it was the character turning onto elm street from washington street that caught my attention

I started to write a novel today. I wrote the first sentence: “Phoebe wore her blue parka that afternoon.”

I thought it was well begun.

But then I couldn’t imagine where she was going. I didn’t want harm to come to her. I didn’t want her to be a cop. Nor have children.

I drank some Oakhurst Coffee Whole Milk. The dog lay down at my feet. The dishes were washed and stacked to dry.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I didn’t want to write the novel.

I stared at laundry hanging on porch. The yellow-gold tee-shirt. The black one.

I was happy my literary career was over.

I’ll probably think of Phoebe from time to time.

She was that kind of gal.

I hope things go well for her.

frag nicht, sonst müsste ich es dir erzählen

Body in bed, mind off into unrecognizable locations, spirit dwelling in different bodies.

You cannot convince me that I reside in a single place with one identity, or that you do, in one particular piece of geography, one linear time, one psychic narrative.

We are ubiquitous stories unraveling in multiple geographic arisings fashioned by innumerable longings and spiritual revelations.

Night sitting

The hermit doesn’t sleep at night:

In love with the blue of the vacant moon.

The cool of the breeze

That rustles the trees

Rustles him too.

Ching An (1841–1920)

if you ask me who I am I will tell you the truth.

I have only one request: 

Don't ask! 

each year on 10 december, anniversary of thomas merton’s death, we renew

Three promises: 

Contemplation,  Conversation,  Correspondence.
...as held by Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage“m.o.n.o.”(monastics of no other).

Contemplation  is the promise of simplicity.

It is a gift of poverty inviting open waiting, receptive trust, attention, and watchful presence. It is a simple Being-With.

It is attentive presence.

Conversation  is the promise of integrity.

It is a chaste and complete intention to listen and speak, lovingly and respectfully, with each and all made present to us. It is a wholeness of listening and speaking.

It is root silence. 

Correspondence  is the promise of faithful engagement. 

It is responsible attention and intention offered obediently to the Source of all Being, to the Human Family, to Nature. It is a faithful engagement with all sentient beings, with this present world, with existence with all its needs & joys, sorrows & hope.

It is transparent service. 

…………………………………………………………………

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage invites & welcomes individuals interested in the practice of these 3 promises in their life. Whether the interest is in conversing, praying, deepening, learning, or even holding these 3 promises, we invite you to enter the inquiry and stillness. 

May the loving light and the compassionate peace of the Christ and the Bodhisattva accompany and support the efforts of each one. 

………………………………………………………………..

Quotes: 

1.  We are going to have to create a new language of prayer.  (Thomas Merton, Calcutta 1968)

2.   When you go apart to be alone for prayer…see that nothing remains in your consciousness mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God. Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what he is like in himself or in his works) and keep only the awareness that he is as he is. Let him be thus, I pray you, and force him not to be otherwise.   (Anonymous)

3.   I long for a great lake of ale. / I long for the men of heaven in my house. / I long for cheerfulness in their drinking. / And I long for Jesus to be there among them. (Brigid, Celtic saint)

4.   It is not by closing your eyes that you see your own nature. On the contrary, you must open your eyes wide and wake up to the real situation in the world to see completely your whole Dharma Treasure, your whole Dharma Body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power - these are not separate from your nature….You will suffer, but your pain will not come from your own worries and fears. You will suffer because of your kinship with all beings, because you have the compassion of an awakened one, a Bodhisattva. (Thich Nhat Hanh)     

5.   He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion.  (Sokei-an)

...   ...   ...

(First pronounced 10december1998) 

thus come, thus gone

It seems like I get

confused sometimes

these days leading 

up to Christmas/nativity

are not different from days

leading up to Good Friday/Easter 

to be born is to die

to die is to be born

Христос воскрес!

Воистину воскрес!

Χριστός ανέστη!

Αληθώς ανέστη!

(Christ is risen!

He is truly risen!)

Ιδού, σας φέρνω χαρμόσυνα νέα. 

Σήμερα γεννήθηκε για εσάς ένας σωτήρας.

Behold, I bring you good news: 

Today a Savior has been born to you.

Who can separate these proclaiming words?

What knife can slice them apart?

That’s my confusion. 

