-All That is Left is Love-

-All That is Left is Love- 

Fragile the flower that springs from out the soil of compassion. Fragrant, the delicate blossom doth issue from each supple velvet bud. Yet, finespun are the petals of kindness, too easily bruised between ardent fingers, or crushed beneath the soles of determined gait. The ruined rose tenders full fragrance sweet, too late, the thorn and flesh do meet, ne'er again to brush fair loves soft silent silken cheek.

In the end.... all that is left, is Love.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013
 

As an aside... I was awoken at 4am the evening before that with a very sharp pain in my chest, and I have to say I thought then that was it...

The strangest thought came over me, in that moment. I found myself praying of sorts... Not for myself, but for everyone I had known, forgiving them all for anything they had done to me that may not have been kind or had tied them to me in some bad karmic manner... Such a strange thing to do I thought afterwards, but it just instinctively came out of me as I thought I was about to have the next big attack and that would be it. Strange what lurks in the heart of us isn't it. All that seemed important was that those I had shared this life with be freed from any burden associated with having known me.

I don't know why i did that...

Actually, I do know why I did that...

It was simply a matter of love. In that moment, everything else was stripped away and the truth of a soul in the grace of love was all that remained. With the imminent demise of my own body, the core of who I was, was suddenly thrust to the fore, and all the petty squabbles, and foolishness that had gone before, simply fell to the floor, and all I was left, was that which sits in the core of my heart.

If in that moment, I could have spared the suffering of those who had connected with me in this life, and had born upon their own souls, the heavy conscience of actions born of ignorance or blinded through some separation from love, instituted by the deceit of all that we place between ourselves and the love that resides in our inner being, I simply would have. Removing every object that casts so long a shadow between the lives we share, simply to recognize that between us there are only the objects of our own expectations, our own desires and disappointments, erected to fulfill voids constructed where love once shone.

I did not for one instant want anyone or any soul to suffer because of me, or for anything they may have done or felt because of me... and though it may sound strange, or peculiar, in that instant all that was important to me was the forgiveness I could give to others, that they be shed from the burden they may carry because of me... the walls and towers erected to forestall the dawn, for nothing else seemed important in the twilight of my own fleeting hour.

That is the truth, and in that moment, that was what I wanted for my final wish, or thought, or gift upon this earth. Meagre as my own footprint has been. I know it sounds strange, but it was purely instinctual... and came from the very core of my heart, I could no longer have stopped this overwhelming instinct than have stopped my own heart, which I believed at that moment was about to stop of it's own accord.

You just don't know until your there baby... It's pointless pretending that you do. But I will say this... All the detritus, all the shabby moth eaten cloth, or silken shimmering regalia we tout as our own, and which we shimmer in this world, simply gets stripped away, in an instant the sham of the egoistic scam vanishes in a puff air... a breath, so close, it's warm vapour is the brother of death. But then... I knew this anyway!... because this isn't the first time I have been there.

And it isn't about being this or that, a better soul or a worse one... All those judgment calls that seem so important now... Seem so ridiculous in the face of the truth. All of it seems ridiculous in the face of love.

The timeless epiphanic moment, in which you realize that things are acausally connected across eons, and that your minuscule grasp of what is really going on, and your attempt to make meaning out of your life, is simply a perspectival trick, and all the judgment calls you make, about your life and others lives are simply created and generated by a mind that is indoctrinated with a partial understanding of where it stands in the greater scheme of things. Indeed, even within its own evolution as a soul...

The entire making deals with this, or that, or pretending we have any grip on the importance of our lives, and associations with others, that have come into our lives, are simply mirages of humanistic hubris. Men and women, playing God, with our minuscule perceptions of reality... Seeing the world through the eyes of an ant, and speaking our truths as if those truths were the universal truth of all creation... vanity!... Shameful and humorous vanity!

But what in the end is not vanity, is the love that courses through your own soul, because in the end, everything else gets stripped away, everything you cling to, burnt, including everything you think you know about what is going on, and why it happened the way it happened. The world is more vast, and the associations and meaningful connections we make are more complex than we could ever comprehend.

In the end.... all that is left, is Love.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Opiates of Oblivion

- The Opiates of Oblivion-

When all the world has been travailed,
what can a man refuse in the trembling hour?
The ripening bud of her gaze, the unfurling flower.
As the linchpin of his love tumbles through his heart,
unlocked by a glance, a heated lance to his soul,
What can a man do but fall?
A journey of a thousand lifetimes,
crushed beneath her wall.

