Open your heart up to the world You know you want to let that light flow inside To awaken your inner world with colour Radiating through your body.
It’s time for your life to really begin You can keep hiding from it And many do their whole lives But these days I know you’ve been longing To feel that energy surge through you As your eyes meet the dawn And the starry dance of the cosmos Can be seen in your smile.
Write your words Climb your mountains Drive down the highways That will take you somewhere Where your days will have renewed Passion and purpose.
Let the world invite you forward And leap into its possibility As your story becomes richer Each moment so much more vivid That heart once again full Of childhood joy and curiosity.
You know, I once met a man Who wanted to kill himself Before he did that, he thought He’d blow all his money On a final trip in Mexico He flew to that country Ate tacos, drank beer Made new friends Surfed the waves And watched the sunsets On the pacific ocean And finally he decided That his story wasn’t over.
Finally he decided that there was still joy in life By just changing his attitude and expectations And by screwing up the story He had written on a piece of paper That wasn’t really himself Just a tired old narrative That was in need of a new chapter.
There’s light in this world There will always be light in this world If only we open ourselves up to it Each day is a new birth is possible Should we learn to be a bit more destructive Breaking down those self-made walls Which have constricted our view Of an all too beautiful world That is aching for us to experience it
Another one reduced to tears And I can’t help but think Of all the broken hearts tonight Head in hands, tears on cheeks As the candles flicker beside baths And the warmth leaves the heart Swallowed up by a great sadness That seems destined to find us all At some point in our lives.
What is there to do But just try to keep it together As the shaking hand turns the tap And the face forces another smile Silently struggling through the days All of us together as our private pains Continue to fester in our hearts.
This world is a secret tragedy And when I look around all I see are broken people Fighting through the heartache; reorganising their lives Still searching for that one great love To complete what can not be completed To heal what cannot be healed.
Like moths to flame we chase a feeling That continually sears and scalds us But somehow leaves us wanting more.
I’m starting to come to the conclusion That I don’t think we were suppose to ever find it And perhaps a part of us doesn’t want to.
A part of us wants the tears to continue to pour The candles to continue to flicker And our hearts continue to ache For the strange and irresistible feeling Of being burnt in some fire That reminds us we’re alive.
Standing on a lonesome street On a late September afternoon With a pain howling in my heart As I stare into the dark grey sky Pleading for the summer sun to return.
Please don’t let me fade out like this Silently and slowly into the distance With each passing day And each missing kiss I feel myself disappearing in a void No longer able to touch you Or be the one that you called home.
And now I run alongside the river Where I see the entrance of your street Across the field where we played frisbee And laughed in that summer sun.
Well, now the autumn is here And I see the leaves turning brown The first few falling in front of my face Showing the changing of the seasons As my inbox remains empty of your messages As our dreams evaporate more each day And my heart wilts like those leaves Waiting for the breath of life it needs Only delivered by your gentle touch And your radiant sunshine eyes That stirred my senses, nurtured my soul And awakened me to true life.
To write these things I must certainly be a fool. To invest so much of myself into this manic muse of mine. And not just time and effort; I’m talking about scraping the very bottom of my soul, scooping out the contents and placing them onto a page no matter how drained it leaves me. I think of all the other things I could have been doing whilst I’ve been committed to this strange and solitary endeavour. Perhaps I could have been developing some sort of career, building wealth, learning to fix cars, speak another language, or some other thing which I’m pretty sure every other person on this street would see as favourable to torturing oneself to write a pretty sentence. Are these sentences even pretty? Is this collection of words worth everything I have put myself through? I guess when I think about it, through the last ten years, it seemed like I didn’t even have a choice. I was simply possessed, or insane, or just blindly committed to a fool’s errand. I still remember being in a hostel bar in Guatemala with a blonde German girl I had been travelling with. She listened to me describe my need to write – a need which caused me to forsake everything else in the pursuit of becoming a great writer. She sat and stared at me with concerned eyes. I could tell I was a creature that she hadn’t laid eyes on before. Even hailing from Berlin – where I knew there was a wealth of starving artist types roaming the bohemian streets – I was still a foreign thing. She just looked at me and, after a moment of silence, said: “don’t you realise how crazy that actually is? That you would fuck yourself up just in order to write a good sentence?”
