To feel alive as I did long ago...no..more so...but free of my shortsightedness. I feel it bottled inside me, caged in suppression, oh the passion beneath. I smile to myself, a smile of self defeat. How strange it is, how the intensity of your own confined passion can constrict you, to the point of utter desolation. A desire to love another that escapes rational comprehension...with the sole hope of them realising...that this is the pinnacle of life. That come what may...there's a center that holds firm. Yet there is no trace of a recipient, is this caged luminosity so far hidden....clearly so...as I walk alone in wake and sleep.

These afternoons, I hear it clearer, the cries that missed my listening, speaking through the calm. I feel a lightness of being as when the truth is surfaced before your very eyes. The very truth that I have concealed in seek of strength. For to admit to sorrow and loneliness would seem to be a sign of defeat. But if the truth is defeat then I am lost...for I cannot bear this self deceit, this race I run, sullen on the inside. If I were to have my own time, if only. But time is but a mechanical measure and it has no command over my emotions.

These memories may never fade but I long for new ones, a cerulean sky I can touch and remember for an eternity. For a kiss that is immaculate in recollection, free from the reach of regret. For my words to have substance to another upon reading.

I dream...for that is all one can do...I dream of these pages I fill being the light through the catacombs. and the sun through summer. That upon their reading, an understanding so powerful is reached...a deep gaze of recognition would follow. Bound to each other as these beams are to the sun above them. These blank pages will hold me till then, or till my passing.

May I never forget the gracious space you allow for the shades of my soul. I am a host to words - no more, no less....they are my surface and my center.

Atrophy

 

Of what use are my pleas

and declarations?

For behind that mask

and beneath your skin

lie your truths

and deepest depravations.

Yet therein lies a choice to let me in...

Are the best dreams

not built on foundations of ruin?

Camouflage

"I've lived and died in the mirrors of strangers eyes.

Drawing from a cast of thousands, each elaborate disguise.

Yet even in this theatre, Primed for weary reprise, An inquiry ripples through, Under the skin of old lies.

Who am I? But In between and unseen longing for someone to recognise"

The Shapes of Grey

 

What is left after a fire runs through you?

The phantom ash of what was,

An air heavy with swirling requiems to dreams,

A palette of grey?

Could there be in the aftermath,

The space and sustenance for those seeds that survive?

Enlivened by the remains, weary but knowing,

Of the reasons for seasons.

Glimmer

  Some nights I distill the foundations of my will,

Tracing the depths of this yearning to be of use.

I ask if it predates upon the inequities of circumstance,

Feeding upon a marrow of injustice.

Or if it is the revelation of a thread that binds us all

in a fabric beyond the dictates of thought.

And if these years unravel towards the truth of it,

It moves past fallacies and false dichotomies, There is no giver and receiver.

For it is through acts of contribution,

Through the mirror of interdependence,

That I have peered beneath this skin,

Into a world I can sincerely embrace.

Where sorrow is fertile soil for seeds of joy.