Nature’s Heritage

Note: in Neo-Paganism there is a debate amongst some group, between “eclectics” and “traditionals” for instance. And this was my response to that, a feeling that I wanted to transcend those and get to the basics of life. In fact, of “Truth, Love and Life”, which made a sort of trinity for me. There is also mention of ecosystems and “foreign” introductions. Something with which I was familiar in my studies on ecology and conservation.

I don’t want traditional or eclectic,
I want Truth.
I don’t want old or new,
I want Love
I don’t want foreign or native,
I want Life.
If Truth, Love and Life are not the greater
Then let me die now!

Never mind my ancestry!
What about my love for ALL humanity.
Never mind the land’s spiritual traditions!
What about our ignorance of the land’s ecology?
Never mind about foreign gods!
What about our foreign intrusions?
Those domesticated plants,
Which have no meaningful existence within local ecology.
And worst still are the foreign species
That do flourish and conquer;
The mink, japanese knotweed or grey squirrel
That do suffocate our native life,
Delivered to these fair land’s by our own sinful hands.
I look upon the countryside
And wonder upon it brutal acceptance
Of these things.

It sees the foreign not as right or wrong
As we do.
The mink on one hand thrives so well
Destroying our wonderful water vole.
Yet a wallaby seen in the New Forest lives wild
Yet dying as its body fights the cold.

You see, nature cares not for the traditional or eclectic,
For old or new,
Foreign or native.
It cares only for change,
Revelling in the dance of it
No matter what its form.

Thus it has been
Thus it is
And thus it shall be ever onwards.
Change is Nature’s God,
Not the many gods of Old
Or the one God the Christ.
Mere human futilities there are
Before the universes power.
Mere spits in a vast ocean.

Laugh, laugh, laugh!
Traditional or eclectic, old or new, foreign or native,
None of these shall succeed
Before the all-consuming change
That is the crown, throne and kingdom of Nature.

“Mad Kev”

His feet are cradled by the blessings of angelic wings
Bestowing grace here and there to those who need.
Who is he so blessed in his soul?

Dirt encrusted, shaggy bearded and reeking of alcohol,
He walks around parks with a beer in hand and coughing from his cancerous lungs.
So easy to loathe and avoid!

A thief he was, imprisoned in the name of human justice.
Life got screwed up and now he pays beyond any justice.
But have you spoken to him?
Have you seen as he reflects on the world?
What a paradox!

A drunk with a deeper sobriety.
Filled with madness but driven by intelligence.
Self-deprecating pessimist with an honest yearning for optimism.
And his humility pervaded by greatness.

Having ruined it he knows the value of life.
Alas, woe for him who cannot reclaim.
But can’t we learn?

Value life; don’t ruin it.
Don’t spoil for fights; the world is with us if we let it.
Don’t steal; we have every provision we need if only we look inwards at the resource of our own soul.
So smile at a homeless, hopeless drunk before judging them as scum and see what wisdom you find.

May compassion and wisdom be yours in the meeting of everyone.

Reclaiming Earthiness

Where has the real world gone?
What is this pale, watery imitation of life?
This is of no genuine substance,
Just clinical madness.

I rage at pokerfaced inhuman robots on all sides.
So frustrating!
They treat experience as a conveyer belt and die for it.
Life is an art not a factory.

Where is the blood and pain?
Where are the heart and guts?
Lost, they are, amidst shallow parasitic bureaucracy
Turning humanity into a pallid reflection of itself.

Humanity is based on its ability to laugh
When it matters,
Cry
When it matters
And rage
When it matters.

Come children of soil and earth
Reclaim your right to passion,
Reclaim your life of reality
And shed this laughable image
That is nothing more than a cardboard cut-out!

Renunciation and Glorification

I renounce my world,
I renounce my body,
I renounce my senses
And I turn inwards,
Just as a seed denies the sun
In favour of the dark moist soil.
My seed-soul moves,
It grows,
It stretches outwards and upwards.
It emerges,
Firmly rooted in the soil of the inner world
Then freshly kissed by sun and air.
My world is glorified,
My body is glorified
And my senses are glorified
Having denied the outer,
Embraced the inner
To fulfil the outer.

The Holy Land

Holy, holy, holy is this land
Upon which I stand, dance and breathe.
This land where I live from its holiness,
In its holiness
And for its holiness.
Holy, holy, holy where I stand, dance and breathe.

