You provide the bread and I’ll provide the crumbs.
Let us feed on our banquet of emptiness,
Like ghouls at a christening or body snatchers at the wake.
Let us scavenge for the barest morsels of eternity that may have gone overlooked
Slipped under the layered dust,
Under the sediment left by crumbling ruins of once proud memories now long obsolete.
The mirror shatters into a trillion pieces, but who’s counting anyway?
What is there left of the life once imagined?
Once rising above us, over the years,
Once inflated by virtues and memories, and
Now collapsed like a defeated Zeppelin;
Under an Iron Balloon.
© Igor Goldkind October, 2022
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October 1, 2022 | Categories: new poetry, poetry, Poetry as therapy | Tags: Life, New Poetry, poetry, Truth | 2 Comments
Life is Always Replaceable
You might have lost something or broke something
You know you can always look for it or fix it or get yourself a new one
That doesn’t crunch her popcorn in bed.
And shoots farther & quicker than you ever thought possible for a bullet from a gun.
You know, what isn’t replaceable or even predictable is this Stream of events pushing past us
Like panicking strangers in a crowd
Or even worse, engulfing us, trampling over us, nearly drowning us,
Pushing us back from whence we came.
Then leaving us choking for breath on the shore.
Being is Becoming Still
Existence is a limitless screen of emptiness,
Ecstatic contemplation
And gratitude for the joy in rolling a boulder blissfully up a steep hill
Tripping over our thoughts like loosened cobblestones,
The truth is a truce we have struck with uncertainty.
After losing the desperate struggle
To cling to some kind of hope buried at the root of our own awareness.
I am fearful of fully failing myself
Although I love myself best when I am alone with eternity.
I am safest and most secure in this clarity I call awareness.
Insomniac Awareness
We who are hiding in our second bedrooms,
Licking the silver from the backs of our screens,
Are living in a different time zone
Of Insomniac Awareness.
Sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes four or more
Lives are lived and lost each night.
In our rooms, by ourselves
Sitting precariously at the edge of our beds.
This is our legacy
The lasting perpetuity of our sensory species:
The glow that contests the light that once shone from our eyes,
Right up to the surface of our understanding.
What is not yet known.
Or what was known and long since forgotten.
Dances across the screen you stare into.
Tripping over your coded memories; in Real Time.
Who are you reading this?
Do you know
What perturbs your sleep-walk into the night?
Or are you merely waiting for the screen to pull you through?
Into your own quiet world,
Where things that count never change.
And no one is dreaming you, but your mother
Who has left you now for another child.
The Last Halo of Hope.
Hope is mortal, not eternal.
Though it may feel like eternity
Sitting in a chair by the window.
Gazing up and down the path that leads
Up the hill and down to the canyon on your doorstep.
Every morning, every evening, every day.
Awaiting an answer to your prayer for your hope to be restored.
Resilience rewarded
Patience still burning brightly
Under your old photograph on the wall where you live now.
I’m not sad.
No, sadness is just a passing rain to irrigate the eyes.
Instead, I’m a new planet
Ringed by the last halo of hope
Wrapped tightly around my head.
Pebbles
Thoughts are merely pebbles
Being gently washed by a passing stream.
You are the stream.
Thoughts are merely pebbles on a beach
Being gently rounded by crashing waves.
You are the waves.
Thoughts are merely pebbles in the sand.
Being gently worn away by the passing wind.
You are the wind
My words escape on.
Words are merely thoughts
Being gently read by a passing eye.
Yours are the eyes
That can read my thoughts.
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October 1, 2018 | Categories: art, beat, death, Depression, digital insurgency, Emptyness, Existentialism, Faith, Healing, literature, Meaning of Existence, Meditations, mental health, Mindfulness, new poetry, physics, Reigion, Self-Therapy, spoken word, story-telling, Suicide | Tags: art, Faith, Igor Goldkind, Life, literature, Mind, New Poems, philosophy, Poem, Poems, Poetry Submissions, Religion, Self, Truth | 2 Comments
This morning after sitting around and paying attention to nothing for a long while, the pedestrian thought that loitered and would not keep moving down the sidewalk became a realisation.
My self, which I know is an illusion, a trick of perception, occupies too much of my time. I know this fully with my mind even if my heart still clings to safe delusions.
The easiest thoughts to dismiss are the good ones, the comforting ones. The memories of past loves long gone. My mother’s unconditional love, my sister’s devoted, admiring love. The eulogies and compliments I’ve received over time from those who have borne the patience to get to know me just a little bit beyond our facades.
