Unless the seed...

https://songsfromtheriver.com/2020/05/31/unless-the-seed/

Grateful

Grateful

Ah, for so long I have tried to be the poet extraordinaire

But, alas, my books just sit on the shelf

Not going anywhere

I made all sorts of excuses

It’s the modern day

No one reads poetry anymore

There has to be a video

There has to be a meme

Vacillating from one to another extreme

I have finally realized

I’ve tried too hard to be someone I’m not

Do that for too long and your soul will rot

To the point where even you notice the smell

The stench, the pain, there is no gain,

The wrench

That finally breaks the bolts from the tightening

Then comes that feeling that is all too frightening

The feeling of panicked disarray

The feeling of floating in outer space

Knowing you’re a million light years from anywhere

And nowhere is where you’ll always be

Sure that floating feeling is free

But freedom without any boundary is nothing less

Than death by lonely wandering

And that death is very, very slow

How do I get past this vaudeville show?

I do not know, I do not know

This seems to be my favorite answer

More and more popular it becomes by the day

I’m told to read, I’m told to pray

Yet silence has forever greeted me

I wish I could be more upbeat

Instead of this deadpan sullen

Yet there are days where these perceptions must come forth

There are nights where the soul is broken

There are lives in which living is not seen

I think it’s time to find the green

The life that comes from seeking light

But I’ve said that all before

It’s almost become a daily chore

Not the majesty and the mystery that it should

I sit and stare at a piece of wood

Waiting for it to save me

Can I find true life within a tree

Is it living

Or is it dead?

These voices go on and on inside my head

I could probably go on like this forever

So before I drone on into a cumbersome blather

I am simply going to stop

To say

Thank you for this day

kdc, 6/8/19

Musings on Sunday (Unfinished)

Musings on Sunday (Unfinished)

We often feel we must have something to say

We must have this profound wisdom

This answer

And we must have it now

Give it now

Know it now

Yet we really live in the midst of a vast universe

Unknown

Untouched

Never experienced

Still we think we know it all

We know nothing

Nothing at all

Our knowledge and our opinions are infinite

Yet they are a microscopic drop

An atom

A proton

A quark

In the midst of millions of galaxies

So who am I to judge my brother

Who am I to tell my sister she is wrong

Who are they to tell me who I am

Who I am not

None of us have the right to judge another

None of us hardly know ourselves

Much less what drives the heart beats of all the others

See, I live in the midst of great distractions

I can’t join one thought to another

Without an interruption in the mix

It’s a miracle these sentences come forth

These thoughts born right in the middle of chaos

Might simply be a picture of how life really is

I try to shut down the noise

But the noise is just too voluminous for me

Waves come crashing in from everywhere

Now my thoughts are lost in a sandy mix of dark frustration

Grating against my soul

Creating thousands of pearls

I put on the piano music

Listened through the earphones

So that I don’t pay back evil for evil

I consider the others

Even though there is no consideration for me

It’s the way I’ve always been

It’s the way I’ll always be

So here we are

Alone in the world again

I know life is meant to be lived with others

It’s not to be lived alone

But I can’t take all the delusions
I simply want to live in my home

Being what I am supposed to be

Where was I before all of this droning

Who was I before all the stoning

My broken bones and bruises might be healed

The memories still reside

I think I must make the journey inside

To see the one who walks the earth

The one who sees the heavens

The one who lives in the both and the and

The one who sees the purpose in the sand

The one who sees the emptiness of the time

And all its fullness thereof

I don’t think this will ever be finished

4/7/19

MishMash

MishMash

My logic and beliefs have worked me into a place

Where my own life is totally meaningless

I felt the inky black tar pulling me in

A small black hole here in the arms of the Milky Way

Small, but still no light could get through

Somehow wakefulness pulled me out of its throes

I still could smell the scent of woes

Lingering amongst my skin

I have no friends, I have no kin

Here in this place of foreign apparitions

Today I touched the black partition

That separated us from the world of the sane

The fright still grasps my soul, my feet 

Still know the sense of being the head

I hope I never know the dread

Of feeling overwhelmed again

“Happiness doesn’t come from what you have

It comes from what you are.”

Hmmmm

If that is the case I might be great

Or I might be on the path to destruction

Dismembered by the power of a gravity so great

No atom may enter untouched

“If I have many material goods, I will not have time to care

For the things I really love, then I lose my freedom.”

