your own planet

the poetry of dr zen

Wednesday, February 16, 1994

Nothing holds me down

you wake in a rosey pink dawn
been sleeping in a haze
found all your thoughts in all directions
you were otherwise engaged

you slept on a cloud
in a million degrees of light
in a dream of aching years
curled up tight

I held you in my arms
and me and mine
I drank to you with laughter
I drank to you with wine

Anyone who had the soul to see
beyond the things that cannot be
Anyone who ever wonders
Anyone who's floating free.

Nothing restrains us
Nothing can hold us down
Above our heads are stars
beneath our feet the ground

Nothing contains me
No chains or bounds
I was looking for a life to dream
but there's living all around

You sleep on a sea of silver
bathing in a dream
find wings of hope and love
beautiful and clean

Anyone who outwalks the shade
left behind them by the sun
Anyone who has anything
to give to anyone.

Must only tiptoe

The first raindrops on your head awake you
and shivering in the cold ache of another lonely daybreak
You hope to get through.
And knowing that there will be nothing special
nothing fresh and nothing new - you've seen drops of rain before -
You have to just get through.

There isn't anything to want
or even think about, not any more
There isn't any way to show or tell
the ones you wish knew, what was it
you wanted them to know about you?

If there should come a time when
you want someone to hold the umbrella
over your head, their arms folded about you
how will you know or recognise them
when all have coats of hardened rainbow - metal -
you will never see through.

Must only tiptoe when we are walking through
the times and places where we have placed our markers
but if we never let ourselves go - never run -
how will we then ever get any place
we wish to be -
how will we ever learn how to set ourselves free.

The last snows of a bitter winter ebbing away
all the ground is soft and marshy - you cannot move -
you cannot pick your feet up - can only feel
the arctic lonely wind of what you know to be true -
blows right through you.

For every blessing a curse

when I drank sugar, when I drank it,
it rotted my bones and made them into tar
and changed my head so that
I wanted to get better
But I felt worse by far

But sugar is sweet to calm the urging heart
to make you forget that before things improve
they inevitably get worse
and if every cloud has a silver lining
for every blessing there’s a curse

when I took your heart
and modelled it out of plasticine
I made all the valves from clockwork
so it would run just the way I wanted and
we could live within a dream

But I’m not dreaming not anymore
because they tell you and you know it’s true
if anyone’s blessed then you are blessed
but if anyone’s cursed
it’s you

And I will sing my secrets into a rock and
bury them in the sea
And curse the fate that has pulled the tide out
left me stranded and if anyone’s cursed
it’s me