RICHARD’S POEMS
I mostly resist writing poems for as long as possible, it has generally been a last resort to express some inner conflict and move its energy out from myself and onto paper. The process of writing for me has always been one of listening, I hear one word and then the next and so on. The benefit of poetry is the state of concentration of energy and openness that is engendered by the process, the emerging words may be good, incomplete or indifferent but the process of writing is catalytic to consciousness and I find it uplifting. This process has helped me in the dark moments of despair.
I have a problem with depression; I don’t want to say I suffer from it although at times that is true. Depression however brings with it benefits, the benefit of increased sensitivity which allows for a finer connection. I have to admit that this is a gift, but it can and does also lead to personal relationship problems when I just become oversensitive and a pain to live with. Nothing comes for free.
My poems often have a shadow within them and this reflects my inner life that I find difficult to express to others as it extends beyond social boundaries. I have become very good at not showing what I do not want others to see; of course in a marriage and family setting this is a useless strategy. I never really know what will come out when I start to write, generally I just feel a certain tension or internal opposition and try to let the garments of words clothe the emerging shape, one word or phrase at a time. In a way my poems are a revelation and help me to understand something that was not clear before.”
A ROSE KNOWS
Is it true that the plant world is sentient?
If it is true then what does a rose feel like to itself in its own deep innermost being
In its root deep, stem stretching, bud flowering, deep, essential, mysterious roseness
What type of being is there?
What relationship could we have, this rose and I
As a rose, I call myself by no name. Simply, I am.
To name is to separate. To assume a division between one being and another.
I have no name because there is no separation within this joyful wholeness.
Simply.
I am.
Man who named the birds and beasts sees separation where there is none.
Can you separate the drops of water in an ocean?
As a rose my being is the universal being. The one that is in all and is all.
A scion of the rose more perfect than the rose in your garden.
Yet remaining unseen by naming eyes.
When Adam fell from grace did not that serpent subtle garden fruit taste of bitter separation.
Mans poisoned bloodline still writhes from that ancient wound.
We grab ferociously to fill our ever-extending belly that grows emptier with every mouthful.
Starving on values that do not feed the heart and soul
Our children are educated in herds, later to be milked or slaughtered.
Materialism, the old worms lie denying us entry to that not quite forgotten garden.
Proud man have you forgotten the smell of a rose?
The scent of innocence and wholeness
You ask what sort of relationship there could be between a rose and you.
Remember who you are.
Remember we are not separate, listen to your heart.
When your heart beats is it not the heart of the universe beating within your breast?
When you breathe life breathes. Where you are interested, God is interested.
Who are you?
Simple.
Stronger than venom, exists this greater truth
And the gift of this rose is that of true love.
WEATHER OF THE SOUL
So much darkness here,
Dark cold energies of isolating separation
Contracting onto a fluid core of doubt
Winter in the midst of summer
Now the expansive season of loving inclusiveness
Demanding nothing in return,
Here immediate delight
Summer in the midst of winter
Daily many seasons pass
Weathering our soul
Creating the crags and caves
That we call home
All passes, nothing stays
Except change
Except space
Space with no content
Avoid full of laughter.
25th Jan for my friends Tim and Liz
THE FOOLS SACRIFICE
To be born is to sacrifice our awareness of who we are
To have a body
To live
Is
In part
To die.
This separation from our eternal selves is a pain filled sacrifice.
Separation to let us to work within this sacred body space.
Our blood and breath filled container for the time being.
This Time Being that we identify with and call I.
The cells of the body cellf are our prison boundaries
Burdened with murmuring memories in whispering cells
Blood borne impulses of our ancient body that still remembers that primordial sea
Masked and whirling and dancing within the river of ever changing form.
Of gold or lead our outward senses close us in
The dark heart winds down in beating time.
At the darkest stroke the light yet unseen begins to glow
The holy fool smiles with joyful laughter at his profitable self deception.
