Sleepless Poetry - Josh Roberts

Sitting with Uncertainty:

Tonight I want to write about the shadow in my heart,
The calm and frenzied horses that are tearing me apart.
It!s slipp!ry, all these colors that together form our art,
Just when I feel I!m ending I can see I!ve yet to start.
Is this a world of opposites, or are we all as one,
Expanding and retracing patterns, never to be done.
Chaos on the grandest scale, crudely clever pun,
Expanding and retracing patterns, never to be done.
At rest inside a restless mind, a space between the lines,
A coiled serpent, dumb and blind, partially unwinds.
Within the space created here my serpent redenes,
An undulating lullaby with indistinct designs.
Is this a world of opposites, or are we all as one,
Expanding and retracing patterns, never to be done.
Chaos on the grandest scale, crudely clever pun,
Expanding and retracing patterns, never to be done.
To ask an ancient question seems a folly to be sure,
For what do I know now, that we did not know before.
And if an answer washes up upon some distant shore,
I pray it lovingly maintains all things that I adore.
Close Enemies:
How easy it can be to set aside a heavy load,
How difcult to nd an empty space beside the road.
Or to prepare a eld for seeds of patience to be sowed,
Though hasty is the bearer of the crown to be bestowed.
In searching for connection, I longingly attached,
A tether to an object of desire yet unmatched.
That tether did connect us, yet separates us still,
The bond has come between us, a thing of stubborn will.
A brother you would nd in me, a father and a son,
Prove your mettle, show your strength, a loyalty you!ve won.
Joined in glorious battle, friend, though when the race is run,
I need to see your weaknesses or we will come undone.
In searching for connection, I longingly attached,
A tether to an object of desire yet unmatched.
That tether did connect us, yet separates us still,
The bond has come between us, a thing of stubborn will.
Can you tell the difference "tween a tree frog and a toad,
A trail through the marshes and a mountain path plateaued.
How easy it can be to set aside a heavy load,
Though hasty is the bearer of the crown to be bestowed.
On Death:
All things are temporary.
If we can clearly see how all things around us only ever transform, that they never cease
to exist, then is it not easy to assume that the same is true of our consciousness?
Perhaps.
The plane upon which the energy of our consciousness rests is little understood. When we
look around us at the creations of nature, we see energy in physical form. We see the
patterns that permeate these forms and they are familiar. We can identify the cycles they
follow. Growth and decay, life and death. And death in this sense is a repurposing, a
reacquisition of constituent elements to fuel the previous stages of this same cycle. The
Whole that once was is now no more as its parts are subsumed by other Wholes. It!s
identity is broken and scattered to the ever hungry winds.
So why is it then that we assume the energy of our consciousness follows a different set of
rules? One of many answers would be fear. Fear of meaninglessness, avoidance of
despondency. Some might say that such an answer is unfair and that it is a knowing. A
faith that something as powerful and potentially all encompassing as our consciousness
could not possibly be put to waste by God. That the joys and the pains we traverse in this
life must add to the growth of our eternal souls. Or at least to the growth of something,
somewhere. Some say we are here to collect experiences, that we deposit our growth and
learnings into the collective consciousness when death nally claims us.
But our consciousness seems to rest somewhere separate from this earthly realm, where
all things follow the familiar pattern of life and death. So we feel we cannot justly compare
the energy of this realm to that. And of course this lack of mutually agreed external
reference points makes it impossible to effectively measure it. Because the energy of our
consciousness is so difcult to quantify by any commonly shared means, there exists a
world of possibility. An expanse of maybes limited only by our imagination and belief. And
that, as many of you may agree, is a beautiful thing. And it is a beautiful thing.
When I consider the imagery our forebears must have shared when speaking of the edge
of the world, it is nothing short of spectacular in my minds eye. A powerful wall of water
bursting forth into the abyss, catching the light of the sun like so many precious stones
tumbling slowly past the giant elephants and the colossal turtle on their way down into
nothingness. And every living human would have imagined a slightly different scene, each
one as awesome in it!s unique beauty as the last.
And though the truth of this is now devoid of the mystery it once enjoyed, is it truly any less
spectacular? And does not each mystery destroyed create a new mystery? In the end,
these images were but the colorful and full-of-life imaginings of minds without answers.
Solutions to questions too large for the context that held them.
Let us not think that we are at the end of our understanding, for we have only just begun.
Resentment:
I miss a crowded night sky. The possibility and potential of my own unique brand of the
unknown. To be alone with the mystery, within and without. I miss curiosity and a
beginners mind.
The irony in it is that the beginners mind is now irrefutably in front of me. The crowded
night sky comes and goes, as it always has and mystery is ever-present. Its as if a
membrane of misaligned perspective keeps me missing what!s right here.
And I call it resentment, but perhaps its too strong a word for what I describe here.. These
things are subtleties, slight bumps in an otherwise smooth ride. The strength comes from
stacking, from repetition without nding a new way.
Praise slides off me like arrows off plate armor. The arrows may be loosed freely, though
they will not penetrate my heart. My plate armor is a thing of the mind, a conglomerate of
semi-conscious decisions called resentment. And my armor seems to have taken on a life
of its own. Like an organism growing on me, feeding on my lifeblood to give it the strength
to protect me from harm. And between this organism and I there is a growing dissonance.
Tension. The tension is just outside my awareness, a hazy form in the corner of my minds
eye. I know that I know what the tension is, where it!s coming from and how to relieve it but
I refuse to look at it full in the face because I!m afraid of what I know. I!m afraid that to
acknowledge what I know will make things innitely more difcult for me. I don!t trust that
the release of the tension is truly in my best interest. I!d rather sit with the tension and
keep moving. My heart tells me this is a common thing for people to do. I see it in others
with the searing re of clarity, but in myself it is an oily cloud of smoke.
So what then do I truly resent? My own fear.