First, it is that which makes itself felt.
What is the impression that follows the impulse?
Why question?
There is always a design.
"I would give up everything for your touch."
I have been up for hours.
"Now I'm walking with the sun in my mouth."
Let's talk about promises. I'm not closed.
Who is? Sure, I know I am.
I have a standard for desire.
All lies. It's a calico's what it is.
Music loud and pen in hand.
This is a standard I have established here,
which is more than elsewhere,
though it could be.
I want to get up and dance around now.
Some very good things often get lost,
overshadowed by unfulfilled desire.
I am studying it. I'm writing it all down.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Colored Pictures
Moments away from release, that space between
was and will be that is, the snow drop hangs
in the air, white in contemplation
A photograph of a summer woman
gathered in leather riding away
the shadow cropped out
As the words unfold, the meaning
is interrupted by a cloud of gnats
that rise up for attention
Time in time, frozen in bits
lips parted before the pose
ignore the hand reaching out
My eyes are closed in this one captured
just after the last storm passed
just before I broke into a smile
was and will be that is, the snow drop hangs
in the air, white in contemplation
A photograph of a summer woman
gathered in leather riding away
the shadow cropped out
As the words unfold, the meaning
is interrupted by a cloud of gnats
that rise up for attention
Time in time, frozen in bits
lips parted before the pose
ignore the hand reaching out
My eyes are closed in this one captured
just after the last storm passed
just before I broke into a smile
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
White and Red
What love is this that clings to me
though the bed is long cold on her side
through my bravery and strong words
through my fallen sheets of snow
When I mumble in my red dreams
and keep the flame hidden from them
through the alley I find his torpor
and rest my hand on her absence
Why come into the body so weighted
already broken and without spirit
just to give another chance to sing
no matter how sad the song belongs
What love is this that hunts for her
though the door stands open
through the wind I sift for a scent
through the sky I break open again
though the bed is long cold on her side
through my bravery and strong words
through my fallen sheets of snow
When I mumble in my red dreams
and keep the flame hidden from them
through the alley I find his torpor
and rest my hand on her absence
Why come into the body so weighted
already broken and without spirit
just to give another chance to sing
no matter how sad the song belongs
What love is this that hunts for her
though the door stands open
through the wind I sift for a scent
through the sky I break open again
Friday, February 01, 2008
out of the air
afraid in the beginning, like it was
the beginning, churning and looking
through close eyes for the bird of you
and soft through the crowd you rose
to the floor and my eyes soothed my
heart from flutter to wings in full
how to touch what was lost found
lost again and again and found
free again to the rhythm of wings?
how do I hold the cold close to me
walking back without you, without
your heat and your wings unfolding?
I would for you make folds in the gather
of clouds above me to feel you once
again inside the embrace of my breath
foolish with Spring bursting into flight
your body awash with the last notes
ringing inside you, your gentle heart
settled in the arms of my branches
your head cradled and your rhythm
slowing from the surge of soaring
the beginning, churning and looking
through close eyes for the bird of you
and soft through the crowd you rose
to the floor and my eyes soothed my
heart from flutter to wings in full
how to touch what was lost found
lost again and again and found
free again to the rhythm of wings?
how do I hold the cold close to me
walking back without you, without
your heat and your wings unfolding?
I would for you make folds in the gather
of clouds above me to feel you once
again inside the embrace of my breath
foolish with Spring bursting into flight
your body awash with the last notes
ringing inside you, your gentle heart
settled in the arms of my branches
your head cradled and your rhythm
slowing from the surge of soaring
Another Tao
After Reading T'ao Ch'ing, I wander Untethered Through the Short Grass
Dry spring, no rain for five weeks.
Already the lush green begins to bow its head and sink to its
knees.
Already the plucked stalks and thyroid weeds like insects
Fly up and trouble my line of sight.
I stand inside the word here
As that word stands in its sentence,
Unshadowy, half at ease.
Religion's been in a ruin for over a thousand years.
Why shouldn't the sky be tatters,
lost notes to forgotten songs?
I inhabit who I am, as T'ao Ch'ing says, and walk about
Under the mindless clouds.
When it ends, it ends. What else?
One morning I'll leave home and never find my way back—
My story and I will disappear together, just like this.
-Charles Wright
I like to get up early and sit and write. I'm not very talky in the morning. I like to let the day show me what it is before I get lost to the day to day bustle of stayin' alive, stayin' alive (inner city bakin' and everybody shakin').
