Collected
Poems
By
Lee Rector
Part
I
♦ ♦ ♦
Changes
As changes swirl throughout time
To scatter yon dear ash of life
We settle into different space
And any good that’s left behind,
Held fast within supreme mind,
Posts evidence of grace.
The spirit shall be born again
Shall open eyes, wide baby’s eyes
To view the star, to hear the sound
Come burning through a morning sky.
Time flashes clean into the now
Christ in glory
shining stands
And Christmas dawns in man …
1984
♦ ♦ ♦
There are two kinds of love,
Emotional and decisional.
Emotional love you don’t control.
It controls you.
Decisional love takes just that
Conscious commitment to love someone.
Some may say this is mature love.
Mature love has its boundaries.
Emotional love is untamed and wild.
Emotional love tastes long after it lasts.
It seeks and smiles and scouts and sears.
Emotional love wastes after its pass.
It pains and prides and pants and peers.
Mature is love bound – tied to a chair –
There is a wealth of comfort there.
♦ ♦ ♦
CRACK!
Goes the sound
Of eyes scanning light on velvet black stars
Green seas and coral foaming white
Desert parched skull.
FOOMP!
Fireworks flower.
Tree swing tire
Spinning empty
Below the pine.
5/23/85
♦ ♦ ♦
Morning mirror,
You project the image
As I
Looking ahead
At my reflection
Contemplate
And interpret
What I see.
Beyond the wishes
Likes, dislikes
Dreams and imaginations
There you hold
Starkly revealed
– Left is right
And right is left –
Me!
5/88
♦ ♦ ♦
Wearing blinders.
Horse goes where you want.
Without blinders horse wanders around.
Focus your energies.
Believe in fairy tales.
♦ ♦ ♦
You never really understand exactly what the effect of communication is,
Until you miscommunicate.
♦ ♦ ♦
There is nothing wrong with being…
God confident.
God confident means knowing
You love God.
God confident means acceptance
Of your sonship with the Eternal Father.
God confident means open circuits.
Circuits open to the fullness of God’s gifts.
God confident means you see
The good truth and beauty in your life
God confident means the glimmer
Of brotherhood has dawned in your soul.
♦ ♦ ♦
The first thing we see in this life is light
Like coming from darkness from sleep in the night
The first thing we feel in this life is the clamp
As the cord drops away we feel cold, we feel damp
The first thing we hear in this world is our sex
As the sound fades away into balance and checks
The first thing we taste is our mother’s warm flesh
As instinct to survive suckling lips intermesh
The first thing we touch in this world is our mother
Insecure, abating, awaiting the other.
♦ ♦ ♦
Let me tell you what is garbage.
Garbage is waste … rubbish … rubble … stench
Crap that should be carried away
Or washed down the sewer.
There wasn’t a human being there
Who had tickets that night
That didn’t have the same spark of divine dignity
That you so eloquently abuse.
I’ll tell you what’s garbage.
Garbage is pride and envy
And hatred and vanity
And the deceit and lies
That you carry around in your mind!
♦ ♦ ♦
Et tu!
Dim and dank
House lights eyes were closed to blink
A message.
Yet puzzled sat an audience
Which sprach thus one in performance
Saying,
“Will the princess ever prance
Upon the ears of the
prince
Again?
9/19/87
♦ ♦ ♦
Imperceptible as it may be
It shall change the level of the sea.
♦ ♦ ♦
A star shines
Brilliant with light
The love of eternal
Stretches out through night
As inherent is birth
In Universe plan
Son becomes father
Word becomes man
As a circle connecting
Forever and true
So may the light
Shine forth from you.
11/13/81
♦ ♦ ♦
“The sky is a circle,”
He exclaimed from his perch
Gesturing around
His eyes swept far in search
“The mountain grows from valley
The valley grows by stream
To yon awaiting ocean
Or that’s the way it seems”
Then stepping down he smiled
To the students at his feet
And passed down through the aisle
Walking on in search of peace.
8/22/83
♦ ♦ ♦
Placating predictable patterns
The aggressive one sucked energy
From the listener.
Till deflated
Stone cold.
10/26/82
♦ ♦ ♦
This vessel in which I travel, has wearied.
Ident.
Identify yourselves.
Are you?
AM I?
We are!
10/26/82
♦ ♦ ♦
20 years from now,
Should I still be alive
30 years at this job,
I’d be 55.
