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Tasting The Spring Where Pictures Sing

A short book of poems all written between June and October 2006, during a motor-bike trip across India, and immediately after my return home, as I worked to improve them and added a few more. Often humorous or wistful, they reflect on the passing scene, and the impossibility of ever describing what is truly seen or the one who is seeing it.

Compassion

Grunting upwards, lazy legs,
unused to mountain paths,
weighed double by my bag,
and short of gasping breath,
I step aside, to let the faster feet
of this Tibetan girl go past.

But she, instead, stops by my side
and smiling takes in hand
one handle from my bag
and slows her stride to match my pace.

And so we walk up hand by hand,
with me, inadequate to speak
the thanks I feel, but most of all,
the joy that there can be
in this humility
that puts me in my place,
confronted by this sister
from the human race.

Going Walkies

Now that I must leave
this much-loved place,
my mind is dragging on its lead,
and fighting for each lamp-post
that I leave behind.

And thus I bark and whine
along this path,
where I create my time,
as though I were a guide-dog
who has chosen
to act blind.

Sartorial Discomfort

Whether humidity comes from the skies,
or from my skin,
my t-shirt's damn uncomfortable
to keep my body in.

Paradoxes Transcend Time

It's strange, that now I am sixty,
I see these serious, younger men,
still with an eye,
that wonders if I
will one day grow up
to be like them.

Helping Me On “The Way”
“Where have you been?
Just look at your self!
Who do you think you are?”
my mother asked.

And thus she was the Guru
who first set me on this path.

The Gourmet’s Treat
There are many grades of tea
and I would like to try each one:
to feel the different grades of me
with each taste on my tongue.

Tossing The Coin With No Sides
The voice that says that this is me
has rarely ceased to speak
while I have been awake;
but this that is not me, yet is,
has never had a voice
but always is,
and which I am this moment
seems beyond my choice.

The Point Of The Book

I guess I love to rave about
my spiritual affairs,
but still I have to ask myself,
“Who cares?”

Without A Second

In 2004, the German book of the teachings of Karl Renz, called Das Buch Karl, was translated into a fairly German kind of English and Karl agreed to my suggestion that I try to put it into a natural and flowing style that truly reflected the dialogue situation in which they took place. On their request, I gave this text to his American publishers, who then distorted it in a semi-literate manner with superfluous words and dishonoured the poetic and simple lay-out, which I had given them. I therefore offer you the full text, free from the ugliness that was later imposed upon it, and hope you will feel free to download any bits you like.

Here are a few samples from the book:

Karl: If I regarded myself as wise and enlightened,
there would only be stupid, unenlightened beings in front of me.
This would be separation. It would be the old illusion
that here is someone who knows something
and there someone sits who doesn’t know.
But I talk about knowledge which is absolute: absolute here,
and equally absolute, there. It is nothing new for you.
That’s why it is nothing you can attain.
There is nothing you can discover; nowhere you can arrive.
It is already completely present. I talk about that which was never concealed;
which doesn’t require attainment.
Any endeavour can only lead to relative knowledge.

K: … that, which you are, has never been asleep.
It knows neither sleeping nor waking.
Waking and sleeping appear within it.
Moreover, there is no one awake or asleep.
There is no enlightened one or someone who needs enlightenment.
These are merely ideas which are meaningless.
They appear and disappear again in that which you are.

K: I’m not here to dissolve knots. I create knots.
I tie so many knots in your brain that you may suddenly realise
it’s impossible to ever undo them.
So you can give up trying and simply be still.
Once you are completely still, who cares whether there ever were worlds,
or rebirths, or webs, or knots and dissolvings?

Poem For Matthew Greenblatt, American “Publisher”

I cast my pearls before the swine
who laps them up,
saying, "Mine … mine …mine"

Hide And Seek

I’ve been writing poems since the 1960’s, and in this link the best of them are on offer, divided into sections so that you may choose between irreverent thoughts on diverse gurus; scenes of tranquillity and life from many countries; troubled thoughts of a middle-aged adolescent striving for truth and daring to reveal some of his starker holes; or simple descriptions of some of the indescribable characters he has met.

When opening link select read-only option

Hide & Seek

Truth has been playing
at hiding so long
that when it comes out
the party is over
and all of the seekers are gone

Tibetan Nun

Her eyes are so open
they seem to be blind

Benares

Here, by Ganga river,
all the hours of the earth
accumulate and fly
away in dust.

