An Occasional Damage of Roses

By James Victor Anderson

The purpose of Andersons poetry is not to try to seek that which is already within us but that which we have always known since infancy as a viable factor in where we have arrived. And still we travel, discover, and grow with the speed of dawn. Poetry which merely tells a story or points to a deeper meaning does not have the power of taking you by the leash and unfastening it. That alone should frighten a traveler. The art of poetry itself is never a saving factor but is merely a voice found in the heart of one who has never given up in spite of the beatings. Doesnt this explain most of us still on the journey?

The traveler who has found his or her inner voice will understand Andersons poetry through personal experience, but to others, it may be nothing more than indecipherable marks on an abandoned wall. And may have, through no fault of their own, no need of it.

Whichever the case, relish the disturbance and enjoyment of things that have always been yours and your right to reclaim them. This book is best embraced in some quiet, private place of comfort far away from the things that sent you there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496936035

James Victor Anderson

James Victor Anderson has written and published under previous book titles as Not Unlike a Madman in Cheap Sandals, Dance Without a Rack of Bones Within, The Heart Has a Homely Face, and Immersion Into Quantum Creek. His current work is a continuation of the Taoist perspective through which the common human experience becomes extraordinary. If we demanded God to reveal himself the very best, what he might do is tell us to look into water and see what it means. In our own reflection we cannot enter or grasp him at all by means of our intellectual illusions or even faith that water can hold us up. When a Taoist says "There is no God where there is only God," he is insubordinate to all schools of thought, East or West, which try to put the highest deity in an observable container or dismiss it as an irrelevant anachronism.

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© 2014 James Victor Anderson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/25/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-3602-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-3603-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014915264

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Quan Yin

Moment

Bones

Painted Light

Bamboo

Apple Orchard

Things We Know

Tao Cannot Be Told

Manchild

Bad Boy

Precognition

When School Begins

Scissors, Paper And Rock

Remembering Girls With Braids

October In A Glass Of Rum

Puddle Wizards

Night Shore

Come Visit While I Slip Away

Open Windows

Me And Jack Smile Back

Halloween Night

Frankenstein

Passing Through November

Madman

It’s Raining

Fall Water

An Occasional Damage Of Roses

Branches Into Winter

Can’t Find

Transition

Lunch With Joe

1945, A Dog Of Dust

Imaginata

Old Man Lost Young

Mourning Suzanne

Barbara’s Kiss

The Measure Of Pain

The Light Bearer’s Eve

Singers

The Pythagorean Shopping Cart

Good Friday

Housebroken Dreams

Illusion

Air Terminal

Eat It By The Fire

Eulogy

Blue Fjord

As I Turn To Leave

Trench Knife

To A Fat Ugly Girl In A Purple Tee

We Toast Her Cavalcade

When I Was Daniel Boone

Wine Critique

Simpson Park

Forest Path

Forest Of The Heavy Mist

Forest Storm

Riding On The Forest

Forest Passage

Consciousness

Inveterate Peace

INTRODUCTION

What you perceive is the reality you believe. Having said that, neither do you see a trout through your reflection on the water. If you aren’t fishing, then it doesn’t matter. And you also know that incoming fog really doesn’t erase the world before us. But on a bad day you might find that comforting. You know what is palpable and relatively emotional. But if you insist on its reality, then others may regard you as having a gross misunderstanding of identity. The very astute may even say you’ve gone mad. As you grew, you learned not to say certain things you know so that those who have come to control the paradigm in which we live won’t marginalize or lock you up. You may also become cooperatively conditioned in an educational system that does a reasonably convincing job of helping you to realize that what you once held as true was nothing more than a mistaken idea. Of course that makes sense, and those internal sensory feelings mean no more than ragweed allergy, and counseling will help you to see where you comfortably fit in our paradigm.

Better that you were a recalcitrant, babbling madman living under a bridge, for it is only through chaos that one becomes real. But we hide from it. We avoid the fear of torture from it. Even when we fall into the deep chasm of our own catastrophes we seek denial from its onset. We bemoan the fear of rack and ruin in our lives that our peers will forever hold against us. Yet, when it truly does happen, it’s merely waking from a bad dream where you were held prisoner by other people’s thoughts, including your own. You suddenly realize that you cease being their perception of who you are, and you are free to be your own original self. You were never what anyone else thought.

The one who dwells in the Self is real, and the one who dwells in the paradigm of the world is false. The one who is real needs no ego, but the one who is false must build and defend an ego.

The following collection of poetry attempts to discern between those perceptions the world has taught us and the emergence of a spiritual consciousness that knows its difference. You may well recognize the markings of a path