21 years away
Still at my usual tricks
The company would be 41
And I’d be 56.
♦ ♦ ♦
You wear your pity well, my friend
You wear it on your back
Your carry it where ‘ere you go
You wear it like a pack
Your wear your pity well my friend
You wear it like a brace
It compliments you when you smile
You wear it on your face.
It seems to become you, friend
And to enhance your spell
Your hopes, your dreams your fortune, friend
You wear your pity well.
You wear your pity well, my friend
You wear it like a star
That guides you through your days, my friend
You wear it like a scar.
1972
♦ ♦ ♦
Sorry to destroy you,
But you should have been walking
Somewhere else.
♦ ♦ ♦
Stretching your spirit …
Like winged bird soaring blue
Beyond the breadth of what is you
Expanding mental causes
Reason to inquire…
1/21/1982
♦ ♦ ♦
Successful thinking
Is success.
Your comforts will follow.
Success comes before reward.
Reward in itself is not success.
You see …
Let’s say you wanted to have
Money, wealth and power
And you went out to get all that you could
And you didn’t care who got in your way
You’re going at it the wrong way.
That’s not success.
Giving is the key to success.
Sometimes we get things upside down,
Backward, lopsided, distorted.
You have the power, wealth and money right now.
Look inward, where it is quiet.
There is a voice in there.
It speaks to you in INSIGHT!
All knowledge abides
In your inner power
Waiting for
You to
Listen!
1/21/82
♦ ♦ ♦
I’m hungry
Please feed me.
Feed me with a message.
My soul burns.
We all – bar none –
Suffer.
We suffer for the miracle of awareness.
We ache and yearn for enlightenment.
When quiet.
Yes, it’s true.
When we go deep within ourselves …
Observe the parade of thoughts …
We know we are someone.
We are.
“I am!”
I am observer of my thoughts.
They are not me.
I can.
I can choose my thoughts.
I can to choose to be what
“I am!”
1/20/82
♦ ♦ ♦
I sit to kiss the flower of language with my pen
To smooth the silken petals into words once again
Untangling knots of memory back to order, and then
Letting go to watch them spin a bird’s nest in my hand
♦ ♦ ♦
“Rise like a Phoenix,”
Looking down from above
He said, “Fly like an eagle,
Soar like a dove.”
Like gathering the ashes
That the wind has blown away
I tried to pull together
All that I had thrown astray.
With a small collection
Of what I used to be
An offering was made
Then I waited to see.
“Offer me your love,”
Was the abrupt reply.
“Offer me your actions.
Offer me the sky.
But do not hold the shell
Of what you cast away
Up before an altar
As you kneel down to pray.
Offer me tomorrow.
Offer me today.
Offer me your soul.
Without further delay.
Offer me your mind.
Offer me your will.
And I will give a universe
For you to build until …”
2001
♦ ♦ ♦
If I may impose,
Does not the cake
Have the freedom
To be left out in the rain?
Superimpose on the matter
Of this cake thought.
Personality is a gift.
It can not be taught.
Bestow upon your reason
That reason itself moves,
Unmoves, unseen, seasons
Is what ethics prove.
♦ ♦ ♦
The universes are teeming with life.
How imperfect methinks we am
To muddy shallow waters
With small material plans.
When reaching out for reason
Push selfishness aside.
You must touch the matter of primal cause
To turn on the circuits of life.
♦ ♦ ♦
Trivialities must all be said
Have a nice day
Brush your teeth
Before you go to bed.
♦ ♦ ♦
Listen!
And in the silence of gladness
Open up your soul …
For truth, beauty and goodness
Are yours to behold.
Open!
Your mind to the thought
Was once born and always
You are a child of God.
♦ ♦ ♦
Please, Father, help me be
More of you and less of me
In everything I do and see
In everyone I meet.
Please, Father, help me give
More of love and less of self
In every way that I live
Please, Father, help me give.
Please, Father, help me trust
More in you and less in us
That I can be of service
Father, please give me a thrust.
Please, Father, help me do
More of what I’m destined to
And less of what I want to do
Because I know that I AM you.
♦ ♦ ♦
So now we’ve seen reality
And as our dreams have shown
Illusion is the brine of life
And men have returned to stone.
