John Diamond, M.D.

All these things I write are not poems: they lack the art and the craft. Too simple, too straightforward. They are short, but not haikus—there's no Zen twist of the head. Nor are they even meant for the head. But they are not quite prose—there's an intensification, a condensation. And also they're in a different voice of mine.

There're like aphorisms—but not that clever. Nor are they meant to be.

They are verse, because they turn at the end of each line. And as verse is thought by the pundits to be low poetry, Eliot for instance so denigrating Kipling. So they are verse—but with a special purpose: my intention behind each one of the hundreds and hundreds is for me through them to be therapeutic: to raise the Life Energy, the Healing Spirit. Just as is my intention with every sufferer in my healing practice.

William Carlos Williams was a doctor, but I do not believe his poems were meant for his patients, nor to help all his readers as if they were. Whereas this and this alone is my purpose. And I believe, like the Australian psychiatrist Ainslie Meares, that the verse form helps the message to go deeper—not into the brain, but the heart. So as to actuate the deep but often dormant desire for health and life.

And each and every verse I write is tested and re-tested for this—especially the rhythm, the flow, the layout and punctuation. All to ensure that my purpose is fulfilled. Each test is of my therapeutic intention, and each verse must pass that test—at an increasingly more difficult level.

Here's one that comes to mind. I wrote it about twenty years ago on the New Jersey shore where I'd gone to write a book on reconciliation with the mother (The Remothering Experience), which I regard as the very essence of healing. About a decade later my son recited it at my mother's funeral.

I thought I'd keep,
when my mother died,
her tea pot as a memento.

It doesn't matter at all,
not even our memories:
only the ever-increasing knowledge
of the Mother she aspired to be.

Not poetry, only verse. But with therapeutic aspiration. They are, as best I can make them therapeutic verses—for that's what I believe I am: a therapeutic versifier.

Mother is a Verb
“Mother is a verb, while Daughter can be nothing but a noun.” ‹1›
Here am I on my birthday, thinking of, invoking, my mother. Oh, how she verbed me!
I need a son verb. More—I need to be it! To love her as I Know she loved me.
Until then, I’m only a noun.

‹1› Estelle Jussim, The Eternal Moment, New York: Aperture, 1989, p. 192.

To die
never having released
the music inside you,
is indeed a tragedy.

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What makes a house
a home
is its music.

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A concert hall
should be
as a Temple
where you Know
the Belovedness.

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Don't salute
the sun,
but every
sunlit dewdrop.

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My mother
is every goddess
that ever was,
that ever will be.

So sings the saint.

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First
to see the Love
under the vicissitudes.
And then
to see them, too,
as the Love. For Love,
True Love,
is Ever-Constant.

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The basic purpose
motivating
all spiritual endeavors
is the overcoming
of misprocessing
so as to, at last,
Know the Love.

A book should get
smaller and smaller
as it's absorbed into me.

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A color is not just the color.
It is the Spirit as that color.

Green is the Spirit as green,
blue is the Spirit as blue.

Every color an epiphany!

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A male
can never have
a uterus,
but he can become
a womb.

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A raindrop jiggling a leaf:
all of Knowledge in that—
but I'll never know it.

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I am a healer
who writes
to heal.

What is there to forgive
when her deepest Intention
is only to always love me?

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All healing comes down to

finding the sufferer's soul
and thus helping him to.

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All spiritual endeavors,
all meditation,
all healing,
is to reduce Misprocessing.

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All the problems of our lives
are merely stories
—already written.

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Anguish is a gift
which the Giver
unwraps—slowly.

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As she lay dying,
the nurse kissed my mother:
"She was a lovely lady."

Lovely, yes,
because she was loving.

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At her end,
I came to Know my mother
as she had always been.

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At seventy,
I look at my photo
sixty years ago.
"That's the boy
who's going to be
exactly me."

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Bach was created
to teach
discipline and control to Protestants—lest they be free.

Had there been no Luther,
there'd have been no Bach.

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Be altruistic
to the spirit within you:
do what you believe
will help it to evolve
through your actions.

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Beauty,
Blessedness,
Belovedness.

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Cases are treated,
sufferers are healed.

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Deep in that pond
under the ice,
barely alive
they wait.

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Every event a gift
for the spirit within
to grow.

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The ferry boat
to the land of love
runs on music.

Hear the singing over the waters.

The sound of the Infinite.

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Every one,
knowingly or not,
devotes his life to the Spirit.

With some
—not many—
it is obvious.

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He exercises:
low cholesterol,
but low aspiration.

And he meditates:

high aspiration
but high cholesterol.

Both need
both.

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Healing is kissing
the sufferer.

There is a double transformation:
each becoming
the other's mother.

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Heaven is every note
sung with love.

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I am a sacred person,
because so is my mother.

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I am All,
and All
is One.

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I hear your Music
crying for release,
and I help you
to Sing.

That's all I do,
because that's all
that's needed.

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I know
who I am.
I am
who I
should be.

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I know I'm getting better
because the trees
are alive again.

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I love
your love
for me.

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I love the singing
of my neurons, and even more
the feeling
when I'm hearing them.

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I smile
to the Great Mother
ever smiling.

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I start by Knowing
your Perfection,
and I finish
when you do.

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You treat
through the physical body,
but you heal
through the etheric.

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Your hand
as soft
as your heart.

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Your very belief
in self-power
is merely another instance
of Other-power
acting through you.

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I'm dancing
with my mother
as Love.

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I surrender my self
to the spirit within.

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Imagine
the music is coming
from your mother's soul.

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Writer's block?
Easy:
I found his Muse
so then he could too.

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With a treater, it’s what he does.
With a healer, it’s who he is.
A healer’s healing is himself.

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We all are God—
because our mothers are.

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We are doomed
to misprocess
because our mothers
do.

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We are the Womb,
we are the Mother of Love.

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When a psychiatrist,
I used to look inside
to see their psychopathology.

Now—their souls.

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Who am I?
I am the beloved of Music.
Why am I?
To give Her love to the world.

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To play on the Pulse
—don't play.
Allow yourself
to be played
by the Pulse.

It wants to play you
—just surrender.

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Walkers-by
greet Hello,
but runners
too self-absorbed.

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To dance
like the leaves
lifted by the wind
of the music.

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The Tao, the Way:
Ever As-Is.

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Sick—seek.
If sick—seek Belovedness.

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Randomness
is Determined.

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Not the mountain,
but the spirit
in the mountain:
the Spirit
as the mountain.

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My Muse
is always singing.
Usually I'm deaf,
or mishear.
But She's always singing
—Perfectly.

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Music is speech
lifted in love.

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Music is not the sound
but the spirit
dancing before me,
within me.
As is color,
and shape and form.
All is God as the spirit dancing.

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That particular raindrop
was to jiggle that leaf,
just then, just so,
as destined, Determined.

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Sing to remind yourself
of your mother’s love.

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Singing
My Heart Stood Still,
ascending a long, steep hill
—aerobically.

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The healer's role
is to be the agent for change
—or not-
as Determined.

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If it is still,
I take pictures of flowers,
or throw the boomerang.

If breezy,
photos of running water,
or else I fly a kite.

My outdoor life
all depends on the wind.

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Planes keep flying over my kite.
We must be sharing the same flight path.

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The playing of music
without love for The Mother
is the greatest paradox ever uttered.

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Hey, little bugs!
I'm trying to take a picture.
I'm just doing my job –
and you're just doing yours.

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