The pleasure I took in surprising my friends with my true nature is easily exiled, easily erased from the Book of Illusion resting on my dusty shelf. But today I awakened to the fact that so it is of the slings and arrows my memory flings at me. The regrets, the failures, the self-loathing for being so much less than I imagine myself to be.
I have welcomed hatred like a long lost friend. When I am targeted by malice or false accusations, I somewhere believe that I am well deserving of acrimony; that deep within me is a broken porcelain doll wearing a torn, stained dress. 
I have sought refuge in self-hatred, in depression, in the idle futility of it all.
After all, cynicism is just another mask worn by our own complacency.
This morning, the light shone on me and I laughed at how insidious my vanity could be. To soak in self-loathing is as deluded as celebrating false glories. None of my past is real apart from what I insist on carrying into this present like a troublesome burden; weighing down my footsteps. Stalling the will to keep on moving, with the current, a little further down the road. Misery, the sister of Narcissus, loves company and the good liquor I buy her. But she’s too needy and crazy and no real friend of mind.
I may feel brave wrestling with my demons but they are in truth, made of the same scattered dust as my angels.
My Buddha tells me that enlightenment lies in the transcendence of seeming dualities. The trick of mind in seeing beyond black and white to the full spectrum and subtleties of the colors surrounding me. I can hold my inner sense of self, both magnanimous and self-damning, one in each hand and then bring those hands together, accepting both as one simultaneous truth.
I can know myself completely, even the parts left out.
Rumi says that beyond right and wrong, beyond good and evil, lies the desert of disillusionment.
At the end of the desert there is an oasis and in the middle of the oasis is a fountain and that fountain is the source of all Life.
Do me a favour, next time you feel down about yourself, undeserving of love, miserable and useless; do not blow the feelings away but rather hold them in one hand. Then with the other hand conjure the feelings of pride, of self-worth of glorious love. Hold each sense of yourself like a ball in each of your hands while substituting either/or with both/and. Now bring your hands together in gratitude for the whole of who you are.
Tell me how that feels.
Write it here, just beneath these words.
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September 23, 2018 | Categories: beat, Depression, Emptyness, Healing, Meditations, Mindfulness, Self-Therapy, story-telling, Therapy | Tags: blues, duality, Life, memory, Mind, Self, Truth | 4 Comments
Existence is a limitless screen of emptiness,
Jubilant celebration
And gratitude for the joyous exhaustion in the rolling of a boulder up a steep hill.
Tripping over our thoughts like loosened cobblestones,
The truth is a truce we struck with uncertainty ages ago.
After losing our desperate struggle…
To cling to some kind of hope buried deep at the root of our own awareness
I am fearful of fully failing myself.
But I love myself best when I am alone with eternity.
Secure and supported by this very clarity.
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August 16, 2018 | Categories: Emptyness, Faith, Healing, literature, Meaning of Existence, Meditations, mental health, Mindfulness, new poetry, poetry, Poetry as therapy, Poetry Therapy, Religion, spoken word, story-telling, The Inner Temple | Tags: Faith, Helpless, Life, literature, Mind, Poem, poetry, Self, Truth | Leave a comment
Depression is merely an afterthought.
A reflection on deeds that cannot be undone
But our thinking is cut off from the action.
A circuit is broken in a chain that cannot be rejoined.
We are slaves to our memories
Being tortured in real (not imagined), time.
We recall everything from our own anxious center of risk
Hiding the moment we know to be true;
From ourselves, yet again.
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July 6, 2018 | Categories: beat, Depression, Emptyness, Existentialism, graphic novels, literature, Meaning of Existence, mental health, Mindfulness, new poetry, poetry, Poetry as therapy, politics, Self-Therapy, Therapy | Tags: art, blue notes, blues, Depression, Life, literature, Mind, poetry, Religion, Self, Truth | Leave a comment
So who is this Soul that you sing of?
This silent witness
Who counts the leaves off of trees
Instead of gathering them?
And raking them into a funerary pile,
Into the giant pile that your better self will set afire and then fall from,
Or jump into.
Up to your eyeballs,
Up to your own personal crown of thorns.
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June 23, 2018 | Categories: art, death, Emptyness, Existentialism, Faith, literature, Meaning of Existence, Mindfulness, new poetry, Religion, spoken word, story-telling | Tags: art, Belief, Better Self, Faith, Life, literature, philosophy, poetry, Religion, Self, Soul, Truth | 2 Comments
The Numbers Game
In the end, it was the numbers that did us in.
