The Question

The Question

My spirit is a stranger in a foreign land
wide eyed and bemused by linear time
in a galaxy in a grain of sand
tracing echoes of the divine

My soul in reconnaissance scouts the terrain
it's been around and here it comes around again
moving like a wheel within a wheel
capturing images of the surreal

My mind conceded long ago
at the foot of a mountain
I named - 'Things I cannot know'
on an outcrop I scrawled this graffiti -
'The answer is a question'

My heart is a boy lost in a wood
he thinks it's because he wasn't good
at first distracted in his play
until longer shadows strike his day
he begins to feel hungry lost alone
he cries out-"Father find me and take me home"

My body is my dwelling and my cell
too sinful for heaven too wounded for hell
a little lower than an angel
a little higher than a beast
an ebullience of life soon to be deceased

Sometimes
you think you have everything
and you have nothing

Sometimes
you think you have nothing
and you have the whole world at your fingertips

Sometimes
you get clean away
only to turn around turn around again
like a moth to the flame

Will tomorrow bring an answer
to yesterday's dilemma
the picture's not worth watching
I can't move the antenna
I'm in a dream state
paralysed but wide awake
and in this dream within a dream
events are not what they seem
walking on the mountain
drinking from the fountain
asking the question
receiving the answer
creates another question
why am I told
things I cannot hold
sitting up in my bed
I clasp my hands for molten lead

Such spiritual wickedness
in such high places
camouflaged by airs and graces
the pseudo-socio religious farce
in Sunday best and washed arse
and all the learning
and all the knowledge
and all the posturing
of science and art
have never and can never
wash one human heart

And my own heart is just as dark
and just as ready to kill
and less delusion and less pretence
will not make it white as snow
my knees may kneel upon the ground
but it's upon the mass graves below.

I wrote this a few years ago and decided to repost it.