casus belli

War is where

Evil takes off 

Disguise

Blinds

Humans with

Lust for power

Giving them

Pain and death

In return

look on this and be comforted

 Power has

A way

Of corrupting

Itself

Do not

Fear another’s

Power …

to be free

We must

Learn

To read

t.b.w.y. (a late december greeting)

 Yes, 

The season is here

Let me see,

Let me see

It becomes

A different greeting —

“Truth be

With you”

Yes,

You

“Truth 

Be-with 

You”

he thought we should be grateful

 Vinny died in Vietnam 

This day in 1968.

 A friend

I salute you

That war is over —

You know this

Don’t you

Left handed

Sandlot player

Wearing

Catcher’s

Gear

no distance at all

 Night sky 

Venus 25 million miles away

In upper corner of window —

Right here in these eyes

augen, schweigen, nichts

 I looked

Zen

In the face—

It had

Nothing

To say

writhing toward wood stove to be sorn

 Presuming generosity

The zen fool was asked:

Why do you write?

He had no answer —

So he sat and thought

He saw words as fools do

Tires rolling along road

Yesing and splashing 

Toward town

Where they are used —

He had no use for words

So he fitted them to paper

Rolled the paper for firebox

Meeting match and kindling

Giving their lives for warmth

Disappearing into joy

as i see it

 Not going anywhere

Staying put

Rain stops

And sun crosses

wet road into

Neighbor’s yard

no ticket, besides, last bus has pulled away

 I’m glad there are optimists. I’m not one of them. 

I understand their brightside take on things.

Nor am I a pessimist. Though, Lord knows, it’s 

The prevailing gray tone these days. Pessimism 

Takes too much thought and analysis for me.

I’d rather glance then glance away, several times.

No, call me that sliver space between light and dark,

The end of exhalation and prior to inhalation —

The horizon where day and night stand still

Where dark and dawn circle one another.

If there is any love, I am grateful there is.

If rain is to fall throughout this night, so be it

if, today, you hear the voice, open your heart

 Where does a message go when deleted?

How long does a word hang around unsaid?

And if someone we’re to say, “”I love you,”

Do the words float off, an unhanded balloon 

Drifting directionless over ubiquitous need

Of immumerable souls thinking they hear

Something circling their inner depletion

Their thirsty listening for that which upholds

be brave

 If you’ve

Got nothing

To say,

Say it 

no answers on machine

 The machine had 70+ messages

it was time to cull

the "ok you fruit loops" lady's voice

which were the first four messages,

on machine for over a year

always complaining the recording

said "Leave a message and we'll get back"

as if the act of message-leaving would

ensure we'd get back from wherever we were.

Only her voice remained, she was gone,

finding out months after her death in (of 

all places) Florida, the research into her

whereabouts -- which comes up, who knows?

I press delete, four times, her voice erased

She never left a return number

maybe she didn't want to talk -- what was there 

to say -- advanced Parkinsons, confined to 

nursing homes, this estrangement, that one --

the wrinkled memory of brighter days at

bookshop, her buddhist practice, the dead

dog she kept in her car for months, the smell,

the depredation uncompanioning, sorrowing loss -- 

dust and dog hair coating & cushioning her floors.

All that, silenced now, no messages forthcoming

no messages extant, only these words telling

there once were messages, some jibes & joshing,

good enough laughter, then fade into unechoing

the way a voice will stop within unsaying memory

this, this . . . is christ. . . the lord

 Christ

Itself

Is

Prayer

Becoming

You

that which is becoming 自体

Let us

Pray

It is

Prayer 

Brings

Us to

That

Place, umwelt

That

Which is

Becoming

Christ 

You 

Wonder —

“What is

Prayer?”

I 

Am

Telling you

This

That which

Is 

Becoming

Itself

Is

Christ

Revealing 

You

To and as

Itself

自体

Jitai

the throes of elsewhere

 That surprising realization on the part of the protagonist in the novel about a residential facility for teens in Maine that the man she worked with was not interested, really, in the facility, his job, Maine, or anything else but finishing his doctorate, moving on to a real job, elsewhere.

Familiar.

