copyright 2019
all rights reserved
photo: poetic air (12/19/19)
Tag Archives: writing
LuvB2URoad
Miles to go before I can pause
My companion the road holds me safely in its embrace
Asphalt lover unwinding beneath my tires
How I love to be grounded and rolling
LuvB2URoad
Where all is possible in your flowing lanes
Where adventure and possibility are waiting
Where miles evaporate in Mindfulness Meditation
And my muses dance on the pavement
Rubber, creativity, and road are the happy trio
As I grab my voice recorder and take another note
My mind dances so freely between those lines
That make up each lane
I feel it speeding so rapidly no matter
The limits imposed by signs I whiz by or drift past
Ensconced in my moving pod
I playing songs over and over again
As thoughts, images, and lines of dialogue
Burst forth and make their way to my lips
And digital recorder
Transient car and truck cities moving inspire me
As we jockey for position
Swearing laughing and smiling at each other
Though the professionals pay us no mind
For them the road is a thirty-thousand pound office
At times, a million miles left is a welcome break
At others, one mile seems more like swatch of asphalt
Stretching infinitely painfully beyond breaking
Over so many damned hills and equally as damned valleys
Never surrendering a hint as to its hoped-for end
At those times, it is a vapid creative purgatory
Limbo untouched by favorite songs or phone calls
LuvB2URoad as you simultaneously take me
Away from and lead me to wonderful worlds
Corporeal, imagined, and metaphysical
My journey limited only by the gas in my tank
Going, going, going
Flowing, flowing, flowing
While fully swaddled
In my rolling meditation temple
Copyright (c) 2019. All rights reserved.
Photo: Infinity’s Road (Lehigh Tunnel, 2015)
I (The Artist)
I (The Artist)
Know this world
Inside my head
Fueled by dreams
That ignite my soul.
I (The Artist)
Live in worlds
Handed me in bits
And pieces
And dreams
And scents
And distractions
And sounds
And wide-eyed faces
Caught in the passing smiles
And muted giggles
Of joy
I join into
With each flutter
Of my fingers
On this keyboard
On this literary dance floor
From which all my glories
Wash over
All those damned distractions
I must call life.
I (The Artist)
Laugh at my follies
And silly pursuits
As decades pass
And allow me to
Know living
Know connection
Beyond ambition
In those moments when
Word and I and Reader are one
As all those readers know
The union of reader and word
Render all else insignificant.
© 2016 by John David Higham: All Rights Reserved
Photo: Writer’s Paradise (Windfall, 12/18/16)
Who Wants This Truth?
Who wants this truth
That is flowing like a river from the sun
And cascades all over my life
In a nurturing flood
Of Abundance and bliss?
Who needs the touch of the warm wind,
The hypnotic sound of the ocean’s waves,
And the comforting embrace of a lover
In the middle of a raging snowstorm?
Why would I share these worlds?
What might they bring me
Or take from me if I sat only in silence
And said nothing of the thousand worlds
Inside my head?
What should become of those
If each were hidden in a prison of my mind’s making,
Each submitted to a rigorous test before allowed
To grace the glorious light of day?
It reminds me of the dawn:
In the morning, the sun brings the birds and their music
Until the discordant logic machinery disrupts
The day’s symphony.
These things my path consists of;
How many countless times have I lost myself
Justifying my truth to the birds who only care to fly,
The sun that only cares to shine,
The wind that only cares to move about?
They’ve no use for my justifications
And neither do I;
Truth exists sans words and reasons
And requires I justify
Nothing to my strictest judge: me.
My art is my truth,
My truth is my life,
My life is my being,
My being is this poem:
Nothing more I will explain.
© copyright 2016 John David Higham
I Saw Blank Pages
I saw
Blank pages,
Blank books,
Unfinished poems,
Unfinished synopses,
Unfinished pitches;
I saw them everywhere.
I heard
Unspoken dialogues,
Undeveloped characters
Unrealized plots;
I heard them all night.
Too many
Worlds were swirling
In my head;
Waking, dream, creative, mundane
Were all begging, stealing, fighting
For my attention, my energy, my soul.
Too much, too much, too much
In this writer’s world
Being pushed aside ;
Creative opportunities,
Artistic potentials
Flowing like floodwaters
In all directions
Across an infinite plain.
Will my passion shrivel
If I don’t overfeed it?
Will my magician
Cease making his magic?
Will enslavement
And mediocrity
Be mine?
Meditating,
I sought out
The Inner Voice,
The Universe,
The Great Spirit,
The Angels
To direct me.
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Breaths cleansed me…
So loud the answer
Came to my consciousness:
“Temperance,”
“Temperance,”
“Temperance.”
I saw my smile.
I heard my bliss
And the worlds
Stopped swirling
In my head
So that I could once again
Write my soul’s poem.
© copyright 2016 John David Higham
Barbeque with a Side of Poetry (Hold the LSD): Halloween 2015
Ribs,
Pulled pork,
Barbeque chicken
Filled my plate, my stomach.
My ears were filled by
The Eagles singing
About living in
That fast
Lane.
A
Paper
Tablecloth
Was my Tabula Rosa,
A
Crayon
Was a pen,
Was then MY pen.
Barbeque with poetry
(Hold the LSD):
My soul, gut
Full.
I smiled,
Seeing words
Dancing across
The brown paper.
Was
All so
Funny, so
Nicely surreal.
A blissful journey:
Barbeque and poetry
(That was now my LSD).
Muses dancing with
Me in Callears as
I ate, indulged
With these
Folks.
The
Quiet
Couple
At the next
Table, enjoying
Their Texas Briskets
As I watched their meal,
Watching their hands
Talk with forks
And nodding
Their heads
(A “Yes”
Now).