At the time I took it as a compliment; her reaction simply reaffirmed my belief that I was someone going to the ultimate effort of becoming what he desired deepest. It didn’t matter if I went crazy, or destitute, or scared away everyone close to me – all that mattered was getting that sentence down in a way that would show me I was a true writer, just like my literary idols – the other madmen: Thompson, Bukowski, Miller, London, Kerouac, Celine et al… all those fellow fools who bled themselves dry in order just to be great practitioners of the craft. None of their lives were pleasant, but they were ferociously alive and could put down immortal words that could put fire in a person’s heart. In my young and idealistic mind, that was the greatest achievement of a man: To create art. To stir souls. To understand the human condition and tap into a sacred place that was out of bounds to those who stayed on the safe path of life. I imagined society as a herd of animals; the majority of the people stayed huddled in the herd for safety and belonging. They had those things, but they were also restricted, held in place by others, and could only see an obscured view of their surroundings. The animals who drifted away from the herd, sure, they were more exposed and vulnerable to the beasts of loneliness and madness; but they also could move freely and see the world with greater vision and clarity. They had a wide screen view of the herd and their place in the environment that was simply unavailable to those within it. I explained this metaphor to her but she just continued to look at me like I was some sort of ranting lunatic.
I quite liked that young German girl. Despite her concerns, we even got close to romance, sharing beds and kissing when drunk. But her block up against me was too strong and we eventually parted ways. I was an unsettling creature and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to see the back of me. She was yet another one scared off by my madness, only to be recounted here in some random story I’m strumming out at 10.42am on a September morning over four years later. I wonder if she ever anticipated that she’d feature in my writings? I guess she wouldn’t have cared.
Anyway, after all this time, I’m perhaps not totally as idealistic as I was then when I was scaring off pretty young German girls. I’ve since self-published four books, selling somewhere around 2000 copies, making almost no money when I take into account the few adverts I’ve done on social media here and there. All of this effort and sacrifice for this. Naturally, you wonder if it’s all worth it. You only seem to get poorer and crazier as the years go on as a writer. Sure, there is the odd success story, but the 20th century is long behind us, and the writers who make any form of living as writers seem to be 1 in 47,897 or something like that. Naturally, you think about packing it all in and becoming a respectable human-being. Maybe you can still write the odd poem here and there, but it just doesn’t seem to make any sense to devote so much of yourself into something that takes you nowhere, other than the realm of your own satisfactory delusion that you’re a great and noble writer – an undiscovered genius strumming his keyboard in his garden at 10.47am on a September morning, as the rest of the world toils in their jobs and responsibilities.
I think again of utilising this energy for something else. Age 31, I still haven’t learned to drive, and I’ve recently committed myself to trying to obtain my licence again. I could be spending this time learning the theory like I promised myself I’d do this morning. I could also be researching jobs which I also promised myself I’d do seeing as I’m currently getting by on a zero-hour contract job with inconsistent work. But yet, here I am again: all these years on, still totally committed to the same manic muse that has consumed me now throughout the whole part of early adulthood. I can just about imagine that same German girl sitting opposite me now, still with those confused and concerned eyes, wondering why I am still fucking myself up just to write this nonsense that probably only a handful of people will read and forget about. It reminds me of a story I recently read online about a man who took ten years writing his novel and two years promoting it, only to receive no sales. When his family found out, they disowned him. He ended up depressed, moved to another city, and then started work on his second novel…
I guess it comes back to it: a person’s own purpose. We frame human purpose in a positive light; that generally one is meant to find what it is that they’re good at, serves others, and makes them a fulfilled human-being. But we never stop to consider that someone’s purpose can also drive them to the edge – to become fucked up, tortured, isolated, misunderstood, destitute, deserted, and even dead. I think again of Kafka and Van Gogh and Plath and all the others who only ended in darkness while pursuing their innate calling. Once again at the crossroads, I consider packing this laptop away and learning to drive. I consider searching for that job, tidying my room, ironing myself out, and becoming a respectable member of the human race. I hear the German girl urging me on. “Finally stop this madness. You have four books now. You’ve given it a go. You’ve done more than most people and it’s time to give yourself a break. Put down the pen and get yourself in order.”