When weekend came and everybody went home. When everybody leaves in the evening and you remain on duty.

When you realize that everyone has someplace else to be.

There’s something. Riveting. About the realization of the transitory. Everyone moving on. Plans. Goals. A future.

The moon is not up yet over to Bald Mountain.

I am a teenager in high school. I begin to sense that high school is a temporary passage. The athletes on scholarship would go on to be insurance salesmen and actuarial trainees. 

The nice girl met at a dance would go home to her mom and dad, brothers and sisters and the boy she liked from the neighborhood.

That all of them would marry, move to suburbs, have kids, and drive pontiacs and chevys, serve on church or town committees.

The sense of loneliness back then when the notion arose that this, this, wasn’t it, that there was something else, somewhere else, someone else that people were gravitating to, planning for, acting on.

It was surprising. My immature view of things. 

Then time passed.

I sat on a cushion. Breath came and went. 

Once it was “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” But that wasn’t true.

Then it became: “The more things change, the more they become themselves.”  Or, “The more a thing changes, the more it becomes itself.”

Yes, that’s it — it becomes itself, the more it changes.

It had been a shock that things did not remain the same. A summer afternoon. A walk by the narrows with an Italian nurse. A blue jay on a branch.

Sitting on the ground in a schoolyard with a bevy of men and women in religious habits. The flash of connecting eyes. She leaves for Japan. Ten years pass. Spackling the walls of a house where folks lived in poverty. Body movement in improvisational theater at university workshop. Walking to school during school years with the tall girl from 70th street and being tongue tied to say anything at all. Walking down subway stairs. Different stops.

Moments of steadfast immediacy, a Parmenidean insistence on unchanging Being. And nearby, lurking, Heraclitus gesturing that it is going to change, will soon change, and any construct of shutterblink permanence would fade like an old Polaroid photo left outdoors and forgotten under sun and rain.

This, this, changes.

All of it. Changes.

Not that I became friends with time. With time passing. With place changing. With same and different.

You don’t have to like your traveling companions. You do, however, have to travel with them. And they will turn, and wave, goodbye. Both people and time.

And there you are. In the throes of elsewhere. The passing of time. Of places. Of those, you were, once, with.

still life

 Frosty night air

Dog pees just beyond tree

Moonlight . . . dooryard

crossing window

through coincidence 

of opposites

the continuous 

emerging center 

this full moon

attending the sacred/natural

There is a sacred space available to every creature without denominator, divisor, or religious affiliation.

Last night, I attended.

Then I closed the sanctuary drapes.

Having received the holy in its most natural appearance.

in the radiance of the spirit

Conscripted in old age wounded and enfeebled staring out at dawning civil twilight trusty stead in dooryard pointing toward road readied for ride into battle tilting black ridgeline with nameplate “now” its signal flag first wave into spiritual battle against eponymous foe fie fi fum rocinante fire-breathing work-truck stead ready to ride into absurdity to fillet the mighty fishy fellow looming largely orange over the near-winter brown morning earth.

By day the sun shines,
And the warrior in his armor shines.
By night the moon shines,
And the master shines in meditation.
But day and night
The one who is awake
Shines in the radiance of the spirit. 

—Buddha in the Dhammapada

 My meditation is in the zendo of my cluttered cell up over bird feeders this cold morning. The jikido keeps time. She understands the inner battle wanting to become likewise outer battle. But her job my job is to note the time and wait for enlightening cosmos fiery star to penetrate this slate gray melodramatic emptiness to brighten through this metaphoric dimness covering the land.

Bodhi-chitta, abbey/ashram* hermitage jikido cat, keeping watch

(* in early days of meetingbrook, departed community member david shippee (rest well, friend), thought we should be called the abbey/ashram)

solving the ‘mu’(king) kong-an zen annoyance

 No

I won’t

Capitulate

No

abc

Donation

To 

(Ha!) 

‘Library’

(Moat?) likely

A warehouse

For merchandise

Chief salesman

Lures

(Baaa baaa)

mag(a)-ites

To tithe and

Titillate

His mag(a)stic

(Gegasten) ego

We are

Downwind

Of an 

Awful stench