psalm of myself

 

Named after Whitman's Song of Myself, this began as a journal of daily three-line verses which do not necessarily connect to the adjoining verses but chart an inner journey. Often, stand-alone poems arise, too. This is not meant to be polished, but is more like a notebook, a work in progress...

 

March 2025

Tell me how to love – I lived so long

but do not know – it’s what I want. This heart

forgot to feel but beats with longings

losses, needs and grievances; it does not

beat for you, although I find a chamber

that laments for you, and you and all the yous

I did neglect.

 

Tell me how to lift the siege, take down the walls,

and let them go, the shame and pride and hatefulness

and let them in – the people I would love.

Open and unlock – it’s demolition day!

I love! help me in my lack of love.

Let in the pain and it can tell me what to do.

Let it sink into my heart, and let it hurt

so that it hurts no one I love.

 

Pallas Athene

 

My personal private vampire wakes me: fear,

and sits by the bed in pre-dawn dark.

The child within me cries, ‘Why must he come?’

‘Because he calls up courage,’ whispers

one behind me, in me: Athena

with her owl of wisdom, warlike weapons

and the deadly cunning of the snake. She is

here to arm me, against my own bloodsucking self:

stand up! defend yourself, be not aggressor. Peace

is daily work and not avoiding conflict:

love the struggle, cut-and-thrust, debate;

face down the fear that drains, emasculates.

The Virgin Birth

 

Swimming in a torrent of lust, lost

in the body’s bliss, this earthly delight

seems heavenly, holy. But now I can

turn it around, reverse the direction, swim

like salmon upstream, toward what I choose,

not following gratification

but turning it inwards and upwards

toward: my work, my creation, my people.

I offer this force and receive satisfaction,

not spent or jaded, not spilled on the earth –

perhaps you could call it a virgin birth.

                                     

2025 New Year

On the bleached, washed-out pastel strand of dawn

after the dark-bright night of constellations,

what is this land, this newfound-morning?

 

Adrenangel

 

Waking fearful, early morning,

came my angel close to me

warmed the bloodstream with a glow

brought a flow of feeling through me

holy touch upon my neck brought comfort,

on the head a blessing

offered knowledge: now I know

adrenalin’s not fear which I must flee

or overcome, but is the angel in me

with his power, her fire, their presence,

spreads his wings within my breast that I can face

this life: let’s do this life, with you

my adrenangel, I can do it.

 

In the night then, waking calmly

came the adversary unto me

whispered, argued, proved, persuaded, promised

twisted, beat and threw me,

black-petalled bruises bloom, I’m battered,

thrown down, bested by the beast who stalks me;

he is myself, my true desire, my quest

while it is I, my quisling self, who works with darkness

who enabled this invasion

and when I turn and look him in the face

and hold him in embrace, and think of You

then all is well and life resumes

toward the next encounter..

***

 

Do not practise gratitude: be grateful;

nor try to find contentment: be content;

nor simply pray but be the prayer:

I praise, I thank, I ask, forgive, and give commitment.

In work and life and prayer, I AM – not practising but being.

 

*

from Elysian fields of night, the way

lies through valleys of sorrow, across the abyss of fear

back to the Earth, blue planet of love.

 

*

 

What’s for ye’ll no go by ye,

It’s rising o’er the hill

it comes always to help you

though it can seem for ill

 

What’s for you’ll no go by you

be strong, O anxious heart

What’s for you’s for your best self

and love’s the one you are.

 

 

A knife edge lay at the base of my being –

all my life walking in fear until now, when I fall

it rises to face me, a mirrored blade

that shows me my self.

And though I don’t like the person I’ve been,

there is now below me no knife edge, but ground.   

 

23 April 2024, Shakespeare Day

Blacked-out empty stage, I strut and stumble

my brief hour every day devoid of sound and fury,

echoed whispers signifying nothing.

     *

Do not ask, Who is my friend? but be one.

Do not ask, Who loves me? Love yourself then love some more.

Be love, and find love at your door.

     *

A firebird, love pursued and drove me

with burning wings toward the edge.

I turned and she embraced me.

A flaming dove, love flew with me, all peace.

Easter Day 2024

No birdsong but silence as leaf-buds swell,

no bells or banners, singing or clamour

but uproar within, the urge to unfold.