The attempt to cut one into two

The way misogynists and racists

push and pull and tear and sever

that which is whole and unified

complete and of a piece

I stop calling one thing something else

I look out over this grey afternoon

at what is born and dead, gone and come

a Tathāgata, thus come, thus gone

A Christos preceding existence or 

manifestation -- the energy of eternal return

ultimate affirmation, yes and yes and yes

with every no a returning yes, MU! --things

as they are, being as it is, life and death

appearing and disappearing, a baby cries, we are

touched, a friend dies, we are touched --

rise up! don’t give up the ship! if you are

tired take a nap, if you are a dreaming dog

wag your tail, if it snows let it snow, 

Нам дано быть в этом мире.

(Nam dano byt' v etom mire.)

(We are given the opportunity 

to be in this world.)

hickory hill road, pennsylvania

 I watch the birds

They come and go

Night snow on the feeder

I read Jo’s letter

31 years ago, it falls from box

She’d her first bone marrow transplant

It is found prose poetry, she combs

Daughter’s hair, who combs hers

Husband reads paper by fireplace

Then-child now lives down south

Jo and David are gone 

Coffee cup down, kitchen empty

semi-ecstasy and aridity

 “The life of a monk is a semi-ecstasy and forty years of aridity.” (Thomas Merton)

 

Road-plow goes by

Easting toward town

Thomas Merton died

Fifty-seven years ago

Twenty-seven years

To the day he was received

Into novitiate of Trappists;

A mysterious death in Bangkok —

Anyone who knows God is threat

To country and church

Our absent brother

Prayed for and to

All this time

As nothing passing

thirteen minutes

 Zazen before bed

Just in case

Sleep is not enough

just the cold

  leaving apple peals

no deer prints

 in day-old snow

no practice is no enlightenment & vice versa

 there are two footbridges

two brooks ten pet graves

as I walk incline of Ragged Mtn

it is so cold

fingers in gloves hurt

not even winter yet

I used to practice meditation

now I just sit just walk

just make coffee just write this

yes, yes i will, yes

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”    (James Joyce, Ulysses)

 I’ll bite —

To answer your question

I don’t know

You asked

Where did he go?

I don’t know

You want me to

Tell you what I know

I don’t know

Do the dead

Carry on unburdened

I don’t know

Or a life within god

Or without god, alone

Here’s what I know

I don’t! —

G’wan, take a hike, 

Leave me be, intimately

one step at a time

 For now

Those of us

Alive go on

And we do

For now

Go on

blow out the candle

 happy bodhi-day to you

happy...

    (birthday?)

no, bodhi-day

    (wass-at?)

sigh,

let me enlighten you

mo chara aisteach

 he left socks behind

and a hammer

he was buried today

near his ma and da

a candle burns

Bí i do shuaimhneas, a chara

when immaculate means unobstructed reposition, 8 december

 Girl begins as no barrier

As open as open could be

Then filled with

No boundary itself

Wechsel zum Austausch mit der Leere

(Change to exchange with the void)

Mary

Mary

Mary

Conceived as the

Within

Without

family

 Red apple peals

On white snow deer trail

Othe side of green fence

if you see god, give your best

 I’m not going to Wash.DC, not me

Nope, not on your life, no way —

I’d rather stay home and wait

For news

Of demise

Or some other terminal celebration

I’ll just stay home

Immaculately concieved

Tathagata’s Bodhi-day

Departure of duplicity

Everyday mysticism

"تمويه" "tamwihi"

 I'll read what is at hand

for instance, The Paris Review

"Camouflage", by Adania Shibli

translated from the Arabic

by Max Weiss. We wear disguises

It is during the pauses

between reading numbers 

for the auditor at her desk

I open the tidy issue, Winter 2025

because it sits on cardboard box

next to chair, non-assiduously like

a lethargic cat you stroke because there

it gets dark early as days still shorten

the cold grips walls of old house

deer look to bed down on old leaves

dog on bed makes snoring sounds

the kufiyya on dashboard, then hiding

it from checkpoint soldiers, then waving 

it at young boys throwing stones at car 

his uncamouflaged head in a dangerous land

streetwise

 the buddhists in Augusta cancel 

zoom practice this morning

I logged on three times

figured they’d thrown me out

the way buddhists do when mad,

gave me wrong link, frowned on me

turns out there was illness, said email

after I watched myself and cat

in front room chair by large window

I like buddhists

they stay well within themselves

even when in public, no soliciting

in fact, they’re hard to pick out

in a crowd, unless one is playing

shakuhachi on sidewalk behind coin cup

bright night, red apple gone

 I scratch my head

This itchy time

Very full moon

ceart go leor

    “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a God.”  (Aristotle) 