A clutch of sadhus
choke the chillum,
smoking out
across the sunset
with the breath
of bones.

The river is soft.
The river is soft.

Two Trekking Haikus

Stumbling frozen in the night;
even the stars afraid
to climb out of bed.

***

Seeing the fire die,
I climb into my sleeping bag
and close my eyes.

Portrait Of A Friend

Her mother had run out
and gone somewhere
with brighter lights.

Her father was too proud
to ask the dole man
for his rights

Sick of house and homework,
wanting love and money,
she decided to work nights.

***

After she’d been on the game
for a while,
she’d come to school:
so cool,
and slender.

Her delicate gender
told such lies,
even her sadness was buried
under the brilliant make-up
round her eyes.

Moon on the Man

The full moon is so beautiful,
all the frogs are talking about it.
I am glad they told me to look.

New Work

Written, since Oct. 2006, when the last book went to the printing press. Some of these are bound to be a little shaggy round the edges and uneven, but any one included here should have some redeeming features that give hope for its future.

13 Dec 2006

The sufferings of one
can entertain a million.
And that is how the media
make their bread.

From Auschwitz to "Big Brother"
there’s an audience.

So why spend time and money
on a thriller or sci-fi,
when starving Africans oblige,
and murderers and rapists
stretch our eyes
and open up our pockets
for the products that they sell, so well?

Once the purse is opened up
for charity, it stays that way,
to buy whatever stuff is sold
to compensate us all
for all the sufferings we feel
as we slouch on armchairs
and we stare indignantly at Hell.

It almost seems bad manners
here, to point this out
and break into the sympathetic
anger and the grief,
as tears roll down one cheek,
while fascination entertains
our other eye so well.

This is our nature,
so there seems no point
in making this complaint,
except, perhaps, that if we see the truth
it may perhaps be good to realise,
in honesty, just who we are,
and not pretend we are
a being that we ain’t.

9 Dec.2006

It is the role of thought to try
to put on all a boundary.

To grab the neck of Now and wring
until it can no longer sing

Thus teachers who carve words in stone
are better left to freeze alone

16 Dec 2006

For My Beloved Friend, Mr Mooji

I am walking forwards, not sideways;
and that is why you will not find
my cushion in your satsang, even though
I love your words and know
how well your presence
sweeps away my mind
to leave me open-mouthed and peaceful.

For my pockets are not big enough
for you to fit inside,
so I may cart you here and there
to answer me, when I am all too much confronted by the frame
that I’ve barb-wired
round this notion that I think is me,
which sometimes feels itself, so painfully.

This is the space where I must be alone
to face whatever ghouls my thoughts
of me have built, to howl
and make their faces
in the mirror of my face.

There is no-one but me
who has to stand before their accusations
and to hear each horror I have been,
until this momentary slate
has been wiped clear.

And that which chooses not
to step aside for momentary peace
and fellowship, can breathe
a mighty breath and step again
all by itself, which never is,
all by itself,
into the morning air.

On Mr Tolle’s Spiritual Instructions

Any book that tells you what to do
has got a cheek,
for truth does not require
a battering ram
to get inside its door.

Nor does it call
for subterfuge or bribes
to make it stick its nose outside.

And while you search
for all these methods in a book,
the page that stares
back in your face
contained each answer that you seek
before a single touch of ink
wrote lies upon its face.

About Kevan Myers

Born in London; but soon found the way out, using his thumb to visit many lands, and now that planes are cheap, he always bags a window seat to peer through clouds at places where he’d love to wander, underneath.

In 1967, he set out to round the World, but got waylaid, in Punjab, sitting backwards on a horse-cart, faced by setting sun which spread across the skies between the trees, accompanied by clopping hooves and birds with wild cries.

He found that India had got him by the hand and even when he turned away she never would let go.

He tried twice more to round the globe, but every time she lay in waiting by the road, to throw his watch away, and spin his head around, until one day he found the place to plant some trees and build the house where he would stay, from 1995 until today.

Between these trips, for money and for joy, he worked in schools, endeavouring to teach the words and tools that make it possible for everyone to speak, in English words, the feelings and the thoughts which make each being unique.

He still can feel the presence that each name will bring, but when the school bells ring, inside his dreams, he finds himself stark naked in a race with time he cannot win.

And this may be one reason why he left the West.

Another is the place he now resides: beside a holy mountain, in a climate where his windows never close and sleeping can take place, near to the breathing trees and stars, which peer through the mosquito net to light his face.