There’s a fish on my ceiling
with a huge eye.
The blade of a hunter
liberates it from its tale.
There is a gong in my insides.
It has begun to vibrate.
The whole world listens,
But only I, her and the earth hears.
To speak of it
without knowing with certainty
that the death of fear
at last approaches.
If there was, if there is,
an ancestor of this heart,
my heart,
who stood last
and allowed fear
to swallow him whole.
If such a man lived.
If such a man lives,
Stand aside, by your leave
Give way!
I surrender my head,
cleaved clean
from its body anchor.
Let this man crush
this parrot of an orb,
and use it for the chum
to set traps,
to catch the rats of thought
that feed from doubt
that linger in lack
That falter and give rise
to this maddening cry
of mediocrity.
The cry of the masses
as they shuffle toward
some imagined security.
As they struggle
with their lack of love.
As they struggle
with their lack of truth.
As they struggle
with their lack of love of truth.
And build upon
the beauty of the earth
Their fear-filled
desires for the known.
When only that which is unknown
can save them.
Why build upon such beauty?
Acres of wasteland
Giant monuments to honor greed
factories of despair
Within this, within this
this sorrow and suffering
this joy and exuberance
I have distilled it all
into a tincture
And I am that drop
into which a thousand ships have sunk
And a thousand more to come
To speak of it
without knowing
with certainty
That the death of fear
at last approaches…
The pebble
that birthed a path
Beyond fear’s horizon
Pick it up!
Poem by Ray Songs (1997)