 

did I tell you my name

you did

ok

do you remember what it is,

my name, 

do you

no

ok

well, guess i'll be leaving

bye

thanks for

the coffee --

ok

ceart go leor

ok

rearranging my dusty room

 Finding sweatshirts from years ago, dress shirts from long long ago, ties from decades ago. Two hundred socks, some that match.

Discouraging accumulation of a recluse.

I’ve forgotten why these things inhabit my room. I wear a different dress shirt every day. I don’t go anywhere, just downstairs, walk the narrow trail up Ragged Mtn. I can go a month and not repeat. They’re themselves ragged, wrinkled, worn out, and perfect for these days of haphazard memory. 

I used to think I was a christian. I used to think I was a buddhist. Now I don’t think and find myself a buddhist christian without belief. I pray, I meditate, but without reference to anything other than the prayer and meditation.

Odd, isn’t it? Form has no function.

Dementia Is a New Way to Be Buddhist

                Kelli Russell Agodon

Today my mum said she doesn’t remember

arriving at my house with a dishcloth,

doesn’t remember me telling her

my kitten stayed overnight at the vet,

that I’d be coming over to help with bills.

What she remembers is now.

She knows her memory is a ship

leaving port without permission,

her memory is a cloud she can’t hold.

When she asks, Why is everything so hard?

I say, I don’t think you’re the only one

asking that. When I say, I have trouble 

with loss, she says, We are all leaving.

She adds: I know I won’t be around

much longer. So I ask her 

what she’ll come back as? A pig, she says, 

then laughs. I tell her I can’t imagine 

seeing a pig and having to say, 

Oh, there’s my mom! She smiles 

and says, Then maybe I’ll return 

as a hummingbird. Another conversation 

in the present. Another conversation 

I will remember alone.

Copyright © 2025 by Kelli Russell Agodon.

Never thought of myself as a cowboy. I aint, really. 

But these days the lyrics of the country western song sound familiar, and feel even more familiar:

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

'Cause they'll never stay home and they're always alone

Even with someone they love

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/waylonjennings/mammasdontletyourbabiesgrowuptobecowboys.html 

Growing up with “Gunsmoke” in the afternoons on the small tv in Brooklyn house I felt I lived just off the Main Street of Dodge. My gunbelt and sixshooter cap gun, stetson and boots, kept my solitude from varmints and outlaws wandering the sidewalks of Bensonhurst where horses were tied to railing out front.

Now I live between two mountains. Barn has horse stalls broken down with ancient strands of straw nuzzled between floor and wall. 

Always alone.

What a curious idea!

Being alone.

As if even remotely possible.

bedankt sinterklaas

 young deer with limp

wanders close to speeding white pickup

stares up and down road

walks into driveway and dooryard

nibbles on yew branches outside kitchen

old apple placed outside barn door by rowboat

attraverso l'oscurità

 I don’t want to hear it.

       Hear what?

That the default position

Is sin and evil.

        And if it is?

That lies are the norm

That self-interest the fallback.

       What would you prefer?

Tell me about goodness.

       What about it?

Is God good?

        Sure, God is good.

And?

       We are not God.

Is God in this world?

        Yes, God is in this world.

Where, when, how?

        Only when God is through with you.

Through with me?

         Breaking through with you

        Into the world

        As it is, attraverso l'oscurità

        Through the darkness

         Seeing through here 

         e adesso (and now)

mio padre mia madre, così com'è

 I practice

Death

Falling asleep

At night

Napping during

Day

What dreams

May come

Heaven, the

As it is

Earth

Given

This, così com'è  

Bread of quotidiá

Each breath, 

Each moment a

Deliverance

From (through) 

Yes, (even this)

evil

If we would

Have it

Be, (being, 

been)

So …

(Ah, man!)

crossing prison lobby

 “Old school!”

