Is
Everything
Listened
To
Saturday, February 21, 2026
Friday, February 20, 2026
leave that place
Right there
in transparent yellow prayer flag
ascent from hades
getting the hell out of there
Christmas circle
stepping into Lent
the expanse of birth
death and beyond
even the gipper will see through tears
Yes. We have
No integrity
In White House
None in department
of justice, homeland
Security, commerce.
Treasury, national
Intelligence, hhs,
Anywhere he touches —
We are bereft
Legs crushed
Under rubble
Spirits deeply
Wounded, minds
Shattered glass —
But not defeated
Stunned, but
Not defeated —
Someone nears
Will head-butt
Smug face, cuff
Hands behind back
Frog-walk through
Debris of lies
A broken yet brave
Revival of decency
Erasing smirk and snarl —
Why not believe in
Such an outcome
Taking back the flag
The trust in truth
Unlocking front doors —
Mourning in America
Thursday, February 19, 2026
looming extolling
I’ve taken up
broom strolling
given up
doom scrolling
happy to sweep
away absurd people
to praise what appears
to extoll lingering grace
get free
Disregulation
Brrrr
Quick
Hold me
Stop me
From shaking
(Thanks Mandy)
We need to
Close ambiguous
Grief (thanks
Brianna)
We need
To learn
To breathe
Again
Yes, so much
Insanity —
It’s their
Depraved
Abnormality
Not yours —
Get free
hashem
Hashem (Hebrew: הַשֵּׁם haššēm, literally "the name"; often abbreviated to ה׳ [h′]) is a title used in Judaism to refer to God. -Wikipedia
Dementia
Nothing going on
I’ve forgotten
Your name
That makes sense
Late for introductions
Let me just give you
What I don’t have
Your name
Fully pronounced
el flujo no cambia, solo distribuye una vista.
If there is only God
what is it we experience
that seems so not God?
These men and women
so seemingly not God
seem to run the world
But if there is only God
what are we experiencing --
the not God -- if not evil
(profoundly immoral and
wicked) -- those living
illusory, self-obsessed lives;
this time of lent and ramadan
the invitation of One and One
Alone -- losing what-is-not
for
what-is-
good
'tawhid' (توحيد)
I awake at 2AM with the word “Tawhid” being pronounced in mind.
Tawhid,[a][b] literally "to unite" or "to make one"[2], refers to the principle of monotheism in Islam.[3] It is the religion's central and single most important concept, upon which a Muslim's entire religious adherence rests. It unequivocally holds that God is indivisibly one (ahad) and single (wahid).[4][5]
Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession of submission.[6] The first part of the Islamic declaration of faith (shahada) is the declaration of belief in the oneness of God.[4] To attribute divinity to anything or anyone else, is considered shirk, which is an unpardonable sin unless repented afterwards, according to the Qur'an.[7][8] Muslims believe that the entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of tawhid.[9]
From an Islamic standpoint, there is an uncompromising nondualism at the heart of the Islamic beliefs (aqida) that is seen as distinguishing Islam from other major religions.[10]
The Quran teaches the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world, a unique, independent and indivisible being that is independent of all of creation.[11]God, according to Islam, is a universal God, rather than a local, tribal or parochial one and is an absolute that integrates all affirmative values.[7]
Islamic intellectual history can be understood as a gradual unfolding of the manner in which successive generations of believers have understood the meaning and implications of professing tawhid. Islamic scholars have different approaches toward understanding it. Islamic scholastic theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, Sufism, and even the Islamic understanding of natural sciences to some degree, all seek to explain at some level the principle of tawhid.[12]
Chapter 112 of the Qur'an, titled al-Ikhlas, reads:
Etymology
The word 'tawhid' (توحيد), which means "He asserted, or declared, God to be one", is derived from the Arabic root 'wahhada' (واحدة), which means "to unite" or "to make one".[2][13] This term signifies the belief in absolute oneness and uniqueness of God.[14] This reflects the struggle of monotheism against polytheism.[15][16]
It must be the hovering spirit of Ramadan come visiting.
Elsewise. . .
My mouth hurts. I look forward to its not hurting.
On the other hand, it’s only pain.
Fresh air through open window pleases.
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
because i know i shall not know
making an ash of myself
burning down old edifice
you ask if God cares
about renunciation
I say I don’t think so
God is non-attachment
nothing there
to hang anything on
everything has fallen away
if anything other than
our projections were ever
attached to God -- no, you
can’t care for what is not there
only for what is
wood stove ashes of trees gone by
from bowl to finger to forehead
some words improvised
the touch, recollection
former formal times liturgical
now impromptu passing touch
all the mountain trees standing
in snow, glad, in sun, letting go
into glad beings hiking with ski poles
dog burying face, staring, listening
this rejection of belief, claim, course
of action, right, title, contract, obligation
all gone to ash
gone to momento mori
this flagrant non-attachment
ground scattered with pale gray ash
remembering to forget it all
one instant through another
seven dogs, three cats
I bow
At tree
With cross
Four-leggeds
Cemetery by
Brook bridge
Poke brass bell
Butterflying from
Branch, liturgy
Under snow under
Ground, they are
Imagination’s nave
Once they crossed
Double waters up
To spinnaker's Ragged
Climb, mountain
Backyard, the joy
Companioning hikes
Broken bench
Broken plastic chairs —
Unbroken “Peace” aloft
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
it feels and presents them—nothing more
Listening to Will Durant writing about Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) while walking island path up toward spinnaker on lovely snow-deep Ragged Mountain this afternoon with Enso the good dog.