     *

April is the coolest month, breeding

desire and hope, resolving memory, ripening fruit

of old wasteland winter – harvest in spring.

     *

Racing down the road to ruin, I fell –

tripped by friends who saw where I was headed. Thank god,

hit the ground, foundation of the world.

April 2024, Glasgow

The day has dawned when I will start to be.

Dawn's palette scrawls the sky, ominous announcement

of what’s on its way: blazing, dangerous day.

     *

No more waiting and watching, no more words,

wandering in windswept deserts, wondering which winding path –

today, nouns and adjectives become verbs.

     *

Same old face and hair, eyes and nose and chin,

waistline bulging, arms too thin, ragged fingernails and skin,

but everything is different within.

     *

I want to invite passionate living

into my void, capability into this negative space.

How to make something of nothing? Just do it.

     *

Yet still, the tolling bell sounds in this void,

emptiness is amplified, dolefulness reverberates.

Can hollowness be filled, become holiness?

 

journal

 

January 2024

Days and days and days, the march of days goes on;

another year begins as minutes drag while decades disappear

and time grows strange.

     *

Grey sky, brown trees, black earth; in the cracks

celandine and snowdrops shine gold and white, virginal 

purity rising from dark, holy earth.

     *

A crowd of crows shocked out of its tree

wheels round the canopy, unseen the cause of alarm.

And now my friend is gone, is friend no more.

     *

She loves me not. She loved me. She loves me not.

Picking over scattered petals, six years bloomed and fallen,

the day’s-eye sees what the night-heart feels.

      *

How strangely hard it is to face your Self,

a pain so close, right at the core, I feel I’d rather die.

No wonder humans turn away, avoid, deny.

     *

Tunnels between hedges, flowering or dark,

inviting or grim or striking out under wide fen skies.

Which way is the way? What is my desire?

     *

As buds fully formed shelter in autumn

under dying leaves, and when these fall, weather winter’s blast,

so an unknown future is prepared.

     *

In the fenlands you can see for ever,

till black earth, bright water touch the distant sky.

Sky, earth, water, I, water, earth, sky.

     *

Fordham, Cambs.

My Own Private Jericho

 

When I fled the homosexual life

hiding in the fortress of denial

under banners of propriety

with its basilica of piety

walls excluding otherness

towers of self-righteousness,

I found that nothing stopped the wind of truth,

bearing storms of inner conflict,

or the blazing sunshine of self-knowledge

casting deadly shadows.

 

The attackers blew trumpets

my Jericho tumbled

I came out from the ruins,

fearful and shame-full

discovered my besieger

was an army of angels.

 

Glasgow Green: Left and Centre, the Gorbals and Nelson Monument. Right, the Templeton building

journal

 

And now I do not know her anymore;

I wish her well. That is, I wish that she may find herself,

her true and noble self, the one I knew.

     *

Attachment is the spirit’s refuge

from the hurt of separation from its true home; a scab

on the wound that weeps and bleeds for ever.

     *

Write, write – it is some form of comfort and

distraction from the nearing, fatal edge to which I drift.

Step back, my heart, turn round, be still, say Yes.

     *

Self-hatred is sin as much as self-love.

Do not fall into the one nor float into the other;

gently sway, side to side, slowly forward.

     *

If a single goldcrest, bright crown flashing

in the yew tree’s gloom, can light me up,

then what could earth’s primal force,

vast beyond imagining, arouse in me?

     *

Open the heart and sadness pours in,

hangs heavy, weighted from the centre – soul’s anchor

holding me safe in love’s haven.

 

Railway bridge by the Clyde

R: The People's Palace, Glasgow, November 5th 2019

 

After Whitman's 'Song of Myself'

 

I castigate myself and sing of woe

and what I bemoan you shall suffer,

for on levels deeper and higher,

in the quantum world, we are connected,

indeed are one.

I writhe and wrestle with my soul,

I agonise and writhe with no ease, suffering the rod

on which I am spitted,

desiring to break myself open to joy,

that every atom of bliss may belong to you, too.

 

Whitman, throbbing with life-force, nature’s pulse.

How can I, who trickle, dribble,

fagged out, spent, rise to this?

I know, buried deep, it’s there,

in dammed-up, sealed-in aquifers,

afraid to unleash the power to sing

the song of myself.

                                                      *

The Nelson Monument, Glasgow Green