But alas, the words just keep on coming, and if you’re still here listening to this self-indulgent, introspective, stream-of-the-consciousness crap, then well, I guess maybe you share a similar type of madness. There are so many other productive things one could be doing, but then again, what is the point. What is the point as I now watch two butterflies dance with each other in the morning sun; as I watch a ginger cat strutting elegantly down the path; as I watch a squirrel run along the fence and listen to the birds singing somewhere in the nearby trees. I guess nature doesn’t concern itself with what it ‘should’ do rather than what it is doing. And that in doing so, it is far more graceful than us with our clumsy and clunky lives. Perhaps I was simply born to the wrong species. Humanity was never the intended destination of a soul like mine. I was better off being a cat, or a squirrel, or a butterfly fluttering in the early morning sun. I know the second I stop this story and start studying my driving theory and searching for jobs, I’ll be longer in tune with the great harmony of nature. But this seems to be the requirement for surviving in society and stopping the pretty girls from thinking you’re crazy and wanting to sleep with you. That is an awfully nice thing, I must confess, so now I consider packing it away again. And it seems to me that if I do that, I’ll no longer be considered a fool by others, but I’ll know inside that I am a fool. To neglect this holy feeling I must certainly be mad, and now it’s time to choose: to be mad by my own reckoning, or by theirs. There is no easy way and I guess maybe I’m just too far gone as I decide I’ll be adding this piece of writing to my fifth book: Daft Daydreamer Delusions. I’m choosing to be mad in their eyes again. This one is for you, pretty German girl. I hope your life of sanity and sensibility is as fulfilling as this is. If you read this, get back to me and we can have a chat again. If you’re not too scared, that is.
My fight was a savage attack Facing down my demons in the darkest of all woods Bitten and bleeding in places I didn’t know existed Cut up, skinned alive, the teeth sunk into my throat As I snarled and fought, red-eyed, a wild creature myself I became something I had to become; a necessary survival Carrying deep wounds but somehow still alive; A long way from the unblemished, innocent child And those colourful days of candy and crayons Far behind me as I now carry the tears in my flesh And the ferocious lust for survival in my eyes That causes each creature to fight till the bloody death; To overcome a hostile and seething environment The evolution of each thing tested by this world To either be consumed by the beasts Or become one yourself.
It was a bad dream, I think I was standing in some strange place And all my friends had faded away All the feelings had faded away Time had shipped out much of my joy And I was left standing in an empty port Of an abandoned town Wondering what to do next With my ragged life.
I wandered back out into the wilderness And felt the nakedness of myself Totally alone with no path to follow Only one to forge to somewhere else That might harbour me and my madness.
The way led me through harsh lands I knew not what would become of me And as night came the stars shone bright I gazed up to them with weary eyes Confused and trapped in some world Whose origin was unknown.
Nowhere seemed to be the place Where I set down my bags for good And I drifted onward in my journey Carrying a great sadness in my heart Wondering what the point was To this strange story.
At times, I thought that I had missed my boat Perhaps I was supposed to join the others And follow their ships to a new world Instead I chose to follow the voice out there Calling me into this barren wilderness That had left me bedraggled and bewildered With no chance of finally finding my way As the wolves howl and vultures circle above As a cold wind blows and the earth begins to shake….
Then suddenly I wake up But the dream isn’t over I stare into the mirror I’m one day older Carrying more hardship in my heart Going to a job I don’t want to do Surrounded by people I can’t relate to And I realise that the wilderness in my dreams Is no different to the one I wander in now Perhaps there are more people around And I am slightly more static But I am a lone wanderer in this life Passing through doorways; shaking hands Attending to the tasks required of me But still, all the while, I’m out there In some great unknown Drifting, searching Caught in some dream And I think it’s a bad one.
“I don’t know Ryan,” he said. “I really don’t know. I’m just so disappointed with my species. I give up on them. There is just so much potential for humanity, yet here we are wasting our lives in trivial routine, going through the motions, following outdated traditions, chasing materialistic things which don’t really make us happy. The way people treat each other is so bad. And even the way people treat themselves. People are their own worst enemies; they slowly build their own cages bar by bar – out of fear, comfortability, security, and conformity. Anything just to fit in and not think independently. Why Ryan, why? Life is such a glorious opportunity but we throw it away so willfully with these ridiculous lives we live.”