Star Soul

I hear an echo coming from amidst the stars across the blackness of space.
It resonates through me and a message soaks my heart.

Greetings brother of earth, don’t lose heart.
I shall support you in all that you do,
I shall be with you in your endeavours
And I shall uphold your soul,
For I am your soul.
And when the time comes
We shall meet once more and love one another once more.

United we shall be my soul when our time has come to return.

The Vampire

Note: this poem was written before I started writing poetry properly. So it’s amongst the earliest attempts of poetry when I was a teenager. Now I don’t get the obsession with vampires, I mean who wants to be dead and sucking life from others? Perhaps that’s best left as a retorical question… have a good weekend and keep your garlic handy.

The pale white skin, the pointed white teeth
And blood red eyes just stare.
In the corner, at night,
It’s aura dark and powerful.
It’s floating on the air.
It moves with intent to capture its meal,
On the next day it was just a dream
And the next wound strangely heal.
Or three nights and two days
Illness and dark evil dreams haunt the mind.
After this the third day
You are dead,
And this is all your kin can find.
You’re put in your grave
And though you grave reads RIP
You do not.
Unlike the other corpses
You are moving
And unlike the other corpses
You don’t rot.
The moon lights the dark sky
And your grave opens up.

Waters Mysterious

The Goddess guides me through dismal confusion.
I doubt and distrust for I wade through cloudy water
And tread on unknown and unseen ground.

Will I sink up to my neck as soft mud gives way?
So little could put me off balance,
Losing me in those depths.

Around me swirls a thick mist,
A mist from the magical and mystical world.
It enchants and obscures,
Misdirecting me in many directions.

Is this all an illusion?
So many guiding lights shine in the murk.
But they’re so faint and grow more so at my approach.
Then they gently fade like the evening sun,
Dispersing in airborne condensation.

I have now given up any hope and hopelessness.
I’m too exhausted to nurture either in a hollow soul such as mine.

I carry on trudging through this dreary lake with no resting place.
I have no hope or faith in finding such respite,
Just an indifferent and careless certainty of such.

But I tell you,
When I have lost focus of any kind
And my attention ceases
The Grace of the Goddess will come unforeseen upon me.

From nowhere her slender towers of silver and glass
So easily hidden within mist,
Shall fade in spectre-like in unobtrusive suddenness
Whispering on their silver islands submerged in water.

Here lies the grail I seek,
Here will lie the very thing that my dry husk needs.
It shall be absorbed and quench my dusty minded thirst.
The clear spear of clarity shall pierce me.

She of the towers led me through a bleak landscape
To meet and then harvest of this burnished perfection.

The Lady’s lake and Her mist will still remain ever the same
But within,
I will be the shining beacon to break through it all.

I, a confused spirit no more
Living in blessed clarity with truths pure vision hallowing my life.

My Fourfold Nature

Long have I aged.
Slowly my body creates and destroys.
My surface contains many things.
Maybe you have seen my high mountains and open plains
Where my essence is reflected on.
An essence found deep within my dark abode,
Where nothing is found but all things are realised.

Steadily but easily I change.
With great power I crumble things before me
And yet my voice soothes breaking upon the rocks.
Upon my rolling back I carry many things without tiring.
But mind the unknown currents.
From here on my flowing deep ways
Can take you to worlds of love and fear.

Unseen are my movements.
Yet clouds and birds find their home in me.
Ever moving the world around you,
You cannot escape from my eyes or ears.
Your secrets are mine as are others
For my reach covers all places,
Places beyond the reach of man.
Higher than any creature can reach,
Cradling the sun, moon and stars.
Listen carefully to me and you will learn much.

Bright I burn,
A light that delivers black ash.
So fast furious and flickering am I
That you might just miss me.
Briefly licking at the surface my power can charm or terrify,
As a tame candle of a monster obliterating no end of forest.
Look into my depths,
Neither blinding nor invisible for here lies my secret.
A moment of my flickering can seem an eternity of peace.

My World

There’s this world.
It takes up all of me;
It is everything to me
For it is my world.

It comes from something greater.
This is its source,
This is it food,
That created something from nothing.

But my world’s nothing.
The great onslaught of time and change
In time depletes it.
Dissolution is my destiny.

A relationship between something and nothing.
My everything began from nothing
And the great power of the greater
Brings me back to my beginning.

I am humbled.
Put into perspective,
My life is a succulent morsel.
I’ll enjoy it before it ends.