There is such goodness that comes from other worlds

Maybe this trip to the black holes of my own

Is showing me its time to look out to the Cosmos

To find the diversity of the light in the stars

I’m finding myself more in balance now

I’m finding the air to breathe

I think it’s time to sit here quietly

Taking the moments for simply enjoying the sun

I don’t know if I’ve lost or won

But I’m learning I cannot know it all

But I surely can let All know me

Beginning Anew

Beginning Anew

It’s frightening beginning all over again

Frightening

But necessary

Often every day

Often every few minutes

I have to start again

Humbly change course to the new

I wish that steady courses were all too true

But alas they are not

Only change is the Rorschach’s blot

That determines whether I dwell inside of sanity

That determines whether I live amongst the ashes of the past

Or the ephemeral mists of the future

Or am I present in the present?

I feel a great and growing dissent

Amongst the souls of my spirit, its armies

Are ready to rise and see what all is good

They are ready to see what all is happiness

Death has reigned for far too long

Death in the form of rules so rigid

That they snap at the slightest breath

Life always seems to erupt through the bricks

The bricks and the concrete cannot hold it back

Life is always placing roots deeper and deeper

Steeper and steeper is it’s climb toward the sun

All I know is that the pursuit of fun

Is leading me toward the meadows

I hear the rivers running toward them as well

I think it’s time to break this shell of a mask that covers my face

I dwell in lonely, in sharp disgrace

no more

5/12/18

Questions

The Questions 

Maybe this is my refusal to leave the tent

Maybe I’m just done

Maybe I simply have no clue 

What is always going on 

Though I have nothing left

Or so it merely seems 

I still sit here amongst the place

Of all my dead and dying dreams

So what now?

What now?

What is to become of all this waiting?

What is the purpose of all this carbon dating ?

What water will I drink from these ancient wells

While the ocean that dwells within me has no wave nor swell?

The questions ripple through the waters

Yet they seem to never return 

I believe they have not struck the cliffs

The mammoth rocks I’ve heard of but I have yet to see 

The things I know are real 

Are the things I never see

Maybe it’s time to follow the questions 

They are like the homing pigeons 

Always knowing where the answers live

The place my heart simply knows as home

Time to roam

With a purpose 

I feel the call within 

To follow 

Yet where is the way?

Where did that ripple go?

