Poems To Make You Blink is a reflection of a ten-year spiritual and not-so-spiritual period in my life. It is not all my life. Just a period. It spans a Silent Retreat through the Sahara Desert, Zen and Tibetan retreats. It also tracks my travels to Rotterdam, the Sahara and India. ‘Food’ reminds me of the Tibetan Buddhist ritual of leaving the dead out in nature for the vultures to eat. Quite gruesome but also brutal like human nature sometimes. ‘God King’ is me doped up on too many Buddhist retreats and profound Buddhist books but I wrote the poem after a Big Mind retreat which blew my mind. ‘The Piper’ is for my father and now in hindsight he has passed away and stands as a great testament to his skill as a musician. ‘Collateral Damage’ is based on a news story about a soldier that was charged with murder.