♦ ♦ ♦
Ponka Ticka – Ponka Ticka
Ponka Ticka – Ponka Ticka
Ponka Ticka – Ponka Ticka
Ponka Ticka – Ponka Ticka
Ponka Ticka – Chit
“What is it?”
Ponka Chicka – Pong
“Something’s Wrong!”
Ponka Chicka – Tick
“Fix it, quick!”
Chicka Ticka – Dack
“Check the tach!”
Dicka Pooh – Whew
“I’m afraid it’s through!”
Whoo Whoong – Whooh
“No! No! No!”
Whooh Chicka – Tssssss
“Is there no chance?”
crunk
♦ ♦ ♦
The room was blue from the TV tube
As all eight gathered ‘round to watch
And the announcers tried to fill in the delay
By showing commercials a lot
The excitement was new and rather strange
That men had sat down on the moon
And the clock rolled around to early morn
We’d be too tired to perform that afternoon
When the door finally opened I had gone out for beer
My friends watched the tube rather dulled
“One giant leap for mankind” was spoke
And footprints were stamped in the mud
Eighteen months later there and back again
We still sat in the TV blue
I still wondered what the outcome would be
What these voyages really could do
For a nation still cries out in fear
While my friends are all off asleep sleep in their beds
Dreams of voyages of their own filling their heads
The dawn cut through my cigarette smoke
This was really nothing more than a joke
Madison avenue gained a lot
By advertising the moon shot
And telling of the juice that they drank
And all of the money they sank
…Into the sky.
1969
♦ ♦ ♦
Until the ego dies
You are trapped in condition
To stretch immortal wings
You must release tradition
For mind has no beginning
Mind, it has no end
It sweeps in pure perfection
Like the passing of the wind
Mind imposed on matter
Starts ticking of the clock
And to complete the cycle
The hands of time must stop
So mind is free to wander
Absolute, complete and free
Till again it settles
On some other energy
1/23/82
♦ ♦ ♦
The sense of self which peers
From behind my eyes to you
Is the same sense of self
That you are looking through
Consciousness, a puzzle
Is the voice which says, “I am”
One self pervades creation
In an ever sweeping plan
It was there before you or I
Ever came to be
And will steady forth its course
Throughout eternity
For the secret to yourself
Is the source where you begin
You were here before you were
And will ever be again
1/23/82
♦ ♦ ♦
I shall
Be
I am!
Come
I go!
God
I!
♦ ♦ ♦
Upstream there is a source
From whence the river flow
And as it gathers waters
To the ocean it shall grow
And as the source shines brightly
Oh the waves, it’s glory streams
Clouds begin to gather
And thus is formed a spring
Upstream there is a source
From whence the river flow …
1982
♦ ♦ ♦
As I close my eyes
Wait for sleep to be my garb
My memory seeps backward
And snags upon a barb
Before I tear my trousers
Save I open old incision
I shall slowly back away
And alter my decision
For soon it will be mourning
I shall find myself awake
So quickly I take warning
Least I make a grave mistake.
1/21/82
♦ ♦ ♦
As naked storms are twisting
Lo there’s danger in the air
As small men run to shelter
To hide within their fear.
The thunder set on blaring
Readies widely at the door
To blast its lyric laughter
In a gust of cracking roar
“Oh he controls the elements”
A fearful voice proclaims
“You will be struck by lightening
If you step out of the main.”
One silent by the fireside
Not prone to speak in haste
Once given cause to utter said,
“Thus chance be thrown to waste.”
1/22/82
♦ ♦ ♦
The mirror turns its face
And stares you in the eye
Speaks when you speak
Copies your expression
Would but you could step out
And express unique idea
Would but we could divorce
And speak what’s on your mind
Would but I could
Know your thoughts
And find you to be kind.
1/22/82
♦ ♦ ♦
Flame licked a waxy candle
With it’s blue and yellow stem
Eyes fixed on its flicker
Wondered if it could be him.
Man seeks for proof in places
In such strange improper ways
Yet truth can be found be seekers
Who but concentrate their gaze.
For within the darting ditter
Of awareness in repose
Are the seeds of diamond glitter
All the cosmos to expose
1/22/82
♦ ♦ ♦
Three Short
Poems
Resolve
I shall!
I am!
I!
1/22/1982
♦ ♦ ♦
© 2001, Lee Rector, Reno, NV,
USA, 606 Nebadon
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction is prohibited
without author’s permission.