How do I unhear this call?

What choice have we, but to bear it...
Or sink ourselves in the opiates of oblivion...

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Another Mans Sorrow

-Another Mans Sorrow-

If I could have reached out to that young man, reading lines from an old mans eyes, the sorrow of passing lives, snuffed out in an instant through those bleak manifested lies. I would have taken his hand, and spoken softly with eyes fixed, a gaze unbroken, and simply said: 'Remember, it all means more than you will ever know, even if at times it may not seem so. Be careful as you go, and try to learn how not to walk in another mans sorrow.'
  
© Richard Michael Parker 2013

A Living Gift

-A Living Gift-

Wandering through the cemetery yesterday, whilst I walked towards the hospital, not sure if I was going to make it there, I got to thinking about what a life means, surrounded by all those stones. Wondering if I had achieved all that I had wanted to achieve... taking a few photo's while I had the opportunity... forever the opportunistic artist.

It was cold and sunny, and my little angel shone with a dazzling lustre in the crisp sunlit air. She, and a few other things, suddenly struck my eye, and I guess a certain realization came upon me, as it so often does in such moments. The realization that the real gifts we leave are not the bridges of stone or mountains of metal that we build, or even the organizations, the rocks and stones we move about us, but rather the hearts we have inhabited, the intangible fleeting moments, where one soul has communed with another. Where one heart has spoken gently with some other, whose rhythm and rhyme has met with our own in that instant of time.

So that the earth, or the eyes that see it, barely recognize the footprints we have left behind, barely notice the coming and going of each soul as they have lived. Yet, it is the passing of the flame which is the true gift. The flickering light that passes between hearts, between souls, eyes opened to one another, so that the soul of each becomes one within the soul of the other. And though it may seem as though the tangible remnants of a life are meagre or as nothing, or even if it be mountains that we have moved, the truth, is that in the subtle communion of that moment, a moment in which we have shared of our true selves, we leave an indelible footprint upon the soulful road of another.

Lives made all the richer for the passing of that flame, the evolution of each, enriched in those heartfelt steps, moving ever forward, bolstered and encouraged by that communion. So that often the measure of our lives is completely intangible, as we effect the world in ways we could never imagine, simply by being, through the sincerity and authenticity of who we truly are.

We effect the world as a living entity, and we connect with other lives, displaced from our own by many miles or many years. Generations may pass, before the seemingly intangible meeting of hearts and minds, souls, that open to one another in an instant of time, effect each-other, though vastly removed from that initial communion. Lives, affected by our being, through the quality of our existence and intimacy of that communion.

The recognition of a shared existence, often removed from one another by generations, and vast distances in time and space, and completely intangible in material terms, unrecognized by sentient eyes. Life, this living gift, each soul offers to another, is a thread in a fabric of time, a weave upon a tapestry, so vast, that in the blessing of that gift our own lives extend themselves far beyond anything we may imagine. The meaningful associations we forge with those who enter our lives, and are themselves a part of an extended tapestry of existence, that have preceded them, progress further to touch still more lives, in ways we can scarcely conceive.

These connections would and could never have happened without us, no matter what we may conceive of our own worth and the worth of the tangible material we may leave behind. For we are part of the great panoply of existence, and because of this truth, intrinsically and irrevocably valuable. The inviolability of this truth is that our worth is not in the things we have left behind, but in the hearts we have touched, the souls with whom we have communed, and the quality with which we have existed.

Each courageous moment of sincerity, of authentic vulnerability, is more profoundly precious than we can ever comprehend. It should never be forgotten, that our legacy is first and foremost one of the soul, and it's worth is measured through the sincerity of our communion. For it is this, that is passed as a living gift, to lives, enriched, not just within the circles of those we have known, but to all who will be touched through that communion, across the vast reaches of space and time, for the gift of life, ultimately, is in the passing of that flame.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Scarlet Shore

-The Scarlet Shore-

Bright scarlet,
bristled against the shore,
the sonorous whisper of the sea
languidly seeping between the green,
trees, a canopy of silence,
swimming in the breeze.
An ancient song,
a timeless air of birds and bees.

The surging rush,
the cool crush of salted flesh,
sizzling, drenched and enmeshed.
Soft moaning thighs,
wrapped around each melting sigh,
muffled amidst these yielding lips,
the soak of warm tongues,
awash in a licking tide,
these rolling hips, crushed inside.