Richard Freeman March 2005
THE DARK KNOT
Between my fingers frayed and matted lies this umbilical rope
Damp, blood slippery and noose taught.
Knotted at anchor on a heaving sea
Like me
Nowhere to go except up and down
Down and down
To drown in this caustic sea
The boat of my life still at anchor
Tethered to the emotion of storm and tide
The shame of not living to my free potential
The dark knot strangling the questing wind that lives in my soul deep ocean.
Richard Freeman
May 2005
THE BODY BOOK
Engraved by innumerable owners
The corporal cells of this time chain echo back to Adam.
Energetic imprints preserved for all time are
Recorded in newborn bones
Like one leaf tipped branch
of this scarred body tree of Ede
The still ear reveals by listening
Secrets within the long book of body wisdom
The body book read, is true education.
Alive again in the plasmic dance of ancient rhythms
Here time is not relevant, be guided by just intent.
We who are millions of years old know all thi
Any Civilisation based on deafness in leaden tension sinks.
Now discover who it is that looks through your eyes.
Not everything is what it seems when viewed from within.
Ancient energy recycled creating a new fruiting spur
This breaths intent energising the vital choice.
The choice to stoop or smile.
Richard Freeman
24th November 2005
SWADDLED BREATHERS
Echo’s enclosed within births whispering world
Emerging zygote swaddled
Murmuring memories engrave cell walls
This bodies library lined with unexamined work
Ancient pulse embodied in a temple prison cell
Self, saturated with memory and desire
Writing with sunlight the pen pusher sees all
Within this corporal confinement
Dancing now to an unseen tune making each new step
A vortex for delight
Caught between two worlds free and bound
Bound to follow the old worms rules and free not to.
Here is the choice.
A second birth for all new breathers
Richard 30/8/2016
SLATE
Dark Energy
Condensed by downward pressing force
Gripped layer on darkened layer
Compressing the burdened heart
Soaking up speech
Merging soundlessly into a rain grey sky
Slate the boundary stone
The long slow test
Bound, held in, separated
The journey of despair
To the arched portal at the dead centre
Flying through with dream feathered wings
Slow oak strong growth
Raises the dark night
Riven and jagged it surrenders
To a new dawns light
Radiant gratitude shines freely
On the significance of this dark loving embrace
Richard Freeman
March 2006
SILENCE
There is silence before the words start
a pregnant silence, sometimes called the void
it is a full silence, complete and secret,
only silence knows its own secret and words
can never tell it.
Silence knows in a way that words can never describe
to be whole, and to know is to be silent.
Silence is a level of intensity, not a absence of noise.
Silence is a level of intensity of immediacy which
has its own rules of communication.
It is possible, although difficult, to speak and
be silent simultaneously.
The key is in the heart, the words hear,
ear and art are contained in the word heart.
The key to the art of the heart is to hear
with the ear that is silent.
CREATIONS IMAGES
Unimaginable distant dimensions
Radiating spherically in every direction
Not empty,
Vast beyond measurement and description.
What is this earth in relation to the cosmic ocean? Less than one grain of sand in an entire rolling desert Yet existence must have boundaries
Even on this universal scale
This is the irritant question
I avoid thinking about
What is beyond the last boundary? Beyond the final galaxy? Beyond finity The nameless abyss before creation Utterly empty yet completely full
Divine Lightless imploded self frustration A terror of everlasting aloneness
In a wakeful dark night
The primal stuff of nightmares
No logic can rescue me here
Save the single thought
That what created all this also made me My soft body screams with fear at
Its lack of permanence
Another corporal grain of sand on a rolling shore My fluid soul slips home without question Interconnected in this boundless sentient sea
Richard Freeman 9/09/2009.
THE MASK 97
Dull leaden a heavy weight containing and constricting my natural movement.
A lead skullcap molded to my features containing my expression.
Between the blood and the air lies this mask.
