I'm wired and amped; my feet know the last dance. What's a poor old end-run death dog to do But surrender to music's honeyed trance, Waltzing to it like dreams that seem cuckoo? But nothing 's crazy at last dance juncture -- Just before the call for all to get lost: When sanity stretches but won't rupture, And one can see crystalizing hoarfrost.
So many cultures
make their dead
cross a river.
The Greeks' Styx.
The Hindus' Vaitarna.
The Norse Gjȍll.
The Gnostic's Hiṭpon.
The Japanese Sanzu-no-Kawa.
The Mesopotamians' Hubur.
Taoists cross Naihe Bridge --
over what (I'm not sure,
but) is probably a river.
No rest for the dead?
It seems kind of rude.
I click on Google Maps;
a pin highlights for a cemetery,
and, here, I stumble upon
graveyard reviews.
These reviews intrigue me because
it seems to me that if one is capable
of writing a cemetery review,
then one is unqualified.
And, if one is qualified to comment
on the caliber of an eternal resting place,
then one is unlikely to be capable of
posting a review.
I read one of the one-star reviews
and see that the reviewer's principal complaint
is an overabundance of "pocong."
"What is a 'Pocong?'" you may ask.
It is a Javanese ghost that takes up
occupancy in death shrouds.
Why is there a Javanese ghost
infestation in a cemetery 4000 kilometers
from Java, and -- as near as I can tell --
with zero Javanese occupants?
The review does not say,
but I love that someone panned
a cemetery based on the presence
of foreign ghosts
[and not because it is simultaneously
phasmophobic and xenophobic.]
But because it shows an unbridled commitment
to one's imagination that is usually
only seen among children.
i walk through the graveyard,
subtracting birth from death dates
to determine age at death.
there’s a correlation between
speed of calculation &
the degree of tragedy.
the faster i can determine an age,
the more disconcerting the death:
like the girl — 1990 to 2008.
the 89 year old man who survived WWII
service in the Burmese jungle
doesn’t raise as many questions.
a still dragonfly
looks perched & ready,
but then falls dead.
Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us.
principal doctrines – No. 2
Nothing is enough to someone for whom what is enough is too little.
Vatican Sayings – No. 68
Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.
Principal Doctrines – No. 27
Don’t spoil what you have by desiring what you don’t have; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.
vatican sayings – No. 35
No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but some pleasures are only obtainable at the cost of excessive troubles.
Principal doctrines – No. 8
And Five Honorable Mentions:
[T]here are an infinite number of worlds, some like this world, others unlike it.
Letter to Herodotus
Dreams have neither a divine nature nor a prophetic power, but they are the result of images that impact upon us.
vatican sayings – No. 24
It is pointless for a person to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.
vatican sayings – No. 65
But one must not be so much in love with the explanation by a single way as wrongly to reject all others…
Letter to pythocles
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.
Letter to Menoeceus
SOURCE: Epicurus. 2021. The Fundamental Books of Epicurus: Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, and Letters. Trans. by: Robert Drew Hicks & R. Medeiros. Independently published on Amazon. 45pp.
dying by the second
from a starving brain;
each new panicked moment
narrows down the frame.
now, my world is dwindling,
shrinking to a dot:
like TV's used to do
when you shut them off.
Now, this poem is done.
there's nothing past one pel --
except for oblivion:
no sight, no sound, no smell.
In the drowsy dark caves of the mind / dreams build their nest with fragments / dropped from day’s caravan.
From the solemn gloom of the temple / children run out to sit in the dust, / God watches them play / and forgets the priest.
The wind tries to take the flame by storm / only to blow it out.
The same sun is newly born in new lands / in a ring of endless dawns.
When death comes and whispers to me, / “Thy days are ended.” / let me say to him, “I have lived in love / and not in mere time.” / He will ask, “Will thy songs remain?” / I shall say, “I know not, but this I know / that often when I sang I found my eternity.
Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore is in the public domain and can be read at sites such as:
Fireflies is available at PoetryVerse
grand monuments,
overgrown with moss & weeds,
for Dead long forgotten.
Sun, Rain, Wind,
& other agents of wear
that tear down ancient stones
one grain at a time,
eroding symbolic rocks
carved with symbols
that meant something
to people in days of yore.
And they mean something
to people today,
but whether those meanings
match is another question...
Because our understanding
of past perspectives
is ever eroding:
just like those rocks,
but - unlike rock -
thoughts and beliefs
were wisps writ in a
malleable art: language.
We cling to traditions & lineages,
but everything is erased.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 