Poetry
by Adam Shaw
Adam Shaw 2024
YOU SAID YES
yes perhaps before you were born
you were shown everything
that would make up your life
the color the blood the love
and the lost love
the music the fire
the flood
and you said yes yes yes
But you had never touched
the ground you didn't
even understand weight
gravity sound grief
hunger and the slur of wine
you hadn't even tasted time
but you said yes to everything
and here you are
ORDINARY THINGS
In states of deep meditation
or despair
you may be visited
by beings made of celestial light
lying in bed at night
you may rise disembodied
and weightless
and travel through unencumbered space
but the greatest revelation
is recognition
of what is ordinary
and most close
Enter the mystery
of ordinary things
the wings of a fly
wind and the green leaves
flashing their silver bellies
through shifting filtered light
every instance of sound
and the sound of no sound
the seeing of the eye
which itself remains unseen
-a great hint!-
and the insistent breathing of everything
A WORK OF ART
a work of art
that doesn’t have hidden
in it, somewhere,
a dagger
is like a sun
that doesn’t burn
an Earth
that can’t turn and erupt, flood,
devastate, ruin, misplace
and ultimately make you cherish
what you have
just by being alive
DROWNING
Then when you turn your back
to the ocean to wave
at your lover
sitting on the sand
you call come in
but your words are nothing
swallowed by a crashing
curl of the moon
You’re standing where the waves
Are breaking and you’re pulled
Under
tumbling outside of time
you taste metal
before
suspended
in silence
you let go.
I am going to drown.
And the peace is already there
Waiting for you. You embrace it.
You’re ready.
And suddenly you hear the rattling
of shells like cheap Balinese chimes
grinding of sand
human voices
and you come crashing down.
THIS WAS GOING TO BE
This was going to be the poem
in which I reveal
the ultimate meaning of everything. The poem
that made you remember
the placental texture of the womb
the umbilical breath
when you were a fish
the concentration of non differentiated
free floating awareness
into your genetic flesh
and how and why it happened
I was going to unravel
the fabric of celestial bodies
their composition and intelligence
and your relationship to stars stars stars
numberless as sand
In this poem I was going to show you
how life is so right and how
life is so wrong and why
as I reveal to you God’s plan
and why we suffer
and how to be free from suffering
I was going to take you to the source
of all rivers the source
of all beings the source
of light and awareness
which is a single source
I was going to show you in this poem
how flowers
grow not merely from a seed
but even before the seed
I was going to take you to the wedding
and let you taste the wine
Jesus made from water
and I was going to show you how to
dance with everything
that arises
and everything that falls away
This was going to be that poem
ART IS USELESS
If I can pick it up and dig a hole with it
it’s not art
if I can drive a nail into a wall
with it it’s not art
if I can feed a starving man and prolong his life
for a single day
or bandage a wound even as the blood seeps out
around the edges
if I can smoke it, fuck it, drink it
it’s not art
because art is useless
superfluous, essentially, vitally
superfluous
and if it’s not useless
I have no use for it
BE ON YOUR WAY
and if you gave away
everything
emptied your pockets
and walked
out the door trusting
your fate to the kindness
of strangers
where would you go
traveler?
As you walked through the trained
and twisted vineyards
and past the yellow
fields of mustard
toward the unknown
could you find that faith
the size of a single seed
to move the mountains
that have blocked you
from your own heart
and be on your way?
THE LAST ROOM
you don’t know which room
it is but there is a room
that will be the last room
you are ever in
you may be in it now
In that room you might
remember in a flash
your entire life
in a flash!
and see all at once
all the time wasted
on trivialities
all the slights and insults
hurled, incubated, endured
all the clues acknowledged
yet ignored
all the opportunities for Peace
you walked by pursuing
something meaningless and transient
like sex or money or fame
or some small victory over
the agony of being disconnected
In that room you will see
you were never absent
never disconnected
and how ignoring the ever present
truth of your being
has occupied the major part
of your entire life
But it won’t matter
because in that flash
you will have let go
of everything
forgiven everything
associated with that person
who has stolen your life and is dying
on the bed
that imposter, that fiction
In that room as you rise
and leave that body
you held so dear
and abused so relentlessly
you will look down
and see it as no more than meat
meaningless now in the moment
of your departure
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ARS POETICA
If you’re hungry or need
a roof over your head god
forbid that your only skill
is to make music from words
like rubbing two sticks
together to make fire in a hurricane
with your name on it
MY GURU
My guru is the dirt
wedged into the sole
of my boot
and tracked through the house
It follows me everywhere!
my teachers are the birds
that won’t shut the fuck up
when I’m trying to concentrate
My grandmother’s hands
reach for me through the gnarled oak bark
and my dead brother is resurrected
in the pungent scent of new mown grass
Follow one thing
and you find all things
Stay in one place
and you find yourself everywhere
A PRAYER
If I fall
let me fall like rain
into the ocean
transparent and spilt
from one
infinity into another
Release me from the grave
millstone of my mind
burning and bearded
with judgements about things I do not understand
And I do not understand anything
The voice, silence
the voice
of the Sirens
drunk with the madness of transience
or tether me to the mast
of the moment and let me be the Witness
Shatter me
like an apple
ripe with stars
and scatter me as a seed
into the heart
of everything that breathes
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