I could see my good friend Bryan had finally reached the point in his life where he had simply given up on the world. Idealism had given way to nihilism and I watched as he downed the rest of his beer before throwing it onto the pile of empty bottles which had been gradually accumulating since my arrival. I was visiting him in his holiday home in The Netherlands. It was a small cabin in a holiday park which he had recently bought for ten thousand euros. You were only supposed to use it for vacations, but Bryan had decided to live there full-time. He was working as an urban planner in Rotterdam, but only had to be in the office two times a week which allowed him to ‘work’ from his cabin the other days. He was supposed to be engaged in his employment activities right this moment, but here he was drinking beers in his garden while putting the world to rights with me. I asked if he wanted another beer to which he reminded me it was time to take some psychedelic drugs.
“Don’t you have any work to do today?” I asked.
“What’s the point, honestly, I don’t care about this bullshit job. It’s so badly managed, I can do what I want. And if I get fired, then so be it. Like you said, the collapse of civilisation is coming anyway.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s go and get high and enjoy the day then.”
We headed back inside to get the magic mushroom truffles from the fridge and began preparing them. Pretty soon we had taken our doses and then hopped on our bikes to cycle to a nearby nature reserve. We rode in the summer sunshine through rural lands and villages while waiting for the first effects to hit. Bryan was a seasoned veteran when it came to psychedelics, regularly doing mushroom and acid trips on his own; I, however, had only taken them a couple of times before – and not at the dose level I had just consumed. The feeling of excitement was mixed in with some apprehension, and I even began to start feeling a bit sick in the stomach, which was not too unusual for a short while after eating magic mushroom truffles, especially when you were also hungover from the night before.
We carried on cycling towards the nature reserve as the landscape became forested. Lush green trees surrounded us as we ventured closer to our destination. Pretty soon we pulled up in the car park and locked our bikes up. It was then that the first little waves of effects began to make themselves known; in particular, tree branches around me looked wavy and the light through the canopy began to have a heavenly quality.
We then made our way through a pathway in the woods that eventually gave way to a vast open expanse of sand dunes. It was a surreal looking landscape; not the type one would envisage when thinking of The Netherlands. There was an otherworldly vibe to it – small scrubs lay across the sandy ground with networks of cobwebs between them; that same lush green forest circled the wide open area before us; dead tree branches lay like skeletons of carcasses in the hot sun. We walked barefoot across that strange land as Bryan played some ambient music from his speaker and I imagined us as two neanderthals roaming the plains of the outback tens of thousands of years ago.
The effects were soon getting stronger as I looked at the ripple lines of the sand beneath my feet. All of it was swaying and swooning in a playful manner. With each step, my feet were swallowed by this sea of sand, before soaring out of its surface again like two dolphins skipping through the water. The sun still stood above us and its searing heat led us to decide to search for some shade. A small way in the distance was a large dune with a few trees that seemed to be the spot the universe was guiding us towards. It was there that we agreed to seek shelter as the effects of the mushrooms started coming on even stronger.
We threw our stuff down and sat down beside a tree trunk. We stared out at the surrounding area of sand dunes which was now looking like some sort of dreamscape, especially with the dust devils that were blowing around us. We were far away from the city life and we may as well have been marooned on another planet. The forest that circled the desert-like expanse we were in was now dancing, taking on that kaleidoscopic pattern which I had only seen representations of in posters and psychedelic artwork. Now it was happening before my eyes as the whole world looked like some sort of fantastical phantasmagoria. When I focused a little more, each tree began to look like a mushroom itself, almost on fire like the landscapes that featured in some of Van Gogh paintings. The world was more vivid and fascinating than ever – some sort of entrancing work of art that I was happily trapped within.
We both carried on enjoying the captivating visual effects while discussing life. Me and Bryan had been friends for eight years at that point after having met while travelling in New Zealand. My closest friend from the past decade of my travels, we were two people who were incredibly similar at our cores – hell, even our names only had one letter difference. Aside from that, our lives just seemed to mirror each other constantly in the things we were experiencing. We both often felt out of place and misunderstood in this society, and deep down we longed for a life of free-spirited adventure instead of the one which the majority of people our age strived for. We were men with similar stories and struggles and I guess we provided some sort of sanity to each other by just knowing our thoughts weren’t completely alien. I knew Bryan was currently more at odds with the world than me though, having expressed ever-growing dissatisfaction since returning home from his last world trip. He was growing increasingly jaded, drifting towards self-destructive and reckless behaviour. Drink driving, skipping work, an increasing detachment from pretty much everything – he truly was a man who was teetering on the edge of sanity and society.
