Those eyes without dragons in them,
without rebellions in them,
without orgies in them,
without mushrooms in them.

Those eyes which move by habit,
which see by habit,
which unsee by habit.

Those eyes which go dead
while tongues gibber in the skull.

Those eyes which miss miracles and ignore armageddons
to watch adverts and wawawa drama queens.

Those eyes which say “I’ve seen that before”
to unprecedented moments and phoenix worlds.

Those eyes which say “I know what that is”
to ineffable eruptions from unknown angels.

Those eyes,

those eyes,

those eyes,

those eyes,

those eyes do not live in your face anymore.

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19 responses to “Those Eyes”

  1. those lines
    those lines
    under THOSE EYES
    are they there for us
    to write own lines?
    those lines,
    to those who realize
    are hanging there to invite reply.

  2. See with your eyes. Think with your mind. Feel with your heart. Understand the difference.
    (In Buddhism, heart and mind are lumped together as one process. The eyes, however, are separate.)
    .. but those eyes. Those eyes which are not even truly eyes. Those eyes do not live in your face. Those eyes can never see truth.

  3. Aldo Maria Valli on the Church and the Pandemic: “The Masks have fallen! The Masks have fallen!”
    by Aldo Maria Valli of Duc in Altum

    Translated by Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-masks-have-fallen-masks-have-fallen.html

  4. Harry S Nydick Avatar
    Harry S Nydick

    Those eyes never did live in my face. That fact is what makes life so pleasurably difficult.

  5. To the Author,

    As a poet myself I am intrigued by your words in your poem. ONE GREATER THAN US ALL, has allowed you a secret to cause you to be intrigued! SEEK THE KINGDOM AND ALL IT’S RIGHTEOUSNESS……

  6. I can not remember the exact words from many, many years ago when a teacher told us: Each and every day your mind and reasoning are supposed to change the things that you look at regularly. As a child you might bend over and pull a flower from the ground and take it with you. Hopefully, sometime later in your life you would have grown and never do such a thing to anything on this planet that possessed life. If year in and year out everything looks the very same to you you are stunted and stuck in a boring rut.

  7. Roundball Shaman Avatar
    Roundball Shaman

    Most of the people of the world have eyes that refuse to see. They “see” only through the eyes of others. What others see. What others believe. What others want others to see and believe.

    When those who refuse to see might catch a rare glimpse out of their real eyes, they are confused and frightened. So they retreat back into the sight of others. And they feel safe and content.

    Or so they think.

    It is said that early native peoples in the islands and Americas could not see the tall ships from the conquerors approaching them for the first time because they had never seen a ship before and they had no frame of reference for it and so their eyes could not see them at all.

    How many things like that do we not see right now because our frame of reference is so limited or we so much prefer to see out of the wayward and clouded and polluted and twisted eyes of others?

    Are we so fogged up with the visions and thoughts and beliefs and propagandas and coercions of others that our eyes and brains have no room left for what’s really out there to see?

    We were given such beautiful, miraculous eyes. What a terrible shame it is not to use them.

  8. In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, there appears a remarkable quotation attributed to Michael Welfare, one of the founders of a religious sect known as the Dunkers and a long-time acquaintance of Franklin. The statement had its origins in Welfare’s complaint to Franklin that zealots of other religious persuasions were spreading lies about the Dunkers, accusing them of abominable principles to which, in fact, they were utter strangers. Franklin suggested that such abuse might be diminished if the Dunkers published the articles of their belief and the rules of their discipline. Welfare replied that this course of action had been discussed among his coreligionists but had been rejected. He then explained their reasoning in the following words:

    “When we were first drawn together as a society, it had
    pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some
    doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors, and that
    others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From
    time to time He has been pleased to afford us farther light, and
    our principles have been improving, and our errors diminish-
    ing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of
    this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological
    knowledge; and we fear that, if we should feel ourselves as if
    bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive
    further improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiv-
    ing what we their elders and founders had done, to be something
    sacred, never to be departed from.”

    Franklin describes this sentiment as a singular instance in the history of mankind of modesty in a sect. Modesty is certainly the word for it, but the statement is extraordinary for other reasons, too. We have here a criticism of the epistemology of the written word worthy of Plato. Moses himself might be interested although he could hardly approve. The Dunkers came close here to formulating a commandment about religious discourse: ‘Thou shalt not write down thy principles, still less print them, lest thou shall be entrapped by them for all time.’

    1. Much truth in your words. Perhaps the best we can do, when it comes to things of ultimate importance, shrouded in mystery, is to tell and write down not principles but STORIES.

      1. Indeed, a lost and neglected art. Perhaps we can do our part to revive it.

        Why do people believe in what they do? Why do they do what they do? And how can that be changed?

        The primary problem isn’t that we don’t know what our problems are, or even how to fix them (in technical terms). It is that we aren’t fixing them even though we know they exist and have a pretty good idea how to fix them.

        I mean, we’ve known about climate change, undeniably, since the late 70s, at the latest. And we did, well, basically nothing. We know that inequality is terrible for everyone, and people were warning back in the late 80s about it and we, well, slammed our foot down on the accelerator.

        And so on.

        Now, this isn’t a new pursuit for me. I wondered about it when I was younger, but I examined it, mostly, the wrong way—through anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history, neuroscience, and so on. Oh, it’s not that these disciplines don’t have important insights, but they are all fragmentary and none of them tell you the most important thing, not really: How to change. I mean, it’s nice to have some insights into why you’re fucked up, but if those insights don’t lead to the ability to become less fucked up, the exercise is somewhat sterile.

        There are a group of people who have, over millennia, spent virtually all their time examining how the human mind works, and why it believes what it believes: spiritual people. Not religious people, understand; religion is what people who want pat answers to the insights of spiritual people create. They suck the insights dry, and turn them into set rules.

        You’ve got someone like Mohamed, say, whose first followers are mostly slaves, women, and poor people. And Mohamed, well, he made their lives better; he made new rules which were not as bad as the old rules. Sure, women still weren’t equal to men, but they had more rights than before. And people think that the new rules are now set in stone for eternity, rather than considering that he was making things as much better as he could under the circumstances and given his own, unbroken conditioning.

        Then there’s poor Jesus. Good God, what his followers have done to his teachings! They’ve turned them into, with some exceptions like the social gospel, an utter force for evil. This is the fate of the great spiritual figures: to be misunderstood. Sometimes that misunderstanding doesn’t do too much harm; sometimes it does a lot, as with Mohamed and Christ.

        We are only claiming to be less ignorant than the status quo. There is no enlightenment, only the endless march (hopefully) towards less ignorance.

  9. Jared Kushner – stare of the undead.

  10. Lili-Ann Berg Avatar
    Lili-Ann Berg

    Poignant and perspicacious. Your poems vibrate literally.

    Social distancing has its benefits – you no longer have to suffer the stares of the walking, talking dead,

  11. How many have witnessed a psychopathic stare?

    1. Sorry, couldn’t resist, baby-boomer, ya’know.

  12. You see with your own eyes you live love love life
    Pura byvida

  13. You live love life.
    You see with yer own eyes

  14. I enjoy your poetry very much. I am on a “which hunt” today though. Try changing your whiches to “that”

  15. Oh Caitlin,

    Thank you again for drawing the line between sleepwalking and being truly alive. Your work is a constant source of both concern for our future and unending joy. Thank you xxx

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