He says in greeting —

Long time known face

vivre, pourquoi pas

 It is December, 

of course, 

time to be reading 

Sartre, Camus, 

and Heidegger

I’m not sure

i've gotten beyond

absurdity

the problem of suicide

of nothingness

whether in existential

philosophy, Zen Buddhism,

or the unfolding absurdity

of political discord and

narcissistic megalomania --

I choose philosophy --

the detritus of political

chicanery is much less

interesting than whether

to live (as Camus says) or die

tuning radio in parking lot

 Oboes rather than words

(Those clashing symbols)

Ah, silky melodious sound

wieviel

 Wieviel 

You ask

How much

Keinviel

I say

Not much

We are talking

About love

Enough for sanity

 

Genug

Yes, enough

To continue on

dropping to 1 degree

 It is cccold

Window frozen shut

Nextdoor they make snow

(How good) 

The gift of shelter

wishing i'd been there

1.

 too many words

crowd the space 

mind abandoned

2.

if you love me

teach me

what you see

3.

on snowy

frozen mountain

deer prints

as empty and thus infinitely interpenetrating

 About the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, also known as the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra:

The East Asian Buddhist view of the text is that it expresses the infinite universe as seen by a Buddha (the Dharmadhatu), who sees all phenomena as empty and thus infinitely interpenetrating, from the point of view of enlightenment.^[22] This interpenetration is described in the Buddhāvataṃsakasūtra as the perception "that the fields full of assemblies, the beings and aeons which are as many as all the dust particles, are all present in every particle of dust."^[24] Thus, a Buddha's view of reality is also said to be "inconceivable; no sentient being can fathom it".^[24]

The following passage from the Buddhāvataṃsaka describes this holistic idea of universal interpenetration or interfusion which sees the total sum of all things as being contained in each individual phenomena:

Children of the Buddha, just as if there was a great sūtra, as extensive as the great universe, in which are written down all phenomena in the great universe. That is to say, in it is written about the phenomena in the great enclosing iron mountains, as extensively as the great enclosing iron mountains; it is written about the phenomena on earth, as extensively as the earth; it is written about the phenomena in the medium universe, as extensively as the medium universe; it is written about the phenomena in the small universe, as extensively as the small universe. In the same vein, all phenomena – be they of the four continents, or the great oceans, Sumeru mountains, the palaces of the gods in the heavens of the realm of desire, the palaces in the realm of form, and the palaces of the formless realm – are written down to an equal length. Even though this sūtra is as extensive as the great universe, it can be fully comprised within a single particle of dust. As it is with one particle, so it is with all particles of dust.^[25]

This idea would later become central in East Asian Buddhist traditions like the Huayan school and Zen.    --wikipedia

What is in one is what is in all.

If your practice leads you into the clear spaciousness of enlightenment, thank you!

If your depravity leads you into perverse and hostile antagonism to truth and the good, o merdè!

I cannot dwell alone. You dwell within me. There’s a crowd there. I look in the mirror. I see you.

 I’m so upset with myself for running for president with no interest in the people of the country I’m meant to lead and serve.

I’m so confused as to why I shot those two people wearing camouflage on the street in D.C. last week.

I remember saving the young boy from running into traffic in India where a speeding truck bore down on him.

I prayed for the mother of a friend whose obituary appeared in the paper today. Of course I had died in that Portland hospital with her, our myocardial infarction catching everyone by surprise.

The Avatamsaka sutra also states that the wisdom of the Buddha (the Tathagata) is present everywhere in the universe, indeed, it is present within every living being. Thus, the sutra states (in chapter 32, Manifestation of the Tathagata):

Son of Buddha, the wisdom of Tathagata is present everywhere. Why? Son of Buddha, in the class of living beings there is no place where the wisdom of Tathagata is not present. Why is it that? The wisdom of Tathagata is not established due to grasping the discrimination/consciousness, because the omniscient wisdom, the self-existent wisdom and the non-obstructed wisdom perfectly appear in total disconnection with discrimination.^{[29]. --ibid} 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddh%C4%81vata%E1%B9%83saka_S%C5%ABtra

 One cat scratches at cellar door to get downstairs and out under porch. I let her down the stairs, put midday treats in their bowls. Give dog a biccie. Sip bitter coffee.  Look out at gray day with snow clinging to branches. 

Feel like the inside of a crypt. 

Attending what everyone calls a transition.