They lined us up into military rows
And assigned us all numbers
One after one after one after one after one….
How many, nobody knows.
You see, it’s a numbers game
It’s all the same
You’re not your name
You’re your numbers.
Let me explain how it’s done,
And how this game can never be won.
See, there are good numbers and bad numbers
High numbers and sad numbers.
Sometimes high numbers are good and low numbers are bad
And sometimes low numbers are good and high numbers are sad.
It all depends on who is counting.
Not you or me
Not the numbers either.
They don’t know, they’re just numbers after all.
Although…
The numbers are counting on each other.
Just not you or me
Because we will never be free
Of Big Numbers and small numbers,
Negative numbers and imaginary numbers,
You see, it’s a numbers game.
It’s all the same
You’re not your name
You’re your numbers.
Let me explain
How it’s done.
And how this game can never be won.
Prisoner number…
Credit Score number
GPA number
SAT Number
Zip code number
Blood pressure number
Heart rate number
DOB & TOD numbers
House number
Gas number
Phone number
Electricity number
Room number
Water number
Dog tags number
Social Security number
Bank account number
Table number
Sibling number
Temperature number
Flight number
License number
Vehicle registration number
Alcohol level number
Height, weight and age number
I hear you scream:
“I’m not a number, I’m a human being!!”
Sure you are,
Now take a number.
It’s for your own protection
There’s safety in numbers.
Numbers can answer all of your questions:
How far, how long, how deep, how high, how many,
How often?
Just not ‘how come’?
Anyone can count,
But you can’t count on anyone.
See, it’s a numbers game
That can’t be won
It’s a numbers game
It’s just how it’s done.
It’s all the same.
You’re not your name
You’re your numbers.
Now count to ten
And start all over again.
For Rob Thompson who asked me if Numbers occupy Space.
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April 3, 2018 | Categories: Americana, beat, digital insurgency, Emptyness, Meditations, new poetry, poetry, politics, spoken word, story-telling | Tags: Data, Dystopian, Life, math, Mind, Numbers, philosophy, Poem, poetry, Self, Truth | Leave a comment
These Curious Hands
The world is not a mystery, my friends.
It is an enigma waiting to be unwrapped from its riddle
A safe anticipating its own combination.
To open and reveal what has been safely locked away since before time Began.
The puzzle patiently poised for its pieces to coincide
With your hands.
To fill the gaps they were carefully carved to fit.
Together.
The question is not who made the world we each live in
The question is who made the hands that fit the world together,
In anticipation of our futile and yet eternal curiosity.
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February 26, 2018 | Categories: Existentialism, Igor Goldkind, literature, new poetry | Tags: art, Being, Being and Time, death, Life, Nothingness, poetry, prophecy, science, Time, Truth | 3 Comments
Quote
The Infinite
What I see is the reflection of my eyes
In every direction that I gaze.
Two mirrors face each other
Only the dust can tell the difference.
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November 6, 2017 | Categories: beat, Existentialism, literature, Meditations, new poetry, Poetry as therapy | Tags: Infinity, Life, literature, Perspective, poetry, Truth, Zen | 3 Comments
And Zen-some!
The only way to explain Zen is by describing the sleepy mind. The sleepy mind describes a tree in terms of attributes and data: the number of leaves, the leaf shape, the number of branches, thickness of the trunk, the colour of bark. Which birds make use of the tree etc.
All these observable and measurable attributes are assembled as data by the sleepy mind and voila! the sleepy mind thinks it knows what a tree is. The sleepy mind can give arguments with citations about the validity of its data. The sleepy mind works well with other sleepy minds.
And the sleepy mind isn’t totally wrong, the data it compiles in reference to ‘tree’ are all real and quantifiable features of the tree. But no matter how exact or comprehensive, the data is not the tree nor even the experience of the tree.
The awoken mind merely says “Look, a tree”, and points.
Because there is no data that conveys the experience of that tree in the moment of your apprehension. The awoken mind, sees the leaves, the branches, the colour of the bark, the thickness of the trunk, which birds fly in and out of the tree as much and as well as the sleepy mind does.
But the awoken mind also sees that the spaces between the leaves are part of the tree. The negative space surrounding the tree. The unseen roots spread beneath the ground are part of the tree. The sunlight reflecting off the green of the leaves are part of the tree. 