He shared some more thoughts on this as he expressed how unfulfilling his current job was, how traditional middle-aged life was so uninspiring, and how much he missed working in the Tasmanian outback building hiking trails. This led to our frustrations with the system and popular culture as we discussed the possibility of what the world would be like if people regularly took psychedelic substances. “I mean, just look at what these mushrooms can do for people. There’s a natural substance that opens people’s minds to more perspectives, insights and growth? And what is the response of most governments? BAN AND CRIMINALISE IT!!” There was then a short silence before he proclaimed “honestly, what a complete joke.” At that moment, we both burst out into a fit of laughter. Just the authority with which the sentence was said struck deeply at some profound and fundamental level, like a divine truth being uttered. I mean, it was a big joke when I really thought about it. Society was one big madhouse, especially at the moment – PC culture, covid lockdowns, inflation, social media, consumerism, the climate crisis, and the general state in which late stage capitalism had left full-time workers barely able to heat their homes – it was quickly going down the drain and it was only a matter of time before the system collapsed completely. All the while, people voted for their own demise and busied themselves with the consumption of vapid TikTok videos. It was truly something to despair at, but the next thing to do was to laugh. This seemed the logical response for the sake of one’s sanity: just to laugh at the world and at yourself, to see the ridiculousness and absurdity of it all in plain, comic sight – it was a medicine for the soul and at that moment we dosed ourselves with that medicine as we howled atop that hill like two crazed apes.
Once the laughter had died down, a quiet period began and I started to get more introspective. Reflecting more on the feeling that the end times would soon be upon us in society, I couldn’t escape this feeling that my life was also destined to be some tragedy – that a great disintegration was coming of myself too. I simply seemed to face great hardship in life and at times I wondered how much longer I could get by living the way I had been. Now I was at a time in my life when I was acknowledging that I was probably autistic to some degree, and could probably get diagnosed with a few other things which would explain why I felt like I was constantly living my life on hard mode. My life had been a grand adventure but it had also been an immensely difficult ride, and I knew I was at risk of madness or homelessness with my outright inability to fit into this society. At the moment I had no job, no career, and no real talent or trade. I was in a strange place in my life and I no doubt needed to confront some things if I was to make it through another few decades without some sort of disaster occurring.
Deep realisations were hitting me as I sat tripping in the sand, but I was also seeing how beautiful the whole experience of just being alive was as the mushrooms continued to do their work upon my brain. I closed my eyes and saw the most insanely complex patterns unfolding before my eyes. I found it hard to process that my brain was automatically creating this rich tapestry of colours with an indescribable beauty, as great as any work of art I had ever laid eyes upon. Pretty soon after this Bryan put his hand on a nearby tree branch and we could see the tree breathing in and out as the veins in his arm flowed into the veins on the tree. At that moment I saw how we were all a part of some sort of mysterious, singular organism, and that no matter how absurd or ridiculous we felt the world was becoming, everything was going to be okay in some weird, fundamental way.
Eventually we decided we had spent enough time atop our little hill. We continued roaming the nature reserve for another hour as the sun began to drop lower in the sky. Though five hours had passed since dosing, the effects of the mushrooms did not waver and I wondered when, if ever, I was going to return to my ‘normal’ state of mind. It seemed not any time soon as I passed a group of people entering the park who appeared all to have distorted faces, like that of deformed creatures. I questioned whether they were actually deformed, but then another group of people went past looking the same, at which point I concluded it was some weird, trippy effect from the truffles. I was going through a bad part of the trip, but I soon felt better by focusing again on that sunlight still bursting through the tree canopy in a divine and heavenly way.
We finally jumped on our bikes and cycled back to his cabin in the sunset, the last rays of light illuminating the world with a dreamy, serene glaze as psychedelic rock music played from Bryan’s speaker. I couldn’t even feel my legs working as some higher force made it feel like I was gliding along on some sort of hovercraft. Though blissful, it was all a bit too much at some point, and I was happy when we arrived home and the effects finally started to fade. Some points of the trip had simply been too intense for me and I was eager to grab a few beers from the fridge and take the edge off with the comfort and familiarity of being drunk. I sat there drinking a beer in his garden while still appreciating the beauty of the world with fresh eyes, watching little helicopter seeds float down gracefully from a nearby tree, marvelling at my surroundings like a new-born baby.
