Category: Barry Long

  • Poor Fellow

    By Barry Long

    You will not die when you die, poor fellow.
    God, how I wish that you would.
    Death is not won so easily.
    The greatest good takes the greatest effort
    And your clamour is to live in peace.
    Die before you die
    Or you will be stuck with yourself
    Once again.
    I have found death
    But as the hunter not the hunted.

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  • The Spider

    By Barry Long

    The spider of emotion diligently spins her web
    Urgently repairing every tear
    That might reveal the truth
    Since her life depends upon the web.
    The web the mind
    The spider the tireless emotion
    Keeping mind intact
    Against the piercing rips and tears
    Of love and truth occasionally perceived
    Revealing no thing (not even Spider)
    Behind the web.

     
    Web and spider
    (horror of the pleasant walk through nature’s garden)
    Rise into existence
    From that potent place of mind and self
    Within us pleasant people.

     
    Destroy not nature’s spider or her web
    They are but symbols
    Of one mighty righteous whole
    The garden of the earth.
    Destroy instead
    The spinner of all wickedness within
    The spider of my self
    That spins the web of anguish
    And does not see the whole
    The venomous humanised spider
    Spinning inner dreams and dialogues
    Of how the garden should be
    Yet not daring to contemplate the hole
    The exit from the web
    Rent by love and truth
    Lived.

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  • Pale Frog

    By Barry Long

    Pale frog
    Cramped still in tadpole garments
    Waiting for the kiss of life
    To turn you into Prince Charming.
    Perhaps the wicked witch herself will die
    And loose your spell
    Or the maiden princess
    Who shares your garden but fears the pond
    May awake
    Bathe naked
    And smile just once in love and passing
    At your uncomeliness.

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  • I

    By Barry Long

    I do not exist
    But the existence of I is you
    You do not exist
    But the existence of you is me.
    Without me there is no you
    And there is no existence.
    Except I.
    Who do not exist.

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  • The Master’s Score

    By Barry Long

    A screech, I am
    Out of which
    Life makes a melody.
    Time-honoured am I
    In my moment,
    My brief place,
    Scored by some Mozart
    Somewhere
    And played by the pangs and pains
    Of the earth.
    Screeching again I am
    Abominable poetry …
    But dare I,
    Can I,
    Judge the Master’s Score?

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  • The Garden

    By Barry Long

    Come
    I will show you a garden
    Where nothing dies
    My respite for you
    When day is done.

    Come, I will take you with me
    Hold my hand
    My love.
    Precious, faintest, sweetest heart
    Love’s subtlety
    Like purple dust
    Afloat in light.
    Elusive love lay in my heart
    So light I felt it absent
    So gentle sweet.
    My pen as heavy as my words
    Inadequate as my tongue
    To name the namelessness of love.

    Can I be so loved, so intimately, so divinely loved?
    Is it possible for anything to care as much as love?

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  • The Transcendental Realisation

    By Barry Long

    Nothing.
    Nothing but I.
    Origin
    Black, undistinguished, indistinguishable
    Being Outside the world
    Static
    Forever aware
    Forever
    Forever present
    Forever unformed
    Forever unable to tell the secret of My being.
    Yet, not from withholding
    For I am Origin
    Source
    Beginning
    Everness
    Now
    It.

    Nothing.
    I am producing Nothing.
    And you, My Love,
    Are producing Everything.
    As Nothing
    I am Supreme Being
    Origin indescribable
    No-suchness
    A mystery
    Of non-stirring, knowledge, ceaseless undetectable
    presence.

    I am Origin of all action and sound
    And My agency, the lesser being, the creator
    Is Love.

    Love is all.
    Life is the action of Love
    Love’s business
    The never-ending tireless endeavour to enact My Being
    To describe with creation what I am
    And lovingly creating what I am not.
    Love fails.
    Love always fails, yet never tires of failing
    (Even now, Love groans at its own inadequacy to
    express in words the Truth I am.)

    This the impossible, hopeless task of love
    The reason why love lives to serve
    Yet must forever remain sufficient only to itself, that task.
    Love is the only means I have
    And the only means to Me
    Nothing.

    I am producing Nothing.
    An unimaginable substantive endingness
    More real than even Love.
    I am the space, the pause, the perimeter of sound and
    form.
    I enable Love’s beauty to be seen.
    Where All and the Nothing meet is Man.

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