poems payne alan watts

JUST THE DANCE: Poems inspired by Alan Watts

What You Don’t Get in Church

It has nothing to do with the thoughts that bring results we want. Pulling at our seatbelts. A chronic feeling that sees. If you feel your ears, you have an organ that is sick. You are not in your own way. Optic nerves in the back of our skulls, like the awareness that sees the futility of seeing. I am impotent. I am a real problem. I should be different. I am a heart.
I am everybody. I am awake. I am in the world. I am selfish. I am in love. I pretend to love.
I love the Lord and my neighbour. But I don’t. I am in love against. I am trying. This religion.
Changing. Satori. Mystical. Moksha. What you don’t get in church.

The Chatter in the Skull

The breath runs.
If we will it to and
if it wills on its own,
the breath breathes
the way it wants to.

I breathe because
I am doing it, just as
I am walking and talking,
just the same. I am doing
it and it is happening to me.

Awareness, and the hard and
fast division. All one happening.

What You Cannot Help Naming

Let them go. Let your ears hear
whatever they want to. Without judgment,
it’s all just sound. I want you to listen to me.

To this poem. To what the brain understands
automatically. The sound. The experiment.

What you cannot help naming.

Thinking About Thoughts

My self and the universe.
There is no real difference.

A basic inseparability. Silent.

The interminable chatter.
Thinking compulsively.

Talking to ourselves. The first sign of madness.

Thinking about thoughts.
Living entirely in the world of symbols.

The only reason, meditation has none.

In the Mind’s Eye

It’s amazing what doesn’t exist in the
real world. There are no events. Nothings.
A marvellous system of describing. Picked
out stars in the skies. Constellations in the mind’s eye.

Stop Talking to Yourself

There is no purpose. There is no arrival. There is no journey that
has a point. There is only playing. That is the only point.

The discovery of an immediate moment. The future, my friend,
never comes. There is only now. Stop talking to yourself.
Stop looking for tomorrow.

Meditation is no grim duty. Religion is no grim duty. We
do it because it is good, not because it is good for us.

Watching the Happening

Thinking inside is automatic, but repression is not.
As you hear, simply listen to them as the general noise.

Cars going by and birds chattering outside the window.

Your own thoughts. The outside and inside coming together
as a happening. A happening. We are watching the happening.

The Difference Between Waiting and Enduring

What is the difference between
waiting and enduring?

Pulling ourselves together.
Holding our breath. Trying
to control the nervous system.

Grunts and groans as if we are lifting weights.

But when we are not talking about it,
there is just a nameless. A happening.

My Eardrums turning the world into sound.

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image: George Payne

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