The seat waiting to rest your back against the trunk is part of the tree. The awoken mind ‘see’s the tree; the form of the tree; the tree itself in all its ‘tree-ness’, the tree as a child sees a tree; not what the sleepy mind contrives to substitute as its surrogate.
I think this is the closest I can come to describing the Zen disposition. I say disposition because too much is made of practice and the philosophy of Zen when all are merely aids to assist in the unravelling of illusion and self-deception. Zen is not an acquisition of skills, rituals, garments or ideology; instead, Zen is relinquishment. It is a reminder to keep paying attention. Not acquiring but letting go: unravelling, stripping away layers of calloused skin, leaving your baggage behind and not looking back over your shoulder. In the words of the bard:
“My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step”.
Buddhists will talk about the Buddha-nature as universal, the same as our original nature. Don’t listen to them. The face that first looked up at your mother’s face is still there, submerged and (sometimes suppressed), within you. All that Zen suggests is that we are encumbered by needless worry, anxiety, expectations, daydreams and nostalgias that have buried your true self under the rubble of your crumbling castle and keeps you from seeing the world and your place in it, with any clarity.
We are all distracted by anxieties and worries about money, about jobs, about partners and children. That distraction is manufactured by the powerful in the society we live in to keep us consuming, acquiescent and very sleepy! It doesn’t matter if you meditate or not; if you read poetry or not; if you drink tea or practice martial arts or not. It doesn’t matter how you get there or what you wear; just that you wake up and experience the miracle of persistent and unwavering creation. The universe is created, then destroyed then resurrected millions of times a second, faster than you can blink; so try and keep your eyes open!
I leave you once again with the immortal words of the Nobel Prize laureate:
“Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.”
– With Compassion, Igor Goldkind, 2017
Please feel free to share and copy this.
I’m just trying to help anyone who’s read this far.
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October 6, 2017 | Categories: Americana, anarchy, art, beat, comments about poetry, Emptyness, Existentialism, literature, Meditations, mental health, new poetry, poetry, Poetry as therapy, Self-Therapy, story-telling | Tags: art, Life, literature, poetry, Truth, Zen | Leave a comment
Had a good night last night drinking cask barrel wine with Anneke Doty at Solterra Wine Bar in Leucadia, California. We were trying to recall how and when we knew each other 40 years ago at John J Pershing Junior High. We knew all of the same people, some still alive and obviously were on the same general childhood network but for the life of me, I can’t recall any specific interaction with her.
Is that because I didn’t pay much attention to girls in junior high?
Am I gay?
Who knows? Better late than never, I suppose.
Passion is always a matter of imperfect timing.
I’ve always preferred the company of women, on a spectrum quantum levels from physical to mental. I don’t really think that I’m gay (not like there’s anything wrong with that!), because I’ve never appreciated the scent of a man the way a woman might. Instead, I’m stuck in a blind Al Pacino movie.
Nonetheless, Anneke Doty does seem familiar to me as if we’d been friends for years. I think rather than having a submerged feminine nature, my feminine characteristics have alway been in the foreground, especially around other women. Don’t get me wrong, women can be just as troublesome as men but usually in a slightly kinder way.
I am nurturing in the sense that I get a kick out of helping my friends, or even those I don’t know, sometimes just with honest conversation.
I’ve always appreciated the aesthetic of something even before knowing what it was for.
I love to cook and serve a superb meal to the people that I love.
I suppose this is the way I’ve always expressed love to others, alongside my sardonic sarcasms.
I like plants and flowers and those things that grow, peak and then die.
Like me.
Perhaps it is decay and entropy that universalizes us all with common purposelessness.
For what else could this absurdist’s moment be but the peak of experience; the very pinnacle of existence? The infinite in a nutshell in an easy to swallow form.
Never bought into the notion of degrading a man by calling him a woman, even when I was young and being overlooked for sports team choices. To me being called a woman meant being called someone who could birth to a man. And endure the pain of doing so.
What could be more worthy of aspiration?
My feminine side has always been front and center, especially in interaction with other women. It just seems like the human place to go is female. Women define the best of humanity in my mind.
If aliens landed here they’d really only want to talk to our women; don’t you think?
My uncle used to cast bronzes of mountainous women holding a small child to her breast. A universal archetype and the symbol of our species nurturing the relationship to our Earth.
We are merely our planet’s child, no better, no worse than any offspring.