The next few days I carried on experiencing that afterglow, but some negative effects made themselves known too. Something had triggered in my mind and left it in a restless place it had been before in recent years. I had struggled with insomnia for a while now and it was one of the reasons I now had lost interest in travelling the world like I once had. Simply put, my body needed a routine in which for me to sleep, and as soon as my circadian rhythm was disturbed, then I quickly spiralled into an insomniac state. Now the new environment – coupled with the drinking and the drugs and the heat – had set my brain off once again. It appeared sleep just wasn’t going to happen to any decent degree for the rest of the trip. There were just a few days left so I just accepted what was and sought to make the most of the rare occasion me and Bryan got to hang out together.
The searing summer heat continued as we cycled around, chilled out by lakes, went to bars, ate pizza, played ping pong, and generally had fun like guys fifteen years younger than we were. We spent a day in Amsterdam enjoying the bars and parks and sights of that famous city. Drinking and debates on life was the general vibe as we sought to make the most of the opportunity of having conversations we simply couldn’t have in our normal day-to-day life. To be with someone so similar to you was a strange and cathartic experience, and naturally there was an electric energy in the air. Every time we met this energy invariably led to us partying and causing mischief, and this time was no different as we sipped back those strong Belgian beers and drifted from bar to bar. At one point we cycled drunk to the nearest town, then cycled back blind drunk, leaving me crashing into some ditch at the side of the road, leaving Bryan once again laughing at the absurdity of it all.
Monday morning soon came around following a final night of drinking in Rotterdam. The fun was over and there I was at the end of my trip, in one of the most sleep-deprived and burnt out states I had ever been in. I had just spent five days in the sun, drinking heavily, eating badly, barely sleeping at all, and having the biggest psychedelic trip I’d ever had in my life. I’d been in some depleted states before, but I deemed this to be the most extreme one yet, and I truly felt close to that great collapse that I had envisaged on top of that hill at the nature reserve. I was bordering on being in a state of psychosis, experiencing some auditory and peripheral vision hallucinations, making me wonder if the dose of mushrooms had permanently messed up my mind.
This state wasn’t helped by a day that seemed set out to test me. This day included a delayed flight, sitting in an aeroplane on the runway for an hour in 30 degree heat next to a screaming baby, a delayed bus from the airport in London, waiting for that bus in a thunderstorm that proceeded to follow me up the motorway to Nottingham, and then finally arriving home thirteen hours later to find my landlady’s son trying to hang himself in the garden. The next morning I awoke after another night of bad sleep to hear that there had been a murder rampage in the city centre. Bad vibes were following me all around and the post-partying anxiety was at an all time high.
I didn’t know what to do with myself and I just sat in my garden staring at the noose the landlady’s son had poorly constructed the evening before. I thought of how mentally ill he was, and how messed up the man who had just went on a murder rampage was. I then thought of Bryan’s growing nihilism, the troubles in society, and my growing sense of impending doom upon myself. Maybe the collapse was coming; it certainly seemed like it at that moment in time as I sat in a hole and reflected on the sad state of the world. A great sorrow filled my soul for moments, but then I looked out at my garden and saw the beauty of nature again that had been so prominent while high on those magic mushroom truffles. I saw the chirping birds bobbing from branch to branch. I saw the sunlight again bursting through the trees. I saw the butterflies and the flowers and the artistry of nature in the peak of summer. Maybe there was death, decay, and destruction in this universe – maybe the collapse of civilisation and myself was coming – but I felt once again ultimately everything was going to be okay in some strange way. This universe would keep on weaving its magic, and I would be forever cocooned in some indescribable cosmic blanket of infinity. The fact that I was a part of this great work of art that had been revealed to me on the truffle trip was enough for me to keep on keeping on for now. That was enough to accept the darkness of the world as well as the light. That was enough to pick myself up out of that hole and keep on marching through the tempestuous plains of life, transfixed by the strange wonder of simply being alive.