My blood insulated
The mask distant and distracted conducts a little warmth but not my true heat.
Yet lead although heavy melts and re-forms.
Let the fire within re-form my destiny.
My heart beats anew every moment. I in this new heartbeat
have the choice to live in a new world, formed not from fear sculpted lead
But free choice.
Richard S Freeman June 97
THE MATRIX
Before conception, We are.
Our mother the matrix moulds us in her likeness
but the baby is not the mother yet it bears her imprint.
The individual can be born a second time
I believe in a greater mother than she who moulded me in her likeness,
This mother is ever present, I can hear her every time I listen,
she sounds like the ocean . An ocean of life. Joy.
You may think this fancyfull but to me it is real.
This mother is not limited by her fear and contracted by her pain.
She is inclusive of everything like an ocean without edges.
And all men must become sailors.
Richard Freeman
THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE
Can I reveal to myself how beautiful I am ?
Can I reveal to you how beautiful I am ?
Can you reveal to yourself how beautiful you are ?
Can you reveal to me how beautiful you are ?
Together your beauty and mine enrich a growing universe
Richard Freeman August 1997
TRYING TO KEEP IT TOGETHER
I am trying to keep it together
I hope I look OK to other people
I try to look successful to my father, family & friends
sometimes I believe I am.
Other times I wake up in the night feeling ashamed that
I have allowed myself to be driven by others expectation.
I have a face for the world and a face for myself.
Too much time spent pleasing others has made me a stranger to myself.
I am angry
I have compromised when fighting for my interests would have been more profitable
I have not made my boundaries clear and defended them.
This results in me not trusting myself.
If I can not trust myself I start to depend on other people for my sense of self
This is an addiction
It is easy to blame someone else. But not true.
yet the faults named would probably be true.
Yes it is my mistake!
Now can I learn from it?
Richard Freeman august 97
WIGWAM
My wigwam is blue with yellow fringes
inside it feels safe
It is my wigwam and it is safe
I am an Indian brave.
Richard Freeman October 1997
WORDS
Beyond the misunderstanding between us there is love.
I do not choose to stay silent and not express my thoughts
and feelings with the intention of angering you.
I fumble from one dread word to the next crucified by the
incompleteness of what I have said. Or out of fear of exposing my
inadequacy I say nothing.
In this moment the grip of the past is still strong so it is easier to write
than talk.
Richard Freeman
WORLD CONFLICT
Is anyone safe?
From the dangers of a one sided view.
Self-proclaimed to be right and
Ready to defend themselves with might or martyrdom
Can we see the world through Arab eyes?
Can we transcend our own greed and fear and lies?
And are we Free of the will to dominate others?
And can we see in Iraqis our sisters and brothers ?
Jewish, Christian and Muslim factions
Untruthfully try to avoid responsibility for the effects of their actions.
Jewish Christian and Muslim men are all children
of one almighty father.
How many towers in how many countries will burn
Before this essential lesson is learned.
As individuals we can find true freedom,
When greed and fear are not dominant.
This opportunity lies within our individual will.
In Gods Will in our will
The lasting solution will not be won by use of military force.
So let us all individually
Create a universal unilateral peace accord.
A small solution to great world conflict.
