Chronicle of Dreaming Man

Chronicle of Dreaming Man

Feb 17, 2023 | Spoken Poetry

Chronicle of Dreaming Man

by Robert Levey

Every morning,
he would row his boat
gently down the stream,
merrily,
thinking life is but a dream.

He was not concerned with how things worked,
but rather how they seem
inside his often broken heart,
and he would dream
and allow his thoughts
and tears
to carry him
past fears,
the troubled years
and the moments that played out like Cheers.

He would dream of love
so heavy and pure
that he was sure
it must exist,
he could not resist,
the feeling would persist,
insist,
his boat began to list
to one side,
and so he leaped
with his heart
and soul,
no end in sight,
no goal,
and he would dream.

The stars would twinkle,
the moon would dance
and the world felt quiet,
pregnant with hope,
dazzling landscapes in his mind,
spaceships bound for worlds unknown
and a love he could hold in his hand
as an old man
on a summer afternoon,
a fan
gently moving the breeze past his face,
nearly every trace
of childhood erased,
and he would dream
of the first time
he was not alone in that boat
on that stream
and how it felt to not have to dream.

Running To Love

Running To Love

Jan 22, 2023 | Love

Yesterday, I was on a run near a river and actively pondering the experience of love when I had a profound realization about myself that I think is relevant for others. All my life, love has been an experience for me that has felt so utterly massive, so real, that I have run from it.
I went out on my run yesterday with the intent to explore why this is the case, and I unexpectedly ran into an answer.

The feeling of love is so beautiful to me, and yet it hurts my soul, which is the first part of the realization I had yesterday. It hurts me so deeply—and as I said this statement and felt the idea in my heart, I began to cry. I embraced in that moment my vulnerability and did not run from it in my heart. Unexpectedly, I then realized why it hurts me so bad.

When I feel deep love, I cease to exist. Everything ceases to exist. What she said, I did, she did, we did, I believe, I want, I need, my pain, her pain—all of that disappears and nothing else exists in the fullest expression and experience of love. I find that so scary, because my very identity hinges on my beliefs, my needs, her needs, or what I can and cannot do, right?

Well, that depends. Am I just an American? Am I just a white man? Am I Robert or Rob? When I feel love and embrace it authentically, I cease to exist, and love becomes everything in the universe. I have felt this potential in my heart all my life, and I have run from it because it has hurt me and scared me.

I am delicate—and yet in that delicacy there exists a way of life and love with unlimited potential, and this potential is not in me, but in the field around me. I had a conversation this week with someone, and she invited me to embrace the field and move past ‘this’ or ‘that.’ I embraced her suggestion, and I feel (even if I cannot adequately convey in words) differently about everything.

As I put my hands on my knees yesterday and cried with ferocity, I ceased to exist—and for the first time in my life, I was not afraid. I feel afraid right now, because parts of me still hold on to what I love, how I love, and why I love. This is a process, however, and not a destination.

The last part of my realization is that my current heartache is my friend. I would not be here in this space without this friend. I’m scared of this friend, but I recognize the need to embrace the heartache. There is still a ‘but’ in my thinking and feeling, and so my focus is on this area of my heart that resists this path.

I believe in absolute true love, and to live and express this is my life’s mission. I am not a writer, marketer, business person, professor, or anything else. I am a single strand of love that is woven in the tapestry of life, and I am being spun.

If true love is a place, then yesterday I saw the bus go by that can take me to it. I have never seen this bus before. The next time I see this bus go by, I will be ready. I am going to move to love forever—and if I cannot catch this bus, then I will run to love.

Sure, the cost is steep. I must let go of myself to embrace the love. For the first time in my existence, however, I do not feel scared of love, because I realize I am already in it…

In Plain Sight

In Plain Sight

Jan 1, 2023 | Spoken Poetry

In Plain Sight

by Robert Levey

As
I lay hiding,
confiding
to no one
and no thing,
the remnants of past selves
bring
me pain
inside the heart
I pretend is my brain
is a boy,
so scared
to share himself
with a world
that seems so hard,
harsh,
and yet the metal
I think I see
outside of myself
is actually inside me,
within each reverie,
each dream,
every intent,
all waves,
one sea,
three of me,
the man before,
the one now,
and the one yet to be,
we three
have a responsibility
to each other
and to me,
the man with tears in every lie,
every half-truth,
every story
I’ve ever told,
or held,
or allowed to meld
inside the blood
that runs through every vein
in my heart,
so big,
so small,
insignificant,
but aren’t we all,
I ask myself
in half jest
lest I come to believe
that the pain I love
will never leave
and that the man I thought I was becoming
was the same figment,
the same mirage
in a lifetime full of dreams
and expectations
that go unfulfilled,
because I won’t fill them.

What is Love?

What is Love?

Dec 21, 2022 | Love

Sure, I know love. It is a feeling, right? Is it an action, too? Or is it a sequence of actions? Is it formulaic? When I read my last post on love, I am forcibly reminded that perhaps I do not know what love is it all.

Written by Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now is a song whose lyrics have always haunted me, this stanza in particular:

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

As I try and unpack the above sentiment in my heart now that I am clearly past childhood (or am I?), I have a feeling that the way I have experienced love throughout my entire life has been remarkably selfish in some ways. I reduce love to (non)actions. I can do this, but I cannot do that, etc.

What does that really mean? I do not know except in hypothetical scenarios that, well, are hypotheses on what I ‘might’ or ‘might not’ do in a given circumstance. Perhaps, however, I limit my life and those of others when I imagine what I either can or cannot do.

Heinz von Foerster developed an ethical imperative, which states: Act always so as to increase the total number of choices. I find this statement profound in many ways. When I look at the sum of my life and various specifics, I do not see I have embodied this principle very well, if at all.

Recent events in my life actually call into question the extent to which this imperative currently serves as a guiding beacon in my relationships with others. I am obtuse. I am aloof, and I have discovered long-cycle patterns of behavior that take years to unfold. My discovery of these long-cycle patterns provide fuller context into my assertion that I am broken as a man.

What is love? Unlike some in this world who cling to ‘absolute’ truth, I cannot definitively say one way or another. What I do feel, though, is that the quest to love others deeply has intrinsic value in ways that affect past, present, and future. Whose past? Whose present? Whose future?

Nothing should ever be taken for granted.

Soft Feelings

Soft Feelings

Nov 11, 2022 | Spoken Poetry

Soft Feelings

by Robert Levey

Soft feelings are hard to let go,
especially when they bleed
into dreams
and streams
of consciousness
that meander and flow
into places I do not understand
or know.

Broken people made whole
inside the hole
within the sphere of the heart
of the soul
and liquid dreams,
streams
of tears,
cascading fears,
the undulating,
rapturous years
bent around
a tree
and its roots,
offshoots
of self
and sky
and earth,
the branches of time,
the hidden,
unforeseen,
the sublime,
the hands of time…

…constructs of mind,
the lost,
the blind,
the dreams of humankind
held inside the womb
of space and time,
floating free
within a revery
of a man who asks himself,
to be or not to be
and how it came to be,
and the feeling lingers,
rests on his fingers
and fills the hole
in his crimson heart…