Tonight I am drilling down to the bottom It’s been too long hearing something stirring within And this surface I’ve built up needs breaking in I’m bringing forth the equipment I need And digging down to the depths To find whatever it is that’s been disturbing my sleep.
You always have it You know it and I know it There is something somewhere inside That you feel in certain moments of your life Those select moments that appear suddenly When the soul makes itself known Through a feeling of existential longing Or some raw, wild nature That is awakened as you stare Upon a sunset landscape Or hear a certain song Cruising down the highway While watching the birds head south.
Yes, it’s easy to suppress it For the sake of security and convenience To silence the rumbling within That is a threat to your civilised world And the character you’ve been playing But think about the thrill of responding to it.
Think about the thrill Of beginning a journey to the centre And finding what you truly possess But has been lying out of sight.
Think about the thrill Of striking down into the ground And seeing your spirit come surging up As this world sees you finally discover The great wealth you held all along.
Go for it. Dig, drill, dig. Use your hands if you have to. Your elbows, your teeth. Be relentless on the pursuit Of the thing the world has made you forget You have inside of you.
You know it’s the only way to become The person you secretly yearn to be. You know it’s the only way to become Truly and totally and shamelessly alive As your days erupt with burning passion And those magic moments appear more often Until everyday you are living your absolute truth And the essence of your soul is finally unleashed The gold within you pouring outwards As the days of true prosperity Finally begin.
Living, that strange thing So many of us feel we’re not doing it right We are undoubtedly living each day Breathing in the air, beating our hearts Rising out of bed each morning to face the world And all it can offer us in it the human experience But yet so many of us still don’t feel we are actually living.
Beset by constant feelings of incompletion And something that is often unspeakable The days drift by as we sit at work stations And stand in supermarket queues Secretly searching for something That can‘t be purchased in any store.
We keep the animals close to us Those dogs and cats living in our homes We marvel at the birds in the evening sky As something in us senses a deep truth That there is a naturalness missing within us As our actions seem to lack the same fluidity And grace of the things we see around us.
For some reason we’re at odds with the world And we walk down the streets of life Unaware of our surroundings Our minds frazzled by thoughts Constant language closing the curtains To the grand show in front of us.
Living, that strange thing So rare to find a person Truly fulfilled and content Or without desperation in the soul Longing to be someplace else.
Perhaps one day a realisation will come Something fundamental which we forgot That the glory lies in our awareness of the moment And allowing ourselves to be truly present As we live in tune with the totality.
Perhaps one day we’ll see the futility of thinking And the voices in our head will quiet As we finally hear the voice of the heart And then we’ll slowly regain some naturalness Living each day more like those birds Swooping and soaring in the evening sky In motion with the majesty of the moment As this world invites us to return to grace As this world invites us to become the beautiful beings We forget that we are.
I do not believe I am special But I do believe I have worth to this world Even if my worth is not something commonly understood To be a good or desirable thing These feelings have substance and belong somewhere So hang my poems like paintings In the bedrooms of your house, And read my existential rantings.
You’ve been chasing the wrong things and you know it Time will reveal the foolishness of false endeavours The right way has always been available to you You just needed to sit down and have a word with yourself Escape the crowd; examine your life under a microscope Dissect each day; tear out the heart of what’s going on And see how that bloody thing beats.
Here my heart is beating with each word that hits the page Giving me something that my culture failed to provide I didn’t learn to do this from any teacher or textbook And to many this act of writing would seem silly, even pointless But let me tell you how alive I feel As I connect with my deepest self And pour out the raw truth that is lurking In the recesses of my soul.
Everyone in this life has that thing That will get those fingertips flickering And if you haven’t found it Then it’s time to step back and reassess.
All you have to do is be with yourself tonight Put away that phone; look into that mirror Be still in the silence And search your soul for that something That has been drowned out by society’s noise And remember that you are a divine being Who belongs to this world And your feelings, your hopes, your joys Your pains and fears They are real and vital And can be the signposts to the place Where you truly belong.
Dare to listen to that inner voice And take the journey of the self Knowing that the days of emptiness shall end As you finally work it all out Cutting whatever you need to out of life Finding the points that are seeping your energy That are not authentic to who you are And then gradually begin to feel your words and actions Flowing freely from the source Of whoever you really are As everything finally comes into place Just like these words are Now.
~ A Voice From The Wild ~ 