3. What is Beauty?
Croce came to philosophy from historical and literary studies; and it was natural that his philosophic interest should be deeply colored by the problems of criticism and esthetics. His greatest book is his Esthetic (1902). He prefers art to metaphysics and to science: the sciences give us utility but the arts give us beauty; the sciences take us away from the individual and the actual, into a world of increasingly mathematical abstractions, until (as in Einstein) they issue in momentous conclusions of no practical importance; but art takes us directly to the particular person and the unique fact, to the philosophical universal intuited in the form of the concrete individual. “Knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge or logical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or knowledge obtained through the intellect; knowledge of the individual or knowledge of the universal; of individual things or of the relations between them; it is the production either of images or of concepts.” The origin of art, therefore, lies in the power of forming images. “Art is ruled uniquely by the imagination, Images are its only wealth. It does not classify objects, it does not pronounce them real or imaginary, does not qualify them, does not define them; it feels and presents them—nothing more.” Because imagination precedes thought, and is necessary to it, the artistic, or image-forming activity of the mind is prior to the logical, concept-forming, activity. Man is an artist as soon as he imagines, and long before he reasons.
Croce prefers art to metaphysics and to science: the sciences give us utility but the arts give us beauty. The origin of art lies in the power of forming images and not concepts. The image-forming activity of the mind is prior to the logical, concept-forming, activity.
The great artists understood the matter so. “One paints not with the hands but with the brain,” said Michelangelo; and Leonardo wrote: “The minds of men of lofty genius are most active in invention when they are doing the least external work.” Everybody knows the story told of da Vinci, that when he was painting the “Last Supper,” he sorely displeased the Abbot who had ordered the work, by sitting motionless for days before an untouched canvas; and revenged himself for the importunate Abbot’s persistent query—When would he begin to work?—by using the gentleman as an unconscious model for the figure of Judas.
(-- from Chapter X Section 2.3 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The contents are from the 1933 reprint)
Seems right -- to feel and present.
No rational argument. No calculated or conditioned elaboration of a point of view intended to overwhelm someone’s conclusions to correspond with your slant of persuasion.
Rather, to feel and present.
To intuit the whole of one’s life and past while navigating the moments and molecules of a quietly passing geography of now.
We are artists until we think we should be something else, do something else to justify our existence in the eyes of mechanical pragmatic witnesses. And then we grow old. A nostalgia for the person we always were overwhelms us. Maybe resentment. Perhaps blame. A spate of what could have been.
Forget about it!
Feel now.
Present now.
You are the blank page, the empty canvas, the mute flute, the silent spacious vista, the deep inner space, the cavernous dance floor.
Go ahead...there’s nothing more to think about.
out for the count
in prison yesterday
wondering if Jesus
has any juice in
world today
man thinks yes
calls it ‘within christianity’
no regalia, ritual, title --
just the feel of faith inside
looking out at the unfeeling
structures and politics
those wanting to use the christ
for their portfolio, their resumé
he feels what he says, makes no
big claims, no triumphal BS
scratches his service dog-in-training
with her mohawk ridge on head
in library federal holiday Monday
talking as respecting conversationalists
as our lives pass one another
pausing in fond inquiry together
¿puedes ver lo que yo veo?
Jackson, Duvall, Jurgensen
these deaths
civil rights leader, actor,
quarterback
Jesse, Robert,
Sonny
close their eyes
rest their eyes
no longer needing
to see what we see
downsliding february toward march
To think we matter
Else, why think
If we don’t thinkIt doesn’t matter
Some say thought
Builds the world
Others just look at youMindless
As these days
Pass without thought
I cannot find
A world to dwell in
Hanging on to eaves
A melting icicle
The hard cold respiteDripping each disappearance
Monday, February 16, 2026
i’m glad for you vickor frankl
I find myself absurd
Whatever you think,
No need to think well of me
No one cares
Excepting one who cares
Whatever their name
I breathe in
I breathe out
Absurdly
is me
Gordon Lightfoot’s first verse could be about dementia, the ghosting mind.
If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
'Bout a ghost from a wishin' well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I'm a ghost, you can't see
(—from If You Could Read My Mind, Song by Gordon Lightfoot ‧ 1970)
As we disappear.
Mind staying inside itself.
Hauntingly.
there’s no need to prolong this conversation
do you want to know who I am?
yes, who are you?
I don’t know.
oh, well, then . . .
do you still want to know who I am?
no, no longer.
good, then that’s settled.
on second thought, who are you?
I am, I am, (oh dear) I don’t know . . .
right! thank you! thank you!
Sunday, February 15, 2026
how do you get to carnegie hall
just because they
are hateful
doesn’t change
loving care
it does make
love
something
to practice
so, do so --
practice love
hate doesn’t know
what to do
with
love
prolixity, 864,500 (all those thousands of miles) diameter in frozen slice of water
Some bird calls
Two and two and two
As our sun-star clings
To icicle off eaves
Non-local 93 million
Miles and inches
Outside morning window
Behind bamboo shade
While riding road through
Shudder breeze climbing sluice
Up toward Hope this Sunday
Between Ragged and Bald
second-hand sweeping ‘round
When I sat
With the dying
It occurred to me
How little it mattered
What anybody
Thought
So I didn’t —
Think
Just sat
Empty-minded
As one would
Watch finch
At feeder
Drop seed shell
And sometimes
Seed itself
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