How do you manage the weight of the world
When the weight of the world is too much?
When the birds are all sent to the sky, flying
By the dinosaur bones floating through the air?
How do the trees that lived for ten thousand years
Live for thirty years rotting in a house?
How does a landscape dug up, bulldozed around,
Erected with skyscrapers of metal and glass
Placed on the land held sacred for generations
Now become meaningless and void?
Perhaps it’s become a subject of cultural appropriation
Us humans and that of the Gods,
Powerful mother Gaia and her wiles and subtlety
And a grandiose sense of reality.
Tag: reality
Reality (day 2862)
Sky has turned on me
I awoke to a burning red
Dazzling my imagination
As fire so transfixes thoughts.
Then Rain began
Challenging my scales
Peaceful summer breeze
Turned torrential squeeze.
I closed the book of a window
To still my worried mind
Losing my touch
With Reality’s closest neighbour.
Awoke Cold (day 2791)
For I awoke
And knew then
It was mine own thought
Had led me here
Astray
Down a path of
Misunderstanding
Misjudging
Forgotten reality
And clouded
Though my bed
Still lay cold.
My Breath Caught in Fire (day 2206)
Crescent of my memory
Shines like water we braved together,
Amidst barnacles and salty slime
Where my dancing heart played games
With the sea lion
That so transfixed your gaze.
We dried our shivering hairs
Upon rocks of an overcast day
That supped with each ebb and flow,
Gathering my breath caught in fire
– each step to the four corners of earth.
An innocence I hadn’t expected
A sensitivity I hadn’t planned
A heartbeat I have learned to only observe
Though my inclining fingers reach towards
For this, long ago, has bowed deeply
To the essence and reality of you.
Fade To Black (day 1923)
I don’t want to make my way in a barren landscape
The thought overwhelms me, loses my hope.
It loosens my grip and forces me
Into an unforgiving reality
That stops at every stop sign,
Red lights my deepest dreams,
And perpetuates my winter footsteps,
Fading to black.
Sewers (day 1915)
It is my check into reality moment
My hero’s capacity
My fatale coup with ignorant blinds up,
Two short skips and plastic bags
Street lamps clanging away
To the tune of some bastard child’s nickel
And the corner store is closed now
So cigarettes will have to wait
Until I can find a better reason
To let my keys fall
Into sewers of my memory.
Exist Between (day 1861)
Where is this spot that exists between dream and reality
The viscerally imaginative soft stuff
That shakes shaggy ground free of complaints
And sunsets clear morning’s dew
From cobwebs shining as if testing new approaches
To similar corners, similar filters, similar dreams
That sit still and recoil while inhale meets exhale
And spring meets autumn
And one meets two
And a shoe gets worn through by impermanence of space
That’s always been growing up and chopped down
And eaten and fed and counted and weighed
And slotted into a spreadsheet marked with scales
Ranging from zero to ten with a save button
That creates multiple redundancies.
When the only request is for a tiny piece of convenience
For just one moment.
And in a flash,
With feet firmly planted securely on uneven ground
And hands held out in wide Namaskar to this beautiful world
A little droplet of rain shall fall perfectly
Upon a freckled upturned nose holding thoughts
Of a sunny day and all the rays of life shall shine down
In abundant warmth like a ticking clock
Chiming in at every quarter hour.
At Home (day 1439)
My reality is filled with love:
A backyard of such splendor,
Vigor wafting through my open window
Singing sweetly to this heart
In a home of one thousand cats.
Island in the Sun (day 1436)
Dear George,
It’s been a while since we last talked,
For that I am sorry,
I hope you do not wait impatiently for my letters…
Like I do.
I have been off to the tropics,
A tiny little island in the middle of the sea
Where geckos climb banana trees
And the end of rainbows are within walking distance.
I swam in the ocean here,
Swam with sea turtles as large as sheep
And walked most places without shoes or sandals on.
I think you would have appreciated our diets,
We were mostly eating local vegetarian cuisines
And I learned how to make kichari and nutmilks.
Some of the people I was staying with
Indulged in bliss balls,
And yes, the name alludes to the taste of these heavenly things.
With the leftover bits I’ve strained out of the nutmilks
I’ve begun to make at home now,
I plan on making some bliss balls of my own,
For snacking.
It’s been an interesting journey for me trying to reintegrate into society.
I’ve been taking it slow,
Going for multiple bike rides – which I love so much – every day.
Along the ocean here and through my favorite parts of town.
I’m doing lots of writing,
Which you also know I love to do so much.
I’ve just finished a book entitled Okham’s Razor
That was comparing the contrasting views of reality
Between the Middle Ages all the way up to the present day.
Along with the learning I did at the yoga immersion
On the tropical island in the sun,
I’ve begun to really get clear questions
I’m searching for.
I’m excited to remember everything,
And grow with everything at the same time.
Love is good, food is good, life is good.
I hope yours is too.
Hope to talk soon,
Sincerely,
Joshua Radlin