This torpid sun,
that slowly rocks the fevered brow,
seeps between the cracks,
languid, slow, and now.
Sparkling in your florid eyes,
wavelets, teased upon the shore,
the suckled lips of soaking mouths,
quivering within this trembling roar.

An intimate repose,
caught within this moment.
The fevered sands of time.
Your fingers locked in mine,
the grip of loves fomenting rhythm and rhyme,
slips between these dripping hands.
The writhing hourglass,
dishevelled and tanned.

Sundown,
a gulls fading call,
smooth and warm against my breast,
a treasure, troved from out a pirates chest,
shot through with scarlet waves,
a timely reminder of natures ancient ways.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013 

A Still Life

-A Still Life-

What is a poet without words?
No paint upon the palette knife.
A crusty cake of stony blues.
The frozen peaks of a still life.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Without The Cost

-Without the Cost-

More joy,
More tears,
More fury,
More fears,
More brokenhearted rent capitulation,
Than any word could express.
The hours of anxiety,
The days of endless misery,
The forlorn degradation of resignation.
The cold sweats.
Waking in the dim twilight of your passing,
The endless nights, silently awaiting the dawn,
The furious anger wrapped up in scorn,
The melting ray of this suns mocking peace,
Hidden behind these curtains, a closeted release.
The razors edge,
The morbid dread of loss...
What meaning could there be without the cost!

© Richard Michael Parker 2012



Artwork: Isaiah Stephens

God Paints Between The Cracks

God Paints Between The Cracks

 'Grow your blossoms, blossom!... Don't let them wilt in an untilled field. For they were sown in your life to bring joy to all who would bathe in their aromatic wonder, and dance in the fever of their hue. Only you, can choose as to whether they blossom or wilt. For the field is your own. It has been furrowed, ploughed and sown. So that now, in these vital winds, the wild seed, swept between the gaps, settles into each weathered groove. For God paints between the cracks.'

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Green from Sami Takieddin on Vimeo.
 

Come Be A Tree...

-Come Be A Tree-

Come be a tree...
Come sway lugubriously in the summer sun.
Come play in a zephyrs touch, at close of day,
when all the work is done.
Come drop your leaves upon my feet,
to stand, naked and replete,
proud in the winter snows,
a velveteen squirrel snugly nestled upon your nose.
Come drop your acorns into my earth.
Grow these wild sapling loves,
deep in the silent belly of my girth.
That we might flame upon this wild sky,
an iridescence of cupidity,
entwining green limbs,
enmeshed in fiery autumnal hues,
the majestic ruddy screams,
spitting upon the cool reach of those ancient blues.
Come float into a dream,
the snowy mountain pass whistling in a breeze,
the restive silent comfort of the midnight frozen tree.
Come rustle in the wind,
when the lark sits proudly upon your bough,
the golden dew sparkling in loves dawning sky;
Come fly, when springs budding blossom,
pollinates your hair in a swirling heady dance,
the supple maelstrom of this dizzy dappled trance.
Languidly creaking in a sunlit kiss.
The moon rising between each silent limb.
A nightingales song enraptured in bliss.
Come ride through the seasons in silence,
to watch the world swim in giddy motions.
The somnolent dipping cycles,
of our own deep emotions.
An ant crawling upon a limb.
Come be a tree...
The elegant timeless simplicity,
each breath, a pause,
a gentle swing upon a bough,
these cycles of eternity,
the simple truth,
of me and you,
and I in Thou.
 
© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Wrapped in the Swaddling Cloth of Innocence

-Wrapped in the swaddling cloth of innocence-

Stultified in this absurdity,
caught in the ragged ends of this storm,
branches bedraggled and naked,
the leaves tattered and torn,
scattered upon the walkway of this love.
Seated upon the old bench,
beneath the corpulent trees,
resting, I find a kind of ease,
some sinew of peace, a remnant of holiness,
left over from the fire in that breeze.
The sun, ekes its weary way,
making skeletons upon the ground,
as they cross our path in the dead of that sound.
Turn your face my love,
that I may not see the tears,
the constancy of all those faltering years,
the running game,
torn from the pages of your book,
read a thousand times in the darkness,
the silence of the shadows moving in time,
to the passage of our sun.
Come, sit a while, hold my hand,
watch the moonlight bathe our world
in her silver balm,
the restive calm of gentle limbs,
wrapped in the swaddling cloth of innocence.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012