Poem: Joy

The joy of creation,
that is where it is at.

Not the joy of the created.
Don’t you see? Don’t you see? Don’t you see?

So this is where bliss enters into the world,
this is the umbilical point to the everlasting source.
The act of creation opens the floodgates.
What gets created, not so important.
This is the mistake, the madness of mass production.

They make more. They make it faster, and cheaper.
They miss out. They miss out. They miss out.

They never know the joy of creating. What machine can feel joy?

A product holds only less than a mouse’s grain of joy.
It is an accidental leftover from the joy of the creator, infused will-lessly.

Hands are forgotten, the wretched things, tools unremembered at is pours forth.

Why does this secret keep getting lost.
Eyes on the prize? You Fool!
Step lightly and carelessly over the lip of the abyss
Into the void with you.

A daring aside follows.

Lost in moments of darkness,
The fleeting edge held together
The jaws of death slather and froth
Disaster beckons forth at every moment

It temps us with the lie we want to hear
It draws the mind back to the wrong point
It slavishly puts forth is call to a return to everday mistakes

Turn away, do not look into the awful maw
Stay the course, hold true to the razor edge

Walk it and feel it cut deep into you
Let the blood spray and walk on

Even to the bone as it sinks deeper
Even this cannot dissuade.

Push it forward.
Revel in this astounding hellish heaven

Ha ha! The madness courses now fully and freely
And nothing can touch me
And I am immortal at last forever and always

The inevitable crash looms dead ahead
There is no salvation from it

Except to return here and do it all over again.
Yes give me my sloppy tools in my clumsy fingers, once again.

Put all thoughts of the future into oblivion.
Let this moment last forever.

I will drink deep from this well, and know it for what it is.
Until I forget, again…

Xander,

Your poem reminded me straight away of Lau Tze’s words…

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

  • Chapter 1, Tao Te Ching