If you look at the above poem, there are several things going on. (Forgive me if I come across as insulting, but I want to bring you in on some of the secrets that turn in the inner mindspring that is me.) The T'ao Ch'ing is a very old piece of writing that lays out some of the basics of Chinese Philosophy. If you haven't read it I will lend you one of my several copies. "The Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao." Very simple yet often opposing ideas rest next to each other in the same sentences. Paradox is very important. There is the surface and then there is the whole. Another way to say it is: "The god that can be understood is not God." The only way to truly know something is to give up trying to know it and accept that the mystery is safely beyond human comprehension.
Notice in the title the capitalization of the word "Untethered". The Tao will do this to you. You have to get comfortable with the lack of permanence to be unconnected and really notice what the world is without our subjective identification to meaning. This opens you up to what can come next. It allows you to really see what you are stepping on.
Notice the relative simplicity of the ideas. There are a few tough ideas...what are "thyroid weed"?..but generally all very clear and simple words. There is trouble here, but the idea of impermanence allows the author (and hopefully you and I) to come to what is generally thought of as a terrifying idea - death - with a kind of nobility. There is no mention of safety. There is no safety. He knows as did the writers of the Tao that we are here now and at no other time, and when we cast our thought out to beyond here, the ultimate reality is that all things will become what we cannot know. I love the way he brings this home with the last line.
This is an ideal for me. I am more than any other descriptor, a Taoist. There is no religion, no formula, no dogma. There just is what it is, though it is not what it may appear. There is in me the strong identification with what the world constantly tells us to think.
I want you to always feel comfortable with the idea that I want you really to be what you already are. I don't want you to think that I want to change you into something else, even if those kinds of words will sometimes tumble out of my mouth. I want in my life to be more at home with my dis-ease. I have a chronic condition which is terminal (life), and I want to enjoy the sensations that I have while I have them. This is why, when you want me to declare something, I always pause. It is in that pause, that expectation, that between what-has-been-asked and what-is-then-said that the universe reveals itself for what it is to me.
Dry spring, no rain for five weeks.
Already the lush green begins to bow its head and sink to its
knees.
Already the plucked stalks and thyroid weeds like insects
Fly up and trouble my line of sight.
I stand inside the word here
As that word stands in its sentence,
Unshadowy, half at ease.
Religion's been in a ruin for over a thousand years.
Why shouldn't the sky be tatters,
lost notes to forgotten songs?
I inhabit who I am, as T'ao Ch'ing says, and walk about
Under the mindless clouds.
When it ends, it ends. What else?
One morning I'll leave home and never find my way back—
My story and I will disappear together, just like this.
-Charles Wright
I like to get up early and sit and write. I'm not very talky in the morning. I like to let the day show me what it is before I get lost to the day to day bustle of stayin' alive, stayin' alive (inner city bakin' and everybody shakin').
If you look at the above poem, there are several things going on. (Forgive me if I come across as insulting, but I want to bring you in on some of the secrets that turn in the inner mindspring that is me.) The T'ao Ch'ing is a very old piece of writing that lays out some of the basics of Chinese Philosophy. If you haven't read it I will lend you one of my several copies. "The Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao." Very simple yet often opposing ideas rest next to each other in the same sentences. Paradox is very important. There is the surface and then there is the whole. Another way to say it is: "The god that can be understood is not God." The only way to truly know something is to give up trying to know it and accept that the mystery is safely beyond human comprehension.
Notice in the title the capitalization of the word "Untethered". The Tao will do this to you. You have to get comfortable with the lack of permanence to be unconnected and really notice what the world is without our subjective identification to meaning. This opens you up to what can come next. It allows you to really see what you are stepping on.
Notice the relative simplicity of the ideas. There are a few tough ideas...what are "thyroid weed"?..but generally all very clear and simple words. There is trouble here, but the idea of impermanence allows the author (and hopefully you and I) to come to what is generally thought of as a terrifying idea - death - with a kind of nobility. There is no mention of safety. There is no safety. He knows as did the writers of the Tao that we are here now and at no other time, and when we cast our thought out to beyond here, the ultimate reality is that all things will become what we cannot know. I love the way he brings this home with the last line.
This is an ideal for me. I am more than any other descriptor, a Taoist. There is no religion, no formula, no dogma. There just is what it is, though it is not what it may appear. There is in me the strong identification with what the world constantly tells us to think.
I want you to always feel comfortable with the idea that I want you really to be what you already are. I don't want you to think that I want to change you into something else, even if those kinds of words will sometimes tumble out of my mouth. I want in my life to be more at home with my dis-ease. I have a chronic condition which is terminal (life), and I want to enjoy the sensations that I have while I have them. This is why, when you want me to declare something, I always pause. It is in that pause, that expectation, that between what-has-been-asked and what-is-then-said that the universe reveals itself for what it is to me.
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