The Will

The will is such a potent force

It fashions every life

It replicates similitude

In shapes the heart derives

Few tap into its power

Most abdicate the right

Few question their collusion

And environment indict

Through the Open Door

(continued)

Mindscape Seven:

Return to Self

The shackles will hold us as long as they fit

But change can transform us into chrysalis

And pass through this doorway, when into this bliss

Without force each manacle slips from the wrist

Beginning the end

And a new genesis

Through the Open Door

(continued)

Mindscape Six:

Return to Reality

The bite of reality stings to the heart

Our freedom a theory

Our prison of bars

To come to oneself

All our dreams seem a farce

And quaint ideologies fade into dark

But out from the chains steps a being unfettered

And beckons us follow, then walks through the bars

Through the Open Door

(continued)

Mindscape Five:

Escape to Light

Soaring throughout all the star lit creations

Embroidered like gems on a canvas of black

Spiraling orbs synced in cosmic relation

Swirling together in heavenly dance

Then like a scroll

Rolled to together

A black hole

Inhaling the light

Watching matter collapse

Locked in the grasp

Of her gravity’s pull

Take my heart through the open door

Back to the present passed

Through the Open Door

(continued)

Mindscape Four:

Escape to Piety

Rushing Alpine air

Clouds mass at its feet

Bathed in solar flares

Snow capped jagged peaks

Bells in the monastery ring the communion high

Priests chanting grace in Gregorian round

Voices escaping the walls of seclusion

Their echoes rebound off the face of the mountain side

"Keepers of ancient lore"

"Buried the key of yore"

"Locking the corridor"

"Looming behind of the door within a door,"

"Within a door, within a door, within a door. . ."

Tombs of inquisitors

Whitened exteriors

Perjured conspirators

Rotting interiors

Knights of the Holy War

Drunk with the blood and gore

Praying, you prey the more

Who now is conqueror?

Many who said, "Lord, Lord"

Never knew neither nor

Bishop and beast will roar

When kings betray the whore

Scaling the heights of the summit

Projecting above every climb in the boundless expanse

Standing erect up atop of the zenith

The pinnacle shakes at the force of an avalanche

The apex beginning to crumble beneath me

Sends ice shooting shards through the splintering cracks

Compressed time is taking a quantum leap forward

Eroding through rock like a flame melting wax

As clouds move beneath me at speeds fast increasing

The day the night seem a flickering lamp

This is the weakness

My feet have no wings

Let the open door swallow me live

In the deepness yet

Through the Open Door

(continued)

Mindscape Three:

Escape to Honor

The sun through the trees

Laces light in the shade

As a low morning mist

Settles over the glade

Nature echoes the sound

The rhythm of hoofs

Tis' a knight on his quest

Flies a standard of truth

From his lance and his armor

His family crest

Facing the vision

His evil resistance

Far off in the distance

The black knight now issue the challenge

Strokes of death and horror

More blood won't quench the sword

Escaping through the open door

Through the Open Door

(continued)

Mindscape Two:

Escape to Innocence

Dance down the path

Plucking flowers and laughing

Where song fills the air

Like the scent of green grass

After morning dew falls

Stop on the bridge

Over looking the stream

Where reflections appear

As the skipping of stone's

Ever widening rings

The sound of the wind

As it rustles through leaves

Harmonizes with birds

And the music of minstrels

In evergreen woods

Darkness falls

The winds turn cold

In crooked, twisted, knotted, leafless oak

Strange sounds in the forest cry

The eery moon reveals a thousand eyes

Paralyzing fear now thickens

Take me through the open door alight

Through the Open Door: first day of the seven part poem

Through the Open Door

Mindscape One:

Path to Freedom

The powers that be

Would to capture all

But loose through their fingers

The essence of life

That could hold them so fast

In a vacuum of peace

As they tighten their grasp

They fall

True freedoms release

Is an open expanse

In the clearing of mind

As we climb through the ceiling

We enter a trance

Mental focus the key

That transfixes the gravity's pull

Holding me to the earth

As is seen in the distance of being

Ever leading you

Drawing you through the open door

Harmony

The choir sang in unison

The sweetest melody

But how the sound transcended all

When split in harmony

The tenors sang a different strain

The altos contrapuntal

While baritones and sopranos

Sang rounds in loose rubato

Diversity is interesting

In music and relations

For such reveals true harmony

As God’s own vast creations

Pyramid Scheme

Considering investment

In the Elysian Fields

The treasures we can transport

From our mortal harvest’s yields

We must examine things suited

Within spiritual purse

And things that we must leave behind

Which death shall then disperse

We cannot transfer currency

From earthly banks or stores

Material possessions

Are corporeal resource

Utility of passions

Born of instinct have no use

Consuming our desires in the pyre

As refuse

What are the things which endure

With the soul that carry on?

Does not a will infused with love

Eternal glory spawn?

A pyramid cannot protect

In death from plotting thieves

It is yourself you rob

When virtue neglected bereaves

Counting Sheep

Why do we see what is not there?

Is it imagination?

Perhaps it’s based on our facade

Or mass indoctrination

Surely the eyes we’re given though

Are sovereign to the self

And yet we’ll trust a stranger

Who's insistent in his stealth

We don’t like being different

Looking stupid--being odd

Yet ignorance will never be dispelled

By our own fraud

The path to greater wisdom

Thus, is paved with many questions

We cannot hope to know things.

Without probing in dissension

The proud and foolish won’t admit

They’re doomed before they start

They focus on appearance

Rather than on being smart

The trends of mass hypnosis change

As fickle fashions swing

Thus, popular opinion

Is a sheik relative thing

When eyes fix on this pendulum

The soul falls fast asleep

According to this reckoning

There’s no end to counting sheep

Cross-eyed

His one eye fix on his facade

The other on his trouble

But when they crossed each others path

He began seeing double

Love’s Sting

Sometimes we don’t know what we need

But only what we want

How rare when bound in love they meet

Rather than heart they haunt

To this love’s bumps and bruises shall

Provide a balance of things

As sweet on tongue life’s medicine

Can counteract its sting

Thus, sacrifice we ego

To acquire a remedy

And flush lust’s deadly poison

In the flux of lonely greed

Till in the end desire

Is but for the things we need

For what we need is love itself

And Self one with all being

The Dream

To keep one’s eyes upon the prize

One must see beyond skin

Not only that of others

But of one’s own self therein

Divisiveness divides us

What can we hope to glean?

By seeing self in common soul

We keep alive the dream

Rare

The spirit has no genotype

We aren’t defined by race

We can’t constrain uniqueness

To the color of a face

When will we see the common heart

That we as humans share

Allowing for our differences

To prize each soul as rare

Stage Name

I read him in the paper

I saw his name in lights

But when I got to know him

He was nothing like the hype

Away from prying eyes

I found we’d many things in common

The parts he’d play by night and day

Were stage named “Joseph Ahlman”

The real man that I met that day

A lifetime I had sought

I never met myself before

I’m glad we finally talked

Rings

The ground where I was planted

Excelled above the rest

The other trees I left behind

A giant in the forest

Yet too, this true, my open view

Was better than the best

My trunk was thin as trees begin

And twisted in the torrent wind

My branches

My strength was spent

Each day to meet the storm

Yet year by year

New rings appear

And I a better form

The wisdom of a lifetime takes a lifetime

Though one tree may excel above the rest

Still everything must earn each ring

Through seasons in the forest