Perhaps, more accurately, a fulmination.

journey of a thousand wings

 Chickadee

Flies to feeder

Back to branch

Again and

Again

One seed at a time

God is not

Good is 

God 

Again and

Again I am

Leaving branch

closing ap(peal) to sanity

 Yes

We have

No

(Bananas)

We have

No

(Bananas)

Today

Frightening 

How

(Bananas) he

Is

I

Say 

(Bananas)

Go. Away

intoxication of pernicious truths

 I remember when I taught at university. There was a desire to think. Alongside the expectation that theories and facts, trends and history were part of the learning experience, thinking might have been a luxury left to the side while trying to convey the data of philosophy and familiarity with language and concepts.

There was a waterfall of possibility and a slender stream of time to foray the gushing offerings of the texts and barrage of potential tumbling toward that swept-away wisdom downstream.

A more skillful pedagogue might have been content with the limitations of time and speculation and focused more clearly on breaking open the names dates and theories nicely displayed in the table of contents.

Perhaps I inadvertently tried to make graduate students of newly arrived and neophyte to-be students of a required stepping stone course. Upper level courses had more elasticity and I was invited to that niche. I should have figured this out decades ago and angled toward Oxford or Cambridge to fully embrace the lecture and tutorial motif.

Philosophy, I might have said, is the conjunctive between Life and Death.

I would prefer to take up residence in such a connective, and deconstructed the "and" and recomposed a new sive/sive where life is a variant of death and death a mirror of life.

E.M. Cioran:

I think of so many friends who are no more, and I pity them. Yet they are not so much to be pitied, for they have solved every problem, beginning with the problem of death.

                                                    &

In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are left—ignorant how to react—with a foolish grin.

                                                     &

Two kinds of mind: daylight and nocturnal. They have neither the same method nor the same morality. In broad daylight, you watch yourself; in the dark, you speak out. The salutary or awkward consequences of what he thinks matter little to the man who questions himself at hours when others are the prey of sleep. Hence he meditates upon the bad luck of being born without concern for the harm he can cause others or himself. After midnight begins the intoxication of pernicious truths.

                                                     &

As the years accumulate, we form an increasingly somber image of the future. Is this only to console ourselves for being excluded from it? Yes in appearance, no in fact, for the future has always been hideous, man being able to remedy his evils only by aggravating them, so that in each epoch existence is much more tolerable before the solution is found to the difficulties of the moment.

                                         &

(--in The Trouble With Being Born, by E.M. Cioran, trans by Richard Howard) 

The evils of the current day are aggravating the composure of our minds. Cioran might suppose that this aggravation is necessary preparation for any successful resolution of the evil we experience. 

It is disturbing to consider that the flaring of evil is prelude to identification, encounter, and possible resolution into something less evil or even good. 

Does the "O felix culpa" lend the notion that fault and resolution, that good and evil -- (like life and death) -- are directly up against one-another in a symbiotic dynamic of interaction?

Is there in Cioran's thought the implication that the very notion/act of "being born" is troublesome in that it introduces a faulty dualistic conception that there is some applicable distinction between being-born and being-not-born?

It also conjures an odd distinction between being-born and not-being-born. (Can "not-being" be born?) Can nothing come into being in a similar way that something comes into being?

This, from Forest City Zen:

When I was pretty new to Zen practice, I came across a quote, Unborn mind is Buddha mind. I was baffled at this term “unborn”. Subsequently, I've learned that whenever our interest is piqued by some Buddhist teaching, like Unborn mind is Buddha mind, it is a good idea to pay attention. This is our body's way of asking us to grow. At the time, however, I was confused. How could something be “unborn”? Was this some sort of baffling Zen koan? It kind of got under my skin. So, I decided to set out and try to find out and understand this expression. The expression was used and popularized by a 17th century Japanese Rinzai Zen teacher named Bankei who lived between 1622 and 1693.

 

Bankei describes the unborn mind in glowing terms,

What I call the “Unborn” is the Buddha-mind. This Buddha-mind is unborn, with a marvelous virtue of illuminative wisdom. In the Unborn, all things fall right into place and remain in perfect harmony.1

 

Bankei gives an idea of how the unborn mind functions with this quote,

The Unborn manifests itself in the thought, “I want to see” or “I want to hear” not being born … The reason I say it's in the “Unborn” that you see and hear in this way is because the mind doesn't give “birth” to any thought or inclination to see or hear.2

-- (from Unborn Mind, Kuden Paul Boyle, Forest City Zen Group) 

It is intriguing to consider that we human beings are a sort of nexus between the seen and unseen world, where things can emerge, if you will, without fully entering this visible realm with independent existence, but, rather, participate in active engagement in this physical realm, straddling the seeming divide without inhabiting either realm, but only as co-responding echoes criss-crossing this or that without permanent residence or even graspable tangibility.