Richard Freeman. Feb 2003
ALL EARS
We are sung into being
Drowned in sound
Floating in this fluid foetal ocean
Ears attuned to the bodies long growing song
Dark inner loneliness is present
The space between two octaves
A vibration too heavy to rise yet too light to fall
Resonates the dark chords and lets the shapes from hell emerge
Letting the locked in live again and dance to the light of this dark nights moon
So tension more the strings of self-oppositional love
For only dark sound hears the words not spoken and
Sees those ancient forms revealed in a new moons light
Tree like roots grip with sonic force into our mother earth
Limbs sprout ears like leaves
Dividing cells undulate to this life-sound till
Celestial song with systolic ease brings morning light to all
Richard Freeman
11 Aug 2008
Leela/Praia do Forte
BAD SPACE
Unfocussed empty day
Void of real purpose – creating work to make the moments pass less slowly
No rhythm or routine. Flooded by associations – Psychic deluge – Feelings of personal worthlessness surfacing – an unwillingness to conform to flat line living – give me the vertical or nothing – testing- looking outside for groups or therapies or communities somewhere where I will be valued – a home life of moderate kindness and stifling boredom – I need a new solution – see me for who I am – I do not fit in any more – I have forgotten the rules – living as an appendage to someone else’s purpose- Where is my own will to be – I am fed up with being Mr Fix It for others – Who is going to fix me? – The flat time line of doing – value by achievement- the vertical line of eternity and being- no cross over point –
BELOVED BEAUTY
Beloved Beauty
Source of all life
Heart Divine
Dance with me my daily steps
Let my ears hear your whisper in my heart
Let not my dull leaden mind of daily duty
Obscure your immediate presence
Soften my judgements that spring from fear
Encompass my soul in a circle of radiant light
Let me recognise your beauteous presence
In the tiny and the trivial, washing my clothes makes clean garments for your body
I love you.
Croydon Hall
July 2011
DARK CRYSTALS
Dark Crystals
Dark knowledge from the dark heart
Ancient darkness
Bound by suffering compressed
Dark seeds
Indirect deeds
The souls Dark night.
Whispering memories weave this cloth of time
The cellular cellf self-enclosed.
Ancestral attitudes unexamined
Blindly orbiting my murmuring dark heart
Dark is Light, engraved with fear
Fear crystalized in Saturn’s time bound grip
Releasing the grip
Returning ourselves to the source beyond form.
Letting the radiant white dove fly
Being
Free.
Free and bound simultaneously.
Richard Freeman Nov 2007
DEEP WOODS AND DARK VALLEYS
Today I feel
Nameless anxiety in my abdomen
Can I give this sensation a name?
Just one name
Is it
Despair
The lead heavy poison of un-purposed living
Immobilizing the will
No purpose worthy of pursuit.
Perhaps an inner pain that I have grown used to and not felt all my life
Words like Shame and deep down fear
No defences except invisibility
I am not here so nothing can hurt me
Must I still glide and skate for applause in the spring thaw
To show my lack of courage
My boiling self looks seperatingly upward through the distorted frozen water
At this unconscious fancy footwork.
The tides cycle in majestic authority
Sun sets, moon rises, night comes,
Twixt day and night the soft light of balance
A temporary ease
Staying fast the pain
Change will surely come
Night falls swiftly, no light to see
this unknown anguish that gnaws from inside.
This struggle for authentic freedom.
I am off the bus now, tramping a country path
I hear the birds, see the colors and smell the air
I have far to go before I rest
In the deep woods and dark valleys.
Far to go before I rest in the deep woods and dark valleys.
August 18th 2008
Praia do Forte, Brazil
DIVINE UNION
Tonight’s sleepless silent moon now dances alone
This evenings gathering fire has burnt low
I awake, unable to sleep walk as softly as moonshine.
A soul deep longing is illuminated in me
Beyond my thrusting desire
Moonlight reveals the waxing pain of incarnation
The screaming ache of separation keeps me awake tonight
Ever singing silently this lover awaits his beloved
Prayers to celebrate life’s empty void
Only in this still night of dark silence
Can this pained whisper be heard
The absent longing in my heart
Awaits an answering call
This singer wants a union made in heaven
Cynical dogs howl in indignation at this presumption
I waiting, like a receptive bride
Whose painful yearning make a joyful hymn
to the author of my soul.
Come soon beloved come soon.
DIFFICULT MOMENT
Have I the courage?