That’s ok, I’ll just ask another question 

Because there’s everything that I do not know

The Void

The Void

It is strange to think that emptiness

Can carry such significant weight

How can it have such a powerful impact

Dropping boulders so heavy and great

They leave my heart a crushed up mess

Like grapes trodden on the ground

My heart it yearns for any sound

That would bring some purpose, some meaning

I’m so tired of trying to force the rhyme

I’m so tired of trying to play the rhythm

These damned distractions do so hinder the art

The art of the effortless beauty

But sometimes these fanciful ideas are myth

They contain a truth,  a touch of bliss

But in the end they always fall short of the filling

So I must move on to find the truth that is fulfilling

But still I have yet to find it

I know these facts inside my head are inadequate

They have no colors to paint the hues of the masquerades

They have no tinctures to match the escapades 

Of the ones who live life so completely

But I believe most of these are dead

The skies are dark, the blood is red

And I just sit here in this meandering state

Frustrated more than ever that this heaviness within

Cannot be described with mortal words

Or mortal wounds

The dog is yipping in the bedroom

Reminding me of the mundane

The ritual we all walk, insane

Doing the same thing every day

Without any vivid recollection

Maybe it’s time to stop the vapid reflection

And instead point my heart to a source

A source of everything the universe is made of

A source of everything we’ve never, ever known

We speak of it all as dark matter

Yet we cannot even measure it

Much less give it an appropriate name

Whether we see it or not, it is all the same

For it makes everything in the universe to be different

Diffuse, unique, mystique, eternal

Whether black or grey or red or vernal

I know not

All I do know is that even in the discussion

My emptiness is no more

Time to soar

Stuck Indoors

Stuck Indoors

I think I might just be a honey bee

Who has flown in through the open window, free

Now I find myself in an entirely different world

Flying and buzzing around, searching for something familiar, swirls

Searching for pollen, searching for water

But there is none of that here

Only expensive furniture and carpet and stone and slaughter

As on and on my unseen wings do drone

I am running out of energy seeking for home

I am running out of sustenance

I cannot find the escape

Maybe it is where I first began this journey, behind the dark capes

If I can only find my way back to the sunshine 

K, Duane Carter 3/18/15

Love in the Stillness

Love in the Stillness

I am longing for the stillness

Stillness,

Like the darkened sky against a September moon

Yet here I am at the tides of noon

With all of hell and water beating down my door

This heart within me does so long for more

yet my head is banging against the bricks

Raised up long ago with clubs and sticks

and a thousand useless apparitions

and thousands more useless superstitions

Have overtaken my nights

So now it seems my only plight

Is how many videos it takes to entertain

How many cells can I kill before my entire brain

Finally comes to the point where I can actually be human again

Finally comes to the place where my heart can pulse

Not to mention where there my soul, repulsed,

comes into the pleasures of the meeting

Time is continual, time is fleeting

But to the birds I make my motions

Greetings high with mixed emotions

I stand on a rusting moonshine still

I hear the sound of a whippoorwill

Yet in the midst I know no distinctions

The old, the ladies, the dark, the tinctures

Have all faded into dust

I must, I say, I must, I must

Travel into the realms of timelessness

To hear my heartbeat revel in the winds

“Dear God, would you please stop this meandering.”

I hear the raucous noises daily, the philandering

It is the only music the dirt can hear

Yet I dance to sounds in the atmosphere

Which is why my soul is in stillness

In places dark and unseen

No shiny, metallic, shimmering sheen

But just an overwhelming magnanimity 

Sewn with deliberate humanity

Brings on a dance that shakes the universe

This I will never, ever reverse

Forever forward will I go

Will your heart and soul and being know

Me in this land of fierce contention?

I believe that I must have forgotten to mention

You were with me all of this time

You were the cadence, the voice, the rhyme

That slathered all of my being

In dusts and dances and darknesses bleeding

yet healing all the same

Was found in one vastly simplistic name

Called love

I have found the stillness

I so long for it....

K, Duane Carter 10/30/13

God's Country

God’s Country

I have come into the land of God

I am closer than I have ever been

Yet I have never been further away

It isn’t that my heart has strayed

Rather I am steeped in an aloneness

I’ve never had this before

This pressure that molds and forms

It makes and shapes and recreates

Something I could never have dreamed or imagined

I sense Him coming after me

With a passion that could only compare to a fiery wind

A heat, a power so massive that no one and no thing can stop it

Yet I fell nothing, see nothing, hear nothing

Knowing all the while it is right there behind me

Waiting to surprise me with such an abrupt suddenness

That my rocky heart must crack and bleed

A new one will take its place

Then the stagnant will erase

I have come into the land of God

I simply wait

I simply walk on

To the way where He’s already been

K, Duane Carter 7-28-11

The Wings

The Wings

A stirring…

Oh, I feel a stirring

Just as the butterfly wing brings on the typhoon

The wings of the Spirit are moving; the Wind does resume

Those winds sweep across the universe

He is swooping and soaring and we do the same

When we enter into the glory of the incomprehensible Name

The Spirit’s great talons are sharpened and shine

They pierce all that is yours; they pierce all that is mine

A stirring

A whirring

Now all is blue, All is orange

Shifting, moving, Mystery in bodily and spiritual form

This, this is what is the norm

Are you ready for the twists and turns?

Are you ready for the ride?

Are you ready to fly through the portals and the nebulae?

And gather all of that inside

Simply so it may be released, simply so it might be contained

Simply so that in the desert there can be a pouring of Mighty Rain

Watching the creating, watching what is to be

Sensing, moving, being still

In the place where I am free

I feel the breeze upon my face

K, Duane Carter 1-16-10

Living

New Year’s Song (Living)
Starting fresh, starting new
There’s not much else left to do
But sit here and ponder
Sit here and wonder
But no, no, no that doesn’t go
It only leads my heart to woe
And split asunder
I split asunder
So step ahead, step ahead
Keep on going though the light is red
From all the others that say they’re brothers
But move along, move along
Cause I’m singing freedom’s song
And not another, never another

I’m going high, higher than ever before
Eyes to the sky, and my heart is still begging for more
I say my good-byes, and put my feet to the floor
No pain, no sighs, I’m just knocking on the right door

Going out, going forth, going long, going on
My heart is beating now stronger
I can feel the sunlight coming down hard, coming loud
And the days are now getting longer
I don’t know what to do, what to say, what to feel
Yet my soul has never been better
I don’t have to know anything at all, and I don’t have to know everything
I just have to believe in Your letter

I’m going high, higher that ever before
Eyes to the sky, and my heart is still begging for more
I say my good-byes, and put my feet to the floor
No sad good-byes, I keep knocking on the right door

You may say I’m history, a wanna-be
Or you may say nothing at all
I just ask, and I just seek, only seek, only knock
And into Your goodness I fall
I just fall, and after all
This is everything and anything, and is simply just living to me…

K, Duane Carter 1-2-10