What is gained

One foot strides in front of the other,
The path is across worn un-mortared stones,
The ages tug at the soles of the feet,
Stains of conflict and change in the stones.

The whisper of the sandal shod feet breaths,
“Do not hurry, the temple has waited forever,”
There is a rush of exhilaration, a sensual need,
The very thought can stop the heart, this forever.

An ancient part of the soul reaches forward,
Its clasp tempered by the passing millennium,
Some will not reach the sacred grounds,
Others will prostrate as done for past millennium.

The question is asked: “And what will it gain,”
The answer not of the stone or perceived spirituality,
No book, no shaman, no priest, can explain it,
Gained is what is carry in peace to our own spirituality.

Awed by the simple truth

It was not I that chose,
non ordinary chose me, perhaps
out of curiosity. I have become
Nagual, a trickster, student
of the shape shifter, party to
that unknown realm past the
deception of that called reality.
Now an animal, now a man caught
in a Castaneda datura delirium.
What is real, what is the
dream? Something is missing
pulled from past and present.
The mind has become a broken
chair with three legged support,
an apparatus of contradiction,
neither useful or needed.
Where the seat of experience
was the glue of logic there
is now separation, only vision.
From the litmus colored
sky I veil my face, shroud my
body, hiding all that I
could be or should have
been . The urine tests of
years is a stain upon this
Kubla Khan dome. Khayyam’s jug
of wine has turned to vinegar,
the loaf of bread moldy,
and you are not here
beside me in this wilderness,
this corpus prison. There
exists only this solitary realm.
The song of life a lament wailing
on bended knees before a
maggot starved mind. The ink
still wet upon the parchment of
this soul, a scribble of paranoid
demented schizophrenic babble.
Written there a simple truth: life
does not lie….or, does it?

Copyright: 2010, Donald Harbour

The Watchers

When you are alone,
there are often those times
that the silence is pierced,
a heaviness in the air,
an oh, so slight pressure
upon the senses, the nerves, the mind.
A movement across the ceiling,
Trembling in the darken corners.
A calling, an awakening
In some forgotten part of psyche.
Hidden in the primitive recesses
of the distant ancestral past
it sleeps, waiting to be summoned.
Once again you are huddled around
a blazing fire the spirits dancing
upon the cavern walls, and you fear.
The neck becomes tight, painful,
the scalp prickly with anticipation.
You are now so very close to them.
All the past, all the lives lived,
can be held in a grain of sand,
the prism of a rain drop,
the gentle whisper of a breeze,
darkness of night, a shadow.
No god, no talisman, no shaman
can hold back the knowledge
the feeling in your bile filled gut,
that you are being watched.
Are we really alone?

Copyright: 2008, Donald Harbour