Those who claim there is no birth and no death seem odd to those of us for whom such a claim rings preposterous.

And yet (and yet) this existence we cultivate as a given fact, is, indeed, troublesome. 

As such, Siddhartha Gautama, was given to such exploration that the truth of suffering, craving, seeing through, and actual ways of being in this (Maya?) world constituted his Four Noble Truths.

As such, Jesus of Nazareth, wandered through a fantastical narrative of transcending (life and) death that we are uncertain about whether death is real, whether resurrection is a thing, whether everyone who has "died" will transcend that belief and arise into a realm beyond our understanding or conception.

Conjunction.

Heidegger said that language is the house of being.

And non-being?

How is it we dwell in these two expressions of phenomenal and spiritual reality, and still have such difficulty (trouble) navigating and negotiating them?

(I just sat with some Friends, the Quaker variety, at their Wednesday mid-week zoom.)

Practice, practice, practice!

moonrise over spinnaker trail Ragged Mtn (sh, 3dec25)

inherently complete

 Chinul thought he was smart.

He looked around the 12th century and saw Francis in Italy and Dogen in Japan. His hometown was in Korea.

Said to himself: “Let’s just write something before dinner and call it quits."

Errant thoughts are fundamentally empty; the essence of mind is fundamentally pure.

You suddenly realize this essence is originally free from afflictions; the essence of knowledge is inherently complete, no different from Buddha.

To cultivate practice based on this is called the Zen of the highest vehicle, and it is also called the pure Zen of those who realize suchness.

 -- Chinul (1158-1210)

So he did. Call it quits.

Finished his tea and trundled off to his reading chair.

He didn’t exactly realize suchness, but it was a nice idea to imagine what it would be like to realize suchness. 

“The true nature of reality as it is” -- what an idea!

He got into bed, chuckling.

He was asleep in no time.

Pretty smart if you ask me.

the paperwork verifies it

 I never wanted to be a saint

then, unexpectedly, I became a saint

I am in heaven after my death

holy and ensconced in beatific light

I don’t remember dying, I don’t 

nor do I know what a saint is, I don’t

but here I am, a saint, with a certificate --

it says: "You are a saint, goodbye and good luck!"

not enough

 Six AM

Room shrugs

Falls back in

as told me

 Deer tracks in

dooryard snow —

Dog pees by yew bush

noise and smoke

Nor do I write poetry. 

Got to love the subtlety. We need more folks who don't write poetry. Poetry is dangerous and fraught with a belief in its importance.

In Praise of My Sister

                    (by Wisława Szymborska)

My sister doesn’t write poems.

and it’s unlikely that she’ll suddenly start writing poems.

She takes after her mother, who didn’t write poems,

and also her father, who likewise didn’t write poems.

I feel safe beneath my sister’s roof:

my sister’s husband would rather die than write poems.

And, even though this is starting to sound as repetitive as

Peter Piper,

the truth is, none of my relatives write poems.

My sister’s desk drawers don’t hold old poems,

and her handbag doesn’t hold new ones,

When my sister asks me over for lunch,

I know she doesn’t want to read me her poems.

Her soups are delicious without ulterior motives.

Her coffee doesn’t spill on manuscripts.

There are many families in which nobody writes poems,

but once it starts up it’s hard to quarantine.

Sometimes poetry cascades down through the generations,

creating fatal whirlpools where family love may founder.

My sister has tackled oral prose with some success.

but her entire written opus consists of postcards from

vacations

whose text is only the same promise every year:

when she gets back, she’ll have

so much

much

much to tell.

Rather, write as little as you can.

Bunch words in narrow places.

Let vanilla egg nog pour into glass.

Take haiku, for example. They're not artistic creation. 

Haiku are immediate noted glimpses into what is real.

Don't let the sneaking syllables fool ya!

They'll fall asleep as soon as they lay down.