gut yom tov

Shalom,

chag same’ach

no way, out

 Of course slavery is wrong. For everyone. Mostly for the enslaved.

And, of course sin is separation. But from what? And there’s the mistake.

We think we are separated from something, or from some state of perfection.

When I become fully human I suspect there will be sufficient awareness to realize there is nothing that I lacks.

(That phrasing is not dialect.)

No-thingness.

We are not things. We are no thing. I doesn’t see that.

It is the idea of nothing that frightens us.

Being nothing, doing nothing, will not be frightening when we are that doing what that is doing.

So much seems wrong.

And there is nothing...

We can 

Do

With that.

for the very first, time

 Virginity

When no one is used for your desire

When no-desire uses you for a resting place

Celebrate celibacy, if you find yourself there

remembering no more

 Everything falls away

This and that and the other

Until only you remain

In a world unpopulated

Birdsong and rain dripping

Car through morning wind

To town, to mountain rise

The way we purpose action

Why is this night so different

The screams, bloodstain, anguished

Horror of preferential murder, children

An ugliness of a chosen metaphor

I cannot celebrate memorializing violence

Making the horrible ritual ceremonial lore

because it favors me, a gift almighty given

A subjugation of gratitude sweating in hiding place

The mind can only make the story fit

An alibi of convenience — I am here because

Blood of innocence torn from helpless bodies

Marked doorway dripping red into hardened ground

The poet’s words:

Love, if you love me,

lie next to me.

Be for me, like rain,

the getting out

 

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-

lust of intentional indifference.

Be wet

with a decent happiness

(—from, The Rain, by Robert Creeley) 

everything falls away like last night’s rain

Morning sun a demented confusion

Cheerfully trying to remember what in dream

He’d forgotten after telling woman wearing

Choral brown his manner was 

to teach sideways, as if her hearing that

Meant anything at all. The children, you see,

Were dead, as the story namelessly rushes on

protect us lord as we stay awake

I am not religious. I am not spiritual. I am not yet a human being.

I am coming to be what I am not yet aware of.

Don’t call me by any of the names you know.

And asleep, rest, if you can, in his peace.

where have you gone

I looked long at where 

I'd been -- mute melancholy,

slow return back here 

At where I didn't

go -- quieter glance about,

lost in open drift

The day escapes me,

fog hides mountain across road --

cedar branch, slight shake

a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart

 I suspect every generation looks at hypocrisy and thinks it has never been worse than it is at the particular time of their looking. 

 Voting rights.

Gun explosion.

Sexual abuse and slavery.

The degradation of institutions.

Mistrust of everyone.

But I look at this time with the mind of doubt and confusion as tabby cat kneads her way into nesting after coming to my face with meew inquiry. We discuss what’s on menu for her breakfast. I suggest “cat food” for her consideration. She seems amenable. Turns. And settles in with the suggestion.

As for hypocrisy, thy name is “legislature” “house” and “senate” and your sin is always before you.

We don’t know what to do about sin. It seems too ingrained and a mere fact of being alive.

We don’t know what to say about what is so blatantly wrong in our conditions and circumstances, in the works of this generation of hypocrisy.

Friday morning psalm 51 contributes::

15 Open my lips, Lord,
    and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
    you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is[b] a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart
    you, God, will not despise.

We like to believe the Lord will make things right from his residence in the great beyond. We wonder what is taking the Lord so long to set things right. Like waiting for a late colleague at the cafe. “Where ARE they?”

I have an idea what to do while waiting:

Let people vote. Make it easy.

Ban and eliminate assault weapons from general purchase and slaughtering rampage.

Never use another person as a means to satisfy your desire. Back off. Learn to garden or shoot free throws.

Strip power and misplaced belief in institutions whose primary goal is to be overloading and controlling.

Learn to trust yourself, your instincts, your investigation of what is right, and true, and non-egoistic.

Revive intersubjectivity, engage one-another, learn to do good.

This morning it rains. The cat has abandoned her burrow. Tires slosh up the road between two differently named mountains. Men and women dress, leave their homes, and set out to make other people do their bidding and succumb to their legislating, corporating, and financialing.

And, as might be expected, someone is loading their car with weapons, ammunition, and a sincere despair as to the conditions and circumstances of their fellow mortals, and accelerates off to prove the one thing they know no one will dispute — the mortality of those they will point to.

It’s not a meaningful way to live. 

It’s no way to live.

“Are you ready to order? Or do you want to wait for your colleague?” asks the waitress. 

“No, yes ... uhh ... yes, no,” they say. Not knowing what to say next.

if today you hear the voice

 God is the soundless word, creating itself

Christ is the resonance of that which is coming to be

You and I are empty spaces where what will be will be heard 

Sounding through approaching light in deep unknowing and 

Wondering darkness

tell me a story

In the beginning 

there was nothing  

Nothing? Yes, nothing.

Then there was something.

The sound of it. 

Pronouncing itself.

Silence eventually covered

Everything. We were free

Listening to nothing.

And here we are. 

Silent and free with

Nothing.

anunciarte

Do you want to birth 

God?

Sit down. Take a breath.

Say yes.

We really need God.

i look forward to hearing what comes next

 Explain this to me.

What?

This.

sine ipso factum est nihil

 Sluggish, he says, is

how he feels. He cannot say

any other word

zen trash talk

no talk (no failure)

just be what you are doing —

take trash out—  (gassho)

pointing thoughts not weapons

I do not own guns.

I have books in every room —

I am not afraid

should you wish to pray

 Prayer is the willingness to allow love to be here.

idkailu

 It’s not the man who shoots the gun. It’s not the gun that shoots the bullets. It’s not the bullets that pierce the flesh. It’s not the flesh that is torn and bleeds. It’s not you reading these words. It’s not words that reveal  our ignorance. It’s not our ignorance that fuels deranged hate. It’s not delusive derangement and hate that kills each human being. It’s not the human being that brings about such sorrow and pain.

What is it?

I don’t know...and I love you.

dear misguided neighbors

 I go to the market for milk.

I look around to see if someone has an AR15 or AR-556 in one of the aisles.

I’ll give up milk if you give up your gun insanity.

I pray for all of us, especially those dead in Boulder Colorado

a poet dies

Adam Zagajewski died in Krakow yesterday, 21mar2021.

This:

 Try to Praise the Mutilated World  

BY ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI

TRANSLATED BY CLARE CAVANAGH

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June's long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You've seen the refugees going nowhere,

you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

(--Adam Zagajewski, "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" from Without End: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2002)

recovered dialogue

Q: My God, my God, Why hast thou forsaken me?

A: Because there is no 'me.' 

     Break open and you will see.

geez

 I want my hour back. 

No way. It’s mine now, you lost

it yesterday, gone

who you be

 Big yawn, cat turns to

Window, sun grown  higher in

Morning pettifog