There’s
The family:
Dad, Mom, Sis,
And Sis gazing at
Their menus. Sis One
Has a Smartphone and
Is again checking
For some thing
Soon ignored
As Mom
Talks.
And then
The Eagles sang,
The background music
Like a lyrical invitation
For my crayon pen
To dance out
Words.
Whilst
My world
Was prepared
For Halloween,
For Smartphones,
I was just living poetry
And looking beneath
The masks all over
My world today
(Again, again)
As I ate ribs
And was.
My
Poetry:
My mask.
My worlds:
My salvation,
A perfect balance.
Writing is straddling
Both waking and dreams
Both thinking and feeling
Both movement and stillness.
Barbeque, tunes, and poems
Amidst plastic plates
Will eternally
Kick ass.
When My Inner Wind
When my Inner Wind
Is no longer yelling
And I’m no longer
Pulling at this world
With all my letters and words.
When my hands
Are reaching for the sky
And I watch my fingers
Turn into sparkling dust
Woven into the rainbows.
When my lungs
Fill with more than air
And my thoughts stop
Stopping me.
When I become my dreams
And my prayers become buffalo
Bringing me abundant lightness.
When I see The Angels dancing
Just beneath my bedtime ceiling
And my eyes become otherwise useless.
When my minutes and hours mean nothing
And I am pulled away
From all those titles, histories
And objects that had defined me.
When my soul’s eyes open
Infinitely within each moment,
Seeing the subtly of the
Inner child inner breeze
And I allow all worlds
To flow through
Me one letter at a time.
When I am the loyal dog
To me and those on my path
That I may sound warning barks
As strangers approach
And I embrace their scent.
When innocence returns
Like a cascade of future recollections
And now empty past predictions
Moving beyond my intuitive self.
When meanings becomes meaningless,
Thoughts become music, and
Work evolves into whimsical play.
Then, and only then
Will my Inner Wind
Gently embrace you,
Gently embrace the many me
Without either of us knowing it.
Then is only here and now.
See The Hierophant
Is upside down…
Montreal (Stuck)
Montreal (Stuck)
By John David Higham
Traveling to Montreal in dreamland,
I lived a life of possibilities then;
Of a spacious home in which I wandered about
In the early morning light
As the sun arrived, illuminating mansions and skyscrapers.
Meals were made as my family gathered;
Stories and jokes retold.
Then, morning arrived
Bringing in the mundane waking world
As annoyance rapidly blossomed.
Stuck:
A thousand times yes into maybe into no into never, never, never
As possibilities dropped from the sky as if leaden flocks of birds
That brought their lifeless heaviness into my heart.
Stuck
So quickly the ground beneath my running feet softened,
Swallowing me up to my waist,
My every movement hastening my inertia.
Ones are bad now and I see them all around me:
Tasks daunting, even the pleasurable ones.
People annoying, even the intriguing ones.
Obligations overwhelming, even the simplest ones.
Stuck
Stuck
Stuck…
Might I be still and surrender to the quicksand of my thoughts
Creating perfect reasons to become even more daunted, annoyed, and overwhelmed?
Going neither left or right, forward or backward?
I embrace this muck clinging to my soul;
My mind continues producing multiple webs
Of knotted tangles that form a dark soaked fabric
Now covering my head as I submerge further into my living grave.
Who has done this to me, I wonder.
How did this evolution take place?
Such useless questions give rise to nothing.
I am nothing when stuck.
I am not serene, I am not alive.
Stuck is not stillness, but freezing.
Freezing is not surrendering,
But the soul’s suicide.
I go back.
I go back to Montreal,
Returning to the feeling I was
When I looked out and watched the sun begin
The city’s day; the dream world’s breakfast
Filling my senses with anticipation of nourishment.
A stir of amusement passes through my consciousness like a leaf drifting by on the wind.
I am the leaf.
I am the wind.
I am the muck…
And, then my soul breaks free;
It dances
As my poem makes the birds
Once again fly and returns me
To Montreal…
Dear Rain, What Dreams Do You Give Me This Day?
Dear Rain, What Dreams Do You Give Me This Day?
By John David Higham
Dear Rain,
What dreams do you give me this day?
Shall I
Sit nude among your drops
And
Allow your chill to cover my skin
As
You journey from cloud to grass?
Shall I be still
In
The world you are watering
And
Be content to hear
Only
Your song against
The
Remaining leaves
And
Barren fields?
Dear Rain,
What muses might you send
As
You moisten my eyelids
And
Make me blink
As
I gaze upward
And
Re-enter dreams
Evolving
Inside my corporeal being?
Mantra into mandala
Moving across Dear Rain’s horizon
One letter at a time
Like a cosmic prayer wheel.
I know
Its meanings beyond mere words,
As drops of enlightenment and insight
Gently fall from the sky.
Dear Rain, what poems will you give me this day?
What verse
Might
I receive from you,
Might
Flow from you
Through my soul
To
My body
To
My mind
To
This page in my world?
Listen as Dear Rain’s pace quickens,
As
The sound of wind
Dances
It against the window’s glass
And
I accompany that tune
With
My fingers loving the keyboard.
Dear Rain, thank you for this poem today.
Thank you for the gifts
Of creativity,
Of here,
Of now,
Of being…
Morning Arrived Cold
Not quite Saturday,
Sunrise was late.
Dreams faded away.
Morning arrived cold.
Leaves now brown,
Grass dew-soaked.
Dishes needed cleaning.
Fatigue’s surprise visit
Paused The Matrix.
Poems were incomplete,
Essays partially read.
Meditation only contemplated.
Morning arrived cold.
Time of without,
Of no longer;
Not of loss,
Not of wanting,
But an intermission.
John David Higham 