I miss my mother; she taught me so much about the divine experience of our senses reflected in the colours and sounds that curl over us like a crashing wave. I guess I’ll have to cling to her planet, the one she taught me to love, for just a little while longer. All I need is one breast bloated with milk to keep me subsisting . . .
Long enough to see the most beautiful fount of my being reach the sky above me.
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August 24, 2017 | Categories: Americana, bigotry, Existentialism, Mindfulness, physics | Tags: California, divinity, Encinitas. Leucadia, Life, love, men, metaphysics, My Mother the Car, Mysticism, school friends, sexual identity, Truth, wine, wine bar, women | Leave a comment
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Copyright 2014: Words: Igor Goldkind; Music and Arrangment: Gilad Atzmon; Sculpture: Martin Smith All Moral Rights asserted in this work and its contents are not to be reproduced in any form without written consent of all 3 parties listed above. This work is a preview from the poetry collection IS SHE AVAILABLE? written by Igor Goldkind, Music Composed and Arranged by Gilad Atzmon with a variety of illustrators from the worlds of Comics, SF and Fantasy contribute including (not from that world, but from the Art World), the sculptor Martin Smith. All rights protected and Copyright on all creative assets will be strictly enforced. Art will set you free.
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May 13, 2014 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: death, Existential, Gilad Atzmon, Igor Goldkind, Jazz, Life, Loss, Meaning, poetry, Spoken Word, Victor Goldkind, War | Leave a comment
igorgoldkind
The Poesie of Igor Goldkind – Reciting Truth to Power 
Sleepy Mind; Awake Mind
And Zen-some!
The only way to explain Zen is by describing the sleepy mind. The sleepy mind describes a tree in terms of attributes and data: the number of leaves, the leaf shape, the number of branches, thickness of the trunk, the colour of bark. Which birds make use of the tree etc.
All these observable and measurable attributes are assembled as data by the sleepy mind and voila! the sleepy mind thinks it knows what a tree is. The sleepy mind can give arguments with citations about the validity of its data. The sleepy mind works well with other sleepy minds.
And the sleepy mind isn’t totally wrong, the data it compiles in reference to ‘tree’ are all real and quantifiable features of the tree. But no matter how exact or comprehensive, the data is not the tree nor even the experience of the tree.
The awoken mind merely says “Look, a tree”, and points.
Because there is no data that conveys the experience of that tree in the moment of your apprehension. The awoken mind, sees the leaves, the branches, the colour of the bark, the thickness of the trunk, which birds fly in and out of the tree as much and as well as the sleepy mind does.
But the awoken mind also sees that the spaces between the leaves are part of the tree. The negative space surrounding the tree. The unseen roots spread beneath the ground are part of the tree. The sunlight reflecting off the green of the leaves are part of the tree.
The seat waiting to rest your back against the trunk is part of the tree. The awoken mind ‘see’s the tree; the form of the tree; the tree itself in all its ‘tree-ness’, the tree as a child sees a tree; not what the sleepy mind contrives to substitute as its surrogate.
I think this is the closest I can come to describing the Zen disposition. I say disposition because too much is made of practice and the philosophy of Zen when all are merely aids to assist in the unravelling of illusion and self-deception. Zen is not an acquisition of skills, rituals, garments or ideology; instead, Zen is relinquishment. It is a reminder to keep paying attention. Not acquiring but letting go: unravelling, stripping away layers of calloused skin, leaving your baggage behind and not looking back over your shoulder. In the words of the bard:
We are all distracted by anxieties and worries about money, about jobs, about partners and children. That distraction is manufactured by the powerful in the society we live in to keep us consuming, acquiescent and very sleepy! It doesn’t matter if you meditate or not; if you read poetry or not; if you drink tea or practice martial arts or not. It doesn’t matter how you get there or what you wear; just that you wake up and experience the miracle of persistent and unwavering creation. The universe is created, then destroyed then resurrected millions of times a second, faster than you can blink; so try and keep your eyes open!
I leave you once again with the immortal words of the Nobel Prize laureate:
– With Compassion, Igor Goldkind, 2017
Please feel free to share and copy this.
I’m just trying to help anyone who’s read this far.
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October 6, 2017 | Categories: Americana, anarchy, art, beat, comments about poetry, Emptyness, Existentialism, literature, Meditations, mental health, new poetry, poetry, Poetry as therapy, Self-Therapy, story-telling | Tags: art, Life, literature, poetry, Truth, Zen | Leave a comment