To live this difficult moment
The courage to say Yes
Yes to this uncertain, unstable, turning time
Subjective lunar tides tearfully flow and vortex
God helps me to know the divine cohesive inner ocean
That connects the isolated, burdened and fragmented shores impressed in this bodies memory
Have I the courage?
To move on to an unknown place
A place of freedom and self expression
Not confined by routine or comfortable familiarity
My soul is pierced by the primal whisper of free immediacy
A wild wheeling call, like a skein of migrating Geese
Flying decisively far beyond known boundaries
Have I the courage?
Have I this courage
To acknowledge that
I do have courage?
Not taking refuge in wordy ritual blame or self limiting excuses
I have individual courage
God given to us all
19th July 2010
Richard Freeman
H EAR T
We are sung into being
Drowned in sound
Floating in this fluid foetal ocean
Ears attuned to the long bodies growing song
Dark inner loneliness is present
The space between two octaves
A vibration too heavy to rise, too light to fall
Resonating dark chords let the shapes from hell emerge
Letting the locked in live again and dance to the light of this dark nights moon
So tension more the strings of self-opposed love
For only dark sound hears the words not yet spoken and
Sees those ancient forms revealed in a new moons light
Tree like roots grip with sonic force into our substantial mother
Limbs sprout ears like leaves
Dividing cells undulate to this life-sound
Till
Celestial song with systolic ease brings morning light to all.
11th Aug 2008
Leela/Praia do Forte
MY COMPASS
Alone in my emptiness. Self willed disconnection.
I have no one to blame
A thousand internal anxious voices disclaim responsibility
In the transition between water and earth there is a sea of mud
A no man’s land of isolated terror and blood.
In this dying zone, abandoned corpses of what is half completed, decay with psychic stench.
Give me my internal compass to find true north
The decadent have chosen differently than I
And both are within me, the living and the half dead.
This cellular graveyard with a thousand voices is not quiet
But groans today with the leaden lethargy of toxic inertia.
Give me my compass to find true north
Let me orientate toward the dawning light
Golden hope for a new morning
Give me my compass to find true north
Show me that my soul has never lost its way
Even immobilised and isolated in this mud and blood
My compass of light re connects me
Step by infinitesimal step I crawl my way
I do not know yet I do know
The poles of this paradox encompass my way
Spirit mud and blood in alchemical fusion
A joke worthy of a shared banquet
August 12th 2009
NAKED EYES
Dive Deep into my naked eyes and
With your all inclusive silence, embrace me.
No busy words describe this moment of union divine
Inspired seekers united in one ecstatic breath
Look into my naked eyes and
Know that this early morning rain will pass
The internal sun transcends these phasic fleshy days
Soul radiant light the source of our dancing joy and passing tears
Show me in your naked eyes the fiery sun
Universal beauty revealed within your time gifted body
My heart too is a sun
Dancing homeward like a drunkard with a wooden leg
Speak your truth in words of silence
Hearts hear what ears ignore
Reveal the seven sonic veils in your hearts depth
See through naked eyes while appearing fully clothed.
Let us live in enlightened liberty within times constricting prison.
Saipiranga Bahia
Dec 2010.
I ONCE KNEW
There is a feeling in me that once I knew something
I know that once I knew
I am searching again for that knowledge
I have not found it yet
This knowingness is like the image of the complete jigsaw
A map to let me place all the pieces in proper relation
Once I knew
But it seems so long ago
I have not forgotten that I knew
But I have forgotten what I knew
Without this knowingness my life is incomplete
And I feel hollow and dissatisfied
Once I knew
Once I knew what it was like to be whole
Once I knew without thought
Once I knew without words
Once I knew God
But it seems so long ago
Searching, seeking, reading,
With hungry eyes devouring the bitty world
Agitated, anxious, unsatisfied
With a store of second hand knowledge I do not understand
When once I knew
I now know nothing
What have I lost and where do I find it?
