Nothing is straightforward,
or simple.
Everything is a messy mix
of shades
blended in swirling clouds—
chaos clouds.
Those who can redraw the world
with sharp, angular boundaries
are the masters of self-deception:
for all deception is self-deception.
How does one master menace,
carving optimal malignancy
into a festive orange orb?
Sometimes the faces intended
to convey happy holiday blessings
are the most creepy and disconcerting…
you know, like with real peoples’ faces.
Sometimes the faces intended
to torture souls and rend psyches
are over-the-top and campy or silly…
you know, like with real peoples’ faces.
How does one master menace
on a festive orange orb?
flowers & greenery
&
little bottled candles
form a memorial
on the train bridge
crossing the river
but the most soul-chilling
is the stuffed toy rabbit,
standing weathered & unkempt,
it testifies that someone
saw the deceased
as a tiny child
was she a tiny child,
or just so remembered?
so many questions float on
as that cold river glides below
Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.
Ralph waldo emerson, Self-reliance
Is there any angst that we will tumble off a cliff that we should have railed off long ago? -- Nuclear War -- I fear that wave has rolled onward, and we have lost that angst. Do we not fear: blast wave disintegration? fire that turns wet things -- such as ourselves -- into instant ash? clumps of hair in the hands of the neutron-cooked? If we've forgotten to fear such things, we are surely doomed.
Eye-to-Eye. circling & jockeying for position, playing with the distance through subtle shifts, then testing the distance, engaging in exchanges Thrust - Parry - Retreat - Repeat moving faster, the interval of exchanges ever shortening then -- in one instant -- it's done.
i enter an empty temple.
it’s not silent.
footfalls resonate
&
floorboards creak.
but flickering flames
&
sleepy-eyed Buddhas
are quiet enough
in an hour,
the monks will filter in
with great punctuality:
monks, young and old.
(i would say, “and ages in-between,”
but they all seem young or old.)
there will be chanting,
and the din of finger cymbals
and deep-toned drums.
and i will leave
for the solace
of the world
outside the temple.
the hawk's head-shifts are precise and follow in rapid succession... and then cease it lifts one feather at a time as if sniffing its pits it shifts from talon to talon, and then once more it seems to be settling in, getting comfortable for a long stakeout... and then it's gone, diving off the ledge, disappearing into the city valley
tweets & cheeps i hear them all: dainty expressions of tiny birds i hear them amid the neck-stretched caws of jungle crows & amid the circling screech hawks weightless birds: flitting & jumping, flitting with wings blurred to invisibility & jumping: bounce - bounce - bounce
Feet feeling rock, until one loses the ability to tell where the sole ends and the mountain begins. If one were rooted like a gnarly cedar, it would feel no different. When there is nothing but mind, there is no longer anything to differentiate...
We need a flow of wild ideas, though some will drift ever onward, into the vast nowhere: beyond application or reason. One will catch on the shore, others will pile into it, becoming a beaver dam of bad ideas. Unstable? Maybe. But the flood will rise, and lift that stuck idea, and send the whole logjam spiraling out to the deeps where maybe one idea will float apart, and find the light that makes it look worth chasing.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 