psalm of myself
Named after Whitman's Song of Myself, this began as a journal of daily three-line verses which do not necessarily connect to the adjoining verses but chart an inner journey. Often, stand-alone poems arise, too. This is not meant to be polished, but is more like a notebook, a work in progress...
A knife edge lay at the base of my being –
all my life walking in fear until now, when I fall
it rises to face me, a mirrored blade
that shows me my self, so long avoided.
And though I don’t like the person I’ve been,
there is now below me no knife edge, but ground.
23 April 2024, Shakespeare Day
Blacked-out empty stage, I strut and stumble
my brief hour every day devoid of sound and fury,
echoed whispers signifying nothing.
*
Do not ask, Who is my friend? but be one.
Do not ask, Who loves me? Love yourself then love some more.
Be love, and find love at your door.
*
A firebird, love pursued and drove me
with burning wings toward the edge.
I turned and she embraced me.
A flaming dove, love flew with me, all peace.
Easter Day 2024
No birdsong but silence as leaf-buds swell,
no bells or banners, singing or clamour
but uproar within, the urge to unfold.
*
April is the coolest month, breeding
desire and hope, resolving memory, ripening fruit
of old wasteland winter – harvest in spring.
*
Racing down the road to ruin, I fell –
tripped by friends who saw where I was headed. Thank god,
hit the ground, foundation of the world.
April 2024, Glasgow
The day has dawned when I will start to be.
Dawn's palette scrawls the sky, ominous announcement
of what’s on its way: blazing, dangerous day.
*
No more waiting and watching, no more words,
wandering in windswept deserts, wondering which winding path –
today, nouns and adjectives become verbs.
*
Same old face and hair, eyes and nose and chin,
waistline bulging, arms too thin, ragged fingernails and skin,
but everything is different within.
*
I want to invite passionate living
into my void, capability into this negative space.
How to make something of nothing? Just do it.
*
Yet still, the tolling bell sounds in this void,
emptiness is amplified, dolefulness reverberates.
Can hollowness be filled, become holiness?
January 2024
Days and days and days, the march of days goes on;
another year begins as minutes drag while decades disappear
and time grows strange.
*
Grey sky, brown trees, black earth; in the cracks
celandine and snowdrops shine gold and white, virginal
purity rising from dark, holy earth.
*
A crowd of crows shocked out of its tree
wheels round the canopy, unseen the cause of alarm.
And now my friend is gone, is friend no more.
*
She loves me not. She loved me. She loves me not.
Picking over scattered petals, six years bloomed and fallen,
the day’s-eye sees what the night-heart feels.
*
How strangely hard it is to face your Self,
a pain so close, right at the core, I feel I’d rather die.
No wonder humans turn away, avoid, deny.
*
Tunnels between hedges, flowering or dark,
inviting or grim or striking out under wide fen skies.
Which way is the way? What is my desire?
*
As buds fully formed shelter in autumn
under dying leaves, and when these fall, weather winter’s blast,
so an unknown future is prepared.
*
In the fenlands you can see for ever,
till black earth, bright water touch the distant sky.
Sky, earth, water, I, water, earth, sky.
*
Fordham, Cambs.
Glasgow Green: Left and Centre, the Gorbals and Nelson Monument. Right, the Templeton building
And now I do not know her anymore;
I wish her well. That is, I wish that she may find herself,
her true and noble self, the one I knew.
*
Attachment is the spirit’s refuge
from the hurt of separation from its true home; a scab
on the wound that weeps and bleeds for ever.
*
Write, write – it is some form of comfort and
distraction from the nearing, fatal edge to which I drift.
Step back, my heart, turn round, be still, say Yes.
*
Self-hatred is sin as much as self-love.
Do not fall into the one nor float into the other;
gently sway, side to side, slowly forward.
*
If a single goldcrest, bright crown flashing
in the yew tree’s gloom, can light me up,
then what could earth’s primal force,
vast beyond imagining, arouse in me?
*
Open the heart and sadness pours in,
hangs heavy, weighted from the centre – soul’s anchor
holding me safe in love’s haven.
Railway bridge by the Clyde
R: The People's Palace, Glasgow, November 5th 2019
After Whitman's 'Song of Myself'
I castigate myself and sing of woe
and what I bemoan you shall suffer,
for on levels deeper and higher,
in the quantum world, we are connected,
indeed are one.
I writhe and wrestle with my soul,
I agonise and writhe with no ease, suffering the rod
on which I am spitted,
desiring to break myself open to joy,
that every atom of bliss may belong to you, too.
Whitman, throbbing with life-force, nature’s pulse.
How can I, who trickle, dribble,
fagged out, spent, rise to this?
I know, buried deep, it’s there,
in dammed-up, sealed-in aquifers,
afraid to unleash the power to sing
the song of myself.
*
The Nelson Monument, Glasgow Green