I just know that I once knew what I now quest
Like a Squirrel seeking long stored nuts
Divine restless irritation goads me on
Till one day maybe one day soon
Grace will lift the veil once more
Richard Freeman
16 August2008
Praia do Forte
PERFUME
The sea of sound
Bears her name gently up
Ever searching my heart crawls around
Its own broken down walls and dry wells
Ever seeking news of her name
Even a whisper
Parched in this drought
With increasing thirst
Many times I have drunk from a dry well
I have been told to knock on the door of light
And open it inwards
I have been told that to those who call
An answer always comes
The sea of sound still whispers her name
I see nothing, I know nothing, I am nothing.
The faintest scent of her perfume lingers in the air.
Richard Freeman July 05
PRISON BARS
Looking through the prison bars of my bathroom this morning
I survey the long day ahead
How will I fill these anxious hours and today escape the hangman’s noose
Feeble foundations must surely crumble
Exposed and pendant I defend each imprisoned hour avoiding the hangman’s shadow
Outside the orange breasted bird displays with beauty ease and grace its thoughtless immanence
Between the conditioned bars of my prison mind I see the shadow of another self
Laughing at me dread,
My time measured out with borrowed coffee spoons
Laughing the laugh of acquired power he scorns my ignorance
My self deceit
What I deny he embraces
I know my smiling words are no match for his decisive wit.
20th August 2008
Praia do Forte
Brazil
THE HIDDEN BREATH
Inward spiralling breath
Draws profoundly
Encompassing the perfume of this flower
Dilated nostrils scent the womb
From which this rose uncoiled
Fragrant memory in fragile bud
Of a boundless field in spectral bloom
Inform this willing wilting time
Field wrought creation re-absorbed
This unique fragrance re-wrought remains
The out breaths timeless energetic signature
Richard Freeman
Brazil
September 2006
TODAY I FEEL
Today I feel
Nameless anxiety in my abdomen
Can I give this sensation a name?
Just one name
Is it
Despair
The lead heavy poison of unpurposed living
Immobilizing the will
No purpose worthy of pursuit
Perhaps an inner pain that I have grown used to and not felt all my life
Words like Shame and deep down fear
No defences except invisibility
“If I am not here nothing can hurt me”
Must I still glide and skate for applause in the spring thaw
To show my lack of courage
My boiling self looks separatingly upward through the distorted frozen water
At this unconscious fancy footwork
The tides cycle in majestic authority
Sun sets, moon rises, night comes,
Twixt day and night the soft light of balance
A temporary ease
Staying fast the pain
Change will surely come
Night falls swiftly
No light to see
The unknown anguish that gnaws from inside
This struggle for authentic freedom
Free from responses conditioned
Free from a life not worth living
Hence the stop and social commotion
I am off the bus now
Tramping a country path
I can hear the birds and see the colours and smell the air.
But there is far to go before I rest
Deep woods and dark valleys
I have far to go before I rest
In the deep woods and dark valleys
Richard Freeman
18th August 2008
Praia do Forte
WEST KIRBY
WEST KIRBY WINDS
EATING SAUSAGE AND CHIPS
SAILING ON THE MARINE LAKE
TOGETHER
KNOWING
I WOULD
RATHER
BE
YOU
SELF SACRIFICE
To be born is to sacrifice our awareness of who we are
To have a body
To live
Is
In part
To die.
This separation from our eternal selves is a pain filled sacrifice.
Separation to let us to work within this sacred body space.
Our blood and breath filled container for the time being.
This Time Being that we identify with and call I.
The cells of the body cellf are our prison boundaries
Burdened with murmuring memories in whispering cells
Blood borne impulses of our ancient body that still remembers that primordial sea
Masked and whirling and dancing within the river of ever changing form.
Of gold or lead our outward senses close us in
The dark heart winds down in beating time.
At the darkest stroke the light yet unseen begins to glow
The holy fool smiles with joyful laughter at his profitable self deception.
Richard Freeman
March 2005